Last week there was a major tantrum in my house. There was rage, there was yelling, there was a banshee scream – “YOU JUST DON’T UNDERSTAND!” – and then a door slam.
There was a flop on the bed and a big cry. The dog howled, my son hid and the neighbours grimmaced.
That tantrum was mine.
A few minutes later there was another tantrum. This time it was my 12-year-old daughter. As she lost all reason amid many tears, she looked to me for strength, calm and reassurance.
The major problem was that those were the very things that had completely escaped me only moments before.
We trigger each other, my daughter and I, so our house is becoming a collision zone. There will be casualties.
My daughter looks so much like her father it frightens me, but in this perfect storm we girls have become more alike than ever before.
We are both getting swollen breasts and hormonal pimples. We are both sometimes irritable and cranky, at others teary and bereft. Sometimes we need cuddles, at others we can't stand being touched. We are both struggling to adapt to living with a new body that scares us.
She is going through puberty and I am going through perimenopause.
She is in denial and I was in ignorance until our Just Between Us podcast this week. On it, I heard about the rise of the third boob, the bone tiredness, the changing sleep patterns ... and I had an a-ha! moment.