I’m sorry there was no blog post on Tuesday.

Those of you who have been following me for a while will know that I’ve been caring for my mum, who was diagnosed with a rare, progressive neurological condition called Multiple System Atrophy just over three years ago.

On Monday, Mum was really unwell, and we ended up in hospital. It was an awful experience. After more than seven hours in an overcrowded medical assessment unit, without adequate facilities to attend to Mum’s needs or make her comfortable, I made a best-interest decision to bring her home in the early hours of the morning.

Since then, we’ve had a really helpful visit from a wonderful hospice nurse. She’s offered us advice and support as we navigate what may lie ahead. The coming weeks (possibly months) are likely to be very challenging, and I’m incredibly grateful for the friends and professionals who are rallying around us.

So why am I telling you this?

Well, I had planned to write about some of the values I’ve chosen to live by: honesty, courage, kindness and adventure.

It turns out that right now, I’m having to put three of them into practice in ways I hadn’t anticipated.

Honesty: The truth is, this is horrible.

Courage: I’m digging deep to find the courage to face whatever lies ahead.

Kindness: I’m determined to give Mum the love, tenderness and care she deserves, reflecting back to her something of the wonderful care she’s given me throughout my life.

But kindness also means being kind to myself.

And right now, that means giving myself permission to have just one focus. I’m not going to expect myself to keep blogging, illustrating, producing and doing all the other things I usually do.

Who knows? There may be moments when a crazy idea pops into my head and I feel like picking up my paints or writing something. And if that happens, I might share it.

Or I might not.

For now, I’m giving myself permission to simply be here, with Mum.

One day at a time. One breath at a time.

Thank you for bearing with me. I’ll be back when I’m ready.

Love to you all,

Andrea

Back in January, I spent a night away in my little campervan TC, for the first time in ages.

It was -3°C outside, which perhaps wasn’t the most obvious way to rediscover my joy in life. I wrote about it at the time in A Night at -3°C

As I look back eight months later, I see that little trip differently, because it marked the beginning of something.

The previous few years had been pretty challenging, with caring responsibilities and working my way through trauma, recovery and therapy. Somehow, during that journey, my life had shrunk.

I’d become bored. Not the I don’t know what to do, can I find a decent film on Prime? kind of bored. I felt squashed and despondent. My world had become very small.

And I realised I was missing something.

I was missing adventure.

I didn’t want to escape my life or abandon my responsibilities. I just wanted something that had within it novelty, curiosity and anticipation. Something that came with a little bit of I wonder what will happen?

Towards the end of 2025, I began doing some work on my values with my therapist. I picked four words and even painted them onto a little stone to keep on my desk.

Perhaps the most surprising word I chose was adventure.

But I didn’t just want Adventure painted on a pebble. I wanted adventure in my actual, lived life.

So what would adventure look like for me? A woman in her 50s with responsibilities?

Well, adventure certainly wasn’t going to mean climbing Everest. But I decided I could try to make room for one night and a day each month that would be mine to explore.

And wonderfully, I’ve been able to do that.

I’ve been away in my little campervan quite a number of times, sometimes on my own and sometimes meeting up with friends. I’ve stayed up late for midnight Zoom calls with friends in the USA. I’ve explored Manchester and art museums and walked my legs off in Southport.

And there have been other adventures too. Some have involved driving a little way. One involved going only two miles from home. Sometimes it’s simply been coffee and a scone at the little local park.

The thing that brings them together isn’t travel.

It’s doing something new or interesting, perhaps slightly unpredictable, simply because I’m curious about it.

These little mini-adventures haven’t transformed my circumstances. I’m still caring. I’m still carrying responsibilities. I haven’t run away from my life.

After all, I’m talking about one day and night a month, not disappearing to the Maldives for six weeks!

But something disproportionate has happened.

It’s brought back some life, some spark and some vitality.

The adventure itself might last only a day. Still, there’s the anticipation beforehand, the enjoyment while I’m doing it, the memories I have afterwards, and the sense that life still has plenty of possibilities.

And that’s much bigger than 24 hours.

When I first started thinking about deliberately choosing adventure for myself, it felt like a bit of a plot twist in the story I was living. So I designed myself a little Plot Twist: Adventure logo, complete with my little campervan, whom we call TC (Tiny Camper).

And this week, my friend gave me the wonderful hoodie she’s made from my design.

I love it.

And I think there’s something quite lovely about the fact that in January I dared to write Adventure on a small stone sitting on my desk beside my laptop, and in September I have ADVENTURE written boldly across a hoodie as I head off again.

And yes, you can have a little smile at just how Andrea it is, to design my own adventure hoodie.

So this week’s adventure is Newcastle.

I’m driving right across the country because I’ve found a talk that fascinates me: The Science of Trauma and the Body. I’m going to drive across, explore some of the coast, go to the talk, spend the night in TC and then head home.

Hopefully this night will be somewhat warmer than the -3°C night in January!

I’m not escaping my responsibilities, and my life hasn’t suddenly become easy or carefree. I’ve simply started making a little space within it for something I’ve realised matters to me.

Is there something that makes you feel more alive that has quietly disappeared from your life?

What might it look like to make just a little room for it to reappear?

I was so grateful for his care and concern for me, but mostly I was just relieved.

My son was okay.

Later that evening, I realised that a falling sign had taken the life of a man who was a husband and a father, and two others were critically injured.

I felt such a confused mix of emotions. There was enormous relief that my son was all right, alongside this awful knowledge that while I’d had a phone call telling me my son was safe, another family was facing devastating news.

At the same time, I was seeing news from the other side of the world of devastating floods that had killed hundreds.

I just found myself thinking: this is hideous. These people matter. This shouldn’t be happening.

I have this deep sense of the preciousness of human life. For me, it comes from believing that we are created by God and that every one of us carries his image. Every person matters.

And as I was thinking about all of this, my mind went back 16 years to the earthquake in Haiti.

My sons were four at the time. I was watching the distressing images on television with one of them, seeing the devastation and the appeals for money, and trying somehow to explain to my little boy what had happened.

He disappeared upstairs.

A little while later he came back carrying his piggy bank.

“Mum, I want you to take all of this money to the post office for those children who don’t have anything now.”

And my response wasn’t to tell him that the contents of a four-year-old’s piggy bank weren’t going to make much difference. I didn’t tell him that terrible things happen all over the world and we can’t possibly help everyone.

Of course I would help him give it.

I was just incredibly moved by my little boy. There he was, too young for theology, just living out the image of a generous God.

He saw suffering and his instinct was compassion.

And here is the bit I’ve only really understood recently in my own healing from trauma.

The compassion I instinctively feel when somebody else is suffering applies to me too.

I’ve been able, increasingly, to look at myself and say:

I matter.

What happened to me mattered.

My pain matters.

It sounds like such a small step.

For me, it has been a huge journey.

And even as I write that, I can hear myself doing it. “Other people had it worse. My suffering wasn’t that bad”.

But I’m not talking about scale.

I’m talking about the simple reality that people matter.

And that includes me.

I think sometimes, when we look at our own suffering, we say things like:

Other people have it much worse.

I mustn’t make a fuss.

I’ll find something to be grateful for.

Surely I can forgive and move on.

But when we do that, I think we bypass something essential.

Before we can heal, we have to be able to say:

This hurt.

This mattered.

I mattered.

I needed safety.

I’m allowed to grieve what happened.

This makes me think of the work of psychiatrist and trauma researcher Judith Herman. She describes three broad stages of recovery: establishing safety, remembrance and mourning, and reconnection.

This fits so much with what I’ve been discovering for myself.

I had been trying to leap straight to reconnection.

I wanted to understand, process, forgive, make sense of things, behave well and make things better.

But first I needed to ask: Am I safe? How can I begin to feel safe?

Because creating safety says something important.

I am worth protecting.

And mourning says something too.

What happened to me is worth grieving.

Which brings me back to lament, something I’ve written about before.

I think lament is deeply human and deeply spiritual. It isn’t wallowing, and it isn’t saying that there is no hope. It is refusing to deny the reality and intensity of pain in our rush to get somewhere better.

And after all this thinking, I still find myself asking, “Why, God?”

And sometimes, “Where were you?”

I can ask those questions about what I see happening in the world. And I can ask them about my own story too.

I’ve come to believe my faith doesn’t require me to suppress those questions. That’s part of lament too.

So this blog post doesn’t end with an answer to suffering.

I don’t have one.

But perhaps I don’t need an answer to suffering before I can choose how I respond.

When somebody far away is suffering, I can notice and care. I can pray, and I can give.

When it’s my friend beside me, I can listen. I can protect, and I can help.

And when the person suffering is me?

I think it’s the same.

I can notice.

I can listen.

I can believe that it matters.

I can seek safety.

I can respond to myself with compassion.

My little boy didn’t try to work out whether those people in Haiti had suffered enough to deserve his compassion. He didn’t compare their pain with somebody else’s. He didn’t calculate whether the contents of his piggy bank could fix anything.

He simply saw suffering and responded with compassion.

Sixteen years later, I think I’m learning to respond to myself a little more like my four-year-old.

He saw suffering and responded with compassion.

It’s not because I’ve suffered more than somebody else or because I can prove that what happened was bad enough.

But because I’m human.

My life is precious.

I’m worth protecting.

And my suffering matters.

And I hope you can see for yourself that you matter too.

