Category: Boundaries & Self-Kindness
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For most of my life, I was the good girl. Good for my parents, good for my partner, good at work — where “good” mostly meant assistant, secretary, the person quietly making sure everyone else’s day ran smoothly. I didn’t choose those roles so much as fall into the shape of them, over and over,…
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The cats always know before we’ve even brought the suitcases in from the car. Naboo checks the open bag first, Wicket checks whether we’re actually staying still long enough to be worth greeting properly. There’s a particular quiet to the house after two weeks away — not empty, just paused, waiting to see whether we’re…
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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 tired…
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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…