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
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.
A question I am often asked is “How did The Little Yellow Boat book come into being?” And then the next question is “Are you going to write any more children’s books?”
In answer to the first question the idea for The Little Yellow Boat came from a series of daily writing promotes I was doing with my friend, David, a fellow writer who was encouraging me to write every day because I was struggling to focus on writing. The prompt came, from the book “A Writers Book of Days”, although I cannot now find the actual promote that started it or the original words. . But I do remember David suggesting I turned it into a children’s book
The Little Yellow Boat is very much my story. In fact I find this often when I do free writing prompts, that I explore me as much as anything. But then maybe that’s what we all write about really – ourselves?
So I am the one who was, and still is, always dashing off out to have amazing adventures but then the sea gets rough, I get scared on my own, and come back with something half finished. I have been teased about it lost confidence with it. Since moving to North Wales I have gathered round me more and more people who are real friends, who when they see me too far out and the seas getting rough come to support me rather than tell me I’ve gone too far on my own again. It is so refreshing and so empowering.
So David had suggested this as a children’s’ book but as I cannot draw or paint I put a request out on Twitter and Instagram asking for an illustrator. Interestingly the only person who got in touch with me was Danielle, who used to a friend of my daughter’s when we were living in Scotland in a Christian community. I was also friends with Danielle’s mum but we had not been in contact with each other for about 15-20 years as we’d just gone our different ways. I say “interestingly” because really the story of The Little Yellow Boat is about how she connects with friends, people she has known and not leant on, who help her to go on adventures. Having reconnected with Danielle it felt like the message of the story was being fulfilled.
I have to be honest even when Danielle had finished all the illustrations I was still reluctant to go further. My inner critic, and all the criticisms I had received in the past were kicking in, but I wanted to encourage Danielle and help her on her adventures which is the main reason I plucked up the courage and got in touch with some publishers.
I had no idea about how one went about publishing and didn’t think to get in touch with some of the writing groups I’m loosely connected with – Writers HQ, Writers&Artists, Write Day – so I just googled “children’s publishers taking submissions” and emailed the first three that came back.
This is where it starts to get exciting. All three of them got back in touch very quickly, all wanting to publish my book via contributory contracts. I pondered over them, read the contracts and then picked Olympia Publishers because they gave me the best contract and were the most communicative. I have not been disappointed with them. They are a very supportive, easy to communicate with publishing house.
It has been a long slog, especially during lockdowns, etc, to get the book marketed and out there. But I have learned so much – how to make my own website, set up two Instagram accounts, set up a Facebook page and to email various people to ask if they will sell my book. I do need to pluck up the courage to go into bookshops now they are open, and need to remember to take flyers with me when I’m out dog walking or even shopping. It has been fun signing books for people too. I love the look of pleasure in their eyes when they hold a book from an author they know. That has been a good feeling.
As to whether I’m going to write another children’s book? Well I don’t know. I never intended to write one in the first place. The prompt came in the middle of me trying to write things about female Celtic saints who get raped as part of their way to sainthood. It is female issues, voices not heard that generally fill my writing time. At the moment as well as looking into female Celtic saints I’m also exploring the things some of the mistreated women in the Mabinogion really felt when they were abandoned, raped, spent a year sleeping with a man who wasn’t their husband, were made out of flowers, etc. So exploring abandonment, lack of partnership in relationships, etc. I’m also looking at writing my memoirs but for now that is sat on the back-burner and I’m probably exploring things from it via these Medieval women.
So for me having my first published book as a children’s picture book is a bit of a shock to the system but I am loving it. It fits in with the serendipitous ways of my life
This is personal to me because this year I am 60! And I must say I love being 60! I feel like the constraints of trying have fallen off and I am becoming me without worrying what other people think. And that doesn’t mean I’m being a horrid person which is sometimes what comes over when one hears people saying “I don’t care what other people think” and then do something hurtful, rude, selfish. For me ‘not worrying what other people think’ means that I don’t have to put up guards and defences, don’t have to fit my corner, can just go and run workshops, write, etc as I want without worrying if it is what anyone else wants.
Also, for those who know about Chinese horoscopes will know that this year is the year of the Ox but also being 60 means that I was born in the year of the Ox too. I am also a Taurean bull so I was definitely made to plough!! As followers of my blog will know I am also a Christian but can happily see that God uses all things to bring his truths into play so I don’t believe that being aware of star signs, etc stops you from following God.
