Hello and welcome back to Widowed AF, you're here with me, I'm your host, I'm Rosie Gill-Moss, I'm your constant companion on this journey, arnt lucky, If you're new to the podcast, welcome, we love new listeners joining us and if you are a regular and a dedicated listener, some of you have listened to every episode and it still astonishes me that you, uh, put yourselves through that many hours of my voice, so thank you. Uh, I just wanted to check in with you guys. I've really missed doing these chatty episodes. So, um, because we tend to record quite far in advance, I was like, in fact, I've just done this ahead of a record, thinking, oh, I'll put it on the beginning of the episode, and then realised that makes absolutely no sense, because it could be three or four months before the episode goes out. So. Pulling myself back in from that tangent. Uh, the date currently is, I don't even know, Friday the 12th of July. So we have, we have one, another child finishing school today. This one is leaving primary school, so this is a bit of a tearjerker. We've had two assemblies, two productions, and there is a prom tonight. So. For those of you with smaller children, yeah, I thought prom was something they did at secondary school. Apparently it's, uh, worming its way into primary schools now, so there you go. Um, and it's just, it is like, I do say now, just spinning plates, and it does feel like that. And things are getting dropped and missed, and I've got some gazebos I need to go and pick up from one school to take to another school. It's, um, it is a bit of a juggle, but it's also, it's so exciting. And this, and this. So make sure there's some fun and positive steps happening as well. Now, um, I don't know how many of you do follow us on Instagram, but if you do, or if you follow me, um, I'm more likely to reply if you message my personal Instagram account, actually. It's rosie gill moss, gill moss, rosie gill moss. Um, but I had a visit this week. I had a visit from a former guest, Sarah Swainson, as she was then. Sarah Laker she is now, and she came on the podcast, um, around a year ago. So I was pretty new to this and Sarah was just one of those people that you meet. And I mean virtually through a screen on this occasion, and you just know that you want to keep in your life. Now she, her husband died from a drug overdose, and that was, and still is, quite a taboo subject. You find people, um, feel stigma and shame around those sorts of losses, and for no fault of their own. So it was really, really brave of her to come on and talk about this. And those of you who are familiar with the podcast from the very beginning, you will know Lulu's story and Lulu's husband died. Um, in, I mean, they were very, very unusual circumstances, but there was a drug element to it. And she struggled massively with the stigma and the shame around that. So for Sarah to come on and tell me, a virtual stranger, and all of you, Her story, I thought was incredibly brave and I am going to check before I air this, whether she minds me saying this, but I do know that a family member reached out to her, somebody that she had, um, become, what's the word when you don't see your family anymore? Estranged. Estranged. Thank you John. Sorry. She was estranged from since her husband's death and they had reached out to her having listened to her podcast episode and wanted to make, build bridges, make amends and told her, you know, how, how much they admired her and how little they knew about what has actually happened. So the knock on effect of people coming on to tell their stories is that bridges are built and families are, you know, brought back together and sometimes it can cause a little bit of Sometimes we do have people whose relatives, perhaps of their person, might make contact with them. Now, we have had people reach out to us directly, and we won't take anything down unless you guys want us to. By you guys, I mean the people who share the stories. We don't put anything else that's slanderous or incorrect or inaccurate, but, you know, we, um, we listen to. They, they are our guest stories. They belong to them. So,, it's been an interesting week professionally. I've spoken to a really great guy. He runs, um, or is the founder of a, um, service called MindJam. So some of you may have neurodivergent children, or you may have children who have, um, trauma from I'm a parent, presumably, if you're listening to me. Or for a myriad of other reasons. And Mindjam is a kind of mentoring service. So young people, because they work with young people up to, I think it's 25, and they get to, they have a mentor whom they build a relationship with, and it's all done virtually, it's all done while playing computer games. Now as a mother of two teenage boys, well one is 12. That's almost that counts. Gaming has been as it has in many households, I'm sure, a