Before I Get Old and Wrinkly

By Sheila Steptoe

Before I Get Old and Wrinkly opens with the powerful story of a portrayal of one ordinary woman's life and how she learnt to find peace within herself amongst the incredible turbulence of a succession of traumas and heartbreak. Written to help anyone who is on the brink of questioning the quality of their own lives, Sheila Steptoe highlights key issues that facilitate this questioning process. She conveys especially the importance for us all to ensure that we truly understand the significance of getting to know our family and friends properly as people instead of merely taking their presence for granted. The result, as the book describes, leads to a deeper understanding of ourselves as well as an appreciation of how crucial family and friends are to us - something that is so easily overlooked, and then regretted when it becomes too late. Despite the distress of life-threatening illness, death and excruciating family separation, the ultimate message in this book is a deeply positive one about learning to forgive, patience and, above all, awakening. The practical approach of the second half of the book opens the door for the reader to apply such essential questions to their own life situation and benefit from the valuable insights contained within these pages. Sheila Steptoe is a young grandmother who is not yet old inside or out! She is still living life to the full.

• Language: English
• Publisher: G2 Rights
• Release date: Aug 20, 2013
• ISBN: 9781908461971

Book preview

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Contents

Authors details

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Foreword

By the editor

About my life and my journey to finding peace

Book One

My letter to you all

Maturity …. arriving slightly creased

Part One

My youth …. embroidered with adventure

Part Two

My thirties … zipping along, married and a mum

Appreciating life

Next obstacle - education

Our social life

Family bereavements

The holiday and then …..

Part Three

My Forties …. ripped apart

I meet my saviour

I like helping others

I am scarred

I move into the unknown

I lose my mum

Part Four

My fifties…tattered and frayed, but saved

My eyes begin to smile

I get a brilliant job

I see the beauty of life

I learn how honesty is good

The opening of my eyes

My special friend

I am a grandmother

I love both my children equally

I learn the true meaning of unconditional love

I cry so much

I am put to the test

I see friends and family move on

I go to the wedding on my own

I am in deep shock

I cannot believe what is happening

A beautiful moment

I do hope…

I have some good news – the future

Book Two

My thoughts for you about life

Introduction

Why I wrote this part of the book and how I hope it helps you

Chapter 1

The beginning of your journey – the here and now

Chapter 2

You and your purpose

Chapter 3

You can change

Chapter 4

You are in control

Thinking and feeling

Our thoughts

Our desires

We cannot deny our feelings, and we cannot ignore them either

Following our feelings

Chapter 5

You are beautiful

Chapter 6

Believe in yourself

Chapter 7

Be inspired…feel the passion

Chapter 8

You and your friends

Simple Friends V Real Friends

Too busy for a friend – never

Chapter 9

You and your body language

Chapter 10

You as a parent

Chapter 11

You can fail…it’s OK

Chapter 12

Beliefs…My angels

Chapter 13

Make it happen

Chapter 14

Something to think about!

Celebration of life

People come into your life for a reason

Suggested reading

End Notes

Authors details

Sheila lives in Essex and wrote the book in the comfort of her recently-acquired 15th century cottage. She loves reading, learning, travelling and enjoying life to the full.

‘Before I Get Old and Wrinkly’ is Sheila’s first book which started simply as a letter to her children. She soon found that the idea and contents were beginning to help so many other people that Sheila decided to turn it into a book. This book is now making people think about their own lives and bringing people closer together.

Her life has been an adventure from the start and as a teenager in the late 60’s and early 70’s, Sheila and a group of girlfriends thumbed their way around Europe for three years. She then settled down and was happily married for 20 years and had two children. They have now flown the nest and she now has two beautiful grandchildren.

Sheila went back to work when her children were teenagers and, having spent most of her working life at The Observer and Sunday Times newspaper, she went to work for her local newspaper. After six years she then trained to become a BUPA healthcare adviser. The company then (thankfully) moved her from sales and trained her to become a trainer and teacher. This is when she found her vocation. Sheila also undertook a counselling degree and trained to become a life coach before taking time out to write her letter. This has been a journey of self discovery.

Having a corporate background in sales and having been a volunteer for Victim Support, Sheila decided to utilise her skills when writing her letter to her children. She has also written a second part within the book ‘My thoughts on life’, designed to offer advice and support to people looking to move on in their lives.

