Happily Imperfect

Ten years ago people weren’t talking about it so publicly and honestly. There was no social media, no ‘Maybe I can go on Twitter and ask for help or read blogs.’ I was told, ‘It’ll all be all right in the end,’ but that didn’t prepare me for having giant needles in my spine, clamps up my vagina, and yet another person looking at my nunny.

It was the first time I truly felt my mortality, triggering all those old, anxious feelings. Giving birth was so painful, alien and undignified that it shook me. I found it utterly traumatic (don’t let me put anyone off – I had a second child so it can’t have been that bad, right?) and at one point I really thought I was going to die.

I realized I wasn’t super-human. I’m not indestructible: I am, in fact, mortal. Perhaps I should’ve grasped that earlier in life. I’m a bit of a control freak. I like being on top of things. Anything I can’t control sets off my worries big-time, and those feelings continue today.

Now I can’t wait to have another baby. I go online, look up childbirth blogs, and birth stories, then work out all the options.

Anxiety is the bottom line for me. It sits under everything I do or am as a person. It comes on early in the day, a kind of itchy, troublesome restlessness that creeps over me, making everything I do seem strange and forced. It’s usually when a friend rings and says, ‘Did you know so-and-so got diagnosed with cancer?’ or ‘So-and-so died yesterday of a brain haemorrhage,’ and it stays with me all day. It’s the understanding of how fragile life is. It’s much later, when I get into bed, when the kids are asleep, when my filming is done for the day, and there’s nothing to distract me, that I go into a full-blown panic attack.

If I try to relax that only makes things worse. My breathing becomes something I have to think about, just like when I was a child, and that’s when I know I’m having an attack. My body feels numb, heavy and paralysed. I have pins and needles in my hands. I can’t swallow, and feel like I’m going to faint. I’m like that for about two minutes but it feels like for ever.

So, what do I do? I’ve come to terms with the fact I cannot stop the attacks when they start. I have learnt that the only way through is to accept it. I can’t change who I am so I accept that I’m someone who has panic attacks. It’s part of me, just like the colour of my eyes or the way I speak.

Rather than try to stop one, I concentrate on each moment, focusing on what is happening rather than trying to deny it. It sounds counterintuitive but, slowly, I was less freaked-out when I had one. Over time each attack felt less severe. I had to see an attack for what it was: a response to unhappy news that left me feeling powerless. A panic attack began to seem a logical response to whatever had happened. Once I understood the cause, I was able to sit through each one, and understand it. In doing so, I lost some of my fear of the actual attacks.

Afterwards, I can’t sleep, so I’ll clean the house, at 1 a.m., if need be, and eventually I might get a few hours’ sleep. These days the attacks are fewer. I don’t know why. I tried every technique I could, including cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), yoga, Rapid Eye Movement Therapy (EMDR – Eye Movement Desensitizing and Reprocessing Therapy) and hypnotherapy. They all helped in small ways, and may be useful to anyone experiencing panic attacks. Do seek help and try different techniques if you suffer from anxiety – it really is worth it. In the end, though, it was accepting my anxiety, and enjoying my life despite the attacks, that made the difference for me.

I have learnt that if I allow each attack to happen without trying to stop it, it will work its way out. When I’m in that scary place, when my body is freaking out and my mind is telling me I’m going to die any second and leave my babies bereft, it feels like it’ll never end. That’s why I talk about it to friends and family. Somehow the act of talking, of being open about it, makes it seem less overwhelming.

If anxiety is part of you too, you’ll know that feeling – the first few prickles of sweat, the nagging thoughts, the sensation in the pit of your stomach that tells you an attack is under way. You may feel light-headed, restless, have racing thoughts, faster breathing, and your heart is beating, it seems, at a thousand miles an hour.

At times like that it’s impossible to see the bigger picture, to know that this excruciating feeling will last for a few minutes at most. Knowing your triggers and building a support network of friends, family and GP are invaluable in dealing with anxiety.

