I’m not the gentle kind of tired that a good night’s sleep fixes. It’s the kind that sits somewhere deeper. Decision fatigue. Emotional overload. The sense of having held too much, for too long. I will be boarding a plane with three women who have known me since we were young and just beginning to figure out who we were.

We met as young adults in Manchester. We were starting out in our first jobs, all optimism and energy and not nearly enough life experience to know what was coming. Since then, we have collected a lifetime of memories.

There was the time we found ourselves tearing down a mountain river in full wetsuits, gripping what can only be described as a floating sledge, under the questionable guidance of a company called Laax Crap! It was equal parts terrifying and exhilarating. At one point, we were standing on the riverbank with a group of very unfazed Europeans, slowly realising that modesty was, apparently, not part of the plan. There we were, two English girls, rather embarrassed, trying to navigate a full outfit change on what looked like a nudist beach.

Or the European road trip that went spectacularly wrong.

We had just driven over the San Bernardino pass, the kind of scenery that makes you feel like you are in a film, when the car gave up entirely somewhere on the Swiss-Italian border. Armed with my very limited German, I rang the emergency number and confidently announced, “Unser auto ist kaputt.” Confidence far exceeded accuracy.

What followed was a logistical masterpiece of chaos. A hire car. All our camping gear stuffed in. A cross Europe drive. The wrong port. Taxis between terminals. A ferry. An all you can eat smorgasbord eaten while guarding tents and rucksacks and getting many curious looks. Arrival in the UK at the wrong place again. A taxi from Ramsgate to Dover. Another hire car. Finally, home.

At the time, it was madness. Now, it is legend.

These are the women I am going to Amsterdam with.

And this trip feels different.

Because this time, I am arriving not full of energy and expectation, but completely spent.

The last few months have taken more out of me than I realised. I can feel it in the way even small decisions feel heavy. In the way my mind keeps circling things I cannot resolve. In the quiet awareness that I am, quite simply, tired of holding it all together.

So before we go, I did something I do not always do.

I told them.

Not in detail. Not to process it all. Just enough to say, this is where I am at.

And then I made a decision.

On this trip, I am going to let go.

There is a Hebrew word in Psalm 46:10, often translated “be still”. The word is raphah. It means to release, to loosen your grip, to stop striving.

That is what I am practising.

Not switching off. Not pretending everything is fine. But loosening my grip on the need to manage, decide, anticipate, and hold everything together.

Because if I am honest, my brain does not naturally let things go.

It holds on. It replays. It scans for what is unresolved.

The amygdala keeps asking, " Is this safe yet”.

The default mode network keeps looping, have you finished thinking about this.

Even when nothing is happening, something in me is still trying to solve it.

And that is exhausting.

So this trip is a small, deliberate interruption.

I am not planning where we go.
I am not deciding where we eat.
I am not researching the best anything.

I am, quite simply, going to follow.

If they want to wander, we will wander.
If they want to sit in a café for hours, I will sit.
If we get slightly lost along a canal, even better.

This is not my usual mode of operation.

But maybe that is the point.

Because letting go is not passive. It is not giving up. It is choosing, moment by moment, not to tighten your grip again.

Jesus says, do not worry about tomorrow. And I am beginning to realise that worry is not preparation. It is attachment to outcomes I cannot control.

And perhaps more quietly, more gently, there is this invitation.

You do not have to carry this right now.

What makes this possible is not just the decision itself.

It is the people I am with.

These are women who have seen me in all sorts of situations, competent, chaotic, brave, ridiculous, and have stayed. Women, I can laugh with until I cry. Women who remember stories I have forgotten. Women who know how to carry things lightly.

Sometimes letting go is not about having less control.

It is about finally being somewhere you do not need it.

So as you read this, I am somewhere in Amsterdam.

Probably near a canal. Possibly slightly lost. Almost certainly laughing.

And, for once, not in charge.

Maybe stillness is not about stopping.

Maybe it is about finally putting something down.

My old smartwatch had died months ago, and in a brief and slightly noble phase, I decided I would return to a simpler life. Analog. Intuitive. Free from data.

Reader, I lasted longer than expected. But not all that long.

Because it turns out I quite like knowing things.
Especially things about how I’m doing.

So when the Pixel Watch arrived, I was quietly delighted. New tech, fresh start, little graphs and metrics to explore. I set it all up with the enthusiasm of someone who absolutely intends to use this information in a calm and balanced way.

And that’s when I noticed it tracked something called heart rate variability.

Seventeen

A few days in, I found the number.

17 milliseconds.

I didn’t really know what it meant, but instinctively, it didn’t feel like a winning score.

So, naturally, I did what I always do.

I looked it up.

The geeking out phase

Heart rate variability (HRV), it turns out, isn’t about how fast your heart beats.

It’s about the tiny differences in time between each beat.

And those tiny differences tell you something about your nervous system, how flexible it is, how well it’s adapting, how much capacity it has.

Higher HRV is generally associated with resilience and recovery.

Lower HRV…

Well.

Let’s just say 17 ms is not typically described as “thriving.”

The bit I wasn’t expecting

I think I expected to feel curious.

Maybe mildly concerned.

Possibly motivated.

What I didn’t expect was the quiet sort of sadness that came over me.

Because suddenly there it was, not in words, not in a journal entry, not in something I could explain away, but in a number on a watch face.

A small, precise way of my body saying:

This is how much I’ve been holding.

Naturally, I tried to fix it

Well, of course I did!

I downloaded breathing apps.
I sat upright.
I inhaled for four, exhaled for six like a woman on a mission.

I checked my HRV the next morning with the anticipation of someone awaiting exam results.

Seventeen.

Still seventeen.

That was just rude!

A slightly different understanding

As I read some more, something in me softened, maybe compassion emerged.

HRV is closely linked to the autonomic nervous system, particularly the balance between:

• the sympathetic state (alert, mobilised, “on”)

• and the parasympathetic state (rest, restore, regulate)

The vagus nerve plays a key role here, acting as a kind of communication pathway between the brain and the body.

When we feel safe, connected, and regulated, HRV tends to be higher.

When we’re under sustained stress, emotional, physical, or psychological, it often drops.

So then… context

When I looked at my numbers again, I realised:

Of course.

This isn’t random.

My body has been:

• caring

• holding

• anticipating

• managing

• staying steady for others

For quite a long time.

And doing it well.

But at a cost.

So I’m trying something different

Not:
How do I raise my HRV as quickly as possible?

But:
What might help my nervous system feel a little safer today?

That looks like:

• Sitting down with a cup of coffee and actually sitting

• Stepping outside for a few minutes of daylight

• Breathing slowly (without turning it into a performance)

• Letting myself rest without earning it

• Paying attention to what soothes, not just what “works”

And yes, maybe occasionally still checking the number.

But holding it more lightly.

A gentler conclusion

Because maybe the goal isn’t to optimise the data.

Maybe it’s to listen to what the data is quietly pointing towards.

Not:
Do better.

But:
Be cared for, too.

What might your body be quietly trying to tell you,
if you gave it a moment to be heard?

I’d love to know if you feel like sharing.

Leave a comment

I had thought healing was something you did quietly.

In a therapy room.
With the door closed.
One brave conversation at a time.

But what I didn’t expect was that some of the deepest shifts in my healing would happen sitting in a small Zoom circle with a group of women I had only just met.

Recently, I’ve been reading Desire: The Longings Inside Us and the New Science of How We Love, Heal, and Grow by Jay Stringer. It’s an extraordinary book — perhaps one of the most impactful I’ve ever read.

One line in particular has stayed with me:

“Community is the place where shame-based belief systems go to die.”

I’m beginning to understand exactly what he means.

A small piece of neuroscience

Here’s a slightly geeky neuroscience moment.

Trauma has a strange way of affecting language. A region of the brain responsible for speech — called Broca’s area — can go offline when we revisit painful memories.

Which means that sometimes the hardest part of healing isn’t the emotions.

It’s finding the words.

But something remarkable happens in community.

We begin to borrow language from one another.

Someone tells their story, and suddenly something clicks:

Oh… that’s it.

That’s what I’ve been feeling.

That’s the experience I didn’t know how to describe.

Sometimes it feels like someone has simply pointed to the right thread in a very tangled ball of wool.

