Good morning!
If you’re in the UK reading this, hopefully you’re waking up to another equinoctial sunscape – all bright greens and crisp blues, yellow shine and crunchy leaves, horse chestnuts and seeing your breath again, jumper in the morning back to rolled or maybe even short sleeves at lunch.
This week’s newsletter is inspired by a conversation I had while running with a dad whose eldest child represents the age gap between he and I, and how we can be perfectly content and still wonder what it’s like to be in someone else’s shoes…
For context, I’m an online coach and former PT who has guided tens of working parents through their health and fitness goals and had them lean into me for a sense of vicarious living; yesterday, it happened again, and I love the timbre of conversations I’m invited into and the ideas I’m trusted with as an unattached adult in the coaching space.
A life cycle
May and September are easily my two favourite months in the UK; there’s an excitement about them and a sense of change that likely maps onto the academic year: first, exam season and summer plans, and then start of term, back to school, another gauntlet of ring binders, deadlines and staying awake to study, to write…to not get blasted by the teacher in class.
…I promise it’s not your teaching, it’s me; even before the multiple nights out in a week as a student, even as a masters student who ate well and had a regular sleep and get up routine, I’ve always found there to be something soporific in scratching pens and being talked at…
This weekend just gone, Yorkshire was a wash-out – any semblance of summer unceremoniously swept away by Saturday’s afternoon rain. But today, Tuesday as a I write this, the third day in a row of sunshine and debating whether to wear a hat or a cap, I’m back where I love to write and edit, and, as always, inspired by the words of Philip Larkin:
If you can’t see the above (or don’t want to watch me read!), the lines we might focus on go:
Summer is fading:
The leaves fall in ones and twos
From trees bordering
The new recreation ground.
In the hollows of afternoons
Young mothers assemble
At swing and sandpit
Setting free their children.
[…]
Something is pushing them
To the side of their own lives.
That’s quite the lifestyle you have
You tell me: is it three years of sleep, or is it more or is it less, that you don’t get as a new parent? When everything you have to give goes towards this new life, when what you knew about yourself was necessarily reconfigured, maybe torn up, in order to satisfy this new (state of) being?
Parents are funny creatures, right? Doting and indifferent. Massively capable and constantly deprived. Exhausted by and effusive about this richer existence they’ve (typically) chosen and remain completely unable to sell to me (though they/you all try).
Now, I’m not for a second about to say that I’ve encountered an openly neglectful parent yet but the thing is they/you all talk to me about what you wish you’d done differently before becoming one.
When we talk and you’re a new parent, you tell me about the inexplicable soul-pull you have to your baby and an inescapably lonely sex life, the mounting nursery costs, and the weekends (or maybe even simply Friday evenings) you can’t wait to sneak away.
With older kids, the sleep’s come back but that’s not to say you’re not anxious about who they’re now spending time with, or what they’re watching, uniform costs and frozen pitches, which university they’re (not) going to get into. Sure, it was a treat to go to Greece or to Spain this summer and to drink by the pool, but it wasn’t long enough with your partner or away from work or much of an adventure.
It must be amazing to travel like you do, the/you parents say to me: to spend six months backpacking, to go up and down the country when you want, to do everything on your own terms. I wish I’d done more of that. I don’t regret having kids, but… When they leave, I know it’ll be my turn again. I wish I’d waited a year. Obviously I love them but it’d be nice to… I wish I had that time for myself.
Would you do what they did for the life they have?
The thing is, whether it was in our PT sessions or in our video calls and texts, I also found phwoar moments, except mine were more I wonder what that must be like to: have a stable job, have a house, have a companion to weather the storms with…
You see, when I catch up with my parent-clients/you, I recognise (and would like you to recognise) that I live vicariously too.
One beauty I find in hearing about the businesses you run and have sold for eye-watering sums, the fitness goals you have when you only have two hours to train in a week, the car that you’ve waited 10 years to buy and so on, is seeing how much joy we all experience and how much stability some of you create, while knowing, a lot of the time, we’d never do what the other person does to have the kind of life (or things) that we sometimes (think we) want.
I can’t describe to you the buzz I get when a dad tells me about their wife grabbing their bum or biceps again, or the texts I get from mums feeling confident on the beach, or the families that are eating to contentment and cooking for each other to be healthier, less lethargic and less stressed.
I love hearing about what you have, and what you’re starting to build (again). And, in part, it’s because I don’t want to go through what you did to get it.
I think I’d struggle to be a parent and a coach; I feel like I get the best of both when I’m trusted to help.
Unripe acorns
I think it takes a childless person to write the kind of verses Philip Larkin did. And, as a childless person, I wonder if I find it easier to smile and wriggle at his sometimes acerbic phrasing – the number of parents I’ve had slap my arm and call me this or that for enjoying Larkin’s lines like I do is well into double figures now.
But I’m really proud of my mates and clients who parent without letting go of their own aspirations. Having helped over 100 people reassert a grip on their lives whether they’ve had children or not, I cherish this point in a life cycle where we all grow up together, and, when we get it right, out from the shadows and sometimes protection/sometimes complacency of what came before.
Just because something’s common doesn’t mean that it’s right or good. Just because you’ve had a kid doesn’t mean that you no longer have or get to live.
Something is pushing them/to the side of their own lives.
The last line of “Afternoons” has made an indelible mark on my awareness; I know it’s not just having kids that can make people feel like this, because I’ve felt it too. I guess, then, to the parents and the childless, all us children of men, trust that who you are or what you have is worthwhile because of its you-ness. And someone, somewhere, would give something, maybe anything, maybe even everything, to know what that’s like.
Further reading
https://thepoetryhour.com/poems/afternoons/
Bit looser today’s piece. I would love to know if you say yourself in it or took something from it.
The podcast
Each week I host a podcast that leans into people and practitioners of all backgrounds to discuss and describe their experiences of fitness. So far, we’ve had life coaches and teachers, runners and fighters, professors and PTs and, last week, one of my clients share their thoughts and feelings. Across the next run of guests, we have bakers and chefs, a gym manager, potentially our first endurance athlete, and a soon-to-be yoga therapist.
When I clocked that my next guest gets their podcasts from Apple, I made sure that we’d be set up for them this week. So whether you’re on Apple, Spotify or YouTube, do like and subscribe and leave a comment or five star review when you can, it makes a difference and lets me know that there’s worth in this time I wile away wanting to learn everything there is about living our best lives yet.
For you super keanos, we’ll look to put out audio-only first on Apple Podcasts on Wednesday evenings and
Look out for the video episode on Spotify or YouTube on Thursday mornings.
And that’s it from me!
Much love and hopefully speak to or see youse soon
J x