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Maybe somebody who loves you gave you this book because you’re hard to get presents for (code for ‘not worth the research’)
Through social media, letters or email, I get to hear directly from people who’ve seen my work and who ask for tips on how to match my lurid level of courage and assurance. What they describe is: Audacity NOUN courage or confidence of a kind that other people find shocking or rude
Sure, I care about people – their safety, wellbeing and access to free and legal abortions – and I’ll always do my best to make others happy wherever reasonable. But I embrace the reality that you just can’t please everyone. As
TV execs are most satisfied when they’re able to use the same words to describe me that they might use to sell a duvet. They’ll ring my agent and say, ‘Wow, we’re thrilled that Katherine was so warm, comforting, soft and 100 per cent sourced in Canada.’
I hated being admonished and losing the respect of my peers – the teachers.
Me as a kid
Joanne eventually grew into a toddler that I could boss around and Kerrie was born two years after her.
She doesn't have eldest daughter energy so I am surprised but this also makes perfect sense??
I was lucky to grow up with a few cherished and like-minded friends, but for the most part, I had to contend with bewildered gazes as very few people ‘got me’ in Sarnia. I can’t blame them for that – I didn’t understand most of those muggles either.
Oh, and if you don’t know what ‘boomer’ means, it’s an insult which degrades your ideology and worldview based on the varying levels of privilege enshrined within the generational divide. But worse still, it implies you look old.
Like Mum, I couldn’t give a fuck about how things are perceived, I only care about how things are. The idea of church looks lovely but why bother going when you’re going to be a judgemental bitch in the parking lot afterwards? Why show up when you clearly aren’t listening to the sermons, heifer?
I have found my people
I’ve never respected the creative opinions of people who create nothing.
My self-confidence had reached an all-time low, which is the absolute most TERRIBLE time to choose a partner, by the way. It’s akin to food shopping when you’re hungover.
She resolved to give things one last go or ‘earn her way out’ through couple’s counselling which, from my personal and limited experience, is only helpful in the unlikely scenario that your differences are reconcilable but you both lack communication skills.
One weekend, upon noticing that I was about to pop outside to the grocery store in my pyjamas, she stopped me and said, ‘Why do you dress like this? You are a beautiful girl. You could meet husband in parking lot.’ I decided that I’d better start making more of an effort if I wanted to win the affections of all the eligible men hanging out by the bakery bins. My mother also thought I might meet a man in a parking lot but her advice was to carry bear spray and a rape whistle to deter him.
Positioning yourself as a ‘pretty young thing’ means living like an avocado: you’re delicious for a very brief window of time
If you’re really that consumed by the fear of failure or criticism, then you’d better hide yourself away for eternity.
Nobody cares about your bad reviews more than you do, so you might as well just get over it.
Also, Roxanne was trans. The vet said she was a boy when he neutered her but we knew that she wanted to live as a glamorous woman and respected her true spirit from the start. I know what you’re thinking – maybe he was just gay, and honestly, how dare you. I think it’s sad that you don’t know the difference and I hope you use this moment as an opportunity for personal growth. You’re cancelled.
Did young women born in the 1980s start treating sickly puppies as babies because their ancestors would have all had human children by the same age? It’s troubling.
What has my most ‘textbook’ quality ever done for me? Sweet fuck all. Meanwhile, being unusual has bought me a house. It’s such a shame that many of us spend so much energy trying to fit in.
Journalists have asked me, ‘Katherine, how can you have said, done, dated, or believed (BLANK) and claim to be a feminist today?’ The answer is because I was a little culture sponge and I didn’t have a crystal ball with which to gaze upon the future.
But even the absence of training is a form of training.
I cannot stress this enough – EVERYTHING you do is training, even when you think you’re doing nothing.
so as soon as she started on solid foods, I could tell by the look on her face if she needed the toilet and quickly whipped off her nappy to hold her over the potty. I thought it was probably easier to go that way than it would be strapped in a chair. Poos are the easiest at first because you get a warning via facial expression. If my instincts were right and she went then I’d praise her and leave the nappy off for a while as a comfort reward. We’d sit on the potty to read a story first thing every morning when she woke up and that usually resulted in a wee. We’d do the same maybe hourly or so
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When people ask what my ‘breakthrough moment’ was in comedy, I can confidently tell them that it’s been a series of baby steps. That’s anticlimactic but true. Showcases turned into bookings; open mic nights turned into a bit of paid work and a few auditions turned into jobs.
I’ve overheard punters tease him for being ubiquitously on our screens and he’ll say, ‘Most people I know work every day’. It’s a really down-to-earth way of explaining away his popularity.
My theory is that bad men can’t talk like that. Instead, they’ll craft a ‘family man’ image or start a podcast about enlightenment.
She has a point
I didn’t and I don’t value pure ‘selflessness’. You can be thoughtful and generous without abandoning your goals or yourself.
My career was also definitely a consideration and it’s terrible to acknowledge, but I wasn’t sure whether I was in a strong enough position to be ‘forgiven’ for what pregnancy would do to my body. Ugly sentence to write. Uglier reality to navigate.
The world is a hole
It was difficult for me not to answer back and I’d have to remind myself that these were not debates, they were traps.
There’s something infantilising about being around people who were powerful when you were small, even when you’re grown.
I think she’s special, intelligent, layered and a ton of fun when she wants to be. She’s a great mother and I wouldn’t be who I am today without her audacious, no-fucks influence growing up. I love her so much but I don’t have the tools to be around her anymore, to carry on any kind of relationship alongside alcohol abuse, so I’m out. Why should I? I don’t have to. You don’t have to. As I’ve said before, letting go isn’t the same as giving up.
I think communication technology in the afterlife is very similar to that in mid-1980s Sarnia, Ontario. As long as one of you has the receiver off the hook, the line stays open.
The whole situation was sooooo Liberal-elite: a shoeless white woman holding a glass of Merlot while crying in the street about cuts to government funding and trying to be polite about her house being robbed.
love her wit
I suppose that one positive takeaway from this dark chapter in my life was that I gained even more love and respect for my husband. (I definitely thought I’d had plenty enough beforehand but I guess the universe disagreed and sent me a lesson just to make sure.)
‘Great minds talk of ideas, average minds talk of events, small minds talk of people,’ but anytime I discuss celebrity, I’m trying to get at bigger ideas – like the social customs or cultural trends they embody or represent. I’m mostly fascinated by what and who we think celebrities are – the space between the actual person and the persona – and what the consumption of that through our media and our suspended disbelief says about us.
Accountability is very different from total erasure.
Having been held by a stranger from your haplogroup a few times as an infant doesn’t automatically mean you should meet up with them as an adult if you happen to be passing through their town. ‘Oh, your second cousin Melvin lives in Plymouth. You should stop by!’ Absolutely not, Dad. I’m on a tight schedule.
I’ve heard this articulated by a TV psychologist as, ‘She’s got something I just can’t stand about me.’
But first, you’ve got to stop apologising so much, stop wasting your time asking questions when the answer doesn’t matter or is going to be a lie, and start navigating your life with a self-assuredness that pisses some people off.
You don’t need a long-term plan or a short-term plan – just wake up every day, wash your face and move forward with confidence. Some people will call that ‘audacity’. Let them.
Thank you for being my first audience, my sounding boards and my context.
watching you as a dad has healed all the misgivings I had about men.
You have a natural affinity for leadership and, even as a feminist, I’m comfortable calling you the leader of our household. It’s very relaxing. Finally, the pressure is off me, and I can trust the person I admire the most, with the finest dick in town, to make wise decisions for the family, while giving me the respect of being able to overrule him if I disagree.