My resistance to group work

I’ll happily admit that I resisted this idea for a long time.

For nearly five years, I’ve been doing deep individual work in therapy. Several times, my therapist gently suggested group work.

Every single time, I dug my heels in.

I had plenty of convincing reasons:

• Other people’s stories will overwhelm me.

• I don’t want to wash my dirty laundry in public.

• It probably won’t help anyway.

In hindsight, I think the real reason was much simpler.

Shame hates an audience.

That’s why I resisted group work for so long.

The unexpected breakthrough

At the beginning of 2026, I finally did something that surprised even me.

I joined a group-based coaching programme.

I was nervous. Honestly, I felt I had reached a point where I had little choice but to try something different.

And something unexpected happened.

As I slowly began sharing pieces of my story, I wasn’t met with judgment.

I was met with kindness.

Women I barely knew looked at me with compassion and said things like:

“You’re doing amazingly well.”

And as I reflected on that, I realised something quite confronting.

I had been telling my own story through an incredibly harsh lens.

In my version of events, I was weak. Failing. Not doing enough.

But other people saw something very different.

Community held up a mirror.

But not the kind of distorted mirror I’d been using on myself — the sort you find in a hall of mirrors that bends everything out of shape.

Instead, it reflected something clearer. Kinder. Truer.

When shame begins to loosen

Brené Brown famously says:

“Shame cannot survive being spoken and met with empathy.”

She also says that if you put shame in a petri dish, it needs three things to grow exponentially:

• secrecy

• silence

• judgement

What I discovered was that this group quietly dismantled all three.

Psychiatrist Curt Thompson puts it this way:

“Shame dies when stories are told in safe places.”

And I think I actually felt that happening.

I felt my shame beginning to lose its grip.

The moment everything shifted

It was actually in this group that I had the realisation that led to my slightly ridiculous little cartoon drawing of me leaping over fences to rescue everybody else.

I realised I had essentially been running an unofficial neighbourhood rescue service.

Available 24 hours a day.
Seven days a week.

Just not available for myself.

But something shifted as I listened to these other women and watched the kindness with which they spoke to themselves and to each other.

Sometimes someone would say something about their experience and suddenly a piece of my own story would make sense.

It felt as if someone had quietly found the end of a thread in the tangled ball I’d been holding for years.

Once the end appeared, the knot didn’t disappear instantly.

But it began to loosen.

And slowly I realised something that seems obvious now but had somehow never occurred to me before.

I was allowed to rescue myself too.

I was allowed to have boundaries.

A new kind of desire

Jay Stringer writes that when we begin to understand our trauma, our desires start to change.

Instead of wanting to numb or escape, we begin to long for deeper connection.

That feels true for me.

I’m discovering that healing doesn’t always arrive through dramatic breakthroughs, clever insights, or heroic personal effort.

Sometimes it happens in very small moments.

Moments when someone simply says:

“That sounds really hard.”

A different understanding of healing

For years, I thought healing meant being able to understand my story perfectly.

To analyse it.

Explain it.

Find exactly the right words.

But now I’m beginning to think it might be something simpler.

Perhaps healing is just this:

Telling our stories in spaces where compassion lives.

Because in the presence of kindness, something remarkable happens.

The story itself may not change.

But the way we see ourselves inside it does.

If you’re carrying a story that feels tangled or heavy, perhaps a gentle question might be:

Where are the spaces in your life where compassion lives?

Healing doesn’t always happen alone.

Sometimes it begins when someone sits beside us and helps us gently loosen the knot.

Me: a grey-haired woman in pyjamas, upstairs, energetically thumping a blow-up punch bag.

It turns out quite a few of you related to that.

Several people fed back some version of:
“Ah… so the body needs somewhere for the ‘grr’ to go.”

That got me thinking.

Because once I’d finished laughing at the absurdity of it, the curious part of my brain woke up.

What was actually happening in the body when that release happened?

Why did ten minutes of slightly undignified punching leave me calmer, steadier, and much more at home in my own skin?

So, being the geek that I am, I went down a small neuroscience rabbit hole.

And what I discovered is surprisingly reassuring.

Anger and stress aren’t just emotional experiences.

They are biological processes moving through a living body.

The Stress Cycle

When something stressful happens, the brain activates the fight-or-flight response.

Signals from the brain tell the adrenal glands to release stress chemicals into the bloodstream.

These include:

Adrenaline (epinephrine)
This prepares the body for immediate action.

Heart rate rises.
Breathing speeds up.
Muscles tense.

Noradrenaline (norepinephrine)
This sharpens alertness and attention.

It’s the chemical that makes you feel wired, watchful, ready to react.

Cortisol
This is the longer-lasting stress hormone.

It mobilises energy by increasing glucose in the bloodstream and keeping the body on alert.

The neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky puts it simply:

“Stress-related diseases emerge when the stress response is activated too often or not shut off properly.”

In other words, stress itself isn’t the problem.

The problem is when the body never completes the stress cycle.

The writers Emily Nagoski and Amelia Nagoski explain this beautifully in their book
Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle.

Their key insight is simple:

“Just because the stressor is gone doesn’t mean the stress cycle is complete.”

The chemicals remain in the body until something signals to the nervous system that the danger has passed.

Three Things I Learned About Stress in the Body

Looking at the science, three things stood out to me.

1. Stress is physical before it is psychological

We often think of stress as something happening in our thoughts.

But the body experiences stress chemically and physically.

Adrenaline changes heart rate.
Cortisol changes energy levels.
Muscles prepare for movement.

Which means stress is not just something to think through.

It is something the body must move through.

2. The body expects action

The stress response enables survival.

If our ancestors encountered danger, they ran, fought, or escaped.

Movement completed the cycle.

But modern stress is different.

Emails.
Conflict.
Systemic failures.
Relational betrayals.
Low-level pressures that linger for months or years.

There is no lion to chase.

So the body releases the energy — but we sit still.

And the stress chemicals linger.

Which means that what I was doing with the punch bag last week wasn’t irrational after all.

It was simply giving my body a way to finish the stress cycle.

3. The nervous system calms when the body feels safe again

The nervous system has two main modes.

One prepares us for danger.

The other restores calm.

The neuroscientist Stephen Porges describes how the body settles when it receives signals of safety.

Those signals can be surprisingly simple.

Movement.
Slow breathing.
Crying or laughter.
Creative expression.
Connection with other people.

All of these help the body recognise that the threat has passed.

Letting the Body Finish the Story

The trauma researcher Peter Levine once wrote:

“Trauma is not in the event itself but in the nervous system.”

Our bodies are designed to complete cycles.

To mobilise energy.
To move.
To release.
To settle again.

Which perhaps shouldn’t surprise us.

As human beings, we are whole multifaceted people — body, mind and spirit — so it makes sense that healing needs to happen in all of our parts.

But when those cycles are interrupted, the energy stays circulating inside us.

Which is why completing the stress cycle might look surprisingly ordinary.

A brisk walk.

A game of badminton.

A good cry.

Singing loudly in the car.

Drawing or writing.

Or yes — occasionally punching an inflatable cylinder in your pyjamas.

What I’m Slowly Learning

What I’m slowly realising is that emotions aren’t problems to be solved.

They are signals moving through a body designed for movement, expression, and connection.

Sometimes wisdom looks like reflection and prayer.

And sometimes wisdom looks like helping the body do what it was designed to do.

Move.

Breathe.

Release.

Gradually, the chemistry changes.

The nervous system settles.

And the body remembers that it is safe again.

Sometimes healing doesn’t begin with understanding.

Sometimes it begins with letting the body move.

When stress or anger shows up in your body, where do you feel it first?

And what helps your body settle again?

Walking.
Gardening.
Crying.
Music.
Movement.

Or perhaps — like me — something slightly ridiculous involving pyjamas and a punch bag.

Sometimes we learn the most helpful things from each other. I’d love to hear from you:

Leave a comment

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Not very Christian.
Not very kind.
Not very mature.

Anger was something to manage quietly. Internally. Preferably invisibly.

Good girls don’t explode.
Faithful women forgive quickly.
Strong people cope.

If something hurts, you deal with it in yourself.”

But trauma has a way of surfacing emotions we’ve neatly filed away.

And lately, one emotion has been knocking very loudly.

Anger.

