You're Never The Only One - The Things Kids Say & My Half Term Sh*tshow

Episode Date: October 31, 2022

In this episode Cat shares the things kids say to other adults that leave us reeling in embarrassment and tells us about the time she had to explain to her kids' headteacher that she wasn't on Only Fans (yet!). There's deep discussions on failure and how to stop it paralysing us by learning to reframe it - inspired by Dr. Julie Smith's wonderful book Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before?Plus, Cat spills the beans on her half term and why she's spent the week cleaning up shit.Follow Cat on Instagram and TikTok and head to her website to buy a signed copy of her book The First Time You Smiled (or was it just wind?)Buy The First Time You Smiled (or was it just wind?) Buy Dr. Julie Smith's book Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before?You're Never The Only One is written and hosted by Cat Sims, founder of Not So Smug Now, an online platform for people just trying to get through the day with some credit in the karma bank. The podcast is edited by Lucy Lucraft and executive producers are Bonnie Barry & Parami Kodikara.

Hi, the things I say do, I'm always what are me. I'm neither saying or sin, I'm somewhere in between. Hi and welcome to You Are Never the Only One, hosted by me, Kat Sims. Now, you may think you're special, that your worries, fuck-ups and fun times are unique only to you, that only you can get so many things wrong, so much of the time. Well, I'm here to prove. to you every Monday morning that, in the nicest possible way, you're not special or unique.

You don't fuck up any more than the rest of us, and that even though it doesn't always feel like it, you are in fact never the only one. Hello and welcome to episode five. Now you will have noticed there was no episode last week that wasn't planned there was I had every intention of doing an episode but then real life got in the way half term got in the way my husband left me to go to work you didn't leave me um that would have been a plot twist wouldn't it after the bonus episode that jimmy and i did at no we're very we're still very happily married um but it did mean that i felt a little slammed and overwhelmed and rather than run myself ragged doing an episode i thought you know what no

I'm not, I'm not going to do one, and the world isn't going to stop and the sky's not going to fall. And it didn't. So here we are, episode five a week late, but I promise you it will be worth the weight. First up, we have got probably what is one of my favorite segments ever. Now, a while ago, I asked on Instagram for you guys to send me in stories of things that your kids have said to other adults that have been misconstrued and boy did you deliver. I have been. howling. I've tried to select the best ones because I literally had hundreds and it's been so difficult. So the segment might be longer than the normal, but trust me, it's going to be probably one of the best ways to start your week. So we've got that coming up first. Then I have been reading Dr. Julie Smith's book. If you don't know who Dr. Julie Smith is, then what rock have you been living under and can I come and stay sometimes when I want to escape the world? Everybody who's anybody has heard of Dr. Julie. She is a, let me see what the book Jacket says.

Dr. Julie Smith, social media superstar, an experienced clinical psychologist. I mean, hang on a minute. In what world do we live in where this woman who has been to university for like seven or eight years to become a clinical psychologist in her book cover

is described as a social media superstar first? Yes, Dr. Julie Smith, social media superstar. Oh, and an experience. clinical psychologist. Anyway, that is the world we live in. It's a world that I work to uphold daily, in fact, so I don't know why I'm getting so judgmental. Anyway, it's her book. I've just finished it. Everything she writes aligns with exactly the type of person I want to be in the way I want to live my life, but she does write something about success and failure, which gave me all the warm and fuzzies, so we will be chatting about that. And then finally, we're going to be

talking about my week. That's it. I'm going to warn you, there's a lot of poo involved. Almost every member of my family who is currently in the house presented me with a poo dilemma and I'm not going to lie it's been messy and long oh god it's been so long and mine has only been the normal amount it's just been a week and yet it's felt like I have been living in Dante's seventh circle of hell for a month I am on my knees and I am in awe of all of these people who have got two week October half terms. Now, I know a lot of private schools do that, but there are also a lot of academies that are starting it as well. So loads of you have been saddled with a two-week half-term. That's a Christmas holiday. That's an Easter holiday. It's not a half-term break. That's an event that

requires planning and structure and logistics. That's not on. It's not on. So for those of you who have had to deal with a two-week holiday, my strength and love is winging its way over to you. I do believe most of us are back today. If not, I'm sorry. Again, strengthen love to you. But I will be sharing all of my half-term highlights, of which will take about 25 seconds. The rest of them are definitely not highlights. And hopefully we'll have a laugh about it. And you'll realize that you'll never the only one. Booda-bum. Anyway, listen, if you have anything that you would like to say about this episode or any episode and you want to write in and let me know, then please drop me an email at you're never the only one at gmail.com.