But there was something else about those days, about that holiday, that I’ve found myself thinking about since I got home.

I was curious.

Really curious.

And I had so much fun with it.

One day, as we were wandering around one of the beautiful National Trust properties, I stood in a grand dining room, looking at the incredible paintings hanging on the walls.

I’m just fascinated by those paintings. You know I paint myself, obviously on a very different scale, and I know how difficult it can be to get onto paper the painting that you have in your head.

I found myself looking at these enormous paintings and wondering, how on earth did somebody hundreds of years ago manage to create that? How did they get the proportions right on that scale? What kind of brushes did they use? How could they see well enough to paint in that detail without modern lighting? How did they make their colours?

And as I was admiring one particular painting, I noticed something.

The hand just looked wrong.

I looked again, and it was definitely odd. The proportions weren’t right, and the more I looked at it, the stranger it seemed. It almost looked as if the subject might have had an extra digit or a disability.

So, being me, I kicked off a conversation with the National Trust volunteer in the room.

She knew so many interesting things about the room, the objects, the painting and its history, but she’d never noticed that about the hand. As we chatted and looked together, it intrigued us both.

Suddenly we weren’t simply two people looking at a painting. We were curious together.

My small observation had opened up a conversation, and the conversation led to more questions.

I loved it.

I’ve had more thoughts about that hand since, because I can be horribly critical of my own artwork. I look at it and think, That’s not right. The perspective isn’t right. The colours haven’t come out right.

Oh gosh, and hands!

They are so hard to paint. How many times do I redo those? Even in my finished pictures I can find myself thinking, Oh well, I hope they don’t notice the hand.

Yet I can walk into a historic house, look at a painting created nearly 280 years ago and put its creator on a pedestal in an entirely different league, thinking, Wow. How amazing these artists were.

And, of course, they were. Their skill was extraordinary.

But apparently they could still paint a slightly dodgy hand.

I find that strangely encouraging.

There’s a difference between looking at something and thinking, That’s rubbish, and looking at it and thinking, That’s really interesting. I wonder what’s going on there?

The first is judgement.

The second is curiosity.

And I’m thinking I could do with a little more of the second, especially when I’m looking at my own work.

Brené Brown, who, if you come to my blog a lot, you’ll know I think is rather amazing, talks a lot about curiosity. She says it requires us to tolerate uncertainty and vulnerability. We have to be willing not to know.

She uses two phrases as a practice of curiosity that I think are absolutely great:

Tell me more.

I’m wondering...

I love these words because curiosity doesn’t demand that I have an answer. In fact, it begins with admitting that I don’t.

Brené talks about the difference between being a “knower” and being a learner. Sometimes being the knower can feel safer, because there’s vulnerability in saying, I don’t know, but I’d like to understand.

But I think that also brings so much freedom.

Curiosity followed me around on my holiday week.

As I walked through historic buildings and villages, I didn’t just want to know facts. I wanted to figure out what it would actually have been like to live there.

How dark would it have been in a room on a winter’s evening?

What would the smells have been like?

What would they have believed?

What would they have been frightened of?

What did an ordinary Tuesday look like for the person living here hundreds of years ago?

I found myself standing in ancient buildings, disappearing down rabbit holes about my own Christian faith, or wondering about a church and who built it. What did the people who came into those rooms believe? How have those ideas travelled and changed?

One question led to another question.

I wasn’t becoming an expert.

I just wanted to know.

And perhaps there’s something about historical curiosity that helps us grow in empathy. It’s easy to look backwards and judge people from another time with what we know now.

It takes imagination, though, to ask:

I wonder what the world looked like from where they were standing?

And then there was the sky.

That particular week there was a rather impressive solar eclipse. I could probably have looked at it, nodded wisely and pretended that I understood rather more astrophysics than I actually do.

But why?

It was so much more fun to wonder. To look. To ask questions. To admire other people’s photographs and marvel at what they’d been able to capture.

Maybe I understood a little more than I did before.

But I still don’t get it.

It’s incredible.

And that’s something I’m learning about curiosity.

I don’t have to understand something to be delighted by it.

I don’t have to master it.

I can simply pay attention.

Because curiosity makes room.

When I judge something, I reach a conclusion.

Well, that’s wrong.

That’s no good.

This is what I think.

I’m rubbish at that.

But curiosity puts a question mark where I might otherwise put a full stop.

That’s interesting.

I wonder why?

What am I missing?

How was that for you?

What might happen if I tried this differently?

And I’m thinking that the use of a small question mark creates room for other things to happen.

It creates room for learning, growth, empathy, connection and, importantly, fun.

Because that National Trust volunteer and I weren’t having a fascinating conversation because either of us had all the answers.

She knew things I didn’t know.

I’d noticed something she hadn’t noticed.

And between us there was a slightly odd hand on a nearly 280-year-old painting that gave two strangers something to investigate together.

I want more of this.

More of really looking.

More of noticing.

More conversations where I’m less interested in proving what I know and more interested in discovering what I don’t.

More generosity towards the bits of my own work, and perhaps the bits of myself, that aren’t quite how I think they should be.

More willingness to say:

That’s interesting. I wonder...

Because perhaps curiosity doesn’t just help us understand the world.

Perhaps it helps us connect with it.

And with each other.

It would be just perfect for keeping the sun off me on this really hot day. I loved the look of it.

I tried it on.

It briefly crossed my mind that my young adult boys would definitely roll their eyes.

And then I thought, No. I like it.

So I bought it.

I wore it. I took photographs in it. I enjoyed it.

And somewhere along the way, I realised that I was just happily wearing the hat.

I wasn’t watching myself and wondering what other people thought of me.

Perhaps that’s why something as insignificant as buying a hat has stayed with me since I came home. Because actually, it represented something much bigger.

Julian and I were staying at our friends’ house on the Staffordshire-Shropshire border. It was a wonderful respite break from my everyday responsibilities, and I found myself really relaxing into it.

We geeked out together.

We wandered around National Trust properties enjoying the architecture, paintings, history, gardens and nature. I disappeared down Christian history rabbit holes, looking for little details and quirky facts.

I took the photographs I wanted to take. We stopped when something grabbed our attention. I chatted away to volunteers and asked far too many questions.

We lingered.

Occasionally I thought that, if the boys had been with us, they’d probably have been moving me on by now. But even that thought just made me smile.

This was Julian and me being who we are, enjoying what we enjoy, and having a wonderful time.

There was no need to hurry.

We didn’t have to rush from room to room because somebody had got bored. There was no pressure to get on to the next place. I could stand and really look. I could read every last word on the information board, ask another question, take another photograph or simply sit for a while.

I was able to linger.

And somehow, on this holiday, time itself felt different.

Nearly a quarter of a century ago, I was preparing for our wedding. For the fortnight leading up to the big day, I had created a colour-coded timetable detailing who was doing what, when and where.

One morning at work, it was sitting beside me on my desk when a couple of colleagues noticed it. One of them burst out laughing.

“Hey Andrea, I bet you’ve got one of those in your bag for the honeymoon too.”

It was funny because everyone knew there was a little bit of truth in it.

I’ve always been a planner. I like organisation. I like doing things well.

And, yes, there’s some perfectionism in there too.

I’m still the woman with the colour-coded calendar. My life now probably needs one more than ever. Mum’s carers have one colour. I have another. Different family members have theirs too.

Organisation isn’t the baddie in this story. It’s a skill, and sometimes it’s essential.

But what I realised on this holiday is that I don’t have to organise my joy.

A younger version of me would probably have approached holidays with a subconscious desire to holiday well.

Where are we going? What time do we need to leave? What can we fit in? Are we making the most of the day? Where next?

Something was different this time.

Yes, I made some plans because I haven’t suddenly become somebody I’m not.

But the plan wasn’t in charge.

Curiosity was allowed to interrupt.

A conversation could take longer than expected. Something beautiful could cause us to stop. We could change our minds.

We could linger.

I wasn’t trying to carry out a plan to optimise my joy.

Part of what allowed me to holiday like this was the respite from caring. In ordinary life, there are things to remember, coordinate and anticipate. There is information to hold in my head. Even when nothing urgent is happening, responsibility can occupy a lot of mental space.

But for those few days, I wasn’t carrying it all.

And what surprised me was what appeared in the space that left behind.

Nothing huge, worthy or productive.

A hat.

An old house.

A painting.

A bridge.

A photograph.

A fascinating conversation.

A historical rabbit hole.

I had room in my mind for wonder.

As I sit here writing, I wonder whether this holiday could have happened quite like this at any other time in my life.

In the past, I was much more attuned to other people’s responses.

Do they approve?

Are they enjoying themselves?

Am I taking too long?

Am I being silly?

What does everybody else need?

I can see now that much of that was people-pleasing. I’ve come to understand some of it as fawning. Some of it was probably simply my perfectionism and my desire to get things right.

But as I’ve grown, as I’ve healed, and perhaps simply as I’ve got older, something has changed.

I’m much less likely to monitor myself living.

It’s not that I’ve stopped caring about other people. In fact, I think I’m better able to care about other people now that I’m not disappearing from my own experience.

I’m still the woman who loves a colour-coded planner. I still like to organise things, and I still like things done well.

But I’m also a woman who is curious, playful, interested, creative and easily fascinated.

I’m quite happy to chat to a National Trust volunteer for ages about something obscure.

Healing hasn’t changed who I am.

