“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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Life can be complicated, but hope often arrives in small, ordinary moments. If you’d like these illustrated reflections delivered to your inbox, I’d be delighted to have you along for the journey.

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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.

Not just the obvious kind,
the kind you expect when something hard is happening,
but the kind that seems to arrive from nowhere.

Or at least from somewhere older than the present moment.

I think we often assume grief belongs neatly to one thing.

One loss.
One moment.
One chapter.

But that hasn’t been my experience.

What I’m noticing is that some grief doesn’t get processed when it happens.

It gets stored.
Quietly.
Out of necessity, maybe.

Because we didn’t have the space,
or the safety,
or the words for it at the time.

And it doesn’t disappear.

It waits.

Then something in the present, real and painful in its own right, comes along and touches it.

And suddenly it’s not just about now.

It’s about then as well.

Layers of feeling rising together,
tangled, disproportionate,
and hard to make sense of.

I’m finding that in this season with my mum’s health declining.

I expected sadness.

I didn’t quite expect the way it would open up other things.
Older things.
Feelings I thought I’d already dealt with,
or at least packed away neatly enough to live alongside.

It doesn’t feel like opening a new door.

It feels more like turning back a page in a book I thought was already finished.

A chapter I’d closed carefully,
believing I’d dealt with it.

Only now, as I sit with it again, I can see the gaps.

The places where I kept going because I had to.
The lines I didn’t have words for at the time.

And so I’m here again, pen in hand, almost.

Not rewriting what happened,
but allowing myself to add what was missing.

The feeling.
The weight.
The truth that didn’t have space to land before.

And I don’t always know how to be in that.

There’s a temptation to try and tidy it up.

To tell myself a better story.
To keep perspective.
To not overreact.
To stay strong.

All the things we learn, consciously or not,
about how to handle difficult emotions.

But I’m starting to wonder whether that’s exactly how some of this grief stayed unprocessed in the first place.

Because it didn’t have anywhere to go.

No space to land.
No permission to be fully felt.
No language.

And so it stayed.

What I’m slowly learning, again really,
is the importance of something that feels both very simple
and strangely hard.

Letting it be named.

Saying, even quietly,

this hurts.

Not explaining it away.
Not comparing it.
Not rushing to the part where it makes sense
or feels okay again.

Just staying with it long enough
for it to feel real.

I think this is what lament is, at least in part.

Not a dramatic or overly religious thing.

Just a kind of honest staying.

A way of telling the truth
about how it actually feels,
without needing to fix it straight away.

Because when grief is given some space,
spoken, written, even just acknowledged,
it seems to shift.

Not disappear.
Not resolve neatly.

But it moves, somehow,
loosening its grip just enough
to create a little more room to breathe.

Whereas the grief that isn’t felt
doesn’t go anywhere.

It leaks out sideways.
Or sits quietly under the surface.
Or waits for a moment like this
to rise again.

I’m realising I’m not just grieving what’s in front of me right now.

I’m grieving things that didn’t get a voice at the time.
Things I needed and didn’t have.
Moments that passed
without being held
in the way they should have been.

And that’s a strange thing to sit with.

Because it can feel like too much.
Or like I’m getting it wrong somehow.

But maybe it’s not wrong.

Maybe it’s just what happens
when something in us finally feels safe enough,
or is forced enough,
to feel what it couldn’t before.

So I’m trying, gently, to stay with it.

Not perfectly.
Not all the time.
But a little more than I might have done before.

To not rush myself out of it.

To let the feelings
have some kind of place to go.

I’ve spent some time thinking
I should be above this somehow.

More certain.
Less shaken.

But I’m beginning to see
that bringing all of this,
questions, distress,
even the parts that don’t sound very faith-filled,

might actually be
the most honest expression of faith
I have right now.

Not neat.
Not resolved.
But still turned towards my Father God.

And somewhere in that,
not at the end of it,
not as a neat conclusion,
but within it,

I find myself coming back
to a quiet sense of being held.

Not because everything feels resolved.

It doesn’t.

But because when I stop trying to move away from what’s true,

I don’t seem to be there on my own.

Not mine. Not even ours, really. Things Mum no longer needs. Things that don’t quite belong to anyone anymore. Outdated equipment. Half-sorted piles. “I’ll deal with that later” decisions that had quietly multiplied.

They’d spread across the bedroom, onto the landing, into the spare room, like they’d taken up residence without my permission.

