I married Ian in 2007. I have two grown up children, who I home schooled until they were 16. My son has just joined the army, my daughter has just moved to Cardiff.
I have a degree in History and Creative writing and a PGDip in using Creative Writing for Therapeutic Purposes.
Until Feb 2016 I lived in a beautiful part of England and now I live in a beautiful part of North Wales where my time is filled with welcoming Airbnb rental guests, running writing workshops, writing, serving in my local Welsh Anglican Church, going for long walks with my little dog, Renly, and drinking coffee and chatting with friends
Dancing silver birch trees in my local park. Taken by me 8th August 2021
Enough! How often do we start our day believing we have had enough sleep and will have enough time to do all that we think we have to do during the day? Very rarely I would say.
Too often we wake thinking we haven’t had enough sleep – especially if we are menopausal women who have restless nights, or have babies that keep us awake half the night or more. We then look at our “to do” list and think we don’t have enough time.
For me this contentment with “enough” comes from Brene Brown’s “Daring Greatly” book, QEC coaching and also really praying the Lord’s Prayer after doing yoga most mornings.
The “give me today my daily bread”, for me, can only come from a place of “enough”. But that was not how I was taught this prayer. I was taught it from a place of “lack”. A place of begging God to “please give me my daily bread”. Believing that unless I really asked God properly I wouldn’t have enough to make his Kingdom purposes come!
I have now started praying “help me believe I have all that I need, my daily bread allowance, to do all that I am meant to do today” or “thank you that I have already got all that I need for all that I will be doing today” or “I start today grateful for the daily bread I have been given for my day.”
It is a knowing that I have already been supplied with “enough” for today; whether that is energy, time, patience with others, grace, food, etc. Even those I meet will be part of my “daily bread” for today; people who enrich me, that need me, that I need, that help me and I help. All are part of my daily bread. And I come from knowing that I have enough to give and to receive all through the day.
It also means that at the end of the day when I’m tired and don’t feel like doing the washing up and can’t read as many pages of my book as I would like that is ok. I’ve done my “enough” for today and it is ok to curl up and go to sleep. I can end my day feeling grateful for what I did and knowing it was all that I was meant to do for today.
Cathay’s Cemetery, Cardiff. The largest Victorian cemetery in Wales and third largest in the UK. Taken by me on 11th August 2021
I have been reading some books by Dr Martin Shaw on rites of passage and his ponderings on whether this is one of the problems with young people today.
I became 60 in May and, as I have mentioned before, feel like I have stepped into a new place, a new season. It feels like a very clear demarcation between my 50s and my 60s. I now own a bus pass which means I can travel anywhere in Wales for free on the bus. Ok so this does take longer but it is still a thing. And I have just bought a senior railcard which gives me 30% off journeys across the UK by train. I went to Brighton to see a friend and saved the cost of the railcard in that one journey. Very clear rites of passage.
When I was 18 I did not have any of those things. Yes I could legally drink alcohol, but I had been doing that for the previous three years so nothing much changed there. I did get to vote the day after my 18th birthday so that was a something. But very much else changed for me. Most of the things I could do after I was 18 I had been doing previously. So yes I can see why I didn’t feel any change at that age.
Then one just sort of potters on through birthdays with people either saying you are “x years old” or that new and, what I find infuriating thing, people saying you are “x years young”. To my mind that is stupid. I feel much more content in being 60 years old than in being 60 years young.
We went to see Ben Elton on stage before away before lockdown and he was talking about how one likes to say “I still feel like I’m 25” and he got his usual Ben Eltonesque irate about it, and I do agree with him. I don’t feel like I’m 25. At 25 I was insecure, scared, full of issues, doing many self-destructive things, trying to find out who I really was, and much more, but now at 60 I feel settled and secure. I know what I like and what I don’t like. I no longer beat myself up about being who I am. I like myself, which I didn’t when I was 25. I think I would be sad if I still felt 25, also because I’ve experienced another 35 years of life which has alter and changed me and my views.
