
Last week, on Mamamia Out Loud, Mia, Jessie and Holly spoke about loneliness.
This is me and my loneliness. Massive disclaimer – my loneliness is clothed in ridiculous amounts of privilege, of and for which, I’m acutely aware and grateful.
I’m Australian. I’m 47. I have two kids aged nine and seven. I have a very hard working, MAMIL (middle-aged man in lycra) husband. I adore them all and vice versa.
Bear with me, the next few details are relevant, I promise. Until this year I have worked and earned money all my adult life – actually from when I was 15, working part-time throughout school and all through university – relishing in a fantastic education and parents who thought I could do anything, always told me I was clever, and valued hard work.
Watch: Monz on her loneliness bench. Post continues below.
As of early February 2020, we have lived in London. Prior to that we lived in Singapore for three years. Prior to that, we lived in Melbourne for six years (where child number two was born), and before that we lived in Brisbane – me for six years, my husband for 16. Our first child was born there.
My husband is from Tassie and I’m from Victoria. Before I met him (I was 31, he was 30) I had been a lawyer and then a corporate communications professional. We’d each travelled, studied, worked, lived.
Immediately after we had our first child we moved from Brisbane to Melbourne for my husband’s job.
Needless to say, I couldn’t keep my job. And so began my ongoing reinvention of what work I do and what my role is within my marriage and family.
My job has taken second place since then, which was a team decision. When we moved to Melbourne from Brisbane, I also left behind the best friends I had ever made.
I made more, and I continue to make them, wherever we live. But I crave the deep, honest, unconditional, no-holes-barred love and commitment of my handful of Brisbane girlfriends, whom I’ve been away from now for 10 years; longer than the time we spent glued to one another in our early, childless thirties. And I miss the love I have for them, and bestowing it upon them on a constant basis.
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