It’s given me more of myself.

And I’m letting her out.

My perfectionist organiser doesn’t have to be the gatekeeper anymore.

So now I’m sitting at home on my bed, looking at my fairly ordinary hat and acknowledging that my boys wouldn’t choose it. Maybe other people wouldn’t either.

But that’s not the point.

I love the hat.

And now it’s a tiny reminder of something I don’t want to lose as I return to the calendars and responsibilities of ordinary life.

I can say:

I like this.

I’m interested in this.

I’m going to stop here.

I want to learn more.

This delights me.

And I don’t have to justify any of those things.

Perhaps that is one of the quiet gifts of healing.

I can stop watching myself live and simply get on with living.

I’m taking a little bit of my own good advice today.

I’m away with my husband, enjoying a lovely, restorative few days, and I’ve decided I’m not going to spend my time here thinking, planning, processing and drawing something new for the blog.

Instead, I’m going to enjoy being here.

So today I’m sharing an older illustration of mine that felt rather appropriate.

“I’m so tired,” said the girl.

“It’s OK to pause and rest,” said her little dog.

Perhaps you need that reminder too.

You don’t always have to keep going. You don’t always have to be productive. And you don’t have to earn your rest.

Sometimes it really is OK to pause.

See you next week.

Andrea x

I don’t need perfection. I don’t need an RHS show garden. But I do want people, even before they ring the bell, to have a sense that they’re welcome here.

When people arrive at our clean and tidy front porch, they won’t see the hours spent sweeping away brick dust left from building Mum’s annexe and the porch. They won’t see the heavy bags of compost, the ground baked hard by weeks without rain, the hours wandering around garden centres reading labels on plants I knew nothing about, or the aching muscles that arrived after two days of work.

They’ll simply see a few pretty pots by the front door. Like so many things in life, they are the final chapter of a much longer story.

Thankfully, I wasn’t doing it alone.

I had a friend; I didn’t need my friend to do it for me. I needed her to walk alongside me on a path she knew well.

She could gently say, “That plant will grow well there,” or, “I know you like that one, Andrea, but it won’t survive in that shady spot.”

As our family admire the finished result, they probably won’t notice the wonderful friend quietly in the background whose wisdom and encouragement helped make it possible.

What makes it even more special are the memories those pots hold.

Some of them belonged to my dad and stood in this very garden before we moved in and built Mum’s annexe. Others are beautiful old stone planters that once stood proudly in my husband’s grandma’s garden.

Buying new plants and placing them into those old containers feels deeply symbolic somehow.

Our lives are rarely built from scratch.

We inherit stories.

We inherit kindness.

We inherit beauty.

Sometimes we literally inherit the pots.

For a long time, I wanted to sort out the garden, but so much of my energy was needed to care for Mum that it simply had to wait. Not because it wasn’t important, but because something else was.

Perhaps you have something that has had to wait too.

I’m incredibly grateful that we now receive Continuing Healthcare support. For the first time in quite a while, there’s enough breathing space to notice the neglected porch, wash away the last of the building dust, and prepare a welcome.

There’s something rather beautiful about preparing a celebration for our sons using containers that have already witnessed so much of our family life.

I wasn’t trying to create an award-winning garden. I wasn’t hoping people would admire my planting schemes or ask where I’d bought my flowers.

I simply wanted them to arrive feeling that someone had been expecting them.

I’ve even been looking for a simple metal sign that says “Welcome” to put beside the front door. Not because it’s fashionable, but because I want our home to say “welcome” long before the sign ever does.

Preparing a welcome turns out to involve much more than arranging a few pots.

It looks like trusted friends sharing their wisdom, tired muscles after digging stubborn ground, watering tiny plants that haven’t yet proved themselves, washing away the dust of an old building project, and reusing containers already full of family stories.

Perhaps the warmest welcomes are always prepared this way.

Slowly.

Quietly.

Through countless unseen acts of care.

Then one day someone walks through the gate, smiles, and simply feels at home.

Perhaps that’s what all those unseen acts of care have been preparing for all along.

She pulled out her phone to show me a photograph of the puppy who’ll soon be coming home to live with them.

We chatted about puppies, and our other neighbour’s enthusiastic new arrival, who Barney and I met last week. Then she laughed and said I was more than welcome to pop round for puppy cuddles whenever I liked.

“You can have all the fun without any of the responsibility.”

The more I thought about it, the more I decided that sounded like a rather excellent arrangement.

Don’t get me wrong. Barney was an utterly delightful puppy.

He bounded through life with oversized paws, endless enthusiasm and a determination to investigate absolutely everything. His cuddles were wonderful. We affectionately called his tiny razor-sharp teeth “the shark teeth”. He left the occasional puddle where puddles really weren’t welcome and needed constant supervision.

One of my favourite memories, and the one I’ve illustrated here, is of Barney and his “got me” grin from the little side table where he was nibbling one of the very few houseplants I’d actually managed to keep alive.

It was impossible to be cross with him for long.

I adored his puppyhood.

However, I have absolutely no desire to do those puppy days again.

As I remembered the delight and exhaustion of Barney’s puppyhood, it struck me how often life’s greatest joys arrive carrying demands we could never have fully anticipated.

In just a couple of weeks, our twin boys, Isaac and Ethan, will celebrate their twenty-first birthdays.

Their beginning was frightening.

There was an emergency delivery, resuscitation, and then Ethan’s sepsis, followed by years of hospital admissions as we tried to manage his breathing difficulties.

Later came a different kind of fear, as Isaac battled serious mental ill health and suicidality following the loss of our dear friend Chris.

For a long time, exhaustion became normal.

So did fear.

Some seasons feel as though they’ll never end.

But now, as we prepare to celebrate twenty-one years, I look at the remarkable young men they’ve become.

They are well.

They’re flourishing.

And each has a lovely girlfriend.

After years of living in a house full of boys, I have to admit I’m rather enjoying having two wonderful young women becoming part of our family story too.

And perhaps, for the first time, I can look back with a different perspective.

If someone offered me those years back, I wouldn’t take them.

And yet...

I wouldn’t give them back either.

Not because suffering is somehow good.

I would gladly have spared my boys every moment of illness, fear and struggle.

But I cannot separate those years from the people we were becoming within them.

Those years contained my boys.

Not only their fear and illness, but their laughter, courage, growing confidence and all the ordinary moments that quietly became precious.

They held family memories.

Unexpected kindness.

Friendships that carried us.

People who walked alongside us when life felt impossibly heavy.

I didn’t love the fear.

But I loved the people who met me there.

Perhaps that’s true for many of us.

Most of us will recognise seasons like this.

Caring for someone we love.

Living through illness.

Grieving.

Trying to hold a family together while wondering whether we have enough strength for the next day.

Those seasons often carry both immense joy and immense cost.

Looking back doesn’t require us to pretend every moment was wonderful.

Nor does it require us to wish those seasons had never happened.

Sometimes, with the gift of a little distance, we discover that both things can be true at once.

So I’ll happily accept an invitation for puppy cuddles when the new arrival finally comes home.

I’ll smile at the oversized paws, the gangly enthusiasm and the inevitable mischief.

And then...

before the next puddle appears...

or something expensive gets chewed...

I’ll hand the puppy back.

Because there are seasons we’re grateful to leave.

There are seasons we’re grateful to have lived.

And sometimes...

they’re exactly the same seasons.

We’d been clearing years of overgrown shrubs from the front garden and had reached the point where only thick, stubborn trunks remained. We simply weren’t equipped to deal with them. My lovely neighbour has a garage full of useful things, so I wondered if I could borrow a saw.

A few minutes later she appeared in our front garden, saw in one hand and a rather impressive power tool in the other that made us both laugh and pause for a photograph.

Then she said something I wasn’t expecting.

“I’m free. I can stay and help.”

She disappeared home for a moment, returned wearing thick gardening gloves, and simply got stuck in.

For the next couple of hours we chopped, dug, pulled and cleared. By the time we’d finished, an area that had felt completely overwhelming had been transformed. Branches were bagged, stubborn roots were gone, and the space was finally ready for whatever came next.

As I thought about it later that evening, one simple thought stayed with me.

Some people give far more than we ask.

I asked to borrow a saw.

Instead, I was given an afternoon.

Conversation.

Laughter.

Shared purpose.

Perhaps that’s why the practical help is never really the point. We remember how people made us feel long after we’ve forgotten exactly what they did.

Presence isn’t only for life’s biggest griefs or deepest crises.

Sometimes it looks like someone pulling on a pair of gardening gloves.

A couple of days earlier I’d been chatting with the neighbour on the other side about what should eventually replace all those shrubs. I’d imagined planting another hedge. He was hoping for a simple wooden fence.

As we talked, I realised he was probably right. A fence would let in more light for both of us. But I still longed for some greenery, especially beside the little corner where I dream of sitting with my morning coffee.

So I rang another friend who loves gardening.

“What about evergreen jasmine?” she suggested. “It would thrive there.”

I loved the idea.

As I looked around, I realised this little project had quietly become something much bigger than clearing a patch of garden.

One neighbour had given me her afternoon.

Another had helped me see the space differently.

A friend had imagined beauty where I could only see a fence.

Without really noticing it, the project had become woven together with other people’s generosity.

Then another thought arrived.

When the fence is finally built, I’ll enjoy it.

When the jasmine begins to climb, I’ll smile every time I make my morning coffee.