When the Body Refuses to Stay Polite

As I’ve been working through past trauma, I’ve noticed something uncomfortable: my body has been holding a lot of unexpressed “grr.”

Racing heart.
Pounding chest.
Tingly hands.
Restless sleep.
That wired-but-exhausted feeling that leaves you shaky and brittle.

It would be easier if anger stayed in the realm of thoughts, something to journal through or pray about quietly. But my therapist reminded me:

We are whole people.
Body. Mind. Spirit.

Not everything can be processed purely in our thinking. Sometimes the body needs to move.

In Burnout, Emily and Amelia Nagoski describe how stress is a physiological cycle. If a lion attacked your village, you didn’t just sit in a circle analysing it. You ran. You fought. You killed the lion. You ate together. You buried the remains. You celebrated. The threat was gone. The stress cycle is completed.

But in modern life, our lions are different.

Systemic failures.
Relational betrayals.
Injustice.
Low-level, chronic stress that never fully resolves.

There is no lion to chase. No clear ending. And so the stress chemicals stay in the body.

And we call it anxiety.
Or insomnia.
Or “Why can’t I just cope better?”

The Punch Bag Confession

Which is how, at 55, grey-haired and supposedly sensible, I found myself ordering a blow-up punch bag.

It now lives in the room above my son’s bedroom.

There is something faintly ridiculous about being a middle-aged woman in pyjamas giving an inflatable cylinder a determined pummelling.

At one point, my 20-year-old appeared upstairs, slightly bemused:

“Mum… what are you doing?”

After a brief explanation about stress cycles and nervous systems, he and his girlfriend both had a go too! bonding. I’m calling that therapeutic family bonding.

I wasn’t hitting a person.
I wasn’t rehearsing revenge.

I was moving energy.

Letting anger have a physical expression that harmed no one.

And afterwards?

Calmer.
More grounded.
Less jarring in my own skin.

The stress cycle had moved.

Anger as Signal

For a long time, I labelled anger as “bad.” Something to get rid of quickly. Something unspiritual.

But I’m slowly learning not to label emotions as good or bad.

They are signals.

Anger says:
Something isn’t right.
A boundary was crossed.
Harm occurred.
Injustice stands.

Harriet Lerner writes,

“Anger is a signal, and one worth listening to.”

That line has undone me a little.

Because if anger is a signal, then suppressing it doesn’t make me holy. It makes me disconnected.

Brené Brown says,

“We can’t selectively numb emotion. When we numb the painful emotions, we also numb the positive emotions.”

If I shut down anger to appear composed, I shut down joy and clarity and conviction too.

For years, I tried to move straight to forgiveness without fully acknowledging harm. But forgiveness that bypasses anger isn’t peace, it’s avoidance.

Anger doesn’t mean I’m bitter.
It means something mattered.

Jesus Wasn’t Meek and Mild

Somewhere in the middle of all this, I’ve been thinking about the story of Jesus clearing the temple.

He saw exploitation in a space meant for prayer. He saw worship corrupted and the vulnerable pushed aside. And according to John’s Gospel, he sat down and made a whip of cords before overturning the tables.

He made it.

That detail matters.

This wasn’t a temper tantrum.
It was intentional.
Purposeful.
Costly.

We’ve inherited a very polite version of Jesus. Soft-spoken. Mild. Perpetually serene.

But the Gospels show a man who confronted hypocrisy, defended the vulnerable, and embodied the full range of human emotion.

If Jesus was fully human, then anger itself cannot be sinful.

It’s what we do with it that matters.

His anger was not ego-driven.
It was protective.
Rooted in love.

And perhaps that’s the difference.

Moving Beyond Politeness

I think I am gently moving out from under the tyranny of politeness.

Not into aggression.
Not into cruelty.

But into honesty.

There is a difference between being kind and being silent.

There is a difference between being faithful and being emotionally numb.

Completing the stress cycle might look like:

A stompy walk.
A full-on game of badminton.
Crying fully.
Praying with your whole body.

Or yes, buying a blow-up punching bag and giving it a determined thump.

Anger, expressed safely, has not made me harder.

It has made me clearer.

Clearer about injustice.
Clearer about boundaries.
Clearer about what love actually protects.

Maybe anger isn’t the enemy.

Maybe unexpressed anger is.

And maybe sometimes the most spiritual thing a grey-haired woman can do is stop being polite…
and start being honest about what hurts.

And if that honesty occasionally involves pyjamas and a punch bag upstairs,
Well, perhaps that’s just one small way of letting the body finish the story the mind has been trying to carry alone.

Over the past six weeks, I’ve eaten my feelings.
Quite enthusiastically.

And this has been particularly disheartening because, in the eighteen months leading up to the start of this year, I worked really hard to care for my body. I moved more. I ate more thoughtfully. I lost a significant amount of weight. I felt steadier, stronger, more at home in myself. It wasn’t effortless, but it felt earned.

Then pressure mounted. Old trauma stirred. Buried things resurfaced.
And my nervous system reached for the coping strategy it knows best.

Food.

If you’ve ever felt that familiar “What’s the point?” spiral start to whisper, the quiet shame, the sense of having undone something important, you’ll know how heavy that moment can feel.

Almost exactly a year ago, I wrote a piece called Learning to Need. It came from a realisation in therapy that I had been living as though my only needs were food, water, and shelter. Survival basics. If I had a roof over my head and something to eat, I assumed I was fine.

I was not fine.

That blog was about discovering that self-care wasn’t indulgence, it was a necessity. It was about allowing myself to need more than survival.

Apparently, this year is the sequel.

When the Body Is Doing Its Best

One of the biggest shifts for me recently has been understanding what’s happening under the surface.

When old trauma is stirred, it isn’t just emotional, it’s neurological. The brain’s threat system activates, the nervous system shifts into survival mode, and the body begins seeking regulation.

Food is very good at that.

Eating stimulates dopamine, dampens cortisol, and offers immediate comfort. From a nervous system perspective, emotional eating isn’t a moral failure; it’s an attempt to self-soothe.

Or, as I’m learning to say with more kindness:
My body wasn’t sabotaging me; it was trying to help.

Writers like Bessel van der Kolk and Gabor Maté have written extensively about this, how the body holds stress and trauma, and how our coping behaviours often make perfect sense when you understand the context they arise from.

Shame melts when curiosity steps in.

Compassion Is Not the Same as Letting Yourself Slide

At the same time as all this was unfolding, I was reading more about self-compassion, particularly the work of Dr Kristin Neff, who is very clear that compassion isn’t the same thing as indulgence.

And this is where it got interesting.

Because self-care isn’t always soft.
It isn’t always candles and warm baths and early nights.

Sometimes self-care is discipline.
Sometimes it’s structure.
Sometimes it’s choosing the thing that will help, even when you don’t feel like it.

I decided to treat myself, not as a reward, and not as a punishment, but as support. I bought myself a new smartwatch and paired it with an app. Not to whip myself into shape, but to gently anchor myself again.

I started eating a bit better.
I began walking regularly, often with Barney (my fabulous Collie), out into the countryside.

Fresh air. Movement. Space.

This image used to sum up what I thought self-care was.

And sometimes it is.

But it isn’t the whole picture.

Walking, Regulation, and Muddy Boots

There’s something quietly powerful about walking.

The rhythmic, alternating movement provides bilateral stimulation, the same principle used in trauma therapies like EMDR. Add daylight, fresh air, and a stretch of open landscape, and you have a nervous system gently being reminded that it’s safe.

That academic information wasn’t in my mind when I started walking again.
But my body knew.

And I loved that this kind of care wasn’t glamorous.
Dirty boots. Cold air. Sometimes a bit of grumbling.

But it worked.

Self-care isn’t always soft.

The Migraine Moment

Then a few nights ago, a migraine hit.

The kind that ruins your sleep, leaves your neck, face and head throbbing, and makes even a short walk feel wildly optimistic. I had been awake for hours in the night, and I woke in pain and immediately felt that old internal voice warming up:

You can’t do this. What’s the point? You might as well just eat.

This was the moment I usually disappear into old patterns.

But something shifted.

I spoke into the app. I said what I couldn’t do. I named the difficulty instead of bulldozing through it. And back came a response that essentially said, "That’s a tough start." Be kind to yourself.

