Recent meanderings,
reflections
and passions
The wonder that is embodied being
Adventures with ‘The Call’ #Cork continued This is the second piece written specifically for the workshop, bookstall and exhibition at the Critical Voices Network Ireland annual conference in Cork 2022. The first piece can be found here…
Adventures with ‘The Call’ #Cork
Douglas Ross and myself self-published a book back in June 2020. It’s mainly a photo art book but also with a fair bit of text and it’s taken inspiration from my experiences of living with voices throughout…
The Land is Alive #1 where my family lives
This bit of land. A small house in a small garden. Like an island on an island on an island. …
The Land is Alive #intro
‘There is nothing new in the kingdom,’ said the demon, ‘but the land has woken up.’ In Terry Pratchetts book ‘The Wyrd Sisters’ the story takes place in the land of Lancre. A king has been killed…
Music to keep me company
photo credit Douglas Ross I have a few artists that I return to again and again when moving through heavy times. That is if I manage to remember to put on music. Tina Dickow is a Danish…
Peer supervision for Hearing Voices Group facilitators
I have had a long think about how to get started and have decided to offer 2 monthly spaces online (zoom). These spaces will be open to anyone who is facilitating or co-facilitating a hearing voices group. …
I am not my past…
Listen to this blog on Living Life Gently on Anchor I am not my past. …but my past lives in me. Last year a friend invited me to a photo challenge on Facebook called #natyamheals (dance heals).…
Equality inside out
I wrote this piece to share at the World Hearing Voices Day online celebratory event I joined on September 14th – after much editing I managed to create this shortish version… There are many elements to equality,…
(Female?) raging
I think there is a lack of useful representation of female aggression, wrath and rage in the Northern European cultures that I am part of. I don’t know how to be angry in a way that I…
Do we really want a world without voices?
We seem a long way away from accepting voices as – not just a normal – but a natural part of human experience. The voices I hear passionately object to a world without voices – and so…
Death as life’s companion
We’ve just had our annual local death festival Pushing Up Daisies. A festival intended to encourage us to have more conversations about death, dying, bereavement, loss and grief and build a local community where we support each…
Hello Self-loathing, my old friend…
Self-loathing as a belief system Today I did a session on beliefs with a community team and one of the subjects that came up was self-loathing. It can be painful to witness somebody caught in cycles of…
Grieving every day
As far back as I can remember I have experienced times of intense sadness. Feeling like a heavy weight is dropped into my solar plexus and at the same time as if some creature is clawing at…
Feeling the ground beneath my feet
I used to live in a state of constant overwhelm and anxiety. Only I didn’t realise it at the time, because it was all I knew. I suspected something was wrong; the suicidal yearnings and impulses to…
The forgotten body
I think that the way society works today, it can be easy to forget the body. Even though we are bombarded with stuff about body image, food, exercise, healthy living and the importance of appearances, none of this…
Living Life Gently 