massive bone of contention. They're spending too much on their time in their Xbox, not time, you know, frolicking, like little lambs in the garden. And I actually realizing lockdown because my, particularly my eldest son spent a lot of time on a screen because there wasn't, there wasn't enough. All else to do was there. And he is, um. Articulate. Polite. Healthy, happy, emotionally balanced. And I think talking to Dan, who Dan Clark is from Mindjam, made me realise that perhaps it's just another, another unnecessary guilt. Because as widowed parents, I'm guessing that we are all using screens, or we have all used screens, more than we might have, um, Anticipated. Ben was quite, um, old fashioned. I mean, I'm sure they'd have won him round, but he was very much, no, they don't have iPads. And we had TVs, like, I'm not a sadist, but As they get older, obviously, they want more access to this world. And it's quite a frightening world, because they could be talking to anybody. They could be being bullied. They could be bullying themselves. You know, you just don't know what's going on out there. And many of you might be gamers, but I'm not. It's just something that bypassed me completely. So I found it really reassuring to talk to Dan because, A, it alleviated quite a lot of that mum guilt, and B, I realised that there is a lot more safeguarding protocol in these games now than there were maybe even just four, five, six years ago. And I guess, um, My takeaway from it in terms of talking to you guys on this podcast, because this was an interview I did for my other one, is that if your kids are spending quite a lot of time on their screens, um, you know, as long as what they're doing is relatively age appropriate, I'm thinking bloody YouTube here, which is the bane of my life because they seem to navigate around all, all age restrictions on that. Then, um, And if they're not outside in the sunshine, and if you can see your friends, and they might be widowed but they might not, and they're out at the beach, or their kids are getting, you know, gold medals in, I don't know, jumping over people. trees, I don't know. It's, you can feel like a massive underachiever and, um, and guilt, you know, that, that guilt. And I just, I, insofar as I have the authority to do it, I wanted to alleviate some of that because believe you me, you know, Instagram is a liar and my kids, uh, they, they spend a fair amount of time on screens, be it TV, be it the Xbox. It is about balance, you know, they do, they do see day life periodically. I did say to my teenager, actually, you are going to get rickets if you don't leave the house at some point. But, it's also, it's their pop culture, it's the world they live in. And Dan said something quite interesting, he said, I can't remember the timing of this, but he said when fiction books first came out, they were seen as bright, rotting your brain. You know, sitting, reading a book was seen as really negative. And now, of course, if our kids sat and read four books back to back, we'd be delighted, right? And when we were kids, and I'm a, I'm a, an eighties baby, it was telly. You'll get square eyes. On. And my mum was quite strict. I wasn't allowed to watch Crange Hill or EastEnders. And I used to sit on the stairs and sort of peek my head round and try and see through the banisters at EastEnders. So kids will, will always push at the boundaries, whatever you, whatever you put in place. But I just think, Perhaps a lot of the fear that we have around computer gaming and a lot of the stereotyping and the, um, assumptions that we make about people that game actually, if sometimes, if you have got a child that struggles a little bit socially, which, You get a lot with neurodivergent children, but also a lot with bereaved and traumatised children. They will have, or potentially will have, social anxiety, social awkwardness. Um, many develop tics or, um, uh, sort of repetitive behaviours as a result of their trauma. So, for a lot of those children, integrating into a conventional, I'm using inverted commas this time, Society can be very difficult. They maybe have a very particular interest, or they perhaps don't just want to talk about, you know, what pop star they fancy because their life. It's a lot more serious than their peers. So online gaming gives them access to a community beyond those that they're at school with or in the, within their local community. And I think, you know, obviously we have to take precautions and, you know, you can't just have them unlimited access to an online gaming platform because. I mean, you just can't look, can you? But it, it, it isn't something that we need to be so scared of, and I can tell you one, one half term I think it was, it might even have been a summer holiday, and I said to my middle son, I said, oh, you know, you're going to tell the school what you did