I cannot overstate how proud I felt.

Not because I felt great, I didn’t, but because I didn’t abandon myself. I didn’t spiral. I didn’t turn one disrupted night into a story about failure.

I rested.
I got through the morning.
And later that afternoon, when the pain eased (and after a bubble bath!), I went out for my walk anyway.

And it helped. Deeply.

The Hard Edge of Self-Care

This is what I’m learning now.

Real self-care isn’t indulgent.
It’s the steady, sometimes uncomfortable practice of responding to yourself with both kindness and courage.

Sometimes self-care is a bath.
Sometimes it’s lacing up your hiking boots with a migraine hangover.
Sometimes it’s not eating the feelings.
Sometimes it’s eating them and forgiving yourself.

It’s showing up.
It’s keeping small promises.
It’s being kind without letting that kindness turn into collapse.

Growth, I’m discovering, isn’t never slipping back into old patterns.
It’s noticing sooner.
Recovering faster.
Choosing differently, not always, but more often.

It isn’t perfection.
It’s practice.

And for now, that feels like real care.

If this piece resonated, you might like to read the post that came before it.

Almost exactly a year ago, I wrote Learning to Need — a reflection on discovering that self-care isn’t indulgence, but necessity. At the time, I was just beginning to realise that being “fine” on paper isn’t the same as being well.

You could think of that piece as Part One.
This feels very much like Part Two.

You can read Learning to Need: A Journey to Real Self-Care:
👉 here

And if you’d like to receive future illustrated reflections straight to your inbox, you’re very welcome to subscribe to Illustrated Musings. No pressure, just gentle company on the journey.

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At minus three degrees, the coldest it’s been around here for a long while, I was only three miles from home, camping out alone in our tiny camper van. A few days earlier, I’d named some values with my counsellor: courage, honesty, kindness, including self-kindness, and adventure.

This felt like pressing “go” on all four.

I’d reached that familiar point where everything felt just a bit too much. Not dramatic, just full. So I did the honest thing and said out loud that I needed some space. That, for me, was both honest and courageous. Then I followed it up with kindness, not just kind thoughts, but kind action.

I booked a campsite close to home and set off in TC, our little camper van that we’ve loved and converted, but haven’t used nearly as much as we’d hoped.

It was properly cold.

I slept in a hoodie, thick socks and gloves, under layers of blankets and a duvet. Early in the morning, I woke to complete stillness and windows laced with frost. For a brief moment, a slightly dramatic one, I wondered if I might actually be frozen in.

I tested the door.

There was a tiny pause where my brain considered headlines along the lines of:
Local woman found cheerfully iced into a camper van three miles from her own house.

Then, with a big yank, the door opened.

And I smiled.

It was fine. More than fine. I loved it. It felt like an adventure, the safe kind. The kind you choose.

The evening had been spent cosily in the van, listening to music and podcasts and breathing slowly. No one needing anything. Just space.

The campsite was so close to home, yet it felt like a different world. As you entered, there was a small shed selling eggs, fresh fruit and vegetables, simple, grounded and quietly lovely. It felt like a breath of fresh air as soon as I arrived. The owner was warm and genuinely kind, and I left thinking this little spot might become a future retreat place for me, somewhere I can go when I need a night away from my responsibilities, without having to travel far.

In the morning, I headed to a lakeside café and treated myself to breakfast and coffee, and then another coffee, plus a scone with jam and cream. It turns out courage burns calories.

There was plenty to be grateful for.

And it was there, sitting by the window with my journal, that I tried something new.

Gratitude, but with a response

I’ve practised gratitude before. Many times. Sometimes it’s helped; sometimes it’s felt a bit thin, a little like trying, unsuccessfully, to talk myself into feeling better.

Recently, I’ve been reading Joyful Journey by James Wilder, and one of the first practices he describes is interactive gratitude.

You write down what you’re grateful for. Then you pause. You reflect on how God might be responding to your gratitude, and you write that down too.

That may sound unusual. For me, it felt quietly familiar, as I often try to listen as I pray.

As I wrote, not just my thanks, but what felt like God’s gentle response, something in me settled. It wasn’t dramatic. No emotional surge. Just a quiet softening.

My shoulders dropped.
My breath slowed.

It felt relational.

Why being met matters

Neuroscience offers some helpful clues here. Anxiety and worry tend to run along different neural pathways from gratitude and love. When we focus on connection and appreciation, we engage the prefrontal cortex, and the threat signals of our fight-or-flight system begin to quieten.

But what seems to matter most is not simply doing gratitude.

It is being met in it.

Psychologist Barbara Fredrickson describes love as “positivity resonance”, the small moments of shared positive emotion that occur in a relationship. Research increasingly suggests that our nervous systems settle most effectively not by managing ourselves better, but through relational safety.

Calm comes when we are received.

For me, that receiving happened through Immanuel journaling, gratitude offered to God, and a sense of it being gently answered. For you, it may come through a trusted friend, a therapist, or someone who listens without trying to fix.

Either way, something shifts when gratitude isn’t left echoing in our own heads.

When gratitude answers back

The night away mattered.
The self-kindness mattered.
The scone absolutely mattered.

But what settled me most was not the solitude; it was the sense of being accompanied within it.

Maybe gratitude doesn’t calm us because we’re doing it “right”.
Maybe it calms us because we’re no longer alone in it.

Gratitude settles me most when it becomes a conversation, not a monologue.

Life feels a bit like that sometimes. Not dramatic. Not eloquent.
Just… full.
Full enough that explanations feel like too much.

I’ve been sitting with the idea that in Hebrew, the word for love — ahavah — is made of very soft sounds. Open sounds. Breath sounds. When you say it slowly, it almost feels like breathing in and out rather than saying something definite.

And I’ve heard something similar said about God’s name — Yhwh — that it was never meant to be spoken as a neat word, but to be held with reverence. Breathed rather than pronounced.

I don’t know enough Hebrew to make big claims.
But I do know what it feels like to have days where words run out, and breath is all that’s left.

Caring. Waiting. Sitting beside someone.
Moments where love isn’t something you say or explain.
It’s something you keep doing quietly.
In.
Out.

There are times when prayer looks like sentences.
And times when prayer looks like staying present in your own body.
Not fixing. Not framing. Just breathing.

Maybe love is like that, too.

Not always grand or expressive.
Sometimes simply the decision not to stop breathing.
Not to leave.
Not to turn away.

If this week you don’t have words either, you’re not failing.
You may just be in a season where breath is enough.

And perhaps, quietly, that is love.

One image that really landed for me came from a coach I’ve been talking with. She described boundaries like this:

If a water pipe bursts in your own garden, you notice it, you worry about it, and you sort it out.
If a water pipe bursts in your neighbour’s garden, you might feel some concern — but you know it’s not your responsibility to fix it.

Simple enough.

Except my immediate internal response was:
“Oh. I would absolutely worry about my neighbour’s burst pipe.”

I’d probably be awake half the night.
Wondering who to ring.
Checking whether they’d noticed.
Offering towels.
Finding the emergency plumber.
Possibly apologising for not fixing it sooner.

And in that moment, I realised just how fuzzy my boundaries really are.

Somewhere along the way — through things I’ve lived, seen, and learned early on — I seem to have absorbed the belief that everyone’s burst pipe is my responsibility. That being a “good” person means noticing everything, carrying everything, and fixing what I can, even when it isn’t mine to fix.

The trouble is, that way of living is exhausting.

From a nervous system point of view, it also makes a lot of sense. When we’ve experienced trauma or grown up needing to stay alert to other people’s needs, moods, or crises, our brains get very good at scanning for problems. The threat-detection systems stay switched on, and the body learns that relaxing isn’t safe. Responsibility becomes tangled up with safety.

So when something goes wrong nearby, even if it’s not ours, our system reacts as if it is.

I notice this pattern in my illustrations, too. Figures leaning, arms outstretched. Bodies mid-motion, always reaching, always responding.

Perhaps that’s why the image of the fence and the burst pipe has stayed with me. It’s simple. Visual. Slightly absurd. And uncomfortably accurate.

I’m learning that boundaries aren’t walls; they’re fences with gates. They let me see what’s happening next door without requiring me to vault over every time there’s a splash or a shout. They allow compassion without collapse.

