You might not know this but I’m utterly incompetent. As the winds of Storm Christoph (one of my boys now thinks the guy from Frozen is visiting the North of England), and the ravages of the pandemic continue to tear at our lives nearly a year on, the reality has dawned on me. I have not got this. 

It is an often-said phrase in the self-help world, and full of encouragement and well-intentioned but “You got this” currently engenders a response within me like … 

“You have no idea” 

I have NOT got this. You may also feel utterly incompetent and want to join my not so merry band of women across the world wondering when exactly we became so crap at so very many aspects of what has become daily life. For example, homeschooling. I could just leave that one there, but I’ll beat myself up slightly by saying’ although we have the support of an amazing school and some key worker provision, I managed to become totally overwhelmed by one zoom class. One boy looked utterly baffled and the other was distracted cutting up balloons. I mean what fool leaves that kind of fun out on the table when a lesson is due? I do. Me. 

Another area I appear to have become utterly shit at is remembering things. I am asking repeatedly at work if we have covered that already and I am sure my students with filled with fear and dread that this is the woman passing or failing their placement. It would be funny if it wasn’t true. 

I am also crap at everything on this list, so give yourself marks for each one you too can identify with and let me know so we can compare scores and declare a winner: 

And that last one is the real bummer. Usually, I love change. If you have travelled with my hair through the last year you may have noticed, we went through several iterations to achieve what my husband now calls my Yaz and the plastic population look. But even I have reached what appears to have been my limit for change. 

Yesterday was my first really weepy day through this whole thing. I am not proud of that. I have felt tears welling so many times and held them back because, the kids, things to do, I’ll never stop. Do you get that? My friend who wanted to cry all day and video called with tears in her eyes, my wonderful sister who has had enough of shit things happening, and my beautiful boy who is confused and angry he can’t see his best friend right now. So much emotion. So little let out. So, here is the bit where I wish I could give you three steps to feeling better but if all this change teaches us anything, it’s that it is messy. What I know in my bones though, is with change must come loss. They are linked forever like the kind of couple where you feel warm towards one and wondered why the hell they teamed up with that idiot. 

So, here are some resources on loss and acceptance of difficult feelings that I’ve found helpful… 

https://amzn.to/3sH8K0y (this is an affiliate link so if you buy this wonderful book there’s no extra cost to you but it does help my small business!) 

RAIN Meditation For Difficult Emotions Or Feelings

And if you would like to chat further under no pressure about how you are doing you can book in with me here… 

Link to initial chat …