So this brings me to why I want to talk about the Year of the Ox. I was pondering this the other day and asking “What is the bottom line for 2021?” As not just me, but many prophetic people, believed that even before it began 2020 was going to be the year of perfect vision. I still believe that all the crap that went on, and is still going on, is about helping us all to see clearly what our world is like. But I believe 2021, the year of the ox, is about ploughing and planting. It is not about growth or harvesting but about setting one’s face to the skyline and ploughing that furrow in a straight line and filling it with seed. There will be years to come when we will see the growth but not this year.
Even though this story of the 2000 year old seeds is over 10 years old I feel that it is right to be hearing it now in the year of ploughing and planting. I have seeds in my life from my years of writing, living, working with various people that really do feel like they are getting ready to sprout. I am being asked to get involved with some youth-based creative writing projects that are much more about ploughing than about reaping. Each of the projects that are either have received funding and are starting or that are in the preparation stages are about preparing something for the future.
Also don’t ever say to me that 60 is the new whatever, generally a younger age. For me 60 is 60 and it feels like the best decade I’ve ever stepped into so I refuse to dishonour it by calling it by anything other than what it is!
A view of my “ordinary” park looking back towards my house and onward into the hills beyond taken by me this morning, 13th June, at 7.45am
I’ve been doing reflections on Rest and Silence with Lily Lewin’s Gift of a Sacred Summer kit These are only the first two of many more but is so much meat in them I don’t want to rush through them.
For me Silence is just taking Rest to the nth degree. Silence is mega rest! [Maybe a longer blog on this some other time?]
The key thing which has struck me so far is the importance of finding “awe” – “a feeling of reverential respect mixed with fear or wonder” says Google dictionary.
I read somewhere that seeing and feeling awe calms our blood pressure, our breathing, our sense of well-being and much more. Experiencing awe is good for us so we need to do it as often as possible.
I am lucky as I live close to some amazing scenery, don’t need to walk far for some amazing views, but most days, due to various constraints, I walk round my local park. It is an ok park with lots of green spaces, trees, a couple of ponds, A55 running along the bottom of it. I could focus on the noise of the A55 and very easily miss the awe of my every day walk.
So from pondering some of the things in The Gift of a Sacred Summer and from reading through the Warrior Goddess book I am working on getting the feeling of awe into my every day, getting awe into the ordinary, and stop seeing “feeling awe” as something that only happens when I go somewhere extraordinary.
It is too easy to stomp round the park – because walking fast is good for one’s heart; making sure to say hello to all the other dog walkers I know – because I’m a polite person; to see it as just what it is, a town park. Instead I have been trying to combine these important functions of my walk with checking out the flowers, of which there are many different types, colours and hues; of listening to the bird song which is different depending which time of day I go and what time of year it is; of seeing what is going on in the ponds, the ducks, moorhens and swans, but also the growth of reeds, algae and more; of checking out the trees and how they change and alter. At the moment things are that solid green of summer whereas only a month ago the leaves were that vibrant green of excitement of springtime. I even made sure I felt awe as I walked the path by the side of the busy A55; for the amazement of the motor car, the way that things speed by and most of the time they are safe, the wonder that it is now possible to go on holiday whereas only 12 months ago it was not.
As I go round and let the awe of the ordinary take me over I am more inclined to have time to chat to the people I pass because I am no longer rushing by, even if I am walking quickly. It is possible to walk fast enough to stimulate one’s heart without rushing. I wonder too if it is possible to walk slowly but still have one’s head in a rush and not have time for others?
From doing this my ordinary has become an extraordinary awe filled place. I arrive back home much more contented and ready for my day. Feeling the awe of the ordinary place I visit every day has stimulated me creatively too. A totally creative awe-filled time that benefits my whole day.
Give it a go. Take your regular ordinary walk or drive or whatever you as a habit each day and find the awe within it. It will change you.
What does that mean? It occurs quite often in the gospels with no real explanation as to what it means. Preachers over the years have explored and explained it and so often it comes down to a doing thing which we’re then mean to follow – petitioning, telling, asking for, listing, talking with. The other day I got a different revelation whilst listening to a podcast on Spotify by Orphan No More talking about mediation – something that was almost banned when I first became a Christian because it was seen as Eastern religion, verging on demonic!! Thankfully things have moved on in the last 30 years.
The way Josh expounded Jesus “going to pray/going to be with his Father” I got this revelation that Jesus went off on his own not to talk, not to ask, not want for anything, but to just go back to the basics of who he was and who Father God is. And it was during this time that God revealed things to him – eg who to pick for his main disciples [Luke 6:12-16]. The more I allowed myself to just dwell on those verses and also on the “Be still and know that I am God” [Psalm 46:10] I came to see that as I pondered about peace and stillness with God so God could talk to me.