My trigger is always health-related. I know that the Big A will creep up on me and take me hostage at night if something upsets me.

I’ve learnt to differentiate between nerves and full-blown anxiety. For example, I get nervous before I go on Loose Women or before I sing. That it isn’t anxiety because during an attack I feel like I’m going to die. I can’t control that at all. I’ve been with Loose Women for years but I get a bit nervous still because I care so much about my job. I want to do well. That isn’t the same as an attack. Before a show I can calm my nerves by telling myself that no one wants me to fail, the girls have got my back, or I remind myself that I’m capable of doing my job: that’s why I was hired. I can create a positive mindset through experiencing nerves.

Positive self-talk is empowering because it helps me to keep my nerves in check so I can use them to try to do a better job. I like feeling that I’m giving something my very best shot.

If I’m honest, I have days when I sit on the panel and feel under-qualified, or unsure of my opinion, but at those moments I make a conscious effort to tell myself I’m good enough, and that it’s okay to be unsure or even to change my mind on an issue. I tell myself it’s okay to be nervous. If I felt nothing, I would wonder whether I wanted or cared about my work.

Knowing my triggers, working with my body and mind, and letting go of the need to stop my anxiety has helped me to keep the attacks in perspective, even to celebrate them. I find that turning a big negative into a positive is the way forward, though it takes time and understanding to achieve. I see my GP regularly, and I make sure my family and I eat healthily and do loads of outdoor play. I focus on creating a happy, balanced home and work life. The Big A can be a positive, even if it often doesn’t feel that way. The challenge for me is to remember that, and keep living my life the best way I know how.

STAY POSITIVE

Find someone neutral or trustworthy, perhaps a GP, family friend, partner, or mental health professional, and just open up. There’s nothing to be ashamed of. Speaking up on any mental-health issue is brave and honest, and will make things easier.

You may need further professional help, which may include medication or talking therapies. Work at understanding your triggers.

Recognize that anxiety is part of you – and is no different from any other illness. If you break your leg, you go straight to a doctor, and it’s the same with panic attacks. Treat your condition as an illness rather than as something to be ashamed of.

CHAPTER 3

Ugly Duckling

The pretty girls at school were petite with cute button noses, smooth, shiny hair, sculpted eyebrows, long lashes and fuzz-free skin.

Then there was me. I was gawky. Ridiculously tall, with frizzy, unmanageable hair – barely there eyebrows and lashes, and a thick Yeti-like fuzz of body hair.

How did I get through school with those ‘gifts’ from Mother Nature? I just didn’t realize how unconventional I was until people pointed it out to me. Even then, I was blissfully unaware of what people classed as pretty or otherwise. I hadn’t really thought about my looks until then. I’d concentrated on developing my personality. I could make people laugh, and if I was naughty and funny, I had friends. I thought less about what I looked like, and more about who I was.

You could say that was where it all began for me. I had to cultivate my character because my looks didn’t mean anything to me. My Shallow Hal approach to life meant that looks were irrelevant to me. Whether someone was kind, funny or smart was way more important than how they looked. I still feel that today.

Saying that, I knew I wasn’t cute on the first day I walked through the gates at high school with the rest of my year group, and someone, an older child, said quite loudly: ‘Ugh, she’s not little …’ And by ‘little’ they meant cute or sweet, or even ‘resembling someone my own age’.

I didn’t resemble anyone of my age. I didn’t fit my year group. My body didn’t fit my age. I was much taller and awkward, with fully developed boobs yet I still had milk teeth. Go figure.

I basically had an adult’s body, plus all the accompanying hormones, with a child’s face and emotional development. I was a complete mismatch. As soon as I heard that first ‘ugh’, I knew I was going to have to work harder than the other girls to be liked. As a kid, I’d always longed to be the cute one, the little one, but I never was. I was always the gangly one with shocking hair and tufty eyebrows. It didn’t take me long to realize that none of the boys my age fancied me. They all went for the smaller girls with the straight sleek hair and button noses.

