Seven Sevens is Forty Nine

In my book, All of These Lines, I gave a brief biography of my life in seven year jumps. I mostly talked about my pregnancy story, but let me share some of the things I learned during each of those seven year jumps. Mainly because this week I close off the most recent seven year gap, and launch into my final year of my forties. 

Birth to Seven

Moving is hard, but it’s also fun to discover a new place. I’m almost certain this is the period in my life where I developed my change-seeking trait.

From birth to seven we moved house four times, and major areas three times. I was born in our capital, moved to a new university town for my father to finish his degree, moved cities again for his first role and moved house in the same city to a new house. Three vastly different parts of South Africa, with different languages spoken and very different climates. We moved fairly regularly throughout my life, but I think this laid the foundation for me being comfortable in new situations. 

I also developed my ear for language during this period. Until I was three I was completely bilingual at home – English to my father and Afrikaans to my mother. In the university town I went to an Afrikaans pre-school and so assumed that everyone spoke Afrikaans to women and English to men. When we moved to the new city, almost everyone spoke English and I had to learn that not all women were Afrikaans. From then on we spoke English in our family, although both my sister and I are largely bilingual. I was also exposed to SeSotho, Xhosa and Zulu during my moves around South Africa.  

Seven to Fourteen

Finding your place in the world is often up to you. If you don’t fit in, you’re probably in the wrong spaces. 

Choosing my high school, I was adamant that it was somewhere I felt I belonged and could succeed. I chose to specialise in Drama at Art School. Being on stage was always a space I felt comfortable in. I realised on joining Art School that I wasn’t as talented as I thought on stage, but I was exceptionally talented backstage – managing creatives, organising timelines and making coffee (all the teachers remember this). I focused on that, but I also learned that drama training can have far reaching effects on just about any career and I’m grateful for all that I learned through senior primary and early high school. 

Fourteen to Twenty One

Discovering who you are and what you like takes a lot of experimentation. Being open to new experiences is always going to be a good thing. 

Like most teenagers this period was one of discovery. High school, and specifically being in boarding school, was a great experiment in who I was, the kind of people I liked to spend time with, the books I enjoyed reading and the relationships I wanted to be in. University was much the same – just on a whole new, highly-independent level. 

Not only was I discovering my interests, but I was expanding my food tastes, my relationships, the locations I enjoyed and the subjects I wanted to know more about. I used University as a time for exploring knowledge in the most beautiful and expansive way. And experimenting was a vital part of that in all areas. 

Twenty One to Twenty Eight

Travel is the single best thing to get to know yourself. Doing it on your own is incredibly empowering. 

Five continents. Living and working in all sorts of places and jobs. Meeting people from all walks of life. The experiences in these seven years shaped me for life.

USA, UK, Taiwan, Australia, Africa – I lived and worked in all these places during this time. 

My first visit to the USA taught me about access and availability and consumerism in a way I had never experienced before. 

The UK – London and Scotland specifically – taught me that city life is great, that I hate wet winters and that meeting people outside of their home countries has a certain element of delight – expats unite. It was also where my pregnancy story quietly began, though I didn’t know yet what that story would cost me. 

Taiwan taught me about Asian culture and helped me understand some major differences between Western and Eastern beliefs. It also helped me realise that I could never do a boring, dictated job in my life. Teaching by number was definitely not for me. 

Australia taught me that love looks different in different places and made me acutely aware of what real inclusivity looks like. And it opened my eyes to a truly multicultural life – Sydney has such a variety of restaurants and cultures represented there. 

 South Africa was home and I popped back regularly. 

My second visit to the USA taught me that love does not, in fact, conquer all and that life experiences are the most valuable things you can get – whether that’s weird jobs, new cultural exposure, or learning a completely new lifestyle. 

I wrote those seven years up here in a handful of paragraphs, one lesson per place. It took an entire video to actually get into what home meant while none of those five continents were it yet. If you want the longer version:

Twenty Eight to Thirty Five

Settling down isn’t a bad thing. Home truly is where your heart is – whether your heart is with a place, a group of people or a single steady soul. 

Travel was phenomenal, but there was a loneliness I didn’t really understand. Being in spaces where I never quite fit in was exhausting. Coming home was an incredibly important part of this section. It was a hard thing to admit at the time, but South Africa really was home. Being here brought about a calmness about me that I hadn’t experienced for more than a decade. 

And I carried on with traveling while working as a travel agent, but with the joy of always coming home. Knowing I had a home base where I fit in and felt comfortable made the extensive traveling I did for work even more fun.

I met Brian during this time slot, but I needed to be the calmer, settled person when I met him for the relationship to be able to grow into what it did. Ending this period with a ring on my finger was probably the highlight. 

Thirty Five to Forty Two

As long as you remember that you have survived all of your worst days to date, you can get through the hard ones still to come. 

These feel like the pregnancy years. 7 pregnancies, 5 losses and 2 children with Brian, and the first seven years of our marriage.

This is the chapter the book tells in full, so I’m not going to try and cram it into a paragraph here. It deserves the pages I gave it. What I’ll say here is what I always say: I survived 100% of my worst days. And I had some of my best days too. I loved being a mom even through the hardest things.

Forty Two to Forty Nine

There is healing in the chaos, and it’s often found through writing. 

Pandemic, Perimenopause and Pink.

The last seven years have been full. The Pandemic hit the world and we locked down and stayed home. A year later in South Africa we had the riots that devastated my city in particular. And a year after that a deluge of rain over a short period that caused catastrophic infrastructure collapse throughout our area.

Through all this I started experiencing perimenopause symptoms which brought up a whole lot of triggers from my pregnancy era. And now in my 49th year I am likely in my final stretch to my official menopause date.

Through all the things in these seven years my self assurance and self love has grown and I have done the work to heal a lot of my trauma. I wrote and self-published my book which came out of journaling regularly. As that has happened I have found myself drawn to only wearing clothes that bring me joy.

Someone saw me recently and asked if I changed my hair colour when I changed my outfit and I replied that that wasn’t necessary since almost everything in my wardrobe is pink and purple. I love that I have embraced this. The pink/purple/blue hair, the pink and purple wardrobe, the sparkles. It feels so deliciously me and brings me so much joy. 

In a couple of days, I will turn 49 and enter the next 7 year slot. I am looking forward to what this next chapter brings: raising teens, speaking and writing, travel, connection and an even more fulfilling life. There is a lot I still want to do, and so this is really just the end of one chapter and the beginning of the next. I still have lives to change with my work. I want to change the medical industry’s perception and treatment of loss parents. I have a whole lot of places to tick off my travel bucket list. I hope you’ll come along for the ride. It’s going to be wild, colourful, loud and passionate, but rooted in love, acceptance and growth.