Writing
Michele has been writing a regular column since 2008, most recently for the NZ Woman’s Weekly. You will find some of these pieces republished here.
For Michele’s other writing, follow the link below to Substack.
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Mostly I am too busy enjoying being an old hag to register these things. The glorious thing about being this age is you’re not bothered about being this age…
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I’d love someone to come up with a way of doing a mammogram that feels less … crushing? Pretty sure that’s not how they check for testicular cancer...
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On any given day if you ask a mother what she thinks of JD Vance’s “childless cat ladies” who he says are “less invested in” and less valuable to society, this woman will get a faraway look in her eyes and sigh, “Aspirational”.
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Father’s Day can be tricky for people who don’t have a dad to celebrate. Some people never had a dad, or don’t have the kind of dad you’d make a card for. Or maybe you had a pretty great dad, but he’s not around anymore...
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It’s only as I’ve been drawing a picture of who my grandmother was that I’ve realised this is the kind of nana I am choosing to be.
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What really is fascinating is that our wish lists - given urgency by age or a diagnosis - so often involve things that are terrifying.
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The goal should be to buy, if not the Ferrari of winter coats, then at least the best quality you can afford…
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Then I saw a look on her face which was familiar to me. The look I’ve seen at many points throughout Holly’s life… and you see her face and think, “Right now you look exactly like yourself”.
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We all need places where we are not “other”, where we metaphorically and literally speak the same language, where we are not seen as the odd one out.
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I like the idea of saying there is a thing you will not do and sticking to it - even when some of the reasons for setting that boundary have gone. I heard myself say recently – not even sure how it came up – that I had decided 25 years ago that I would never do another man’s washing, and I never had.
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There are things I want to say each time a friend tells me they have lost a parent. Not only a parent – also a friend, or a cat, or a job. The scale might look different, and grief is specific each time you experience it, but it is also the same.
What I would really like this International Women’s Day is a lot more days like the one I had last Wednesday. Because Wednesday was a beautiful thing - a whole day in which I was not interrupted.
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I thought I knew what I was in for. I’ve had plenty of CT scans and I imagined – based largely on television medical dramas – that an MRI would just be a bigger, more dramatic, full-body version of one of those.
As they looked around our house, their eyes lit up at the place we keep our music. “Ooh, CDs,” they said approvingly. “Very cool.”
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“Out by the pool, two middle-aged ladies arrive in what appear to be – and it takes me a moment to process this – matching outfits… One person sashaying poolside in that outfit would have been striking. Two were show stopping….”
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Last week I talked about my small town childhood terror of turning up to an A&P show overdressed – that whole “Who do you think you are?” jab from the local cool girls.
If you’d ask me this time last year for my thoughts on football, our conversation would have been limited to my enthusiasm for the TV show, Ted Lasso. Favourite team: AFC Richmond. Favourite player: Jamie Tartt.