And yes, that is why oh you are? Because it is you are never the only one, not your never the only one. Grammar lesson over. Let's get on with it, shall we? Okay, so we are calling this segment, The Shit Kids Say, Out of the mouth of babes. Now, this was inspired by something that my daughter said in school. And they were going around and they were asking kids what their parents did.

And my daughter said, My mummy makes videos and puts them on the internet for me. money. Now, she's not wrong, but she's also, she's really not filling in all the information there. She's not giving him, when I say him, let's be care, it was the head teacher. So the next time that I did drop off and the head teacher said, oh, good morning, Mrs. Sims. So I'm interested to hear more about what you do. And I said, oh, okay. And he said, well, your daughter said that you make videos and put them on the internet for money. And immediately, out of my mouth came,

I'm not on OnlyFans, that was what I said. I didn't even assume, I didn't even give him the benefit of the doubt. In my mind, he already assumed that I was basically a sex worker online, which by the way, I am not ruling out. If Instagram blew up tomorrow or if I got cancelled, listen, you're always one post away from getting cancelled, then you better believe that I am on OnlyFans with my feet the next day. No shame, no fear, no guilt, nothing.

OnlyFans, I'm coming for you. In the meantime, though, I explained that I wasn't on OnlyFans and explained what I did for a living, which is almost as embarrassing sometimes, if I'm honest. You know, when you're like, oh yeah, I'm a grown up, I'm 40 and I make a living as an influencer on Instagram. Oh, what kind of things do you do? well I make videos of me dicking about in my kitchen usually uh taking the piss out my kids um yeah that's no better really is it anyway so off the back of that I thought I cannot be the only one

and I'm laughing because I know what's coming I cannot be the only one who has come a cropper with their kids basically throwing them under the bus. So I've got a list. I honestly wish I could read them all. I couldn't possibly, but I am going to read a lot of them. So settle in, get your tenor pads in, make sure you can cross your legs because your pelvic floors are going to be put to the test.

Here we go. So I'm not using any of the names either. The first one, my son told his teacher he had a yummy cigarette at the weekend. Failed to tell him, it was a baguette, he had. A baguette. I mean, they're both very French. We can go there. My son said I had herpes. I mean, what a way. What a way to start the day.

Oh, God. So this kid went into school and told his teacher that his mom had herpes. She had a cold sore and she'd mentioned that it was part of the herpes virus. But that, again, that bit of the information didn't make it to the teacher. It was just that his mum had herpes. Somebody said, my daughter told her teacher she used to sleep in a cage. It was a cot bed. I mean, again, it's the imagination of these kids that really, we have to admire it. Like, I have to give them credit.

I love where their brains take them. We had another one that said, my daughter told the teacher, I had lots of men coming to the house. We were renovating and they were all builders. my niece told daycare she needed a big fuck in fact she needed a fork that's a classic my kids have done that mummy doesn't like it

bareback said one she forgot to mention I was a horse rider oh my goodness I don't know if I'm going to get through this Okay. Here we go. My brother told his head teacher that daddy drinks and drives. Again, didn't mention that it was coffee he was talking about. A coffee. I mean, I think that's probably still illegal, but not as illegal. My son's head teacher couldn't find something. And my son said, oh, did you have a man look? Do you know what? In our house, Jimmy gets very, very cross. to anything in a gender stereotypical way.

If I really want to piss him off, I'll be like, you need to do the bins, that's a blue job. Like that winds him up like a jack in the box. I swear to God, he's like, listen, it's my job. I get it, but it's not my job because I'm a man. I'm like, well, he's like, it's not my job because I'm a man. I'm like, whatever you need to tell yourself, babe. I'll be honest, and if he denies this,

He is lying through his bum bum because unless the thing that he is looking for is jumping up and down and saying, Jimmy, Jimmy, I'm over here, then it's lost. Or I've put it somewhere. I have put it somewhere. I've put it away. That's what I've done with it. When asked what her dad's favorite thing to do on Father's Day was, she replied, watch adult movies. My daughter told the teacher I was in AA My car had broken down Oh no Do you know that's just Brilliant That's the perfect example of why the world is so wondrous to children Because they don't know the stuff

Like we know the difference between AA My car's fucked and A.A. I'm fucked But they don't know the difference And so that's where this happens and I love it. My daughter told a teacher, I work with prostitutes. I don't. I work with prosthetists.

This woman is a specialist amputee physio. I'm not laughing at the amputees. I'm laughing at the malapropisms between prostitute and prostitists. To give that girl credit, prostitists is really hard to say. I've had to say it three times now and I really had to concentrate. This next one came from a teacher which of course is brilliant too and she said I was once told by a kid that his dad didn't come home last night because he was in prison.

When she investigated it further it turns out he was a prison warden so that's a relief. It's probably worth noting here that throughout this whole list of things many children got prison and heaven mixed up so lots of people's grandparents were apparently in prison. Let's move on. My son told his teacher, Daddy, had new lingerie for work. He'd got a new jillet.

