It was a slightly silly conversation on the way home from the cinema. The four of us had been to see Top Gun: Maverick and were giddy on nostalgia and sweets. It started with my husband admitting he would have loved to have been a fighter pilot. This was if life hadn’t taken him down a different path. We all then chimed in with our once-fervently-held ambitions. It was a moment of warmth and camaraderie – friends, and parents of a collective brood of seven, comfortable sharing that we had once wanted something different from what we have now.
I am incredibly lucky. I always wanted to write, and this is what I spend the majority of my days doing. Life has dictated, however, that I am not putting pen to paper by torchlight in the corner of a bunker while missiles fly overhead; as unappealing as that sounds to most people, that was my dream from a very young age. I wanted to be Kate Adie, bringing the world’s attention to stories of suffering and strength. My ambition was based, I’ll admit, on an overly romanticised view of being a special correspondent. Now, as a mother of four, that kind of journalism – the Pulitzer Prize-winning kind – just isn’t on my radar. This isn’t a bid for sympathy. It was a decision that I made, not one that was forced upon me.
This story is from the January 2023 edition of Psychologies UK.
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This story is from the January 2023 edition of Psychologies UK.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
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