A friend sent me these pics yesterday – memories of Switzerland last August. This hike was sublime! Up above Lac de Louvie, then a 2,500m descent in glorious sunshine. My heart felt so big, and at this point my body felt so strong. 25km in about 11hrs and oh! this middle aged soul feels younger every year I take a step into myself and away from self-sabotaging behaviours. …
I’ve been talking a lot about what makes a successful life these past few years. I think this is because I came to realise we have very narrow parameters around what we consider success that often focusses on our earning or networking capacity. I had a very chaotic childhood. I’m not saying this to invite pity, but to offer a brief context. So success to me has been learning about stability, about how relationships work and how to form authentic…
A friend said to me recently, ‘You don’t have to grieve standing still’ and oh my I felt that deep in my bones. I’ve been focusing on building an internal success paradigm that doesn’t rely on external validation. It’s one where I give myself credit for overcoming smaller fears, where I celebrate every time I genuinely strengthen a connection instead of shutting it down, when I step into my power instead of giving it away.None of these things are particularly…
When we were at Worm’s Head, South Wales, recently we witnessed a huge sand dredger hauling its cumbersome body forwards and backwards through the water, dragging up sand for all the new buildings. This level of extraction causes endless untold stresses on the local ecosystem, and yet we just see this as a natural element of human progress. Why is this? By sending my book out into the world as copyleft/ under the Creative Commons I wanted to put myself…
Sending new words out into the world can feel like jumping off a cliff. You don’t know how it’s going to land, or if people will connect. There’s that lurch in the stomach as your feet recognise thin air, the last-second terror that maybe you should just forget all about it and go hide in bed. And yet we do it don’t we? We scramble up, stride forward; step off. Over and over: crafting the narrative, reshaping the vision, reconfiguring…
This poem was gifted to me by the land at San Juan de Gaztelugatxe, northern Spain, over a magical hunters full moon weekend back in October 2019. We parked on the cliff tops then walked and dreamed. A truly magical place in time. This is also the opening poem to the new novel The Madness of Sara Mansfield as I felt directed by the land to stitch as much of her into the book as posible. The Madness of Sara…
I am so in love with my body right now I want to swim in every glorious moment, feel it visceral and wild against skin. Yesterday I blasted uphill fireroads on the bike, lungs sucking in mouthfuls of spring, forest air. Then long swooping singletrack descents had me stood on pedals until the fronts of thighs burned like crazy, eyes focussed on the trail ahead. Slowly I’m remembering how to ride, the movement of body with bike, muscle memory calling…
One of the elements of the new novel, The Madness of Sara Mansfield, that’s important to me is the nature writing. Although this sci-fi trilogy nods towards dystopia, there’s also hope, and for me, the potential for new dreams always flows from nature.After wars, or in derelict places, wild plants grow, reclaiming the space, rejoicing in their fecundity. Nature knows how to heal the scars of our making. I think this is why I find books like McCarthy’s The Road…
Yesterday we hiked to the source of the Severn River. We stood at the small swampy bog that is the origins of this vast and tumbling body of water that becomes so large the Severn Bridge was constructed so that we might cross. A reminder that the humblest beginnings can grow into the most unexpected forces of nature. Later I spoke with the trees there, who do not think of humans as friends, and I apologised for the mess we’ve…