My Creativity Portal is Open for Business

I believe in the power of the universe to hep with life decisions. I believe that there is some kind of higher being, but I don’t know who it is. It could be God, or Lakshmi, or Allah, or Buddha or in my world it could the souls of my parents.

Dad’s Death

In 1996 a few days before my first year maths degree exams at Brunel were just about to sat my dad suddenly died. It was 29th May and I had just turned 19, I have been living away from home for the first time in my life for eight months. I was still financially dependant on my father, especially as my mum had died three years before just after my GCSE exams had finished.

I remember the 29th May 1996 so clearly. The night before I had been out with my boyfriend, we had been drinking and eventually made it to bed, a single bed always, in the early hours. The hall way phone was ringing and ringing at 7am. No one called that early, it was ignored but it kept on ringing. One of my lad friends Craig eventually got up and answered. It was was my sister, saying that she urgently needed to speak to me.

He ran up to my room, no sign of me, then rans to said boyfriends room as a second guess. ‘Lynn, you really need to come to the phone, it’s your sister, something has happened’. I left Gareth in bed and walked to the public phone with Craig, he knew something was up and stayed with me.

Yvonne my sister was on the end of the landline, her in Penzance, me in Uxbridge, ‘Lynn, dad had a massive heart attack last night and died’. I collapsed onto the floor and started heaving sobs, I couldn’t breathe through the uncontrollable emotion. Craig picked up the phone and spoke to my sister reassuring her he would stay with me.

Eventually I stopped heaving and spoke to Yvonne, she said ‘We are jumping in car right now, we’ll see you in six hours to bring you home’. Craig gave me the longest and kindest hug, ‘what do you want to do Lynn?’ I just wanted to go back to bed. I returned to boyfriends room, said, ‘I have to go home to Penzance, my dad has died, but I’ve got a few hours’. So I curled up in bed and he cuddled me until I fretfully fell asleep.

6 hours later I was bundled into my sisters boyfriends car on the way back to Penzance. Sat in the backseat like a tiny young child with all random stuff I’d packed for however long I was going to be at home.

Mum’s Death

Reverse back three years, on the 26th June 1993 my mum had a heart attack, just about survived, then a few hours later had another and died whilst in hospital. I was 16, and had just finished my GSCE exams a few days before.

I was in Penzance when this was happening, I was out with my friends so never saw any of the emergency, ambulance and panic. I was taken to the local Penzance hospital that evening to see my mum, still clinging on, hooked up to every machine in the world. High dependency units are very scary places for the strongest of people. I held her hand and said ‘Please get better’, she looked at he and raised her eyebrows as if to say no, this is it.

I truly believe at that point she passed on all of her strength, determination and magic to me. A few hours later she had a second heart attack and died.

Forks of Life

I am telling the story of their death to now share something that means a lot to me. Of course, it was life changing and a huge trauma to go through the ages of 16 and 19. It was forks of life that turned me into an adult and the Lynn you maybe know today, Lynn before 26th June 1993 was a different person, a child.

I see this time of the year as a portal to immense creativity, resilience and decision making. My mum and dad are literally there encouraging me to say yes to the right things, no to the wrong ones, encouraging me to a leap of faith to change my (and my boys) lives for the better. Of course I refer to my real life mentors as well, you know who you are. It’s no coincidence that I ended my marriage on the 2nd June 2019 and my decree absolute arrived on 29th May 2020.

The portal opens on or around the 29th May and closes on or around 26th June, their respective death days. This year the door opened slightly early on 22rd May with my appearance on Woman’s Hour where I shared my personal story of love bombing. I had recently been suffering from insomnia with nasty perimenopause symptoms and I woke at 3am one morning, saw a woman’s hour post and thought, aha they need to talk about Love Bombing. I DM’d them my thoughts, pitched my idea and sent a recent article I had written about a two-month love bombing experience from earlier in 2024. Said love bombing article.

They got straight in touch the next day with a BIG yes and I was booked on. Yep people if your story is that good, relevant, can help women, you are fine with millions of people hearing you and are comfortable talking on the radio, then you might get onto Woman’s Hour.

It was an incredible experience from beginning until now, six days later. I arrived super early and chilled out in Broadcasting House reception opposite Rafe Spall, me a celeb like him. Simone Bose the therapist, my fellow Woman’s Hour buddy arrived shortly after, I recognised her, ran over and hugged her. We were both a bit nervous about talking to millions of people about love bombing.