For the last couple of months, getting into bed has meant climbing over things. Carefully placing each foot. Trying not to trip. Trying not to stub my toe (at least once unsuccessfully!) on stuff that shouldn’t be there in the first place.

And all the while, life hasn’t paused.

There’s been care to organise. Appointments. Phone calls. Forms. People coming and going. Extra washing. Extra bedding. And the quiet, constant work of making sure everything, and everyone, is okay.

Somewhere in the middle of that, I disappeared a bit.

My routines slipped. My eating went off track. My migraines came back. I had a familiar tightness in my neck and head that said, "This is too much now."

I kept thinking about that phrase: ‘eat the frog’. Do the hardest thing first.

But the truth is, I didn’t want to. And if I’m really honest, I couldn’t.

Because it wasn’t just one frog.

It was a whole room full of things. A backlog of life. An emotional weight that doesn’t fit neatly into a task list.

And then, somewhere between stepping over another pile and feeling completely done in, I remembered that other phrase, the slightly odd one about eating an elephant.

One bite at a time.

Which is just weird, then you realise there’s an actual elephant in your bedroom.

Yesterday, I didn’t eat the frog.

But I did take a few bites of the elephant.

Not all of it. Not even close. But enough to make a path. Enough to reach the bed without climbing.

Enough to feel a tiny weight lifted.

And alongside all of that, there was a moment I’m definately not proud of.

Mum asked me for something, something small, and I was irritable. Short and grumpy.

Not my usual self.

And I felt it straight away. That jolt of, this isn’t who I want to be.

But maybe that’s part of this, too.

Because underneath the irritation wasn’t anger at her. It was overwhelm. It was the weight of too many things, carried for too long, with not enough space to put them down.

It was a signal.

Not a flattering one. But an honest one.

There’s a kind of work that doesn’t get counted.

The noticing. The remembering. The anticipating. The holding of it all, so that other people don’t have to.

And sometimes, that invisible load spills over.

Not because we don’t care. But because we’ve been caring so much for so long.

So maybe this week isn’t about eating frogs.

Maybe it’s about recognising when the elephant has quietly moved in.

Maybe it’s about admitting that you can’t clear the whole room in one go.

Maybe it’s just about making a path.

A small one. A doable one.

One bite. Then another.

And calling that enough.

I think I’m beginning to understand that something beautiful can come from the broken pieces. In fact, something more beautiful than if the item had never been broken at all.

I don’t think I could have said that a year ago.
And I’m not even sure I fully believe it yet.
But something about it had settled in me enough that I wanted a way to remember it.

Not something to think about.
Something to carry.

I began mulling over the thought of kintsugi as a metaphor to understand my healing from trauma during a grief retreat that I’ve written about before (Grief retreat blog). The idea stayed with me; when something breaks, it can be repaired in a way that doesn’t hide the damage, but honours it. That the cracks become part of the story.

I decided to try it for myself.

I took a ceramic bowl, broke it into pieces, and used one of those kits with glue and gold to put it back together again. And in some ways, the process was really helpful. There was something quite powerful in doing it slowly, piece by piece, seeing it come back together.

But if I’m honest, what I ended up with was… not beautiful.

It was clumsy. It was awkward and slightly ridiculous!

I remember looking at it with a sense of disappointment. It didn’t come close to the picture in my mind.

The concept of kintsugi is so beautiful.
The reality, at least in my hands, wasn’t.

And that thought stayed with me, too.

So when I found myself wanting something to make this kintsugi metaphor for my healing feel tangible, I knew I didn’t want another object that would sit on a shelf.

I thought briefly about buying a proper piece of kintsugi pottery. Something genuinely beautiful, done by an artisan.

But I realised it would probably just sit on a shelf.
I didn’t want something that I would leave at home.
I wanted something to carry with me.

So I started looking for a piece of jewellery.

And I found a necklace made from broken pieces of amazonite, held together with copper.

I immediately knew I loved it. The colour was calm and soft. The copper felt warm. And there was something about the way it had been put together, not hiding the breaks, just holding them, that felt right.

I had found something I liked, so I bought it.

That might not sound like much, but it felt like a big deal to me. I’m usually so reluctant to spend money on anything unnecessary for myself. This was extravagant self-care.

Life hasn’t suddenly become neat or resolved.

Things are still hard. There’s still a lot of repetition, a lot of holding things together day by day. There are still moments when life feels more like my wonky, functional bowl than anything beautiful.

But now I have something small with me that reminds me of what can be true.

