Author: dianewoodrow

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

Categories
peace solitude

Content With Solitude

This is where I was sat when these thought came to me. I’m going to try to work out how to get them onto photos but just wanted to share them today

Also want to link this to blog from Deepak – Choosing Happiness in all the Wrong Places because I think we are saying similar things with different words.

Solitude – a place where you can sit with the chattering monkey thoughts and let them slowly settle to the river bottom; where you can stay in that place of peace and wait to see what rises again to the surface

Diane Woodrow – June 2025

Being alone doesn’t mean that all that random “monkey chatter” isn’t there. You don’t feel instantly serene and at peace with yourself and the world. But, I believe, if you don’t sit alone for long enough and allow those monkey thoughts to settle, then wait and allow what God/The Universe wants you to consider at that moment, you will never reach peace with yourself.

So to me when I sat by the sea, just me and my dog, I let the thoughts that were bubbling in me about various things rise to the surface then fall to the depths. I didn’t try to pick any out to think of but waited to see what rose up. I then gained some interesting insights into myself and why things unfold as they do and also about a project that looked like it was failing but was going the wrong way. But I had to sit without an agenda, without people pleasing, and trusting to listen to my heart.

Solitude is a place where you can be fully in love and fully trusting in yourself and just being

Dollar Glen, Scotland – June 2025 – photographed by myself

Solitude is glorious when you can see and know yourself in all that you are – your strengths and weaknesses, hurts and joys, mistakes and triumphs – and know that you like and love yourself just as you are at this moment in time.

Solitude isn’t a place of loneliness. Loneliness can happen in a crowd, especially when you are trying to be someone you are not, when you are trying to please others, when you are afraid to reveal who you really are, when you don’t feel like you fit in.

Solitude is a place of calm, of peace, of being, of knowing who you fully are, of knowing what you fully want to do.

Solitude, I believe, is something you can take into a crowd and enjoy who are you with because you are being fully you with no agenda for yourself or for those you are with. Things don’t have to go a certain way because you are calm within yourself for all that time of being alone.

But this can only come about if you are willing to take time out from the noise and hassle of the life we lead, can let go of those monkey chattering thoughts and listen to your heart.

Solitude can be glimpsed through a porthole. Lady’s Tower, Elie, East Neuk, Fife. Photographed by myself June 2025

Categories
decisions democracy

Local Elections

Renly outside our local polling station.

Today was a local election. Not even a county one. Just a town one. But because it is an election I believe it is my moral duty to all those people, not just the women, who fought so that everyone could have the vote, not just a selected few, that I need to turn up at the polling station.

But that’s where the dilemma comes. I have been a socialist, as a teen and young adult I even joined the Communist party for a while and subscribed to The Morning Star. As time has passed I’ve become more and more disillusioned with politics. They all seem a bit same old same old and not really in touch with day to day life.

So the choices were – a local lad of just 19 doing a politics degree in the capital four hours drive from our town, someone from Reform UK and then I noticed a name I recognised, a poet I had worked with 7 years ago.

The nineteen year old was keen and knocked on doors, handed out leaflets, but then he was funded by the local Conservative party who have money to spend on campaigning. He was lovely to chat to, very keen, very enthusiastic. And he was the only one to knock. But the bit I struggled with was the Conservative party rhetoric of it almost being every man/local area/community for themselves whereas I’m more of a global person believing what we do here does affect people across the world.

The Reform UK guy might have come round but his leaflet came when we were out so who knows. But then I find the whole thing of blaming immigrants for the ills of our country is not the way to look at things. Again to me it that global thing that we all need to be working together, supporting each other. I also believe that most people who migrate to another country do it because their own country isn’t safe to live in. I think most of them would rather stay at in their own lands but cannot do it for fear of so so much we’d never understand int his country.

The poet guy I know didn’t appear at all. Or if he did we were out. And he didn’t drop in a leaflet so we don’t know his views on anything.

But then at the last general election we only met our Labour candidate though knew a couple of the others because they were local – so we knew them and their blemishes too.