My hair was long but it was frizzy, so much so that my sister Jemma and I nicknamed our hair the ‘Jewish-fro’, or Jew-fro for short. Straighteners hadn’t been invented, and if they had, I wouldn’t have been allowed to buy them. Neither my mum nor my dad was vain and they’d have laughed at me if I’d said I needed to buy something to straighten my hair, though they relented when I was older. They thought we were beautiful as we were – which until then I’d believed. School had set me straight. I like to describe my ’fro in those days as part Joan Rivers, part Cher, part Monica-from-Friends-when-she-goes-to-Barbados. A fright, basically.

By the time I hit year seven, I had braces to add to the mix. Another nail in the coffin of my physical appearance. My front teeth were so far apart I liked to joke they had had an argument and were trying to get away from each other. At one point, pre-brace, I could fit a pound coin in the gap. My eyebrows had become small tufts that sat waving at me from over my eyes, and I’d been blessed with thick black hair all over my body except in the places that girls want it. My body was, I thought, horrendous. I was embarrassed by it and by my face. I wanted to stop time so I could go back to being young, but my physique wasn’t letting that happen.

When (shock! horror!) someone finally fancied me, it was a boy from year eleven (when I was still in year seven). I found that disgusting because, back then, I thought he was way too old for me. Practically ancient! Also, the girls in his year took his liking for me as treachery, and blanked me, which wasn’t pleasant, especially as I never encouraged him.

All in all, I was pretty insecure. I knew I would never be the pretty one in class, so I felt I had to earn people’s friendship by acting out and generally being as loud, naughty and funny as I could.

I had to make myself likeable – it was a survival mechanism, but it taught me so much. My dad had always been very sociable. If we went to Butlins on holiday, he’d always be the parent who made friends with everyone, who led games with the kids, or got up for the talent contest. I really admired how well he got on with everyone, and how much effort he put into meeting people and honing his social skills. When I was a child he would say to me, ‘Go on, go out and make friends,’ or ‘Be confident. Go and join in.’ He had the knack of bringing people together. I always wanted to be that person, and being the ugly one at school laid the foundation for it.

So, I told jokes, messed about and did stupid things to build my friendship group because there was nothing I could do to change my appearance. I felt I had to work way harder than the attractive girls to fit in and be accepted, and that people had to have a good reason to want to be friends with me. Rightly or wrongly, that had a huge impact on the development of my character.

I rapidly became the class clown and loved my friends, who came from across the spectrum of the year group, including the popular ones, the pretty ones and the clever ones. I was just friends with everyone. I made sure I was the one you could have a laugh with and was great fun to be around.

Louise was my hero. She was popular, pretty and naughty, so, to me, she was endlessly mysterious and fascinating. All the boys loved her, and I looked up to her. My mate Joelly was just like me, really silly and childish in her tastes and behaviour. We both found really uncool things funny, and shared a secret liking for a babyish cartoon called The Land Before Time. Neither of us would have admitted at school to liking it – it would’ve been social suicide – but together we’d laugh over our favourite bits.

I was so rubbish at lying that I always got caught out. When I went off to school, I’d take my skiving clothes in a plastic bag. Mum always left by 7 a.m. for work so I didn’t have to worry too much about being caught then. But I’d get home, still dressed in my joggers, hoodie and trainers, to find Mum staring at me, asking why on earth I wasn’t wearing my school uniform. D’oh.

Basically, I was questioning the system at the same time as not feeling aesthetically ‘good enough’. I was working hard on every other part of me to compensate, and at times I definitely took it too far, but underneath it lay the strong belief, passed on to me by my amazing parents, that personality outweighs physical appearance. The thing I care most about, regardless of how I look, is who I am as a friend and a mummy, and I try to be as decent a person as I can possibly be.

The seed of self-esteem must have been planted in me by my parents because as I got older, and grew into my body, I grasped that my worth was as a complete human being, and didn’t rely on looks or achievements. I became more confident as people liked me for who I was, and the more sure of myself I became, the more boys started fancying me. I realized there was so much more to me than looks. I was growing up.

