Let Life Happen
Womb talk, London, Prosecco and smelling roses
Thursday morning, UK
I’ve been having chats with my womb recently, hearing things I don’t want to hear, but really need to hear.
“Relax, all in perfect pace.”
She insists that no matter what I decide ‘consistency’ needs to be for me, no matter how committed I am, I gotta let life happen.
I had grand hopes of leisurely days of writing while here in UK, of my three year old having fun with family, not needing me around.
It’s been the opposite.
We’re in London right now, Gia and I, staying at my brother’s while he’s away.
We’re right on the Thames, watching tug boats and police boats and Uber boats cruise by.
Dada is back home in Mullumbimby doing renovations on our house, which is full of asbestos - eeeek. So we timed the removal with Gia and I being away.
Right now, she’s watching Peppa Pig as I part-write, part-parent.
She’s paying no attention to the array of boats going past, and barely aware of my voice, “Do you want some more toast darling?… Have you had some water? We’re going out soon, we must do a surprise wee wee before we go, ok?”
Solo parenting is one thing, solo parenting away from a three year old’s friends, familiar surroundings and routine is another. Peppa was once reserved for ‘emergencies’, but is now a regular source of comfort, I’m a tad sad to say.
Gia has even wanted milk from a bottle again after nearly two years of giving it up.
She needs her comforts, and yet she’s grumpy in front of the TV. Because what she needs more than anything is near-constant play.
My sweet, joyful child returns when there’s action, like when we’re whizzing through tunnels on the Tube, people-watching in a restaurant or chasing pigeons in the park.
Among it all, there’s a lot of confusion, why does she have to see people and say goodbye all the time? Are they coming back tomorrow? Why not?
We don’t even have a TV at home, but here it’s cutting me some slack.
If it wasn’t for Peppa I wouldn’t have meditated or had twenty minutes of yoga this morning, albeit interrupted three times each, “Muuum! Come watch with me!”
We’re off to the Natural History museum soon with one of my oldest and dearest friends.
I’m fantasising about coming back to my laptop later this afternoon, and yet, anything can happen.
I asked my mum to come over when we get back from the museum and take Gia out so I can get a break (a request quite foreign to my voice, being so used to my mum on the other side of the world). I realised as I was saying the words ‘so I can get a break’ that I meant ‘so I can write’.
My womb keeps whispering for me to take my time, to stop fretting about sticking to the writing structure I had in place back home in Australia, which served me so well while Gia was at daycare. It isn’t relevant here, she says.
My twenty something London self would have split her sides at the idea of talking with my womb in my forties. ‘You’ve fuckin lost it love,’ she would laugh in a mild cockney accent.
8am Friday morning, UK time
Gia wasn’t keen on nanny taking her to the playground after we got home yesterday, so we all went together, much to Gia’s delight.
Needless to say I didn’t get to write last night.
But in surrendering my fantasy of writing, I was really there.
Watching my mum watch my little girl as she climbs to the top of the roped pyramid, “I’m going so high!”
“Yes you are, that’s brilliant darling, nanny’s proud of you.”
I’m not sure I ever heard those words as a child, “I’m proud of you.”
My mum was a single parent of three, an un-mothered mother, sibling-less and ally-less in her mother world, stretched in a gazillion directions and depleted af.
I get it now. I didn’t then. I didn’t get it until I became a mother.
I’m struggling to find time to write, with just one child.
My mum is a very talented artist, who barely got to express herself while struggling to put food on the table.
My heart hurts for her.
It really does not matter to me now that I didn’t hear those words.
And yesterday I told my mum how much I love her recent artwork.
It meant a lot to her to hear this. She never heard it from her mother. I think both our hearts healed a little in that moment.
I’ve had the privilege of meditation and yoga, shadow work, community and thousands of supportive conversations. My mother has had none of it.
She could say to me, “Well I managed with three kids on my own.”
