Lorraine Candy > Quotes

“Almost every woman over forty will talk about the rage, or the ‘mean reds’, as Audrey Hepburn called them in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. It’s volcanic.”
― Lorraine Candy, ‘Mum, What’s Wrong with You?’: 101 Things Only Mothers of Teenage Girls Know

“Some would have been grateful for hot flushes, had that been one of their symptoms. Anyway, the rage is raw and uncontrollable, and women have told me absolutely mad stories about hurling hoovers out of windows, punching holes in walls and driving cars into lamp posts.”
― Lorraine Candy, ‘Mum, What’s Wrong with You?’: 101 Things Only Mothers of Teenage Girls Know

“Boundaries are also proof for them that you love and care for them, only a person that wants them to grow up safely would set boundaries they can lean on.”
― Lorraine Candy, ‘Mum, What’s Wrong with You?’: 101 Things Only Mothers of Teenage Girls Know

“As someone once said, dogs are not our whole lives, but they make our lives whole.”
― Lorraine Candy, ‘Mum, What’s Wrong with You?’: 101 Things Only Mothers of Teenage Girls Know

“Obviously, what a perimenopausal, rage-filled woman needs to calm her nerves in that moment, just as the ship is becoming untethered from the dock and flung into a stormy sea, right in the middle of her demonic unravelling, is to live with a teenage girl. Or two, in my case. Just as you come apart, she is coming together.”
― Lorraine Candy, ‘Mum, What’s Wrong with You?’: 101 Things Only Mothers of Teenage Girls Know

“So listen up: there are at least thirty-eight symptoms of perimenopause and menopause. Most are caused by the gradual decline or fluctuation in hormones in a woman’s body as she ages. For the majority of women, it happens from the age of about forty. Aside from the much-chronicled (and, annoyingly often, laughed-at) hot flushes and night sweats, you can also get sore joints, insomnia, depression, dizziness, tingling in the extremities, loss of libido, numbness, headaches and tinnitus. Tinnitus? I mean, who knew you could get menopause of the ears, for god’s sake? There are also emotional or psychological symptoms, like anxiety and low mood, mood swings and panic attacks. But perhaps the most frustrating and surprising medically recognised symptom of the perimenopause is ‘the rage’.”
― Lorraine Candy, ‘Mum, What’s Wrong with You?’: 101 Things Only Mothers of Teenage Girls Know