I do think we need to bring back some rite of passage for younger people where we can release them into the big wide world. And I do think school which runs into university, with the much needed parental support, doesn’t help our young people be released into adulthood. But maybe we need more than a graduation ceremony. Maybe we do need a rite of passage.
But also let us acknowledge, rather than be ashamed, at the rites of passage that come with growing older – in my case the bus pass and railcard – and enjoy them.
No matter what age we are rites of passage as we age and grow are important.
This post first appeared on GodspaceLight on 10th August 2021
Conwy Beach, July 2021. Taken by myself
Godspace there of Gearing Up For A New Season got me thinking about what that means to me.
At the moment none of us really knows what this New Season will look like. With global warming our seasons are all over the place. Over the last month here in North Wales we have gone from 17C to 32C and now it is 13C. The only type of weather we haven’t had over July is snow, but we’ve had blistering heat, pouring rain, hail, funnel winds, and gentle sunshine too.
At one time when schools restarted the pupils would have had time at the end of the last term to go check out their new classes or new schools and have met their teachers and even started making friends, and be prepared for their new season. But due to covid many were isolated before the end of term, or discouraged to be anywhere other than in their regular classrooms.
For me personally I can feel a new season starting. Since published The Little Yellow Boat I’m being called a professional writer, which has led to me being paid to become part of a long term youth project. I am also setting aside regular times to write, both in my beautiful study or out on walks. Yesterday I went to the place in the picture and wrote.
But still the question is – how do I prepare for this new season? How do I gear myself up for it? What will it look like? Or even should I be planning? Check out my blog “Intentionality written in pencil”
So whereas once we would almost know what this new season would look like with Covid, with the extremes of weather, with new projects, with different working conditions, we cannot predict how things will be. Tom Sine does a good attempt to explore the themes of these changing time on his blog – NewChangemakers
As the saying goes “change is always with us” but it feels like as things start to open up, even with cases of Covid continuing to increase, there is nothing solid to hang on to. I am grateful for my faith but even with that, although the Bible says the Lord is the same today, tomorrow and yesterday, my relationship with God and how I see my faith have changed.
So what are the concrete things I can hold on to as I gear up for a new season? And what can I share with others?
For me the big one would be that God is God and is always there no matter what goes on, no matter how much I change, no matter what goes on in the world. And that God wants the best for me and so, if we work together I can grow more flexible, more trusting in God, more deeper in my beliefs of knowing God is watching my back. You know I was going to write stronger but I felt like flexible was the word. We talk a lot about growing stronger as though that is a good thing but I actually think that if I can get more and more flexible then I will be able to roll with the seasons, be blown by the winds of change but not fall. I think to be more flexible I need to have roots that go deep and I think for me as I gear up to this new season, whatever it is going to look like, I want to send my roots deep into my Saviour, Maker of the Universe, and just trust that what will come my way, however it comes, I will remain with my Saviour.
Bath spa graduation bear on my graduation with a 2.1 in History and Creative Writing – May 2014
What is it with qualifications these days? Everyone seems to need them for whatever they do and I think from that we give too much importance to those who are able to gain the qualifications and those who have the skills but either not the academic ability or just haven’t had the time.
The reason I am pondering this at the moment is to do with my work with Youthshedz. Two of the people I work with have both said to me on separate occasions “but I’m not a youth worker”, meaning they don’t have the qualifications. I’ve done a lot of youth work in my time [and still don’t have the degree for it] and have worked with some who have degrees, Masters and even PhDs in youth work, and yet these two people that I’m having the privilege to work with now have such skills with the young people, such empathy, life skills and life experience. Both have got stories to tell of their past and remember what it is like to be young. They aren’t doing youth work to these young people but are down with them, learning along with them, getting their hands dirty, seeing their own issues and changing as they go. The young people love them, respect them and want to be with them. To my mind if that isn’t qualification then I don’t know what is.
But I do think since Tony Blair’s “50% of the school leavers will get to University” bid back in Sept 1999 did so much harm to learning. It put qualifications on a pedestal. No longer a place for those who are very academic and want to study a subject to a higher level, but an expected place for all young people and a failure if they don’t reach it. But also it said to everyone else who, like the people I am working with, that if you don’t have the piece of paper then be careful what you say you are.
