You Can’t Cuddle Money

I’ve said it for years. It’s as true now as it was then.

I started saying it originally as a way of reassuring myself when I was working part-time after having my kids. I worked half the week and their Dad worked the other half. Shared parenting. Shared working. Shared reduced promotion opportunities. Shared going into the office and getting your head down and trying to fit in a week's work into 3 days. Shared no longer taking much notice of general office tooings and froings as the priority was to get the work done and then get home to do the work. Family work, kids work, glorious, relentlessly glorious, work of raising little kids.

You can’t cuddle money. It was quite a helpful thought really, particularly when we had none. Money that was. I think the worse month of my second maternity leave was getting down to the last ￡80 in the bank soon after I had returned to work and deciding to take and sell a load of cake stands to work colleagues, it being a fashionable thing at the time. That money paid for the car service that month and for months, years afterward I would see pictures of those mismatched vintage crockery cake stands appearing in Facebook photographs and the like.

Eventually, the saying took on a new meaning as I started working full time when the kids' Dad got made redundant and he took over full-time parenting during the working week. I got to dress up, leave the house, put lippy on, talk to adults and still get home in time to put the kids to bed and read the bedtime story. Most of the time.

I made sure I was there for the important things. First days, last days, Christmas plays, and Sports Days. I remember one day in a relatively new job, a big job, being asked to attend a meeting with the chief exec in place of my director. It would have put me in a favourable light to have attended the meeting and would have given me some useful exposure to what went on within the corporate management team as well as giving them useful exposure to me. Sadly though, the meeting clashed with sports day. So I turned it down and booked my leave. And I thought to myself, that’s the right thing to do. You can’t cuddle money. Choose the sports day. Make the memories. Do the thing that fills your heart with joy. Do that thing as that’s what is really important at the end of the day. That. Not the whims and fancies of organisations where you can be a hero one minute and a zero the next. Not all organisations. I know that. Just quite a lot of the organisations that I have worked with, been involved with, and coached people through.

Deciding on whether or not to end my marriage, a decision that went on for years, at the heart of it was the kids. Obviously. Could I make this work? Could I sweep aside any doubts, fears and fill up my jigsaw with so many other pieces that the marriage would work. Could I deal with the fact that I wouldn’t have as much time with the kids if we no longer lived in the same house every day? Deal with it, wrong words, of course, I couldn’t deal with it. It's utterly rubbish in lots of ways and I’m sure there is some overcompensation that goes on. I know there is. So whilst not sure I could deal with it, I did of course deal with it because actually there was no choice but to. And as some people might say, you made your bed so you must lie in it, or something to that effect.

I think I held onto that for a long time. I made my bed so I must lie in it, So I did. How that looked was make the best of things, don’t moan, don’t admit you feel sad about things, don’t miss the kids and for gods sake don’t ever let yourself feel. The fear being that if you start feeling then maybe you’ll never stop. You will disappear into a big deep puddle of feelings and you will go under. Drowning in feelings.

It was my partner in the end that unlocked it when he said how much he missed the kids when they weren’t at home. I closed it down for a long time until I felt ready to experiment with saying yes, so do I. Rolling the words around my mouth to see how they felt. I miss them too. With every breath in my body. I miss them. Of course, I do. Even though there is a heap of positives to the way of life we have now, different experiences, more loving adult relationships in their lives, more positive relationship role modelling, happiness and joy, and a certainty that this was the right choice for everyone, I still miss them when they are not with me.

It's coming up 7 years since I started my business. Partially a response to the knowledge that I needed cash to buy my way out of my relationship and a way of moving positively and gracefully away from the organisation I was working with. Walking away without a penny meaning that I had the necessary burning platform to get on and create something that would enable me to pay my way, pay my ex, pay my rent, furnish my house, get a mortgage, pay a deposit and buy a new house. ?

Once I settled into the house, new relationship, co-parenting, I was also working with my partner's businesses as well as running my own. Busy, busy, busy. Busy and happy. Most of the time. Happy because I had everything I had ever dared dream of and more. So busy and happy in fact that I didn’t really have any time to think. Every time I stopped to think there was always more busy to get on with.

Sometime in 2018, I became aware that busy happiness was more about being busy than being happy. I was blessed to have always had more than enough work, both with the businesses and with my own work but the cold, hard reality of it was that most of the work I was doing was there to earn money rather than for any other reason. Asides from having the flexibility to be with the kids when I had them, but that goes without saying. ?Obviously, earning money was necessary, and going back to divorce, single parenting, and moving out of organisations after nearly 25 years, it was no surprise that earning money became the single goal and earn money I did. I earned money but somewhere in the early months of 2019, probably when the dust of the previous years settled, I realised I was earning money but not really enjoying what I was doing. I wasn’t really enjoying it because I wasn’t really doing things that were aligned. I was doing things that seemed like a good idea, that was great in terms of helping other people, that earned me cash, that enabled me to spend time with the kids but actually, I wasn’t really enjoying them.

At first, I decided to ignore those feelings, on the basis that they would go away. Great plan, NOT! So in the end, as they got louder and louder, I leaned into them and decided that I would go and put some of my money where my mouth was and re-train to do something that would be more aligned with my skills, loves, and purpose. Coaching. The perfect addition to my counselling qualification, my years spent doing personal development, therapy, coaching others, and all the things I loved.

I trained and started practicing as a coach in 2019, becoming accredited by the International Coaching Federation the year after, and at the start of 2021 I started moving away from my existing work in order to refocus on my greatest love which is coaching women, especially knackered women, to help them turn their own lights back on, find their purpose and walk themselves home. Along the way this year I have also discovered some other loves in painting, photography, and writing short stories.

It’s been 7 years tomorrow (24th July) since I started my business I’ve spent some of this last couple of months mainly on sabbatical which I will stay on into September. Getting some coaching of my own, putting some ghosts to bed, painting, writing, and planning. Most of all stopping. Stopping doing the endless busy doing so that I can start something. My youngest child has finished primary school this month, a real transition for him, but also for me as I know it means the end of sports day, end of Christmas plays, end of chatting at the school gate, end of being a governor there, end of all that contact and knowing that your child is safely ensconced in the primary school bubble.

Ending, in order to make way for a beginning but as we process the ending and tidy up the remaining sweets from the sleepover, I am glad for all the sports days attended, all the work things missed in favour of nativity plays, all the leavers' services, all the teachers thank you gifts, all the pictures stuck to the fridge, all the little markers of the years surrounding us. The reminders that yes, if you stuff enough money into a bag, you probably could cuddle it (as many smart arses have told me : -D) but actually, it won’t cuddle you back. ?