Childhood

I didn’t talk to other children, sitting in the corner of the playground. I was constantly bullied by more outgoing children. I enjoyed my time alone, but teachers suggested that my parents send me for psychiatric help. Convinced that I didn’t need psychiatric help, my mother sent me to drama summer school at age 13 and I loved it. I could be whomever I liked and came out of my shell. I still liked to be alone, but I learned a very important lesson – I could act at being Janis Grummitt and exist in the real world as well as my own! I continued spending my holidays and weekends acting as a member of the Junior Drama League in London until I went to university at age 18. It would be many years before I understood that I was a highly sensitive introvert, but until then, I knew I could act and be whomever I liked.

Contribution towards wisdom

This era changed my life…I became a communicator when I acted and confident in front of an audience. Eventually, that extrovert character became as much me as the quiet, introvert Janis.

Late teens, early 20’s

University was easy for me. I studied a subject that fascinated me and felt at home with the freedom to study as I liked. Sussex was a new university with an experimental approach to teaching the arts subjects in a wider context. I studied Social Anthropology, which examines how human beings live in social groups, in the school (context) of African and Asian studies. Learning was also self largely directed. In my second year I had only one mandatory lecture and a small coaching group of 5 students each term. This was ideal for me! Many others dropped out or found the distraction of other ‘student’ events too tempting and failed to learn anything.

I had always loved trees. At primary school in Manchester, we were taken on an annual trip to Denton woods where we walked amongst the Bluebells and the trees; quite an event for children who lived and went to school in a dirty, industrial city. It was magical to me. At Sussex University, our campus spread across fields and Stanmore Park was on the border of our campus. I was a regular visitor, walking and dreaming amongst the grass and trees there. It was on one of those visits that I sat under a big old tree in the dappled sunlight and closed my eyes. Without any warning, I had an experience that I remember to this day and yearn to repeat. I felt as if I was part of everything and had no physical existence. It was an ethereal, floating, happy feeling of ‘oneness’ and very hard to describe.

Contribution towards wisdom

I have brought with me the intense curiosity around understanding people and their connection to others. I developed my skills of self-motivation and self-learning. I also reinforced my love and connection with trees and the countryside. I still feel the magic.

20’s – early 30’s

My father always emphasised the importance of hard work and when I left university, I started working for an organisation that he respected in London. The Industrial Society was a two-sided body representing both Employers and Trade Unions; this was most unusual in the 1970s when the bitterness between these groups was palpable. We were a ‘not for profit’ organisation and the largest training and advisory organisation in the UK. I loved working there and we all had a sense of purpose and passion for our work.

Our leader was John Garnett, a lay preacher who cared about industry. He was one of the most influential people in my life. He taught me to speak in public (he was a brilliant speaker) and he had a vision to change the world, which we all shared. Sadly, I was not mature enough to deal with the relentless hours and energy required to do the job.

My emotional sensitivity became a problem as I was promoted to more senior leadership roles.

I was 29 when I suffered burn out. It was about three months before I was able to return to work and even then, for many years, I didn’t know why I had crashed. After 11 years in the Industrial Society I was given the opportunity to give advice and training in New Zealand and I never returned to the UK.

Contribution towards wisdom

I know now that I had learned to act but still needed a rest from that extrovert Janis that was always ‘on platform’. I loved being successful as I was promoted but with my emotional sensitivity and not much emotional intelligence, I carried a bad case of imposter syndrome with me, which my team had to cope with. It took me years to work out how to deal with these issues. Even now I am reluctant to accept leadership roles because I feel such a strong sense of responsibility.
This era provided a role model in John who saw work as service and believed that the most important contribution was to help change the world. I learned to ask ‘is this the right thing to do?’ rather than ‘is this the most cost effective or profitable?’. More than anything I felt the deep satisfaction of working with others towards a common purpose for good. This has never left me.

30’s-40’s

In New Zealand, I was employed by the country’s largest corporate employer (60,000 people worldwide in 1985). I was 32, an executive, in a new relationship and starting a new life. What could possibly go wrong?

After the initial honeymoon period, I realised that corporate life was very different from the work life I was used to. Changing the world for good was secondary to making more profit. Asking ‘what is the right thing to do’ was considered naïve. Successful people were expedient, which was considered an important leadership trait. I began to hate it. I left to set up my own consultancy in 1992.

I met and married a Kiwi. I had left a husband behind in the UK…our relationship had not survived the difficulties of my 20’s and led to divorce. In 1989, John (my Kiwi) and I married but were unable to have children despite fertility treatment. I had always assumed that we would have children and so this period of my late 30’s was a change of thinking that would affect the rest of my life.