As I come to the end of this piece, I want to share a song that’s been really meaningful to me in all of this.

It’s called Shattered by Blanca.

It speaks about being put back together again. For me, it means believing that God is with me on this journey of restoration.

I know that won’t be everyone’s way of seeing things, and that’s okay. But if you’re interested, or if this resonates with you, you may find this song helpful: Listen to Shattered here

I’m not a finished piece yet.

But I am in the process.

And for now, this is enough.

I’m wearing my beautiful kintsugi necklace.
As a beautiful reminder of what is possible.

It’s not the day everything falls apart.
And it’s not the day when everything comes back together.

It’s the day in between.

The day where what you hoped for seems to have gone, but nothing new has come to take its place. The day where you wake up and everything feels heavy. Still unresolved. Still not what you thought it would be.

It’s a quiet kind of hard.

We tend to tell our stories in beginnings and endings. Before and after. Problem and solution.

But that’s not actually where we live most of our lives.

Most of life happens in the middle.
In the waiting.
In the not knowing.
In the slow stretch of time when nothing seems to be changing, even though it feels like it should be.

In the Easter story, we often move quickly from the cross to the resurrection. From Friday straight to Sunday. From loss to hope.

But there was a Saturday.

A whole day where nothing seemed to happen.

Jesus had been killed. The one they had followed, trusted, built their lives around was gone. His body was placed in a tomb, and the stone was rolled into place.

And that was it.

No miracle.
No explanation.
No sense of what might come next.

Just silence.

I often wonder what that day must have felt like for the people who loved him.

The confusion of it.
The sharp disappointment.
The questions that must have circled in their minds.

We thought he was the one.
We thought things would be different.
We didn’t think it would turn out like this.

And now… nothing.

The thing about that Saturday is that they didn’t know Sunday was coming.

We do, of course. We read it as a story of hope, of life breaking through, of things being made new.

But they didn’t have that perspective.

They were just in it.

And even when Sunday did come, not everyone recognised it straight away. There’s that moment on the Road to Emmaus where two of the disciples are walking along, talking about everything that has happened, trying to make sense of it.

And Jesus comes alongside them.

Alive. Present. Walking with them.

And they don’t recognise him. Not at first.

Which, if I’m honest, feels strangely comforting.

Because it suggests that even when something has shifted, even when hope is closer than we think, it doesn’t always feel like it. It doesn’t always arrive in a way we can immediately name or understand.

Sometimes we are still processing Saturday, even as Sunday begins.

I’ve had a bit of that recently.

Weeks of emails and phone calls and meetings, trying to sort out CHC funding for my mum. Sitting at the kitchen table with my laptop open, refreshing my inbox more times than I’d like to admit. A cup of coffee beside me going cold as I get distracted and forget to drink it.

Advocating. Chasing. Trying to hold things together for Mum while everything still felt uncertain.

Trying to trust a process that didn’t always feel very trustworthy.

I didn’t know how it would land. I didn’t know if the help we needed would actually arrive.

And then, suddenly, an email.

A yes.

I remember opening it and reading it twice, just to be sure I hadn’t misunderstood.

It was a quiet moment. And something inside began to loosen.

There was a plan to move forward. Care would be in place.

Relief, more than anything.

It wasn’t dramatic. Not a big emotional moment. Just a slow exhale. My shoulders dropping a little. The sense that something I had been holding so tightly could finally be set down.

If I’m honest, it felt a bit like stepping into Sunday.

But what’s stayed with me isn’t just the relief.

It’s how real that Saturday felt while I was in it.
How long it felt.
How uncertain it was.
How tiring.
How easy it would have been to believe that nothing at all was happening.

And maybe that’s the hardest part of these in-between spaces.

It looks like nothing.

But that doesn’t mean nothing is happening.

Holy Saturday, in the Christian story, is a day with no visible movement. No miracles. No answers. No sense of God doing anything at all.

And yet it sits right in the middle of a story that changes everything.

Which makes me wonder whether some of the most important things happen in places that don’t look like much from the outside.

In the waiting.
In the endurance.
In the quiet decision to keep showing up.

Answer the email.
Make the call.
Sit with what is hard.
Rest when you can.
Try again tomorrow.

It doesn’t feel like much.

But sometimes that’s what faith looks like.

Not certainty.
Not clarity.
Just staying.

So if today feels a little bit like Saturday for you, you’re not alone in that.

Not all quiet is absence.

Sometimes what feels like nothing is actually the space where something is quietly, faithfully unfolding.

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.