Be Curious #10 - 14 April 2025
Transitions
Dear lovely reader ~
Welcome to the tenth edition of Be Curious! We made it to double figures!
Transition 1 - hitting double figures
Remember when you were a kid and your tenth birthday was approaching? I do. I recall thinking it was a really big deal to turn double figures, and in many ways it was! It was in 1988 and I was commencing Year 5 at school. My teacher was Mrs Klemke and shortly after the school year beagan (here in Australia, our school year starts in early February), I was made deputy class captain.
My friend Tanya was captain and, later in the year, she was the first person to recieve a heart and double lunch transplant. Tanya was a sweet girl with blonde hair and rosy read cheeks, but she did not put up with cruelty and I saw her more than once tell classmates off for being unkind. I think she may have even given me a razz at one stage! Tanya lived until 1992 when she sadly passed away and I know many of my classmates still think of her and remember her fondly.
Ten is a big number. Celebrating a tenth anniversary is exciting - I am sure many people reach that milestone and think “hey, we might just be in this long term after all!”. Finishing Year 10 at school is auspicious too - that’s the exit point where some young people elect to go to work instead of completing their school certificates.
Transition 2 - selling a home
We are currently in a stage of life transition. We are placing our home for sale straight after Easter, ahead of a move to a new city. We have spent a lot of time in recent weeks packing boxes of belongings and clearing out some of the accummulated junk we have acquired since moving here five years ago.
I have also been “staging” our home ready for photography - making sure beds are made nicely, the walls have great art and our home inspires someone to want to live in it! I look at a lot of homes online (we are searching for our next home too!) and many of them are very neutral and, frankly, don’t inspire me. I don’t want to see people’s clutter, but I do want to see how the home is lived in, not just “staged”. So our home has colour (yes, the books have been arranged in rainbow order!) in bedding, furnishings and artwork, while having almost white walls. We have plants around (I cannot live in a house without some plants) and while there are no longer photographs around, it is still our home and it will, we hope, attract someone like us - who wants to see how this apartment is lived in.
We live about 150 metres from the water too, so I hope our balcony attract someone who, like me, likes to sit outside, enjoy the view and read books and just think quietly. It has been a haven for me over the past five years and I hope it sparks similar joy for our dream buyer.
Transition 3 - lifecycles
The other transition I have been been experiencing has been even more personal than moving house. I am a woman of a particular age, and my body is experiencing some changes which were somewhat unexpected and have caused significant upheaval. I have not been able to achieve a solid diagnosis yet but I have been experiencing significant pain that has been physically and emotionally overwhelming, and included a hospitalisation.
The possibilities are that I have experienced ovarian fibroids that have necrotised, through to adenomyosis. Endometriosis is in the mix too. I am hoping that, whatever the case, the worst is behind me but women who have experienced these issues will tell you: this stuff is not for sissies. I have a very high pain threshold (you don’t survive cancer four times without some resilience) but this has been horrific.
This experience over the past couple of months has really driven home to me some facts: that what women suffer through, when it comes to gynocology, is some of the worst pain possible. For so many women, it prevents having children or makes it really difficult. I do not have children, which I think is why I thought I may have escaped this particular malady. Not so.
It has also reinforced to me that, frankly, if men suffered from these issues, they would be taken far more seriously and there would be significantly more money put into research into these matters. Women (like me) would not have to wait six weeks for an MRI. We wouldn’t just be given pain relief and sent on our way. I know men suffer from a range of issues but seriously, these health matters are still not taken seriously enough. The first time I reported to the ED, I was sent home after eight hours with pain relief and the belief that there was no reason to do further tests. When I reported back a couple of weeks later, I was admitted and, bar one does of a Schedule 8 pain reliever, I was given paracetamol.
If this does escalate for me again, I will be advocating in the strongest terms and I’m less likely to be as polite as I have been thus far. Health care workers do not deserve to be abused, but I will do whatever it takes to resolve this, sooner rather than later.
(This is also why it has been a couple of weeks since Edition #9 of this newsletter!)
So, tell me about transitions in your life. What strategies did you put in place to navigate them? How did they work out for you?
Book Reviews
Since I last wrote, I have read two wonderful novels. You can read my reviews below.
HALF TRUTH by Nadia Mahjouri
The debut novel of Australian-Moroccan author Nadia Mahjouri, Half Truth is based on her own experience of travelling to Marrakech to search for her biological father and, in the process, connecting …
TANGI by Witi Ihimaera
When I travel, I like to pick up novels from local authors and in October 2023, when I was in Queenstown, New Zealand, I picked up Tangi by Witi Ihimaera. This novel was first released in 1973 and wa…
Substack articles I really enjoyed
Currently…
Currently reading: Theory and Practice by Michelle de Kretser
Currently listening to: Mayhem - the new Lady Gaga album throws down
Currently watching: I just watched The Life List on Netflix and it was quite sweet.
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Til next time,
