Hi
Not sure what I want to write.... feel a bit stuck. Lost. having trouble starting things or just doing things. All my get up and go seems to have got up and gone!

I guess I'm down about not securing myself a new job for the start of the new year! It was my aim and I had an interview but didn't get it.(The Man did!- but we've done that post!)

We're not going away again this year, as things are pretty tight. Not that I'm that bothered really as we had such a wonderful last year.

I guess it's related to not having something to look forward to... and so I'm becoming inward looking again which is never a good thing. The nagging voice in my head says "start writing your book" but then the inner critic, headmaster as Jim Lawless would say "YOU?! Write a book? Now there's a laugh. "

Part of me feels that I could do it whilst the other side of me is scared to start- "What if I put in all that effort and it's not good enough?" (I should go into song writing and write this as a song as it could be the sound track of my life!!)

Where does this come from? Why do I always do this?
I think it comes from my inner perfectionist. Don't get me wrong I'm not one of these people who has to get everything right or perfect but there is definitely a voice who is forever talking about what I SHOULD DO and this puts me under pressure.

I tend to think about things as good or bad; wrong or right- bit black and white, I admit.So I think about the fact that I could only write a few 100 words so there's no point. Where as actually, if a did a bit each day, it would soon mount up.

I'm one for rules. I think that goes back to up bringing. I don't remember having hard and fast rules as a child. When I think back, it was a bit inconsistent which is probably why I impose my own rules. I know as a teacher of primary age children, they need clear boundaries and feel secure with familiar routines. So I'm guessing that's why I follow rules in a way. But my Dad was quite controlling so additional to my desire to obey rules I HATE being told what to do and will "cut my nose off to spite my face"!  

"I should have go this sorted by now!" see, there's that critic, again.

I guess I should devise my own guidelines to replace the inner critics 'shoulds'.When I took charge last summer things really changed- I need to take charge and de-clutter myself, just like I did with my house last year! I can chose! 


Something else I know I can do is to set unrealistic goals- i.e. to become an author as successful as JK Rowling. Now, there's nothing wrong with this ambition but it's hardly a goal to be worked on and measured against. I need to break it down and work towards it. JK was turned down a lot by publishers!But I'm sure she just wanted to get it down on paper at first. By setting an unrealistic goal the inner critic and Headmaster laughs out loud and I feel ashamed of wanting to do this. I'm my own worst enemy.

What did Taming tigers teach me about the Headmaster? ACTION!

Another thing I do is that I'm very reluctant to ask for help. Don't know where this comes from, but I see it in my classroom. Girls don't ask for help for fear of looking foolish! And I'm just the same. WHY? Aren't I the one who says to my pupils there's no such thing as a stupid question?

 

 Teacher, TEACH yourself!! 

The last  thing that I do is to compare myself with others. It's often a problem for the childless woman. To compare our lives with other women, those who have children. But I've always done it. Again it's a girl thing- why? Quite often it's like comparing yourself to the media images  of women- it's not real! Things aren't as they seem.

I seem to be attributing a lot of how I act and feel to being a girl! Maybe I need to come up with a new way of raising strong girls and try it out on myself....
 

Okay, having rambled a long, what have I decide to do?

1. ACT
2. De-clutter my rules and list of 'SHOULDS'
3. Decide on my own set of guidelines
4. Write a few words on my book and just get going.
5. Contemplate how I can overcome my upbringing and develop myself into a 'strong woman'.

Making Friends With My Anxiety

Making Friends With My Anxiety



Wish that I'd found this years ago!  A brilliant post and so helpful!

Thank you Shelia Bayliss

Advice to my 14 year old self

Hi me again, long time no speak things have been a bit manic, as usual  :-)

Have been thinking lately about life and where it's going....no answers there just more questions really.

 

One thing though is that I wish I could go back and try again knowing what I know now... but it's best not to regret as it gets us no where. So instead I thought I'd imagine that I could give myself some advice that is a positive spin on the past and something I can continue to take with me into the future.

 

So here goes...

 

Advice to my 14 year old self:

Dear 14 year old ME,

You'll do it, you'll get to college! You'll get through it and do it!
You are so much better than you think.

Your mum will be okay- you don't need to worry. Forget your dad, he's not worth it- but YOU are!

You'll met a guy and he'll become everything to you; he'll give you the stability you so desperately need now but it won't last for ever, nor should it.

 

Learn from the lessons, it will hold you in good stead.

You'll love being a teacher and you'll meet your future husband.

You'll never believe what you'll do! YOU that are so scared of you own shadow!

It'll be tough but you'll have the relationship you always wanted.

You'll be loved like you've never been loved. You'll finally know what it's like to be loved just because you're you.

They'll be tough times ahead but, as you've always known, "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger!"