We were collected by Maz in her punky outfit and red lipstick, we were immediately welcomed, made to feel comfortable and escorted us to the green room, with a piano and coffee. We spent a few minutes being calm, chatting, then were taken into the studio to meet Nuala McGovern the presenter. She is so wonderful, made us feel at ease, her Irish accent is like silk and she is such a natural interviewer. She interviewed Imo Boddy first, all about her INCREDIBLE three peaks challenge, not just running up the peaks, also running between them!

We were up next 10:15 to 10:30. I shared my story succinctly, but with emotion and vulnerability, Nuala asked some questions, when did you see the red flags kinda things. Then Simone came in and explained why love bombing happens. We both shared the signs to look for and how to get out, or what to do if you are in that situation. Lots of comments were coming in from listeners, many from men, one man comments, ‘It’s not just men who love bomb, women do it too’. Simone jumped on this one, yes some women love bomb, but it’s scientifically proven that more men than women do this particularly to gain control over vulnerable women.

Please listen to the show, you will learn so much, particularly if you don’t know you do it, or have experienced it. Or you want to know what to do if its happening to you? Sadly it’s so common.

The BBC put out a reel on Wednesday afternoon, and the comments and DM’s and followers started rolling in. Six days later this continues. Women are incredible, we go through SO much with men, and babies, and divorce, and perimenopause and then the periods stop and suddenly we are too old to work, or to be beautiful. All Bollocks.

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We have beautiful bodies, boobs (I love boobs), we can orgasm multiple times, we give birth, we are incredible at multi-tasking, we can balance everything (kids, work, social life, fitness, aging family, logistics, housework, I can go on and on). We are better investors than men, proven by Warwick Business School via this article from Boring Money. We are better at household savings and can make a roast chicken stretch for three evening meals with ease. We have empathy and therefore make better leaders and negotiators.

Shall I go on? Ha, woman are amazing and I was SO honoured to speak to all of you (4 million of you) on Woman’s Hour. The feedback has been overwhelmingly positive from the audience and the shows producers. I am sure I will be back on, maybe even to talk about money;-). We had a little photoshoot after the show and off I went to do some work with a client at London Bridge.

Time for Change, Growth and Success

This is a time of huge change, a portal. Many new projects are flowing and will be shared very soon.

My Book The Money Guide to Transform your Life is being updated to Edition 2. I am going to do a small print run where you will be able to buy direct from me for the lower price of £10 (inc P&P), it will be £14.99 on Amazon, I only get £6.22 of the sale!). There will also be a kindle/PDF edition for £7.99 ( I get a £5.45 cut).

I’ll turn on my shop on my website to enable you to safely pay via Stripe. Part one of my book is all about money for now and how to get through the on-going cost of living crisis, budgeting, bill savings, debt, food savings. Part two is all about the future, emergency savings, ISAs, investing, protection and pensions.

I’ll also be re-rereleasing the wonderful podcast episodes from S4 that I recorded with people like Pete Matthew – Meaningful Money, Romi Savova CEO of PensionBee and Amy Sheppard Food, each talking through the important points from each chapter. Or you listen/watch any of these episodes on my podcast page on website, or Spotify, Apple Music, where you listen to your podcasts, just search for Mrs Mummypenny.

My podcast Mrs Mummypenny Talks is back for S6 in June, this season is all about the BIG Questions and features guests including Timi Merriman-Johnson (Mr Money Jar) talking ‘What is Happiness?’. Faith Archer (Much More with Less) talking ‘What is Financial Freedom?’, Sara Williams (Debt Camel) with ‘My Debt is Out of Control’. It’s going to be INCREDIBLE. Recording starts this week. I am so excited.

Work continues to flow with exciting projects coming with PensionBee, Octopus Energy and Zopa Bank to name a few. And of course it’s the summer of fun, so I have a few holidays planned. A gorgeous rest and yoga retreat in Kent mid June with Freeform Yoga Freddie, family holiday with my wonderful friend Kate and our boys to Rhodes, then a festival (where I work and play) mid Aug, then Cornwall home for a week end of August with Neilboy to visit my sister. With no men or relationships to tie me down.

The last thing to mention is 4th July election. I am passionate about politics and have been so engaged since I started listening to ‘The rest is Politics’ Podcast from Alistair Campbell and Rory Stuart. I am involving myself in the campaign. Firstly encouraging everyone to register to vote, register to postal vote if on holidays and to register for FREE ID. After then, we shall see what I do. But I want the TORYS OUT.

What are your summer plans? Is there a time of the year where you can take on the world and change things for the better?