A woman's place is.....wherever she chooses it to be.

'I decided it was up to me where that was.'

I find Louise's story of why she joined the Royal Navy very empowering and she makes a very good point.

My current place to be is in the home. I am a home maker, home executive and housewife. Well that's what I've had written on my visas in my passport for the past 10 years. No idea how it would've read if the roles had been reversed and my husband and I swopped jobs. 

It hasn't defined me. It's upset me, my ability not to be able to work, for me not to have had the choice for 4 years when we moved to South Africa, my identity took a huge knock and then again when the kids left home at the time we moved to Dubai. But after almost 2 years in Dubai. I then made the decision NOT to work and focus my time on our adult children, all by now NOT living at home.

I've never had a life plan, I've never had a plan for my children either. It's not about rebelling, having a strop, being a feminist or a tom boy. It's not even about being different or difficult. it's about doing whatever is best for you (and your family) at the time. 

I left school, I wanted to study for the Royal Navy in the Lake District. I passed the entrance exams but couldn't get a guarantor to secure the funding I needed for the first year. Then I just drifted, I worked, moved away, tried life abroad, had a child, bought a house, got married, had another child, started a PGCE, had another child and abandoned studies, divorced, met Peter, inherited 2 older children, moved, resumed studies, finished degree got a job, a career, packed it all in, followed willingly my husband abroad, fought against it every day.

I'm 50 this year in June. A few years ago I stopped worrying about how other people saw me, was my tummy too wobbly, was my hair right, should I be wearing more make up, should I be visiting the beauty salons for procedures like everyone else, did I need a career to define me? 

The answer was and still is NO. There is no life plan, circumstances change our plans, change us. We may have to sacrifice something in order to be where we want to be. There are very few people in the world who actually have it all. We may perceive that they do and measure our achievements by theirs.

I want to be the homemaker. But I have the choice to return to work. I have the choice to say NO today, I'm doing something else. But I'm also part of a team, my family. I can be selfish, without behaving selfishly.

I no longer need to prove to anyone else or even myself that if I want, if circumstances allowed, I can do anything I want to and be anywhere I want to be.

This was my latest role.

A woman's place is on the golf course.

Are you a good social media role model to your children?

How to be a good social media model to your children

I almost think teaching kids to be savvy online now has almost passed. I don't mean just letting them have accounts and not supervising them in the use of what to and what not to post, but in regards to how they use it with their friends. We've all posted photo's we regret, drunken nights out etc but I've also seen comments from concerned parents about some of the harmless stuff such as endless selfies and how silly their child looks with pursed lips.

I've been on the interent as a full time hobby, tweeting, facebooking, blogging etc for over 8 years, I own an iPhone and MacBook air, I share personal moments, photo’s, thoughts and feelings on a daily basis. I tell you how family behavior affects me but I no longer tell you what that behavior is/was anymore.

Many times I've written an update or a blog post and ended up deleting it for fear of reprocussions, not because I’m worried about offending anyone, I just hate the back handed way people think they can hide behind a screen and say what ever the hell they want.

The 4 boys all have social media accounts and use them differently, I find my kids aged 18-27 use them in different ways and rarely post anything on the main timeline, in fact when I consider how many friends children I have on facebook it is rare that they actually post anything, they comment on peoples posts and share ‘motivational’ crap but rarely share what they're up to, but are happy to respond to messages with details when you ask them about a party, girlfriend or if they want to let off steam about their mum or dad…lol.

My children didn’t grow up with social media, they grew up with a mum who used social media, the youngest had instant access to the internet, he's 18 now but was in boarding private school from year 2 and at 4 years younger than the next sibling he had almost instant access to it, where as the eldest went thorugh school without it being around to any great extent and the demand for mobile phones still being seen as a privilidge and not a right of passage, having left school, college then home by 2007, he's not really got into it, the middle 2 entered their teens through the normal route but left their teens and entered into adult hood with every piece of technology going although they use it very differently, one mainly for gaming, the other the same as I do.

Hubby has only recently started using facebook, he trusts my decsions in regards to meeting total strangers, but the reality is its my kids that keep the closer eye on me when I'm using social media, offering advice, questioning my decisions, asking me to remove images and blog posts because their friends are on here and it could embarrass them, half the time my kids think I'm a bit stupid and when it comes to social media and I do have to remind them from time to time of the number of tweets, responses, comments and blog hits I get and how long it has all been running.

I haven't been the best social media role model for my children over the years, having gone for tweet ups with virtual strangers, but I've always met people in broad day light in busy areas, such as cafes or pubs and I've always let others know where I'm going who with and when to expect me home. In most cases I've met up with people after exchanging messages, exchanging phone numbers and having Skype calls. On one occasion my then teenage son, sauntered past a local pub with his mates to 'check' on me.

I've met people at football matches at half time for a drink, gone to places I'd never have been, events etc and in 2015 I flew from Dubai to Canada to stay with a women I met on twitter. We've had complete strangers come and stay at our homes in South Africa, Dubai and the UK, but we've never had a bad experience to date. 

There have of course been some meet ups that haven't gone as well as I'd have hoped for, with someone being completely different in real life to how they've come across on social media, my kids have been a good judge of character and nearly every one we knew in South Africa we'd met online and we became real life fiends, who one of the kids have stayed with when they went back to South Africa to visit their friends. 

I am of course still cautious when making friends on social media, I've sent private messages to my kids when I think something they've posted online could upset someone, especially family members, but it's more likely that the kids will message me with 'muuuuuum, what were you thinking? take that post/picture down.

Are you a good social media model to your kids? 

Are your kids savvy online?