Pushing the heavy pressure cooker back into place, I marvel momentarily at the metal shelving unit and its insistence on staying fixed to the wall. I don't have this feeling with everything in the house. I don't stare in wonder at the ceiling staying up, or the stairs refusing to give way, or … [Read more...] about Whose Critical Voice Is That?
Meaning
Recovery Might Not Be What You Think It Is
In therapy, I am looking out of the window at the gravestones. I didn't deliberately choose a therapist whose office was in a cemetery but now that I think about it, there is something peaceful and fitting about talking of the past surrounded by the dead. Our conversation is about the need to … [Read more...] about Recovery Might Not Be What You Think It Is
Sober Relationships
The Sunday I watched my father zipped into a body bag and removed from the living room didn't seem an obvious point at which there would be a change in the relationship I'd witnessed him have with my mother. That morning, he would have been listening to Brahms or Beethoven, maybe Grieg and … [Read more...] about Sober Relationships
Happy Families
My sister texts me with the news that our brother has returned from ten days in Yorkshire to find that his water tank has been leaking and made the house uninhabitable. The insurance company say it will be a year before he is back home. The last time I saw my brother was when I bumped into him in … [Read more...] about Happy Families
Word Games & Boundaries
I'm playing "Bananagrams" with my daughter and, in what now feels like a rash move fuelled by early game bravado I have "dumped" too many of my opening letters and find myself with a swathe of tiles in front of me and unable to make anything of them. Serenely fashioning "Paradoxical" on the … [Read more...] about Word Games & Boundaries