Goodbye and thank you

Some months ago, I did an interview on national TV related to my work. My mother watched and told me that it never failed to amaze her how her shy, tongue-tied child had turned into someone who could stand up and speak in front of large audiences.

‘I wonder where your self-confidence comes from…’ she mused, and was surprised when I said a lot of it came from Anthony, my ex-husband.

Surprised because the narrative of the past few years, as our marriage had begun to unravel, had been largely negative. On the frequent occasions that I wept in my mother’s kitchen, I had given the impression that nothing good had come out of the 25 years Anthony and I had been together but, of course, there were many things. It just took me a while to acknowledge them.

So much of the language connected with the