The garden will look better than it does today.

But if I’m honest...

It will still only be a garden.

Years from now I probably won’t remember exactly which shrubs we cut down, or how many bags we filled, or which roots were the hardest to dig out.

I will remember my neighbour arriving with a saw in one hand and a ridiculously oversized power tool in the other.

I’ll remember her disappearing home for gardening gloves.

I’ll remember us laughing as we worked side by side.

Because it wasn’t really the cleared garden that made that afternoon precious.

It was knowing that somebody looked at my little problem and quietly decided it mattered to them too.

The shrubs will be forgotten.

The fence will weather.

Even the jasmine will one day need replacing.

But I have a feeling I’ll remember those words for a very long time.

“I’m free.”

“I can stay and help.”

A gentle note before you read

This week’s reflection includes a personal experience of suicidal thoughts and mental ill health. Although the focus is on hope, empathy and recovery, I know this may be tender territory for some readers. Please read with care, and feel free to come back to it when the time feels right.

I’ve been reading the ancient story of Job this week.

Two things struck me.

The first was his astonishing honesty. His whole world has fallen apart, and he doesn’t pretend otherwise. He tells the truth about his pain. He questions. He laments. He cries out. He doesn’t tidy up his emotions before bringing them to God.

The second was his friends.

We’ve even given them a name in our language: Job’s comforters.

At one point, Job describes them as being like a seasonal brook—full of rushing water in winter, but dry when travellers most need a drink. They promised relief, but when the heat came, there was nothing there.

As I read those words, I found myself unexpectedly thinking back six years.

It was during the COVID lockdowns. I was working in the NHS when unresolved trauma resurfaced with overwhelming force. My mental health deteriorated rapidly and eventually I had to be sent home from work.

There came a point where I became actively suicidal.

Looking back now, I realise just how unwell I was.

What I realise now is that I wasn’t alone.

I had an extraordinary counsellor and an amazing friend.

My counsellor was experienced, wise and deeply empathic. She recognised the seriousness of where I was, helped me put a safety plan in place and asked me to promise that I would tell her if I was no longer safe. The trust we’d built over time meant I could tell her things that felt impossible to say out loud. Her calm presence and practical guidance became part of what carried me through the darkest days of my life.

My friend had earned my trust long before I ever needed it. She had shown me, over and over again, that she could hold my deepest fears without judgement. When I eventually found the courage to tell her how desperate things had become, she didn’t panic. She didn’t lecture me. She didn’t try to explain my pain away.

She simply stayed.

Years later, I came across Brené Brown’s wonderful little animation about empathy. She describes the difference between standing at the top of a hole shouting helpful advice and climbing down to sit beside someone in the darkness.

Brené Brown illustrated video on Empathy

The first time I watched it, I smiled through tears.

Because that was exactly what my counsellor and my friend had done for me.

They met me there.

Perhaps that’s why I’ve been thinking differently about Job’s friends this week.

Before they began explaining his suffering...

Before they tried to answer questions nobody could answer...

They simply sat with him.

For seven days.

I wonder whether that was the kindest thing they ever did.

As I look back now, I can see something that I couldn’t see then.

Hope didn’t begin when my circumstances changed.

Hope began when I discovered that unbearable pain didn’t have to be carried alone.

As I sit here writing these words six years later, I remain profoundly grateful that those dark days did not have the final word.

Perhaps you’re carrying something you’ve never quite dared to say out loud.

If you are, I hope you find someone safe enough to tell.

Or perhaps someone has trusted you with their pain.

If they have, don’t worry about finding the perfect words. Your presence may matter far more than you realise.

I’ve come to believe that kindness isn’t always knowing what to say.

Sometimes kindness is simply refusing to leave.

The greatest gift my friends gave me wasn’t a way out of my pain.

It was the certainty that I wouldn’t have to sit beside it alone.

If this reflection has resonated because you’re struggling with thoughts of suicide or you’re worried about your own safety, please don’t carry that burden alone. If you can, tell someone you trust today—a friend, a family member, your GP or a mental health professional. You matter, and help is available.

If you’re in the UK or the Republic of Ireland, the Samaritans are available 24 hours a day by calling 116 123, or by visiting www.samaritans.org.

The adventure had actually begun the evening before. My wonderful friend Claire had offered to put me up for the night because it’s quite a drive down to Staffordshire. She welcomed me with a cheeky G&T in her beautiful summer house, cooked me tea and simply gave me the gift of hospitality. I don’t think she realised quite how much that simple welcome meant to me. After months of caring responsibilities, it felt like I could finally exhale.

Looking back now, I wonder whether that simple act of being cared for prepared my heart to notice what the clay would teach me the following day.

The next morning I arrived just in time for my pottery lesson, full of excitement and already imagining the beautiful pot I was going to make.

What surprised me was that we didn’t begin by making a pot at all.

Instead, we spent a long time simply preparing the clay.

The instructor had me coning it up, pressing it down, coning it up again and pressing it down again. It took far more pressure than I’d expected. Before I could create anything useful, the clay had to be centred and prepared.

She explained that all that squashing had a purpose. It removed hidden air pockets, made the clay consistent and prepared it for the kiln. Without that process, the pot could crack or even explode during firing.

The pressure wasn’t ruining the clay.

It was preparing it.

As I sat there with my hands covered in clay, I couldn’t help wondering whether life is sometimes a little like that.

For me, the pressure of recent years hasn’t created people-pleasing or unrealistic expectations. Those things were already there. The pressure has simply revealed them.

Looking back, I realise I’ve been shaped by many things: therapy, good books, painful experiences, deep friendships and my faith. None of them on their own, but together. Whether we realise it or not, we’re all being shaped.

Perhaps the question isn’t whether we’re being shaped.

Perhaps it’s what we’re allowing to shape us.

As those thoughts settled, I found myself thinking again about Claire, and about newer friends I’ve met through therapy groups. Their kindness, conversations and hospitality have shaped me too. Not just the difficult things. Sometimes the gentlest influences leave the deepest mark.

My own faith adds another layer to all of this. The Bible often pictures God as a potter and people as clay. I don’t pretend to understand every difficult season I’ve lived through, and I certainly don’t believe that every painful experience comes neatly wrapped with a lesson or a silver lining. But I do believe that our hardest experiences don’t have to be wasted. Somehow, they can become part of the shaping.

As I looked at the little pot I’d made, another thought quietly emerged.

The kiln was never the pot’s purpose.

Its real purpose begins afterwards.

A pot isn’t made just to exist.

It’s made to hold something.

Looking back over my own life, there are still chapters I would never choose to relive. There are pages I’m very happy to have turned.

Yet those experiences have also increased my capacity.

A greater capacity for compassion.

For patience.

For hope.

To receive kindness.

And, I hope, to offer it in return.

My friend had quietly modelled exactly what I’d been learning all day.

Her life had the capacity to hold me.

As I drove home, ridiculously pleased with my slightly wonky little pot, it struck me that the clay hadn’t been pressed simply so it could survive the firing.

It had been shaped so that one day it could hold something life-giving.

Maybe that’s true of us too.

Perhaps all this shaping isn’t simply making us stronger.

Perhaps, little by little, it’s increasing our capacity to hold hope, kindness, wisdom, joy and compassion...

...so that when someone arrives at our door needing shelter, needing kindness, needing someone simply to hold them for a while, we’ll have something life-giving to offer.

“Forgiveness means giving up all hope of having had a different past.”
Edith Eger

In a few weeks, my boys will turn twenty-one.

What a wonderful milestone.

Birthdays have a curious way of inviting us to look backwards before they allow us to look fully forwards. At the same time as approaching this milestone, I’ve been exploring what feels like one final layer of my complex PTSD story with my therapist. Somehow, the two seem to have met in the middle.

I’ve found myself looking through old photographs, some of which I’m sharing with you here.

I see ventilators and incubators. Monitors and hospital rooms. I see frightened new parents trying to make sense of events that had unfolded so quickly.

But as I’ve sat with these photographs, something has quietly shifted.

I’ve begun to notice something else.

Hands.

Holding.

Presence.

Connection.

The quiet ministry of people who simply refused to let go.

These photographs tell two stories about the very same events.

One is a story of trauma.

The other is a story of love.

Looking back over those early weeks and months, I’ve realised there are large parts that I simply don’t remember.

My boys arrived through an emergency birth that required resuscitation. Isaac spent time in special care, and just three weeks later Ethan developed life-threatening sepsis. We spent weeks in hospital, frightened and exhausted, living very much in survival mode.

As I’ve reflected on those photographs and explored this season in therapy, I’ve decided to write to the hospital to request our medical records from that time.

Not because I’m stuck.

Quite the opposite.

I’m doing better than I have for a long time.

I’m writing because I’d like to understand my own story a little more fully.

The past twenty-one years have been rich.

I’m incredibly proud of the two healthy young men my tiny babies have become.

Life hasn’t been easy. There have been challenges along the way. But there has also been laughter, work, love, creativity and so much healing.

Perhaps this next stage of healing isn’t about trying harder.

Perhaps it’s about understanding more deeply.

Perhaps understanding is one more way of making peace with the story I’ve already lived.

Recently I’ve found myself returning to Edith Eger’s wonderful book The Choice. One sentence in particular stopped me in my tracks.

“Forgiveness means giving up all hope of having had a different past.”