Subsequently, this has led her on to a new successful business venture; giving talks and running workshops to help others get the most out of their own lives. Sheila said: I turned my letter into a book to make positive thinking more accessible to the general public, but there is no book, course or seminar that can actually change your life, until you yourself want to. I am driven by the idea that we can all learn something new.

Dedication

This book is dedicated to:

My beautiful children, Robert and Anni.

My beautiful grandchildren, Simone and James, and any future grandchildren I may have.

(I have changed their names for their privacy)

Acknowledgements

The first list of people I wanted to include here ran into pages. I feel that each name holds a story in itself and that each person has had such a meaningful effect on my life, that a mere name-check was not enough. To all of my dear friends, the support, encouragement and value of our friendships mean a great deal to me. I am sorry that I cannot include you all by name, but you know who you are.

I do have to say special thanks to a few people. Janice, Theresa B, Mandy, Cathy T, Theresa S and Sharon N - thank you for always being there. I could truly write pages on what you all mean to me.

To my long standing friends Molly, Sharon M, Greta, Karen, Tony C, Jenny and Del, Roger and Pat. I have known you all since my teenage years and what wonderful friendships they have been and still are. As you will all know, there are too many others within our crowd to list here, but we have all shared so much over the years and for this I am truly thankful.

To my friends Geoff, Anthony, Debbie, Fran, Cathy A, Rachel, Ginny and the new friends, who have recently joined us in Circle. I feel that we all share a special bond and without this, the recent events in my life would have been so much harder to cope with.

To my work colleagues who became friends over the last twelve years; Julie, Sharon W, Derek, Lynn, and more recently Ray, Alan W, Colin B, Nigel, Rod and Peter. You all encouraged me and it has been wonderful to work with you all. I can honestly say that to work with such lovely people has been a pleasure - most of it was fun!

Also my friends Brenda, Clare, Doug, Lesley B and Jan H, who showed me that life as single person is fun. I also thank Emma for her understanding and Tony M for his support.

My editor, Lesley Townsend-White for her friendship and unwaivering trust in me. She trusted me and encouraged me that this book was meant to be - Thank-you.

I would also like to acknowledge some friends who have died quite young; Wendy, Sheila, Les, Adonis and Anthony. Finally, I also want to remember my mum, dad and ex-in-laws, who are all sadly missed.

Foreword

By the editor

When you pick up this book imagine the author to be in your sitting room with a cup of coffee (or more likely, a glass of red wine) and she is talking to you in a relaxed and informal manner, just as if she is your friend who has dropped by for a chat. The conversation rolls around various subjects – your work, your family, your relationships, and so on.

How Sheila Steptoe would chat to you is the way she has recorded the words in her book, in an easygoing manner. She wrote the book in just a couple of months. 74,000 words were tapped out with hardly a break from the keyboard, and she felt passionate about it. The book had been brewing for a number of years, but she had been wrestling with whether or not to publish. She was nervous, naturally enough, of exposing some quite intimate and emotional matters and who would be interested anyway? There is a natural curiosity about reading autobiographies of the famous but there is no real curiosity for the average person in the street to read about Sheila Steptoe. The one overwhelming need for her to publish was to help others; to give people a wake up call to get to know their family and friends on a deeper level and to do it NOW.

I read Book 1 in an evening and did wonder what the point of it was. Was it just an outpouring of troubles and woe describing a series of family events and arguments? I then read the contents of what is now Book 2 and saw the relationship between her life experiences and her thoughts on how she moved through each scenario; separating out the emotions she went through and analysing them, ascertaining why each event happened. This I found constructive and could relate to it myself. The manuscript was untidy - well it was early days in the production of the book but she wanted my thoughts which I gave and then she threw in that she needed an editor.

It took me a minute to recall my past in publishing and I volunteered my services - albeit having had no experience of editing an entire book. The red ballpoint pen quivered in my hand. However, I restrained myself; a perfectly written book was not the intention or in this case, important. What was important was its content. Sheila and I discussed that to keep it, more or less, in its raw state gave it a certain appeal and Sheila wanted to keep its easy, chatty style. So here I was learning one of my lessons in life, learning to step back and go with the flow.

