‘Be quiet and do as you’re told.’ So I did, because that’s how ‘good girls’ behave. And I carried on doing that for decades because I believed it. In a perfect world, we would all be loved unconditionally, but in reality, love comes with conditions. From an early age, many of us have been surrounded by messages from the authority …
Letting go
A couple of years ago I rescued a banana plant. It was sitting on a bench at the garden centre with some other bedraggled specimens ‘going cheap’. I was still mourning the loss of a beautiful tree fern that had succumbed to the frost earlier in the year (rather, I had neglectfully not covered it). It was early autumn so …
Soul searching
How is it with your soul? No, I’m not asking about your extensive collection of Aretha Franklin LPs but you – your soul. (Perhaps you’re already running for the hills from this kind of talk but hang around). What do I mean when I talk about ‘soul’? Does it have to be ‘religious’? Try a quick Google and you’ll discover …
Grounding techniques – what are they and how can they help when I’m anxious?
As a child I was a big fan of comics and one of the comic strips I always looked forward to was called the Numskulls. It was based on the idea that there was a team of little beings who lived in the brain of a person and from their headquarters, each department operated different parts of the body. Whilst …
Burnout.
‘You’re burnt out’. The doctor barely looked up from his computer as he updated his notes. Unspoken rage coursed through me. Burn out isn’t a diagnosis. Burnout feels like a weakness and I felt like it was my fault already. Rage at him was quickly followed by shame. How had I got here? I’d got my degree while working and …
MEN-tal health
MOVEMBER (that’s not a spelling mistake!) has become the month when some men choose to ditch the razor and sport a beard – or for those feeling even more daring a moustache, but what’s the point? The aim is to draw attention to men’s health – physical and mental – to encourage a conversation, a conversation that might save a …