Earlier in the morning I’d been pondering an issue, done some journaling around it, did 10 mins of yoga, then sat for 10 mins just breathing in and out focusing on the peace and stillness of God and that verse. Almost as soon as my timer went to tell me I’d finished my 10 mins stillness what I felt was the answer to the issue fell into my head. As I was walking the dog later I wondered if this was what Jesus had felt like when he had been hanging out in stillness and peace with God all night. That suddenly he just knew who to call for his special twelve.
I wonder if too often we do too much talking when we’re with God or even too much trying to listen when actually he wants to get us to a place of trust so that our hearts can hear. Too often it is our heads, our minds, that hear but not our hearts. Doing this QEC counseling one of the things to learn is to stop, breath and listen with one’s heart rather than one’s mind. The mind is jumbled up with thoughts and shoulds and oughts and fears and anxieties and busyness. Meerkat/monkey mind, always on the alert. But our hearts know what we really really want. They are still and touch the peace inside of us. If I listen with my heart I feel peace. I think it gives me time to know what I really want, to feel what God wants for me, to slow things down a bit, and to let go of the meerkat/monkey mind that is constantly chattering.
I think if Jesus was fully human then Jesus also had to deal with a meerkat/monkey mind. If he didn’t then he wouldn’t be able to truly understand what we all go through. But he taught that to go away not to petition God but to rest in God’s stillness and peace we could hear the answers to what we need to hear answers to and let go of the rest. I think Jesus spent his times with God alone calming his meerkat/monkey mind and remembering who he truly was – which if Jesus did then so do I!!
I wonder what we would have thought of Joan of Arc today even in some of the more crazy charismatic churches. She doesn’t fit the stereotype of prophetic leader. She didn’t have visions of Jesus but of Michael, the archangel, Catherine of the “death by flaming spinning wheel from which the firework known as the Catherine-wheel comes from”, and Margaret who was tortured and murdered because she would not renounce the vow to remain a virginal bride of Christ when a pagan king wanted to marry her. Would we have been more like one source and just say “she claimed to have heard voices in her head”?
I wonder if she had come forward today, a young girl of 16 or so, and said she heard voices of an angel and two martyred women and that she wanted to lead her country to victory, she would be taken to a psychiatric ward? Or, if one of our children said they heard voices, would we tell them to hush and maybe get them checked out for autism? Or, what about ourselves? What would you do, what would I do, if we were sure we could hear voices telling us to do something bold and brave? I wonder if we would just keep quiet and wait for our voices to be “confirmed”.
As I pondered Joan of Arc, Greta Thunberg came in to my head, the teenager who has stepped up to the mark to try to lead the world to another place. I wonder if there were other young people who felt the same but whose parents, teachers, or churches, told them not to be so silly and the whole thing was too big for them. Greta, I believe, has only got as far as she has because her parents didn’t stop her. There is nothing to say what Joan of Arc’s parents thought but it was her relative who was bold enough to take her to a local garrison and from there she made it to the French court.
Joan experienced lots of opposition but preserved because of her total belief that this was what God was telling her through his messengers; Michael, Catherine and Margaret. How often do we hear something, and hear it very clear, and yet when we hit opposition, or lack of support from others, we give up? This doesn’t mean that we should power on through because we think this is what we should do but sometimes, like both Joan and Greta, we need to listen to what we are hearing, listen with our hearts, and keep on keeping on even if it means we lose our reputation, our livelihoods, and in Joan’s case, our lives.
I don’t think Joan cared what other people thought. I don’t think Greta cares much either. This isn’t to say I think either of these young women lack emotion at all. I think they both believe/believed that what they were doing is/was so right that they just can’t/could stop.
From pondering Joan of Arc, and as a result of that Greta Thunberg, my hope is that when I hear a voice or voices telling me to go and do something I won’t hold back whatever opposition I face, or however much it might damage my reputation. But also when I hear of some young person talking about a dream, a vision, voices speaking to them, that will change the world I will be willing to encourage them rather than hinder them.
Our world needs to change to stop it going back to the same pre-covid patterns where those who have stuff and status, fear of losing out to those who do not, and where those who do not have status are treated with disgrace and live in fear of having the little they have taken from them. We need to change and I believe we need younger people to help us with that – with more energy, more determination, more of an innocent belief that things can change.
