Yesterday I went to school in my bikini and scuffed old cowgirl boots. No, I wasn’t wearing just that, calm down dear. It is December, after all. I was in a lot of pain and the thought of putting on proper clothes was just more than I could stand. You know those days when everything hurts so much that you don’t want people to come within 5 feet of you, let alone have clothes weighing down your limbs and cutting into you? It was one of those. So we picked out my softest loosest clothes, fabrics like bamboo and soya and, as it happens my bikini. Did I perhaps look…

This earth, and all it’s birdsong, orchids, teacups, and toffee is already a living paradise. Perhaps we incarnate to experience sheer joy.   For ourselves and for the Divine.   After all, God/dess cannot run through a field, play with a puppy, paddle in the sea, enjoy a foot rub, savour freshly picked broad beans or make love. But we can, and through us, God/dess feels this delight. We need to feel joy so the Divine can experience these treasures. Maybe the world is meant to be beautiful.   In the Celtic traditions the world has good and bad equally alike in it, where curses are blessings and the bitter…

Do you identify as a survivor? A cancer survivor? A trauma survivor? Sometimes, it is less about what we survived and more about the fact that we did. And what that means about us.  When we say survivor, we are talking about the strength and grit that allowed us to keep going. We are talking about qualities inside us, how we quantify it, what specifically we lived through is less important than the very fact that we did survive. You are so much more than the worst experiences in your life. After a certain point, isn’t trauma just trauma? Who are we to designate and delineate hurts and heart-cracking experiences?…

1. Paws – Love lives with you now. So often we look outwards, it is wonderful to believe in all we can do and all we can be, but aspiration can be exhausting and if we don’t love anything in our lives now. Who is to say we will suddenly feel love when we get ‘there’, wherever ‘there’ is. Many of us have so much love in our lives already and I’m asking you to look at it and enjoy it now. Share something with your oldest friend, deepen what you have before expanding. And if you have an animal in our life then you may be blessed with their…

The first time it happened, I used to hate them for it. I really did, but I was 18 and hurting a great deal. Just because I look broken does not mean I am not like you. I feel, care, hurt and bleed too. Sometimes profusely and simultaneously. Later when it was the prayers, the laying on of the hands, the constant questions, the inquisitiveness, the over-zealous interest I felt exposed and betrayed. As thought my body, in failing to do what I wished, had opened me up for the world to see and to enquire about. I do not believe illness should be a taboo topic but I have a…