24th October 2020
Back at the end of February (goodness, that sounds such a long time ago now, and so much water has gone under the bridge since then) I forced myself to attend a talk at my local library by a local author called Katie Portman. I say forced myself because at that time my confidence and self-esteem were at rock bottom. I really felt like staying at home, but on the day I got myself ready the best I could and I went, by myself, to spend some time with other ladies to listen to Katie talk about herself and her new book “A Little Pick-Me-Up”.
Inside I was shaking so much and felt so self conscious, but I am so glad I went. When I had the opportunity to chat to her afterwards I told her about when I used to write my blog. She gave me the encouragement to start writing it again and the rest, as they say, is history.
My daughter and son had also both said to me, previously to this, to start again, but I just wasn't in the right place. I suppose it was a stranger saying it to me that planted the seed in my head. When lockdown started it sort of watered that seed and the need to express my thoughts in an external way began. I spent a lot of time on my own during lockdown and I had time to really think about me, but it is only recently that those thoughts have started to come together and I have realised just how far I have come, not only in this last year, but also in the years since I split up from and divorced my first husband.
This really came to a peak last night when I had an epiphany while watching a chat on Instagram, “5 Style Pieces, 5 Stories” hosted by Katie Portman, where she chatted to a lovely lady called Lisa Rowley. During lockdown Katie has trained as a personal stylist and at the moment is training in colour analysis, and the chat was about a choice of five style items and the stories around why they were thought provoking and meaningful to Lisa. It was great and I look forward to the next web chat on November 2nd.
It started me thinking about my own style and how it has changed since I was sixteen years old and met my first husband. Goodness me, what a can of worms it seems to have opened! I was never one for fashion in a big way when I entered my teens greatly affected by being over-weight and not many things fitting me. I must have been about fifteen years old when my mother made me some checked Oxford bag trousers, in true Bay City Rollers fashion, and I still remember how great I felt, but I was never like the other girls and I just accepted that I was “fat” and I didn't deserve to look good or be really fashionable. My mother was only seventeen years older than me and she was beautiful, with gorgeous red hair and slim. I remember going through the clothes in her wardrobe and thinking how I wished I could wear things like that, but I was just too big and plain and not at all like her. She did sort of try to help me lose weight but it never came to much. She never really went shopping with me, or talk about fashion and make up. We lived with my grandparents at this time as my parents had split up, so my mother worked and socialised as a single person and didn't really spend a lot of time with me. So, I didn't really get a lot of advice fashion wise and, to be brutally honest, I really didn't feel that me as a person mattered or deserved it. So there I was at sixteen years old, not having any real clue about style.
Then I met my first husband and it all went down hill from there. Personal style was definitely put away for many years to come.
But things did change eventually, as you'll see when I continue the story in my next blog.
See you then,
Jackie
xx
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