If you have ever taken part in a workshop or perhaps even training at work you will be familiar with ice breaker sessions where you have to stand up and introduce yourself to the rest of the participants. Love it or loathe it, I use this idea as an exercise to kick-start proceedings in my Read More
Category: Musings
Bibliotherapy: Could this novel therapy heal you?
The love of writing probably started at the same time as my love of reading. I learned to read before starting school and my young life was filled with positive experiences around the joys of words. I was one of those children who was sent around the primary school classes (paired up with a boy Read More
The write location
Our everyday lives are an abundant source of creative ideas in the form of people, places, locations and experiences. However, when it comes to using this ‘primary source’ of information, many people find it difficult to distance themselves from the ‘physicality’ of the object, event or the person – getting too caught up in the Read More
Can reading help you cope with grief?
A Grief Observed by C.S. Lewis is like that warm and gentle arm around your shoulders telling you everything you feel in your darkest moments of grief is OK.” This was a quote from a book review I wrote many years ago having lost my mother. On my ‘human’ level I felt her death as the ultimate Read More
Is happiness a choice?
The way you react is your choice … or is it? As a spiritual and healing practitioner, I have to confess it jars me when I notice the clichés many ‘new’ New Age practitioners serve up on social media. I trust they are coming from a well-intentioned place, and I believe that they believe in Read More
Time and a safe space
As a professional writer, I have seen a lot of ‘snobbery’ around writing in general. The publishing scene in London is a social ‘set’ all on its own and it’s renowned for being one of those industries that everyone is desperate to enter and ‘unthinkable’ to ever leave. Let me just say there is a Read More
Defining Trauma
It seems people talk about ‘Trauma’ or being ‘traumatised’ in such a ‘carefree’ manner these days. I have even seen various articles referring to Trauma with a capital T and ‘trauma’ with a little ‘t’ though it can be a bit ambiguous as to who decides whether your trauma merits a capital ‘T’. When a Read More
The art of safe ‘expression’
Trauma lives in a place that can be very difficult to reach with normal words and language or description, and might only be accessed, initially at least, through the ‘symptoms’. At best trauma can manifest in indescribable anxiety, a sick feeling or a heavy, empty ache … either quite randomly or as the result of Read More
Feisty or stuck in survival mode?
What images does your mind conjure up when you hear the word ‘trauma’? Words can become ‘fashionable’ and in so doing, the real depth of meaning is often lost. Until a few years ago, the word ‘trauma‘ was for me a bit like the word ‘stress’. In my world, stress was bandied about with such frequency and was attributed Read More