Category: Boundaries & Self-Kindness
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I don’t have children. I want to say that at the start, plainly, because it matters. I’m not writing this from the inside of parenthood. I haven’t been woken at 3am by a small person who needs something only I can give — or had to strip a bed and scrub projectile vomit off the…
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There’s something humbling about being confronted with who you once were. She found me on LinkedIn last year, nearly thirty years after we’d lost touch from school. I remembered her name before I remembered much else — she remembered everything. The house I grew up in. My parents. Afternoons I’d completely forgotten were ever part…
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There’s a photo from this spring I keep coming back to. Roger and me, still in our motorbike gear, sitting on a terrace in La Roche-en-Ardenne in the first proper sunshine of the year. A cold Belgian beer for me, a coke for him. Nothing remarkable happened. We just sat there for a while, helmets…
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There is a particular kind of tension that arrives before conflict fully reveals itself. It doesn’t begin with raised voices or sharp words. It begins much earlier, in the body. My jaw tightens. My breathing becomes shallow. My thoughts sharpen into something almost metallic. Sometimes it is triggered by something small — a tone, a…
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Slow living for January — no hard starts, no rigid goals, just gentle beginnings. January often arrives with a cultural drumbeat: new year, new you.Suddenly we’re expected to force motivation, overhaul our routines, and reinvent ourselves before the holiday decorations are even packed away. But what if the first month of the year isn’t meant…
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(and What We Can Do About It) There’s a particular kind of tiredness that doesn’t always look dramatic. It’s the deep, quiet kind — the one that hums beneath the surface as you go through your day. You still show up, get things done, and smile when needed. But inside, you know: this kind of…
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We We often think closeness lives in conversation, laughter, shared adventures. But there’s another kind of closeness — the quiet kind — where nothing much happens, and yet everything still feels exactly right. Tea, Then the Garden Whenever I visit a particular friend, the visit always has the same shape. Tea first, and a real…
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Friendships often come with unspoken expectations. We feel like we should send reFriendships come loaded with unspoken expectations. Send regular texts. Plan outings. Keep up with every update. Never let too much time pass without checking in. In a culture that treats constant contact as proof of caring, it’s easy to assume more is always…
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I am, by nature, someone who carries a lot of shoulds around. It took me a long time to even notice that, let alone start putting them down. Before I understood I was an introvert — properly understood it, not just as a label but as something that actually explained years of my own behaviour…
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Most of the time, when someone’s tone lands wrong or a colleague goes quiet, it has almost nothing to do with you — it’s a window into what they’re carrying, not a verdict on who you are. Learning to actually believe that, in the moment, is a different and much harder thing than knowing it…