So who to vote for? It is so hard especially as there seems to be such a lackadaisical approach from those who were standing – apart from the Conservatives and their budget to campaign. But still I made my way to the polling station with my dog and put my cross where I felt it was right to put it and walked away hoping I was helping to keep democracy ticking over.

Categories
confident playing more strings

Strings To One’s Bow

From Openverse

This post came about from an interesting conversation in which when I said something like “as you get older you get more strings to your bow” the person hearing thought of the strings on the instrument not the bow. And interestingly when I did the search using “strings on a bow” I got lots of pictures of violins or guitars. But the bow is the thing you play the instrument with not those strings you run the bow across.

I wonder if we like it to be the instrument because that is unchanging whereas the bow can gain strings, can change how it plays, and also, if I remember from my long-ago violin playing days, the bow was the part that needed regularly waxing so it moved smoothly across the strings.

I do think it is true that as we get older we do gain strings to our bows, with experience, with learning, with exploring, and with healing. Confidence grows. We just know more stuff.

For instance I run writing groups for both adults and school children. I do them mainly with some basic notes but am continually pulling things from the depths of my brain, altering, changing, rehashing, being able to answer questions, etc. This isn’t because I am super intelligent but it is that I have been around a lot. I’ve read a lot. I’ve been to lots of other writing groups. I’ve listened to others. I’ve a love of learning. Things are just in my head. And I have gained confidence in myself that I can do this. They are the strings to my bow.

Interestingly I’ve been doing some emotional support work in a local school via an organisation using their tools but the whole time I was finding I was “playing a scratchy tune.” I wasn’t playing cleanly. It was not good. In the end I gave up on their tools and went back to having a rough plan and going with the flow – allowing my bow to flow smoothly over the strings.

I’m not saying I am better than the organisation but to play a tune that was harmonious for me and the lad I was working with I had to use my own bow, so to speak.

My husband has just gone for a new job and what he found at the interview as that as they asked him about certain things he was able to say “I’ve done that with X that I used to work with”. He has gain strings to his bow over the different jobs he’s had, the different things he’d been involved with, the different people he’s worked with. His bow has grown fuller.

Even now as I grapple with a new laptop [mine died on holiday. Thank goodness for ‘the cloud’ that stored all my writing] because of the experiences of setting up other laptops over the years I have skills and this time it didn’t take as long [apart from getting solitaire up but then maybe that is the gods of laptops telling me I don’t need that!!!]

So let us all enjoy our bows as they gain their strings and allow them to flow smoothly over the instruments that are placed in front of us.

my daughter and my son about 20 years ago at my mum’s enjoying a jamming session one Sunday afternoon. Unfortunately neither of them has continued playing an instrument
Categories
Flexible interesting

Be Flexible

https://dailyverses.net/2025/6/3

I know I’ve written about being flexible before but I love it when a Bible verse pops up in my inbox that is so relevant to my day.

Today looked like being a full day so I journaled how best to fit everything in, had my plan ready, and then the day changed shape. Firstly those who come to the writing groups I run steadily cancelled one by one so that now it looks like there might be just one person but she hasn’t got back to me just to confirm. But even if she does running a writing group for just one person is very different to running it for 5-6.

Then I drove up to school where I’m doing some emotional support work with a lad to get told that someone was in from SEN to observe him and after some discussion between myself and the deputy head we decided that it would not be beneficial if I took him out of class.

Change! Change! Change!

I know at one time I’d have been really angry about things and also not sure what to do, but today yes I did have a little “oh my what shall I do?” moment but was able to ANS [realign my autonomic nervous system], breath, and thank God for this space in my day. Not that at the moment I need great spaces because life seems pretty chilled at the moment – with even a holiday approaching on Friday.

Again at one time I would have panicked that I have all this free time and I should be filling it but now I trust to God/The Universe that they know what’s going on and that it is ok to just be rather than do.

And to also remember this from Matt Kelland

So now today I’ve done this post. Then I will do some more major decluttering of my study because I bought 3 wooden crates on Sunday and am having a revamp. It looks good but there seems to have been an explosion of paperwork from somewhere, which probably needs recycling! Either that or I’ll sit in the garden and read a book!