over the holidays, and he went, yeah, yeah, I played on Xbox. Right. So now, at the end of the holidays, I like to make my children do a little list of their favourite things we did in the holidays. And I like to remind them to remember that actually there was theme parks, and picnics, and swimming, and playdates, and barbecues, and grandma, and you know, a million other things that I broke my neck to lay on for them. Bloody Xbox. Kids, man. Honestly. So I also, while I've got you guys, I'm going to just give you a little bit of an update on Woodstock. So it's rocketing along now. It was a slow burn, um, from a horizon. And I, in my very, you know, laser fair attitude, was like, It'll come together, it'll come together, and then I go into complete panic. So we have, um, I'll tell you the things I've got. I've got a cocktail bar. I've got a team, like a posh team coffee van that does toasties called Melt, even the name sounds good. We have got at least one inflator, I think, as in like Bansky Castle, it's a slide. I think we're going to, I think we're going to go for another one. We've got deck chairs, we've got festoon lighting, we've got glitter walls, we've got glitter tables, um, we've got bands, we've got me singing. I'm no longer saying I might sing, I'm saying that I will sing. So, if nothing else, if you'd like to see me butcher a classic on stage, then, um, I think that's worth your twenty quid ticket alone. Ticket posting is now free if you don't have it registered because we were aware that actually the ticket cost posting was starting to maybe be a little bit prohibitive so we have removed that. Um, and if you live locally to me you can send me a message and you know I love a Wid meet or a meet with anyone actually. I'll go for a coffee with anyone, then give a like. Um, but yeah give me a shout and you can collect it directly from me. Um, but I am, yeah we, we're getting quite excited now. It's, it seems like it's really happening. So. Please come. Please. You know, I've got those visions of being, you know, when you have a party as a kid and you have this fear that nobody's going to turn up. It's just going to be me in a sequined dress in the field with a band playing. Actually, that sounds quite nice. Oh, but yeah, it'd be more, more fun if you were there. And actually, while I've got you, I did mention, um, my other podcast. I know, I feel like I'm being very disloyal to you guys, but there is, um, I realised that this, this podcast, there were so many other topics coming off the back of it, that I wanted to be able to talk about in more depth. So, um, Rosie FM is available all the same places you get, um, Widowed AF. If you could leave me a review. A nice one. And that would be helpful because it's, it's, I've forgotten that you just literally are starting from scratch, from scratch, and I'm like little fish, big, big pond out there, right? Um, I've got some really exciting guests coming on. I've got, so any of you who are a woman of a certain age, you live with a woman of a certain age, you, um, you may be living with a woman of a certain age in the future, but it's, you may have come across Dr Louise Newson. Um, she is a specialist in menopause, and it's actually, um, government taskforce. Task Force. Brain fog being one of the signs of perimenopause. So I'm under the care of Newsome Clinic, so I'm not doing this for free, I pay for my care, and gladly, because they are incredible. They are the only people that really felt like they listened to me in all of this. I spoke to, I think, three different gynecologists, all of whom had different advice, put me on different medication. I felt like I was losing my mind, like, you guys were with me through some of this. It was scary. And, Newson have a really refreshing attitude to the clinic. Louise's book is amazing. I've obviously read it, annotated it, put post it notes all over it, ready for my interview with her. Because that's what I was going to say, she's coming on for an interview. I just was a little cheeky and I emailed her PA and just said, do you think Louise would like to come on? And I had this really amazing email back saying that she would love to and that actually her own mother was widowed. So, um, I think it could end up being a chat that actually has crossover for this as well. So I will let you know how it goes. Um, but I'm, yeah, I'm excited. Things are, things are. Teetering on the edge of the school holidays with my sanity just about intact. Just come back to me in a couple of weeks. So, so anyway, I am going to shoot off now, but I just, yeah, I just wanted to pop up and say hello and remind you all that we're, we're here and we're listening. Um, and that you please do get in touch. If you've got anything you want to ask me or any topics you'd like me to talk about. Um, and yeah, keep on keeping on out there. Lots of love guys.