Hello and welcome to Happily Ever After, with me Hannah Harvey. This week I want to talk about the Fairytale. You know the thing we thought we wanted and then maybe we got it and we’re like … hmmm, is this it?
A few weeks ago I interviewed one of my very best friends, Cath, who I’ve known for over 10 years. We did NCT at the same time and have been good friends ever since.
Cath is a professional declutterer so I’ve talked about her before. I was so overwhelmed the first time she came and helped me sort out our kitchen that I wrote a whole post about it! And I will link to that in the show notes because honestly it blew my mind. Cath also helped me a few times over the years, especially when we moved to our final family home and she helped me, it was 2 months after leaving my ex and the family home and she helped me prepare the house so that we could sell it.
We spent a week sorting, organising, styling and decluttering and it was also the culmnation of about four years worth of renovation work and the moment the house was finally finished, the estate agents turned up to take photos and get it on the market.
I would never live in the finished house and I would never use the incredible kitchen that took so much time and effort and grief and even builders living with us during Covid, to finish! Because obviously at the beginning of lockdown nobody knew what was going to happen so they just moved in.
If you would like to hear Cath and I talking about THAT week, please do click here and I’d love to hear your thoughts, so let me know.
The Fairytale
Since doing this podcast, I have been mulling over the house because to hear the story from Cath’s point of view was so interesting and I realised it was something I had all but removed from the memory banks or at least put in a little horrible box to deal with at a later date probably with Caths help. But this house was such a huge and significant part of our lives.
It represented so much - from materialistic show home ideal all the way to kind of feeling like a prison - so I toyed with the idea of writing this post about the house, sharing the finished photos and it’s really got me thinking about the idea of fairytales ideal and I guess the irony of finishing our forever home for someone else to enjoy, including my ex’s and his new girlfriend for a little while.
I called my podcast Happily Ever After because of this idea we may have when we’re younger: meeting the love of our lives, getting married, living happily ever after, etc.
And basically that bit hasn’t gone to plan for me, as I know it hasn’t for many of you.
Buuuuut, as I emerge from the otherside, I truly believe we can still have our happily ever after it’s just maybe not the one you thought you wanted. Heartbreak is all part of the hero’s journey, you know when you’re story telling, you’ve got to go through these bits where we can learn and grow and find out more about ourselves. If you’re able to wade through the dark times and learn from them, it’s all part of the process.
As I was growing up, I didn’t think I thought in fairytales. I felt progressive and independent, confident and feminist (without ever labelling it as that), but if I’m truly honest, in the back of my mind I did have the fairytale ending lurking somewhere. How can we not when it is so ingrained in our stories, the books we read, the articles, the films. When I was looking back and contemplating all this stuff I was like ‘oh my god, I even had Prince Charming in mine’.
Literally, I remember visiting friends who were studying at St Andrews at the same time as Prince William. Did I have the odd fantasy on the train journey that I might bump into him and sparks fly … ?
Yeah, I probably did, just for fun! You just let your brain go there.
Of course, we all know the reality of marrying a prince is a tricky one and there’s always a tradeoff for the lifestyle somewhere along the line.
Whether the fairytale I ended up with was my one is I guess the issue but maybe not the point here. The point of this is to look at the family home.
We moved to this beautiful, grade 2* listed house in July 2016, just before Reuben turned 4. If any of you have been following my blog since the early days you’ll know that we lived in a terraced house in.. it’s a lovely seaside town now but it had a bad reputation so this was quite a transformation to go from that to this enormous countryside house with an incredible view. It even had a hobbit house in the garden and it was a lot to get used to.
But it also needed a lot of work doing and for the next 4 years we were speaking to architects or speaking to planners to get permission for all the things that we wanted to do to make it perfect. And when we weren’t doing those things we were on the pinterest boards creating inspiration for what the house would be like.
I loved the house, it was super cool, really inspirational - It was built in 1723 for the Duke of Northumberland’s Master Builder. It had loads of beautiful details on the woodwork on the stairs and the brass on the front door, it was gorgeous. It was also the place where William Dixon, if you don’t know him I mean where have you been?!
He compiled his Northumbrian Pipe manuscripts there. So he's basically one of the earliest writer downers of music for Northumbrian pipes. And weirdly, he wrote down one of the earliest renditions of Bonny Bobby Shafto nursery rhyme. I found out whilst I was writing a kids novel book inspired by the story behind the nursery rhyme!
It was such a weird coincidence and I almost feel like the story came from the house and I was just channelling it, but I don't know.. Either way it was very escapist for me at the time and nothing has ever come of the book but I really enjoyed that element of being there and writing it.
There were little cupboards which were for hiding Catholic priests and even an escape tunnel that led from the cellar down to the crags. So it was this really cool house and we were getting to do it up and enjoy it. And the views were incredible. It was “the dream”.
