Turning insults derived by patriarchy into empowered change — Something was triggered in me recently. Not in a good way. I was listening to a podcast about a modern day (and absolutely awful-sounding) cult. At one point, the leader turned horribly nasty on a woman who began questioning the cult’s practices. He called her “a nasty little witch.” There…

It’s time for this phase of life to come out from under the rug — I’m forty-seven and my sister is fifty. We’re both at “that age” that everyone knows about but few discuss. No elders taught us about it as they did when we were adolescents and were being primed to have our first periods. Back then, we knew the order of events, and…

What’s stopping you from being vulnerable in your writing? — Recently, I’ve been battling with writer’s block more than usual. I’ve tried facing it head on and just writing. But when I do that, I find myself cringing, feeling as if I am just putting out any old crap, just to try to get over this feeling of being stuck. …

What some may know, others may wish to know, and yet others don’t give two hoots. — Hey! Great to have you stop by ;) Pull up a virtual seat and I will put on the virtual kettle for a cuppa. I may or may not have yet read about you, but I guess this is where you get to find out all about me, so here…

I never realised how much I underestimated the complexity of forests until I switched off from everything to hang out in one — It’s long been understood by the masses that nature has the power to heal. Yet, in our modern, developed, western world, it only seems to have really caught on in the last twenty or so years. Without wishing to sound like I was ‘doing it before everyone else’, I chose…

I didn’t know I was the one hiding until the mirror was held up to me — Hey you! The one hiding with your head hanging low and your posture hunched over — I’m talking to you! Okay, really I’m talking to myself. I’m the one who has been hiding in the shadows, choosing not to risk triggering any backlash for the sake of ease and peace. …

And no, my owner didn’t win first place — Today is a very special day. ‘Why?’ I hear you ask. Well, it was the day I entered a dog show for the first time in my life. I mean, I was a little confused because, given how much my owner and the owners of all the dogs we ever…

My parental advice: tread your own path and walk in your own shoes wherever possible — I had a rude awakening this summer when I pulled out the UK size 2.5 shoes I had bought for my son a couple of months earlier, only to find that they were far too small already. I mean, I should have realised since he had been wearing size 3…

A case of childhood leukaemia affecting a beloved friend raised my awareness tenfold of the dangers at bay — Food and Health and Hope I have a favourite band from my days of protests and hippy gatherings. They were a bunch of fellow protestors, yet they were far more hardcore than I was. They went to all the road protests, nuclear power plant protests, and anti-fracking marches. They wrote the best lyrics, full of…