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Mental Health

creating dailyconnectionwithnature feature Mental Health nature poetry

Awakened by the mountain

July 25, 2021

It’s the strangest thing, to look back on events years after they’ve happened with new eyes. To see the woman I was from the perspective of this woman I’m becoming. Once the mountain speaks to you nothing can ever be the same, and yet I tried, I really tried so hard to keep everything the same. Until eventually I had to understand that it’s all the same. Do you believe in predetermination? That our outcomes are already set?  Have you…

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dailyconnectionwithnature feature Mental Health nature water

Searching for joy

July 18, 2021

I had thought to write an inspiring caption for this short film of yesterday’s beautiful wild encounter (swipe left). I took off clothes, swam naked and free, but sometimes I find it hard to write with joy when there’s so much misery in the world. I read the words of a man who worked in an industrial pig farm and the disgusting ways he abused innocent animals just because he could exercise some power. I then felt overwhelmed by the…

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Mental Health nature vanlife

When I’m away from people the world makes sense

July 14, 2021

When I’m away from people the world makes sense. I can walk or cycle these rolling hills with a glorious heartfull of belonging. Every atom of this beautiful earth is deeply sacred so that I can simply exist in these spaces and just breathe.Still, the need to connect, to understand and be understood is a deeply human attribute that I also possess.People give me intense anxiety, but I’m learning to work with it, to slowly feel my way into being…

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dailyconnectionwithnature feature Mental Health nature

On quitting yoga

June 29, 2021

It’s the strangest thing, finding your way in the world, and I’ve written before about the many circular or dead-end paths encountered on this journey of self-discovery. During early sessions of studying Kung Fu (in my late 20s), I couldn’t get my head around the feeling I was a blackboard being wiped clean in order for a new text to be written across me. I didn’t then have the self-knowing to understand this was not the kind of teaching I…

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family feminism Mental Health

Herstory

June 24, 2021

There’s a long herstory of emotional neglect and abuse running throughout my matrilineal ancestry. It’s not something that was acknowledged or even understood when I was a child. You just grow up thinking that whatever circumstances you’re born into are completely normal because you don’t know any different. Reaching middle years has been a huge turning point, like I’ve climbed that ancestral massif and, turning to view the ascent, I clearly see the carnage strewn across the landscapes of past…

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feature feminism Mental Health nature

Figuring out the language of my body

June 20, 2021

Figuring out the language of my body is a lifetime’s work. Does anybody else feel they’re balancing so many elements – like keeping a very long line of plates spinning? And I drop them, sometimes a lot of them, even if less often these days. I write often about self-directed learning because this is the pathway into understanding that resonates most strongly, especially so with my body.Maybe this is a ridiculous approach because there’s so much to learn from others.…

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feminism Mental Health vanlife

Forging friendships on the road

June 15, 2021

When we first moved into the van nearly four years ago we wanted to get away from everyone and everything for a while, just to reset ourselves and maybe recalibrate our place in the world. As much as I needed those long months of solitude, I’ve emerged from that cave happier, and feeling more confident around people. I’m not sure this is something that’s evident from the outside because I was so good at masking, but now I’m building a…

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creating dailyconnectionwithnature Mental Health nature vanlife

Finding my own successes

June 5, 2021

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…

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family Mental Health vanlife

The truth of a successful life

May 4, 2021

We met on MayDay seventeen years ago. It’s the strangest thing, colliding with one person who changes the entire trajectory of your life. These past 3yrs in the van, I’ve been thinking a lot about what makes a successful life. Previously, I’d chased all those things I was told would make me successful, while working to help others achieve success. Until I began to ask the question ‘what does success mean?’. Ah. Epiphany. Much of what I learned about success…

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books creating Europe feminism Mental Health poetry

Writing characters I love

April 28, 2021

One of my favourite characters to write in The Madness of Sara Mansfield is Sara’s life-partner, Nneka Adesina. I am in love with Nneka’s brilliance – she has worked her way to the pinnacle of success as a biotech scientist in the sovereign state of Mont Blanc – the world is at her feet, and she knows it.  And yet, beneath the surface of her immensely successful and meticulously shaped Amortal life, difficult questions begin to surface about the true…

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