It's a mistake easily made. My kid told her teacher that Mommy was... My kid told her teacher that Mommy was at a hotel with her boss. She's like, I was on a work trip. On a work trip with my boss. I wasn't having an affair with my boss. My brother told his teacher that... My brother told his teacher that granddad wore a dress and talked.

plates he was a vicar daughter put her hand up and told teacher she found the word wank in the word search listen this is not new we always looked for naughty words in word searches but none of us had the balls to actually put her hand up and say we've found it good honour

I like this kid my daughter told everyone at ballet class that mummy does redwees yes every mummy does redwees my son asked an African American woman breastfeeding if her baby got chocolate milk Now listen, this is the stuff that I love. I love this about kids because it's such an innocence and it's their imagination.

And that is just one of the coolest things I've ever heard. Oh, this one. Oh, I don't know if I can say this one. Okay, this might be one of my favorites. My eldest told her teacher that her toddler sister put her finger in her bottom and Daddy filmed it. I'm only laughing because I know that's not sinister trust me she said I had to confirm that it happened

but in a we were just naked and mucking around way I was mortified when the teacher pulled me in for a chat yes when the teacher feels like they need to get involved that's the real moment where you feel like you have to sit your kid down and really explain the ins and outs of what's going on my daughter oh again this is the innocence My daughter shouted Batman at a lady in full Berker. Do you know my daughter?

She used to go, Mommy Ghost! Mommy Ghost! And nine times out of ten, everybody thought it was hilarious and cute and laughed, and I would always apologize to say, I'm so sorry, you know, she's obviously a toddler. And it's this innocence of kids, and they just don't know.

It's like when they point at people who are overweight and they go, look how fat she is. They're not doing it as an insult. They're doing it because they're like, wow, I've seen this and I've noticed and I'm going to tell my mum about it. Oh no, this is my favourite. I've changed my mind.

This is my favourite. My kid told her teacher... No, sorry, my kid told his teacher, that's important, you'll see why, that Dave licked his willie. Dave is our lab puppy who ran into the bathroom while he was having a wee. First of all, congratulations on the name

Dave for a Labrador. Probably the best thing I've ever heard. I did have a friend. who once had a Dalmatian and she called it Ian, which is equally as good. But I'm very, I'm here for these names that nobody really uses anymore and giving them to pets.

Like Colin would be a great name for a dog. Terry would be a great name. Phil the Chihuahua is exactly the kind of dog I want to meet on dog walks. Unlike the man who I met on a dog walk the other day, this is a bit of a segue, who had a Rottweiler and who literally thought this Rottweiler was an extension of a video. his manhood in the same way that people who drive Lamborghinis do.

So Dave licked his willie, but it was the dog. That's all good. We can breathe a sigh of relief there. A kid wants... Oh no, maybe this is my favourite. A kid once told me, my granddad lets me shine his knob. It turned out that he had a doorknob collection, which he polishes. Now, this could be true.

It sounds like that maybe needs a bit more of investigation, but that is brilliant. granddad lets me polish his knob. How generous of him. Um, to our neighbour who is a policeman, my son said, hmm, daddy doesn't trust the police. Now that's not going to make for very good neighbourly relations, is it? My son told his whole class that dad smuggled when we went on holiday. Now, I don't know what he was trying to say. Maybe, maybe his dad is the dad that smuggles the budgies. Maybe that's what he was talking about, his budgie smugglers. We are coming to the end now, sadly, but there are a few more. My son can't say the letter B.

So when we're leaving, so when we're leaving, he tells people to, die die. Oh, a bit dark. My youngest told his teacher, he had a whiskey at camp. He didn't. He meant a whisper. Yes, I often used to get those two confused as well, darling. The police visited my kid's nursery to give them a safety talk.

And my daughter told them, Mummy has handcuffs on her bed. They were there from an Anne Summers party. Yeah, yeah, you don't have to explain it to me. I don't care if you've got handcuffs on your bed. In fact, high five if you've got handcuffs on your bed. I'm just happy that you've got the need for handcuffs. Okay, this is the last one.

My son told his teacher he didn't like the feel of Daddy's balls. He only liked the feel of his own. He was referring to the bollock-shaped stress balls we got him for Christmas. Oh, just to clarify, they didn't buy the boy, bollock-shaped stress balls. They bought the dad. Pollock-shaped stress balls. Oh, Lord, there is some things. Do you know what?