As you can see from the above picture I graduated in 2014 after my son had left home and my daughter was in her first year at university. I didn’t intend to go to university, but I loved it and gained much from it. I have since gained a PGDip in Using creative writing for therapeutic purposes, which I use the concepts often in my writing workshops, and have completed two years of a Celtic studies MA, looking at Medieval history and literature in Wales and Ireland, which I incorporate into my writing. What I noticed when I was doing my BA was that so many of the mature students were totally paranoid and fixated about getting a first, yet when I talked to people who had graduated before me they were saying that employers looked highly on mature students even if they had only gained a third because of their life experiences.
It is not the piece of paper that makes you good at your job but your experiences. Yet unfortunately it could be that piece of paper that gets you the extra money. Please can we go back to valuing the skills not the ability to pass qualifications?
Llanddulas beach walk which I did when a writing group I run had been cancelled due to only one person showing up. Intentionality written in pencil!
I was reading Lisa’s blog on Musing From a Sacred Summer, of how she is being intentional with the things she does before leaving Seattle, but that so often we don’t know what is round the corner. If these past 18 months have taught us one thing it should be that we don’t know what’s coming. Every January we sit and plan, roughly, our year so that we’ve at least got some idea of what is going on. Even as February 2020 came into being and rumours were starting about this new virus we still went ahead and book a trip to see my son’s flat and a couple of other events later in the year. For us here in the UK March 23rd was “end of the world as we know it” day. Lockdown day!! The signs were there. It had been coming. But I don’t think anyone really believed it would be as it was.
So things will change but does that mean we don’t plan any more? I don’t think so. But it is how we plan that will help to keep us sane.
I am trying to make my whole day intentional. I am a writer and, as most writers know, unless you carve out time then you don’t get to write. In fact I think that is probably true for most self-employed creative people without deadlines. I don’t have a publisher waiting round the corner for me to produce my next book, next collection, but I do love to write. I have published a book. I would like to publish again. But there won’t be anything if I don’t intentionally set aside time to write. So I am putting aside time in my diary. I also live in a big house that needs cleaning regularly. It is easy to keep clean if I intentionally set aside time to do it. I have paid projects that I need to be doing too.
Some people write their plans in stone. Some people don’t write them at all and wonder why things don’t get done. But I am planning on writing my plans in pencil. Not because I don’t take them seriously but because things can change. Take for instance my cleaning routine. I had it all planned out and then heard from a friend that someone she knew was going to be homeless for a couple of days, so a quick change, replan and they’ve got rooms ready for them. Or this morning, I had a list of what I was going to write. One of which was to finish off a blog post to share on Godspace but as I was writing it I put in a reference to this blog, that I hadn’t written at the time so thought I’d best get it done!!!
As I’ve mentioned before I intentionally put an Artist’s Date in my diary, where I go for a walk and write. I was planning to do that today but in the end went yesterday because there was a space. I am so glad I did because today there is sideways rain crashing down. Even the dog only got a 15 min walk. Intentionality written in pencil.
Hopefully this will make me more flexible, more trusting in God and the Universe, more able to do what I have to do. So I put things in my diary, make my to-do list, and hold everything lightly, and trusting that what I get done for that day, be it writing, cleaning, working on a project, emailing, seeing friends, or all the other myriad of things I love to do, will be what I am meant to do for that day
Stuck on my fridge. Sent to me by my dear friend, Jane Evans
Monday would have been my sister’s 58th birthday. It is strange that I felt so low about it because I cannot remember the last time I celebrated her birthday with her. I don’t remember doing anything for her 18th or 21st. Yes I’m old enough to have had both an 18th and 21st birthday party!!! But by the time my sister was 18 our parents had separated. In fact even by her 16th they were apart. But even before that I don’t remember her birthdays unless I look at photographs and then I’m sure it is more perceived memory rather than really remembering. My sister has been dead now for over 9 years and of course I still miss her. It is hard work being an only child now after having had a sibling for 49 years.
