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What does Success look like?

Yesterday I had one of those days. I sat down to write this blog and had a carefully curated to-do-list of ‘grown up and responsible person’ things to accompany it. This list had time slots for optimising my productivity, bullet points and carefully written out notes to remind me of my ‘intention’ for the day.

Then my laptop (which is over ten years old) and has seen me through two degrees and a Masters decided to have a monumental freak out. It seemingly had a mind of its own. Tabs opened at random, the screen blackened out and flickered back to life like it was trying its best to be faithful and trustworthy – but the strain just made it all the more unreliable. Most bizarrely (and frustratingly) the numbers on my keypad decided that it would only show their symbolic counterparts. I spent over two hours down YouTube rabbit holes trying to fix my ailing robot who I am actually very sentimental about. I did it, but it involved a lot of screaming at inanimate objects. It involved muttering out loud to an American IT Expert from 2010: ‘Thanks Gary…that Ctrl-Alt-shift trick with the F8 button is genius.’

Nonetheless, my list was ruined, the schedule completely in tatters. The day felt like a right off; and I felt shameful, irritated tears prick my eyes.

‘Successful People’ don’t waste the afternoon curled up in a ball of computer induced rage. ‘Successful People‘ don’t have laptops that were designed and manufactured pre-2010. ‘Successful People’ are consistent and seamless in their efforts to produce and be productive. ‘Successful People’ are effortless and always able to level up to that next challenge AND look good in lemon sorbet yellow (who in real life looks good in lemon sorbet yellow?! and yet...they do.)

I didn’t look like this guy…


Anyway, you get the idea – I was having one of those days. You know self-doubt is rife when sorbet yellow is in the forefront of your mind…

Later whilst I was washing up the dishes (this is where most of my thinking takes place) I wondered: ‘Why did this bother me so much? What about this situation made me react with such anger and frustration?

We all carry around sets of beliefs about ourselves; we all carry stories that are playing out on a cinema screen for an audience of one. One of my stories is about where I place my worth. One of my stories is about what success looks like. It’s important to note that I recognise that both of these stories need a re-write. They need modernising, They need time and tenderness, encouragement and new voices to enter into the narrative to help change the tempo.

So many of us have this neon sign flashing at us.


My internal conditioning means I will always want to be seen as ‘successful’ by others. As part of a society that heavily critiques and shames people (especially women) who don’t fill a role in the way that is expected means my unconscious self is almost entirely set up to help me to avoid this scrutiny altogether. She gets very upset when her attempts at being ‘successful’ or ‘productive’ are called into question. Somewhere along the line the messaging I’ve picked up is that I won’t be successful. Perhaps it was when I was little and I understood poetry better than algebra and one was seen as ‘superior’ to the other. Perhaps it was the unexpected eye-roll when I decided to study English Literature, then the anticipated second eye-roll when I trained as a counsellor. Not. Much. Money. In. That.

But the question I really want to ask in this blog post is do we need anymore ‘Successful People’? I’m referring to the ‘Successful People’ who look good in sorbet yellow…who actually don’t exist.

It’s a hard shade to pull off



This led me with my soap-drenched hands to wonder what kind of people we do need? If the ‘Successful People’ I’m comparing myself to (that aren’t real) are more fiction then the stories that play on loop in my brain, then what does a real, concrete success look like? Maybe success is not throwing my aged computer against a wall. Maybe success is waking up today and sitting down at this desk and writing these thoughts down. Maybe success looks like tenderness, maybe success is allowing poetry to be just as important as algebra. Maybe success is litter picking.


Then this afternoon the counselling gods shined down on me, they gave me this quote and I felt comforted:

‘The plain fact is that the planet does not need more successful people. But it does desperately need more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers and lovers of every kind. It needs people who live well in their places. It needs people of moral courage willing to join the fight to make the world habitable and humane. And these qualities have little to do with success as we have defined it.’

David Orr ‘Ecological Literacy: Educating our Children for a Sustainable World’

What is success? Seriously, what is it? Money, status, how other people view you? This quote made me think of it in a different way. What if I defined my success by what this world actually needs, what if I defined it by what I’m actually capable of giving to it?

I’m never going to be an economist (pants at maths), or a doctor (blood is icky), nor a lawyer (devil’s advocate is stressful). And that’s ok. I’m a professional listener who really loves poetry. We need more of us.

I reckon that if you’re reading this then perhaps you have felt this way too (even if you are a lawyer, or a doctor or a economist). I suppose what I’m trying to say is that you are exactly what our world needs; your kindness is revolutionary. Your love is society changing, your art is important. Perhaps your great great grand children will be more impressed by your compassion then your paycheck.

Just a thought for when your computer next blows up and it makes you feel as useful as a potato.

You are not a potato.

A Word for the Year: Home

The words we choose for ourselves hold power. If we don’t consciously spend a little time thinking about the words that we attribute to ourselves other words will find their way into the equation.

