Wellbeing
How to support yourself naturally through perim...
Perimenopause is as natural as waking up in the morning – but eavesdrop on a conversation between forty-something women, and you’d think the end of the world was near. Though talking about menstruation is beginning to lose its hushed whisper, the shame around menopause is still hot and sticky. But the news from the wild shores of menstruality coaching is that perimenopause is something to get excited about, that it’s the biggest selfhelp workshop you ever signed up for, and that you get it for free! The task of perimenopause is to clear up outdated ways of being, the roles that don’t fit, and toxic relationships in your life. Post menopause, or in the Second Spring as it’s known, you’ll emerge revitalised and deeply engaged with your calling. It’s an inside job, a rebirth. No wonder, then, that the old patriarchal systems don’t like older women; the last thing they need...
How to support yourself naturally through perimenopause
Perimenopause is as natural as waking up in the morning – but eavesdrop on a conversation between forty-something women, and you’d think the end of the world was near. Though talking...
Taking time to cook with wild ingredients
 It is dark outside and has been for some time. The gentle ticking of the clock, muted by the hum of family life during the day, is the only sound in the kitchen. Accompanied by a little glass of sloe gin, I have spent several hours preparing sweet chestnuts to use in my little girl’s birthday cake. Earlier, at the base of a tree near her school, we used our booted feet to separate the spiky cases scattered on the ground, checking each one for shiny, plump chestnuts. Now I score each one with a cross to roast in the oven. Once cooled, there is the arduous task of peeling the shells; I will have sore fingers for days. I could have bought vacuum-packed cooked chestnuts instead, and I often do. So why spend precious ‘me time’ doing this? Here’s the thing: on one hand, we want to prepare...
Taking time to cook with wild ingredients
 It is dark outside and has been for some time. The gentle ticking of the clock, muted by the hum of family life during the day, is the only...
Why it's important to meet your own needs in mo...
I became a mother at 25. Straight out of university, I left the parental home to travel a bit and make some cash. After spending a few weeks in the north of England, I went to London to visit the man I had met and fallen in love with at a summer festival. (And we have pretty much stayed together since.) Five months into us living together, I was pregnant. What takes some couples years, we covered in months. I came across JUNO in the health shop where I worked. It was a true godsend to me. I was totally inexperienced, but I knew I wanted a home birth, to breastfeed and to carry my baby in a sling. How hard could it be? When it came to it, I was often alone at home with my baby. I barely knew anyone, and nobody with children. I struggled with cooking...
Why it's important to meet your own needs in motherhood
I became a mother at 25. Straight out of university, I left the parental home to travel a bit and make some cash. After spending a few weeks in the...
Circles and how they can offer us healing and c...
In 2014, my carefully planned, idyllic home birth with a doula turned into a failed forceps and emergency c-section. I felt broken and a failure. I had lost confidence in myself and my body, and all the while, I was struggling to come to terms with the demands of being a new mum to a colicky baby. I felt isolated and alone with my experience and my feelings. Talking about it over coffee with friends didn’t feel right – it was too deep and raw for that – but having therapy didn’t feel right either. Then I happened to read A Doula’s Journey by Hazel Tree. In it, Tree describes a women’s circle in some detail, and I knew it was exactly what I needed to heal. Being held and witnessed by a community of women in a safe and sacred space was just the nurturing I had been seeking....
Circles and how they can offer us healing and connection
In 2014, my carefully planned, idyllic home birth with a doula turned into a failed forceps and emergency c-section. I felt broken and a failure. I had lost confidence in...
Forest Bathing: the benefits of spending time i...
Trees smell wonderful, don’t they! The aroma of leafy materials and flowers from many trees is part of the joy of walking in woods, and you can gain numerous health benefits simply by spending time in forested areas. Altogether some 3 trillion trees on the planet sustain the air and water that are needed for life. Forests benefit living beings by improving air quality, and this is vital since more than 90% of the world’s human population lives in places where air pollution exceeds World Health Organisation guidelines. Trees help mitigate many of the problems of living in urban areas, for example by reducing the urban heat island effect, which is lethal during heat waves, and moderating noise. Given these and other benefits of forests and trees, pioneering health policies have begun to recognise the use of nature to enhance urban population health while conserving biodiversity. Thousands of different volatile...
Forest Bathing: the benefits of spending time in the woods
Trees smell wonderful, don’t they! The aroma of leafy materials and flowers from many trees is part of the joy of walking in woods, and you can gain numerous health...