But anyway Monday I felt this overwhelming sadness mixed with other emotions of guilt, regret, fear, anxiety. I checked dates, remembered the significance, and accepted how I felt. Our bodies are so much better at remembering things than our heads. We so often need to bypass our heads and listen to our hearts and bodies. Something I am learning often. And we need to accept that a feeling is just a feeling and it will pass.
If we have lived a long and full life there will be many days where we remember things with sadness, with loss, with regret, with grief, and I am learning that this is alright. It is how I feel. It is a feeling from what was, but it is just a feeling. It is not the “now” of my life.
So when I realised the source of my sadness I journaled it, walked the dog and pondered it, accepted it, and placed it in a safe place. Not buried but not somewhere where today would fall over it. I got on with my day, checked out my heart regularly, was kind to myself – because I think often we can tell those feelings of loss, grief, anger, fear, anxiety, that they are negative and so shouldn’t be a part of our lives. But that is so untrue. Feelings are not negative or positive. Yes some are easier to sit with than others. Some we prefer, especially in others, than we do other ones. But they are just feelings.
Our feelings colour our memories and we need to accept that. We also need to accept that we won’t have a photographic memory of the past, no matter what some people tell themselves they do. What we do have is a memory of an event coloured with our feelings at the time overlaid with our feelings of where we are now.
So Monday I accept that I was feeling what I was feeling. Kept my thoughts to my journal. Waited till the feeling had got to a more settled place to be able to share on this blog. And it did as the sticker on my fridge said it would. It passed. I now have other feelings about other things but I know they are my feelings and are not the fact of the event.
Serendipity means – the faculty or phenomenon of finding valuable or agreeable things not sought for; an aptitude for making desirable discoveries by accident; good fortune; luck
On Wednesday I had decided to take myself off on an Artist’s Date as recommended by Julia Cameron in The Artist’s Way. On Tuesday night I’d had an important email regarding working with a school’s holiday club which needed admin tasks doing but I decided, as I am trying to “wear the cloak of a writer” – something that comes from the Warrior Goddess work I’ve been doing – I decided that the admin would wait until the afternoon.
Before getting the dog up and leaving for my Artist’s Date – which was going to be a walk from Beaumaris to Castell Aberlleiniog, some writing on the castle motte and then walking back again – I did some journaling around “Roots”. One of the things I wrote was “God will supply all my needs whether money, time, energy, direction, etc” Also things around trusting that I get done each day what I need to get done for that day. A sort of “give us today our daily bread”.
I managed to get a bit lost on the drive to Beaumaris, but found the car park and set off with my bag with notebook, water and a sandwich and the dog along the coast path. The weather was awesome. The clouds were low and were hugging the mountains across the water. I walked for a while and then thought I would stop and take a photo. That was when I discovered that I had left my phone in the car. And I had said to my husband that I would be fine on the walk because I had my phone with me!! Ok so it did help that I was walking a coastal path so just had to keep the sea to my right on the way out and then on my left on the way back! But it did mean that I didn’t know what the time was.
Even though I had journaled around trusting that I would get everything done in the back of my head I had thought that if after an hour’s walking I hadn’t found the castle I would turn back. Well now I didn’t know what the time was so I just walked.
I did find the castle, which turned out to be further from the coast path than googlemaps had said. But because I was working on “trusting time” I was at the top of the motte when the sun burned off the clouds. I wrote poems and bits for the story I’d gone to write in situ, but also as I came down I bumped into a man who had been involved in the restoration of the Aberlleiniog who told me lots more than was on the information boards which was so helpful to my story.
I would say my day turned out to be totally serendipitous. But it came from letting go of something that we all use so much now for so much – the smart phone – and trusting to God/the Universe/our own intuition.
Brene Brown in her Daring Greatly book, talks about believing we have “enough” and from the vulnerability to trust oozes. I trusted that I had “enough” time, energy and whatever, to have the time out I needed for my writing, and from it I was blessed immensely.
I’d love to share pictures from the walk but like I said I didn’t take my phone. And then when I got home there was an email from the school I’m going to be working with dates for me to work, and I did get all the admin tasks I needed to do before supper time!