I’ve got a lot of words that I float between my conscious and unconscious realities. Sometimes I get caught by the words I use for myself and the ones that I get labelled with. Often with labeling our impressions of ourselves get mixed up with the past, present and future ideas of our identity. It can get pretty noisy and disorientating, especially at this time of year when advertisers are working really hard to fill in any space for reflection with a sense of unworthiness.

As a result, having a word for the year that holds meaning, intention and most importantly is a kindly given gift to yourself can act as a touchstone when all the other names begin to swirl behind our eyes.

This last year, many of us have had to learn to live in the dark. We have had internal and external marathons to endure, moments defined by extremes, whole months shaped by limitations. The clash between joy, grief, calm and anxiety I can imagine has left many of us feeling exhausted and energy depleted.

For me, having something like a word that I have chosen for myself to encourage me to keep connected to my values has at times offered a sense of simplicity, calm and kindness when I most needed it. In addition to this, I also find that spending some time selecting a word for the year gives my busy brain something uplifting and hopeful to train onto when the narrative of ‘new year, new me’ rages on social media.

Social Media at the start of the New Year can be an intense place with all the narrative of change. Remember, you can decide to change/rest/develop/stop/reflect any day of the year!

Last year for 2020 I chose the word ‘Gentle’. I wrote a blog post about my decision process if you’d like to read it here:

A Place for Gentleness

I feel what I wrote about my word for 2020 still stands up today almost a year on; even as the world has tipped into the oddest of circumstances.

‘Gentle’ has encouraged me to tread carefully on my soul when the hardness of the world made it difficult to show compassion.
‘Gentle’ gave me permission to slow down.
‘Gentle’ let me take a couple of months off this blog with no guilt.
‘Gentle’ let me promise to myself that I don’t ever have to wear denim shorts again. Like ever. They make me feel yucky and just have no place in my life.
‘Gentle’ also meant strong when grief slammed its locked door in my life.
‘Gentle’ meant time to just be and the opportunity of a lifetime to come to New Zealand.
‘Gentle’ gave me a chance to pause when doubt threatened to sweep me away.
‘Gentle’ came to hold a meaning far greater than its dictionary definition. This year ‘Gentle’ belonged to me and its own unique meaning bloomed alongside me as the months and seasons turned, changed and then reversed.


Gentle helped me slow down and find new ways of seeing my surroundings – like treasures on a beach.

So how do you pick your own word for the year to accompany you and reflect your values for 2021? Something I find helpful is journalling about my values and then creating a visual reminder of them through a vision board or picture that represents my word for the year. Not only is this a fun and creative way to look to the future, but it is also a way to support me to engage in the process of development rather than the ‘hoped for result’. I’ve also written a blog post about ways in which you can find out your values and some ways to approach this, the link is just here:

My vision board for 2020 ‘Gentle’

Sometimes a word will already be hanging out in your mind just waiting for the invitation to be held as important and valid. My word for 2021: ‘Home’ almost felt like a paradox. I’ve chosen to go as far as it is physically possible geographically to go from my bricks and mortar home. From my family and friends. I’ve also spent more time at home then I have ever done in 2020. Our little terrace house in Sheffield became our whole universe for many months. I was surrounded and trapped by Home. So when ‘Home’ first came to mind I tried to find another word…any other word. But Home kept coming up, kept creeping in.

The city I call ‘Home’ Sheffield


The questions that have been bubbling up for me since then have been surprising.

What would my life look like if I made decisions that brought me home to myself?

How can I build a sense of home on the other side of the world with until recently utter strangers?
How would I treat my body if I saw it as a home? What about my emotional life, if I accepted what I found there and let it be part of the furniture of home, rather than constantly trying to redecorate. What pictures would hang in the hallways of my heart?

So this year I am dwelling at Home, just not in the way I ever expected that I would.

Have you had any ideas of words for the year that could work for you? I’d absolutely love to hear your thoughts!

Naming our Narrative

When I first stumbled upon these words they stopped me short. I was taken aback by just how true they are. We have a need to name: our children, our homes, our favourite food…our emotions and internal world.

This quote from Ronald Rolheiser sparked a pondering in me; how often do I name my experiences for myself, independent of other people’s labels or expectations? How often do I stick with a feeling or an emotion long enough that I can gather a sense of its character, its texture, its colour – let alone giving it a name.

Yet in our culture names really do matter. Names stick. Everyone knows how an unkind nickname from childhood can linger long past the time anyone has thought to use it. We use names as a way of identifying each other; so when someone calls your name, your head turns without you thinking about it. So what happens when we don’t name what’s going on for us internally…what happens if we allow other people to christen it without our consent or collaboration?


More and more I am starting to feel that too often when we don’t get to name things ‘properly’ for ourselves it breeds a sense of distrust within. Our intuition gets dampened or shanghaied by a louder more persistent voice (one that may not even belong to you). Perhaps as you read this there are things under the surface that are unnamed. Perhaps its something you don’t want to acknowledge or something that feels like it should be ignored.

