I'm a reasonably bright girl, but my general knowledge is woeful. The stuff I don't know could fill an encyclopedia, though obviously someone else would have to compile it because I don't know very much.
I know a lot about certain things. I know pretty much every detail of my kids' lives, and that is a lot of detail. I know about my friends' marriages and my parents' friendships and why Simon Baker is currently in Australia. I know how to get burned soup from the bottom of a saucepan, what hair products are best for curly hair, and how to write a good circular conclusion to a blog post.
I know about social media and 19th Century literature and how to compose a haiku. I can recite the raps of Eminem and poems of John Donne and the entire script of Grease including musical numbers.
But I cannot name the capital cities of half the world's countries, and when I say 'half', I mean 'much less than half' because I'm so ashamed about how little I know.
I'm fascinated by people with tremendous general knowledge. I want to be them And I try, but the information keeps slipping from my brain. Interestingly, though, the names of every celebrity baby ever born are wedged there like blu tac.
But are certain types of knowledge objectively 'better' than others? Is my father the smartest man alive? And why are we wearing scarves?
These questions and so many more could fill an encyclopedia, but they are answered in the five minute video below:
I spend half my life playacting. I pretend to be a Real Writer. I go on TV and pretend to be a Real Commentator. I discipline my kids and pretend to be a Real Parent. And I go on dates and pretend to be a Real Woman.
But inside I feel..... Can't they see I don't really know what I'm doing? Can't they see that I am an imposter???
It's not all the time. I have moments when I feel like I've got it all together. Small snatches of time - perhaps I've just published an article I'm really happy with, or I have successfully helped one of the kids with a problem - where my brain catches up with public perceptions of me.
But they are moments. Most of the time I feel like I'm fooling everyone, and that soon I am going to be recognised for the fraud that I am.
this is SO TRUE
I think Imposter Syndrome is very common amongst women; less so amongst men who seem to second guess themselves less. Even since filming this segment with Lana, I have learned that many women I admire and respect feel exactly the same way.
It is remarkable to me that such high achieving women can have any doubt about their abilities. But then, it's possible that other people think the same about me. And that notion really blows my mind.
Watch our discussion here, and let me know if you feel the same:
I rarely talk about the birth of my third child. I did, however, include it in the book that was never published. And after Lana raised the issue of birth this week, I decided to haul it out and share it with the world. Be warned. It's traumatic.
My caesarean
section was bizarre. There was
no labour, no pushing, no transition, no process.
One moment I was pregnant, and then, within a
few minutes, I wasn’t. And there was my daughter,
beautiful and healthy, emerging from the other
side of the screen.
The baby
was cleaned up, and
shortly afterwards we both returned to my room.
After twenty minutes or so my mum brought my big
kids in to the hospital to meet their baby
sister. Photos were taken and phone calls
were made. I was light headed, but calm, and
glad to have my daughter safe in my arms.
Then they
left, and it was just my (then) husband, me and the baby.
And suddenly, I wasn’t feeling so great. My
stomach hurt, and it was grossly distended. And when the
nurse came in to check my pad she noticed
that my legs and my gown were soaked with blood.
“We’ll
need to keep an eye on this,” she said, and I felt a
tinge of alarm.
“Is
everything okay?”
“I’m just
going to give your stomach a massage to help move
some of these clots,” she told me.
“So I’ll
be okay after that?”
The nurse
just smiled. She massaged my stomach, but it was
agonisingly painful.
“Stop!” I
cried. “It hurts!”
“I’ll get
you another shot of morphine,” she said, and
left the room. My husband looked worried, and he
never looked worried.
I counted
the minutes until the nurse returned. By the time
she gave me my shot, my pad was drenched
again.
“I think
we need to call the doctor,” my husband said.
“I’ll call
the registrar,” the nurse told him.
“Call
Kerri’s specialist,” my husband shouted after her, but
she had already left the room.
Around
twenty minutes later, an unfamiliar doctor pushed his
way through the curtains. He looked about
fifteen. I felt woozy, and my stomach was still sore.
“I’m Dr
Amira, the registrar,” he announced briskly.
“I’m just going to check your stomach.”
He felt
around my stomach and I winced. Then he checked my
pad. More bright blood.
The
doctor chewed his lip, furrowed his brow and made some
notes in my file.
“I want
you to call Dr H,” my husband said.
Dr Amira
paused. “We don’t disturb the specialists unless
there is an emergency.”
“It is an
emergency. My wife is bleeding.”
The young
registrar looked profoundly uneasy. “Let’s give it
another hour and see how she is, shall we?”
“Call him
right now or I will go downstairs and page him
myself,” my husband hissed at him.
Just
then, my mobile phone rang. It was my son, calling me
from my mother’s house.
“Hi Mum.
How’s the baby?” asked my beautiful son.
“She’s
good darling,” I said. “How are you?”
He
answered, but I kept losing track of his words. I tried
very hard to focus, but I felt like I was floating
away. It’s the
morphine, I
thought. The drugs
are making me fuzzy.
My son
was saying something about homework and bedtime, but
I couldn’t understand him. And I felt
strange. Very strange. I was staring down a narrow
tunnel, and I was being sucked into its vortex.
I was
fading. I felt it. I was fading.
“I have
to go now darling,” I said, and I let the phone
slide from my hand.
