Choosing You and Choosing Life
I don’t need to tell you there is no easy path to self-esteem. There are hundreds of books on this subject, and I certainly do not have the right skills to write another. It is a dispiriting disease too many of us inflict on ourselves. Those are the key words, though. Inflict on ourselves. Yes, you may have been crushed in the past by another’s disparagement, or simply by your own poor view of yourself. But only you can decide how you deal with those feelings.
I want you to imagine yourself in a beautiful garden. Design it however you like, but it’s got to be busy. You know, water features, a nice shady gazebo, maybe one of those with a big fat day bed in it. Maybe a swathe of your favourite flowers, or a stream with a little stone bridge, a lovely old oak, or a scribbly gum. This garden has no climate limitations and you can grow any mix of plants and trees you like.
Now from here on in, this garden represents your life. That beautiful infinity pool can be your best girl pals. The roses are your fab mum. That super healthy thriving veg patch is your successful career. Don’t fret if any of these examples are not in your life – they are examples.
You have a great life. If you really think you don’t, we’ll find it together for you later on. But for most of you, you already have it. You just don’t spend enough time in your gardens to realise it properly.
Far too often, we women let our minds get polluted with worry weeds. And we single women, of course, are polluted with pesky IWAB weeds. Pull them out. Don’t let them take a hold. You may have noticed how most of the complaining single women in the media are pretty comfortably off? It’s always the women with good jobs, financial security, and lots to be grateful for who bemoan their lack of man. You too, right? Me as well. Women who are poor, or struggling to raise four kids on their own, or look after an ageing parent; you don’t hear them complaining about the man drought as they have more important things to worry about.
But we women with our gardens full of good things have the dubious luxury of being able to focus on the lack of a man. Don’t do this to yourself. Dance around your garden. Plant a holiday to look forward to. Plant some goals. Revel in what you have and plan for still more good things. You are a lucky woman and more good things are coming your way.
Don’t spend any more time in the dreary waiting room of “When is my boyfriend getting here?” You know of enough shitty relationships, and probably had enough of them too, to know that having a bloke = having happiness is not the case. Stop hankering, start living.
I know, of course, that a lot of the following requires money you may not have. But a lot of you can gather some spare cash. Like I said, a lot of us single ladies are in the better off bracket. But if you are not, there are still plenty of things which don’t require lots of money.
Download a fitness app on your phone. A candle for your bedroom, or a meditation CD? Thirty dollars. You could have a lovely, reviving night in nurturing your body and soul. A cheesy film revival night with the girls, a bunch of you on the sofa watching Flashdance or Grease with a glass of wine? Free – you thought of it, so they can bring the wine and the DVD.
Pick up the phone to an old friend you haven’t seen for a while. Reconnect. And if you get the old, “Have you met anyone?” question, if you are happy in your life, it won’t deflate you. It always deflated me, I admit. Now I say, “Actually, I’m a very happy single,” and change the subject to one of the happy single things I’ve been doing.
As well as the cost objection, I know you could also protest that you could do all of this stuff with a cute guy in your life too. And of course, you could, though most of the ones I ended up with probably wouldn’t have had the enthusiasm to bother. But, you could meet a fab fun guy who would do all this stuff with you. Maybe you did have a guy like that once and now he has gone. These are all possibilities. But deflating your experience of your own single life right now because you think that, with a boyfriend, you’d be having a better time? Well, it’s a classic self-fulfilling prophecy, isn’t it? I need a boyfriend to have my garden truly nurtured. Think that and it will be true. Don’t think it and you’ll realise how wrong it is.
Nurture the life you have, and I promise you it can be far better than the grump and gripe of an old relationship, or the angst and anxiety of a new one.
And certainly a million times better than being a sad IWAB.
So, what can we be doing or planning? What can we plant in our gardens?
Hike to Everest base camp. Climb Kilimanjaro. Walk The Kokoda track. I’ll say it here before you scream, I would personally rather put pins in my eyes than do any of those things, but this is a list for everyone, not just lazy me! Those scary things you could do to raise money for a charity you feel passionate about supporting, so that would make it worth it? No. I don’t think so either.
