This week I am reflecting on re-entering the workforce at 42. For many years, I have floundered around in the art and academia world, never really finding a footing, always feeling an outsider, and never sure of where I wanted to end up. Having children (they are now 6 and 3) has really sharpened my focus and made me pay attention to how I am spending my time and what is most important. Ultimately, that is financial security and a permanent home for my girls (yes, I still rent).

Like a pool of clear water, holding sunlight, my mind grasps nothing.

This is a line from an incomplete and not very good poem I wrote when I took myself out for the day during the last school holidays. I wrote this in the bush of the Blue Mountains where I live, overlooking a deep valley, cockatoos wheeling through the vertical landscape, their pristine wingspans cutting shapes out of the dark tree canopy and cliff faces behind them. I had sat down to write but very little came, my mind felt as clear as a crystal pool.

The combination of getting older and doing healing work has made me more attuned to the quality of the relationships in my life. There’s been an interesting shift, which I think will be familiar to everyone who has embarked on deep self-work: I now take a lot more responsibility for this. There is less blame and more self-analysis. Less passivity and more of an effort to change. It’s painful at times, but also liberating.

On the Sunday just gone we had our daughter’s 6th birthday party. Now, for any parents out there, you know what an undertaking organising a children’s birthday party is. It’s big, no matter how ‘small’ you try to keep things. But we only have one childhood, and if I can give my daughters happy memories like fun birthday parties, then I feel I have at least done part of my job as a parent.

We all feel it, that disconnect between who we want to be and who we actually are. We don’t want to be a yelling parent as we believe in responsive, respectful parenting, yet here we are shouting at our children. Again. We want to get back into reading because we hold in high regard the value of personal development, but yep, we’re scrolling Instagram again at 11pm instead of picking up that book giving us the side-eye from the bedside table. We all know the areas in which we can improve, but we’re also human, and no-one should strive for perfection at all times. Where it does, however, often bite most cruelly - and chronically - is when it comes to our personal and professional goals.