Warning: Men – uh uh. Not this one. Contains flashing images. Visual junkies that you are, they’ll be hardwired into your cortex. Okay, you can read the second half, but only the second.

Disclaimer: Story retelling often allows for a teeny tiny bit of poetic license. Credit to the lovely Lara for giving this one the nod.

Okay girls, gulp. Truth time.
What’s the biggie? Surely, I can’t have that much to hide.
I have that much to hide.
Ask my husband. After being married for 20 years, his latest furrowed brow remark directed my way was, “Uhm no…don’t be yourself”. Hard behind, my 16-year-old quipped, “Mum your license plate should read #nofilter”.
But I’m just saying what everyone else thinks.
Pat, pat. “No love, actually that’s not what everyone thinks.”

I’ve laid down the truth gauntlet, so here goes.
I hate sharing beauty secrets with pretty people.
There you go – fake Fiona truth number one. Well, I don’t mind sharing a few that won’t make any real difference to you at all – in fact that might send you on a very expensive waste of time tangent, like algae face masks that leave your face with a greeny green tinge, egg yolks in your hair… you know that kind of stuff. But real gems? Please. I mean who would share secrets with someone who already looks younger and prettier than you, that would make them look even younger and even prettier still? I know..
Okay, there is one person.
My truly beautiful, babe-luscious sister- in- love, Lara.
For those of you who’ve never met Lara, let’s just say she’d cause a blind man to stumble. (and no, not fall over).
Remember Melody from the Archie comics? The one who spoke with music notes all around her voice?
That’s Lara. My Melody Muse.

She ♪really ♬ does ♫ speak ♪ like ♫ that. And it’s not false.
Now, Lara is kind. Truly kind.
And Lara is beautiful. Truly beautiful.
And Lara has a body that should be censored.
And, (is there no justice in the world?) she doesn’t need to work out.
I know.
Hate her? If only. Because it’s impossible to hate Mother Theresa reincarnated as blonde Beyonce.

(That warning did sweet nothing right? A red flag to a snorting bull. Name and shame. Andrew Hoek. Victor Coert. Greg Benno. We see you.)

So anyway, Lara wrote up every single one of her beauty secrets and shared them with us mere wrinkly mortals. Typed nogal. I know. Bless her beautiful silk socks.
Her doting audience assembled eagerly for the impartation.
“ ♬♫Ladies, before I start ♫ , the most important beauty♬of all is our inner beauty, the ♬unfading beauty of ♬a gentle and quiet spirit ♬”
To the side a scuffle broke out as a few wrinkled desperados launched a frenzied pounce at her notes, stacked just out of reach.
“♪♫ Now girls, pretty is as pretty does♪♫” She cast an approving beam of Lara light at those uninvolved in the kerfuffle. Sweet sigh. “ ♪♫Patience is wisdom ♪♫”
In all honesty, the recipients of her praise looked more beyond hope, than epitomes of restraint. Catatonic inertia of the despairing. Classic symptom.
“ ♪♫Beauty is not in the face, beauty is a light in the heart♪♫”. Synchronized eyelash flutter.
I swear by now, the girl next to me’s nostrils were flaring Morse code for GIVE US THE FRIKKIN NOTES. Maybe Lara pitied us sad sacks and wanted to sprinkle some of her antirust-dust on us. But I think it’s just because she really is that lovely.

“I’m glad you’re turning out as sweet as Aunty Lara now” Jesse proclaimed to me recently, with his usual frankness.
Game on. I’m living up to the Lara, and coming clean with a real babe-body buster: Dr Ho.
Or Derriere, Dr Ho Ho Ho, because you will be chuckling whilst all your friends sweat their sweet dimples off. True story- for this little genie brings you a toned- honed -to- perfection booty with none of the grunting, or body fluid emissions associated with unmentionable E. And not just there. Anywhere. A colourful placement diagram indicates where toning pads should be applied whilst a mobile control unit regulates mode / intensity.
There’s more. Dr Ho can work his magic whilst you are cooking, reading, watching telly – or engaged in any number of higher pursuits. Case in point: as I type, my upper right thigh muscles are being flexitoned to pristine condition. What more could a girl want?

(The men are still reading, right? Skimming fervishly through the text with that haunted beady eyed look. Hunting down the carrot they thought I dangled. Guys. There’s no carrot. Trust me. You will be scarred.)

Back to sleepy bums. Bootylicious Zoe Bray Cotton explains this as a common condition where our glute muscles become largely dormant, inactive and unable to be engaged properly (sounds like my husband). Long periods of sitting prevent oxygen and nutrients reaching our booty, and the muscles stop firing properly. Her masterful booty sculpting routine can be found here (http://www.yoga-burn.net/more-info-ybbc), but given the state of Mopey and Dopey I decided to give Ho a chance, binned the pamphlet and smacked those babies centre court.

