Apologies but this week’s blog is going to be a long haul. In fairness it’s going to be a lot of photos, so think more comic book than gripping saga.
The reason I started writing my thoughts in blog form is because I thought pre op; that I would be some monstrous, repulsive, unsightly, unspeakable, abhorration ~ mutilated and utterly appalling…no kidding, no exaggeration. This was my thought process and expectation of my life post stoma surgery.
I thought I’d never leave the house again, and I most definitely thought I’d never see my friends in the flesh again.
So as you can imagine, going from that to me wearing in public, and posting on social media photos in my bikini, well, it’s something of a change of heart.
It’s beyond a delight. It’s something that every day is a source of joy.
I expected to be never seen again, and now I’m out and about every single day. Loving life, living it to the full, and happily sharing that journey with others.
And as shallow as this may seem, wearing nice clothes and feeling like I look good wearing them is really important to me, and extremely gratifying.
I don’t feel that I dress well despite my stoma…that seems dismissive of the fact that I feel I am able to dress well with it.
It hasn’t altered what I wear in a negative way. I feel like I look good, and I enjoy dressing well.
(If I didn’t want to I wouldn’t of course. I feel free to choose. Because some days I feel I look like a bag of crap, and that’s okay too. I don’t ever burden myself with expectation).
So that’s me, I’m shallow enough that I want to be judged on how I look, I have no deep and meaningful agenda, I can’t help anyone feel good about their stoma, but I can show that if someone wanted to, they can still dress well after surgery.
And the reason we often feel like we can’t, is because we are generally told that shitting in a bag attached to the abdomen is dirty and disgusting.
When in fact, in my opinion and experience (not everyone feels this way I am aware) it’s actually far superior to having a bumhole.
I honestly feel elevated, and more than a little smug over my friends who still have the old fashioned plumbing. I listen to their stories of near misses with finding toilets in time, and worse than that, not finding toilets in time, as I remember having a bottom isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, if you’ll pardon the pun! ;)
Mainly, actually, probably only because I have an exceptionally well behaved colostomy.
Someone with a very unpredictable and explosive ilesostomy, understandably, isn’t going to feel as at ease and as fortunate as I do.
So I can only speak from my experience with stoma-ing, and it’s amazing! I appreciate I’m probably in the minority here.
More than anything I wish people can find peace with a stoma, I would love it if they loved it, or liked it even. But it’s a struggle for some, so being at peace with it is my main hope for others.
Stoma Neutrality, is better than loathing it.
I was incredibly lucky that my brain reset immediately after surgery. I went from fearing impending doom, to a ray of sunshine and feeling great about myself in an instant.
I do believe I am weird in this, even I find it very odd, but that’s me I guess, I’ve always been a little bit weird.
It’s far more common and understandable to feel other worldly, like the rug has been ripped from under your feet and that your place in the world has been destabilised.
No two stomas are the same, no two experiences are the same. Some will thrive, and some will struggle. And neither experience is the norm, there isn’t a standard pathway.
We’re all so completely different. And that is okay. We are who we are.
I don’t have to justify why I feel good about myself and life, just as much as someone shouldn’t have to defend not feeling good about themselves. We should all be less judgmental and kinder in that respect. The rules are, there are no rules. We’re all so very different.
My quest is simply to show it’s possible to dress well with a bag of poo attached. But in no way should anyone else feel they have to dress up to be accepted.
Like I said, a lot of the time I look like a sack of crap, I simply choose not to take, or post those pictures.
The dress below is from Tesco. I love supermarket clothing lines. I think you can not only get bargains price wise, but the quality is unexpectedly good.
I have a couple of Primark dresses come to that which are really high quality feeling, but with purse friendly prices.
Dress from Tesco, Shoes from Hermes, Bag from LV
I enjoy putting outfits together, it’s all part of living life like I’m playing full size dolls houses I suppose.
Dress from Tesco, Shoes from Hermes, Bag from Goyard, Hat from Locke and Co.
Not only do I get to dress up, I get to fully participate in life, especially all the best bits, like eating out and catching up with friends ~ the cancer ravaged me meant I didn’t get to enjoy life’s simple pleasures.