Categories
others self

Do It For Yourself

A fascinating tree near Red Wharf Bay. Photographed by myself May 2025

Love your neighbour as yourself

Mark 12:31

I know I’ve mentioned this verse many times before but I had a new revelation today. And this is what I love about the Bible. It is the living word of God not a static set of rules. It has something new to say to us often if we are willing to listen.

I was doing some QEC work around writing my memoir novel and exploring why I’d stopped not just sharing on Substack but stopped writing almost completely.

What came from it was that I’d got into writing for submission, for sharing with the new writing support group I met whilst on the memoir writing course, and got into wanting to make it “right” – which is another word like “enough” which is not quantifiable.

What I had stopped doing was writing it for me; writing for the joy and love of writing. At the end of last year and the start of this I just let the words pour from my finger tips and learned loads about myself as I let it flow. Yes I do have a dream of publishing it but back then my first goal was to get it written for me; was to write for myself.

So where does the above bible verse come in? Well as I’ve said before it has been translated the wrong way round. The original read “love yourself so you can love your neighbour” and as I’ve said previously if we don’t love ourselves then we can’t love our neighbours, can’t love anyone else fully because too often we are trying to love people so they like us. If I love myself then I don’t need others to love and affirm me. I like it when they do but that isn’t my reason for befriending and hanging out with them.

So it struck me in the middle of this QECing was that I need to love and want to read my book, that I need to be writing it for me and no one else, that I am doing it for me not for publication, not for anyone else, but for me. Then I will be able to write my story my way which will then be the way it is meant to be [possibly the “right” way!!]

But that isn’t just for my story but for everything I do whether that be housework, running writing groups, speaking to others, when I’m on my dog walks, driving my car, cooking tea, being with my family. I must be doing it for me not for others and if I do that then it will flow and I will be at peace and I will be kind and generous, not fearful, not checking if it “works” or if I’ve “got it right” but will just flow, will just be me, will not be doing it to get a need met.

I think it is why I enjoyed my birthday this year because everything we did was what I wanted to do. Yes there were tweaks due to dogs not being able to walk as far as they use to and my children tired due to traveling up to us. But it was tweaks for me to enjoy it more not to make it “right” and trying to please others. And guess what? Yup everyone had a good time because I was going with my flow.

Too often we are taught that we are being selfish if we do what we want to do but I think that is a lie. Most of us, if we love and respect ourselves and are doing what gives us joy, will not do harm to others but actually will be nicer people and people others will enjoy being around because we flow with what we want rather than double checking what others might want.

So I would also write that verse as “do all you do with love, peace and flow, without worrying about what others might want, and then that will give others space so they can flow around with you in love and peace”

Renly by the fascinating tree. May 2025

Categories
Little Yellow Boat my book

An Ending

February 2021 The Little Yellow Boat was published; a children’s illustrated book, words by myself and illustrations by Danielle Chapman Skaines, now Danielle Littlewood. It was fun to do and to collaborate with an illustrator. Although both collaborating and writing children’s books are not my normal genre. Also I am not a natural marketer so the whole promotion of the book and myself was not easy. It was not helped by the fact that we are in the second phase of COVID and lockdowns and whatevers so by the time everything fully lifted my initial enthusiasm had waned.

I did get copies in my local library and did manage to go to a couple of craft fayres run by friends so my book will be out there forever.

Two days ago I received this from the publishers

… it is now some time since our company published your work. During that time we, as your publisher, and yourself as the author have put a great deal of hard work into your book.

Regrettably, these combined efforts have not proved to have been as successful as we had initially hoped, and we now feel that the time has come for us to remainder your work.

This will mean that all relevant areas of the trade will be informed of the discontinuation of publishing, and all rights to the work will revert back to you, the author.

Remaining stock will be pulped …

I have about ten copies of the book still in a box in my study which I keep promoting whenever I run writing workshops but it was a very strange feeling to receive this. Not a sadness but a definite glump!