How to use journaling as a healing tool
I have been journaling in some form or another for most of my adult life. Writing has always been important to me, but I have come to understand it as a deeply healing practice, and I now encourage patients to find their way to journaling as a therapeutic tool. The realisation happened when my daughter was at university. She wrote an assignment while studying the work of Hélène Cixous, the French feminist writer. Here’s an extract: I couldn’t stop thinking about my mother who would pour her heart out into a diary and then hide it away… Perhaps this is what Cixous is saying. Instead of feeling shame and a need to hide their writing, women should want their writing to be read, and through this, the reasons behind the hiding would be addressed and dealt with… Was my mother’s hiding of her writing just a trait of her hiding...
How to use journaling as a healing tool
I have been journaling in some form or another for most of my adult life. Writing has always been important to me, but I have come to understand it as...
The heart of Danish communities: Florrie Cassel...
When we hear about childhood in Denmark, it is often with descriptions of children dressed in rain suits, freely exploring woodlands and whittling with sharp knives beside campfires. There are stories of babies peacefully sleeping in prams, unfazed by snow and subzero temperatures. It’s all true. Danish children are renowned for their deep connection to the outdoors. Time spent out in all weathers is a fundamental aspect of their upbringing. Yet, amid these wonderful and freezing experiences, another (warmer) backdrop to Danish childhood exists: public libraries. In England, visits to the local library with my children were brief. We’d dash in, attend a rhyme time session, select a couple of books, and be out the door within 20 minutes. Any need for a snack or a run about prompted a swift exit, and there might have been somewhere to change a nappy, but I never found it. We relocated to...
The heart of Danish communities: Florrie Cassell's love for local libraries
When we hear about childhood in Denmark, it is often with descriptions of children dressed in rain suits, freely exploring woodlands and whittling with sharp knives beside campfires. There are...
Nourishing spring soups and teas with nettles
Spring is a busy time for hedgerow herbalists. The riverbanks and meadows are bursting with green leafy delights and the house becomes full of drying bundles of herbs and jars of herbs macerating in alcohol or infusing in almond oil in preparation to make remedies. These include nettles, dandelion, comfrey and cleavers (‘sticky soldiers’). Plants ready to harvest each season often reflect the health and wellbeing needs of people at that time. Spring provides a wealth of detoxifying, nutrient-rich plants great for ridding the body of post-winter sluggishness and conditions that may arise in spring. Hay fever often begins at this time and can last throughout the summer. I was taken on a weekend break one spring to a beautiful setting: a log cabin in the middle of a magical wood. It wasn’t long before my eyes started streaming and puffing up. My chest became tight, making breathing difficult, and...
Nourishing spring soups and teas with nettles
Spring is a busy time for hedgerow herbalists. The riverbanks and meadows are bursting with green leafy delights and the house becomes full of drying bundles of herbs and jars...
Reflections on Healing: triggers and glimmers
There is little doubt that you will have come across the word ‘trigger’ over the last few years. In short, triggers are cues around us that signal to our system a potential threat. They can be obvious, but they can also be so subtle we might not even be aware of them, yet we suddenly find ourselves sweating with anxiety for no apparent reason. Now more than ever before, the subject of mental health and trauma awareness is in the public realm and in government focus, and that can only be a good thing. The understanding of how events from our past can impact our emotional responses in the present is becoming widely discussed in mainstream culture, enabling much more understanding about how to identify and work with our trigger points. Trauma to some degree happens to all of us at some point, and it can teach us survival skills....
Reflections on Healing: triggers and glimmers
There is little doubt that you will have come across the word ‘trigger’ over the last few years. In short, triggers are cues around us that signal to our system...
How to compassionately witness and heal your in...
The buck stops here. With me. This far, no further. This promise committed me to a journey beyond my wildest imagination, oftentimes beyond my limits and along the very edges of sanity. I seem to be given to these grand romantic pledges to the universe - must be the well developed drama queen in me! When my incestuous history finally revealed itself after a bang to the head, I’d long been a woman engaged in the healing struggle to emerge from what I already knew to be a difficult childhood. I carried the emotional and mental traumas in a way that I hoped meant business. I wanted different for my children; a family hearth rooted in loving kindness built by adults whole and present in themselves and each other. Such an easy wish on the rainbow; the pot of gold an endless search within and without for the resources to...
How to compassionately witness and heal your inner child
The buck stops here. With me. This far, no further. This promise committed me to a journey beyond my wildest imagination, oftentimes beyond my limits and along the very edges...