I’ve been carrying that sentence around with me for days.

Because as I think back to those traumatic weeks, I notice old emotions surfacing.

Anger towards the obstetrician whose decisions made an already difficult birth even more dangerous.

Frustration that Ethan’s illness wasn’t recognised as quickly as it should have been.

Sadness for that frightened young family we once were.

And yet, perhaps forgiveness begins when I stop hoping that history could somehow have unfolded differently.

It didn’t.

That is the story we lived.

Trauma has a habit of whispering, “If only...”

If only different decisions had been made.

If only someone had recognised the danger sooner.

If only I’d seen the warning signs before my friend’s suicide.

Our minds keep searching for a version of history that doesn’t exist.

Perhaps you have your own “if only” story.

I’ve also been wondering whether trauma doesn’t simply leave us with painful memories.

Sometimes it leaves us with bodies that remain on constant alert.

Always scanning.

Always preparing.

Always expecting the next emergency.

Hypervigilance probably protected me once.

It helped me survive.

But twenty-one years later, I’m beginning to wonder whether it’s still trying to protect me from dangers that have long since passed.

And perhaps that’s why acceptance has become such an important word for me.

Not passive acceptance.

Not approval.

Not pretending it didn’t matter.

Not forgetting.

Acceptance simply says:

This happened.

It mattered.

I wish it hadn’t.

But it cannot now be different.

Only then can I stop arguing with reality.

I’m beginning to think that giving up hope for a different past makes room for hope for a better future.

My hope now isn’t that history will somehow change.

My hope is for understanding.

For peace.

For freedom.

For healing.

For a nervous system that slowly learns it no longer has to live on constant alert.

So, as I write to the hospital to ask for those medical records, I’m not trying to relive those weeks.

I’m not collecting evidence.

I’m not reopening wounds.

I’m simply reading the missing pages because, perhaps, I’m finally strong enough to read them.

And maybe understanding them a little more fully will help my heart and body catch up with something my head already knows.

The emergency is over.

Perhaps that’s what healing has been trying to teach me all along.

Now, when I look at those photographs, I still see trauma.

I still see tiny babies, hospital equipment and frightened parents.

But I also see something I couldn’t see so clearly before.

I see love sitting quietly beside every incubator.

I see hands that never let go.

I see people who kept turning up, one day at a time, carrying us when we couldn’t carry ourselves.

Perhaps that’s been the truest story all along.

The trauma was real.

But so was the love.

And maybe, twenty-one years later, I’m finally ready to carry both stories together.

With a little less fear.

And a little more peace.

I wonder what your “if only...” story might be.

Is there an impossible hope you’ve been carrying—one that quietly asks yesterday to be different?

Perhaps, gently and in your own time, there is freedom to lay that hope down.

Not because what happened didn’t matter.

Not because it wasn’t deeply painful.

But because perhaps your heart, too, deserves to hear the words mine is slowly learning to believe:

The emergency is over.

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As it was Father’s Day this last Sunday, it’s perhaps unsurprising that, nearly nine years after Dad died, I found myself thinking about him.

I was remembering the twinkle in his eye and his cheeky humour. His wonderful bedtime stories. Family games around the table. Roughhousing with my brothers. The practical skills he taught me, like decorating and DIY.

All of those memories are precious.

But as I reflected, I realised that what I miss most isn’t something Dad did. It’s how I felt around him.

Encouraged.

His greatest gift wasn’t simply teaching me how to do things. It was helping me believe that I could.

I think I managed to capture the twinkle in his eyes. The same eyes that looked at me with encouragement long before I realised what a gift that was.

It was 1987, and I had just passed my driving test. I was about to start training as a physiotherapist, so I borrowed Mum’s mustard-coloured Austin Maxi and drove into Bradford on my own. It was probably only fifteen miles, but it felt like a great adventure.

On the way home, I clipped a kerb on a hill, blew out a tyre, and very nearly hit a wall.

I was in complete panic.

There were no mobile phones back then, so eventually a family friend was tracked down and came to help. He changed the wheel and got everything sorted.

“Right,” he said. “You can head home now.”

But I was terrified.

“I can’t drive.”

My wise friend looked at me and said, “No. You need to drive home. But I’ll follow behind you. You’ll be safe.”

That was encouragement.

He didn’t do it for me. He didn’t shame me for being frightened. He didn’t dismiss my anxiety or tell me to pull myself together.

He simply stayed with me.

He believed I could do something that, in that moment, I didn’t believe I could do myself.

So I got back in the car and drove home.

Later that evening, Dad got home.

There was no fuss. No criticism. But no over-comforting either.

Instead, he said, “Well, love, if you’re old enough to drive, you’re old enough to know how to change a wheel.”

Then he took me straight outside and taught me how.

As it turns out, that has been a surprisingly useful skill over the years.

I think we sometimes assume encouragement is all about compliments, praise or reassurance.

And sometimes it is.

But often encouragement is something deeper.

It’s believing that somebody is capable.

It’s staying beside them while they try.

It’s teaching rather than rescuing.

It’s refusing to let fear have the final say.

As I thought about this, I realised that the word encourage literally means to put courage into someone.

One of the people most remembered for encouragement in the Bible was Barnabas. In fact, his nickname literally meant “Son of Encouragement”.

Can you imagine that?

Being so consistently encouraging that people simply start calling you that.

We often admire people for their intelligence, leadership, gifting or success.

Barnabas became known for encouragement.

What a legacy.

I wonder who comes to mind when you think about the people who have put courage into you.

Perhaps it was a parent.

Perhaps it was a teacher, coach, friend or neighbour.

Someone who believed in you, steadied you, challenged you or stood quietly behind you while you attempted something frightening.

As I reflected on this, I found myself remembering a much harder season of life.

Years ago, when I was having EMDR therapy to help process trauma, I was asked to imagine a safe person. To my surprise, I struggled.

Around that same time, my artwork was beginning to develop, and I often painted my little dog Rafiki speaking words of encouragement to me.

Looking back, I can see that something deeper was happening.

The encouraging voice wasn’t really coming from a dog.

It was my own voice, slowly learning to speak with more kindness.

Sometimes we need encouragement from other people.

Sometimes we need to borrow their voice for a while.

And gradually, with practice, we learn to speak those same words to ourselves.

When I think about all of this, I come back to Dad.

No, he wasn’t perfect.

None of us are.

But he gave me a gift that has lasted long beyond his lifetime.

He put courage into me.

And perhaps one of the greatest gifts we can give one another is to do the same.

To be the person who says:

“You can do this.”

“I’m staying beside you.”

“I believe in you.”

And sometimes, when it’s needed:

“Get back in the car.”

“I’ll follow you home.”

Who has put courage into you?

I’d love to hear about the people who have encouraged you along the way. Feel free to share in the comments.

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I was a young adult navigating one of the first significant losses of my adult life. My granddad had died and, in that moment, a small package arrived through the front door. It was a card from a friend and a gift of a jazzy pair of socks. The card said, “I hope that you don’t find this frivolous, but I just wanted you to know that I was thinking about you and I cared about you.”

It was so amazing to have a friend who knew me well enough to choose something that she knew I would like. It mattered so much because I felt seen and known. I wasn’t excited because they were the most wonderful socks in the world. Had I bought them for myself, I might simply have thought, “Oh yes, nice pair of socks.” But she knew me. In the midst of grief, she had noticed my pain and reached towards me with something small, thoughtful and deeply personal.

The joy it brought was extraordinary: such a small act, and yet so deeply felt.

As I reflected on that long-ago gift, I realised that joy had visited me again only a few days earlier.

I was in a therapy session and my therapist, who I’ve been working with through some really deep and difficult stuff, said to me, “You know, I think you’re getting to the place where you won’t need any regular sessions anymore.”

I think if she’d said that even a month before, I would have panicked. I would have felt abandoned. But I didn’t. Instead, I replied, “Oh, but I’ve only been in this good place for two minutes.”

So yes, I had mixed emotions. I knew she wasn’t going anywhere. I felt proud of myself and the progress I’d made. I felt excited for the future and grateful for her skilled help. But I also felt strangely anxious. Joy had arrived with a flutter of fear.

That made me think about Brené Brown’s work. Brené Brown calls this foreboding joy: our tendency to brace ourselves just as something good is happening. I recognised it immediately. Rather than simply receiving the moment, part of me was already preparing for it to disappear.

I guess that was what I was doing with my therapist. I was trying to figure out: What if I’m not quite there yet? What if this isn’t as good as I think it is?

It struck me that joy can make us feel strangely exposed.

As I mulled all this over, I thought, you know what, I’m just going to check up on foreboding joy and see whether I remembered it correctly.

I have both read and listened to Brené Brown’s wonderful book Atlas of the Heart multiple times over the years. It’s one of those books I’ve returned to again and again because it has helped me put words to experiences that once felt impossible to name.

I realised I probably hadn’t opened my own copy for over a year. So I went downstairs to the bookcase to check whether my memory of foreboding joy was correct.

As I opened the book, two bookmarks fell out.

The first marked a page entitled “Anguish”. The second, “Disconnection”.

It took my breath away.

The last time I had reached for this book, those were the chapters I needed.

Now I was opening it to look up joy instead.

It dawned on me just how far I had travelled.

Growth can be difficult to see from the middle of it. Often we don’t notice the slow, quiet changes taking place in our lives until something unexpectedly reveals them to us.