Contribution towards wisdom

I leaned how corporate organisations worked and it wasn’t my place at all. I felt deeply saddened that many people were not purposefully engaged in their work, as I had been. I decided to move on after infertility promising myself that I would take advantage of the time I now had and that I would do what people with children couldn’t do.

40’s-50’s

In my 40’s, I became a material girl. Convinced that I need to earn enough money for holidays in five-star hotels, expensive restaurant meals and designer clothes. Not to mention the two cleaners and three gardeners that we needed to maintain our three-acre garden. It was a trap. The more hours I worked running meetings, holding workshops, speaking, and travelling to venues, the more I needed a well-deserved rest or treat. So, holidays and other expensive events became a necessary part of our lives to compensate. They didn’t.

Towards the end on my 40’s I was tired, overweight, and unwell. I weighed 95 kilos, had permanently disrupted sleep and had so many aches and pains that I found it hard to get up from a chair. I was able to create adrenaline at will so that even when sick or tired I was able to put on a good show. I thought I was getting old though…our brains always find a justifiable explanation.

In 2004, we sold our Homestead in Kumeu and decided to rent for a few months while we built a new home. My father died in 2001 and we needed to be closer to my mother, so we moved from Kumeu to Whangaparaoa. It would be another 12 years and four different rentals before we built our next home.

Contribution towards wisdom

I don’t think that I learned anything during my 40’s other than I yearned for a life that I didn’t need to escape from. I had no idea what that would look like, except I still loved trees and growing. Moving from Kumeu was a big step change after 11 years and a decision that would be fortuitous in hindsight. Most of my learning from this era hit us with a sledgehammer in our 50’s when this decade would take its toll and become an unmistakable trigger for life change!

50’s-60’s

You would think I had been given enough chances to learn, but my 50’s became the era of major shift for me.

Exhausted and sick, I started another business. It was what I knew, we needed to make some money and I had a drive to help others that had never quite left me since those early days in London.

So, in 2005, aged 55, I was hospitalised with the large tumour in my uterus that turned out to be a Molar pregnancy. It weighed 7 kilos by the time it was removed. I had been ‘pregnant’ for around 18 months, and no-one had expected pregnancy after our infertility journey!

Two years later, I was diagnosed with a Meningioma, my last chance warning. This was not malignant either but very large. No-one picked up the symptoms.

After all, a Molar pregnancy is a one in a million chance…how could I also have a brain tumour? This time I would be out of action for over a year.

That year was a constant battle to survive…4 brain operations, deep vein thrombosis, Heparin Thrombocytopenia, brain infection, and a serious allergic reaction to the strong antibiotics that were keeping me alive. I was 110 kilos and was tired all the time. There wasn’t much chance to work!

Every day was clear – survive another day. In some ways, this time was an enormous relief. There was nothing I could do, and I knew exactly what my purpose was.

Later, learning to live without financial security was a huge learning that taught us to be very cost conscious and almost allergic to waste! We will never take money for granted again but neither will we sacrifice our happiness for it.

Contribution towards wisdom

This era created a trigger to change. A year without ‘busyness’ gave me time to reflect. I knew I had to change. I started learning about building a better brain, then lifestyle changes and discovered that most of us know little about these things that we can control. What we are told is about pills or getting used to living a lesser life as we get older. Social media and marketing have become so strong that even research data is manipulated to sell us ageing products or diets through fear. I realised that this was my work, the purpose that I was made for.

70’s and beyond

So, here I am! Using all my skills of communicating, speaking, helping others to change the world in a way that helps them to help others.

First, I learned about staying healthy and building wisdom myself. Then I started to curate, translate and communicate the simple techniques that worked.
Part of my journey also involves growing, of course. I live on 4 acres with thousands of trees (most of which we planted).

Kingfisher Cottage is a sanctuary where magic can exist for those times when I am recharging my energy from being my extrovert self!

We are not wealthy, but we are very self sufficient and happy. I reached 70 kilos on my 70th birthday and I am fitter and have more energy than I can ever remember.

John and I no longer go on five-star holidays but share a love of growing and trying to be role models for ageing. We have been married for over 30 years now. My mother has survived my father by over 20 years and in her 90’s she is a role model for positivity, red wine and tenacity in old age!

Join me and let’s change the world for the better by becoming role models for growing older with less dependency and contributing our unique wisdom to others.