These are any of the things that we know about? Lord knows what our kids have said when we're not around. And it's not got back to us. And we haven't been able to contextualise it. If there is a mum or a teacher that looks at you a bit weird or doesn't talk to you anymore now, and you're not quite sure why, I guarantee it's because your kid's,

threw you under the bus and they haven't had the balls to bring it to you. God, that thought is terrifying. So that's it for the shit kids say, I hope that you enjoyed it as much as I have. I think the next time we do something like this, I'm going to do something along the lines of the time my kid swore, because there is nothing more joyful to me than hearing kids swear, especially when they use it in a contextually correct way. Apparently, when I was three, we were all in big camping holiday in France. And my mum turned around to me and said, why don't you come and help me with the washing up. And legend has it, I turned around and said, why don't you just fuck off? And I knew I'd said it and I got up and ran, apparently, three years old, ran like the

wind. My mum said the only reason she caught me was because I backed myself into the corner and by the time that she got hold of me, she said she was laughing so hard, she didn't have the heart to beat me. So yes, that's 80s parenting for you. Remember, I am always on the lookout for more of your stories. I want sad stories, happy stories, embarrassing stories, humiliating stories. I want the full range of emotions and I want to share them because it all helps us feel a little bit less alone. If only there was a podcast that was dedicated to make us all feel a little bit less alone. Oh yes, that's right. It's this one. You're Never the Only One. Email me at you're never the only one at gmail.com. Y-O-U-R-E.

Okay, so on to Dr. Julie. Now, if you're not following her on Instagram or TikTok or any of the other social media outlets, then I highly suggest you go and find her and follow her. She creates these short, bite-sized videos that always have, by the way, the best analogies. I love an analogy. And it's all about helping us with our mental health and giving us a new perspective on how we see things, how we feel about things, what we think about things. Now, I have been reading her book called Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before and it is exactly how I want to live my life. She is all about making sure that we start to think about how we think. Rather than taking our thoughts as fact, we are encouraged, I guess, to assess them a little bit more and find out why we're thinking that way and where that thought has come from and why we tend to go in that direction

and how we can perhaps change that habit and do it in a healthier way. So one of the things that she writes about is failure and I have always, always struggled with failure. I grew up As an only child, I do have brothers and sisters, but they lived in different houses. They were from my parents' previous marriages. So I was the only one in my house. And I think that children who grow up as only children struggle a lot with failure because of the pressure that you get. And I think if you're an only child in the most regular sense of the term, i.e., your parents only had you, and that's it. Then it's because, of course, they want the best for you and you're like their one chance, right? In my instance, it was more that my parents had

previous chances that they didn't really have much control over anymore. But I was the one that they thought was going to redeem them, essentially. So they wanted me to get all the best grades. They wanted me to go to university, get a proper job, marry a really rich man, you know, two out three eight bad. And sorry, Jimmy, listen, we're nailing it now, babe. And I think that has given me a real fear of failure. And I did notice early on in my parenting when Billy was starting at school that I was kind of transferring that onto her and you know second place was first loser and then she became quite afraid to try things because she didn't want to fuck it up and she was afraid of failure essentially and I'd pass that onto her so I've done a lot of work over the last

few years to really undo that and make sure that she understands that it's okay to make mistakes that we are all fallible and that is all part of being human and in fact what I have learned is that the mistakes are where we learn, right? That's where we can figure out how to do better next time. And I've also learned that for me, failure is not the opposite of success. In fact, failure and success are part of the same process. Nobody is successful without failure. You have to have those failures to get to a point of success because that's where we figure out stuff and grow and learn. So this is what Dr Julie writes about failure. When the pressure is on, it's often because the stakes are high.

We believe that failure has big implications. This makes sense. When failure is interpreted as a big threat, the brain wants to focus on that threat to be sure we avoid it. For those who tend to self-attack after any failure, yes, me, any signs of potential failure will likely lead to a spike in the stress response. We all have a limited capacity for attention, some of us more than others, And when we need to perform under stressful conditions, we need to take full control of that spotlight and focus on what is going on to help us face the challenge.

To overcome that fear of failure in the moment and that preoccupation with everything that could go wrong, we need to immerse ourselves in a narrow focus on the process, leaving no space for worrying thoughts about potential outcomes. When we believe that mistakes and setbacks are linked to who we are as a person and our self-worth, then even the smallest of failures will trigger shame and the urge to give up, withdraw. hide away and block out the excruciating feelings. This happens a lot for perfectionists. Yep, that's also me. There is a focus on being enough in the eyes of others,

and assuming that those others demand nothing less than perfection. If I fail, then I am a failure. And this is like the crux of the matter. I've had to really unpick this habit in my head because it's a bit like when I was a teacher and we were always encouraged to remind the kids that when they got things, when they behaved badly, it was their behaviour that was bad, not them.