Towards the end of editing the final chapters I felt there was something missing. Is there another reason for the book? I asked. The answer came back weeks later because Sheila was still moving through her life’s journey and getting to know herself. She decided it was a closure on an unhappy period of my life, which I cannot change at the moment and something I had to do in order to move on. There you have it; sometimes you have to let things rest to see how they unfold for themselves. This is what she has been prepared to do for the sake of, hopefully, saving the relationship with her daughter. Distancing herself from the situation and getting on with other projects are not because she doesn’t care; far from it.

Is she lucky to have found a way to close this particular episode of her life? Not lucky but forthright and hard working. She looked within herself and found a new belief and found the energy to move forward. Something she says any one of us can do when we need to.

There may be much you will be able to relate to your own life in this book. It is an aladdin’s cave of emotions and the pearls and gems of wisdom are there for the taking. It is Sheila’s intention that you do raid the cave for whatever you find useful. Most importantly she hopes to pass on the lessons she has learnt in her life so far to her children and grandchildren. Book 1 is written as a letter to them all. You might be shocked at being able to view her life in such a personal way and you may find it rambling, but if there is just a small section that gets you to question aspects of your life and spurs you into action to change what you are not happy with, then the book will have served its main purpose. To provide the wake-up call people might need in order to look within themselves to achieve happiness and to help them on their own life journey.

Some people are doing this already – looking inwards at themselves. They are turning away from money, possessions and other people to find the happiness they seek and are receptive to learning about the New Age - the Age of Aquarius with its emphasis on humanity, kindness, truth, spirituality and enlightenment; all things that you can find within yourself. Sheila is definitely of the New Age.

Jonathan Cainer, astrologer for the Daily Mail, claims that the Age of Aquarius is truly dawning and that the separate ancient Eastern and Western expectations are now dovetailing beautifully into one global vision of peace and hope. Sheila’s own vision is one of peace and hope. Her birth sign is also Aquarius so whether or not this has something to do with her spiritual awakening at this time, I don’t know, and am not qualified to say. What I do understand is that her new belief in spiritualism has led her to her own self-improvement and that she has the potential to help others do the same. It has led her to writing this book which began as an inspiration, became a passion and which she turned into reality.

The weekend I was expecting to complete the final proof read, we actually put everything on hold due to emotional pressures Sheila was encountering. However, she held onto the main reason for the book which was to help others and she removed the stop and we moved onwards. If it can help just one other family mend a rift between a grandparent and child or grandparent and grandchild then she will consider the book successful and worthwhile. Unfortunately similar situations are occurring in millions of other families - far too many.

In 1997 Prince Charles launched an initiative called Respect, which seeks to promote greater tolerance between faiths. He called for all religions to unite in faith in the integrity of life itself. Before I Get Old and Wrinkly is not about religion and Sheila does not impose her beliefs on you. However, family turmoil expressed in her letter to her children and grandchildren does bring fighting and misunderstanding one another closer to home. It happens to most families. If we can teach respect and integrity to our children, generation to generation, it should spread naturally to the workplace and beyond into the world and may bring families and cultures together to live in harmony. We do not all have to be of the same religion, have the same interests, come from the same backgrounds to live in harmony. Respect for others, faith in ourselves and ownership of our actions are pieces in the jigsaw of life that will make things click together. This is all the author wants – togetherness, harmony in the family, harmony and peace in the world.

Let’s hope she and we can achieve it.

Lesley Townsend-White

About my life and my journey to finding peace

Book One

My letter to you all

To my dear son, daughter and grandchildren, where my life is going at this moment in time I am not quite sure. But isn’t life an exciting journey? It is full of so many different emotions and experiences that sometimes it is hard to put it into words. Everyone’s life is like an adventure, each is different and personal but always an adventure and we never know what will happen next. Life can be full of magical moments but it can also change in an instant.

So much has happened in my life that I felt I would like to write to you and tell you more about it. You may wonder why and for what purpose, but for various important reasons, which I will explain to you as I write, I feel that the time is now right for you both, Anni and Robert, and for my grandchildren to know and understand the deeper me.

Another reason to write to you now is that when nanny and granddad both died, I realised afterwards that I did not really know them, and in some ways that hurt and surprised me. It suddenly dawned on me. Who were they, my mum and dad? All my life, why had I accepted that they were just my parents? While they were alive, I had never actually wanted or even thought about who they were as individual people.