Basingwerk Abbey, Holywell, viewed through the trees on a walk around Holywell taken by me
I have been pondering why so many people I know are feeling low with the coming out of lockdown and with Covid-19 being brought to submission. As I pondered I felt it was because this virus has been an anticlimax. We have all seen or read dystopian stories where there is something cataclysmic that brings an end to civilisation as we know it. Many of us have read about the Great Plagues of Medieval times. The media filled us with fear and dread. But also we experienced something mankind has never experienced – lockdown! Never in the history of mankind have people shut themselves away alone and yet been so connected with the world via TV and internet. Apart but connected or as can feel at times connected but alone.
Unlike the Black Death or the Spanish Flu in the UK we have not experienced losing a high percentage of our population. In fact many of us have not lost a single person in our family here, though most of us do know of someone who has died somewhere. We have not had food shortages due to lack of labourers like in the times of the Bubonic plague. Yes we have had shortages but they have been due to selfish panic buying.
All of us who are comfortably off have noticed little changes – in our income and expenditure, in the way we live our lives, etc. I am sure if we lived in some of the countries we would have endured huge numbers of deaths, struggles for food, for work, for just the things that can be taken for granted in the West.
But if we look back on the headlines for March 2020 we were expecting much more. Something more dystopian. But we didn’t get it. We’ve got change, and big change, but not horrendous change. And especially if one watched the Euro football games things seem to have returned to normal!
I think, when one has been promised much – good or bad – and it doesn’t happen, one is left feeling anticlimaxed.
“The anticlimax is when you’re set up for a climax, such as a spectacular, battle-to-end-all-battles between the hero and the villain. It’s built up more and more until the suspense is extremely exciting, and the reader/viewer can’t wait for it…then the hero kills the villain in one hit, or the villain spontaneously drops dead “
And this I believe is what many of us are feeling now. We were given this huge build up. We expected something spectacular. And now it is all over.
I decided to have a bit of a google through all this and found this from Ethical Horse Products on how to deal with Anticlimax in which she says a good way of dealing with anticlimax after an event is to celebrate one’s achievements. How do we do that when we feel like we haven’t actually achieved anything? In fact everything I read talked about preparing for it. How does one prepare for it when one didn’t get the climax first? All we got was the fear and expectation, the suspense.
I think one of the first things to do is acknowledge this is how we are all feeling. I think too it is why we loved the England football game because there was the excitement. There was also the expectation of not winning. So there was a preparedness in the air. Gareth Southgate told his players, and thus the rest of those watching, to not get too excited. So we were excited but prepared.
With the virus our government did not do that. It told us to be scared. To be so afraid that there were some who did not even step outside their front door for months. For most of us we didn’t travel, stayed away from friends and family. Lived with anxiety, albeit for most low-level, but it was there. We were not prepared for the anticlimax. So how do we deal with it?
So once we’ve accepted this is how we feel then we need to, I believe, step into celebrating what we achieved – for some this could just be stepping back to groups they used to go to, for others it will be more major. Then we need to feel gratitude – that we’re still alive, that we can still communicate, that we made it through.
Gratitude works best if one does it on small tangible things. So being grateful for clean water is great but being grateful that you had a conversation with someone in the park is personal and more real. Start each day with five small things you are grateful for. Look back at my post about “Awe in the Ordinary” – which was also posted on Godspace on 6th July.
Walk whether you live in the countryside or a city. Take in the air. Be grateful you can walk. Find awe in the ordinary. Check out other posts on walking and awe. Be kind to yourself when you don’t feel up for it but give yourself that small push.
Anticlimax is something we’ve all experienced and all walked through but I think this time it is hard because it was thrust on us be outside forces – the government – and we need to walk through a bit more squelchy mud before we can stand on firmer ground. But firmer ground is coming! It has to be because the Ox needs to be able to plough well.
I have loved reading the headlines this morning of how the UK has responded to England’s defeat to Italy in the Euros last night. Every paper I have seen talks with pride about their team and how they did so well and were in the end beaten by a better team. It isn’t often I can say it but I would say England claimed a victory in its defeat but the way the media in this country have stood beside them. There is so much negativity and running down of people who are doing their best that this reporting of a defeat has been done so so well.
