Perhaps then, this is the natural order of things. Turning pages. Starting new chapters. The bewildering evaporation of all that we have known – a slate life wipes clean for us, because attachment, pain or dependency keeps us tied to all that is clogging up our emotional arteries. This is what I know: we can never understand who people really…
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Today. A long call with my doctor and then a drive with Finn, to sit staring at the geese gathered like so many gossiping Mothers at the school gates, cooing at each other and gathering their babies into groups dotted along the coast line. Changeable weather. One moment sun cracking the flags. The next the finest fluttering of snow. Ugly…
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I am all of us. I have been foolish. I have believed in things that weren’t true and imagined myself capable of much that I am simply not. I have made bad decisions in the midst of struggles I was too ashamed to share. And tucked terrible things deep down inside me afraid of what would happen if I labelled them…
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Perhaps it is a sign of the times, this nostalgia for moments long gone I am experiencing. A reaction to the deep uncertainty I currently feel. Claustrophobia as a symptom of Covid. The longing to scream out loud my suppressed panic and run like Forrest Gump until I have managed to run away so completely, I am refreshed and ready to…
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Rachel Ashwell is one of a trinity of women, that also includes Sarah Ban Breathnach, and Cheryl Mendelson, that I credit with teaching me how to live, when I was a young homemaker, running an interiors business and trying to fathom who I was, and what really mattered to me. I think I have told you before that when Mark…
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A few weeks ago a new family moved into the old cottage across the lane. A typical family with two young girls and a happy little cockapoo, they moved in with an eyesore of a trampoline, a boat, and a boy-racer car so noisy it has become my morning alarm clock. Over the years we have lived here more than…
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My Mum used to wake up in rather a bad grump. Mornings coloured her outlook on life and seemingly made it impossible for her to see the positives in her day until mid-morning when to all our relief she seemed to thaw her way back to loveliness. It was difficult to live with and something I was too quick to…
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I do so hate trying to be fun. I’m utterly rubbish at it. The strain paints a grimace over what must be good cheer. But fun should be an accidental thing shouldn’t it? Fun should throw itself upon you without the rigours of planning. The irresistible giggle of a tickle. The ludicrous antics of a toddler. One of those ordinary…
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I’ve been trying to puzzle something out. I have joined groups and scoured hashtags in my efforts to understand, and honestly, I’m still bewildered because it seems to me that the women of the internet have suddenly developed a deep-rooted need not to seek true authenticity, but instead to align themselves into tribes labelled with zeitgesty words that rapidly lose…
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