And so this is the same. Just because you fail doesn't mean you are a failure. If I lose, then I am a loser. However small and temporary, that setback may have been. But when we respond to failure without these global attacks on our personality and instead focus on the specifics of the moment, holding our awareness that imperfection is an intrinsic part of our common humanity, the emotional result is different.

Feeling guilty about an error in judgment or a choice made allows us to be honest with ourselves about where we went wrong without feeling doomed to being a failure forever. It focuses on the specific behaviour rather than attacking us as a person. Quick segue here. I'm sorry about the dog barking if you can hear that. The fireworks are still going off.

This is my life. I'll get back to it, net. Crucially, you still take accountability for your actions. Self-compassion is not letting yourself off the hook constantly. it is focusing on the specific mistake as an isolated event so that you are free to learn from it and shift direction back towards your values. This is the path to continuing to improve and moving on from mistakes. Shame, on the other hand, immobilizes and paralyzes us. And that's a lot of stuff that I've been learning in recovery as well, this idea that shame is I am a bad person, guilt is

I did a bad thing. And so guilt is quite motivating. It can be for you to put it right and to make amends, shame paralyzes you. You can't do anything with shame. She goes on. Failure is always difficult and heightens our stress response. In times of stress, our negative core beliefs can become activated. We start to entertain thoughts like, I'm a loser, I'm a complete failure, I'm worthless, I'm nothing. Those thoughts and the shame that accompanies them are very powerful in making us feel completely alone and isolated. We buy into those thoughts as facts. We think we are the only ones and so we hide how we feel. But as it turns out, among the 7 billion people on this earth, these sorts of core beliefs are part of a list of just 15 or 20 common negative core beliefs

that are seen across the world. In other words, your negative core beliefs are not unique? You're never the only one. Almost like I planned it that way. Essentially, this means that we are the opposite of alone. As human beings, the need to feel worthy of love and to have a safe group in which we belong in is in us all. When we feel shame around failure, we can feel as if our acceptance and therefore our survival is under threat. It is an all-consuming sensation that can stop us even trying to fix things because we believe that the problem is us rather than a specific behaviour or choice. When we are going out into the world and taking risks, making ourselves vulnerable to shame, we need the skills to manage that shame and move through it. We all need a safe place

to return to that allows us to learn from failure without our worthiness as a human being coming into question. That place has to be our own mind. When someone we love is suffering, we show them kindness because we know it is what they need. When we take a fall, it's time to do that for ourselves. It is the surest way of ensuring we get back up and move forward. But how do we become less hostile to ourselves and become instead the voice we need to hear? Well, she goes on to answer that but I am going to put it in my own words I have realized that we are hands down our own worst enemy and our default is to beat ourselves up but we have to start talking to ourselves like we would talk to our best friends and it's a muscle it's a habit that we have got into to put

ourselves down and when we start to think about our thoughts and we start to recognize that we are putting ourselves down, we then realize that we actually have another choice and we don't have to do that. We don't have to say those things. Instead, we can start to say kinder, more compassionate things to ourselves. And it takes a conscious effort. This is the thing. It's not just something that some people do and some people don't. It's a muscle that we build up. And just like we have to let that negative voice die, that muscle of that negative voice atrophy, we also have to build up the muscle of compassion and kindness when we talk to ourselves. And the more we do that, the more that will become the default. And that's what I've realized. And it's not, I'm not doing it.

Listen, I'm still at home beating myself up because, you know, I lost 6,000 followers and telling myself, I'm obviously a terrible person. I'm a horrible content creator and nobody likes me. And, you know, I need to get a proper job because my Instagram and my income is about to crash and burn. That's a conversation I have with myself on the daily. But I also, can recognize that that is a conversation I'm having and can go, hang on a minute. No, I can turn this around and I can make this work for me and for my self-esteem. The one thing that I loved in her book, which kind of relates to this, is that idea of nervousness and anxiety and fear when you're going into something that you're unsure of. So maybe it's like a big exam or an interview or something

like that and again the fear of failure plays into that of course because it's right there and we might not pass we might not get the job but it's about reframing that feeling and instead of using that feeling to hamper us and to hamstring us essentially and to hamstring our performance we can turn it around and instead of looking at it fearfully we can almost look at it as like a challenge and it's like go in there and enjoy it do your best this is a challenge like go and smash the shit out of it because you need that stress you need that anxiety you need that feeling of nerves that's what gets you through to performing your best but if you frame it in one way it's going to hinder you if you frame it in another way this is a challenge and i'm going to fucking rise to it

then it's a powerful force i think what i got out of dr julie's book the most was the insistence on our own power to be the person we want to be and feel the things we want to feel and too often I think we hand over that power to other people we make other people responsible for how we're feeling either because we want them to make us feel a certain way i.e. maybe it's a partner and you want them to make you happy or we want to blame somebody else for making us feel a certain way it's their fault that we're angry it's their fault that we're late it's their fault that we failed and actually none of that's true none of that has to be true because essentially even if they did do something even if they are the people that make you happy

