Daring to be vulnerable
We have had a long morning, we are hungry and think that we will treat ourselves to a proper meal, in a posh hotel.
We arrive, all looks well.
My irritation starts to rise as the customer in front of me at the bar dithers and fusses about what to chose from the menu, when … Read more
If you could be happier
If you could be happier with how you looked
you would spend less on products which didn’t do what they promised,
animals wouldn’t be tested on,
you wouldn’t poison your face like a rat,
the industry would collapse.
What might grow instead?
If you could be happier with moving slowly,
you wouldn’t need … Read more
Creative writing
I have written books. A couple I self-published and there are still gremlins in my head sneering ‘That’s not real publishing, it’s vanity, who cares, you’re not good enough’. That was the same voice asking me who I thought I was as I walked to corridor to meet my PhD supervisor for the first … Read more
Opening doors
Sharon Green and I went to Sunderland Poly to do English at the tail end of the 80s and then for a large part of our adult life lost touch with each other, not out of malice, just life. Facebook reconnected us and so we followed each other from afar, then Sharon announced she was … Read more
The Art of Shouting Quietly
Pete Mosely helped my first book be born. He midwifed it from conception, through pregnancy into the world, calmly, patiently, reassuring me just to take one breathe at a time.
Talking with Pete is like a slow stroll in a meadow speckled with a myriad of wild-flowers. He is so calm, considered, thoughtful. I want … Read more
Perfectionism
So many of the young people I have worked with over the years struggle with perfectionism. One of the ways I work with perfectionism is to turn it into a character and very often she is very closely related to our inner critic.
Perfectionist and the Inner Critic hang out together and sometimes seem like … Read more