But in my heart this wasn’t my dream. We were in the middle of nowhere and I need to be around people. I think it's the ultimate crux.
But I really tried to make it my dream and the process of trying to make something my dream meant I was so annoyed with myself for not loving the fortunate place I found myself. I stopped being able to write my blog which was something that I deeply loved. But I felt like I wasn't the same person anymore and I didn’t know my place in the world any more beyond being a mum and a housekeeper for this incredible house with so much history. I was lost.
Pretty early on into the move, I started to get intrusive thoughts about being trapped in a fire with the children, and even now when I try to explain it, I still struggle to articulate it and get quite emotional and I'm not sure what that was about. And the accompanying guilt at being so ungrateful (even though I was practising gratitude) led to depression, anxiety and panic attacks.
I leaned heavily on alcohol to numb the pain - it was somewhere between boredom and an aching void - and it was a year later that I felt the need to completely give it up or I would lose myself completely. So that's something amazing that's come from it.
These past 5 years since quitting alcohol has been a slow process of working out who I am, what I like, and what I need to feel fulfilled. I’m still not convinced that I know that yet but while having stuff and money is lovely and to feel financially secure is amazing but you never stop worrying about money. It's like a bucket that can't be filled, the more you spend, the more you need, and the more there is to lose! It's a cycle that perpetuates anxiety I think.
If you’ve watched Schitt's Creek, you’ll know that fortunes can change in a moment. I absolutely love that show.
I have lost all of that now and I can say that it feels sad but I also feel like it was never my dream and I felt trapped in that house because I didn't know who I was or how to be it.
The fairytale that most springs to mind is Blue Beard…
Bluebeard is a wealthy man who marries a young lady and he goes away and he leaves the keys to all the doors in this enormous house but he forbids her from opening the door that a particular key works in. He goes away and then her sisters come to stay and together they are so curious (her sisters more than her I might say) and they end up trying every door in the house to find out which door the key opens. And then when they open the door, inside is all the bodies of his former wives stacked up on top of each other. So obviously they crap themselves, the lock the door, they try and hide the fact that they've been in there but when he returns, Bluebeard can tell from the keys that they've been in there, that SHE's been in there. And just as he's about to kill her, the sisters come back with the brothers and they save her life. So that's the story.
I first came across this from an incredible book called Women Who Run With the Wolves, it's by Clarissa Pinkola Estes and in the book she's taking fairytales and interpreting them and what she says for this one is that the room full of bodies is the part of ourselves or our psyche. It's the wild part or the part that we don't let ourselves go into. And I feel like you can have all the stuff in the world but if you're not willing to explore this one part of yourself, you're gonna be searching forever. And that's literally how I feel like i've spent my life, searching, and even when you have it all you're still lost and you're still depressed and I hated myself for it.
I’m not saying my ex was Bluebeard. I think I am. I think we can all be a little bit like Bluebeard for ourselves and keep ourselves trapped with this ideal of what we want. We want these things but it's not truly what we want. But then feel guilty when we get it and use that as another way to keep ourselves feeling trapped and unhappy. To strive for something but then keep ourselves in check. Be yourself but not too much because that might upset other people. And accept what you’re given, be grateful, be everything for everyone but stay small, don't be a show off.
With all this striving for stuff and things, what are we really after? Having financial stability is huge and I worry about money all the time but the thing that keeps me feeling joyful and feeling happy is connection. It always was about connection. When I was doing my blog I would get pumped up if somebody read something that I'd written or said that it helped them with something.
It still is that for me but I'd lost it because I was trapped in this idea that I had it all but was ungrateful. As I feel my way back into writing, I deeply want to connect with people, with you! Your emotions, your motivations, and be around to see the transformation into a place of content. Or at least striving for that and give themselves permission to want to get to that bit of the psyche that's wild.
And living in a house in the middle of nowhere made me feel isolated, lost and lacking all purpose besides the day to day and being a mum and looking after my family. Of course, this has nothing to do with the house, but the house will always be a reminder to me that you can have it all but it doesn’t mean you want it.
I feel like the house and getting it ready for sale (it sold a few months after we put it on the market) was also part of my hero’s journey. I had a deep respect for that place and it was my duty to see it through. I had a baby in the middle of the renovation. I loved and loathed that place! And it was an honour to restore and enhance its beauty, ready for someone who could really appreciate it.
So I guess what I’m trying to say, I’m not even sure I have a point but … I do believe it’s important to have goals and to strive for stuff and things we think we want, but remember that when you get there it might not be what you wanted after all. And that’s alright. It’s ok to not stay trapped there if you’re unhappy. I’ve had to learn from it and move on but what I’ve learnt is that Happily Ever After is literally right now.
Every time I connect with somebody and have that like 'Oh, this is what it's all about'. It's in the good and the bad.
This IS the journey. The fairytale is the journey.
