When I was seven I came home from school to find a woman in our kitchen with short light brown hair. I screamed. I demanded "What have you do with my mum?" She explained that she was my mum but how could she be, my mother had long dark brown hair that she always wore in a bun on top of her head.

I ran out of the house and down the street crying wondering where my mother was. Eventually this woman found me and took off her short hair and I realized she indeed was my mother. It was also the day I discovered what a wig was.

Everyone in my family laughs at this anecdote and chant, it was just a wig! They say how could you have feared a wig? In my defense, there were not a lot of wigs in the suburbs of Sydney in the 1960s!

I see it as the start of my having difficulty coping with change.

My mother assumed that a seven year old would be able to recognize her own mother but with a different hairstyle. Not me, my mother had the same hair colour and hairstyle all my seven years and I thought it would never change.

From this early age I always had difficulty with changes even if it was a desirable change. I have never avoided change I just find the thought of things being different to be challenging.

I am not talking about life changing events or traumatic changes but rather those changes we need to handle throughout our life.

What about you? Can you remember a moment, a story from your past or your present which illustrates how you cope with change?

Do you think it makes a difference if it is a desirable change rather than a negative change?

Leah