I’ll be honest, for all the hope I had for 2024 as a year, after feeling like 2023 has been such a year of success and working hard to come back to myself and a place of acceptance and, dare I say, contentment, this year so far has been a disappointment.

It has been difficult to grasp why. The reasons themselves are not difficult to list out and understand:

• The pain in my toe and bunion after walking 1000 miles last year, never really realising until I went to the podiatrist in February that I have spent my whole life only using my big toe to walk on that foot, springing off it for my every step. I just thought my hard-won mobility was slipping through my fingers. So I’ve had to accept that I am not a 3 miles a day kinda girl and that I need to measure my exercise in calories, not distance and pain.
• The insane cold of January. It got right into my joints and I aged 40 years, no exaggeration, I simply couldn’t move in that cold, I had no physical function. I felt so stuck and so miserable, especially mixed in with my foot pain.
• The grey. The endless grey and rain. How I long for the warmth and colour of spring, not just for my mind, but oh, my body too.

The accumulation of these, the weight they have borne on my body and mind have slowly had me turning in on myself again. I have fought it, but this has exhausted me further, as if I were one woman trying to keep up a crumbling wall.

My eldest sister, as ever, gave me sage advice. “It’s OK to give in. Your mind is telling you it is struggling right now. It won’t be like that forever. You’ve come back before.”

I felt comforted, but could still feel familiar hatreds creeping in, that I wanted to bat away for my own protection. That voice that said: Why can’t you just do better? You managed a whole year. And when I want to act out against that voice, I have a desperate need to do, to control everything happening around me.

Logically, I know this isn’t possible. I have worked to teach myself that truth. But myself when feeling beseiged doesn’t really listen, so wise truths get wasted.

Truth is, I don’t hate myself as much as that angry little voice had been convinced for so many years that I did. I can see what I have overcome, what I’m overcoming and what I have achieved. I’m alright really for someone carrying my plate in life. I really am.

So that’s why I’ve tried so desperately to keep that voice from my ear and the only way I know to do that – which clearly isn’t successful – is to try and control my world.

And to my shame, that can manifest in the way I respond and act around those I love. It happens. The important thing is that I own it.

This past weekend, we went back to my hometown for Kev to run a half marathon. He did so well and was sensible enough to let it be a 3 day excutsion so we could enjoy some time as a family too. For that, I am grateful, but in my action, I was far too hard on my girls’ excited behaviours, especially Squidge.

Problem is, at the time of snapping at her, my reasoning feels entirely logical. Thankfully, the stab of guilt now teaches me that I know better than my momentary lapses and that reflection now allows me to own my own misbehaviours instead of spiralling into self hatred. That is growth to be celebrated, but somehow, I don’t seem able to allow myself to do it.

I just don’t feel myself. But for the first time ever, I’m not sure it’s emotionally led. Physicaly, now my foot has had the once over, I feel better, even if adjustments to my habits have proven necessary. I don’t hate myself. I just somehow know that my behaviours aren’t always ones I can stand by.

And so, at the grand old age of (nearly) 35, I am having to face something I personally have never heard discussed. Ever.

Perimenopause. That wilderness between making babies and definitively no longer being able by virtue of your reproductive system shutting up shop. The long, drawn out process has certainly begun because my menstrual cycles have begun shortening dramatically, my sleep is disturbed (although magnesium balm, on the recommemdation of my massage therapist for my muscles, has been a revealation; just FYI ladies!)

So, it is perfectly reasonable that the changes in my mood I cannot account for after such a good year aren’t because I’m on a spiral back to self loathing. In some ways, that’s a relief. They can just as easily be attributed to hormonal changes I can no longer deny. So let us hope there is help out there for this strange, unspoken stage of life, otherwise my poor babies are going to grow to hate me.

But, I realise it doesn’t have to be that way. I can recognise that I have always had a need to control and that that is not the fault of a 3 and 7 year old. Children will be what they are. And mine are absolutely bloody wonderful

I can accept that I will make mistakes and remember that the important thing is to own them, to be strong enough to go to my girls and tell them when I was wrong and mean my apologies. Be the example I never rememeber being set. That all this means making room for failure. Not just my own, but being able to tolerate when those in my world make honest mistakes too. It has to be OK to not always be in control.