or the people that make you angry we still have a choice as to how much power we give to that and if it's not working for us then we can choose differently and it's not easy it's not like oh do you know what i'm just going to choose to be really happy go lucky person today it is a case are really accepting that our thoughts are not facts, our feelings are not facts. They are just one option and chances are it's the option that we are going to because that's what we're most used to doing and we could go another way. We could end up feeling differently and the effect of that could be so much more positive if we recognise when we're doing those things that bring us down and stop ourselves and change it. And it feels really clunky and it is really

clunky and it isn't easy and it's exhausting at first. And I felt this a lot in recovery. It's the same thing. I had to change habits. I had to let certain habits atrophy and I had to build up some new habits that meant that when I was struggling, I didn't go and pour myself a bottle of Malbec. Instead, I had to figure out what else I was going to do. And to do that, I had to recognize first of all what I was doing and secondly why I was doing it. And so if there's something that's making you miserable, if you're unhappy about something, why are you unhappy about it and what is it that's making you unhappy? And is there something in you that does this a lot? Is this a habit? Is this a pattern? If it is great, because you can change it. There's still

loads of things that I struggle with in terms of failure. And I think that there's probably loads of things in my life that I've avoided or not done because I was worried that I would fail. And I am determined, like committed to my core now that I'm older to not let that happen anymore. And so if something scares me, I'm going to do it. If I'm worried about whether I should do something or not, chances I should probably do it. And I'm just trying to figure that out and I'm 41. And I wish I'd known this earlier. And I'm trying as well to put this on to the kids and be like, do you know what? Scary things are scary. But that doesn't have to be a bad thing. We can reframe it. You know, it doesn't have to be scary. It can be exciting.

It doesn't have to be anxiety inducing. It can be adrenaline inducing. You know, and we can embrace it and make the, because what's the worst that's going to happen? What is the worst thing that's going to happen? You're going to fuck up. Okay, well, you can fix that. You can generally fix that. We can make amends. We can own our shit. We can say we're sorry. And chances of things will be better after that. You know, fucking up gives you a chance to make it even better. So I have read this book. I thoroughly, thoroughly recommend it. I'm going to stop banging on as if I'm some sort of pseudo-psychiatrist. I'm not. Dr. Julie is actually legit diploma-filled psychiatrist. That's not the right way to describe it. But that's what she is. She's the nuts. That's what we're saying, isn't it? Yep, she's the nuts. So go and buy a book. It's not an ad. Go and follow on Instagram. Do what I do. I've read it. I've underlined. I've written in it. There's corners turned down. There's labels and tags. I will keep this book forever. I'll give it to my kids, honestly. I cannot recommend it enough. So today, just remember that you are in complete control of how you feel. It's not easy and it won't happen immediately. But if you don't want to let anybody else ruin your day, then you don't fucking have to. So we're coming up to the final part of the podcast and basically I'm just going to tell you about my week

because you cannot make this shit up and I use the word shit specifically. I warned you at the beginning that this was going to be a very poo-filled part of the podcast and I'm going to deliver on that. So if you don't like poo, then maybe this is the time for you to turn off. As you know, because I'm,

I bang on about it all the time. Jimmy isn't here. I am solo parenting and I like to distinguish between solo parenting and single parenting. I am not a single parent. I have a partner and I do not want to by any means suggest that my life as a parent is the same as a single parent. It isn't. Even when Jimmy's away, it's not the same. I still have somebody to call. I still have somebody who I know is coming home. I still know that it's finite, that it's not going to last forever. Single parents of fucking superheroes and I will not let anybody else tell me otherwise. I am not a hoopis hero. I'm not a superhero. I am just a fairly privileged, indulged woman who occasionally has to look after her children on her own and parent them herself. And, you know, I'm going to whine

about it and that doesn't make me a great person, but it makes me an honest person. So he's not here and he left on the Thursday and obviously they broke up on the Friday. Thanks for that. George at all. And we had to fill a week, basically. And I thought, you know what, I'm not going to be able to do this without losing my shit if I've got a ton of work on my plate. So I worked it out that I wasn't going to have a ton of work on my plate. I like shifted some stuff up before they broke up and I pushed some stuff back to after they went back to school. And I did everything I needed to do. And then other people didn't make their deadlines. And so that meant that everything landed right smack bang in the middle of half term. Now I get it. I don't make

