'How the Hell Did He Have TIME to Have An Affair?!'
Plus, Robyn Malcolm on the 'second spring' that follows menopause.
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What We’re Thinking About This Week…
Mōrena!
Well, it’s March, isn’t it??? A large part of adult life seems to be looking at today’s date and letting out a quiet scream of horror – how?? When?? – at how fast time seems to be going. I’m sure I’m not the only one who sees the arrival of hot cross buns in the supermarket as a portent of doom at how quickly the sands of time are disappearing (the same thing happens with advent calendars arrive in October).
As a millennial, I obviously find a tremendous amount of my personality summed up by memes and nothing cuts to the quick more sharply than this one:
It’s a theme that Meg Mansell expands on in her latest column, about the relentlessness of time and how much she is struggling to ever slow down when there feels like there is always an endless to-do list. The mental load is a much-discussed topic here at Capsule but it is, sadly, always relevant. I hadn’t heard of the term ‘toxic productivity’ until Meg discussed it here, but her reality of working from a hospital bed is, sadly, one that I think a lot of us would relate to.
How do we get better at relaxing? I don’t know, but I will say that Sundays are a great time for trying to carve out a pause between relentless weeks. It’s one of the reasons we are so grateful when you spend some of that precious time reading this newsletter – because we know what it takes to find that time.
So, thank you, as always, for reading this!
The Divorce Diaries: ‘We’re So Busy – How the Hell Did He Have TIME to Have An Affair?!’
“How did he have time to cheat?!” That’s the question that has being going round and round in Sarah’s head since she her husband of 15 years said he was having an affair. But… how?!
When Sarah first saw the Facebook message from what was clearly a fake account, she immediately dismissed it.
She’d been married to her husband for 15 years and they had three children together. Their eldest was just finishing up his last year at primary school. Their second, who they went through years of IVF treatment to finally have, was about to start primary school. And their third was just a wee toddler – she’d been a surprise, but very welcome addition to their family – who was still not sleeping through the night. To be fair, Sarah had barely slept the last two years.
Life was busy. Sarah started work early – Mark did the morning drop-offs, while she left at 2.30pm to do the multiple pick-ups, the shuttling between football practice, karate and ballet classes. She was also the one who most often called in to take a sick day when one – or all – of the kids were unwell.
Her mother had a stroke the year before and had moved into care. She constantly felt guilty that she wasn’t there with her enough. Mark was doing his best to support her though – he’d often get home early so she could go to see her mum, or take the kids out on the weekend.
So, when she got this message out of the blue from a complete stranger, saying that her husband appeared to be having an affair, she almost laughed out loud.
“How?! We have no time!” she says was her immediate thought.
Robyn Malcolm Talks Openly About the Realities: Her Battles with Depression & the Absolute Joy of Your ‘Second Spring’
Robyn Malcolm had one hell of a ride with menopause and figures one thing that could help all women have an easier run of it, would be to start talking about it more. Here she shares her story as we uncover some eyeopening statistics about perimenopause and menopause.
Robyn, who just turned 60, says she had a hell of a run with menopause, and it has become a topic she’s passionate about.
“I started experiencing some symptoms in my 40s and was on some hormones for that, but then when I was about 50, I had what my endocrinologist described as an endocrinal melt-down,” she says. “Everything went hay-wire, and I became clinically – and quite frighteningly – depressed.”
Medication helped, she says, as well as sharing her experiences – which often felt like it was going against the grain. It feels like the societal norms when it comes to menopause include just sucking it up, staying quiet about what we’re feeling (physically and emotionally) and keeping the whole subject taboo.
“It was hard,” she says. “To be honest the hot flashes were the least of my problems, but when I had one, I thought about how we’re sort of somehow supposed to keep this to ourselves and I thought, f**k that. I’d make my partner or whoever I was with come and stand with me outside in the cold while it was happening.”
Robyn says she’s always been political, but she’s felt a fire (no pun intended) under her about the way women in this stage of their life are treated in western cultures, like our own.