Now, I’ve experienced a fair amount of pain in my time. Two natural child births, kidney stones, broken bones, and an ovarian cyst the size of a grapefruit (British doctors being the definitions of decorum I reckon that baby was more melon sized). In fact, come to think of it, the only type of pain possibly missing from my repertoire is that of actual torture.
Enter Dr Ho.

It’s Monday night and I’m letting Gay Google pick the playlist (short leash – one more Paper Lace track and she’s done). Rain by The Script is playing. (Okay, I chose the first one). I’m standing at my recycled – brought-from -poor -homeless-people – who -I’ve – trained – to- be – self-sufficient – worktop, stirring made- from -scratch- planted -the – love -apples -my- self – tomato soup. (Okay- flip! truth is exhausting- the soup’s from Checkers and work surface is Formica. Shoot me) Dr Ho’s zapping gently away, doing his magic. Two of my four kids are doing homework, one is practising violin and the fourth …. well, 3 out of 4 isn’t bad. Think Martha Steward meets Nigella Lawson (without the handcuffs and stranglehold. Now now.)

Abruptly, an eerie subhuman wail shatters the calm. I stare stunned as, slow motion, a red arc of possessed soup slews itself, Jason Pollock style, across the wall. For a nanosecond I’m transfixed – The Flame! – before I follow suit, as in literally follow the soup in a synchronized double leg leap clean across the kitchen.
Ozzy Osbourne just swallowed Mary Poppins.
With cries of “Beep beep beep” violin practice screeches to a stuttering stop, homework books are flung aside, and 3 earnest faces descend on the kitchen. (Number 4 remains noticeably, in abstentia). ‘Everyone alright in there?” comes a bellow from outside. Our tenant is peering short-sightedly through the slatted blinds. Apparently, the banshee shriek had brought him running. Bless. Even blinds dripping red had failed to deter him from his heroic rescue dash.

The culprit? Dr Ho, Mother of all Modes B, Intensity 5.
Oh. My. Friggin. Throbbing. Gluteus. Maximus. That. Was. Sore

Inadvertently, I’d brushed up against the mobile control unit in my pocket, sending the dial thundering to maximum output. Think taser -branding. On replay. Because the problem with Dr Ho’s control unit is that you can’t control anything – not even your bowel movements – when MODE B, LEVEL 5 is on.
My poor body, rendered helpless by the relentless bam BAM BAM searing through me, performed a series of contortionist backbenders, not unlike our confused spaniel when she (yes) humps our male Beagle – sideways. Dr Not So Funny Now. My poor beautiful children and vexed neighbour bore witness to my electrocution as I was sent bucking all over the kitchen on my Groundhog re run. I hung there mid-air (not included in the manual), until the bewitched sadist released me for a drop landing. Simperingly grateful, I was about to kiss sweet terra firma when I heard my son’s horrified whisper, “Mum, what are you wearing? “

Mortification reset. Poor circulation and comfort had prescribed bulging layers and an un elasticised pair of pyjama trousers. Protruding out of these, now much lowered bottoms, A.R.A (also read as) my bottom, were 2 dangling electrodes. Probably wrenched free in my body’s anguished arch across the room. Huddled in a smoking heap, I distinctly resembled a failed suicide bomber. For the bland finale- please God is there no end- the bandage securing the toning pads detached itself from Dopey, rolled limply across the floor, and came defeatedly to the end of itself. Much like me.

In that moment I understood what umpteen psychology lecturers had failed to make me see. The etiology of multiple personality disorder. What alternative, but to shut down when the unspeakable occurs? But- ray of light- into the unthinkable my merciful angel appeared. Gay Google. And so it was, that to the saving anthem of “We’re gonna ri-ri-ri-ri-rise ’til we fall”, my alter ego rose from the floor, with an effusive “Hey ho” to, the, by now, paralytic Graeme (Hey ho?! What the…)
“Ahem…Hey There Graeme! (cheery wave) Just helping Joseph out with his science project. This conductive electricity sure is something else!”

(No children were physically harmed in the making of this episode. Just emotionally scarred for life)

Is that it? Slap a flexitone pad on Dopey and hold on for the ride? Some days, yes. That’s all I have.

But when life allows, I get to wondering. What is it about pain and beauty, that links them so inextricably? Have you noticed how those most beautiful, have often suffered the most? Beauty is, it seems, only soul deep.

“Everything happens for a reason”. If you think about it, what’s actually being said is “Everything happens for a good reason”. Now I get the logic when things turn out for good. But, this world is full of horrors that, no matter how we try and make them fit, just don’t. You may disagree. I’m not saying I’m right. But, for me, there’s no reason a child gets abducted – except if you call sickos a reason. Some pain is just pointless.

But I do believe, we can take that pointless pain, and use it for a good purpose. Mostly.

Aish. My brain is fried right now. Abit like poor Mopey. Hang in there dear reader. We rode high together (well I did, while you watched), so if you’re up for one last push?