YOU ARE STRONGER THAN YOU THINK!!

You'll learn that your purpose in the world is not to have children... it'll be hard at first but it will be the making of you- honest!
You'll work through it and the world will become your oyster.

You are good enough!!- and always have been! NEVER forget this!

 

lots of love Me xx

Been thinking a lot about life, the universe and everything!

The main thrust of my coming to terms with my childlessness is to do with what my purpose is?- who am I?

The childless nature of my life, I think, has made me face this existential question earlier than most women- but I would have always asked it of myself. I'm just asking myself earlier because I'm not caught up with being a mum and I'm having to face it now.

Coming to terms with not having children, not being a mother, is definitely a grieving process.

When I think back to the morning of my last pregnancy test- the shock of a negative result was a definite denial.the classic first stage of grief.
" It couldn't be- we had had forked out thousands of pounds for blood tests which were were sent to one little clinic in Chicago."
" I'd been pumped up with soya protein. My embryos had gone to blastocyst."
Everything was as it should be! It had to be positive.!!.....but it wasn't.

I remember the dawning of the reality. It was very strange.

 In one way it was dark and black and foreboding but in a different light I could breathe a light, feathery breath of relief. There was a much needed sense of certainty which had been missing through the endless IVF cycles. I felt a relief that I finally knew that it was certain that I was never going to have a child of my own. But then the dark feelings came and filled the void.
"What was going to become of me? " The fear builds within me
"When I die who would bury me?"
I have very few close friends- all I could see was that I would die alone in my own house surrounded by my cats- in fact they would eat me...... a gruesome and terrifying thought but a real fear non-the-less. 

I'm happy to say that this thought doesn't occupy my thoughts as often as it did in the early days - it's not gone but it's not at the for front of my mind. 

I also remember the anger at every pregnant woman that I saw, particularly those who we're smoking or drinking or surrounded by a brood of kids and complaining about being pregnant.
I remember being angry at my own body for not doing what it was supposed to- for making me feel like an 'un-woman'.
I was angry at myself for not trying sooner.
I was angry at myself for being so careful in my teenage years.
I was angry!

But that is no longer with me as much. The anger has subsided.

I can now cope being around babies and pregnant women. I no longer run away scared to face them in fear of what I might do, say or how I might behave.(I was often fearful of what irrational thoughts might push me into doing)

I'm moving on. I never thought that would happen. I feared that I would always be stuck with in grief of an invisible loss.

This healing started when I found other women who were going through the same feelings.

Before meeting like minded women I spoke to family and friends- like you do, when you are grieving. And,they would try to offer support. But unlike when you have lost someone you loved when you are grieving due to infertility people, well- meaning people, try to fix or cheer you up.

You would never suggest to anyone whose family member had just died that they should check it out by placing a mirror on their late relative in case you could see their breath. You would never suggest that they aren't dead and that something else could be done. You would never (at least I hope not) suggest that they would be resurrected like Lazarus- BUT when people are grieving the loss of not having children, that's exactly what happens. The well meaning people try to get you to see the positives and hear the miracle baby stories! DON'T- we need to grieve! We need to feel our pain and not hide it away.

So, in case anyone might read this and know someone who is going through and coming to terms with  not having children.
Here are a few suggestions:

• Talk to your Friend/family member BUT more importantly listen! Let them tell you about the hurt and the pain.
• Resist the temptation to try and say something to make it feel better! You can't make them feel better! FACT!! But they may feel better for talking and you listening.
• Don't try to change the subject! This makes them feel ashamed of their feelings.
• Allow them to have their feelings- Yes they may feel like they hate all pregnant women that's quite normal for a childless woman - let them be normal!! It helps, honest. And doesn't mean they are going mad and will do anything stupid!
• Don't recount miracle baby stories- it doesn't help.
• Don't think that adoption is an alternative- it's not- That's another blog entry!!
• Agree that life is unfair-but remind them that you are here for them through their bad times.
• Hug them- Be there! Sometimes being there and not talking helps.

If you have an additional suggestions please tell me. Or if you have any questions about what to say please share- that way we can all help each other.

Hi me again

Been on school holidays this week and have attempted to learn 'Twitter'. As a 40+  childless woman I don't have a teenager in my household who can expose me to the latest technologies. (I know that twitter is not the latest technology- and facebook is so middle-aged!) But I thought I'd give it a go. So far I have managed to work out how to: follow, tweet, reply, favourite and retweet. It's been an education. However, it means that I have read a lot of things which I wouldn't have normally come across. I can spend hours on the net reading; mainly things to with school and childlessness. But I've managed to read things to do with child development, leadership, women's projects, research all sorts!! One article caught my eye yesterday, something which is very dear to my heart, Confidence; more specifically 'The Confidence Gap'- the difference in confidence between men and women.