But the naming matters. How we frame our narratives can completely change the way in which we approach our relationship with ourselves and others.

Quite recently I found myself coming down with a nasty cold. Then this cold turned into a sinus infection (something I’d never experienced before). The pain was inescapable, I was up in the middle of the night taking the maximum dosage of pain relief I was allowed and it hardly dulled the sensation. The first name given to this experience was: ‘Sick’. Later, in one of my 4 am self-pity sessions of sitting in the dark in pain I realised that it wasn’t ‘Sick’ at all. This was what everyone else was calling it.

It was ‘Grief’. My body was forcing me to process the losses of the last few months. It was demanding the recognition, it was insisting that I sat down at 4 am and named in my own words what was going on inside me. You are Grief. At first this was quite a scary moment as ‘Sick’ can be given pills and hot soup accompanied with Disney films and made all better. ‘Grief’ felt like a shadow that didn’t have an end date.


Then something remarkable happened. Once I’d named this for myself something started to shift; a kindness towards my bodies reaction to this ‘Grief’ began to form. A gentleness replaced the frustration and annoyance that the name ‘Sick’ had left me with. The shadow of grief loosened its grip, having only wanted to be seen, to be named.

Only you can name your narrative. Others can guess at it; sometimes they are bang on the money. Other times we adopt the label that is handed down to us until a better name makes itself known. You’re allowed to name your internal world; even when it doesn’t match up with the external one people project onto you.

What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.

Romeo and Juliet (Act II, Scene I) by William Shakespeare

Although I appreciate Juliet’s sentiments about Romeo, a Rose would feel very different if we called it a Thistle. Both are beautiful, both can draw blood if you get caught on its thorns. Yet one of these flowers we bring our noses to and the other we hold in gloved hands. It’s the difference between ‘Sick’ and ‘Grief’ the gulf between ‘Happy’ and ‘Sad’.

I wonder what other thistles I have been holding, that are actually roses?

One Hundred and Fourteen Days of New Zealand

Sitting here writing this I’m finding it hard to believe that I have been in New Zealand for over three months. This is the longest and furthest I have ever been away from home: from my family, my friends and the familiar rhythm of my life in Sheffield.

Of course, we are all living with upside down routines and have found ourselves in some form or another during the last 10 months living without the security of our roots. Dancing with uncertainty on a sometimes daily basis.

My husband and I decided that we were going to apply to come here to New Zealand on our annual family holiday to Wales in November 2019. I remember us walking and talking on the Great Orme in Llandudno. It was cold and brisk and the nights were drawing in rapidly reminding me that I was chasing sunlight from the moment I woke up. We stood on the cliff side watching a pair of seals darting between the waves with grace and ease. We spoke about our ‘why’ for going to New Zealand: we wanted an adventure together that could be just ours. My husband had travelled the world having lived in rural China, and spent many months in Africa and India. I had travelled in Europe, never longer than a week and had never felt I held the desire or confidence to travel before now.

The biggest argument we could find against going was this: ‘We can go to New Zealand at any time, we could go the year after next…’ How wonderfully naive that thought was, on so many levels both globally and personally. If these last few weeks and months have taught me anything it is that next year really really isn’t a given. But as I say, this is what we thought then, this is what we said. It was 2019…

The years of counselling training had changed me. I found myself growing in strength (mentally and physically) my curiosity for understanding the world outside of my own view completely transformed. I began to see myself as someone who might be able to step into an unknown and not be overwhelmed by it. So the decision was made, the paperwork sent off, the interviews done. We were headed to New Zealand in 2020.

Well you know the rest, you’ve lived 2020, you know the score. The entire plan was catapulted into absolute and utter uncertainty. We just kept jumping though the hoops expecting at each stage that someone would turn round and tell us ‘No.’. Honestly, it wasn’t until we got past border control in Auckland (heaving the longest sigh of relief possible) that I actually started to believe that we had made this journey to the other side of the world in the middle of a Pandemic.

We are currently living in Whanganui which is a small town on west coast of the North Island. Whanganui reminds me of a toy-box town; it’s got a lot of charm and character and it’s main street Victoria Avenue is lined with pretty art-deco buildings. What I really appreciate about Whanganui is that it’s large enough that it has everything you could need, but small enough that I don’t get decision fatigue about where to go for coffee. It’s pretty difficult to get lost here so I am left with the feeling that I know my way around. It already feels like a familiar stomping ground.


The Whanganui river is a sacred river to the Maori people and is an impressive feature of the town. I love to watch how the river ebbs and flows with the tide. When the rain has been heavy you can see huge pieces of drift wood being carried downstream to the ocean. Some of these pieces of drift wood wash up on the black sand beaches creating a dramatic scene. The waves are strong and powerful with a fierce roar as they break on the shoreline.