I would like to be like Joan of Arc’s relative, helping to get someone young person to where they believe they should be, helping and encouraging them to see the change they believe in.
To boldly go or to enter boldly! Whatever it is I know my cat can do it best of all. As you can see she does yoga with me each morning. She doesn’t care where I’m putting various body parts but sits where she is comfortable. Then I have to roll her up in the mat when I am done. We know when she has entered a room. She doesn’t only open the door wide enough to get it like the dog does. She doesn’t hope it shuts behind her like we do. She pushes it so wide and then struts in. Generally she enters with loud meows. In fact if she has something to say, no matter what the time of day or night, or what we are doing, she tells us with loud meows. She then lies on the bed, the couch, the laptop, the floor, and purrs loudly. At I write this she is sleeping by myself wheezing happily.
I think when Jesus said to come before God boldly he meant that we were to come to him like my cat. We announce ourselves by throwing open the door and coming in like we deserve to. We don’t care what else is going on because our belief, like my cat’s, is that we are so important that of course he’ll pick us up, stroke us, feed us, whatever us. We shouldn’t care what God is doing if we have something we just need to report and so will shout loudly because who else would he be listening too. And then when we are done we should know that nothing is more important to God than us curling up contentedly with him, purring like the cat.
I was gong to say God doesn’t want us pussy-footing about but for my cat to pussy-foot it is loud, wide doors, in-yer-face, not anything quiet at all.
My cat knows she is the most important being in the house and deserves to be treated as such. Maybe I need to learn to start being like that more with God. Perhaps that is true humility?
The Little Yellow Boat and I have been busy over the last few weeks. We’ve been working with a local film maker to get a promotional video made for The Little Yellow Boat book. It is now ready and scheduled for release on Saturday 15th May. I will put the link up here on Saturday morning as I’m not quite sure how to link to my YouTube site as yet. Hopefully that will come once the video is live.
As you will know from my post Be Who You Really Are, it has been a challenge for me to say what I wanted. Or more precisely to know what I wanted. But once I got my head round that I was able to keep sending the video back and forth to the maker until I had what I wanted.
Though my struggle now is with technology. I think I’ve got the site sorted and I think it will work on Saturday and so would really appreciate all my followers clicking on the link when I post it up, around 11am GMT, just so I know it works. I will also post it on my Instagram page and Facebook page and hope for the best.
There are still many things with YouTube, Facebook and Instagram I am grappling with but hopefully it will all come together.
There is much more to publishing if you want to get sold than just writing the book!!
These thoughts on Jesus our friend were prompted by Lilly Lewin’s Post from 5th May entitled “Cups of Connection and Joy“, from starting talking about connection the post flows into the John 15:14&15 were Jesus tells his followers they are friends not servants.
How often do we see those in church behaving like servants, running round doing stuff, keeping the whole show on the road, even busy doing the praying stuff – which looks so righteous – but in fact they are spending time in praying, whether at alone, online, in prayer rooms, not to hang out with a friend but to serve.
When I tried to share this I was reminded that the Bible talks of asking for things, of petitioning prayers, etc as if that meant that we had to do rather than hang out with our friend. It got me thinking about my friends and how I behave with them and what I expect from a friendship. I though about the words in The Little Yellow Boat book where she says “She realised she did not want to be rescued and taken home. She wanted help to continue her quest.” She then realises those boats she had dismissed, which become her friends, all have different things to offer and different ways to help her so she goes to them for different things.
My friends are all very different and I go to them for different things and expect different things from them. I have friends who I would go to for help to do things, friends that I would go to if I was trying to workout what to do next, friends that I would walk with, others I have never walked with but drank a lot of coffee with, others no coffee but lots of meals and wine. Some of my friends are Christians like me, and some even think about God in similar ways to me. Some are of other faiths and some none. Some challenge me and turn my thinking upside down. Some are a calming influence. When I met with them I am different depending who I’m with.
I found it interesting that there are many many Bible studies and Christian groups that look at God the Father but very few what look at Jesus as our Friend. I wonder if that is because there is distance between us being able to father/parent someone else and us being someone’s friend? With talking of Father God we can stand back a bit, forgive parents and welcome in God, or if parents repent for our misplaced parenting, but perhaps we keep our distance from looking at Jesus as friend because it would challenge us more. I also think being a friend is much harder to define than being a parent. As I’ve listed above I expect different things from different friends and give differently to my different friends.
Yet every day we can get up and be a friend, in whatever guise that is, but how often do we choose to do that?