So I’m practising. Slowly. Imperfectly.
Staying in my own garden.
Turning down the internal alarm.
Letting my nervous system learn that not every emergency is mine to fix.

And sometimes, when I catch myself halfway over the fence, I try to smile — and gently climb back down.

Are you working to fix any burst pipes that were never in your garden?

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Thank you for taking the time to read — and, if you’re listening to this, for sharing a few quiet moments with me.

I often write these posts as much to help me make sense of my own inner world as anything else. Sometimes putting words and images to what’s happening beneath the surface helps things settle, soften, or simply become a little clearer.

I share these reflections because I genuinely want to encourage people — to help us all do a little better, live a little more gently, and feel a little less alone in the learning.

It’s my sincere hope that these words and drawings reach those who need them — and that, in some small way, they might be a blessing.

If this post resonated with you, please feel free to share it with a friend who might appreciate it. And if you’re feeling brave, you’re very welcome to share it on your socials too.

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Thank you for being here.

That’s what happened with these plants that I thought were trees. It wasn’t the church tower nearby or the setting as a whole. It was their height and shape. The way they were growing in different directions, leaning and angling away from one another, as if each had made its own decision about where to reach. I found them beautiful and mesmerising, but also puzzling. They didn’t line up. They didn’t conform. I couldn’t immediately explain what I was looking at, and that curiosity sent me off to find out more.

They are agaves — plants that spend years gathering strength almost invisibly. Season after season of storing, waiting. And then, once in a lifetime, they send up a tall flowering stem. Not straight. Not symmetrical. Each one grows in its own direction, shaped by wind, by weather, by the light it happens to receive.

In other parts of the world, this same plant is managed very differently. It’s watched closely. Its growth is redirected. Flowering is prevented so that sweetness can be extracted and sold. Money is made from what the plant produces, from how efficiently it can be harvested.

Here, on the Maltese coast, no one intervenes.

These agaves aren’t monitored or corrected or optimised. They lean. They respond to wind and light and scarcity. They grow in ways that look inefficient, untidy, even a little awkward. The flowering stalk isn’t sweet. It isn’t useful. It isn’t harvestable.

It is expressive, not productive.

And as I stood there looking at them, a quieter thought began to form, not as a grand metaphor, but as a personal reckoning.

How much of my own life is shaped by expectation? How often do I straighten myself, align myself, tidy myself up, not because it’s true, but because it’s what seems to be required? How easily worth becomes tangled up with output, with usefulness, with the appearance of having it all together.

There is something deeply freeing about these plants being allowed to grow as they are. About not having to be perfectly aligned. About angles and bends and different orientations being not just acceptable, but beautiful.

I’m reminded of a friend whose garden I adore, generous, alive, never overly tidy. She used to laugh at my fondness for straight edges and clean lines. But growth doesn’t work like that. Life doesn’t grow to rulers and right angles. It spills. It leans. It responds to weather, to light, to what’s available.

Standing there, I found myself wanting to offer myself the same permission. To be less manicured. To stop measuring my worth by what I produce or how neatly I line up. To trust that bends and shifts and changes of direction aren’t signs of failure, but part of how real growth happens.

These agaves aren’t straight.
They don’t match.
They aren’t optimised.

And yet, they are unmistakably themselves.

Perhaps there is a kind of grace in that, an unmanicured grace.
The freedom to grow at an angle.
To lean without apology.
To be shaped by what we’ve lived through, rather than by what we think we should look like.

It was funny, really. One of those moments where you laugh at yourself, shake it off, and keep going.

We walked on towards the Xemxija Heritage Trail. It led us onto an extraordinary stretch of Roman road and we were quite literally stepping back into history. Along the way, we came across an ancient apiary, a place built for beekeeping, dating back to around 300 BC.

You could see the human ingenuity and care embedded in it. It sat in an idyllic location, framed by carob trees and other vegetation, with views across the surrounding land and out over the bay beyond. Everything about it should have felt bright and expansive.

And yet, something felt off.

I was warm and comfortable, but what I was seeing didn’t feel that way. The landscape looked dreary and grey. The light felt flat. I couldn’t quite put it together. Why did everything seem so dull when it should have been bright?

There was a mismatch between what I felt and what I could see, and it unsettled me. I knew something didn’t add up. It wasn’t until I stopped and took my glasses off that I realised what was going on. They were filthy. The splash from the sea, mixed with salt and spray, had dried across the lenses and left a cloudy film.

I’d been looking at the world through fog.

When I cleaned them properly and put them back on, everything changed. The day wasn’t grey at all. It was bright, pleasant, full of warmth and detail that I simply hadn’t been able to see clearly before. And that’s when a thought landed with me.

In life, there have been moments when I’ve got close to things: friendships, situations, hopes. Not recklessly or wrongly, but vulnerably. And things didn’t go as I expected. Disappointments I didn’t plan for splashed back onto me. Nothing dramatic enough to shatter everything, but enough to leave a residue.

A film of disappointment. Unannounced. Quietly clouding my lenses. Enough to dull colour. Enough to make beauty harder to see. Enough to make hope feel further away than it really is.

That thought spoke deeply to me about my faith. About needing to reach out and ask for help. About admitting that I can’t always do it on my own. About learning to trust God to restore clarity when my vision is distorted. But it speaks more widely too. Disappointment is part of being human, and hope often needs tending.

What made the moment even more extraordinary was what happened next. We walked down the hill and stepped alongside the harbour. My glasses were clean. My vision was restored. And there it was: a huge, beautiful rainbow stretched across the port, arching over the water and the boats below. Completely unplanned. Completely unearned.

I smiled to myself. Because sometimes symbolism really does arrive unannounced.

I’ve used rainbows in my work before, often as a quiet reminder of hope in dark times. This one felt personal. It wasn’t just about hope existing. It was about hope becoming visible again, once my lens was clear.

As I think about moving forward, about not living life through a lingering film of disappointment, I’ve realised how important small, faithful practices will be. One thing I started on this holiday was a simple daily gratitude practice, with illustrations and words. Writing down one thing each day that I’m grateful for.

Drawing the ordinary things. Nothing polished or profound.

Noticing what I already have that makes me feel glad.

I know from experience, and from what I’ve written about before, that gratitude is one way I gently wipe my glasses clean. Not to deny pain. Not to pretend everything is fine. But to keep my vision honest and open.

Alongside that comes a quieter understanding of self-care. Not the bubble-bath version, but the real work of noticing what I need, naming it, and responding to myself with kindness. Another way of tending my lens.

Hope, I’m learning, isn’t always about changing the landscape. Sometimes it’s about tending to the way I see it.

Maybe the beauty hasn’t gone. Maybe the light is still there. Maybe the world isn’t as grey as it looks.

Sometimes, it’s time to clean the glasses.

If you’d like to share, I’d love to know what small practice is helping you tend hope right now. You can reply in the comments here, on my Facebook posts or message me privately.

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Difficult things don’t arrive at convenient times.

Illness doesn’t wait until the diary is clear. Trauma doesn’t pause for festive seasons. Grief and exhaustion don’t politely step aside because the calendar says celebration.

And yet here we are — lighting candles, wrapping gifts, singing familiar songs — while carrying things that are heavy, tender, unresolved.

This year, that reality feels close to the surface for me.

When vulnerability meets a “special” season

In 2020, I was diagnosed with complex post-traumatic stress disorder (C-PTSD). Since then, I’ve been doing steady, committed work to heal — slowly learning how to feel safer in my body, how to tell the truth about my limits, how to stay present without collapsing.

I’ve also learned that healing is not a straight line.

The last few months have brought experiences that have been genuinely destabilising for me — layered on top of caring for Mum, navigating systems, and holding ongoing uncertainty. And all of that has landed right in the middle of Advent.

There’s a particular poignancy when vulnerability collides with a season that carries so much expectation. A season that speaks of joy and peace, while your nervous system is quietly working overtime just to stay regulated.

I want to be honest about that — but not dwell there.

Choosing not to collapse

What I’m noticing, with some gentleness towards myself, is this:

I am vulnerable — and I am still standing.

Not because I’m pushing through.
Not because I’m pretending things are fine.
But because I’m choosing kindness — especially towards myself.

That kindness has looked very practical.

