For nigh on fifty years I was like most people – very quiet and private about my personal life. I barely shared my inner world with myself, let alone anyone else. But now I live my life like the door to my house is wide open and everyone can see inside. And there are reasons for that profound change. Let me see if my humble words can explain a little bit.
Read MoreI have a cycle. And it’s not menstrual (that ended 20 years ago). It turns out that every four years, something major happens in my life that changes me. Forever.
Read MoreChildhood is a tricky time. As is parenting. And while the vast majority of parents do the very best they know how, sometimes it just isn’t enough. Sometimes the scars last a lifetime.
Read MoreAt 11:03 AM on Tuesday 03 September 2024 I developed a tremor. It hasn’t left yet. I think it highly unlikely it ever will now. It was triggered by shock.
Read MoreBroken hearts have been around since mankind first walked out of the primordial slump. But for all the long and painful history of heartbreaks, there is still no tried and tested formula for navigating something that is so deeply personal and individual for every person.
Read MoreDepending on which of the nine different eating disorders is the primary issue, we may have to eat more or less food, more or less frequently, or different food altogether. But as food is an essential survival tool, at the end of the day, we have to eat.
Read MoreToday my friend, I want to talk about grief. This is a hard story to write but let me start at the beginning.
Read MoreJanuary 28 will forever be a memorable day in my life. It is the day my mother was born. And it is the day my father died.
Read MoreFor much of my life, I was driven and busy and energetic and doing shit all the time. I didn’t sleep. I ate a lot. All my spare time filled up with mothering or wifeing or friending or working or volunteering. It was a fairly typical life for someone in their thirties and forties. Then I imploded and everything changed.
Read MoreOver the weeks and months and years of my healing journey, I have heard the word ‘boundaries’ whispered in my ear countless times. Although, sometimes it’s less of a whisper and more of a fish wife’s guttural screech, echoing around the chambers of my people-pleasing brain.
Read MoreI take up space in this world and I don’t like it. I am wired to the core of my being to […]
Read MoreI did a hard thing. Well… It was hard for me. Perhaps you would find it easy. Or impossible. Perhaps like me […]
Read MoreI arrived in Lisbon a mental mess. The two hour flight from Pisa airport, on our most budget airline, turned me into a blithering ball of batshit crazy. It was time to see a doctor before my oldest and dearest friends traded me in for a better model.
My fondest memories are sitting at our villa, eating dinners outside and toasting the magic view of Lucca in the distance. The evenings were warm, the food spectacular, the drinks convivial, and the company exquisite. These are the precious memories I cling to. As our week came to a close, we packed up and headed to Pisa for the flight to Lisbon. With my anxiety now peaking and bordering on full panic attack, the flight became an interesting affair.
The Arc de Triomphe was within spitting distance of our hotel (we elected not to spit on it). Of all the iconic Parisienne landmarks, this was our favourite. It’s enormous – towering in the center of the Place Charles de Gaulle, with 12 streets radiating out in all directions. We explored Paris on foot, meandering almost all 12 at one time or another.
Contrary to a vaguely popular (and really fucking irritating) belief, anxiety is not stress or worry – although stressing and worrying are part of anxiety. And it is most certainly not a choice. It’s not a lifestyle. It’s something you have – like chicken pox. Although thankfully chicken pox is a once (perhaps twice) in a lifetime affair. Anxiety on the other hand, can be a daily curse. Forever. And just like chicken pox, it needs to be managed.
Our first morning we visited the Saint Cyprien farmers market. Oh my lord – how fabulous! I’d heard French farmers markets were pretty special, but they really are pretty special. The produce and the atmosphere, and the cheese and strawberries and nectarines and sausages and tomatoes and baguettes and yoghurt and more cheese and we were in gastronomic heaven!
Yep – I spent a week in Berlin, and by day three I was bored. By the time we arrived in the city that birthed Oktoberfest, the Brandenburg Gate, and Adolf Hitler, we’d been away from home for 46 days. So looking at old rocks, old churches, and old history, was wearing a little thin. As are funny-tasting tap water, pay-to-use toilets, European heatwave, and whatever-that-yellow-stuff-is-they-call-cheese.
The Krakow signal bugle call, or Hejnal Mariacki, dates back to the Middle Ages when it was announcing the opening and the closing of the city gates…The melody abrupt ending is said to commemorate a trumpeter from Krakow who was shot through his throat by a Tatar archer in 1241 when the Mongols besieged the city. Every full hour a golden trumpet shows above Krakow’s central Grand Square in the west window…of the Basilica of the Virgin Mary’s. Then a characteristic signal trumpet melody…resounds all over the city’s Old Town…Next the same bugle call is played towards the east, the south and the north.
While you’d think fear and loathing around body size would make me eat less and move more – proven methods of weight loss – it does in fact increase my anxiety which makes me eat more food, more often, and much faster. Counter intuitive. But my reality. This in turn makes me more unhappy and I find myself in a vicious downhill spiral.
Budapest is a city of statues – there are statues for everyone and everything. The beautiful wide streets, flanked by stunning gothic buildings, have small parks and plazas filled with statues and fountains every couple of blocks. There is no shortage of places to sit down and have a lovely rest.
The small old city of Sarajevo where we spent five serene nights, is full of historic buildings with beautiful Georgian architecture, displaying the brutal wounds of gunfire and shelling from two decades prior. Much of the city is graffitied and dirty as post-war economic devastation still remains, and a third of the population are unemployed. The busy streets are a kalediscope of cultures, with nuns, muslims, westerners, arabs, and people from every ethnic and religious background wandering the streets, ordering thick bosnian coffees, decadent icecreams, or the local must-try dish, cevapi.
Endless fields of tall, ripe sunflowers lined the roads to our first stop – Gallipoli. Blue skies, green grass and sandstone memorials line the shores of Anzac Cove on the banks of the Dardanelle strait. I waded into the water to see the coast of Gallipoli, just as thousands of young men did in 1915. As the local Turkish man sunbathing on the pebbles said, Too many lives lost for nothing.
For me, “triggered” means feeling a compulsion to succumb to the disorder. As a bulimic, that means compensatory eating behaviours. Binging, purging, or both. Finding any means possible to compensate for having eaten. Finding any means possible to reduce the size of my body so clothes hang loosely and my bones become visible. Feeling triggered means a huge risk of relapsing.
We visited Jerash and the Amman Citadel before driving to Petra. I had no idea what to expect in Jerash – maybe a couple of ruins before heading to one of Jordan’s treasures. But it’s a lot more than a couple of ruins – it’s a Greco-Roman city full of exquisite ruins and fascinating facts. An intact amphitheater, replete with Jordanian bagpiper and drummers, reveals the genius of ancient acoustic engineering. Put your ear to one circular niche and chat to your buddy on the opposite side of the arena. Totally audible despite the bagpiper, and distant repeats of Fur Elise piped not from an ice cream van, but the man selling gas bottles door to door in modern Jerash.
I’m searching for something – and I don’t know what it is. But I do know what it isn’t. It isn’t physical. Or psychological. It isn’t health or wealth or happiness – although they’re lovely and I’d like more please. I’m not looking for religion – I need something far more personal. The only word that makes sense to me, is spiritual.
Ambleside and the entire Lakes District was just stunning. I cannot articulate how delightful it was. And how different to where we’d already been. We managed a quick dip in the lake where my husband enjoyed the fact I wrapped my arms around his neck so he could float around and enjoy a cuddle, while I didn’t have to touch the slimy rocks beneath. Win win. We enjoyed a picnic on the side of the lake with the hot evening sun, and then two canadian geese came to share in our picnic.
