And Just Like That, I Cried, In Public

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You might recall from a newsletter I wrote a few months back that my default response to even a hint of tears is to shut them down. I had one of those eighties/nineties upbringings where crying could elicit taunts of being a ‘cry baby’ or ‘drama queen’ or invite threats of being given ‘something to cry about’.

Well, yesterday, the shutting off did not happen. Even when I consciously attempted to rein the tears in, they weren’t having any of it. So… in a room full of people at my friend’s workshop, I wept.

This wasn’t intended, and it wasn’t even the kind of workshop where you’d necessarily expect emotional displays*. I spent a week on a retreat in Jamaica with the host, Jess, where there was an abundance of tears and didn’t shed a drop, and there I was bawling at a business workshop.

You might be wondering why I cried.

After struggling with an exercise, I felt compelled to admit that I hadn’t been able to do it. I’d hoped to get a framework or tool to help tease out the answers to a task that hadn’t quite made sense to my brain. Jess asked what brought me to the workshop and I explained how I’d hoped it would help me articulate who I am and what I’m doing now in this phase of my life. I felt myself well up and immediately knew something was up.

Jess then went on to speak so beautifully about me, the book, and Baggage Reclaim and then invited me to stand up and say more. All I wanted to do was disappear and let the focus be on someone else.

As soon as I opened my mouth and said, “Today is eighteen years since I started Baggage Reclaim… I’ve spent most of this year slowed down trying to discern what I might want to do next after pausing and stopping lots of things…”, my emotions—grief—rushed up to meet me where I was at.

It was like, Knock knock! Hey Nat, you did this huge thing with Baggage Reclaim and the podcast and the books and whatnot, and then you did another huge thing and stopped. That deserves some attention and recognition. From you.

In that moment, I thought, I am dying of mortification right now.

And then I felt compassion creeping in and an almost resignation to the fact that this was the moment I was having whether I wanted it or not. I am not in control of everything and can’t just demand that buried feelings show up when it’s most convenient for me. Surender.

There was something releasing about it and, honestly, they’re just emotions, and the sky didn’t fall in because I dared to be vulnerable in this way in front of a bunch of strangers.

At the end, when attendees approached me and were so kind, I cried a little more and then beat a hasty retreat. Then I headed to Victoria Station to get my train home, called up my homie Karen and sobbed while ordering myself Leon’s gluten-free chicken nuggets for comfort. More tears trickled out on the journey home as I texted with another pal. And then I got into the car at the other end and had a little cry to my husband Em. Jaysus!

I’m grieving.

What I experienced yesterday was one of those pesky but nonetheless, beautifully necessary times where your body and feelings show you something so clearly that contradicts where, until moments before, you thought you were at emotionally about something.

Like when you say you’re “fine” or “okay”, and then you lose your shit and catch yourself off guard with the truth. Or when you feel like you’re in a good place about something and then realise you’re welling up and on the verge of crying.

Why am I crying? Am I not okay? Have these big feelings been waiting in the wings to make their appearance? Well, looks like it’s showtime! Oh, sweet Jesus, why are these feelings making a holy show out of me?

I’ve known that I’m grieving.

• I stopped making a podcast that was part of my life for over eight years and stopped writing on Baggage Reclaim, which, as of yesterday, has been going for eighteen years.

• My book, The Joy of Saying No, came out and it was a meh publishing experience that was completely at odds with what I was told I would get. Cue disappointment, anger, frustration, and feelings of abandonment and exclusion. And, no, not all of these feelings were ‘rational’.

• Five days after I published the final episode of the podcast with the intention of slowing down so that I could be curious and gently explore how I might want to show up in the world next, my mother annihilated me, again. She said the most disgusting things to and about me, and I realised we’d reached the end of the road. I honestly don’t know how I sustained that behaviour as a small child.

• Between tinnitus and perimenopause, I’ve felt like I’m all over the gaff with myself.

• This season of my life has required me to dig deeper into shedding more layers of being the Good Girl. It’s meant not heeding the call of perfectionism and people pleasing. There’s a pushier part of me that thinks I should be busier, striving, competing, keeping up, sucking up.

• Last month (August), I found out that what I thought I knew about my father’s attitude and behaviour toward me and my brother isn’t true. It’s interesting rewriting the narrative of your childhood when your father’s been dead for over six years.

It also hit me that because the fallout with my mother happened so soon after I made my work decision, plus I was busy with book stuff and travelling a bit, I didn’t really get a chance to just be with my feelings about the hugeness of the decision.

At the same time, I know I can be more than one thing.

• I can grieve and also experience joy.

• I can feel sad and then feel something else.

• I can be genuinely happy and joyful… and also have tinges of sadness and grief right alongside it. Lord knows, these last six-plus years since Dad died have taught me this!

• I can feel despairing of tinnitus one day and have very dark thoughts, and then, a couple of days later, the tinnitus calms somewhat, and I have more perspective.

• I know I made the right decision to slow down to let myself explore what else I can be and do, and I’ve also felt guilty about that decision. Like I’m letting people down or throwing something away for my needs.

• There can be big, complicated feelings lurking, and I can also go about my day—work, parent, hose diarrhoea off the dog after he rolled in it in the park (I kid you not).

Knowing I’m grieving, that there are still feelings to bear witness to that haven’t yet been recognised, acknowledged and expressed, doesn’t ‘undo’ anything. I also don’t have to be afraid of it or ‘do’ something to ‘fix’ it.

I think, often, when we experience emotional turmoil and upset, we see it as a setback or a sign we’ve made a wrong/bad decision. But it’s grief, and we’re all grieving in minuscule, small, medium and big ways all.the.time—it’s just we’re more conscious of it at certain times or about certain things.

Some of our grief is felt more deeply, more acutely, because of what it represents for us about who we are, were, thought we’d be, and are yet to become. We barely notice some of our losses because we’re so aware of the gains, and other losses feel like they swallow our lives whole for a time.

I’m the person who wholeheartedly believes in the joy of saying no, knowing that even though it can feel tricky, messy, unsettling, awkward, all the things, to say it and live it that it also paves the way to saying yes to more of what you need, desire, and deserve. But that does not mean that saying no is always ‘easy’ or that you will see the ‘fruits’ straight away.

Without a doubt, I’m in the messy middle, possibly edging up to being on the other side, of the various nos from the start of the year. Honestly, it feels scary to not know exactly what I’m doing and to want to do certain things but feel hesitant about proceeding. You know, in case I ‘make’ the tinnitus worse or fall flat on my face.

My brother suggested that some of my current feelings are about how you can spend eighteen years being and doing something and realise that you don’t have it all figured out because you’re not supposed to.

I know there are no wrong steps; there are just steps. You take a step, any step, feel your way into that, take some more, feel your way through to help orient yourself, and then take some more. Often, it takes taking a step to get a sense of what you want to do next. You try to logic it, control it, plan it all, and then you finally do it, and your body, feelings, intuition, gut, everything, is like A little to the left/right, please… Ooh, actually, you want to do the other thing that felt a bit scary or didn’t appear to make sense.

Yesterday did not go according to plan. I imagined I’d be posting a pic of myself with ’18’ balloons and saying just the right thing to mark the occasion.

I think of who I was eighteen years ago and who I am now, and recognise and love all the ‘mes’ I’ve been. I’ve come a long way, setbacks, losses, joys, and all, and, actually, that’s something worth having a cry about. Just like back then, I don’t know what the next chapter holds but whatever I’m doing, I’m still Natalie. None of what I’ve done before is a waste or gone. I’m okay.

*Turns out, I wasn’t the only person who cried, haha.