It’s a bit like children, and I think all parents know this well. You see your children every day and assume they’re much the same. Then one morning you look down and their trousers are halfway up their legs and you realise they’ve been growing all along.

Those bookmarks were a bit like a short-trouser moment for me.

They hadn’t caused the growth, but they certainly revealed it.

My friend’s lovely sock gift, the two bookmarks, and my therapist’s encouragement about my progress all brought me to the same place: immense gratitude.

Gratitude for a friend who noticed.

Gratitude for a therapist who reflected back growth I wasn’t seeing.

Gratitude for the distance covered.

So I’m left wondering whether joy isn’t always found in life’s big milestones.

Sometimes it arrives in a pair of socks.

Sometimes it comes in a sentence spoken by someone who knows us well.

Sometimes it’s two forgotten bookmarks falling from an old book.

And sometimes, if we’re paying attention, those small moments gently reveal just how far we’ve travelled.

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If this piece resonated with you, perhaps take a moment to reflect on your own “short-trouser moments”—those small signs that reveal how far you’ve travelled.

What has unexpectedly shown you that growth was happening, even when you couldn’t see it at the time?

If you’d like to share, I’d love to hear your story in the comments. Often, by telling our stories, we help one another notice the quiet work of growth in our own lives.

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This weekend, I was treated to a lovely day out in Liverpool.

It’s been a busy season, and I was more than ready for a break. We wandered around the city, enjoyed some good food, and headed to the theatre to watch The Karate Kid musical.

I was expecting a bit of nostalgia, a few laughs, some good music, and an enjoyable afternoon out.

What I wasn’t expecting was to find myself blinking back tears.

For those who don’t know the story, Daniel travels across the entire United States with his mum. His dad has died, and his mum has been offered a job and the chance of a fresh start. While she’s hopeful, Daniel is devastated.

Everything familiar has been left behind: his friends, his home, his sense of belonging. He doesn’t want a new beginning. He wants the life he has lost.

Near the beginning of the show, Daniel and his mum sing a song about writing a new story. His mum sings it with hope. Daniel sings it with anxiety. How can he possibly imagine a new story when he is still grieving the old one?

That song really moved me.

At the moment, I’m reading a book by Mary DeMuth called Restory Your Life. I’ve been fascinated by how she uses the language of story and narrative to explore healing from trauma. The idea that recovery might involve becoming an active participant in our own story again has stayed with me.

Mary is a novelist whose own story includes trauma, resilience, healing, and restoration. Through the book, she uses both story structure and biblical characters to help us explore our own lives.

One of the things I appreciate most is that she doesn’t suggest we erase our past or pretend difficult things never happened. Quite the opposite. She encourages us to tell the truth, to acknowledge our losses, to face our wounds, to grieve what needs grieving, and to be honest about what shaped us.

That resonates deeply with me because it echoes much of what I’ve been writing about recently.

Healing isn’t pretending everything is fine. It’s not about putting a positive spin on pain. It’s about being truthful.

But Mary also suggests something else. We might not get to choose everything that happens to us, but we do get some say in how we tell our story.

One chapter that particularly resonated with me explored what she calls the muddled middle. She draws on the story of a woman who suffered from bleeding for twelve long years before encountering Jesus.

Twelve years.

Not twelve weeks, not twelve days, but twelve years of uncertainty, disappointment, limitation, and waiting.

That chapter deeply resonated with me because much of life can feel like an extended muddled middle.

And perhaps that’s also why I found myself emotional in the theatre. I recognised something of myself in Daniel’s anxiety about starting a new chapter with the old one barely closed. Not because our stories are remotely similar, but because I know what it feels like to wish difficult chapters were distant memories.

I’m no longer in the depths of some of the trauma that I’ve experienced. Much healing has happened. Much growth has happened. But I am still living with some of the consequences. There are still difficult circumstances around me. There are still challenges that haven’t miraculously disappeared.

Sometimes I catch myself wanting a neat ending. The breakthrough moment. The final chapter where everything is resolved.

Instead, life often unfolds in long stretches of muddled middle. And I think that’s normal. It’s probably where many of us are living.

The muddled middle is not evidence that our story is stuck. It’s simply the place from which the next chapter will begin.

What I loved about Mary’s book is that she didn’t stay in the muddled middle.

She moves on and, in a final chapter, focuses on the Samaritan woman whom Jesus meets at the well.

Jesus engages with her in her brokenness. He knows her whole story. He doesn’t shame her or dismiss her. Instead, in that encounter, he changes her life.

But she doesn’t receive that hope just for herself. She goes and tells others.

The woman who arrived carrying shame becomes someone who brings hope.

The one who was helped becomes a helper.

The one who was restored becomes someone who points others to restoration.

That chapter was really special for me because it reflects so much of what I hope to be doing through this blog.

I don’t write because I have life figured out.

I don’t write because I have reached some wonderful place where all my wounds are healed and every problem has been solved.

I write because, along the way, I have found hope.

I have found people willing to walk alongside me.

I have found truth that has helped me make sense of my experiences.

I have found healing.

Not complete healing, not perfect healing, but real healing.

And if sharing my story helps someone else feel less alone, then it’s definitely worth the vulnerability.

Later in The Karate Kid musical, another line struck me.

Daniel says, “How can I be the hero in my story if I don’t even try?”

And I love that.

Not because it suggests we can control everything, but it reminds us that we are not merely passive observers in our own lives.

We can make choices.

We can seek help.

We can learn.

We can grow.

We can take the next step, even if it’s small.

No, Daniel doesn’t get his old life back. The story doesn’t erase his past losses.

But he does learn to step into a new chapter rather than spending his life wishing for a different one.

And perhaps that’s what restoring is all about.

Not denying the hard chapters.

Not pretending the painful parts never happened.

But choosing not to let those chapters have the final word.

As I look back over my own life, there are chapters that I definitely wouldn’t have chosen.

There are pages that are stained with tears, trauma, disappointment, confusion, and loss.

But I am increasingly convinced that those chapters will not define the ending.

We can tell the truth about what happened.

We can grieve.

We can heal.

We can choose our next steps.

We can become active participants in the story that’s still unfolding.

And we get to make our own final edits.

And maybe we can even help others do the same.

So let’s not give up in the muddled middle.

Let’s keep writing.

Let’s keep growing.

Let’s keep moving towards hope.

After all, the story isn’t over yet.

Or perhaps more accurately, musing about it.

My thinking has been prompted in part by continuing to read Forgiveness by Amy Orr-Ewing. Her writing has given me a lot to sit with, particularly around how forgiveness works in practice, and what it is and what it isn’t.

Forgiveness sounds relatively simple in theory.

In real life, it feels much more complicated.

I’m still learning that forgiveness isn’t forgetting. It isn’t pretending. It isn’t saying, “It didn’t hurt,” or “It didn’t matter.”

If anything, I’m beginning to realise that forgiveness starts with truth-telling.

Telling the truth about what happened.

And telling the truth about what it cost.

One of the images I keep coming back to is debt.

Perhaps that’s because one of the original ideas behind forgiveness is the forgiving of a debt. Someone owes you something, and you choose to release them from what they owe.

When we’re hurt, something is taken from us.

Sometimes it’s something tangible. More often it’s something harder to put into words. Trust. Safety. Time. Hope. Confidence. Peace.

Whatever it is, something precious has been lost.

And loss creates a debt.

As I’ve been mulling this over, I’ve found myself wondering whether sometimes we try to forgive before we’ve honestly reckoned with the size of that debt.

It’s as though someone owes us £1,000, but we’ve quietly written £5 in the ledger instead.

Perhaps because that feels easier.

Perhaps because naming the true cost would mean sitting with grief, anger or disappointment that we’d rather avoid.

We tell ourselves it wasn’t that bad.

They didn’t mean it.

Other people have had it worse.

Maybe.

But you can’t release what you’ve never fully named.

Forgiveness doesn’t begin by pretending the wound is small.

It begins by telling the whole truth about the cost.

As I was reading Amy Orr-Ewing’s book, one particular illustration really stayed with me.

She describes the process of buying a house. The buyer transfers the money and, from their perspective, their part is complete. The funds have left their account. They have released them.

But the money doesn’t immediately pass into the seller's hands.

Instead, it is held safely by the solicitor until the agreed conditions have been met and completion takes place.

I found that metaphor surprisingly helpful.

Because I think forgiveness works something like that.

There comes a point where we release the debt.

In the analogy, we’ve already sent the funds.

We say, “I am no longer holding this debt in my hands. I am giving up my right to revenge. I am releasing my demand to be repaid.”

In that sense, our part is done.

But that doesn’t necessarily mean everything is immediately restored between the person who hurt us and us.

From a faith perspective, I find myself imagining that when I release the debt, I entrust it to God.

He’s rather like a heavenly solicitor.

It’s no longer mine to grip tightly.

But neither is it mine to decide what happens next.

It’s held safely.

And what follows may depend on what happens on the other side. Whether there is sorrow. Repentance. Honesty. Repair. Change.

That distinction feels important to me.

Forgiveness can be real and wholehearted while still acknowledging that something significant happened.

I’ve released the debt.

But that doesn’t automatically mean everything goes back to how it was before.

In fact, one of the things I’ve been noticing is that releasing the debt may be as much about what happens within me as what happens between us.

Anger, as I’ve written about before, isn’t wrong.