My parents had always told me that beauty is subjective, that everyone found different things attractive: there was no fixed idea of beauty. They instilled in me a belief that beauty is a state of mind: if I felt attractive, I would be attractive. In a weird way, this started coming true. The more at ease I was with how I looked, the more people were attracted to me. It was a self-fulfilling prophecy.

It took me a long time to ‘find’ myself, and by that I mean accept and love myself. It didn’t happen overnight. School was a bad time for me, and probably for most people. You don’t know who you are. Your looks and your body are changing. There’s a lot to go through when you’re young and vulnerable. When I accepted those changes, I started letting go of any anxieties I had about who I was and what I looked like.

Zachary’s arrival had a massive impact on me. Everything I’d ever worried about suddenly seemed superficial because I had brought life into the world and I was entirely responsible for him. Even though the birth was difficult, I entered into a Shallow Hal period of happiness with my body – I was totally oblivious to the shape, weight and look of it. Instead, I marvelled at how my boobs could feed a tiny human, how I’d created little fingers and toes, and a beating heart, a person in his own right. My body was brave and amazing. Look what I can do! I felt like saying to anyone who’d listen. Look! I can make fingernails and kidneys and hair!

I was convinced I’d snapped back into shape after his birth and carried on regardless, wearing tiny bikinis on holiday and squeezing into skinny jeans. Looking at photographs of myself in those days makes me laugh. I clearly hadn’t snapped back at all. I carried extra baby weight for quite a while but I really didn’t know, and even if I had, I wouldn’t have cared a jot. I’d made a little boy. I was utterly impressed by myself.

After that, I refused to see my ‘flaws’ – the things I’m told by the media and advertisers that I should hate about my body. I realized I had to let go of what society was telling me. I was a perfect version of myself, and I felt beautiful. At last, I accepted that I could choose to feel those things, and that there was no perfect formula for attractiveness. We’re all beautiful, regardless of what we’re told we should look like. We can determine how attractive we feel. I get to decide whether I’m pretty or not and I refuse to give that power to anyone else.

I feel just as beautiful without my hair extensions, false eyelashes or fake tan. I feel amazing when I’ve got no make-up on and my hair is pulled back into a messy bun. Who is going to tell me otherwise?

I do all the make-up stuff, the glossy hair and fake lashes because it’s fun. I love dressing up. I love being able to change my appearance according to my mood, and I have a laugh with it. I never feel I need to do all that just to be acceptable. Anyone following me on Instagram or Twitter knows I’m just as happy to post pictures of myself without make-up as I am when I’m glammed up.

Being with Joe has also made a huge difference. He thinks I’m stunning, full stop. He loves me and thinks I’m the prettiest girl in the world, and that helps me feel I am because it’s how he sees me. There are many mornings when he wakes up and he has my false eyelashes stuck to his neck or back, and sees me with mascara streaked down my face and greasy hair. He doesn’t care. He loves me just as I am.

I’m not saying we need to have a partner to validate our sense of being beautiful, but it elevates my confidence for sure. I have had times in relationships where I’ve felt insecure, and others have projected their insecurities onto me. I freed myself from those situations and soon understood that someone else’s view of me didn’t have to be mine. Joe is amazing at being the total opposite of that. I used to hide my insecurities by being loud and funny. I’m still pretty loud, and I love having a laugh, and making people smile, but I do it because that’s me. I have nothing to hide any more – and that feels amazing.

I’m in control of how important, beautiful and intelligent I feel, and I stay vigilant: I notice when negative thoughts come into my mind, and talk positively to myself in response. We all have them, those creeping, gloomy ‘I’m not good enough’ thoughts. When they come in I bat them away. They still turn up every day, though far less than when I was younger.

