7 April 2013 Is It Time For Some Relationship Counselling?

Is It Time For Some Relationship Counselling?

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I remember when I first heard about the internet. “You mean you can go into any library?” I exclaimed to an equally excited deliverer of this great message. I could read any book in the world, wander into any library, talk to any person who was in this new cyber location and find out any piece of information that I wanted to know. I was after a hot date this with new WWW place!

It was the mid 1990’s and this ‘date’ was going to be coming to my home! Yes! In my own home, I could travel and read and explore my way around the world. The World Wide Web had lured me in and I was smitten!Continue reading

Filed Under: Being A Writer, Being In Business
3 April 2013 Self Defence – The Emotional Protection Variety

Self Defence – The Emotional Protection Variety

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I imagine it would be hard to believe, possibly impossible, for you to be told that I struggle with talking about many of the things that I write about. Unimaginable that the person who writes about feelings, advocates that connecting with ourselves and then with each other through understanding and articulating how we feel and indeed writes continuously about such things, should be someone who would need to retreat into a cubby hole from time to time when I have spoken openly. I need some pretty hefty emotional self defence strategies!

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2 April 2013 How To Ask The Right Questions

How To Ask The Right Questions

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Part Two – Behind The Scenes

Today I shall be exploring further this gentle process of working with emotional pain and long forgotten experiences giving a little insight into how I worked with the contributors for The Brightness of Stars and the importance of knowing how to ask the right questions.

It can be very frustrating speaking to someone about something so deeply personal when you have to fill in quite basic details and fill in lots of gaps. This tends to be the case when the person you are talking too does not have any knowledge or experience of what it is you are talking about. Now it’s important that you understand that I am not saying this in the context of raising awareness, or helping people make sense of something new or in discussions about any of the issues that I raise in the book (or any of my books). I mean talking to people who really ought to have undertaken their research such a journalists, counsellors, politicians or someone researching a topic for a book (that’ll be me in this instance then)!

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Filed Under: Being A Writer, Recovery
14 March 2013 Revisiting Trauma in Childhood

Revisiting Trauma in Childhood

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Part One – Behind The Scenes

I’ve come to think of myself as a Story Teller. I want to tell you my story but more importantly, I want to help people tell theirs. Sometimes people think the collection of other people’s stories is easy and that people will just somehow disclose all their inner thoughts to the enquirer as if it were a cosy chat. But actually, it’s an incredibly delicate piece of work.

The Brightness of Stars is a collection of stories from adults who have been children in care in the UK. The majority of the contributors have not told their story before and it is possible, although I can only guess, that some of them may not tell it again.

So how have I managed to collect such private information from people who are in effect revisiting trauma in childhood? Essentially how do you ask people to ‘delve’ into a space that is private, internal and in the past against the backdrop of a life that is being lived now?

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10 March 2013 How To Become a Mother

How To Become a Mother

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I am a daughter. I am a mother and have been a single mother, a step-mother and a single mother again. We are not taught how to become a mother yet I seem to have collected a varied experience on the subject.

Today is Mother’s Day; an opportune moment for commercialism to commodify this relationship or a day of celebration of motherhood and what mothering means to each of us individually?

The complex nature of unravelling all that it is to be a mother and to be mothered, makes this subject a tricky one. If we then throw in the societal expectations about those roles we are left with a messy blob of feelings without words, tears without sense and pain with no identifiable source. Guilt, shame, disappointment and emptiness can fill a room quickly.

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6 March 2013 Exposing the exposed!

Exposing the exposed!

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In working with people in workshops and through one to one coaching, there are a few questions that I am asked a lot specifically with regard to not only marketing my own books but also writing about such personal content.

A consistent query, always asked with a slight trepidation, is how do you feel about being so ‘out there’? This is often swiftly followed by ‘I could never do that’ or ‘I don’t want to market myself’ or ‘perhaps I could write under pseudonym.’

This fear of being exposed is essentially a fear of being judged which is sat squarely on top of the fear that we all have which is “I’M NOT GOOD ENOUGH!” If I told you that we all have these fears, that they are not unique and are in fact universal, would that make you feel slightly better?

So here is what I tell them.Continue reading

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Rafflecopter!

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a Rafflecopter giveaway

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24 February 2013 Exploring George Orwell and Why I Write

Exploring George Orwell and Why I Write

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As my second book is complete and the process of it is coming to a close, I have been exploring why I write or rather, why I feel that I must collate information and knowledge and ask the world to listen to what it is I am saying.  I understand that I am passionate about exploring our emotional worlds and how the experiences that we have form and shape what we choose to do and who we choose to surround ourselves with. The emotion of life is what interests me; how it feels.Continue reading

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13 February 2013 Writing Courses In Spain

Writing Courses In Spain

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How exciting, on a scale of one to ten, do you think it might be to be invited to go and run writing courses in Spain ? 9? 10? Nooooo!!! – it’s off the scale! Out of nowhere back in November, I was tentatively asked whether I would consider such a thing and it took me all of about -4 seconds to respond yes yes yes!

So, here are the details. On Saturday the 23rd March I am running the Beginners Writer’s Workshop and on the Sunday 24th March I shall run the Advanced Course which deals with the Marketing and Selling aspect of your book and getting your message heard far and wide.Continue reading

Filed Under: Being A Writer, Being In Business
8 February 2013 How Do We Set About Prioritising Workloads?

How Do We Set About Prioritising Workloads?

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I realise that there is the potential for this to be yet another article on particular techniques to make everything more manageable by scheduling emails to come in every 90 minutes or writing to-do lists but as usual it is the emotion of all of this that is of interest to me. We can all learn to develop techniques that enable us to work out what is most important to do but if we get honest with ourselves there are a whole heap of emotions that underpin the kind of decisions we make about where, what, how and why something has to be treated as more important than something else!Continue reading

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