I spent most of my childhood up a tree. There was a giant oak across the street from our house, behind a wooden fence. I was four years old, and getting to the lowest branch required a whole engineering project: drag one of the outside rubbish bins over, turn it upside down, balance it against […]
There is a moment, right after a door closes, when the nervous system doesn’t know the difference between disappointment and danger. The chest tightens. The mind starts building a case. It was supposed to happen. I did the work. Why did this fall apart. I know that moment well. Earlier this year I had a […]
One of my closest spiritual soul sisters finally came up to Yorkshire for a visit. I gathered my whole family around for dinner so everyone could meet each other properly, because they’ve all been hearing about one another for twenty years. Twenty years of stories, finally sitting at the same table. Santosh came up specifically […]
When I was a teenager, someone told me I had the form and the talent to go professional with horses. I had the blue ribbons to prove it. And I wanted a horse more than almost anything. But I also wanted ballet. And the theatre. And to travel the world. And I knew, even then, […]
After nearly two weeks of travelling, I’m on my way home. Restored in my soul, happy in my connections and full, in every sense of the word. I saw new cities, had spectacular cultural experiences, and unlike my usual healthy eating discipline, I fully committed to the gelato and pasta plan in Italy and the […]
It was a beautiful hot sunny day, not a cloud in the sky. Forrest and Bob were running a fell race and invited me along. In the car on the way I realised I’d forgotten my wallet. Bob had too. We got teased about that, responsible parents that we are. Neither of us could figure […]
You’ve done the work. Maybe years of it. The therapy, courses, healing sessions, and countless spiritual practices. And yet there’s still this feeling, a heaviness, a stuckness, a sense that something is running underneath everything that you just can’t quite reach. That’s not a sign that you’re broken. That’s a sign that what you’re carrying […]
How the body holds what the mind can’t yet say Let me say something that might ruffle a few feathers in the wellness world. Some people still believe that the mind and body are two separate departments! That one runs the thoughts and the other just carries them around. Fix the thinking, the story goes, […]
Chip Conley, the founder of MEA, the Modern Elder Academy, recently shared something from a Jerry Seinfeld interview that I haven’t been able to put down. The idea that the blessing in life is when you find the torture you’re comfortable with. He traced the word torture back to the Latin torquere, to twist. Not […]
I want to tell you about a recent Tuesday in Turkey. I nearly missed the whole thing. After navigating 4 local bus trips, I walked the wrong way, for 30 minutes on a road going nowhere, and had to make a snap decision that every childhood warning my parents ever gave me was screaming against: […]