If you want to raise money without getting horrible blisters, how about a clothes swap party in your office? Everyone brings the things they don’t wear anymore, everyone donates $5 for everything they want, you raise money and get new stuff. Perfect.
Do you need to lose weight? Really lose weight, I mean, not that little bit we all think we need to get rid of. Well, if you really do, pick a friend or colleague who also really needs to, and devise a Biggest Loser style challenge you will both commit to and will have fun doing.
Study, for study’s sake, anything that has always interested you. Or study for an alternative or add on career. Masseur? Pilates Instructor? Teaching basic skills to adults? Aim to change lives, including your own. Do you live somewhere where property prices are within reach of a single person? Lucky you, it’s very tough here in Sydney. If you can, buy a place. Make it your beloved nest. Don’t wait for a guy to come along to get on the property ladder. If you can do it now, do it.
Learn to cook. Become known for your fantastic dinner parties. You already are? Well teach the rest of us then, because we are hopeless. Volunteer; befriend older people, homeless people. Help in an environmental project to clean up your city or town.
Can you paint? Can you sing? Can you sew? If you can’t and you want to then learn to do so – everywhere there are courses and routes to skills you may have always longed for, but never got round to gaining. Just do it. Fill your weekends and evenings with something different, something inspiring.
Couples slob around watching boxed sets of DVDs. Be inspired to do better. If what you chose seems daft to someone, ignore them. Get lost to anyone who wants to be disparaging. Don’t let such negative weedy people into your garden. I want to learn to ice skate. I always have, and now I’ve decided I bloody well will. Even though I’m forty, I want to do it. Lots of people will laugh. I don’t care.
And your new things to do don’t need to be sporty, or creative, or philanthropic. A lady called Louise Hawson visited a different suburb of Sydney every weekend for a year. She took amazing photos and published a book of them. Maybe you could do the visiting with friends and just come away with some good memories of fun days out? Maybe you could plan to visit every theatre in your home town and blog the experience? Or every museum? Maybe an alphabet pub tour. Here in Sydney, you could do Annandale Hotel one Saturday night, Bank Hotel the next Saturday night. There again, that might lead to liver failure, so maybe not.
Are you wary of going on holiday alone, as your friends are either paired off or want different things, or have different budgets? Don’t be. Lots of adventure type holiday companies like ‘Explore’ and ‘Intrepid’ have many single travellers. And their itineraries are not all about that mountain hiking type stuff either. I have done lots of trips with both companies, and you always meet great people who are often also travelling alone, as I have on every trip. The last trip I did to Central America there were sixteen of us. Fourteen solo travellers and two fantastic ladies in their sixties travelling together.
And when you are not in the IWAB space, guess what? You find men who are friends. Given the chance, men are funny, kind, and great company. When you are not eyeing up every potential man as a potential mate, and self-conscious as to how you appear as a potential partner, something changes. You start having laughs with them. You stop judging them so much and start having fun with them...
... so are we having fun yet?
All of this, this push to do fun and extraordinary things, we will call our ‘fantastic’ and it is a vital component of anyone’s garden.
Basically, we all need things in our lives which we find fantastic. And most people you meet will say, “That’s fantastic” too. The shape of any person’s fantastic is very individual. The main thing is, it’s yours and it’s there and you love it and get excited by it.
Other vital components of any single woman’s garden are friends; to share life’s ups and downs with, and to applaud and maybe join in with our one or two of our fantastics.
We must also relish the freedom that being single brings; the knowledge that we can do as we like and don’t need to justify it to any man. Have your efforts at a fantastic ever been sneered at by a man? Me too.
And we must also have a full heart, one that isn’t secretly, after all, still feeling that something vital is missing.
Each of these vital features of our gardens must be nurtured and cared for, and we will explore them all, indirectly, as we go through. Just keep them in mind as we do. Remember the four; your fantastic, your friends, your freedom and your full heart. You will see that everything I write about here is about taking us on a journey to enrich all four. These are the amazing things you have as a single woman. Love them and relish them.
P.S. I don’t wish to fall into “how to find a boyfriend” territory here, but you do know that when you are in love with your life in this way, it is far more likely that the right person will fall in love with you? Please, please don’t do any of this because of that, though. I just thought I’d mention it. In case it hadn’t occurred to you.