Tag Archives: self-acceptance
I celebrate you
I know it’s hard to get out of bed sometimes; that you wake up feeling overwhelmed with grief and fear, with tears in your eyes. I know it often feels like you’re floundering, living the wrong life, or like you’re … Continue reading
Change is possible and it starts with self-love
It’s nearly 10 years since I wrote my first ever blog, on a site I called Just As I Am – An Experiment in Self-Acceptance. It was the eve of Lent, 2011, and I’d had it. I’d had it with … Continue reading
The danger of ‘if only’ thinking
I spent a lot of my childhood peering through other people’s windows, both literally and metaphorically, wishing that my life was more like theirs. Wishing I lived in their house. Wishing I had their parents. Wishing I had their clothes. … Continue reading
Self-love is where it starts
Valentine’s Day isn’t easy for some of us. Everywhere we look, there are hearts, flowers and chocolates. Or couples smooching and holding hands. Some of us can ignore it. Some can dismiss it and deride it for its rampant commercialism. … Continue reading
Talking About Love
In the hours after publishing my previous post – The Magic of March – I worried I hadn’t sounded positive or excited enough about my wonderful engagement news. I read it back a few times. Had my realness and vulnerability … Continue reading
The Embrace
I speak to my Mum and hear the relentless passage of time. In her voice, I hear my difficulties, struggles, doubts, insecurities and pain, magnified a hundred times, exaggerated by age, by decades spent alone and by the absence of … Continue reading
I want to be me
I want to be me, I thought, as I cycled along the Bournemouth seafront this morning. Not someone else. Not that woman over there with the toned, slim legs or the long, thick, glossy hair. Not that sporty girl in … Continue reading
Dread
I can remember it vividly. I left the gym at Belvedere’s, my senior school in Liverpool, and walked past the netball courts and out onto the street, where Mum was sitting in the car waiting for me. I was sobbing … Continue reading
I know who I am
On Tuesday of last week, a few hours before a scheduled phone call that I was pretty sure would mark the end of a brief courtship with an attractive man I really liked but kind of knew wasn’t for me … Continue reading
Cultivating compassion
I just starting rereading my last blog post and I couldn’t get to the end, so if you did, congratulations and thanks for staying with me! But I’m thinking that perhaps it’d be good to write shorter posts, but blog … Continue reading
From Forty With Love 