These first few months in New Zealand have challenged my sense of how I hold my ‘expectations’ of what something might be like and how I meet the ‘reality’ of what it is. For instance, when I thought about New Zealand before we arrived I had visions of us adventuring up mountains every opportunity we had and seeing ‘all the sights, all the must do’s’. The reality has been different. For the first two months we didn’t leave this small town once. The feeling of being able to create community with others, to have a week that had structure and balance, the chance to drink coffee or go to the cinema was just too enticing. Rather than longing for adventure or ticking a bucket list checkbox we have been relishing the simple freedoms that we couldn’t have in the UK. That was what we needed to nourish our souls and recover from the collective stress of getting to New Zealand.

Whanganui River from Durie Hill


Then a tragic bereavement spun our world into disarray and heartbreak. It was the community here in Whanganui who held us through it (and continue to) and I feel so blessed that we met such wonderful and kind people here. The truth is, the world is full of beautiful people. We have all been starved of this knowledge, of feeling the impact of forging friendships and being held by community.

So when I think about what I could share about having been in New Zealand for one hundred and fourteen days; I could share how impressive Huka Falls was, or how odd the streaming volcanic hills by Lake Taupo look. I could tell you about wildflowers on beaches or grand redwood forests. I could tell you about windy Wellington or the feeling of shells between my toes. All of this is lovely…

Red Wood High Tree walk in Rotorua


But the thing that means the most, the part of New Zealand that has had the biggest impact on me is her People. It is the aluminum tin of chicken casserole that arrived that first night when we didn’t know what to do with ourselves. It was the tears shed and shared for strangers on the other side of the world. It was the prayers said, the candles lit, it is sharing birthday cake when your heart is breaking.

I’m sure that we will see some really cool and amazing things while we are in New Zealand, but for me this first three months will always belong to: ‘the wonderful and the awful’. The Wonderful people of Whanganui and the awful sadness I have felt here. It can be both, as humans we are both all the time. We can hold a whole universe of emotion within us. Wonderful, awful, all at the same time. The truest treasure of New Zealand for me isn’t mountains and kiwi birds; but her exquisite humans. Humans defined by warmth, openness and compassion.

Taking Breaks, learning to Rest and Leaning into Loss.

Without meaning to I’ve seemed to have taken almost two whole months off writing on this blog. When I realised this my first instinct was to be critical with myself. A voice floated into my mind saying: ‘Another thing you’ve let slip‘. How unhelpful is that?

I know I’m not the only one who has thoughts like this pop up from time to time. Then a kinder voice came to mind. One who until a few years ago was buried down pretty deep. She said: ‘You’re allowed to take a break, you’re allowed to adjust to a new season of life. Where did you get the idea that adapting happened over night?’

This question really intrigued me. We live in a world where so much is instantaneous. We can have hundreds of thousands of items delivered to our doorstep next day. At a click of our thumbs (like some tech-savvy fairy godmother) we can consume countless stories, films, art and opinions. This fast pace of life has seeped into my unconscious brain somewhere along the way. I have become impatient with my emotional process.

Sitting writing this blog I am reminded of a strange quirk of myself I noticed when I was studying literature at university. I would find myself sitting in the big old fashioned library; here the scrape of a chair or the zip of a bag would prompt an irritated arched eyebrow in your direction. I remember sitting there with all my books spread out before me totally frozen. My brain entirely diverted and distracted by the audible vibrations of silence that surrounded me. I couldn’t get anything done. My ears could almost hear the cogs of other people’s minds whirling, their perceived productivity producing within me an inexplicable shyness.


I would then totally exasperated with myself go to my then boyfriend’s (now husband) house. I would sit in the corner of the living room and work. I would work to the kettle boiling in the background and the heavy footsteps of three men moving around the house. During this time I could allow myself to look out of the window, to tuck my bare feet under a blanket. To sit in a silence that held a very different essence for me. Here was where I processed the world, in my little nest in the corner of the room. Safe, secure and uninhibited.

More recently I’ve experienced a profound and sudden bereavement of a dear and treasured friend from my days at university. So here I am, on the other side of the world – writing this to you, on another sofa that doesn’t belong to me, with my feet tucked up. I am leaning into my grief, taking the time to let it seep in. Allowing myself the space to inhabit a softer silence. I can feel my friend with me each time I do this, I can lean into what her time on this earth meant to me and what I believe about where she is now. Within the sadness and shock, I can feel grateful that I got to share a portion of my life with her. That our paths crossed and that it meant something.

Right now, so much of the online world makes me feel how that old library used to. Not because it is silent, but because it is so loud. There is an angry and incoherent noise I can’t seem to make any sense of. It is like the whirling of other people’s brains, distracting and deafening. I find myself frozen, my brain like a bug trapped in amber. What I mean by all this is that: I need space. We all do sometimes.

I don’t believe I was made to process this kind of loss in an instant. I wasn’t created to feel for a moment; capture it in a photograph and to move on. Time away from the hard edges of today’s culture, time away from glowing screens and accountability feels like the best remedy for me right now.