It is an end of an era moment. And I think ends should be commemorated as much as beginnings. So I will honour this moment. Hence this post.

=======================================================================

There is still time to purchase the book before pulping in 10 days. It is on Amazon and also on The Book Store in the UK and I’m sure can be found in the USA and other countries.

These posts are free but you are welcome to Buy Me A Coffee or buy my book 🙂

Categories
acceptance humble

What Sort of Pride?

Photo by Alexander Grey on Pexels.com

A friend of mine was telling me how she wasn’t happy about the concept of Gay Pride. She said it wasn’t because she was anti gay but it was the word “pride” and the biblical “pride comes before a fall” [Proverbs 6:18] and of pride being one of the seven deadly sins. It got me thinking about the word and different meanings of pride especially as when I run writing groups with adults or children I encourage them to be proud of their work; to have pride in what they do. Then later on that same day someone was bemoaning trying to get a settlement with their estranged husband and said “typical male pride”.

The different meanings of the word PRIDE

  • take pride in something/someone

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/pride

I think the Proverbs verse means don’t think too highly of yourself; don’t be prideful. But that Gay pride is to know your own worth and respect yourself. Very different meanings to the same word.

This is one of the problems with the English language I think. Too often there is only one word but many meanings. It is also where things get mixed up when looking at the Bible, a book that was written in at least three very different languages and then translated into many others. Too often the translation comes via Latin which is too often limited in its wording – eg the word we use as Love as many different forms in the Hebrew and at least six in Greek, all with different connotations. A bit like the Eskimos having many words for snow and the Welsh have at least 26 words for rain.

So I agree that none of us should think we are any better than anyone else, prideful, but I think that we should all be content with who we are, be proud of our achievements, be proud when we see those we love and care for doing well. It isn’t this sort of pride that comes before a fall but the sort of pride that stops us asking for help, stops us helping others, stops us realising that we have faults too. The pride we need to live and walking is a humble pride of knowing our strengths and our weaknesses, knowing our wants and needs, and be open and caring to ourselves and each other. True pride [not pridefulness] means we can truly love ourselves and so truly love our neighbour because we know what we can and cannot do.

Categories
interesting plans

Part of God’s Amazing Plan

Matt Kelland’s Unhack Your Brain https://unhackyourbrain.substack.com/p/priorities

I found this great quote on Matt Kelland’s Unhack Your Brain Substack and I love it, but then on Sunday at our Messy Church Easter service we sang Our God Is A Great Big God which I also love.

I just love to be reminded that God is sooo soooo big but also that God has loved me since before the world began, since before I was born, since before I made all the mistakes and screw ups I did and all the hurting of others that I did too. God loved me inspite of what I was going to do. Now that is amazing.

But then it came down to how to I balance this line “how wonderful to be a part of God’s amazing plan” with it being ok not to have “a purpose or grand ambition” and to just “wander through life finding interesting things to do“.

I know I’ve pondered this whole “God’s plan for your life” before in other posts but again I was struck with the revelation that, even though way too often, especially in charismatic denominations, there is this emphasis on “finding God’s plan for your life”, of praying into every move you make to check it is “part of the plan” and lots of angsting and fears about “getting it wrong” or “missing out”.

But what if …. and as Matt calls it an “unpopular opinion”… what if God’s plan for our lives is to find interesting things to do before we die?

The world is crawling with interesting things and interesting people. This morning an older couple and I stood in wonder at the confetti blossom falling from the trees; in the park I noticed a lady sniffing the apple blossoms; I talked with an man about how he’s dealing with his terminal cancer; with another friend about how the family are dealing with the sudden heart attack of her father-in-law; I laugh at squirrels scampering up trees and the puppy who leaps up the tree trunks trying to catch them; I smile at connections to do with The Green Cross Code man [a UK road crossing initiative back in the 1970s]. And all this is just in the 45 mins to and from the park today. That’s even before I’ve started reading the amazing Substack and WordPress blogs that appear in my inbox, before I start reading the piles of books I have, etc.

The world is so amazing and if God’s purpose for my life, God’s amazing plan for my life, is to potter along and enjoy those interesting things then I think that is totally amazing.