Okay, so here’s how I see it. There’s the pain we choose, and there’s the pain that chooses us.
Olympian athlete, Louis Zamperini chose his pain when he fixed his eyes on Olympic glory. His phenomenal life is retold in the film, Unbroken. (Oh, my word, I adore Jack O Connell)
Second time round, his pain chooses him. It’s World War II and, after enlisting in the military, his plane goes down. He’s adrift for 47 days in a life raft, until captured and imprisoned in a Japanese POW camp.

Although the movie is Louis’ story, there’s another powerful player in determining who he becomes. His brother.
I say becomes, because Louis wasn’t always en route to greatness. The opposite in fact. His life was one delinquent mess up after another until finally, his brother Pete confronts him.
Angrily, Louis lashes back, “I’m nothing. Let me be nothing.” “You’ve got to believe you can.” urges Pete.
Louis remains defeated, “I don’t believe.”
Pete looks at his younger brother and speaks life to him, “I do.”
Long before he was stranded on a lifeboat, Louis was adrift with no idea who he was or what he was for. But his brother did. And because Pete believed for him, Louis starts to see his greatness and go after it.
Then the pointless finds him. Evil hunts him down, literally, in the form of deranged Japanese guard A.K.A The Bird. Savagely, he targets Louis with merciless beatings. Laid out, broken, in the dust, Louis remembers his childhood bully’s taunts: “Stay down. Stay down.”
But the problem with Louis is, he now believes.
Time after time, he staggers back up.
Relentless in his resolution to crush Louis, one of the final scenes shows The Bird, forcing him to hold a 6 ft long wooden beam at arm’s length, above his head. Louis is starved, filthy, beaten and close to death. The two men face each other, one full of hate; one broken, but full of beauty. Gone are the cheering crowds, the adulation. Evil has Louis Zamperini in its cross-hairs and its raging.

Here cometh the darkest hour, and here cometh the warrior man.
The beam drops slightly, resting on Louis’s head as he holds it steady. His ribs, protruding visibly from his skeletal body, rise and fall with rasping breaths. His eyes are closed, his body swaying, close to falling. But then, a lift of the head. A flutter. His eyes open, and the warrior in Louis looks straight at The Bird. The one his brother saw, that he couldn’t. With every muscle strained to breaking point, he grips the heavy splintered beam in his bloodied hands, thrusts it high above his head, and roars.

Imagine the school boy crossing the finish line at the Olympics. Now, see his emaciated frame, beam aloft, eyes blazing.
In which moment is he more glorious?

For me, the second.
But made possible only by the first.
For Louis had to be saved from himself, before he could overcome what was against him.
When his brother’s belief transformed him, he woke up. (Just like Mopey and Dopey in hibernation. Did I just use my sleepy derriere as a life lesson? Moving swiftly on).
Face to face with his enemy, it’s not the pain that makes Louis glorious. It’s his response to it.

What’s mine?
Will I dig deep, find the piece of me I didn’t know I had, but she was there all along?
Despite the deep sadness that always lingers, will I get up?
So, I’m reaching. There’s my strength. And I’m weeping. There’s my bravery. And I bring her, with a roar and a groan, into the light. She’s limping and bruised and gasping. But, she’s standing. One big zap sign to pain.
And finally, I get something else. Why those most beautiful, are those who’ve suffered most. (not always true if you flip it) Like Louis, they’ve overcome that which was against them, by becoming so much more.

I promise to try end now (but you can stop anytime you know and have a cuppa 😊).

I was rescued for a reason.Two of those reasons now sleep with tousled heads two doors down from mine – one with the blanket hanging sideways off his bed, hardly covering him at all. His clothes are usually on back to front, and often inside out. He regularly runs (hard) into lampposts, falls over, and laughs gleefully at anything fart related. And he’s the kindest, gentlest boy I know.

When Lara reminded us wrinkled desperadoes (yes, I headed up the failed note seizure attempt) of the unfading beauty of the spirit, she was speaking of the beauty forged in a thousand responses to a thousand pains.
What if, in a world of so much pain, we could turn that, one person at a time, into so much beauty?
I come alongside you as you limp, and you see that I too, carry a limp.
As you grieve, you see that I too, shoulder a deep sorrow.
I show you that this unthinkable sadness, so deep and wide and high, may always be with you. But you get to choose if it will be your making.

I vividly recall ( those close to me will know that’s a rare feat), the day Torsten and I left Alina and Joseph in Russia. We had to make 3 trips there before finally bringing them home. How do you explain to a 3-year-old whom you’re leaving, that you’re coming back for him? I knelt down in the doorway, on the hard-concrete floor, in front of my son Joseph Vadim Immanuel and said to him “Ya tebya lublu Vadim. I love you, I’m coming back for you”. How do you walk away from your heart that you’re leaving behind in a little soul with a funny haircut?
Becoming all of you, will take all of you.

Would you rather not know about all the pain in the world? Who would?
Let’s not go softly into the night.