I imagine myself as I was eight years ago; curled up in the squidgy second hand sofa. The lamp glowing into the wisps of a freshly poured cup of tea, the rain lashing onto the window blown off from the Peaks. I notice that my heart starts to calm, my soul to settle. Right here, right now.



I don’t have wise words right now. There hasn’t been enough time between then and now for anything else then ‘other’ to exist. In so many ways I don’t even feel like a counsellor right now; just a human who is wading through something. Just a soul who has been bruised.

It is in my interest to be exceedingly kind to myself right now. To find those corners of safety and take refuge in them.

Thank you for bearing with me if you’ve read this. It means so much.

Four Shells in memory of four beautiful souls.

Tides of Change and Bright Stars

Once, when I was first training as a counsellor we were asked to think about some of the most significant changes that had happened to us. Then we were asked to think of one change we would characterise as ‘good’ and one we would judge to have had an ‘adverse or bad’ impact on our lives.

I’d normally like to consider myself a pretty optimistic person; yet I found the ‘adverse’ changes far easier to pick out then the one’s I had been an active participant in. My counselling tutor then went onto conduct a session on our brains negativity bias and how as humans we are hardwired to linger on those tough changes and less likely to celebrate or recognise the good ones.

That particular afternoon has stuck with me. Change will happen. Sometimes it will be of our own making (like our choice to relocate to NZ for a year) sometimes it will be forced upon us. We lose our job, we lose a loved one, unexpected ill health. Sometimes change hides under the disguise of something we should be seemingly able to ‘control’ like a friendship turning bitter or where to live or who to prioritise.

With so many changes that could potentially cause us pain and heartache why would anyone choose to be an active participant in change in their own life? We have all lived impossible changes. To me, any one who is open to change within their life is about as brave as they get (at least they are in my book!)

Sometimes the direction a change takes us in can feel unclear and uncertain


Change will come to you. It may be a steady slope or a sharp drop.

So how do we meet change (even the good change we’ve been eagerly anticipating)? If we can’t fight it or deny it, how do you meet it?

This has been something that has been bouncing around my brain for a couple of weeks now. I myself am in the middle of a big change by relocating to NZ for the year. It’s wonderful, but it is alien…and I would go as far as to say that this kind of change is distinctly subversive to my home-bird nature.

For me, this week leaning into things that feel familiar has made all the difference in supporting me through change. As small as it sounds I’ve been listening to Harry Potter audio books. Immediately, I’m tipped into a cosy world of my childhood brain. I find myself giggling at Stephen Fry’s Hagrid voice; I can feel the crisp cold air as Hogwarts brings in Christmas and Harry opens yet another homemade sweater made by Mrs. Weasley.

Spending time in a fiction home that feels cosy and familiar can be a great support during times of change


I’ve had a long chat with an old and dear friend where we’ve laughed and listened to each others’ burdens with patience and love.

I’ve lit a candle in the evening.


I’ve walked by the water and let my eyes adjust to this new landscape.

Whanganui River, NZ


I’ve reached for old comforts I haven’t thought about in years, namely poetry, in particular my one and only literary crush: John Keats.

Bright Star

Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art—
         Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
         Like nature’s patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
         Of pure ablution round earth’s human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
         Of snow upon the mountains and the moors—
No—yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,
         Pillow’d upon my fair love’s ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
         Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever—or else swoon to death.

By John Keats (1819)

This poem has always meant so much to me. I have always found comfort that however turbulent I may feel that same Bright Star will linger above me, just like it did for Keats and just like it will tomorrow. Within change, sometimes it can feel helpful to focus on something that feels solid. It can be a long favourite book, or song, a place. It can even be a memory.

If all else fails, you can put both feet on the ground and just feel your feet meeting the earth. Solid ground, gravity.

You’re constantly having to adapt to new environments and now more than ever you’re allowed to acknowledge that change (good, bad, surprising or forced) can be difficult for us to meet. Find yourself a Bright Star; let yourself stare at it for a minute or an hour. However long you need until the earth stops spinning.

Notice how your feet support you and how solid the ground beneath you can feel

Leaning into Vulnerability

I’m not a big fan of flying. I’m not phobic; yet the whole performance of arriving early, going through security, finding the right gate, running to that gate because it’s actually 25 minutes away from you, then being thrust into the sky completely out of control to an unfathomable height leaves me feeling…unnerved and vulnerable.

Flying to New Zealand last week had all of these worries and anxieties attached to it. On top of this, we are flying in the middle of a global pandemic. I was choosing to sit in a tightly enclosed space where social distancing would be difficult and spend 21 hours in an environment where the air is being constantly circulated. Crikey.


Everything about this journey felt pretty unnatural for me. I’m the kind of person who needs to go for a walk outside every day despite the weather. My nature is a quiet one, essentially, I’m a classic home-bird who would rather visit far flung places within the pages of a book then with my own two feet. Yet at the end of this plane journey was an opportunity I had never had access to before. Something that excites me and makes me see myself in a different light. I am also keenly aware of how lucky and privileged I am even to get to travel at the moment.