Yes also I know that God’s plan includes loving God, ourselves and others, and forgiving God, ourselves and others, which again if you get into that is amazingly interesting.

I think once we can do the finding interesting things everywhere, can forgive God, ourselves and others and can love God, ourselves and others, then I think we have definitely got the most amazing grand plan ever.

Categories
Feet hands

Why Wash Feet Not Hands?

Photo by Yan Krukau on Pexels.com

I know why Jesus washed his disciples feet – because it was what servants did to everyone who entered the house. It was to wash the dirt of the streets off those sandaled [without socks] dirty, dusty, feet. It is something that is repeated across many churches on Maundy Thursday [yesterday] across the world, and sometimes used at other times of the year to signify someone, generally in leadership, desiring to serve others.

Back in Jesus’s day it was easy though to wash feet. I’m not sure if they did it with or without sandals but even if it was without then it was easy to slip off a sandal. I remember once being at a meeting where this woman wanted to wash all our feet. Great gesture I thought, but I was wearing long boots with buckles etc and I was worried my socks would be holey or something. For me it was a big hassle and I got grumpy about it. It would have been so much easier if she’d washed my hands instead. No faffing with taking boots off, no then having to get feet properly dry before putting socks and boots back on again. Easy!

Easy but actually doesn’t really signify anything.

I think the reason that it should still be feet is because it is more of a thing, more of a faff. And hands one should wash often.

Hands we wash ourselves on a regular basis – before eating, after the toilet, before preparing food, after craft activities, etc.

How often do you really wash your feet? Ok so you stand in the shower or lie in the bath and your feet get wet and hopefully cleaned off from the water around you. But do you really give your feet the attention that you give your hands?

Feet are really important to our daily health. Here’s a quote from the government’s Medline Plus website

Foot problems … can sometimes signal other health issues such as arthritis, diabetes, or nerve damage. Left untreated, they can even cause pain and dysfunction in other parts of your body, including your back, hips, and knees.

And this one

Our feet, containing a quarter of the bones in our body, bear the weight of our entire body daily!

Our feet, that so many of us take so little care of, look after us so much.

So I think, even though yes as I say again I know the Middle Eastern servant reason for Jesus washing his disciples’ feet but also I think whenever we are in a place that does the washing of feet Last Supper tradition that we keep it as feet and don’t turn it into the easier washing of hands. It is like remembering to say that we are going to care for those bits that get forgotten, that get hidden away and yet are so important to our whole well being.

Perhaps in this modern day when this is done as well as remembering backwards to Jesus we can also think about those people who get forgotten and often who are hidden but who are so important.

Duh that’s what servants were!

Look after your feet because they are your often forgotten servants. And look after those in your community who are hidden but important. And don’t try and skip to something easier.

Categories
Love sacrifice

Do you love me more than these? 

The Look of Love – photographed by myself March 2025

I was listening to these words from John 21:15-17 where Jesus asked Peter if he loves him more than “these”. If acted then Jesus is shown pointing to the other disciples on the beach. Often this has been taken as a counter to Peter saying before Jesus got arrested that even if the all the others denied Jesus he wouldn’t and then he goes and denies him three times, hence why Jesus asks if he loves him three times in the redemption part. So basically a “do you love me more than these other disciples do?”

But what if Jesus is asking “do you love me more than these earthly things that are important to you?” in the sense that does Peter love Jesus more than he loves his friends, more than he loves fitting in with everyone else, more than he loves being a part of this clique? Would that make a difference?

I think it can be easy to try to love/care for/honour/do better than/follow someone more than someone else. But also that is a judgement and is one of those things in self-care and mental health one is encouraged not to do – not to compare. Comparing comes with the word “enough” and then there’s some oughts and shoulds thrown in.

I could never know if I loved Jesus or even another human more than someone else because I don’t know what’s going on inside their heads. But to love someone more than loving fitting in/ being part of something/being in safe tribe now that is hard and sacrificial.

Interesting that often this is then used to encourage us to judge and compare rather than to sacrifice!