Often, anger is the thing that helps us recognise that something mattered.

That a boundary was crossed.

That a loss occurred.

That a debt exists.

Anger can help us tell the truth.

But carrying anger for a long time is heavy work.

The mind circles around it.

The body holds it.

The nervous system braces around it.

And forgiveness, when it comes, isn’t about excusing someone or pretending the harm didn’t happen.

It’s about setting down a weight we were never meant to carry forever.

Not because it didn’t matter.

Because it did.

Not because the debt wasn’t real.

Because it was.

Not because the wound wasn’t costly.

Because it was.

These are things I’m continuing to mull over.

And I’m increasingly aware that forgiveness doesn’t necessarily mean reconciliation.

Nor does it automatically lead to restored trust.

Those things are connected, but they are not the same.

Trust often needs rebuilding.

Relationships often need repair.

And reconciliation may or may not ultimately be possible.

That feels like another musing entirely, and perhaps one I’ll come back to another time.

For now, I’m sitting with this:

Forgiveness doesn’t ask us to pretend the wound was small.

It asks us to tell the truth about what it cost.

And then, slowly and carefully, we work towards releasing that debt from our hands.

It came up in conversation with a small WhatsApp support group I’m part of.

We were talking about shame. What it feels like to carry it. How it shapes us. And how we escape it… or try to.

Someone mentioned self-compassion, which seems to come up in conversations a lot recently.

Friends were talking about the need for kindness towards ourselves. Treating ourselves like we would a good friend.

And I found myself quietly thinking:

yes…

but also not quite.

Not because I disagree.

I think self-compassion matters deeply.

But if I’m honest, in the past, when I’ve tried some self-compassion practices, they’ve often felt awkward or performative to me.

Like I was going through the motions of saying kind things to myself without really believing them.

As though I was trying to apply comfort—a plaster—to a wound that hadn’t been cleaned up or properly tended to yet.

I knew the ideas behind self-compassion were good ideas.

But something wasn’t quite landing.

Recently, I read Forgiveness: Reclaiming Its Power in a Culture of Outrage and Fear by Amy Orr-Ewing.

And it gave me language for something I hadn’t been able to name, but had been circling for a while.

She writes about forgiveness requiring an honest appraisal of harm.

A way of looking clearly at what has happened without minimising it or downplaying it.

She uses the phrase bearing witness.

That phrase stopped me in my tracks.

Bearing witness.

Seeing clearly.

Naming truthfully.

Not rushing past pain too quickly.

Not tidying it up.

Not skipping to redemption before grief has had room to speak.

She writes that rushing to forgiveness can sometimes short-circuit anger or grief.

And that resonated deeply with me because I know I’ve done that.

I think in earlier parts of my life, especially around traumas I’ve experienced, I’ve been quick to explain.

To minimise.

To rationalise.

To push myself towards forgiveness…

before I’ve truly allowed myself to acknowledge the harm.

Before I’ve fully said:

That really happened.

It really hurt.

And it mattered.

And perhaps even more importantly:

That hurt me.

That feels obvious written down.

But in practice it hasn’t always felt obvious at all.

Especially when shame is involved.

Especially when faith is involved.

And especially when survival has required simply carrying on.

Around the same time I was reading this book, I was reminded that the root of the word compassion literally means:

to suffer with.

And suddenly something clicked.

Maybe self-compassion isn’t first about doing something kind for myself.

Maybe it isn’t firstly,a cup of really good coffee.

Or an early night.

Or a bath.

Or affirmations.

Or breathing exercises.

Although all of those things can be deeply helpful.

Maybe self-compassion begins earlier than that.

Maybe self-compassion begins by being willing to suffer with myself.

To stay with myself in pain without turning away.

To not abandon myself emotionally.

To bear witness to my own experience.

To sit beside a younger version of me and say:

I see what happened to you.

I see how much it hurt.

You weren’t weak for feeling it.

You weren’t dramatic.

You weren’t too much.

Your pain makes sense.

And you make sense.

That feels different to me.

More honest.

Less polished.

Less performative.

Hard, perhaps.

But more real.

Judith Herman writes:

“Remembering and telling the truth about terrible events are prerequisites both for the restoration of social order and for the healing of individual victims.”

That feels profoundly true.

Healing asks for truth.

Not exaggerated truth.

Not minimised truth.

Just truthful truth.

And perhaps self-compassion begins there.

With telling the truth about our own lives.

Not just what happened externally—

but what happened internally.

What it felt like.

What we lost.

What it cost us.

What we needed but didn’t receive.

And what we still grieve.

Henri Nouwen writes:

“Compassion asks us to go where it hurts, to enter into places of pain, to share in brokenness, fear, confusion and anguish.”

I love that because it completely reframes compassion.

Compassion isn’t avoidance.

It isn’t positivity.

It isn’t pretending.

It isn’t fixing.

Compassion is presence.

It’s going where it hurts.

Entering the place of pain.

And staying there long enough to be honest.

And perhaps that’s what grief and lament are.

A form of compassion.

Maybe lament is self-compassion with tears.

Maybe grief is compassion that refuses denial.

Maybe mourning is the brave act of staying with our own suffering long enough for truth to emerge.

And perhaps only then can some of the softer practices of self-care begin to feel believable.

Perhaps after witnessing comes soothing.

After truth comes tenderness.

After grief comes gentleness.

After lament comes rest.

Not as avoidance.

Not as performance.

But as genuine care.

Care rooted in reality.

Another line from Henri Nouwen has stayed with me:

“The great invitation is to live your wounds through instead of thinking them through.”

That feels deeply relevant for me.

Because I’m such a thinker.

And definitely an overthinker.

I’m very capable of trying to think my way around pain… or out of it.

To analyse it.

To understand it.

To explain it.

To place it in context.

But feeling it?

Grieving it?

Naming it without trying to fix it?

That’s harder.

And I think this is where compassion lives.

Not simply in understanding our suffering—

but in allowing ourselves to feel it.

And staying present with ourselves while we do.

I’m still thinking all of this through—and I can hear the irony in saying that.

But I’m writing from the middle of this journey rather than the end.

And right now I’m wondering whether true self-compassion might look less like being nice to myself…

and more like becoming a compassionate witness to my own life.

Not rushing myself to forgive.

Not rushing myself to heal.

Not demanding immediate resolution.

But staying close enough to my own pain to say:

This mattered.

I matter.

And I won’t abandon myself here.

And perhaps it is from this place…

that shame begins to loosen.

Forgiveness becomes more truthful.

Self-care becomes more embodied.

and healing becomes less performative…

and more real.

I’d love to hear whether self-compassion has ever felt complicated or difficult for you, too, and whether grief, truth-telling, or lament have ever unexpectedly become part of what healing has looked like in your own life.

Thank you for reading.

Andrea x

One of my boys had significant health issues as a baby, and we were at hospital appointments all the time. There was worry and constant vigilance. The other was a truly terrible sleeper. He woke numerous times each night and seemed personally offended by the idea of taking a daytime nap.

I could never get their sleep patterns lined up in the day. By the time I had one baby settled, the other was awake again. I felt totally exhausted all the time.

So sometimes I would put the boys in the car and drive.

Not because I wanted to go anywhere, but because the motion of the car would send them both off to sleep. And once they were asleep, I could park up somewhere quiet or beautiful and just stop.

Sometimes I would take a drink and snacks. Sometimes I would recline the seat and close my eyes for a short sleep.

Looking back now, I think those parked-up car moments were some of the only rest I got at that time.

One day I was planning to stop by at my parents’ house, give the boys lunch there, and then go for one of my usual “drive until they fall asleep” outings. But somehow, during the five-minute drive to my parents’ house, both boys fell asleep in the back of the car before we even arrived.

I simply could not face waking them up.

So instead of going in, I parked outside my parents’ house with the engine running for the air conditioning and reclined my seat “just for a minute.”

My dad later told me that he noticed from his office window a small group of concerned passers-by gathering around my car.

Apparently, I looked either unconscious or dead.

I vaguely remember waking with a start as somebody knocked on the window. I wound the window down to find a very concerned lady asking gently, “Are you all right, love?”

And I burst into tears and replied:

“No. I’m just really tired.”

It makes me laugh now, imagining what those poor people saw as they looked into my car at an exhausted mum, probably dribbling slightly in the driver’s seat, with the babies flat out in the back too.

But honestly, I think there was something really deeply human about it.

Sometimes, exhausted people create strange little refuges.

These days, life looks very different, but I still notice myself doing similar things.

One of the tiny acts of kindness I offer myself now is sitting in my car for ten or fifteen minutes after I’ve been out to do an errand, before the next responsibility kicks in.

I treated myself to a fabulous steering wheel tray, and it now sits permanently in the car ready for whenever I need it. I can pop my coffee on it, or a magazine, or even my artwork, and I can just take a break.

It’s not forever.
It’s not lengthy.
It’s not dramatic.

Just long enough to breathe.

I’m beginning to realise that these little pauses matter so much.

I used to think that rest had to be earned.

I thought I had to finish everything first. Meet everyone’s needs. Reply to the messages. Do the jobs. Push through and cope well.

Then perhaps, once I had proved myself, I might deserve a rest.

But life and faith are showing me something completely different.

There’s a word used in faith circles called Sabbath. It comes from the Hebrew word Shabbat, which means to stop, to cease or to rest.

