Motherload

Motherland  (written by  Graham Lineman and  Sharon Horgan) OK, I admit it. I flew off the handle about Motherland . Or rather I flew off the handle about a a perky young male reviewer in the Guardian – one of the smug new breed of reconstructed men, who have managed to reconstruct a society around themselves in which they think they are feminists, while never actually doing anything in the family that doesn’t serve their own interests first.  Mean, I know. Below the belt, yes, literally. Accurate? Almost certainly. I can do hard satire too. I do apologise if I hurt anyone’s feelings. But to Motherland itself. I actually watched it last night (as opposed to writing about it first).  On second thoughts (or first thoughts if you’re going to discount my pre-thoughts, which were, for the most part, and though I flatter myself, absolutely accurate), Motherland could be the start of something really interesting. You see, it’s billed as ...

Well, once again, it's a delightful day here in Motherloadland. Its early September, Indian Summer, the leaves are on the turn, the tan is fading, the children have skipped off to school in their new uniform and shoes, little faces shining and upturned for new knowledge. I feel I have been here before. It feels a lot like all the other Septembers I've had in my nearly five decades – I used to be the child skipper, now I am the adult skipper. Wait! Let me reach for an apt, Tim Minchin-flavoured metaphor – my life feels like Groundhog Day. I myself have just returned from comparing plastic clothes airers in Tescos and John Lewis, paying over good money for the one that looks least likely to break in my hand, and for yet more socks for our son, because he seems to eat them. I've made a coffee (another one!) and I'm just sitting down to finish writing a book. Only I can't write, because I'm SO BLOODY FURIOUS ALL THE TIME. As I seem to have been since 2003. L...

Tomorrow it will be 6 weeks since some surgery to remove early breast cancer. All is well, I have heard from the surgeon that there is no microinvasion. Healing is progressing as it should. Three weeks ago, my surgeon dictated a letter to another hospital, requesting a referral for radiotherapy. I was in the room when he dictated it. Apparently NHS letters have been outsourced to somewhere in India to be typed up. I don't know what happens to them after that -- who actually prints them out, sticks them in an envelope, franks them, takes them to a post box. All I know, and you can probably guess what's coming -- or rather not coming -- next, is that that letter never made it to the other hospital. Day followed day, and I tried to hurry up and wait. I busied myself, knowing that there would inevitably be a delay while appointments were made, telling myself that a few days, a week, a fortnight, wouldn't matter, that I needed to trust and accept. All that mindful stuff....

Yesterday, I came home from scotch eggs and slabs of carrot cake with the children and my husband, eaten outside at the local farmers' market, in the May sunshine, to discover that my son had chopped up the cable to the lawnmower. I'd gone to the shed for something else, the kneeler, so that I could do the weeding. I confronted him immediately, not even entertaining the possibility that the cat, my husband or my daughter might have committed the crime. He stood in the tall grass and weeds at the back of our garden, his mother lowering at him from the shed door, holding out flailing snakes of orange flymo cable at him with trembling hands. He looked up at me, and didn't try to deny it. 'Yes,' he said, 'I did it.' I set off into a furious tirade, appropriate to the occasion, utterly outraged and disbelieving, aware that the neighbours would be sticky-beaking each side of our tiny garden. In my head were mad images of corpses, severed limbs, my son the ...

In the past few days I have found myself thinking a lot about shame. This is not a word I like to use – who does? The whole point about feeling ashamed is that we want to die inside, curl away from the world, convinced of our terrible worthlessness. Shame refers to the painful feelings of humiliation and even distress, caused by our own perception that we have done wrong, failed, or made a fool of ourselves in some way – whether or not we have. Brené Brown has studied the power of vulnerability, and the transformative possibilities of confronting shame head on. She also happens to be the most wonderful public speaker. That woman is fierce: http://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_listening_to_shame There are a number of points she makes which go straight to the heart of what shame is and why we need to deal with it. 'Shame is a focus on self; guilt is a focus on behaviour.' 'Shame is 'I am bad'.  Guilt is 'I did something bad'.'  'Shame dri...