deadlines. I'm not mad at them. I'm just saying that it delivered a somewhat inconvenient schedule for me. Anyway, hence why there wasn't a podcast last week. That being said, of course it is the half term of Halloween. I talked about Halloween last time. It's not an easy half term. There's an unholy amount of craft associated with Halloween and I am not a crafty person. So we have had the fucking craft box out on the kitchen table for the whole week and I swear to God it's given me hives every time I've looked at it I've wanted to burn it it's there it's glitter there's bits falling out of it every time the kids walk past it they pull something out of it strings scissors glue fucking glitter it's everywhere it's all over the house and so tonight I have finally put that

bastard back where it belongs on the top shelf of a cupboard that cannot be reached until I decide to bring it down again and that will not be until next Halloween I hate crafts. Jimmy doesn't hate crafts, he's good at crafts, so he's normally the craft person, but of course, I don't know if I've mentioned, he's not here. So half-time got off to, you know, a fairly rough start. I am very happy to everybody who celebrated DiVali. It's the new year, and I hope that you all had a blast, and I use that word as well, in a quite appointed and specific way. The fireworks are a lot, and it's not normally. something that bothers me but I live in Harrow. Harrow has an enormous Hindu population so

Duvali is always massive and obviously it's the festival of lights and so fireworks are a huge part of that celebration and I love fireworks I love everything about fireworks I am so happy for them do you know who doesn't like fireworks my dog my dog hates fireworks and I have a miniature dashund and they're known for being barky and I was really smug and I should know by now that that is not the way to go but I was really smug because mine wasn't barquey. I was actually she's not really that barking. Oh my god you're so lucky mine barks all the time. Nope she wasn't very barky until Davali and now fuck me has she got a taste for it. She barks all the time. There are fireworks that have started. It was about five days of fireworks starting at five or six p.m as soon as it got dark

and going through to one p.m. Again it doesn't bother me. I can sleep through anything but I cannot sleep through a dog barking consistently. I swear to God, I have never regretted getting the dog. Not once, not ever, but there was a moment at about 1148 one night where I genuinely thought I might have to put her up for adoption. Awful. Anyway, I pulled myself together. She's still here. She's not going anywhere. But it does mean that I've had quite the sensory overload so far. Of course I thought I'd get prepared So I bought all the fun size packs of sweets and chocolates for Halloween It's part of my ASDA campaign

I thought while I'm here I'll actually stock up on the stuff that I really need I bought a truckload of it I've eaten every single last bit of it Every single last bit I'm now going to have to go out tomorrow And buy another metric fuck ton of sugar and sweets and candy Which I'll be giving away tomorrow night Hopefully before I eat it all

which I'll definitely want to do because of course the doorbell is going to ring 11 billion times which means if it's not the fucking fireworks setting off my dog it's going to be the doorbell of course my youngest got sick she is the kid that gets everything everybody's got one of those kids you know all the kids are fairly strong pick up the odd coffin cold and then there's always one kid that gets everything though is that kid there is a reason we call her bovid she's had it four fucking times. She got a cold. Not a massive cold, nothing to write home about, but enough to make her a grumpy fucker. And we've been doing loads of lovely stuff this half term. You know, we've been to the ET 40th anniversary screening. That was great until it meant that Billy couldn't

sleep because apparently E.T. had turned bad and was now living in her bedroom. We went to see a great show in Warwick with Jimmy's family for his stepmom 60th. They had a blast. We've watched the hunger games movies they've played the hunger games in the woods they're obsessed there's been lots of lovely memory making times and then there was a time i spent the whole day looking for shit i could smell it but i could not see it i had absolutely no idea where it was but i knew it was somewhere i was looking under the sofas under the beds it was it was somewhere and i couldn't find it It was only when I went to do the laundry later that night that I realized the cat had shat in its bed. When I told Jimmy this, he was like, oh, that can't be right.

Cats famously don't shit where they sleep. As if I was lying, he was legitimately sticking up for the cat. He was on the cat's side. I was like, how is this a thing? The cat shits in his bed. That's wrong on every level. There's no coming back from that. You can't justify that.

That's the last thing I need. Of course, I had to clean it and then wash the bed and dry the bed and then I had to clean out the dryer because the cat hairs were everywhere. So by this time I'm annoyed. I'm annoyed because I'm dealing with shit that I shouldn't have to deal with. Then the next morning I come down and again I can smell shit and I'm like, do you know what? It's just because I was smelling it yesterday. It's in my nose. I'm like paranoid.

There can't be any more shit. It's fine. My animals are very well house trained. The fact that the cat shot in the bed, very, very unusual, very unusual. And the dog and I have come to agreement a long time ago about where the shit goes. She's very clear on where it goes, it goes outside. But I can still smell the shit. Anyway, I tell myself I'm imagining it.