Long trips abroad had always been on my hypothetical ‘No-List’ along with: driving, knitting and running. This ‘No-list’ was complied of things I just didn’t believe I could do; things that felt so difficult to me that I wouldn’t even start due to the fear of failure. Over the last few years I’ve been challenging these ‘No’s’ and finding that they can sometimes be: ‘Yes!’ I’ve been learning that failure is a natural part of pretty much anything worth developing and learning. Slowly, but surely, my ‘No-List’ has been shrinking. Despite this, spending time abroad sat resolutely on that ‘No-List’ untouched and growing deeper roots in my mind. This belief is compounded by years of narrative I have spun around myself about not being the ‘adventurous one’.

The reality is that I don’t know that about myself yet, this new narrative is like uncharted waters; I don’t have the answers yet.

There was a moment on the journey to New Zealand where I felt really vulnerable. A couple of hours after leaving Singapore the pilot tuned in to inform us that we were going into a storm and that it might be a ‘bit bumpy‘. I always put ‘pilot talk’ into the same bracket as ‘doctor talk’. When a doctor says ‘sharp scratch‘ what they really mean is ‘this will hurt‘. So ‘bumpy‘ from a pilot struck the fear of God into me.


Then something happened in the midst of that fear (and the tossing and turning of a plane in turbulence) a word appeared and became an anchor for me to hold onto. Recently, I’ve been exploring the idea of mantra’s to help sooth myself. I’ve been exploring how this idea might aid my clients who are experiencing anxiety or panic attacks. I’ve been tentatively reading round the subject and cautiously introducing it into my own meditation practice. A word appeared completely unprompted to me in that moment: ‘Trust’ .

‘Trust’. I repeated this word over and over and really let the meaning sink into me. I needed to trust that the pilot would guide us through this storm. Trust that I am not an aviation expert and that this may be the source of my fear: the lack of control. Trust that I am strong enough to endure this visceral form of vulnerability. Trust that I can sit with myself during times of uncertainty. Trust that it will change. Trust that the bumps that ignite these emotions within me will move through to smoother air, clearer skies.

When we landed in Auckland I was surrounded by overjoyed New Zealanders who had found themselves stranded in the UK for months finally arriving home. I felt a little bubble of emotion dance in my throat. Not because we had landed safely (even though that was a relief after 21 hours in the sky), because my trust had seen me to the other side of my fear and vulnerability. I had met with that vulnerability and in the process its grip on me had diminished somewhat.

Sitting with ourselves in these moments is one of the hardest things a person can do. Even as a counsellor who cognitively understands the importance of sitting with our vulnerability and discomfort as a way of moving through it – I found it really hard to meet with that understanding on an emotional level in that moment. So if you’re someone who is going through a bumpy place in your skies I hope this will be a comfort to you. I hope this post can act as an encouragement to ‘trust’ in the parts of you that are working towards your healing. Lean into it.

Hands and Hearts: An Activist and a Counsellor in Conversation

Jo has been a friend of mine for a few years now, so when she set up her new blog Climate.Emergence: http://www.climateemergence.co.uk I was so excited to find out more. Her blog is such a wonderful resource and so inspiring. Jo approached me and asked if I’d be interested in doing a joint blog post together. Of course I jumped at the opportunity to ask her some questions! We really hope you enjoy this collaborative blog post.

Connecting with our local home environment is a great place to start. I love this patch of green at the end of my road.

Jo asks Rachael:

Rachael

1.      What inspired you to become a counsellor?

As part of my MA in 18th Century Literature, I took part in a year-long work placement. These were pretty randomly allocated and I got Sheffield Arts and Wellbeing Network (SAWN) which is an organisation that links people within the city who are promoting wellbeing within Sheffield. My role was to interview their members and to create blog post content for their website. I had a wonderful time meeting a huge variety of people from priests to hospital interior designers, artists and potters, poets and counsellors. One day I left an interview with a counsellor who was using literature to help women who had experienced abuse process their emotions and I thought: ‘…This is what I want to be doing.’ After I finished my MA I signed myself up for a further four years of training to become a counsellor and here I am.

2.      You used to work in the world of fast fashion. Do you have any reflections on the emotional side of our relationship with what we consume?

Working in the fashion industry was a huge eye-opener. Everything is orchestrated to make you as the consumer spend as much money as possible. The fashion industry isn’t just selling clothing; they are selling a lifestyle that is complete fiction.  We will never reach that image because two weeks later the goal posts will have changed and it will be Scandi Chic that is the new Paris stripe. Honestly, the waste that I saw in my time in fast fashion was pretty astonishing.

But the truth is that you’re enough, as you are. This is something I’ve had to pick apart since leaving retail.

Nowadays I have a little wish list. If I see anything that really pulls me I add it to the list. I leave it for a week and revisit it. Normally the novelty has worn off and I can forget about it. You’re so much more interesting than your clothes. 