It seems that I'm acting just like a woman when I doubt my abilities. Research shows that competence and confidence are equally as important! And all those things I learnt at school haven't helped at all!!Apparently feeling like an imposter is quite a typical emotion for women to feel. Other women also believe that things are just easy for everyone else, unlike me!
According to this paper, Women don't consider themselves ready for promotions and underestimate their abilities. Sound familiar? Too much so!
A growing body of evidence shows just how devastating this lack of confidence can be. Success, it turns out, correlates just as closely with confidence as it does with competence. No wonder that women, despite all our progress, are still woefully underrepresented at the highest levels. Now that's the BAD NEWS. The GOOD NEWS is that confidence can be acquired and developed therefore the confidence gap can be closed! YEE-HA!!

Perfectionism is a woman's confidence killer. Study after study confirms that it is largely a female issue, one that extends through women’s entire lives. We don’t answer questions until we are totally sure of the answer, we don't apply for the job until we are 100% sure we can do everything on the job description and we fixate on our performances home, school, where ever!

So where does this all start? Childhood I'm guessing- thinking back to my previous blog post about my interviews and how I always seem to miss out to the man; and how little girls are described as bossy not having good leadership skills. Nurtured. But what about nature?

I recently attended a training course on 'How to raise the achievement of boys in school' by a very interesting bloke called Trevor Hawes. In primary school (and secondary for that matter) there is a massive gap between the boys and girls achievements. Girls are out-striping the boys and as a primary school teacher, my role is to close the gap. But having read about, and thinking about, the underachievement of women isn't it what we are doing to girls that needs addressing? On average, the the boys seem to be doing pretty well in the big wide world, in spite of their school experience unlike the girls.
It’s easier for young girls than for young boys to behave: As is well established, they start elementary school with a developmental edge in some key areas. They have longer attention spans, more-advanced verbal and fine-motor skills, and greater social adeptness. They generally don’t charge through the halls like wild animals, or get into fights during recess. Soon they learn that they are most valuable, and most in favour, when they do things the right way: neatly and quietly. “Girls seem to be more easily socialised,” Carol Dweck, a Stanford psychology professor and the author of Mindset: The New Psychology of Success  says. “They get a lot of praise for being perfect.” In turn, they begin to crave the approval they get for being good. There’s certainly no harm intended by overworked, overstressed teachers (or parents). Who doesn’t want a kid who works hard and doesn’t cause a lot of trouble?
Dweck, states: “If life were one long grade school, women would be the undisputed rulers of the world.”
As part of the course I learnt about how the male and female brains function differently. Male and female brains do display differences in structure and chemistry, differences that may encourage unique patterns of thinking and behaviour, and that could thereby affect confidence. This is a busy area of enquiry, with a steady stream of new—if frequently contradictory, and controversial—findings. Some of the research raises the intriguing possibility that brain structure could figure into variations between the way men and women respond to challenging or threatening circumstances.

There is also something to do with hormones- I definitely can relate to that one! Sometimes my confidence is high where as others, it's so low it's positively invisible and that I can relay to the place in my cycle.
Many psychologists now believe that risk taking, failure, and perseverance are essential to confidence-building.

Boys tend to absorb more scolding and punishment, and in the process, they learn to take failure in stride. “When we observed in grade school classrooms, we saw that boys got eight times more criticism than girls for their conduct,” Dweck writes in Mindset. Dweck explains that girls and boys get different patterns of feedback. “Boys’ mistakes are attributed to a lack of effort,” she says, while “girls come to see mistakes as a reflection of their deeper qualities.” Boys also benefit from the lessons they learn—or, more to the point, the lessons they teach one another—during playtime and after school. From kindergarten on, they roughhouse, tease one another, point out one another’s limitations, and call one another morons and slobs. In the process, Dweck contends, such evaluations “lose a lot of their power.” Girls don't play like this, girls aren't encouraged to act like this. Teachers, parents, wrongly in my opinion, want an easy life, and therefore are grateful for the girls who are keen to please and don't 'mess around' and praise them for being so!!
The boys' rough and tumble, teasing, playground  behaviour therefore makes them more resilient. This can be attributed to the sports they play too. Through sport they can relish the wins and flick off the losses consequently giving them the experience of life's ups and downs.

I never played team sports at school. Typically, I didn't consider myself good enough, despite being asked to play for a hockey match. I hated PE mostly because I found that I really struggled to do what was asked of me. My teachers weren't really interested in developing my skills; they were more bothered about the girls who had excellent hand eye co-ordination and showed potential. I gave up as I could see that I was never going to be that good. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, girls are still six times as likely as boys to drop off sports teams, with the steepest decline in participation coming during adolescence. This is probably because girls suffer a larger decrease in self-esteem during that time than do boys.There’s even a direct link between playing sports in high school and earning a bigger salary as an adult. Learning to own victory and survive defeat in sports is apparently good training for owning triumphs and surviving setbacks at work. Girls lose confidence, so they quit competing in sports, thereby depriving themselves of one of the best ways to regain it. 