Instead, she says, “Yes darling, as long as I’ve walked the dogs I can come over.”
It’s not just me breaking cycles, my mother would never had heard this from her mother, who was too busy with her social life and attending to her controlling husband, my mum’s step-father.
It doesn’t matter that Gia isn’t quite ready to go out alone with nanny.
I would have missed this moment - watching my mother watch my daughter, smiling, present, proud - if I’d have forced them to go to the playground without me.
Instead I’m writing here now, the morning after an afternoon of dinosaurs, a raucous lunch and three generations in the playground.
Not a trace of Prosecco haze, just humbled.
Thanks to Gia sleeping in this morning, I’ve meditated, yoga’d, sipped a milky medicinal mushroom drink and munched almond butter toast on the balcony - alone.
After the dinosaurs with my wild friend Sophie (we’ve known each other for 22 years, met on a modelling job, got booked for a Nintendo shoot together in Majorca soon afterwards and have been cackling ever since, in recent years from across the world), we walked to Harrods, hoping Gia would nod off in the pram on the way, no such luck.
Too much traffic noise, sirens and excitement over her new stuffed T-Rex toy.
We met Jordana for lunch, another of our dear ex-model friends (“remember when we were all starving ourselves to squeeze into skinny grey jeans and thought we looked hot but were boring as all hell? Bahahaha”)
‘It’s Italian tapas’ the waiter told us. Reminding us after we ordered that the plates were small to medium. Would have been perfect for those skinny days, we laughed.
Two Proseccos and the smallest-pizza-I’ve-ever-seen later, the little one was finally asleep in the pram, even while the three of us were howling with laughter, taking selfies on Gia’s toy camera.
Before uttering, “Another glass of Prosecco please”, I quietly acknowledged my womb,
‘It’s ok, this is rare and we gotta let life happen’, wink.
Soon, I’d forgotten all my frustration about not having time to write since landing in UK.
And forgotten how every time I’d sat to flesh out one of my draft posts, my womb was whispering, ‘no not this, something else,’ while I’d ignored it, continued to over-effort and then huffed in exasperated defeat.
I’d also forgotten how both the nearby Tube stations had no lifts.
Thankfully the Prosecco sway had mostly worn off by the time we left Knightsbridge, instead there was a care-free, fearless, ‘I’ve so got this’ mind-to-muscles for allll those stairs to the platform with a three year old and a pram.
Peppa is still going in the background as I’m tap-tapping away on the keyboard.
Gia is eggy-bread fed and content this morning.
We’re off to Hampstead soon, to see my Nana, my dad’s mother. She’s 98 years old and in a nursing home, mild dementia stealing some of her joy, but not all of it.
She still indulges in chocolate eclairs and rumbabas. And she adores flowers.
It’s sunny today - oh the joy of sun in London!
Hopefully we’ll get her in the wheelchair and into the garden to smell the roses.
This I realise, is what I’ve been asked to do, by my womb.
Relax, all in perfect pace - means I get to stop fretting, let life happen and smell the roses in-between sessions at my laptop.
What on earth would I even write about if I didn’t let life happen?!
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Loved every single word of this. “What on earth would I even write about if I didn’t let life happen?!” Learning to strike the balance between living life and writing about it. A writer’s dilemma I share too 🥹🧡🌳🌤️ enjoy every bit of London! - Gwen
I love this Sarina. Sometimes an hour feels like an entire day with a toddler in your wake. There will always be time to write in the future, I promise. Maybe every once if awhile, Gia will “do yoga” with you. And I bet, if you ask your Mum, she will tell you that she doesn’t regret not painting as much while all of you were little. It can be exhausting, but enriching to be present with a toddler. Our pace, our balance, and at times even remembering who we are is challenged. Maybe you could use your phone to take short note or voice memos about writing ideas, so they aren’t lost amidst the pigeons 💞 I was a single Mom of two girls in my thirties, and there were days I loved it, and days I wanted to scream. I see you.