Recently, I was due to host and run a large church lunch — around 80 people — at a time when I was already stretched thin. In another season of my life, I would have pushed myself to do it anyway, quietly absorbing the cost.

This time, I paused.

I said no to the original plan — and yes to something simpler.

We replaced a full lunch with coffee, hot chocolate, and cake during an extended break. It was manageable. It was warm. And importantly, nobody was disappointed or let down.

Nothing fell apart.

That felt like a small but significant moment — choosing ease where I could, because other things are hard — and trusting that the world would not collapse without my over-functioning.

Letting go of the fixer role

Part of my ongoing therapy has been unpicking a long-held belief that I need to be the fixer — the one who holds everything together.

This season is gently, persistently teaching me that there are many things I cannot fix.
And more surprisingly: if I step away for a while, things do not unravel.

In fact, they may even be better for it.

I’ve gratefully accepted the offer of my sister-in-law to come over and spend extra time with Mum. Allowing that support has felt both humbling and freeing — a reminder that care is not meant to be carried alone.

Rest as part of the work

As this piece goes out, I’m looking ahead to a week away with my husband — time that feels deeply needed and genuinely restorative.

I’m practising not feeling guilty about that.

Rest is not an indulgence.
It is not avoidance.
It is part of the work.

Time to walk, to breathe fresh air, to explore quietly, to notice beauty. Time to geek out over local buses and historic places. Time to let my nervous system settle.

None of this means I care less.
It means I’m learning how to stay well enough to keep caring.

An invitation — gentle and real

If Christmas feels hard for you this year — if everything seems to be converging at once — I want to say this quietly and clearly:

You are allowed to make space.
You are allowed to simplify.
You are allowed to say no.
You are allowed to rest.

Doing less does not mean you are failing.
It may be the most faithful thing you can do.

If you have suggestions for me for calming audio, gentle podcasts, or restful listens, I’d love to hear them in the comments. And if you have found your own ways of making Christmas lighter when life is heavy, your wisdom is welcome here, too.

Light that doesn’t deny reality

I don’t believe peace comes from pretending things are easier than they are.
I think it comes from meeting reality with honesty — and then choosing kindness anyway.

This Christmas, that’s what I’m practising:
Not fixing everything.
Not holding everything.
But making room for rest, support, and small, real moments of joy.

Even here.
Even now.
And that, this year, is enough.

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I’m signing off for this year with an Advent poem

Dear Advent,

You arrive again this year — not tidy, not quiet, not asking my permission.

You come while hospital letters sit on the table,
while my body remembers things I didn’t invite back,
while love and worry walk hand in hand through the days.
You come while I am tired — and still hoping.

Please don’t ask me for more than I can give.

Sit with me instead.
Teach me that small lights matter.
That rest is holy.
That doing less can still be faithful.

Help me notice what is enough:
warm drinks,
kind hands,
shared laughter,
fresh air,
a body that keeps showing up,
love that hasn’t gone anywhere.

If peace comes, let it come gently.
If joy appears, let it be quiet and real.
And if all I can manage is to stay present,
let that be enough for today.

Advent, hold the tension for me.
Let the waiting be a place of kindness.
Let the light arrive slowly.

Yours,
Still standing.
Still loved.
Still here.

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about a small but important word: and.
Two things can be true at once, and often are.

It keeps showing up everywhere, in caring for my mum, in therapy, in my faith, and especially as Christmas draws closer. It turns out that a great deal of life is lived not in choosing one truth over another, but in learning to stand between them.

I keep coming back to a picture: a tent held upright only when its guy ropes are pulled in opposite directions. Without that tension, it collapses. The structure doesn’t stand despite the pull; it stands because of it.

Sometimes I wish life worked differently. But the older I get, the more I realise: if the tension isn’t a mistake, it’s the structure that holds me upright.

The personal tension: privilege and heartbreak, strength and exhaustion

Caring for my mum has sharpened this truth more than anything else.
It is a privilege — one I would never trade — and it is breaking me open.

I am grateful to still have her, to sit by her, to advocate for her, to know her so intimately in this season. And I am tired in ways I don’t quite know how to name. I am both strong and stretched thin. I am both certain about what she needs and confused by how to navigate systems that seem to change shape whenever I approach them.

There are days when the pull in both directions feels like too much, and yet that same pull is the very thing that keeps me grounded in love.

Therapy: when truth stings and saves at the same time

Therapy is another place where my opposites meet.
I don’t like truth when it first arrives. Honestly, I sometimes hate it. It can feel like being scraped raw. But I do love what truth makes possible, the beginnings of healing, growth, clarity, freedom.

I can sit in a session feeling upset by what I’m realising and simultaneously grateful that I am finally seeing it.
It is horrible and hopeful.
It is disorientating and illuminating.

Faith often sits in that same tension, belief and confusion tied together like two ropes pulling in opposite directions. That, too, is a kind of stability.

Christmas: the holy contradictions at the centre of the story

The more I’ve reflected, the more I’ve realised that the Christmas story itself is built on these sacred tensions. Christmas has always been a story of contradiction carried inside a human body.

Let me stay with three of them.

Majesty and poverty

A king born in a stable.
Royalty wrapped in rags.
Heaven touching earth in a feeding trough.

This is majesty and poverty, not one cancelling the other out, but both insisting on being true.

Fear and favour

Mary hearing, “Do not be afraid,” which only makes sense because she had every reason to be terrified.
A young woman entrusted with something glorious and overwhelming.
Tenderness and terror intertwined.

Divinity and vulnerability

God becoming a baby who needed feeding and changing and carrying.
The all-powerful entering the world utterly dependent on human hands.

The nativity holds opposite truths without flinching. It doesn’t tidy them up; it invites us to sit with them.

Other tensions that shape our days

As I’ve paid attention, I’ve started to notice how these contradictions run through my own ordinary life:

• Being held and holding others.

• Wanting rest and wanting to show up.

• Feeling fierce love and feeling overwhelmed.

• Longing for clarity and sitting with not-knowing.

• Tenderness and terror, often in the very same breath.

Life doesn’t seem to ask us to choose; it asks us to learn how to stand in the middle.

Learning to stand in the space between

As I look at caring for Mum, at the work I’m doing in therapy, and at the story carried through this season, I keep circling back to the same quiet truth:

Life is full of paradoxes — and the invitation is not to solve them, but to live inside them.

Christmas, perhaps more than any other moment in the year, reminds me of this. A manger that holds both majesty and mess. A girl who carries both fear and favour. A newborn who is both divine and vulnerable. It is a story stitched together entirely from opposing truths, and somehow that doesn’t weaken it; it strengthens it. It becomes more real, not less.

And maybe that’s true of us as well.

We are held and we hold others.
We are confused and faithful.
Tender and afraid.
Hurting and healing.
Exhausted and devoted.
Two things can be true at once, and often are.

I’m learning — slowly — to let the paradox stand without rushing to tidy it up. To allow the opposing ropes of my life to pull without assuming something has gone wrong. To trust that the tension is what keeps the structure upright.

This Christmas, I want to make space for that:
for the hard and the holy,
for the ache and the joy,
for the truth that stings and the truth that sets free.

Perhaps the paradox is not a problem to fix, but a place to stand, a small stretch of holy ground where light and shadow learn to belong together.

And maybe that is the quiet gift of the season:
That in the middle of all our contradictions, we are not alone.
We are accompanied.
We are steadied.
We are loved.

In this season, I’ve found a Christian song that has been quietly steadying me. If you share my faith, it may offer something to you too; and if you don’t, you might simply be curious to listen: I Belong To Jesus.

And yet, this week has been one of the hardest in a long while.

I’ve been knee-deep in the exhausting machinery of Continuing Healthcare again. If you’re in this world, you’ll know exactly what I mean: the feeling of being ground down by a system that should protect our most vulnerable, yet somehow asks the emotionally exhausted to prove, again and again, why their loved one deserves care.

Our initial request was rejected in January 2025
The appeal meeting arrives almost a year later.
And a 64-page document dropped into my inbox last week to “prepare” for it.

I honestly thought I’d be fine. I told myself I could handle it. I’ve become strangely fluent in this language of domains and descriptors, complexity and unpredictability. But as the meeting drew closer, I could feel something tightening in my chest. Anxiety. The sense of being small against something very, very big.