Women suffer consequences for their lack of confidence—but when they do behave assertively, they may suffer a whole other set of consequences, ones that men don’t typically experience. If a woman speaks up first at meetings, she risks being disliked or even—let’s be blunt—being labelled a bitch.

So what's a woman to do?

Confidence is not, as we once believed, just feeling good about yourself. The clearest, and most useful, definition of confidence could be the one supplied by Richard Petty, a psychology professor at Ohio State University, who has spent decades focused on the subject. “Confidence,” he states, “is the stuff that turns thoughts into action.” Of course, other factors also contribute to action. “If the action involves something scary, then what we call courage might also be needed,” Petty explains. “Or if it’s difficult, a strong will to persist might also be needed. Anger, intelligence, creativity can play a role.” But confidence, he says is essential, because it applies in more situations than these other traits do. It is the factor that turns thoughts into judgements about what we are capable of, and that then transforms those judgements into action.
The simplicity is compelling, and the notion that confidence and action are interrelated suggests a virtuous circle.

"Confidence is a belief in one’s ability to succeed, a belief that stimulates action."

 In turn, taking action bolsters one’s belief in one’s ability to succeed. So confidence accumulates—through hard work, through success, and even through failure.

The natural result of low confidence is inaction. When women hesitate because we aren’t sure, we hold ourselves back. But when we do act, even if it’s because we’re forced to, we perform just as well as men do.

To become more confident, women need to stop thinking so much and just act. 

I know this to be true and I can bear witness to this. I need to stop thinking and do! 

I'm in a bit of a pickle! Nothing serious....or is it?! The more I think, the more I see, and yet, the more confused I become.


I've been trying to write a novel. I say trying, I have this plot whizzing round my head. It's based on my life, well sections. They say write about what you know about so I have this idea. My plot is based around a primary school teacher. A woman who wants to be a mother. She has a variety of reasons for wanting to be a mother, primarily to enjoy the security of the family life that she never experienced as a child. She also believes that she will become a fulfilled person, a grown up, by becoming a mother. She marries a man and they try to have a family but it's not as simple as they first thought. In a empathetic way, she donates her eggs believing that she could offer the hope that she herself believes is guaranteed. In pursuit of motherhood she examines herself and her childhood and who the person she has become against the person she 'should have become'. After years of IVF and a failed adoption application.She finally begins to face that her life as a mother is not meant to be. She throws herself into work. She supports a child in her class who appears to be going through a rough time at home. She builds up a bond with the child and can see herself in the child. They both like cats, singing and have a similar sense of humour. The teacher questions her professionalism but decides that she is only supporting the child. The child's family moves away and the teacher and pupil keep in touch through letters and Christmas cards. The woman realises that her pursuit of motherhood is a way to reclaim her childhood. She goes through therapy and realises that she has suppressed many aspects of her personality and longs to be the person she was meant to be. She confronts her past and manages to find her suppressed self. She finds the life that she was meant to have in a form which was very different from the one she expected. She also finds that the child she helped years before was actually her own daughter from the donated egg she gave and forgot about.

There's the rough plot. But how do I write it? It's not true but I'm writing from a stance where there is some truth in it.

My fear is that I'm writing it to give my own life a happy ending. The ending that I fear is never coming for me. 

What should I be doing with my life?

Been thinking a lot about the battle of the sexes after my latest interview.

In fact for the last 6 interviews the male candidate has always got the job.

In primary teaching, I understand the need to get more men into schools. Boys and girls are growing up without positive male role models. But unfortunately they aren't staying in the classroom and at grass root level they are being promoted into leadership positions. I'm not saying this is wrong- I just feel the foot print of the men as they clamber over the top of me into the leadership positions.

It's caused me to think about how men and women are perceived. What I mean is how men are instantly thought out as being strong and having leadership skills, whereas women are expected to be nurturing and empathetic.  But we're not all the same! So think about a strong woman, a woman with good leadership skills..... do we use those adjectives? Or do we use something else?

This got me thinking about how we nurture and develop children. As a primary school teacher I have first hand experience of children who are developing their personality. When I think of certain girls in my class they are good at organising themselves and others, good leadership skills one might say but often they are described by others, adults and children a like as 'bossy'.
You never hear of a boy being described of as bossy- why not?


We do expect, and attribute, certain behaviours to girls and boys and men and women. We condition children right from the word go!

 

 

 

 

So how do I get that job and not have those negative connotations attributed to me.

How do I become the BEST person for the job and outshine the men?

Not sure........yet!