Who would you thank in your life?

I would like to thank ……. Naked Margaret.

Yep … naked. As a 12 year old girl, with a depressed and uninterested mother who had left her husband (my father) for the last time, Naked Margaret was a surprising, brief but powerful influence in my life.

You see, Naked Margaret was the final mistress/girlfriend that finally convinced my mother that Dad was no good. I only met her once, on an access visit with Dad. She taught me about personal hygiene, brushing my teeth every day, wiping front to back, let me shave my armpits and legs, and yelled at dad when he tried to stop me wearing a bikini.

But what she taught me most, was that you must love your body for what it is, not what you want it to be. She wasn’t a model, she was curvy and lush, with a mummy belly from her own 3 children. But, while making the bed with her one day, I looked up to see her dressing gown open, and the fact that she was naked underneath (where she gets her name from me). There was no hint of shame, or enforced modesty. She was who she was. She wore a bikini, she wandered the house in her underwear, and she took no rot from anyone.  It didn’t take her long to see through Dad and his rubbish, so she wasn’t in his life long enough for me to get to know better.

As sad as it was to watch my parents’ marriage implode, I value Naked Margaret’s brief appearance in my life more than anything.