If you had told me last week that I would be smoke free today, I wouldn’t have believed you. I was one of those people who had a massive panic attack just thinking about not smoking any more. I have tried giving up* before and failed miserably. I even used Champix and had a cigarette as… Read More
In a few days I will turn 51. It is not a momentous birthday like my last one (and I’m not in KL to celebrate it sadly), but I have come to a significant understanding — I am not cut out to be a Midlife Lady — at least not the type I sometimes encounter online. Here… Read More
The girl had wished for a unicorn her whole life. She had seen the beautiful creatures in magazines with the most successful recording artists, models and actresses and she knew she was just the kind of person who could have one for herself. She also knew boys adored girls with unicorns and with one, she would… Read More
On a cold September morning in 2009, I sat in the bottom of the shower sobbing so hard I was almost sick. I wasn’t upset because someone had died, or was ill, or had been hurt in any way, I was crying because I had binged the night before and my morning weigh-in had shown the ugly… Read More
After I finished writing yesterday’s post on the three types of love strategies between a couple, it occurred to me that the same principles apply to self-love. If you know how you receive love from others, you know how to receive it from yourself Many people’s self-love efforts aren’t making any difference because people are following advice based… Read More
The only thing more talked about on women’s blogs than children is The Change. Somewhere around your fifties, you stop having your period and start having things that they call Symptoms. These are physical and psychological changes that seem to have the power to wreck lives and signal the start of a downward spiral into… Read More
Women are like trees. As they grow in years they also grow in their power to provide shelter and to live in full bloom. Some people don’t like trees. Trees strike them as messy — they sway and grow chaotically against the perpendicular lines of houses and fences. Some people want to cut down trees, make them quiet, and make… Read More
The smell was overwhelming. Not the sharp sting of hospital bleach, as I had expected, but a sickly sweet lavender smell that clung to the folds of my sweater. The room was warm and bright, the large windows overlooking acres of rolling hills dotted with sheep. My father sat in a recliner chair, the upholstery made… Read More
I’ve often wondered if all the hours I spent reading under the blankets with a torch when I was a kid contributed to my bad eyesight. I’m short sighted – I can’t see anything more than a few centimetres in front on my nose. Too vain to wear glasses, I have worn contact lenses since… Read More
It’s been raining since Monday. A low pressure system off the coast has been beating down on us relentlessly, bringing with it winds gusting up to 125 km/hr. We live on a hill, right on the beach. Our dead-end street is lined with trees that have fallen over, taking down the power lines with them. We… Read More
Art is a practice, medicine is a practice, and architecture is a practice. Photography, painting, meditation, dance, writing, and yoga is a practice. What makes these particular things a practice? A practice is something that has an intrinsic (internal) motivation to achieve excellence both for oneself and for the good of the community. It brings to mind such… Read More
When I decided to enter a body-building competition in my forties, there was something the trainers and seasoned competitors forgot to tell me. They forgot to warn me that once you’ve experienced being so thin that your tailbone digs into the chair, any weight higher than that will feel fat. So from my point of view, I spend… Read More
He’s my dad but I like to call him Bob. When I was a little he used to say “When people say ‘Bob’s your uncle’, you can say ‘actually, Bob’s my father.’” In the photos I have of him when he was young, I can see a spark of mischief in his brown eyes. It seemed… Read More