November 18, 2018
Walking down past the primary school with Daisy a young man, face red and tearful trudges on slowly talking on his phone. I feel a sudden and profound pang of sympathy, then the moment is gone. An hour later, when I’m walking home with a wet, happy and exhausted dog, he’s still there, pacing the […]
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November 11, 2018
As a kid, the youngest of three, my two siblings had an unfair head start at going off the rails which meant that someone (me) was left trying to be the “good” and “sensible” one. Being OK turned out to be much more of a burden than I had imagined. I can remember my mother […]
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November 4, 2018
I remember the first therapist I ever had. He always wore a suit and tie and his room was full of dark leather. He used a metaphor involving a painting, with me being either in the foreground or the background. I don’t remember anything else about it, apart from it not being at all helpful, […]
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October 27, 2018
“It happens upon you. It’s bigger than you. There’s a humility you have to step into, where you surrender to being moved through the landscape of grief by grief itself” These are the words of writer Elizabeth Gilbert talking about how she experienced grief after the death of her partner. She is writing about the […]
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October 21, 2018
I had an argument in the street with my neighbour. He was shouting at me from his car window without, to my mind, a shred of justification. Once it would have been embarrassing but now it was simply annoying. It stayed with me afterwards, the injustice of it. The disrespect. It irritates me when I […]
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