I mentioned it, almost in passing, to a friend.

And without hesitation, she gave up her morning off, came to my house, sat beside me on a Teams video call for over an hour, took notes, whispered encouragement, and quite literally held the emotional weight I couldn’t carry alone.

Here is the illustration I made of that moment:

Friendship is giving up your morning off to sit with someone through an appeal meeting.

Because that’s what true friendship is:
The willingness to walk into someone else’s hard things and quietly stay.

The thing about capacity

I’ve been thinking a lot about capacity lately, not the kind measured by assessors, but the kind that leaks when you’re caring for someone you love while fighting systems that require strength you no longer have.

I hear from other carers of people with Multiple System Atrophy, and their hearts are breaking too. Watching someone you love deteriorate is devastating enough. Having to battle for the care they deserve feels almost cruel. We shouldn’t need MPs, journalists, or appeals panels to prove that human beings in distress deserve support.

It is hard to fight when you’re already flattened.

And yet here we are, many of us, doing it anyway.

A small offering to anyone else in this trench

I’m not in a place to offer solutions or strategies or brave-faced pep talks.
But I can offer this:

If you’re struggling with care systems, CHC, MSA, or anything that has emptied you emotionally, you are not alone.

If you want to share your story in the comments, reach out, or simply be witnessed, please feel welcome. Perhaps, between us, we can build enough collective strength to keep advocating for the care our loved ones so deeply deserve.

This week reminded me that we’re not meant to do the hard things alone.
Sometimes all it takes is saying, “I’m struggling,” and letting someone show up for you.

And to my friend, thank you. Your kindness steadied me more than you know.

Today I remembered: stopping isn’t failing. It’s tending to the part of me that’s quietly waving a white flag. I’m (finally!) practising what I preach and prioritising my own self-care. Rest is calling, and I’m listening.

Hopefully, regular service will resume next week, with our Watercolour for Wellbeing session on Monday, 8th December, and the usual blog post landing on Tuesday.

Thank you for your kindness and patience.

A tiny, fluffy Bichon Frise with a beaming face and a completely disproportionate amount of loyalty. His name was intentional: Rafiki, Swahili for friend — and he truly was.

During some of the hardest times of my life, including EMDR therapy, Rafi became part of my healing. My therapist encouraged me to imagine a trusted figure saying reassuring, grounding things when my nervous system felt scrambled.

And so, I imagined Rafi, with that uncanny sincerity dogs have, speaking truth back to me:

You’re safe.
You’re doing your best.
You’re not alone.

It sounds simple, possibly even sentimental, but it wasn’t. It was grounding. It was survival. He was putting courage back into me — the literal meaning of encouragement. And my artwork began with him. Those little ink-and-watercolour sketches were like visual breaths, tiny reminders that hope could be soft and small… and still enough.

Losing Rafi was devastating. A grief that hit hard in both body and soul. I wasn’t looking for another dog. But life has strange timings. And then Barney arrived.

He came quickly, disarmingly quickly, after we lost Rafi. At first, I wondered if it was too soon. But grief doesn’t follow timetables, and comfort doesn’t always wait politely to be invited in.

When I met him, his eyes were bright. He wasn’t timid. He ran up from his littermates and chose us. Take me. It was as though he was already listening. And I knew immediately what his name would be.

Barney — short for Barnabas.

Barnabas was a first-century figure whose real name was Joseph. Barnabas was a nickname given by his community because he embodied something they needed. The name means Son of Encouragement. They named him after the way he lived.

That’s what I needed.
That’s what I hoped for.
And honestly, he has lived up to his name in ways I could never have imagined.

The word encouragement comes from the Latin word " cor ", meaning heart. To encourage someone is literally to put heart into them. Not flattery. Not empty positivity. Not “you’re amazing!” shouted across the void.

Encouragement is presence.
Encouragement is truth.
Encouragement is the strength to see what someone else has forgotten about themselves.

Sometimes encouragement is uncomfortable, too. On the Bayeux Tapestry, there’s a scene where Bishop Odo stands behind the troops with a club. He’s not harming them, he’s urging them forward. Encouragement can be like that: a nudge, a reminder, a provocation when everything in you wants to step back.

Barnabas — Joseph with the nickname — appears throughout early Christian history. But you don’t need to be religious to appreciate him. His story is deeply human.

He vouched for people when suspicion was thick.
He spotted grace when others scanned for faults.
He offered second chances.
He took John Mark with him when Paul had rejected him.
And, beautifully, he stepped back graciously as Paul rose.

But here’s the part that really matters:

Encouragement isn’t a personality type.
It isn’t an achievement.
It isn’t a special gift reserved for a few.
Anyone can be an encourager.
It’s not something you are — it’s something you do.

Rafi taught me that encouragement can be gentle. It can sit beside you without demanding anything. It can breathe with you when your own breath is unsteady. It can whisper safety in a way only a four-legged friend can.

Barney teaches me that encouragement is loyal. He listens more than he speaks. He leans in when the world feels sharp. And he nudges me outside when my instinct is to curl inward.

Barnabas teaches me that encouragement can be intentional — that it can lift others when they’re shaky, call out potential when someone can’t see it, and choose generosity over fear.

Together, Rafi, Barney, and Barnabas trace a kind of triangle in my story, a shape made of friendship, healing, hope, and heart.

And so, a few gentle questions for you:

Who has encouraged you when you needed it most?
Who put heart back into you when yours felt thin?
Who believed in you before you believed in yourself?
And who might need encouragement from you this week?

Someone struggling quietly.
Someone weary.
Someone who simply needs you to sit beside them and say nothing.

Encouragement doesn’t have to be grand. Most of the time, it’s presence with hope attached.

Maybe encouragement is less about the right words and more about the right posture.
Maybe it’s listening with enough love that the other person remembers their own strength.
Maybe it’s carrying courage for someone until they’re ready to hold it again.

It’s what Barnabas did.
It’s what Rafi did.
It’s what Barney does every single day.

And maybe, in whatever small, honest way, it’s something you can do too.

“The first service one owes to others in the fellowship consists in listening to them ….. Many people are looking for an ear that will listen.”
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

I think this resonated so deeply because the last few weeks have been stretching ones. I’d worked myself into quite a state: tight-chested, restless, unable to settle my thoughts. There were too many decisions and not enough emotional room to hold them. I could feel the pressure rising in my neck and behind my eyes, the unmistakable signs that I was carrying more than I could manage, even if I hadn’t said it out loud yet.

And eventually, I admitted to myself:
I need a listening ear.

So I walked over to a friend’s office as she was due to finish work. I didn’t quite know what I needed to say; I just knew I needed someone who would hear me. And she made time. We headed across the road to Costa, found a couple of seats, and she did the simplest, kindest thing:

She listened.

Without judgement.
Without trying to fix it.
Without shifting in her seat as if to get to the advice part.

Just listening; open, grounded, welcoming.

Carl Rogers, the well-known psychologist who shaped person-centred counselling, once wrote:

“When someone really hears you without passing judgment, without trying to take responsibility for you, it feels damn good.”

And oh, did it feel damn good.

Something in me exhaled. My shoulders softened. My thinking untangled itself like a knot slowly loosening. It was as if her attention allowed my breath to drop down into my body again.

It reminded me of the beautiful words from Henri Nouwen:

“Listening is the highest form of hospitality.”

I wasn’t in her house, but I felt at home, because she created, as Nouwen puts it, “an act of making room inside ourselves for another.”

Another profound quote — this one from Thich Nhat Hanh — came to mind as well:

“Deep listening is the kind of listening that can help relieve the suffering of another person.”

That’s exactly what happened.
In those twenty minutes, she didn’t solve my problems, but she relieved my suffering.
She made space for clarity, calm, and courage to re-enter the room.

Listening is not passive.
Listening is not small.
Listening is not “just listening.”

Listening is a healing power.

And so, as I sit writing this today, I find myself reflecting on how extraordinary this simple act is — this presence, this attention, this quiet generosity of spirit.

Have you felt listened to this week?
Or have you had the privilege of listening to someone else?

Because here’s the beautiful thing I’m realising:

When we listen well, we create the soil where encouragement can grow.

A listening ear becomes a place where someone feels seen, steadied, and strengthened enough to take their next step.

