The midlife TIPPING POINT

I had felt out of sorts and not quite right for some time, but it wasn’t until I climbed into a fish-finger freezer at Sainsbury’s that I realised I was totally losing my mind. I’d been walking around the shop like a zombie, chucking random things into my trolley: Cornish pasties, grated cheese, Fruit Corner yogurts. All the while I was aware other women were efficiently – OK aggressively – ticking prepared shopping lists of, no doubt, healthy family dinners. I wanted to be like them.

These other women – all other women, it seemed to me – had their lives together and were sailing on TV. This must be depression, I told myself, as I continued chucking stuff in the trolley: spaghetti hoops, chickpeas, half a dozen jars of pesto, nothing but the taste of guilt in my mouth. My teens deserved a mother who planned healthy meals, and performed simple tasks like supermarket shopping without experiencing a catastrophic breakdown.