My Blogs

Every year, as March rolls around, the shop windows fill up. The cards, the flowers, the pastel gift sets with their neat little bows. The adverts show smiling women in dressing gowns being handed breakfast in bed, children with paint-smudged hands clutching wonky homemade cards. And for lots of people, that is exactly what Mother's Day feels like. Warm. Easy. Worth celebrating. But for a great many of us, it is not that simple. Not even close. This is the conversation I want

Sugar Cravings and the Biscuit Tin: From Self-Criticism to Self-Care As someone who has suffered from sugar cravings, I know how powerful they can feel. One minute you are getting on with the day, and the next you are munching on a packet of chocolate digestives or reaching for a bag of Percy Pigs, almost on autopilot. It is very easy for this to slide into self-criticism and shame and to feel as though we are failing in some way. For many people, this is happening against th

A new year can bring a strange mix of hope and pressure. There is often an expectation to reinvent yourself, to set bold intentions, to become a “better” version of who you are. Yet for many people, January arrives with something quieter and more complicated: exhaustion from getting through the previous year, a lingering sense of disconnection and habits that feel hard to talk about, let alone change. As the calendar turns, it is easy to focus on what to cut out. Less alcohol

During National Grief Awareness Week, with its focus on “Growing with Grief,” it’s important to recognise all the ways loss changes us, including the often unspoken grief after the death of an ex-partner. Whether this was your first love, the parent of your child, or someone from a past chapter, you may find yourself quietly mourning, adapting, and gradually growing with this loss. Your grief is real and your growth as you move forward deserves compassion.   Hidden Loss: When

As National Grief Awareness Week begins, I want to bring up the difficult topic of sudden death. Those moments when life changes in an instant, with no warning and no chance to prepare. Sudden death can feel like the ground has opened beneath you, life one minute, gone the next and with no time to say goodbye. It is shocking, disorientating and often very lonely, even when you are surrounded by people who care.   When grief comes out of the blue When someone dies suddenly thr

If you’ve ever watched the movie, It’s a Wonderful Life, you might remember the scene where George Bailey ends up alone on a bridge on Christmas Eve, convinced he has let everyone down and that the world would be better off without him. The film eventually shows him how connected he really is, but that moment on the bridge captures something many people quietly recognise at this time of year: the way Christmas can magnify feelings of isolation, embarrassment and shame.