Articles I've been writing

Because, again, absolutely nobody asked.

Thank you very very much to those of you who have taken the time to get in touch in response to the newsletters. You might be surprised how much it means. My favourite writing was always the writing I did for you - starting with the blog in 2014 and then moving onto newsletters - but I stopped.

Instead I spent the last three years putting all my energies into the bottomless pit of book 2, struggling on my own, instead of talking it all out with you, here. I regret that - and there are good lessons in it.

I have done many workshops with a spiritual teacher called Jan Day whose refrain at all her workshops is; ‘Rich learnings!’. We might be deep in some kind of emotional therapy process - the kind I always think Ruby Wax should be filming - and we’ll be crying and snotty and she’ll look on with pure kindness and love and at some point say, ‘There are rich learnings here! Use the shit to make compost!’

So what are the rich learnings here?

Why do we - I - stop doing the things that we love doing? Why do we - I - insist on making things so hard instead of just enjoying what comes easily? Writing short pieces like this via newsletter and journalism comes easily to me (after 20 years of practice) and I LOVE IT. My fingers dance on the keyboard and my mind is fully focussed on this moment, this sentence… and yet I set myself the long, lonely challenge of writing books, something which does not suit me. I was always best at the short, sharp focus of exams, while longer course work was always a disaster.

A friend told me a few months ago that the way I work is not healthy. ‘MAAATE,’ she said on a voice note, after I’d rebuffed another suggestion to meet up because I was head down on the book. ‘The way you work is self-harm!’

That hit me. She was right.

Why do I self-harm this way? Choose the difficult path? Is it masochism? Self-sabotage? A book called The Big Leap says that I have an ‘Upper Limit Problem’ which means that when things get too good we find ways to mess them up. It’s why politicians might get caught in some scandal just when they reach power or we say something awful to throw a bomb in a romance that’s going so well. We self-sabotage to make our outer reality match our inner world. When things are too good and you don’t feel like you deserve it, you find ways to make things not so good.

I think I do this a lot.

I also fetishise struggle and seem to like making things hard. I’m very annoyed at this habit. On my deathbed I’m going to see what a fool I was not to just grab all the joy and ease. I will want to shake the younger me.

Julia Cameron, author of The Artist’s Way, does not buy into the idea of suffering for your art. She thinks it’s macho bullshit and that… well, ‘great art can come from great joy.’ Elizabeth Gilbert thinks the same.

So I really am trying to do things differently now. I want to follow the joy. And do good work along the way.

Starting with newsletters…

OK, so today’s list is of articles I’ve been writing. There are lots! Journalism has been lovely lately and I’m so grateful for it.

Last week I went to see a witch! I’m going to write a full post on that soon because I really really liked her… but for now, here’s a summary of what I’ve been doing. Most of the papers I’m writing for have their content behind a paywall so I’ll give you a summary and a link.

The Power of Online Friendships

I wrote another piece about the joy of our writing sessions. Online friendships get a bad rap - we think it’s all people pretending to be something they are not, hungry for likes. But it’s not all that. The conversations we have in the Writing for Fun and Sanity workshops are magic and have been going on for three years now. In many ways because we don’t know each other in real life we can go deep, knowing that what we talk about online stays online - like a cross between confession and Vegas! And sometimes it’s not deep at all, it’s light and fun and we swap notes on what we’re watching. Many years ago I interviewed a psychologist who said that all humans need connection for our nervous system to calm down. The kind of connection that soothes us is seeing another, holding another, or hearing their voice. On zoom we are meeting two of those criteria. It’s not the same as being in the room with people, but it’s not nothing either.

Are we too ok with no being OK?

This was a question psychologist, Dr Tracy Tiwary Denis posted on Insta, explaining that: ‘I believe so strongly in the need for self-care, and that’s it’s totally ok not to be ok, but I’ve also seen a trend: we’ve started to believe in the myth of toxic positivity – that, unless we’re completely happy and completely comfortable all the time, there’s something wrong with us. And we start believing we’re fragile. This is not true, and is actually the opposite of mental health - mental health isn’t the absence of uncomfortable feelings, it’s the ability to work through hard things and persist, and know when we do need to take time out to rejuvenate. Mental health isn’t the absence of emotional distress. It’s the ability to work through the hard stuff. It’s falling down and getting back up again’.

Dr Scott Barry Kauffman, another psychologist, posted something similar a few weeks later: ‘I believe we are living in a culture where fragility is rewarded and given a special moral status, where the focus is solely on past trauma and not on a person’s hope for the future.’

The New York Times ran a piece last year about what they saw as the overuse of the word trauma. They asked, if everything is trauma, is anything trauma?

I, uncomfortably, see myself in this trend!! I will write a full post about this at some point but for now here is the link.

How sweating naked with strangers helped me love my body

Ok, so I might have oversold it with the idea that I LOVE my body. I probably don’t all the time but most of the time I feel pretty at home with it, way more than I used to - and a lot of that I put down to going to Porchester Spa in Paddington. It’s a steam room and sauna set up that’s been going since the 1920s. They have women’s days and men’s days and mostly people are naked. I went with a swimsuit the first few times and soon felt overdressed and so now I strip off too and it’s been liberating. There is every age shape size nationality of woman there and they are all magnificent… which made me realise that if they are, I must be too.

I went to a soul sex circle and my vulva had something to say about it

I loved the headline the i newspaper put on this piece, which was followed by this sub-title: ‘I’m not in the habit of talking to my vulva so I’m surprised when it – she?- answers instantly.’ This piece was about going to a woman’s circle organised by Lucy Rowett. Lucy comes from an Evangelical Christian background and years of being bedridden with chronic fatigue. Learning to love her body - and embrace her sexuality - was a huge part of her healing and now it’s what she helps other people with. In this women’s circle we were encouraged to dance and move and talk - which is what happens at most women’s circles - but this one also invited us to acknowledge the existence of our sexuality and at one point to put our hand over our genitals, just to acknowledge their presence. It’s crazy how confronting / embarrassing / shameful this can fee - which is why these kinds of sessions are so important. Highly recommend Lucy’s work.

How I rebuilt my marriage after an affair

I did a fascinating interview with a woman about how her and her husband rebuilt their marriage after she had an affair. They both had the courage and honesty to be really upfront about what wasn’t working and 18 years later they sit down every month and have a board meeting about the state of their relationship. I’m kind of joking with the term board meeting - but it’s a proper scheduled sit down. That’s something that a book called Smart Sex recommends we all do - sit down with our partner once a month and talk about our sex lives. Does the thought fill you with horror?!

Girl dinner - yes, as ever I’m reporting on the news that really matters - this is about a TikTok trend where women shares photos of what’s known as their girl dinners - basically snacks on a plate. It’s how I’ve eaten all my life. I am a trend! Thanks Gary for taking this photo of me.

Love and hugs

Mx