The actions that define us

In late June 2023, on a bitterly cold Wednesday afternoon, I admitted my seriously ill mom to hospital, not knowing if she’d come out again. I then admitted my dad, half-an-hour later to a different clinic around the corner. In the car on the way to fetch my daughter from her friend, whose mom had been kind enough to take her home after school, I broke.

It was already dark, and I was struggling to see, as cataracts were steadily robbing me of my sight. The shards of light from surrounding cars, and streetlights made a kaleidoscope of my vision, and as I gripped the steering wheel, the tears came.  But it was the guttural wail that escaped my lips, from where I had buried it deep within my soul, that I could not turn off.

What followed in the short-term was a month of daily visits to both, taking necessities, while dealing with frustratingly incompetent estate agents as I needed to sell the place they had called home for 24 years. I’d been forced to step away from my job suddenly, unwillingly leaving my team rudderless during a state of flux in that business.

I had a month to pack up their home before they were released from hospital, picking tenderly through a lifetime of memories, having to make decisions on what to keep, donate, or throw away, without their input. Then place it all in boxes to be moved and unpacked the other side.

I was dealing with a lot of guilt. Though they lived close by, I’d barely seen my parents over the past year because I was working 12–14-hour days. I didn’t notice that mom wasn’t eating or drinking much. I didn’t know she spent most of her days in her room on her bed, breathing in spores of mold and crumbled moth balls, placed throughout cupboards to hide the smell of mildew. I didn’t know that my dad was being so badly affected by the doctor-prescribed sleeping pills that he wasn’t “there” enough to properly communicate his concerns about my mom. And because they knew how pressured I was at work, when I spoke to them, they shared only that they were fine.

Not only had I not been there for my parents, I’m a single mom, and I’d also not been there for my amazing teenage daughter like I should have. I was doing what I thought was my best. We’re so close, and it felt like we spoke a lot, but I was missing important cues, because she too, didn’t want to add more to my consistently overflowing cup.

So, I did what I do best in my professional life. I focused on fixing everything that was broken, and boy, there was a lot to fix. My mom was released from hospital two-weeks earlier than expected, not because she was better, but because her admitting psychiatrist “couldn’t do anything more for her,” oh and medical aid funds had run out.

The only person who had shown her any kind of care and helped her while she was admitted was the ward chef who sat with her until she ate, and made meals that encouraged her to eat. The nurses let her fall more than once, and her psychiatrist put her on meds that you should never give to a geriatric patient as it has been proven to cause lock-in syndrome and mimic dementia. Whatever happened to first do no harm? I hugged the chef thank-you when I took my mom home, and made sure she knew her efforts alone had helped.

I moved mom into my room, and I took over the couch for 40-something days. My incredible helper Nelly became my rock, quickly gaining mom’s trust, helping her walk to the bathroom, making sure she ate and drank, observing mom’s physical rehabilitation sessions four times a week and keeping a careful watch and providing companionship when I was away packing up their home. Without her, I would not have been able to do anything as mom could not be left alone. My daughter, who was scared and overwhelmed was patient and gave me love when we were together and checked in regularly to see that I was okay when I was out.

Because of my long work hours, I’d not cooked as much over that previous year, there were too many hurried takeaways, and it caused health complications for my daughter and for me. Now with mom in the house too — needing significant nutrient intake — I started cooking every night again, looking into what each of us needed to boost our health.

My mom, once an avid reader, could barely focus on a magazine article, she slept a lot, and was weak and often confused when she was awake. She’d gifted me my love of reading as a child, and near the end of lock-down, when I hadn’t been able to get further than a page into a book, she gave one of her favourite light reads to me. Sister Mother Husband Dog: Etc by Delia Ephron. It was the book that got me reading again. A collection of anecdotal essays, and each one was like a conversation with a friend over coffee. It was perfect, and I followed that up with Bruce Springsteen’s autobiography (a very much physically heavier read) Born to Run, borrowed from a friend who lived next door. So, I thought I would return the gift and give us un-pressured, bonding time together every night.

I chose shorter, uncomplicated, sweet and funny, easy-to-absorb children’s books. The wonderful Sophie series about a young English girl who wanted to be a lady farmer, written by Babe author, Dick King-Smith – was a firm favourite and I read book after book while she drifted off to sleep. Those were precious, cherished moments, and I was so grateful to have my mom improving at home, when I had thought I might lose her.

Over the next tumultuous year, my rose collection grew exponentially, from just a handful to 32 different roses in pots, squashed into my partially sunny back garden. It became an expensive obsession. Late at night I poured through the Ludwig’s Roses’ catalogue, marking off the ones I had, circling the others that I wanted to get next. I would take time every day outside in my garden, nurturing them, watering daily, snipping off failing leaves, and dead heading spent blooms.

As winter approached and the sun detoured from its usual path across the sky, I’d move each rose into a sunnier position, spraying with mixtures of sunlight and organic pest prevention to stop the aphids, and making sure they had enough water twice a week. At the end of June, or somewhere in July (too late I know) I pruned them after watching numerous videos on the perfect angle to cut the stems. By Spring, they were thriving.

