Lockdown Week 3 In Review

Alternative title: Lockdown With PMT Hell Bitch 

This week I’ve been in the final days of my monthly cycle and can literally feel the hormonal undercurrents tugging my mood and focus deep and dark.

I know exactly what’s going on in me, but it doesn’t stop the feeling happening and despite a load of really beautiful things going on during the week, underneath I’ve felt pretty shadowy.

People have wound me up. Things that I’d normally gloss over have jabbed me in the ribs. My focus has been hard to pin down and I’ve found myself wandering from one thing to the next, feeling totally ungrounded.

“Va te faire foutre” has been my lady-like perfume of choice.

Truth is that even if the world wasn’t in Covid-19 meltdown, I’d been feeling the same way. These cyclic currents always pull me between day 23 – 26 of my cycle and they’re a familiar friend/foe.

I don’t want Evening Primrose Oil or other herbal remedies to soften the edges of how I feel at this point in my cycle. The anger, irritation and take-no-prisoners communication is part of my feminine psyche and I accept them. They are powerful allies in life edits. They are painful change-makers. I embrace  them with snarly surrender.

Also, because my body’s cycles and I are familiars, I know that the lens that’s coloured my world this week will shift in the coming days and a fresh cycle will begin. After the PMT storm will come the soft regeneration of up-levelling oestrogen and serotonin warmth. I’ll be all the nice, lovely things that the world and people want me to be again.

But in the meantime … here’s my Week 3 in Lockdown Review.

Creating / tending my Japanese garden.

AND

Attempting to hide from family demands by planting myself in the middle of a flower bed and pulling out stinging nettles.

Rowan learning how to make Italian meatballs with Adam.

Secret ingredients; fennel seeds, garlic, thyme and love.

AND

Behind them, I am sitting at the kitchen table feeling like an unhinged maniac.

Spending dipropionate amounts of time with my journal

BECAUSE

It doesn’t answer back, doesn’t say the wrong thing and doesn’t ask for snacks or what’s for lunch every five minutes.

Sleeping under the stars and moon and clouds.

Dragging our duvets out onto the trampoline and lying there with the kids, watching the Pink Supermoon rise.

Reid kept referring to it as “Moon Bathing” and brought a teddy, torch and book to read for what he considered to be an alfresco sleep over.

Amazing night. Hilarious, off the beaten track and breaking all the bedtime rules.

PMT Bitch perfectly happy and in her element.

Supermoon rising through the tree branches and trampoline lining.

Setting up the slackline in the garden for the Rowan and Reid.

Hours of laughter, competition, awful balancing and skills discovered

AND

Me sloping off indoors to get away from all of the chirpy happiness and glorious triumph.

Rising early to complete a set of floral initials that I was commissioned at the beginning of lockdown

AND

Feeling unmotivated to do anything, whilst also being hit with a tidal wave of ideas of things I could do.

Getting creative. With … anything.

AND

Me face palming, because this was the box I’d been keeping in the cupboard and was going to cut up to use for delivering prints. It wasn’t meant to be turned into a weird square box body by a six year old with a cute face.

Reid having his piano lesson through a phone screen with his lovely piano teacher.

This week his homework was to compose a song about space. Instead he composed a song that was about a snake who got lost in the jungle and was then found by his family.

Think he might have misheard the instructions.

AND

Me in the other room, overhearing the bewildered snake/space story confusion and having a hysterical laughing fit.

Delicious Asian broths cooked by Ads.

And washed up afterwards by Rowan.

Because these boys know how to look after a Hell Bitch between days 23 and 26.

Planting the giant sunflower seeds, sent through the post last week by my dear friend Hammie.

Hammie sent these little packets of golden potential to lots of people she knew, so by summer time we’ll have a glowing, yellow collective of beauty reaching up to the sky.

AND

Knowing that by the time these have sprouted, I’ll be back into my Sunshine Groove again and everyone in my house will be safe.

Getting to see my 19 year old daughter Pix – albeit from a distance – and having a chat with her.

Being able to go on my daily run.

Vital access to nature.

Easter Egg chocolate.

Checking in with friends and loved ones. Friends and loved ones checking in with me.

Community. Online and closer by.

The tools. By this I mean, the stuff I’ve learnt over the years to process, alchemise and hold emotion and deal with transition. This week hasn’t been an easy one and those tools have helped.

Killing Eve. Box sets. Mainly about ninjas. Entertainment that is riveting, distracting and absorbing. Quality storytellers and screen play writers.

The sun shining.

Deepening into my local habitat. Discovering a smuggler cave in the woods for the first time. Small adventures.

Small waves and little smiles. The tiny interactions with people I see on my run.

Reid learning to ride his bike.

My gorgeous, furry, ever-loyal and continually loving companion; Frida the dog.

Having the job of “structure maker” in the family. Usually school, work and outer demands structure our day-to-day living. Now it’s predominantly down to me and some days I just don’t want to be that space-holder. But it’s required, because the structure seems to be what holds everyone in a good place.

Finding the motivation to do stuff like hit my book deadlines. Lack of certainty about the future makes me wonder about the relevance of the things we are still trying to do.

Moving through the final days of my menstrual cycle. Usually I’d be able to take myself away and get some alone time but due to the situation, it’s difficult finding space. And basically, everything has pissed me off in a way that it wouldn’t have done last week … and hopefully won’t in a weeks time.

Getting upset with the people who aren’t respecting the lockdown rules. People have been in self-isolation for weeks now and it would be good to know that there’s an end in sight. Seeing others deliberately doing things as they’d always have done them and being oblivious or simply obnoxious about travelling, interacting and moving about – therefore potentially extending the length of time this goes on – is frustrating.

Set up some fresh week intentions.

Getting up earlier than the others and creating some beautiful nurturing solo time.

Complete edits on the last three chapters of Rebel Beauty.

Mail out art commissions.

Rough sketches for O.Cs

Limit/tailor social media and online activity to support where I want my head to be.

Go back to books.

 Give my boys a lot of love and hugs.

Different walks to new destinations.

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