Is there a greater experience than good food and good company?
Dress from Nobody’s Child, Shoes from Dior.
Top from Gant, Jeans from Tesco, Shoes from Jimmy Choo
I spent the first part of last week in a hotel in London, with a view to having a lovely time shopping for a wedding guest outfit, but my goodness me, it was brutal.
These are just 4 of the 27 dresses I tried in one day, yep, actually twenty seven in one day!, plus the 6 I’d ordered online to try on at home, which were awful too.
So as it turned out, Tuesday last week was a day of frustration because nothing was fitting me. These dresses range from £295 to £450 and the fit on every single one of them was off.
(I’ve made £550 on my Vinted sales so I gave myself a healthy budget for this dress. As long as it fit beautifully and had other wears in it. I’m all about value for money and pounds per wear now).
They’ve photographed quite well actually, and my smiles belie what I was actually feeling, which was crushing disappointment. It wasn’t a joyful experience.
I needed the dress for our very very good friend’s wedding. It’s not my day obviously, it’s not about me in the slightest, it’s about the bride and groom, but at the same time I want to dress to the best of my ability.
It’s normal to want to go out looking nice, and the way my dress hunt was going it seemed like that wasn’t going to happen.
I am somewhat melodramatic, but at one point I got a bit teary when the very lovely sales assistant in Harrods insisted they would have loads of things to fit me, and that I wasn’t to fret about it at all.
It was after I had tried on dress 22 that he said “Okay, look, you are not big, you have a small waist, but you do have big boobs and a bum, you are womanly, you are very shapely”
He is absolutely correct, I simply have the audacity to be woman shaped in a world where it’s offensive to the designers of dresses.
None of the dresses they were handing me to try on fit my boobs in. The cheek of me having boobs!!
And then, finally we found the dress and my heart felt warm and fuzzy. Honestly as ridiculous as it sounds, I was so happy and relieved. Although it shouldn’t be that hard to fit boobs in a woman’s dress.
The dress is in this edition of The Suzanne Chronicles, further down the page.
Other than feeling inadequately shaped for society I did have a lovely time in London for the few nights I was there. I met up with friends for dinners, I went for lunches (probably not helping the shapeliness of my body, but food is love in my humble but clearly oversized body’s opinion).
I am a peculiar creature anyway, I get anxious about nights out with friends in our area, like when I freaked out about going to the local racecourse the other weekend, but I’m perfectly happy wandering around London, at night, in the dark. I make no sense.
Top from The White Company, Jeans from Tesco, Bag from Gucci, Shoes from Jimmy Choo.
I spent the next day strolling through the shops with gay abandon, because the dress was bought and I could just enjoy myself perusing the wares of all the shops. I bought a few things from Gap. And then later met Chris for a paella. Food is love right. Xx
Then we come to a very exciting day, we were taking clients on The Belmond British Pullman train (the UK version of the Orient Express).
I found the dress for this event ages ago. I had the shoes and accessories ages ago too.
But it’s a simple black dress, which is far easier than wedding guest dress shopping, because I wouldn’t wear black to a wedding, as much as I wouldn’t ever wear cream or white to one.
Dress from The White Company, Shoes, Bag and mitzah scarf all from Christian Dior.
I loved this outfit! Absolutely Loved it! Dressing without a time constraint, and without an internalised dress code is very easy for me…but add in all those things and I go to pieces. :)
I overheard an American lady say to her partner as they were getting off the train, after our day out that it had been a trip of a lifetime, which made me feel very lucky, because we’ve been on there multiple times, and it’s always been incredible. This trip was no exception. We took clients of Chris’s and we are so lucky that everyone we’ve ever taken out have been fabulous company. And Louise and Andy were no exception to that. We’re really lucky that all Chris’s clients are wonderful people, a lot of them have become good friends, who we love spending time with.
It was such a pleasure to host them on Friday, hopefully we’ll be catching up with them again soon as we have finally decided we have to visit The Cotswolds, and handily they live there. :)
And then we come to the big day, our friends’ wedding. Some people spend years planning their wedding, but not Micheal and Catie, oh no, they created an entire full blown wedding in 5 weeks!! Catie is my new superhero!!
