In a dark place once, I felt utterly depressed; could not think of one thing I was grateful for. Not one. I hated where I was living in my sixth floor council flat, where I’d taken up the tiles leaving a bare, concrete floor in the lounge. It felt cold, looked freezing, like the night sky. I had no spiritual practice. I had isolated myself. I wasn’t working. I was on government ‘benefits’. I felt unable to work and bad for not working. Wretched is the word for it.
Continue reading “Gratitude: what’s the point?”Blog
Moving with infinity – an intuitive walk in Venice
As I practised my shamanic drumming before going on an intuitive walk today, I found myself pacing in a figure of 8 around the bedroom. The movement came from my body – a natural urge – rather than my mind leading the way. The intention I set for the intuitive walk is: to find ‘dead’ space to sing to (I am doing art research in Venice for the British Council – see bottom of this post for more information on my project).
Is it safer to fit in or stand out?
Listen to this article:
Do you want to be different or do you want to fit in?
When I was a teenager, with undiagnosed AuDHD and cPTSD, I desperately wanted to fit in, be accepted, be loved for who I was. I also wanted to express myself through what I wore and I had all kinds of ideas of the outfits I would put together to give space to this self-expression, but I didn’t let myself. I couldn’t. The need to fit in, not be ridiculed, and the desire to feel safe were stronger than the courage needed to stand out and be different.
A Place Where I Love and Accept Myself Totally
Do you go on intuitive walks? Where you set an intention and then follow your intuitive urges and see what happens? This is one of mine…
Home is where the heart is?
Home, according to Mole in Wind in the Willows, is a place filled with “familiar and friendly things which had long been unconsciously a part of him and now smilingly received him back.” I read the passage this statement comes from aloud at the start of the Home workshop I facilitated for Outside In at Hove Museum on 9 December. We all shared gestures, sounds and a word to get a sense of what our homes felt like before creating artworks that depicted this feeling(s). Conversation flowed between strangers as their hands busied, and I felt delighted to sit with each person and get to know them a little bit as they made their home. You can see an image of our homes formed into a group below – a village perhaps.
Continue reading “Home is where the heart is?”Othering Me, Othering You
I created this piece using wool. The wool came from a cardigan I made where I found the seams to be too irritating so I unpicked it. I am very sensitive to seams and labels in clothing. I was left with lots of small balls of wool in varying sizes and I followed an intuitive prod to finger knit each ball into a long strand. This took a few months and during this time I was working on my dissertation for my creative psychotherapy master’s, which was a heuristic inquiry into the experience of othering people different from me.
Continue reading “Othering Me, Othering You”Othering Me, Othering You Is This The Best We Can Do?
I completed my MSc Counselling and Psychotherapy – Contemporary Creative Approaches in August 2023 with a research project called Othering Me, Othering You – My Living Experience of Internalised Patriarchy. I’m going to share the following sections from my dissertation in this post: definition of terms, introduction, and conclusion. If you’d like me to send you the dissertation or have a conversation about setting up creative workshops to uncover hidden biases with compassion, please email me.
Some of my creative outputs from my research that I analysed for themes
Continue reading “Othering Me, Othering You Is This The Best We Can Do?”I Am Loving Her Now
Just sit and be still;
Meagre sounds compete with massive silence.
Giving myself to it in a different way now,
Yet tinges of teenage angst touch me with cold, sad fingers,
Continue reading “I Am Loving Her Now”
