How to be stylish – from your bed. A story about whatever gets your through.

How to rock a hospital mumu & handle curve balls.

Sisters, don’t be alarmed at the mumu, it’s totally appropriate and in fact, the only thing I want to and can be wearing right now, because this mother of the sisterhood had a bit of a curve ball thrown at me this week.

I went into battle with a rogue ovarian cyst, that had decided to grow some mutant qualities and wanted to take down a fallopian tube and my right ovary while it was at it.  I have pictures, but I don’t want to put you off your brekkie.

So this is me this morning, in all my glory, hospital mumu and DVT stockings,  to keep those blood clots at bay. It got me thinking how curve balls can have the propensity to steer us so off course and we can often find it hard to get back onboard.  The reliance on others is suddenly intensive and extreme, you are thrust into the care of others and cannot control your own pain or the next steps and that is scary. So I am doing my damnedest to not let it cut me down, but instead, fill me up with gratitude and a story to tell. There’s always a great story to tell.

When my husband took me to the emergency room I recalled vaguely how I had never been to an ED before.  I have only been in hospital once as a teenager to have a nearly erupting appendix out and then twice to have my babies.  But never emergency, never in a wheelchair, crippled in pain.  So this was a new one. I even did a TV-like shout out “please, someone help me, something is wrong”.  YES, that was me, on Wednesday afternoon at 4.45pm.

The nurses and Dr’s were great, telling me to breathe through it and hold their hand and then they tripled the morphine and realised that wasn’t even touching the sides.  So surgery was suddenly on the cards.  Never-mind, that I knew about the cyst already, just not that it was also taking an ovary or fallopian tube with it.  I was due to have it out next week, in a private hospital and not be dragged into emergencey surgery.  I was scared and a bit daunted and shocked that I had left work at 2.30 to collect my kids and was crippled in pain by 3pm and in hospital soon after.

But you see that’s when I just had to let go and for those that know me, they know that that’s hard.  I organise for a living and I was even bossing my husband  around about what I needed him to do, after surgery, no memory of it, but also able to sing “I like big butts and I cannot lie”. 

Suddenly it was all out of my hands and friends stepped in to grab the kids, then my dad took over looking after them that night.  My husband paced the halls of the hospital, waiting for news of me, the cyst and it’s darstedly deeds (that’s a book title if I ever heard one).  Then friends and family started to hear the news and sent texts, made calls and offers of help and food for my gaggle of boys.  They came to visit with flowers, even when I was too woozy to get my head off the pillow.  Flowers and good cheer followed.  Work rallied like the champions they are and am grateful for their amazingness.   While I had to cancel a planning day for Sisterhood of Style today, with an epic business mentor and I won’t be able to speak at a women’s group event on Sunday about style,I know that I will have the opportunities again, I just need to spend the time now recuperating.

When I got my wits back very early this morning, after a second night in hospital, I felt compelled to write this down. This feeling of gratefulness and gratitude.  Life may have thrown me a big fat curve-ball but I’m determined to catch it on the full and run (well maybe walk right now) with it and just be at one with the sucker.

So thanks rogue cyst, you kinda did me a favour, because I see my cup is full of awesome.  I’m gonna rock this mumu and white DVT stockings while I still can, because normal life will resume soon enough and sometimes, a mumu is all a girl needs.

Thanks for letting me share sisterhood.

Love EJ, the mother of the sisterhood. xx

Why you should agender-ise your sisterhood catch ups

I’m here to share with you why you should agender-ise your squad catch ups.  It’s a thing.  Well it wasn’t a thing, but now it is.

Sisters, time with your sisterhood, your besties, your squad is precious and often too short.  These precious moments are often so full of excitement at catching up, workshopping important and less important information and bantering back and forth, that you can leave feeling there was so much more to say.  Well I have a plan to help you on that.

Now, “just back the truck up” I hear you say, you want me to what?  Yes, I said it, I want you to put an agenda on the table and work through it systematically or erratically, whatever rocks your boat when you next meet up with your sisterhood/squad/friends/besties.  You’ll leave with a sense of calm that everyone has put their cards on the table and got their turn to offload/share/bitch/moan/vent/celebrate.

I’m finding the older I get (I still feel 27, but have a few more wrinkles, rolls and kids than I did back then), that time with my friends is sacred and I want to wring the most out of the time I have with them as possible.  There is so much that can’t be said via text and short phone calls, so I tend to “save” stuff up, but by the time we catch up, the moment’s been and gone, I’ve workshopped the issue myself or I’ve just plain forgotten.

And then in the space of one week, I was lucky enough to have two girly catch ups booked in and would you believe, both sets of friends put an agenda on the table.  At my heart, I’m an organiser, I do it for a living wrangling clients in my day job and make shit happen in my #mumboss biz, so you can imagine I was giddy with delight that agendas had been set.  Both were different versions but both have their merits, so it got me thinking that this blog is all about the sisterhood and I should share some life-hacks that I love with you.  So here’s how they went:

1. Agenda One: “Bring your top 3 to discuss, everything else is a free for all”.  This agenda had a fluidness to it, a liberal dose of letting the cards fall where they lay but it set an expectation that you’d get your turn, you have important things to discuss and it will happen, but shit might change and that’s cool.
2. Agenda Two: Rough agenda for Thursday: School fair,  renovation bitch and moan, husbands, kids, body yarns – what the fuck is happening to us?, building each other up – we are amazing after all and AOB (any other business).

To be fair, Agenda number two lingered on AOB for most of the night as there were some big fat rocks in there to jump over, but we got through the rest in a flash, because we remembered to keep referring back to the agenda.  Everyone left feeling lighter than when they walked in, having had the chance to offload.

Now before you get your knickers in a twist with me, thinking I am being some sort of lifestyle expert, I promise, I’m not, I just want to help the sisterhood out with a way to make life simpler, easier, more fun and calming.  Who doesn’t need that?

What do you think?  Let me know if you use the idea at your next sisterhood catchup.  It’s one big karmic cathartic love bomb of an idea.  Well I think so anyway 🙂  Happy life-hack.

Mmmmmwah, EJ, the mother of the sisterhood.  x0x0