“I’m really interested in anything that’s about women in middle age and really everything that happens to us from the moment our fertility is no longer a thing,” she says. “I’m interested in it on a social level, I’m really interested in it on a political level and a health level because not only are women used to being second-class citizens, but for millennia women who can’t make babies have been even worse off. We’ve been an invisible crowd for such a long time – we’re witches, or crones, or failures.”
‘I Had One Motto: Keep Myself Alive, Keep My Baby Alive and Keep My Business Alive, So I Could Provide For Us.’
Seven years ago, Janelle Brunton-Rennie was celebrating her wedding anniversary to her gorgeous husband, Kurt, with their four-month-old daughter. One day later, Kurt found a lump and was diagnosed with an aggressive form of blood cancer, which would end his life just almost exactly one year later. This lead to Janelle becoming a widow at just 36, as well as becoming a solo parent and sole breadwinner.
When I think back to my younger self, I grieve for that woman who had to hold it together. For the new mother who was still navigating those early months of motherhood, for the loyal and devoted wife who fought so hard to save her husband’s life, and who held his hands as he took his final breath.
And then I grieve for the widow and the single mum, who lived in survival mode for the years that followed – the pain and desperate loneliness of all those nights after he had gone, the woman who felt so much guilt and anger that she had failed to save him.
Why is Queenstown the Ultimate Girls’ Getaway? An Expert (Ok Fine, It’s Us) Explains Why
Kelly Bertrand’s been lucky enough to visit Queenstown a fair few times, and after her most recent girls’ trip away, she decided to pop together her definitive, comprehensive list of her tried and true, tested places to stay, eat, drink and enjoy. If you’re looking for what to do in Queenstown, this is it!
Queenstown is one of my favourite places on earth – if you’ve been, you know what I mean. There’s something about the place that makes you feel special as soon as you land beside those remarkable, well Remarkables, and it’s like you’re somehow in another country amongst excited tourists, backpackers and travellers.
Look, you know the story – epic views, great food and drink, awesome activities. Queenstown is consistently on top of booking.com’s list of domestic destinations for Kiwis and it doesn’t take genius to figure out why. But as someone who has been wildly lucky in life to have been to QT more than 20 times for various reasons – with partners, on work trips, on girls’ getaways and even one or twice, on a solo break.
Does it make me an expert? I mean, probably not BUT surely on the balance of numbers, you can totally learn from my mistakes and live through the triumphs to form your own must-do list – and juuust to check myself on my thoughts, I popped down once again at the end of last year with one of my besties to really test out a few new places, as well as confirm some of my old favourites are still vibing. So, here's my ultimate list of what to do in Queenstown!
Emergency Surgery & Early Menopause at 29: The Real-Life Cost Behind Healthcare Cuts For Gynaecological Procedures In NZ
This year, journalist and 2023 NZ Geographic Photographer of the Year Becki Moss (they/she) underwent a third emergency ovarian surgery – a surgery that was almost entirely preventable with a planned procedure last year that was cancelled without any explanation.
It’s just before midnight on the 6th of January 2025 and I’m being wheeled into my third emergency surgery in the last 20 months for ovarian torsion, a surgery I will spend three days in hospital recovering from. And I’m writing today to talk about how this could have been prevented.
It was back in May 2023 when I first went to the Auckland City Hospital Emergency Department with severe abdominal pain. I’m no stranger to pain, but this pain was new, and excruciating. After five hours in ED, a doctor still hadn’t seen me so I chose to go home where I could take pain medication and attempt to sleep it off. The next morning, I was in an ambulance heading back to the hospital, getting an internal ultrasound and being sent to emergency surgery. I was terrified.
Hungry for More?
Here’s what we’ve read and loved this week. Check out some of this week's best stories from the web:
Hollywood Has “Embraced” Aging Women—But Will They Ever Be Allowed to Look Their Age? Jenny
40 Lessons About Having A Baby I Wasn't Ready To Hear Substack
At the Courthouse With Luigi Mangione’s ‘Fangirls’ The Cut
That’s it from us this week! Thanks for reading - we look forward to catching up with you again next week. In the meantime, if you have any thoughts on any of these posts today (or any others!) feel free to leave a message in the comments and we can have a chat!
Have a good week!
x The Capsule Team: Alice, Emma, Kelly & Sarah
An excellent newsletter this morning. Thank you. 📚