They had a life before I came along, but it never occurred to me to ask what it was like. Yes, I knew certain things about them but I never knew their feelings, or what they got up to! Both had done quite a lot in their lives, of which in some ways, I knew very little.

I am sure that they had a wonderful time, and that they were wonderful people, but it is too late for me to ask them now. The list of questions I needed answers to seemed odd in a way. Why did I not ask them when they were alive? Perhaps if I had, I would have felt differently after their death as I would have understood them more.

I also felt guilty in a way because mum and dad may not have known that I loved them. I never told them and I just assumed that they knew. We did not have the sort of relationship where loving words were said, or emotions expressed and I feel sad about that. That is why I tell you both often that I love you. Those three little words are so hard for some people to say, but mean so much.

At this moment you probably feel just the same about me now. I’m just your mum but I am also me. To you, I may be old and beginning to get wrinkly, but inside I am still young. I don’t feel my age and according to one of you I don’t act it either! What a lovely compliment it was when one of you said; Mum, I think you should grow up and stop acting like a teenager. This is how I feel. I am sure I will be old one day but I’m not there yet.

I am having a lovely life with plenty of good times (as well as bad), but since you all came into my life, I have never really been able to tell you how I have felt during various stages. I think we may all be guilty of this, and perhaps we should talk more but there never seems to be enough time. I have had a great life so far with some real fun and laughter. I have also had some real heart breaks, one of which is still breaking my heart today, as you know.

But before I met daddy, I had a brilliant life of which you know very little. I grew up in the late 60’s and early 70’s and that was a great era to be a teenager. We were the first to experience so many of the trends that you now copy. Mini skirts, platform shoes; so many of your modern songs are copies from my generation of songwriters. The list is endless, but I also went through the feeling that my parents never understood me - just like you felt when you were teenagers.

I was your age once and did all the things you used to get up to. I also had boyfriends before I met daddy. A couple of them you know as we are still friends now. And then when I met daddy, we had a brilliant marriage and for three years we had time together before the first one of you entered into our world. Robert that really was such a wonderful honour to have you in our lives.

But of course, at the moment as you both know, the family is split apart through the most horrendous circumstances, and I have not been able to tell you how I have really felt. I never ever thought that one of you would ever do something as awful as this to me. No one can understand how I feel, unless they have experienced one of their children or grandchildren being taken away from them. I hope that this never happens to either of you, as the pain is truly unimaginable.

The pain has eased with time, but the heartache nearly made me go insane. What kept me sane were two things: my wonderful friends and something amazing that started to happen to me. It is something which I have never ever really been able to explain to you properly, or even talk to you about, but which is beautiful and I shall tell you about it as I write.

We have tried talking to each other but we never seem to hear each other, so I hope that by writing about the experiences that have happened to us all, you may understand me better, and, then in some way it may be easier to understand why it happened.

I am only writing about my feelings and thoughts, and how I see things. I am sure that you will both have your own feelings and thoughts on your childhood and the experiences that we have all been through. There are always two sides to everything, but for some reason it is important to me that you may begin to understand me better, just as I had wanted to know and understand my own parents.

None of us will ever know each other completely; that would be impossible and I am sure that there may be lots in my life, and yours, that we would not want each other to know. But I hope that you will begin to see why parents have unconditional love for their children, no matter what happens.

You both have children of your own, my grandchildren, whom I adore as you know. Hopefully I will have more grandchildren one day, and I am sure I will love them just as much as the two I have now. You also know that I will always love you both, but this, I am afraid, has caused me such pain that my heart has been broken.

I also want my granddaughter to know that I have never ever forgotten her, and I never will. Not a day goes by without her being in my thoughts. I cannot begin to imagine the pain and hurt and the mixed emotions that she has gone through, at such a young tender age.

So let me start by telling you how I feel about my life and the emotions that I have now, as strangely enough through all the turmoil I have come to a stage when I now realise that I have inner peace. This is perhaps the secret to life, learning to find the peace within. It has taken me a long time to get to this wonderful stage and I am not quite there yet, being at complete peace, but I have learnt that through acceptance and faith that life does not have to be a struggle and we can learn to live in harmony.

Maturity …. arriving slightly creased

I love, I enjoy, I smile, I laugh, I feel, I weep, I cry, I hurt and I embrace but all with pain in my heart. This pain will not go away at the moment, but eases with time. Often