Community Stories

Gentle humour One of the surprises in this last decade has to be Gone Fishing . The origins of Gone Fishing are deeply personal and rooted in real-life experiences. Both Paul Whitehouse and Bob Mortimer underwent life-changing heart surgeries—Bob had emergency triple heart bypass surgery in 2015, while Paul had heart problems which required stents. During Bob’s recovery, Paul spoke to Bob’s wife and learned that Bob was struggling to resume normal activities. Paul invited Bo

A few years ago, a friend invited me to a gathering her sister was organising. It was a wonderfully random mix of women, brought together through loose connections.  Some knew each other, many had never met before. A village hall had been hired, and we were invited to spend two nights together with a simple agreement: contribute what you could and arrive open to the shared experience. By the time the weekend came around, my stress levels were at an all-time high. I was deep i

Every December and January, the same familiar drumbeat starts up. New year, new goals. New habits. New you. Social feeds fill with planners, vision boards, fresh gym memberships and shiny declarations about the year ahead. There’s a lot of energy in it - hope, ambition, the promise of a clean slate. And yet, I’ve always felt quietly uncomfortable with the whole thing. I don’t love the new year, new me  vibe. If I want to be a certain way, or achieve certain things, and I’m no

Some days, the idea of being organised feels almost laughably unrealistic. We’re told constantly that life would run more smoothly if only we were a little more on top of things. Plan ahead. Do things earlier. Prep the meals in advance. Buy the Christmas gifts in November. Simple, right? Except…not really. Because underneath every piece of organisation advice is one silent assumption: That you have time. And for many of us, that’s the part that’s missing. Organisation = doin

Sehnsucht - Susanne_Kraißer After years of living away I experienced a profound  hiraeth  for the fog, the flatlands and quiet villages of my hometown. Sometimes, I’d be overcome with a yearning to be around my ancestors and the life they once lived; the places they had once walked in. I was experiencing saudade - a deep emotional state of melancholic longing for something that was absent. However, it is fair to say that this yearning, this longing was largely Sehnsucht beca

As the leaves turn and the air cools, many of us feel an intuitive shift, a quiet invitation to look inward.  The end of October and the arrival of Samhain (pronounced Sow-en ), the ancient Celtic festival marking summer’s end, offer a powerful moment to pause, reflect, and realign before the deep winter sets in. The modern calendar urges us to “start strong” on 31st December.  To charge into a new year full of resolutions and new routines. But when we look around, nothing in

Online shopping: thrills and disappointments. I was going to talk about post-menopause but have been distracted by AI. I use Ai quite a lot and really appreciate what it can do. I find that I rarely google anymore because AI can gather the information and discount the irrelevant pieces of information and then present it to me in a language I understand - and conversationally too! I also know we should be cautious about AI because of the environmental drain, especially with su

As someone therapeutically trained, I thought I had a pretty good grasp of grief. I understood the theory. I felt open to it, willing to...

Exploring the Possibilities of Parallel Paths For a long time, I believed that life had a singular, correct path. That we were meant to...

I have been striving for independence my whole adult life. I thought that being able to do it all myself meant that I was strong,...

What do you see when you look in the mirror? It is going to get so much harder, getting or should I say looking older. I have always...

“I learned about microchimerism today.” Microchimerism and miscarriage are deeply intertwined in ways that are both scientifically...

Middle adulthood has come at different ages over the decades. I remember looking at Ladybird books and comparing the original versions...

When we think of burnout, we usually imagine long hours at a demanding job, a full inbox, or never-ending meetings. But for many women,...

If there is one thing I am vulnerable to on Instagram is sample sets of perfume. It is made worse by my tendency to immediately buy them,...

Happy New Year! Many of us know that April 1st was once the first day of the new year, and that this was during pre-Christian times,...

Since Ostara’s origins around the end of last year and the beginning of this, I have had to embrace social media in a way I don’t find...

Have you ever found yourself looking at your cat or dog and thought “I’ve got an animal freely wandering around my house! How has this...

Tiddy Mun Tiddy Mun was one of the Tiddy people - bog spirits who lived in the marshes, or Carrs, of North Lincolnshire, the Fens of South Lincolnshire, and the fens of the Isle of Ely. They could make the waters rise and fall to help the farmers who they lived in harmony with. They were considered mischievous but benevolent people. Tiddy Mun was described as being as small as a three-year-old, and dressed in grey which made him appear to emerge from the thick, grey mists of

I have been watching Davina McCall's podcast on You Tube "Begin Again with Davina", and she is talking with Eleanor Mills. Eleanor is a...