3.      How important do you feel nature is to your client’s recovery?

Evolutionary psychology points towards a large proportion of us being ‘natural watchers’. Our descendants would look out into the natural world and look for danger, a change in the weather and at the stars. This is something almost completely lost in our modern culture; yet that instinct is still within many of us. When I ask clients where their favourite place in the world is, often it will be in a natural environment. A favourite childhood beach, a patch of woodland at the end of the road, tending their window-box.

I believe our wellbeing is hugely linked to our natural world and can have a profound impact on our relationships with ourselves.

For instance, over Lockdown my sleep has been quite interrupted. Since I’ve been making the effort to watch the sun go down each evening it has really improved. Our natural world holds so many wonderful healing properties for our minds.  

4.      How can the environmental movement make our cause more accessible to people who are struggling with their mental health?

I think for a lot of people eco-anxiety and an unconscious stress about our climate emergency adds another layer of overwhelm, which makes engagement with the environmental movement more difficult.

There is also unhelpful stereotypes surrounding so called ‘eco-warriors’ that can make the movement feel radical, inaccessible or something for hippies. Encouraging people to find their own individual relationship with their natural environment is a wonderful place to start. That way some of the changes or actions to engage with the environmental movement will have their root in a meaningful ‘why’ for each person rather than rooted in shame, pressure or anxiety.

I also think that encouraging the message of being ‘imperfect’ is a really positive way of engaging more people. Too often we are faced with images of individuals who are seemingly doing sustainable and environmentally friendly living ‘perfectly’. They aren’t, nobody is. Just like nobody has perfect mental health.

To me there is something powerful about starting where you are and making little shuffle steps. If we all shuffle, we will move mountains.  

If we let it, our natural environment can help us heal.

Rachael Asks Jo:

Jo

1.      What inspired you to start your blog Climate.Emergence?

For nearly six years I’ve worked in the world of climate lobbying. I work with MPs, campaigners, civil servants, NGOs and I’ve seen that work-related burnout is rife across our sector. For me, that has meant periods of time off work, but I also see it in many of those who I work with in the form of resentment, in-fighting and a state of despair for the world.

I’m also a carer for a family member with depression, so I’ve had the opportunity to spend a lot of time thinking about mental health and why it’s so important. I began to see that many of the things that are good for the environment are good for our own wellbeing, and visa versa.

Climate.Emergence is a place to connect the emotional and ecological in the hope that it will make the climate emergency more accessible and engaging for more people; especially those who struggle with mental health.

2.      What is the best thing about engaging with climate change right now?

The impact that young people have had through the youth climate strikes is incredible. Within a year or so they have raised awareness of climate change in a way that many NGOs have been trying to achieve for decades. I am so inspired to know that this is what the next generation looks like!

Aside from that, there is an increasing sense of disorientation in capitalist culture. Mental illness is on the rise, as are instances of extreme political ideologies that take advantage of this disorientation.

We know deep down that there’s something missing- whether that’s a closer sense of community, or a better work/life balance, or greater equality within society- and climate change is a vessel to work on all those things.

So climate action isn’t just about averting disaster, it’s actually about building something better than we ever had before.

3.      If you’re new to engaging with climate change where would you encourage people to start? What did your start look like?

Probably the single biggest thing you can do to tackle climate change is to regularly write to your elected representatives about it. This was my start and led to me founding the charity Hope for the Future which supports people to do this, especially if they’ve never done it before. Even with the squeakiest, cleanest lifestyles personally what we really need is for governments to support all people- especially those for whom environmentally friendly choices are less accessible- to make those choices. If our policymakers don’t know it’s important to us, they won’t have the courage to make those changes because they’re worried it won’t get any votes.

But, of course, personal lifestyle changes are important. If you’re a meat/ dairy eater or you fly, these are two of the biggest things you can reduce to cut your carbon footprint. Another is to switch to a clean energy supplier such as Good Energy, Ecotricity or Bulb (it’s easy and often not any more expensive). Or one very easy thing is do is to use the search engine Ecosia, which plants trees with the searches you make.

But ultimately the best place to start is with a change of attitude. An environmentally lifestyle isn’t about depriving ourselves, it’s about truly savouring what we have so that we can let go of excess and feel in a better position to share with others. It’s actually a really exciting adventure, and we need as many people taking that journey as possible!

4.      What is the hardest part of working alongside such a huge and serious issue? How do you keep hope?

Of course, I have moments of despair and hopelessness. We have ten years to halve our emissions in order to have a decent chance of keeping our planet habitable. That’s a lot to be working with every day.

But I am grateful to be alive at a time when I can really make a difference, when we all can. There is so much meaning in all of this. We know that each day counts, each moment counts. We are waking up and realising that we cannot leave the fate of the world just in the hands of our leaders, that if anyone is left behind we are all left behind, that many things really are worth fighting for. It’s painful, but it’s beautiful too.

