All posts tagged: #wellbeingblog

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’ …

Finding Calm Before Bed

I have never been a ‘good’ sleeper, I’m definitely a night owl. Roald Dahl put it beautifully in The BFG: “The witching hour, somebody had once whispered to her, was a special moment in the middle of the night when every child and every grown-up was in a deep deep sleep, and all the dark things came out from hiding and had the world all to themselves.” The BFG by Roald Dahl I used to love that feeling; of having the world all to myself. I would regularly sit up til two in the morning reading. I would tip toe downstairs to the kitchen and watch the foxes from the backdoor ferry their young across the garden by the scruff of their necks. I adored the stillness of the night. The soft murmur of the wind on the roof, the dart of a bat in the corner of my eye. For some reason it energised me, my imagination would zip into life. Wired, wide awake. Alive, when everyone else was away. This is still very …

A Place for Gentleness

This year I decided against giving myself any resolutions or strict goals. Last year had been a big year of change for me. I’d gotten married and finished a training course to become a Counsellor and Psychotherapist that had taken me four years of training and countless hours of volunteering (all while working to fund my studies). At the end of 2019 I was left with a question that didn’t seem to shift: ‘What now?’ I felt like so many doors had been opened to me that I couldn’t possibly walk through them all. Suddenly, my vision that had been so focused and singular only months before was blurry and undetermined. Then something shifted. I was on holiday with my husbands family in Northumberland. I felt anxious and worried and guilty that I was here on holiday when I hadn’t ‘gotten anywhere’ for months. I started spending hours on the beach combing for sea-glass and remnants of smashed and then smoothed pottery. I found I was distracted from my worried mind with these little treasures …