If you’ve ever felt like an ugly duckling, like I did, then I’d advise you to take your head out of your phone for a second and look around you. I’m always surprised by the difference between real and online life. It’s comforting to lift my head and see that everybody else out there is like me. Nobody has yet invented a real-life skin smoother or airbrushing tool, so outside our laptops and mobiles, there are no perfect-looking humans, or CGI characters. What a relief! Everybody is beautifully different, and it’s those differences that make us people, rather than characters in a fantasy version of life. It makes them real.

The reality is that we don’t notice people unless they’re directly connected to our lives. We feel that everybody is looking at us all the time, but are we being looked at? Probably not. The narcissist in me, says, ‘Oh, maybe I can’t go out in my unicorn slippers with half my eyelashes hanging off’, but why am I worrying what the world thinks I look like? Why do I genuinely believe that the world is so interested in what I look like when I’m doing the supermarket run? It’s not! Take great comfort in the fact that nobody cares and that’s a really good thing.

It is never good to judge ourselves on looks alone. Why would we do that to ourselves? I look at my body and think, I can make stuff with my hands, or My legs can run, walk or do silly dancing – and that’s incredible!

I’m no ugly duckling – neither inside nor out.

STAY POSITIVE

When we’re feeling less than radiantly beautiful, which, let’s face it, can be a lot of the time, there’s a little trick that helps. Look at yourself in the mirror and tell yourself that you love yourself, and that you’re an awesomely amazing human being. It works. Try it for a week. Stand in front of a mirror every morning just before you leave home, and tell yourself you look amazing. It only takes a minute, and it feels super-weird at first, but the benefits are surprising. That minute of appreciation and self-love can help you face the world outside the front door. That confidence-inducing self-talk, celebrating your awesomely imperfect reflection, can be really powerful in helping you live your best day possible, while imparting a little Ready Brek glow of courage and inner beauty to help you on your way.

CHAPTER 4

My Tribe (My Big Jewish Family)

Three words sum up my childhood: Friday. Night. Dinner.

It was always held at Nana’s tiny two-bed Jewish flat in north London. It really was a Jewish flat because the block had been built after the war to help refugees settle in London. It was next to Manor House tube station, and every Friday after school we’d all pile into those small rooms. By ‘all’, I mean my mum and dad and us three siblings, then later my step-mum Karen and her children, my aunties Marilyn and Alison, their children, plus my dad’s brother Sonny and his family. Ten kids at least, assorted adults and the biggest vat of homemade chicken soup you’ve ever seen.

Playing with my cousins was the highlight of each week. I don’t know how we all managed to fit into the flat and play happily together yet we did.

‘Stacey, stop mucking about and help your nana! Matthew, stop chasing Jemma and set a good example …’ My dad’s voice would rise above the melee, but we largely ignored him and carried on playing, safe in our family universe.

‘Bubbe, of course I’ll help you. Would you like me to sing as I lay the table?’ I’d shout above the din. ‘Bubbe’ is the traditional Jewish name for ‘Grandmother’. We’ve never been massively Jewish – we celebrate the Sabbath each week, of course, and Hanukkah, but that’s about it, these days. I wouldn’t dream of denying my family access to Christmas, Easter, Diwali or any festival outside Judaism.

Nana’s eyes would twinkle and she’d shrug in that wholly Jewish way, which was permission enough for me to belt out my favourite chart hit of the moment as she stirred soup and fried dumplings ready for the feast – it went on through the evening due to lack of space.

I had an ulterior motive. If I entertained the adults, made them laugh and sang songs to them, they gave me second or even third helpings. It was a totally primal instinct. If I acted like a performing seal, telling jokes, making everyone laugh, they’d throw me a fish! I really felt I was there for their pleasure, and what I got from it was more food and the feeling I could fit in with the adults.

The first serving of chicken soup with kneidlach had the kids crammed round Nana’s cramped dining-table. Even a whiff of that distinctive smell takes me right back there, slurping the clear soup with its yellow stain from the chicken, the noodles, carrots and unbelievably tasty dumplings – if anyone left one I’d have it. The table was surrounded by random garden chairs, eight in total, though it only really fitted four.