In my family, the request, “Hold the space with me”, encompasses a variety of needs, which I will unravel in the context of our family dynamic. Originally, the expression arose as a response to a question from my husband and my practice of ‘being of benefit’ to our family. To set the course for our… Read More

Recently Kate Halfpenny wrote her column of this title. It is interesting to read that what follows is an awareness that after building the career and acquiring the trappings of material prosperity, comes a need for something more. As Halfpenny pinpoints, “I want to build a second act with meaning which transcends money.” Indeed.  This… Read More

This blog, our 25th, is to be read in partnership with our 9th blog – Unlocking Humans. In our 9th blog we explored the benefits of being physically and psychologically ‘unlocked’. My chiropractor, Ange, is great at helping to physically unlock some of my vertebrae, and my manifesto (hanging on the wall to my right… Read More

Susan Biggar’s memoir invites us into her family comprising her husband Darryl and three children, two of whom are born with Cystic Fibrosis (CF). Their at times chaotic lives would be familiar to readers who are parents of young children, but their challenges are amplified by the episodic bouts of serious illness that the boys… Read More

I’ve always been challenged by the phrase Random Acts of Kindness (RAOK). Not because I don’t think it is a lovely gesture to randomly deliver an act of kindness but because I don’t often hear the other complementary phrase. In my view, the more important and well-known phrase could be Deliberate Acts of Kindness, or… Read More

Hope needs to play as central a role in our lives now as much as it may always have in the history of humans. It has been referred to as the antidote to despair and in the Christian context, losing hope is an occasion of sin. Whether you ascribe to this Christian notion of ‘sin’,… Read More

The sub-title creative living beyond fear sums up this book beautifully.  Have you ever felt scared about putting one of your ideas into action, or of creating something new, or of actually believing in yourself and your ideas?  Elizabeth Gilbert, renowned author of Eat, Pray, Love, shares wise and inspiring insights to help us all to be… Read More

My husband, Gary, is a musician who has been involved, in some way, with music throughout his life. As a Senior, he recently announced that he was taking up the trombone! His first instrument is the guitar, followed by keyboard and voice. He has had no formal music tuition; he was attracted as a teenager… Read More

We have Chris Mackey, principal psychologist at Chris Mackey and Associates, to thank for introducing us to the concepts of Acorn Theory and Individuation of Carl Jung. Recently, Chris was the guest speaker at the launch of my manifesto. In correspondence with us, Chris wrote: “[in my address] I’ll likely focus on Jung’s notion of… Read More