You don’t do this because everything is finished. Not because all the work is done. But because human beings weren’t designed to function like machines.

Human beings are meant to rest.

I think sometimes we imagine that rest has to look peaceful, spiritual, and organised. Candles lit. A journal is open. A serene location.

But sometimes rest looks like sitting in a parked car with a takeaway coffee and a podcast because you cannot cope with one more demand for another ten minutes.

And I suspect God understands this second kind of rest, too.

There’s a quote from Anne Lamott that I really love:

I think many of us are trying to run on empty.

We push through exhaustion, override our bodies, ignore our limits and keep performing capably.

And then we wonder why we feel anxious, overwhelmed, irritable or numb.

What I’m not talking about here is luxury spa days or expensive wellness routines. I’m talking about ordinary tiny resets.

A quiet coffee before going back into the noise.
A sit on a garden bench for five minutes.
Taking the long route home.
Listening to one more song before getting out of the car.
Closing your eyes for a moment in the middle of a difficult day.

Small pauses that remind our nervous systems:

You are human.
You are allowed to stop.
You do not have to earn every breath you take.

And perhaps an ordinary moment in a parked car can be sacred too.

I suspect I’m not the only person who’s ever sat in a parked car for “just five minutes.” I’d love to hear about the small, ordinary things that help you reset, too.

I hated taking them.

I felt like a complete failure. I thought I should have been coping better. I had good people around me. I had resources. I had my faith. Why couldn’t I just get over the things that had happened in my life?

At the time, I drew an illustration in my journal to help me process what I was feeling. In the picture, I’m sitting on my bed, looking utterly defeated, saying:

“I hate these. But I know I need them right now.”

Cognitively, I knew taking the medication was probably a good idea. I knew I needed help. But emotionally, the act of actually taking it felt painfully difficult.

When I drew that illustration, I would never have imagined sharing it publicly one day. Back then, I barely even wanted to admit to myself that I was struggling with my mental health, let alone share my personal journal illustrations online.

But here in the UK, it’s Mental Health Awareness Week. And this year’s theme is action. Not just awareness. Action.

As I’ve reflected on that this week, I’ve realised something important.

Taking those antidepressants was action.

Quiet action.
Private action.
Reluctant action.

But action all the same.

Looking back now, I can see that it was actually courageous, even though I didn’t feel brave at all at the time.

My mindset, my inner critic, and perhaps parts of my upbringing were all telling me:

Don’t do this. You should be stronger. You shouldn’t need this help.

I felt shame for struggling. Shame for needing medication. Shame for not coping.

And honestly, I feel sad now that so many of us carry those same voices around in our heads. Voices telling us we are failures if we struggle mentally or emotionally.

But mental health difficulties are not moral failures. And needing support is not weakness.

Over the last few days, I’ve found myself reflecting on some of the actions, both seen and unseen, that have genuinely helped me care for my mental health.

Yesterday evening, I went to a lovely social clay-building session. It was my first time there. There were about twelve people, and the warm welcome was given by a lovely lady leading the group.

I went because I love being creative and I love clay. But truthfully, I also went because I needed relief.

I needed breathing space. I needed to do something gentle and grounding.

I slab-built a mug and made a pinch pot. We chatted about all sorts of ordinary things. Most of the people there knew absolutely nothing about my history or the things I’ve walked through recently. They were simply kind, warm people, sharing an evening of creativity together.

Driving home afterwards, I realised again that actions for our mental health do not always need a label attached to them.

Sometimes we imagine taking action means announcing something publicly, making a dramatic change, posting an inspirational quote online, or turning healing into something shiny and visible.

But often, the actions that keep us going are much quieter than that.

Sometimes they look like joining a running club.

Going to a pub quiz.
Attending a poetry evening at the library.
Joining a book club.
Going to a pottery evening.
Taking a walk.
Making time for connection.
Sitting in the car alone with a coffee after doing the shopping.
Listening to music or an audiobook.
Or simply building extra breathing space into the day.

Nobody else has to know why you’re doing these things.

Another thing I’ve had to learn is that sometimes action looks like saying no.

Not overcommitting.
Not trying to prove I’m okay by pushing myself beyond my limits.
Not constantly performing strength.

Sometimes rest is the action we most need.

Another thing that has helped me is honesty and connection. Making time with trusted friends, where I can say how things really are instead of pretending.

And another thing has been movement.

My therapist has often said to me at the end of a session, especially if I’m distressed or emotionally reactive:

“Andrea, I think you need to move your body. What are you going to do?”

And she’s usually right.

Sometimes I’ve gone for a long walk. Sometimes I’ve gone puddle stomping. Sometimes I’ve kicked around autumn leaves like a child.

Because we’re not just minds carrying thoughts around. We are bodies too. And sometimes movement helps us process what words cannot.

I think for a long time I misunderstood what courage looked like.

I thought bravery meant coping quietly, keeping going, needing nothing, holding everything together.

Now, I think courage often looks much softer than that.

Sometimes courage looks like:

Taking the medication.
Cancelling the plans.
Asking for help.
Resting.
Telling the truth.
Crying in front of someone safe.
Admitting that you’re struggling.
Doing one small, gentle thing that helps you stay afloat.

Action doesn’t always look shiny or inspiring or Instagrammable!

Sometimes it simply looks like caring for yourself in small, quiet ways that nobody else sees.

So perhaps this Mental Health Awareness Week, alongside raising awareness, we might also gently ask ourselves:

What actions help us stay well?

And maybe we can also begin refusing the shame that so often surrounds mental health struggles.

Because courage is not about never struggling.

Courage is responding to our struggles with honesty, gentleness, support, and care.

I had been carrying a lot of grief, the kind that sits heavy in your chest and hums quietly in the background of everything. But I was managing it, or at least, that’s what I told myself. Keeping going. Holding it together. Not wanting to make too much of it.

And then I saw my friend.

We were just talking, nothing particularly intense or dramatic. But there was something about her warmth, her kindness, the way she was with me… and before I really understood what was happening, something in me began to give way.

I cracked.

The tears flowed almost without permission. “I can’t do this… I can’t do this.” It felt like everything I had been holding in, quite carefully and quite determinedly, suddenly spilled out.

I hadn’t planned to fall apart that day. I hadn’t even realised how close I was to it.

Later, as I stopped crying and found myself apologising, “I’m sorry… I didn’t mean to cry on you like that. I wasn’t expecting to offload all of that…” she gently stopped me.

And she said, “I could see it in your face from the moment I saw you… I could just tell you weren’t okay.”

And that stayed with me.

Because she hadn’t caused the moment. She had simply made space for it.

I think I believed, in some quiet way, that if I kept my grief contained, it would stay manageable. That if I didn’t speak it too loudly, didn’t let it show too much, I could carry it without it overtaking me.

But pain doesn’t really work like that.

It doesn’t stay neatly hidden just because we ask it to. It leaks out in the small things. In our eyes. In our tone. In the way we hold ourselves. In the slight delay before we answer a question.

It was already there, visible, before I was ready to admit it.

What strikes me most, looking back, is not just that I was vulnerable. It’s that she was brave.

She noticed. She trusted what she saw. And she chose to step towards it rather than past it.

She didn’t try to fix me, or tidy it up, or offer neat solutions. She simply stayed. She held me while I cried. She let my overwhelm be what it was.

And in doing that, she gave me something I didn’t even know I needed. Permission to stop holding it all together.

I think I’ve often focused on the first half of that. The bravery it takes to be honest about how we’re really doing.

But that day reminded me of the second half.

It takes courage to see someone. To name what is quietly showing. To stay when things get messy and undone.

Her courage met mine, even before I had fully found mine.

This whole experience has brought back an unexpected childhood memory.

At school, we were given bright yellow armbands and asked to design posters for a road safety campaign. The slogan was simple: Be safe. Be seen.

I remember drawing something cheerful, probably a little wonky. A bee, maybe. Bold colours. The kind of thing that felt important in that very childlike way.

The message was clear. If drivers can see you, you are safer. Visibility protects you.

It’s a simple idea. But I’m starting to think it’s not just true on the road.

I wonder if something similar is true emotionally.

Not that being seen removes our pain. It doesn’t.

My grief didn’t disappear because my friend noticed it. But something shifted in how I was holding it. Or rather, I didn’t have to hold it alone anymore.

There is a kind of safety that comes when someone truly sees you.

Not the polished version. Not the “I’m fine, really” version. But the version that is tired and overwhelmed and quietly struggling to keep going.

Being seen didn’t make me weaker. It allowed me to be human.

Of course, being seen is not always easy.

There is a risk in it. We learn, often through experience, that not every space is safe for our honesty. Not every person knows how to respond to vulnerability with care.

And so we adapt. We hold things in. We present the version of ourselves that feels most acceptable, most manageable.

That makes sense.

But it also means that when we are met with gentleness, it can feel almost disorienting. To be noticed. To be named. To be held without being hurried.

I keep coming back to that simple phrase.

Be safe. Be seen.

As a child, it meant wearing something bright so a driver wouldn’t miss you.

As an adult, I’m beginning to wonder if it also means this:

That there is a kind of safety found not in holding everything together, but in being seen when we can’t.

Not everywhere. Not with everyone.

But in those rare, precious moments where someone has the courage to notice, and the kindness to stay.

Sometimes it shows on our face before we have the words.

And sometimes, the safest thing that can happen is that someone sees it anyway.