The wedding was flawless, which is beyond impressive!
Five weeks to pull off a beautiful, bold, and memorable wedding.
It was fantastic!! Made all the more special because they very kindly invited my entire family, including Zak. Of course all of our friends were there too because we are a very tight family/friends group.
It was an exceptional day! So if you’re planning a wedding, I advise doing it start to finish in 5 weeks. Probably still stressful, but on a much shorter time frame.
I loved the whole day! The ceremony was outdoors in the glorious September sunshine. We don’t get to do that much in England. But it couldn’t have been more perfect, I blubbed, obviously, I can’t help it, Catie looked stunning, absolutely sensational, I blubbed even more when a gorgeous little butterfly flew around them as they were saying their vows, then flew off. It was so special.
James, the groom’s brother gave a fabulous best man speech. And bless them, Michael and Catie gave me a special mention, and the hugest box of fudge as a thank you for loaning them some table centre pieces…I mean of all the things I’ve ever done ~ lending table scaping wasn’t the hardest was it, have you met me? I almost insist I lend you table scapes on regular days, let alone special occasions! Hahahah
I was very happy to have been able to help, that’s what friends are for, no thanks necessary. We’re also meeting up with them on their honeymoon in India, okay, so that might be slightly above and beyond the call of duty. Hahahahahaha. Really can’t wait for that either. :)
My dress of dresses! The one, a dress that proved you can have boobs and a bum…and a colostomy and still look good.
Dress from All Saints, Shoes from Jimmy Choo, bag from Aspinal of London
This dress was a bargain. Firstly I instated one of my 10% off days I get as a Harrods clubcard holder, plus I used the £25 in Harrods clubcard points, plus plus I used our Amex, which gives us 1% cash back, so not only was it the perfect dress for my body shape it was also very cost effective. Plus again, online on the dresses website it’s shown styled in 5 different ways, so I know I will wear it again and again. Well, at least 4 more times anyway! ;)
I did laugh when I realised what had happened in the store. When I came out of the dressing room in this dress, bearing in mind I had got a bit teary eyed during the none of the other dresses fitting me extravaganza, the sales assistant said to me “oh madam it’s perfect on you, you are exuding peace”
I thought he meant because I had calmed the **** down after finally fitting into a dress. But what I realised when I saw the photos of it was that it’s covered in floral CND peace signs! hahahahah
He also said that I must be delighted as the dress was a UK size 12. But I put him right on that point. I didn’t care what size the label said, what had upset me was the fact that I had tried the largest sizes they sell in 21 dresses, and I couldn’t get them to do up! The label size was irrelevant, when the biggest they sell didn’t fit me!
All’s well that ends well as I love this frock.
The wedding….
Ben and Erin
Erin, Ben, Mils and Sam
Photo taken by Zak, aged 4 and a half. He understood the assignment. :)
Wishing Michael and Catie a lifetime of happiness, and wishing them all the best for their Saudi Arabian adventures! Xx
Zak and Kim’s girls played beautifully together the whole day, Zak took photos throughout the day and got some beauts of the girls!
He’s a pretty good photographer for 4!
As the children had played so well together, and so we could all have some fun, we decided to spend the next day at Clacton Pier. It exceeded expectation! It was sooo much fun.
Shirt from Gap, Jeans from Tesco, Shoes from Christian Dior, Bag from Balenciaga
We had the Dodgems to ourselves twice, which was so much fun, it has to be one of the highlights of my life, although poor Bel, my passenger, got thrown around like a rag doll, bless her.
Chris, Ben, Erin, Mils, Sam, and even Kim and the girls and Zak went on the more white knuckle rides. I prefer more sedate ones, like ride on Hungry Hippos and a dinosaur killing game. I am a wuss, and proud of it.
It was such a fantastic day. Finished off with fish and chips and sticks of rock, and hot donuts.
It honestly couldn’t have been a better weekend.
If you’ve reached this point, thank you for your perseverance, I did tell you it was a long one. 😘
Keep well, see you next week. Xx