I was not.

It would take me more than a year after my parents were settled in their retirement village, and in much better health, to realise that each time I’d added to my collection, was when my mom, Rosemary-Ann’s health had dipped again, and that my determination to keep them thriving was a manifestation of my desperate need to keep her alive and help her thrive again.

I felt as though I’d endured a turn or three in a washing machine on the 1000RPM spin cycle. I was deep into burnout that had started years before that I had not addressed and was supporting my parents daily with their needs, ensuring they were taken care of, had nutritious meals, had lifts to doctors and representing their best interest while there, doing their banking, making sure mom had a wardrobe of clothes that fit her as she’d lost so much weight, and making sure that they were taking their meds properly and were on their way to good health. I was also trying to be more present for my daughter, making sure all her physical and emotional needs were met.  

As things settled into somewhat of a routine, I needed to get back to work, and started consulting and freelancing for clients again. It wasn’t easy to build from nothing again. I could not reconnect with previous clients I had worked closely with due to NDAs that needed to run their course, and so I had to begin the networking process from scratch.

My time focusing on my family, and many quiet hours late at night, analysing where things had gone wrong, helped me to reframe what I wanted to do with my life going forward. It made me rethink who I wanted to work with, what value alignments really meant, where I was or was not prepared to compromise. I also thought about the kind of work I wanted to do, where my interests lie, what excites me during this complex and fluid epoch where anything can happen.

I acknowledged the value that I had brought to previous employers that was sometimes overlooked or underappreciated, and tried to make peace with that. I identified aspects of previous roles that I loved, and things those employers had done that I appreciated, so I could actively seek them out in future potential positions. Importantly, I was honest with myself about what I need to work on personally, and where I need to grow and began taking steps to make that happen.

Not an excuse, or blame game, rather more a reality check, AI and its contribution to the flooding of the industry with laid off talent, my need for flexibility, my experienced-based seniority and accompanying salary or consulting rate expectations, and my age are all challenges to be overcome. We live in a time where roles that should be senior are designated to junior-to-mid levels, and job descriptions cover the work of three people, as organisations try to cut overheads, and return to office policies ramp up.

With all that said, I have been fortunate to work on some amazing projects during this time, with clients who aren’t concerned with the recent gap in my CV, or tying me to a desk, because they know I will get the job done well, and on time, and for that I am grateful.

The journey through that traumatic time for me, and my family hasn’t been easy, and the struggle is still real. It’s been a reminder to me of what so many of us face daily, experiences that we don’t share with the rest of the world, out of fear, or shame, or denial. Too often our faces and replies mask our reality, as we state simply, “everything is fine.”

It’s a lesson for anyone in my industry, particularly the strategist, audience analysts and our clients that we can try to break the audiences down into personas, we can try to identify their triggers, what makes them buy or not, and sometimes, we’ll get it right, often though, we won’t be as accurate as we would like because the more we try to drill down through the data, the further we are removed from the people we are trying to talk to.

If someone had to try break me down into a persona, they could generalise and put me in a box along with other 50-something-year-old woman who have a child, care about animals, fuss over healthy meals, and have their own car, but they couldn’t pick up why I suddenly started buying roses by the boot-load a few short years ago, or what triggered me to change toilet paper brands after 20 years of loyalty to a specific brand (that’s a story for a different day), why I love the Blues so deeply, or why I will happily sit out in the cold air at the school market at dawn and dusk every day, to make sure a single cat has a full tummy, and some love.

As strategists and writers, it is not always possible to speak directly to our client’s customers, but we should always try where we can, to step in closer. We should be listening to more of their stories, told in their own words, and try to make sense of what they need from us, so that we can give it to them.

For our clients, and the account executives (our colleagues) who represent their best interests, please understand that it is those stories that will give us our greatest insights, that will help us to tell your stories in much more meaningful well-received ways. So, when we ask for you to facilitate access to a few of your clients to learn more about why they’ve chosen your brand, please try to make it happen. They will ask questions that your sales teams might not have thought of, and overall, it will be a valuable exercise based on authentic, lived experiences and it will more likely result in an old-fashioned win-win scenario.

My mom recently told me about a talk at their retirement village, from a writer who wants to help them to compile their legacy story. He sits with individuals for four hours asking them questions, and writes up their life story over a week or two. I’ve always been a strong advocate for talking to your parents, aunts, uncles, older friends and asking them about their lives, recording that information for the generations that follow to access. It’s because I’m passionate about listening to their stories, because I understand so much more after I’ve heard them, but also because they can so easily be lost as memories fade. I told mom that I thought it was a great idea, but questioned whether a lifetime of experience could be so easily distilled in four hours.

These days we’re being encouraged to commune with AI, to share our feelings, our stories, our hopes and dreams. I’d like to believe that now more than ever, we have the opportunity to start conversations with other humans, and ask them those self-same questions, to pull closer, to celebrate the little things that make us human, rather than isolate ourselves further. Go on, give it a try.