18 May 2013 When is it time to shut up?

When is it time to shut up?

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Yesterday I spoke on BBC Radio Oxford about The Brightness of Stars and today I find myself paying the emotional price. I have an extensive emotional threshold but today I’m sat on its edge.

Kat was a superb interviewer and probably had as much knowledge on the subject of being in care as anyone would without direct or professional experience. So I was delighted that she wanted to hear more and had invited me to come and speak about my book, my experiences and my views, particularly in reference to vulnerable young people in care and the recent case of the Oxford Sex Ring.

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17 May 2013 Mental Health and Children In Care

Mental Health and Children In Care

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Yesterday I was invited to speak at the BASW Annual Conference “Giving Mental Health Prominence in Social Work”. It’s not a field I’ve worked in but I was asked to talk specifically about  mental health and children in care, something I felt able to do having worked in Leaving Care Teams for a number of years in the early part of my career and also in relation to my own personal experiences.

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13 May 2013 Exploring Food and Children in Care and Adoption

Exploring Food and Children in Care and Adoption

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Sally:  So Lisa, you talked on Woman’s Hour recently about the importance of food and taste to children in care, for those who didn’t hear the programme could you just explain?Continue reading

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5 May 2013 Food and Children in Care

Food and Children in Care

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One of the areas around having been in care that has always been of great fascination to me is the matter of food and children in care. My placements as a teenager are remembered through the lens of being able to centrally locate the experience via food. Each placement offers up images, tastes and meal time routines that will never leave me.Continue reading

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The Journey of Soul Journey

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A little insight into my book “Soul Journey” and some of the themes and areas of development covered….

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8 April 2013 If Life Is Making Choices, What Is Choice?

If Life Is Making Choices, What Is Choice?

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The current dialogues around ‘choice’ have been frustrating me for some time. So being someone who likes to think about what might be pushing my buttons I thought that I it was time to explore the subject in a way that made sense to me. Sure enough, the first thing that I discovered in sitting down to write about ‘choice’ is that it is complex and difficult to unravel, the button being that this is contrary to much of the ‘pop’ psychology and personal development rhetoric often found when exploring this which often glibly states that life is making choices. First button identified!Continue reading

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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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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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