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost (1916)

I love poetry. I think poetry has always had a healing quality for me. There is a beauty in taking something complicated; namely our human experience, then distilling an essence of that experience into a few short stanzas. This poem by Robert Frost has long been a favourite.

The way I read it, the voice of the traveller is stepping out of their comfort zone. The traveller is making choices (like we all must in life) they experience doubt and uncertainty, they tell themselves that they will come back to this point again and walk the other path (even though they know deep down that they won’t). For me, this poem is about bravery, it’s a humble bravery…it’s putting one foot in front of the other. It’s making a choice with the information you have, with the tools and experience you have. Bravery is sometimes accepting that you are at a fork in your own life; that a path must be taken and that it will lead you away from the one you decide against today.

I find this poem to be so kind in it’s boldness. Our world is a loud one; there are expectations aplenty to contend with. Yet I find the simplicity of this poem so soothing and grounding.

We found this path that certainly wasn’t popular at Derwent Reservoir. It had an uphill climb which rewarded us with these beautiful views. Didn’t see a single other soul up here!

When we are healing it often feels as if we are walking a road less traveled. We can feel alone or isolated. We can doubt that we have made the right choice when we came across a fork in our path. However, I find such comfort in the line: ‘ Yet knowing how way leads onto way,’ there will be forks to explore, more choices to make. There will be pauses, rest and mountain views.

I suppose this blog post is a simple reminder that you’re doing the best with what you have. Taking the path that is open to you right here and now. You are brave to think about your mental health, you are courageous to learn about yourself and your own uniqueness.

If you’re local to Sheffield or the Peak District I would definitely recommend this path less traveled. It’s the green arrow route (approx 1 1/2 hours) Steep climb for the first half.

Meditation Apps: To Calm or to Headspace?

I mourn the days when I had a brick phone that could be dropped down six flights of stairs and be completely fine. I miss having my black block that rang when I was called and beeped when I had a text. I miss snake, I miss the simplicity of it.

It’s taken me quite a long time to get over the fact that the world isn’t going to go back to these friendly non-invasive blocks. It’s taken me a little while to realise that I am probably being nostalgic about my old phone and my old relationship with technology. The truth is, I’m not going back…

So the question is how do I make my smart phone something that allows me to feel free and to benefit from it; without the pitfalls of the social media hamster wheel and the illusion that I am free to be contacted any time of the day or night.

For me, finding meditation apps has been a huge tick in the smart phone’s favour. I’m a big fan of them. If we are generally never too far from our phones, then having something that might encourage a sense of calm or ease stress in a worrisome situation is a brilliant thing. I suppose, like lots of modern choices we are faced with, it’s how we choose to use our devices to serve us… rather then letting our technology have dominion over us.

There are literally hundreds of meditation and mindfulness apps out there. To be honest, I find this array of options quite fatiguing so today I’m going to talk about the two big boys on the market. Calm and Headspace. Both of these platforms give us the opportunity to have a free 7 day trial to see if it’s for us.

So having used both these apps over the last couple of years here are my short summaries of each to support you in picking which might be best for you.

Headspace:

Headspace is incredibly user friendly and does a really good job of not putting off people who are new to meditation with pictures of smug looking people with zen blissful expressions.

Headspace also does a brilliant job of not making the app feel overtly feminine and is pretty gender neutral. I think this is actually quite important as overwhelmingly men are not encouraged to be mindful and I feel this is a huge downfall of many of the apps.

Secondly, the app is narrated by Andy Puddicombe who has a wonderfully restful voice and manner. It’s also important to highlight that he has an English accent. For some people the American accents of other apps can feel distracting or grating.

Having used Headspace I also feel that as an app it is extremely supportive in helping build a meditation and mindfulness practice with good foundations. It is pretty perfect for anyone who is entirely new to the practice and is curious. After most meditations you can watch a quick animation that supports your learning and helps explain why meditation may benefit you. I really enjoyed using Headspace and found it a very friendly app to use.

Calm:

So first and foremost, Calm has mostly American voices leading the meditations. I personally don’t find this distracting, but it is something to consider and try out. One of the things that first attracted me to calm was it’s use of natural ‘scenes’ within the app. You can sit and listen to the sound of rain, or waves or a river running its course. For me, this is very soothing and instantly makes me feel more relaxed.

I also appreciate the ‘daily calm’ feature which takes all the decision fatigue out of what meditation I press play to. However, they do have extensive choices for particular topics such as stress, self-esteem and depression offering seven-day meditations for these particular issues. I’ve also really enjoyed the Calm Masterclass collaborations and sleep stories which are regularly updated. As an app I feel it offers a few more options to it’s subscribers to suit their mood.

Calm is the app I’ve decided to stick with (mostly because of the scenes and the music element) however, having used both I can highly recommend each platform.

I feel that creating spaces on our phones that act as digital sanctuaries for us can be a powerful way to counteract some of the more anxiety inducing elements of our little hand-held smarties.

Do you use meditation apps?