Next week, I want to write about a man whose whole life embodied this: Barnabas, the “son of encouragement.”

But for now, may this be enough:
Your listening matters.
Your presence is powerful.
And someone, somewhere, may be longing for the gift only you can give: an ear that will listen.

Sometimes the most surprising decisions sneak up on us.

Recently, I found myself making the choice to step away from my career as a physiotherapist after 34 years. It’s a decision that’s both a little bittersweet and incredibly freeing. Lately, I’ve been feeling so exhausted, like I just wasn’t doing a good job juggling everything, especially caring for my mum as her condition progresses.

I’ve been reflecting on this idea of capacity. You know, sometimes it’s not just the debris or overwhelm in our bucket, but even precious stones, things we truly value, that take up space. Stepping away from my professional identity feels like removing one of those precious stones.

As Brené Brown says, “You can’t take care of others if you’re running on empty yourself.” This choice is my way of making sure my own bucket isn’t overflowing.

The other precious stone

It’s not the only stone I’ve had to lay down. I’ve also stepped back from my role as Secretary of Kirkham Cultural Connections, our wonderful local group that brings together art, heritage, and wellbeing. It’s a community I love deeply, and being part of it has brought me joy and friendship.

But again, it’s one of those beautiful, shining stones, something lovely and meaningful that still takes up space. For now, I simply don’t have the capacity to hold it, not while giving the care and attention my mum needs, and still remaining well myself.

If I’m honest, I’ve had to work through a fair bit of guilt about that, guilt about letting people down, about stepping away from things I care about. But I’m realising that guilt often shows up when we start to honour our own limits.

The truth is, these decisions aren’t about abandoning anything; they’re about tending the ground beneath us so that, in time, things can grow again. Maybe I’ll pick up those stones again one day. But for now, they need to rest beside the bucket, not lost, just waiting.

Learning that we have choices

This process has reminded me how easily we can become stuck in “musts” and “shoulds.” We tell ourselves we can’t make changes, that people are relying on us, that we’ll disappoint others. We build stories around obligation and fear until they become walls.

But as I’ve discovered, those walls are often of our own making. We always have choices, even if they’re hard ones, and choosing differently doesn’t make us weak. It makes us honest.

Carl Jung once said, “I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become.” That line has stayed with me, because it reminds me that we can evolve, redefine ourselves, and choose how we want to live, one careful, intentional decision at a time.

A question for you

So I want to invite you to reflect along with me:

What’s in your bucket right now?
Are there things, maybe even beautiful, precious things, that you need to set down for a while?

It’s okay to pause. It’s okay to change. And it’s more than okay to protect your energy and your heart.

Because our identity isn’t only what we do, it’s who we are deep down. And sometimes, making space for that is the most loving thing we can do for ourselves.

🪣 If this reflection resonated with you, I’d love to hear from you in the comments.
What are some of the “precious stones” you’re learning to set down—or hold more lightly?

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About the author:
Andrea Selley writes Illustrated Musings, a reflective blog exploring creativity, care, and courage. Through her project, Illustrating Hope, she combines art and wellbeing to nurture connection and joy.

October has been a month of unexpected downpours (both literal and emotional), of searching for light in surprising corners, and, perhaps most importantly, of learning to lean into the strange, messy moments that make up a real life. We tackled everything from minor medical drama to the deep philosophy of dog waste, and I wouldn’t trade a moment of it!

This month’s illustrated musings took us on a journey through four core themes: finding dignity in the undignified moments of life, appreciating the simple, raw beauty of the world, the quiet grace of borrowed strength, and the sharp, sometimes alarming reality of health anxiety.

And speaking of downpours...

Do you want to see the full illustrated stories from October?

Upgrade to a Paid Subscription to continue reading, download your free Image of the Month (the Collie in the rain!), and join next month’s exclusive Watercolour Wellbeing Session!

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But this week, the rant wasn’t funny. It was raw.

I was on the phone with a close friend when I just… lost it.
The polite phrase would be that my “halo slipped.” Truthfully, I let out more than a few choice words. But it didn’t feel like banter or release. It felt like grief and rage and frustration all boiling over. And afterwards, it sat in me like something sour.

Because somewhere along the line, I was taught that anger is a failure of faith or resilience, that I should just ‘be positive.’
But as I sat there, exhausted, I asked myself:
What if this wasn’t an emotional flaw… but an accurate response?

What the Rage Was Telling Me

Afterwards, still trying to make sense of it all, I came across something by Harriet Lerner. She wrote:

“Anger is a signal, and one worth listening to.” — Harriet Lerner

She adds, beautifully and bluntly, that questioning whether we deserve to feel anger is like asking whether we have the right to be thirsty.
Anger is something that simply is — a signal from our body and mind that something is wrong.

And I realised that’s precisely what had happened.
My anger wasn’t random or baseless.
It had something important to say.

To explain why, I need to get a little personal again, and I do have my mum’s permission to share this.

My lovely mum, if you’ve met her, you’ll know she’s a quiet warrior. She was diagnosed over two years ago with a brutal neurological disease called Multiple System Atrophy.

Lately, her condition has been deteriorating rapidly. She now needs a mechanical hoist to move between the chair and the bed. She can no longer write or use a knife and fork.
She is smiling through constant pain, still offering kindness even as her body fails her.

There are other details I’ll spare, but let’s just say: it’s hard. It’s heartbreaking. I am so sad.

And when you’re already navigating that kind of grief, the last thing you expect is for the system meant to help you to become an obstacle course.

The care services have been patchy at best.
We’ve been repeatedly passed from pillar to post, made to fill in the same forms over and over, questioned as though we’re exaggerating, and forced to wait while things get worse.
It’s felt dehumanising and obstructive. We feel challenged, not supported.

That night on the phone, my words poured out because I couldn’t hold them in any longer.

From Signal to Action

That, I now realise, was the signal:
Something was not right!
Our needs were not being met. My efforts to advocate were being dismissed.

As I kept reflecting, I returned to another voice I deeply respect — Brené Brown.
In Atlas of the Heart, she writes:

“Anger is a catalyst. It’s an emotion that we need to transform into something life-giving.” — Brené Brown

And that’s exactly what I decided to do.

I’m thankful for my safe friend who simply listened and let me let it out, with no judgment.
The adrenaline faded, replaced by a quiet, focused resolve.

In the morning, I sat down and let the truth that had been yelling inside me guide my pen.

I wrote a calm, clear, and unshakeable letter. It wasn’t a rant. It was evidence, backed by policy, and powered by love.

And I’m ready now to take this further if I have to:
To the ICB. To the MP. To the Parliamentary Ombudsman.
Not just for Mum, but for the many others like her, who are being failed.

Because here’s the truth:
Calculated decisions are being made — decisions that ignore both policy and compassion.
And that’s not okay.

I’m not taking up a whip or flipping tables in a public building but you know what? Even Jesus did that once.
When he saw injustice in the temple, he didn’t sigh quietly or send a polite email.
He acted with force. He made noise. He demanded better.

Sometimes anger is holy.
Sometimes it’s the spark that drives justice forward.

The Full Picture

So I’m going to keep listening to the signal.
And I’m going to keep acting, with clarity, with compassion, and with courage.

But alongside righteous anger, I want to practice gratitude, too, because not every experience has been negative.

Yesterday, in fact, we had an excellent occupational therapist visit us. She did exactly what she said she’d do.
She taught us how to use a new piece of equipment, and it’s already making life easier.
She gave us hope.

Because this is the whole picture:

Anger — when listened to — can lead us to life-giving action.
Gratitude — when spoken — can build bridges and restore trust.

To those working in health and care right now:

I see the quiet things you do that no one writes down.
The extra minute. The reassuring word. The steady hand.
I know you’re stretched, and still, you show up.
Thank you.

And to those making decisions at the top:

Before you redraw the thresholds and raise the bar beyond people’s reach, please remember my mother.
Remember that every number on your spreadsheet is a person like her — a family like mine — already fighting the fight of their lives.

See people, not just the numbers.

Are you also struggling with the system? I’d love to hear your story.
Whether it’s CHC, ICB, EHCP, SEND, or any other crazy acronym, please know you’re not on your own.

Join the conversation in the chat, or if that feels too vulnerable, send me a message instead. I’ll read it and I will reply.

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