Menopause is a time of change, a time of positive change. The kids grow up, our parents grow old and we have a lot to juggle just as our bodies try to transition through a hormonal upheaval. Then add to the mix the mid-life health challenges for ourselves and our partners. Life can feel overwhelming. So it’s time to reassess what we need to do and what we want to do. When we take the plunge to look at our lives and our needs it can be empowering. In fact despite all of life’s challenges menopause can be a positive time of change and rebalancing our lives. This has been the experience for myself, Karen and Julie. For me it created a burning desire to help other women have a better menopause. For Karen and Julie it brought together a shared passion that became a new career as published authors.
To celebrate World Menopause Day we held an online event to share our menopause journey here is a recording
Read on to learn more about Karen & Julie's story and the book they wrote together “Over The Fence” . Oh and here is a link to buy your own copy! https://linktr.ee/jkauthors
Over The Fence. The diary of two women, how they view and judge life, and how one discovers a secret so well hidden, it could tear both their worlds apart.
Seren is happily married to a successfuldoctor, Bobby. With their two young boys they move from the South of England to an up-market town in the North. The house they are moving to is Seren’s dream home and she is looking forward to her new life and meeting her new neighbours.
Clarissa is married to a wealthy semi-retired financial advisor, Michael. Her life on the surface appears perfect. The initial pleasure at having respectable new neighbours is soon lost when she realises they have children, and the regimented tranquillity of her life is thrown into disarray. The very sight of Seren triggers in her an extreme dislike and stirs up memories that she preferred not to recall.
What ensues is a catalogue of confrontations that grow increasingly out of control. Each woman keeps a journal which illustrates how very differently they experience similar events, and how they react to them.
About the authors…
Karen Haase
her story…
Garrey, my husband, bought me a laptop and told me it would change my life. Little did I know. I looked at that laptop for six months, opening it, closing it, and thinking I really don’t know what to do with it until I woke up in the middle of the night, opened it, and started writing.
We were going through a very difficult time, dealing with our business and family matters. Everything felt out of our control. But writing it down seemed to help me make sense of the chaos. It was cathartic, a coping mechanism, like brain dumping all the negatives around me. Then I would fall asleep after writing a thousand words or more, not remembering any of it until I read it back the next day. This went on for many months. I let Garrey read my ramblings and he said my writing was good. I’m not very good at English, I find reading hard, my favourite subjects at school were Math’s and P.E. I just put it down to him being kind.
Writing for me was like running away to a different world, where I could let my anger and
frustrations be thrashed out on a keyboard. I was writing my own story, each time another issue or bad experience happened I could put it into compartments of, ‘that would make another good chapter’.
I first met Julie and her husband Stu at our opticians in Knaresborough, she was and still is
one of our patients. While Julie was in the testing room, Stu very proudly mentioned that
Julie wrote, and I suddenly found that talking about writing lit something inside of me.
After that, each time Julie came into the practice, we would chat about each other’s writing.
Soon after that I was diagnosed with breast cancer, so all the writing I was doing got put on
hold.
I wrote for myself as well as letters to my children, just in case the outcome was not great. I
wanted my family to know how much I loved them and that I was very proud of them.
A year of hospital appointments, a mastectomy, luckily no chemo, and finally a hysterectomy
before I had the all clear and I was back to work. Weeks later we went into lock down, which
I was so relieved about because, no surprises, I was really struggling physically and
mentally.
When we were allowed back into the practice, Julie came in and broke the awful news that
Stu had died from Cancer. Stu and I were the same age. He was such a lovely man. What are the chances that we would both have gone through something so similar. The news hit me hard, thinking how lucky I was that I had survived cancer, but how tragic it was for others to lose the one they love.
I remember thinking sod the 1m distance we were supposed to maintain, and just give her a
big hug. I felt she needed it more than I needed to avoid catching covid. Look at how they
made us live.
A year or so later I knew the only way I could improve my writing was to attend a class. So I
swapped my working days and registered at Rossett Adult Education for a beginners writing
course.
On the particular day I’d registered on the course, Julie’s daughter had come into the
practice, I told her to tell her mum about it, and tell her she was to do it with me. I thought it
would do us both good.
And so, we pitched up at school! During one of the early classes, we were put into pairs to
work on a writing exercise, Julie and I bounced off one another and we both realized that
while we may have come together for other reasons, we had each found the perfect friend.