And then my daughter steps in a massive pile of shit as she's walking around the kitchen table to go and sit down for breakfast. This time it was the dog. The dog had decided to shit, both very unusual choices and yet, yet both of them had done it within 24 hours of each other. It was as if they had colluded. It was as if they'd got together and gone, you know what? Why don't I do one in the bed today? And then tomorrow, just when she's on her last fucking nerve, you can put one on the floor. And then hopefully somebody will stand in it just for extra agro. Well, their plan worked because not only was I aggravated, but Bo was not happy that her bed socks were covered in shit.

I don't know when to tell her that I threw them away. I couldn't bring myself. to wash them. They were disgusting. Is that where my shit story ends? Oh, if only. No, no, it's not. So the other thing that's happened this week is that the downstairs toilet is blocked. That is a toilet that we all use the most because we're always in the kitchen. The living room, it's closest and none of us can be asked to go upstairs to use the loo. Occasionally it gets blocked. Jimmy, because he doesn't have a sense of smell, has bought his own drain rods and once a year when this happens, he goes out into the drain takes the cover off rods it clears it it's all good of course he's away so we can't do that so i'm thinking well i'll call a guy to do the drains whatever before i can do that i've made it very

clear to the girls that nobody is to use the downstairs loo they're going to have to use their legs take themselves upstairs and even though i'm sure it's deeply deeply inconvenient for them they're going to have to make that effort because they cannot use the downstairs loo nothing's flushing It's a hard and fast rule. The next thing I know, I go into the laundry room and again I smell shit. Of course, I go straight to the cat bed and I'm like, this is where this problem is. No, the cat's there happily sitting there as if to say, ha ha, not me this time, made you look.

I lift up the toilet, which is already stuffed with Lou Roll that will not go down, to find a turd the size of a baby's arm. perched on the top. When I turn around and ask the girls, who has done a poo in the loo? They both look at me and go, not me. And so I said, so am I expected to believe

that noodle just curled one down, suddenly decided that he was going to start using human toilets, climbed up there on his little legs, and curled a massive turd down in the toilet? Is that what you're telling me? Beau went well it might have been Jasper I swear to God I was I gentle parenting was

so far out of reach at that point I said if nobody owns up to this I am canceling both your birthday parties and I secretly I'm not going to lie I secretly hope nobody would own up to it because I'm dreading the birthday party season yes Beau's birthday was on August the 30th and yes her party is on November the 13th

and that is because I have been so badly organised. But even so, I was looking for a chance to cancel those bad boys. Annoyingly, my daughter's conscience got the better of her. My youngest daughter said, it was me, I'm sorry. Now, I've always told them that if they lie, they'll get into way more trouble than if they tell the truth. They won't get into trouble if they tell the truth. You know, I'll have a talk about it.

There she is, just telling the fucking truth. So I can't shout at her. I can't get across with her, can I? because she's been honest. So now, I'm not joking, it's been a few days. The poo is still there, balancing on top of the toilet roll. I don't know what to do anymore. The drain guy can still come,

but I can't very well ask him to fish out my daughter's shit from the toilet. So I was explaining this to a friend, and she said, just scoop it out with a jug. Oh, God. And I can't think of any other way. I've tried. I've racked my brains. I'm like, how am I going to figure this out?

I am going to have to go in. and scoop the shit out with a jug or a bowl or a glass, oh God, or something. It's not the way I expected my half term to end, but it is the way my half term is ending. And as is the theme of the previous section, I am going to reframe this. And rather than look at it as me having to shovel shit, I'm going to look at it as let me think. How can I reframe this? Yeah. Do you know what? No, I can't. I'm off to shovel shit. I hope you have a wonderful, wonderful week. Thank you as ever for getting involved. If you have anything that you want to write to me, please just send me an email to Your Never The Only One at gmail.com. Y-O-U-R-E. Bye-bye. Your Never The Only One is produced and edited by Lucy Loucraft and executive producers are Bonnie Barry and Paramie Codicara. Our original music is written and perform. by Hot Salad. Yeah, I really fancy the bass player. Please check them out wherever you stream

your music and on Instagram at Your Mum Likes Hot Salad. Everything moves so quick You're lying to yourself If you think that you've got to live Everybody love You're never the only one You're never the only one Don't live inside your strength

Because everybody makes mistakes Don't judge me I'm a weakness Don't judge me on my floor Because no one's really perfect By the grace of God goes home Everybody love You're never the only one Don't live inside the shame

Because everybody makes mistakes Oh Taking the time to make sure Everything's okay Picking up like everyone else Each and every day When I'm having nothing left for you to spend on you You're allowed to be happy to

Never the only war on. Never the only war on. Don't live inside your shame, because everybody makes mistakes. Oh, you're never the only one. You're never the only one. They're never the only one. Don't live inside your shame, because everybody makes mistakes.

Oh, oh. Thank you.