Suddenly
there was a commotion. People gathering around.
Loud voices, needles being stuck into my arm,
thermometers in my ear. I floated in and out of the
scene, trying to stay awake. And yet, even
though I was losing consciousness – even
though my eyes kept drifting closed – I was
panicked in every
fibre of my being.
I was
haemorrhaging both internally and externally and I
could do nothing to save my own life. I was completely
in the hands of the medical team, and they had
not inspired me with confidence. I could feel
myself dying. It was my worst nightmare coming true. I
was dying. I was going to die.
I didn’t
think of the new baby, who wasn’t even real to me
at that stage. And I didn’t think of my husband,
although he was standing there next to me. I thought
of my parents, who had just lost their only other
child. And I thought of my older two children,
and how lost they would be without me.
“You
don’t understand!” I screamed to the registrar. “You
can’t let me die! YOU CAN’T LET ME DIE!”
The
registrar spoke firmly, but I could hear the unease
in his voice. “Please try to stay calm, Kerri.
We’ve called Dr H. He should be here any moment. Just
hang on.”
Hang on?
HANG ON? What was I supposed to hang on to???
And then
I saw the most wonderful vision appear before me.
My white haired obstetrician materialised
in my room. He was already in his scrubs.
“We’re
taking you straight back to theatre,” he said
briskly, and laid a reassuring hand on my arm as the staff
began wheeling my bed out the door.
“Am I
going to die?” I asked.
“No,” he
said. “Absolutely not. I won’t let you.”
Here is the discussion with Lana that triggered this post. More to come.
It was that feeling you had when you were nearly hit by a car as you crossed the road but it missed by that much (also linked very closely to 'relief').
It was what you didn't actually experience when your grandmother gave you a birthday present that was way too young for you and you were really disappointed (see 'ungrateful brat').
It was the emotion that rushed through you when your boyfriend arrived at the door and looked really cute and you felt hugely lucky to have him (also known as 'I can't believe he's mine!').
It wasn't a movement. It was a sensation. It was something that came from the heart, or didn't.
But gratitude has been packaged and commodified in our social media age. It is something that you 'practice', not feel, as part of a Way of Being.
It is something to be cultivated and shared, and expressed in public forums.
What are you grateful for today? people ask.
Today I am grateful for my cat, my hot coffee, this new assignment, they respond.
Gratitude is memes and blog posts and apps and Instagram pics. It is a way to live, to overcome depression, to ease anxiety, to enhance positivity. It is a panacea for all sorts of mental and emotional distress.
And yet... I'm not sold. I feel grateful when I'm grateful, which, admittedly, is a lot. I live a fortunate life. I have much to be thankful for. But when I'm anxious or distressed or in pain or sad, forcing gratitude for what is good can't fix my woes. Gratitude for my children or cat won't palliate my grief for my sister. Gratitude for my friends or parents can't heal a broken heart. Gratitude for having had two books published can't ease the anxiety over the third.
But many people I know practice gratitude, including someone unexpected. We discuss it below. And I would love to know your thoughts. Are you a 'grateful' person? What are you grateful for? Has it changed your life? Am I missing something?
When I was 38 weeks pregnant with my third child, and my sister suddenly died, I was a mess, as you can imagine. I was having all sorts of health problems and suddenly plunged into grief and I had two young children to care for, and it was without a doubt the darkest, most oppressively difficult time in my life.
Friends rallied around, of course, and I will be forever grateful. But in that hideous period, the kindness of two near strangers stood out. One, a teacher, volunteered to bring both my kids to the school gates for the remainder of the term so that I wouldn't have to walk into the school. She knew how difficult it was for me to face people, and I will never forget her sensitivity and generosity.
The other, the class parent for my daughter's year, arranged a food roster for me. Every single night for weeks I had a hot meal on the table for my family thanks to her. I'd never met her, but that woman made a profound difference to my ability to cope.
Fast forward eighteen months, and I am sitting on the grass at a class picnic with my now toddler on my lap. I am chatting to that class parent, properly thanking her for all she did to help me. The conversation segues into a discussion of social media. I explain that I'm on Twitter (I'm feeling quite proud because I already have a couple of hundred followers) and wonder if she's ever heard of it.
"Kerri, we've been chatting on Twitter for months. I'm Sharpest Pencil."
The woman was Lana Hirschowitz. Until that point I had no idea that the hysterically funny person I'd been tweeting online was the very same woman who arranged meals for me after my sister died.
My worlds collided.
Since then, Lana and I have spent a ridiculous time communicating, across every medium one can imagine. We talk on Twitter, in public and (far less politically correctly) in DMs. We talk on Facebook, on Instagram, in emails, and in texts. We talk on the phone and we catch up in person. I have many friends who I adore, but Lana is the only friend who lives in all of my communities - the online, the Jewish, the school, and the anxious.
Of course, being South African, Lana is as different to me as cheese is to a polar bear. Her accent is irritating and she's bossy and she doesn't like most of my clothes. She is a dog person and I am a cat person. She is also a cat person, but whatever. And we disagree on nearly everything, which is weird because we also agree on nearly everything.
But our conversations are hilarious, and often bizarre, and for fun, we thought we'd share them with you.
This is the second in our serious of #5minutes with Kerri and Lana. We are in bed. Don't ask why. Just go with it and look at those ginormous pills.