Ariel India's campaign, known as #ShareTheLoad, was made by BBDO India, and went viral after it was endorsed by Sheryl Sandberg. Sandberg posted the ad on her Facebook page, and wrote,  This is one of the most powerful videos I have ever seen – showing how stereotypes hurt all of us and are passed from generation to generation. [...]  When little girls and boys play house they model their parents' behaviour; this doesn’t just impact their childhood games, it shapes their long-term dreams. It's true that the ad has a powerful emotional appeal, but I don't think Sheryl Sandberg is in the group she talks about. Because otherwise she would not be in the powerful societal position she is in. Clearly, whatever was modelled for her (if her theory of social engineering holds water) resulted in her empowerment.  Stereotyping definitely hurts us all – but it's the way stereotypes are perpetuated and not challenged in this advert that irritated me at first. T...

My mother-in-law's raspberry cupcakes Ever the student, I have learnt a lot from this (fingers crossed) minor encounter with cancer. It's to do with how I cope best – through silence, telling almost no one, yoga, exercise, practicality, being Dutch about the whole thing, cutting out any white noise that derails me, being more ruthlessly focused than I normally let people know I am, looking at the positive and the concrete over the chimerical and the negative. And jokes. The negative is, of course, there, I don't deny it, lurking about in an anti-matterish sort of way, but, in my life, I have welcomed in far too much of that, felt I had to be negativity's caretaker. And that is linked to allowing myself to be bullied, and miserable. I'll take Newtonian over Quantum mechanics for the time being. The sub-molecular level will have to wait. What I've learnt is… that a well-timed joke has a therapeutic power as great as a surgeon's blade. I'll ne...

Pre-op Dutch Courage So Motherload fans, I've been quite absent from this blog for a while, and I've got an excuse. On Thursday I had surgery to excise some very early breast cancer. Now, this won't be a long post, because I'm still post-op and a bit tired. But I wanted to pass on a few things that have interested me on this journey. 1. I found my lump on 22 February 2016. This also happened to be the second anniversary of the death of a wonderful friend, Jane. She was the bravest woman I have ever met. She died of ovarian cancer. We met, the day after her diagnosis, when my little girl went round to play with her little girl. We looked at each other and burst out laughing. What is the etiquette for a playdate chat about ovarian cancer with a mum you've never met before? We became firm friends. We learnt mindfulness together during six sun-filled weeks in her kitchen, as her cat strolled in and moved around us, happy and curious. Another friend I'...

I found Caitlin Moran's heartfelt open letter to her teenage fans moving and upsetting to read. Caitlin Moran is certainly right to point to a very unpleasant aspect of modern life: the hysteria that surrounds young girls. I think her letter is intended to defuse some of that hysteria, but I would love her to write a letter to me, because I think she should target the source of the hysteria not its object. She's right that there are teenage girls who hate themselves, and harm and sabotage themselves, because they are trying to find ways to cope with their own overwhelming feelings. They cannot see any other outlet than to hurt themselves. And something is fuelling that. Yes, this self-loathing exists, I can attest to the fact myself – not in my own girl, I hope, but certainly in my own memories. And I do love Moran's promise to our girls, that we only ever have to face the next minute . This is wonderful advice, and probably shows that Moran has done a Mindfulness...

When I was working for Cambridge, I could not envisage working for myself (although oddly you are like a barrister and you do work largely for yourself). I had a monolithic and binary view of working/not working, being/not being. I existed through my achievements. As things went wrong and went on, though, I went through a long (l-o-n-g – a positively Proustian) process of change.  Over time, I have stopped working overtime. I’ve completely revised the way I see myself as a working person. I now think of myself as a Working Mother, and give both terms equal weight, because they have equal weight in my mind and life.  I don’t apologise any more for existing, being a woman, being a mother, underachieving, trying to balance, and I don't judge myself for failing to be all things to all people. Stopping justifying myself is the single hardest thing I have ever achieved – far harder than the Phd and two births and relocating to and from Australia,...

My daughter sent me the following link yesterday, and I watched it with growing confusion: see what you think: 'If Moms were treated like Dads' is the title – so, let me think, what was I expecting? A few witty comments about American women taking it easy as men don't do enough around the house; feigned incompetence – suddenly becoming unable to do the washing; never taking responsibility for parenting decisions? A teasing interlude of reverse sexism? If I'm honest, yes, that's what I was expecting – a Buzzfeed moment I could laugh ruefully at, but privately deconstruct. Or publicly deconstruct, pointing out the basic stereotyping of men and women alike, and bemoaning the paucity of representation of middle class lives etc etc. Instead what I watched illustrated what I mean by 'Motherload' perfectly. In the video we watch a teacher tell a mother to ask her husband's permission before their child can enter a gifted reading programme. We see a ...