I did stay up till gone 11pm to watch it. I’m not a regular football watcher but I do love finals. I remember when my son was young we used to get the charts from the paper for either Euros or World Cup and use it as a bit of a maths lesson, and also to add to the involvement in the event. I might just get a chart for the World cup next year to be involved.
My involvement this year came about because I went to spend two days with a friend in Brighton – which included the excitement of going on the train for the first time in years and using my senior railcard, which was also a big bonus. And by the way I found the trains very calm, not overly busy and I felt Covid safe the whole time.
England lost because of not being able to score enough goals in the penalty shoot out at the end. A very long well played game!
As I led in bed wondering what, if any, prophetic signs could be taken from the game. I got to wondering about what was being said in the “heavenlies” about why it was that it was the two young men who had been substituted in at the end of extra time that were the ones who missed the goals. [This is no inditement on Rashford and Sancho who are great players] What came to me was how often we bring in young people into a project or a team who have not been involved with the sweat and graft of the main event and expect them to perform to the same standard as those who have been in for the long haul.
I can think of many church projects where older people have slogged through and worked hard at but then get told to stand down to let younger people take over. These older people then have to support the younger people who have usurped them. I have heard of many businesses where things have slogged on for a long time then a younger manager is brought in to take over to finish it. Now one can become a business manager straight from university. There is no need to do the sweat and graft of making one’s way up through the ranks of the company, of learning how other parts work. Do we need to be careful not to expect too much from our young people, not to expect them to finish for us? I am proud to be part of a project with Youthshedz Cymru in which we are encouraging the young people to run with a project exploring their own issues, but as older people we are standing with them not pushing them in front of us. We are not expecting them to do what we would not stand with them to do. So let us be wise and not expect young people to finish the job, not expect them to join something they haven’t been invested in from the beginning.
I reiterate I am not saying Southgate made the wrong decision or that the two young footballers weren’t invested. This is just what I felt was being said in the prophetic. I think, like the newspapers today, that England did an awesome job, that it was a match worth watching. And I will definitely be there expectantly to see how they perform in the World Cup – along with Wales too!
England’s football team, all the players and Gareth Southgate were definitely something to be proud of and very much can claim a victory even in their defeat – and perhaps that is for another blog??
In an article from February 2021 the academic and broadcaster Mary Beard says how she is frequently branded a witch, which she believes is to discredit her and older women generally because people are fearful of them. I think she’s right. People are fearful of older women because of the confidence they exude.
As I have mentioned in May I turned 60 and I feel like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders. All menopausal issues have gone. I feel like I have enough energy now. I am bold enough to say when I’m tired and take myself to bed. No one is going to ask me what I’m going to do with my life because it is too late for me to start a career. I don’t even care now that I did not have a career because I like where I am in life.
It probably helps that I do have a good life with enough money, a good house, children who are settled enough. In fact I have realised as I write this that I have reached the “enough” stage of my life. I’ve got rid of some of the issues that held me back through some expert QEC counselling so that helps too. I don’t feel like I have to say I am “x years young.” I want to say “f*** it why didn’t any tell me being 60 was so good”. But then are we afraid to say that reaching that last 1/4-1/3 of our lives is good?
In Caitlin Moran’s boo, More Than a Woman, she asks that question why didn’t anyone say what being a woman is like? Why shroud womanhood in mystery? I have to say menopause would have been less of a trial if other women had been more open about what they’d been through.
I think that the “witch” accusations and the “not being told it could be this good” come from that fear of having someone about that sees life as “enough”. It is threatening. It needs to be halted. In some cultures there is talk of “the crone” but I wonder if that is just halcyon days, rose-tinted glasses, and actually never was. When one looks at the way older women were treated through the centuries it is appalling. Thank goodness no one does burn us at the stake after calling us witches.
I will ponder the quote from Mary Beard as I rejoice in being 60, in my health, in my confidence, in my freedom, while it lasts.
Aspirational Adventures 