85,000 words later and two years of laughing, crying, and of cathartic writing, we have a
book published by Fisher King Publishing. Our first novel, ‘Over the Fence’ has been
released into the wild!
Julie Martin-Jones
her story…
Ok confession time. I hate opticians more than most people hate the dentist. I have felt like that since I
was a little girl with bright blue owl-like glasses, a pink patch over one lens and nans knicker elastic tied cleverly to both arms of the frame to keep them on my face. I swear that as I grew, the patch and knicker elastic may have disappeared, but the misery of the blurry world without them or the teasing from the world while wearing them still kept me quiet and shy.
I preferred books to people, at least in books the characters wouldn't tease me or steal my
specs to use them as magnifying glasses to start little fires.
From reading came the love of writing. So, I should not be so hard on having to wear
glasses. By eighteen the discovery of contact lenses opened up a whole new world, but the hate
relationship with glasses didn't lessen. I still needed them at least to find each contact lens
and precariously balance them on my finger.
Over the years I decided I needed to treat opticians like hairdressers. I needed to find somewhere I could go where I could be confident that I was being looked after rather than
just sold to. Somewhere that even though they had no magic cure for my rubbish sight they would know
me and help me choose glasses that suited me instead of leaving me to it… it’s hard to buy
glasses when you can't actually see what you look like in them, and you feel so cripplingly
vulnerable and embarrassed!
When Yorkshire Eyewear opened its doors, it was local and I had heard that they were
friendly, my husband, Stu, and I decided to try them. We always went together on one of our routine visits to the ever friendly and helpful Karen. While making conversation with Stu, she expressed a newfound interest in writing. It has to be said that Stu was always a little on the proud side that I could write, and his ambition was to persuade me to submit for publication. He had thus far failed! While he was entertained
having his eye test, Karen and I talked about her writing. I could hear her infectious
enthusiasm and totally understood it.
At that moment I wanted to get to know her better and share the passion; but the standoffish
me felt awkward, unlike Stu who finished his eye test and invited her to join us at a book
publishing do. No such thing as professional barriers or we don't know her stopped him! She
declined and I didn’t blame her. Sometimes he could be a bit full on. Once outside he said he
liked Karen. She had a spark. He thought we should get to know each other. I told him he
shouldn't tell people I was an author; real authors were published. He laughed and said that
would happen, he just knew it. Karen would be a good person to get to know, she had that
same look in her eye when she talked about writing. A genuine enthusiasm for the power of
the pen.
As usual I hung back. Our lives were very different, our paths only crossed at appointments,
which were not often, and I lacked Stu’s charm and confidence.
The next time we went Karen remembered we had talked about writing and I was pleased,
but sadly her health was uncertain. With newly diagnosed cancer, she was writing and found
it cathartic. Again, I felt a tug of regret that we only crossed paths so infrequently.
Covid changed that. Well not really covid but the awful C word, cancer.
We left the opticians on that last visit together both a bit subdued and Stu said he couldn't
even begin to imagine how Garrey must feel with such an element of doubt over Karen's
health. In his shoes he wouldn't know what to do. It was a sobering thought. It was therefore ironic that after lockdown I took myself back to the opticians, this time alone.
We hadn't seen it coming. Fit and well one minute and nine weeks later cancer had stolen
him from me, all of his massive cheeky personality gone in an instant.
The world for me had shuddered to a slow grind, uncertain and empty. I was barely going
through the motions of daily life trying to convince myself and everyone around me that I was
ok.
It was a relief to see Karen looking well and hear she was still writing. I told her I wasn't anymore; at the time I really meant it. Thank heavens she mentioned a writing course to my daughter on her visit. I was told I should go because the company would be good for me. ‘No’, was such an easy way out; but
I said yes because one of the last things Stu made me promise was that I would keep writing
and be published… the latter part was a promise I saw no way of keeping.
Going to the class with Karen was not as hard as I thought it would be and, in the session,
where we were asked to pair up and write a piece, we just clicked and so it began… It was
hard to believe that she had preferred sport to English! She has such a naturally good
imagination.
So here we are. A lot of time spent together in collaboration, 85,000 words behind us, a
publisher who took us on, and thanks to Stu being such a chatterbox and Karen becoming
such a close friend, and genuinely loving writing, I can dedicate my part in the story to
husbands, because as Stu would say, where would wives be without them.
PS I don’t hate opticians quite so much anymore!
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