Courage Road
It’s raining this morning. That steady, relentless Spring rain that soaks everything and lasts all day. On Monday and Friday mornings, I walk to the gym for my PT session, and then walk home again via the local coffee shop. I get my almond flat white and wander home along the stream, sometimes stopping to meditate somewhere along the way. …
It’s been a while. My life has changed so fundamentally that I haven’t known where to start, or how to even begin to convey the shift without losing everyone immediately. (Before we go any further: no, I didn’t find Jesus. Even worse.) The background Almost a year and a half ago, I was finally diagnosed with a skin condition on …
My touchpoint for happiness has always been my grandparent’s house. It’s my lodestone, my central point. My spiritual hearth. It’s the place where I was happiest and my mind was quietest. It held all the things I thought made a good life — the sound of the wind in the pines, sun-warmed veggies and fruit picked off trees, lambs being …
I had a cup of tea before I met my second child. A cup of tea and a piece of toast with jam. It was the best cup of tea and the best piece of toast I’ve ever had, even though the toast was hospital-cooked cold white bread and the tea was in a styrofoam mug with UHC milk from …
If I had to describe Luca in a word, at two months and one week old, that word would be “sweet”. He’s sweet. Like Nico, he’s happy almost all the time, but his happiness is different: Nico’s is active; it comes from entertaining and being entertained. Luca is social too, but he’s a smiler and a chatterbox rather than a …
I was due on the 23rd and born on the 30th. Luca was due on the 23rd and born on the 30th. He has Diogo’s nose, but my pale skin and hands and ears. His eyelashes are lighter than the rest of us but equally as long, and they curl up at the ends instead of sticking straight out. Maybe …
“I’m not thinking the way I used to think. I can feel it most strongly when I’m reading. Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I’d spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That’s rarely the case …
Twitter is now the place I go when I need something to make me furious at everything. Today I read an entire thread of men arguing over why work/life balance is a myth, and marathon hours and working weekends are fundamentally necessary if you want to be a success. Look at Elon Musk, they said. Look at Mozart. Newsflash, fellas: …
And just like that, he’s one. A whole year old. Yesterday I looked at the first photos we took of him — that wrinkled, purple, cone-headed little beauty with his treacle-slow limbs and his crooked stare. He looks exactly the same and nothing at all alike. A year on, he needs a haircut. His hair is blonder than expected, and …
Lately I feel like I’ve been hearing people say “it’s hard work, but it’s rewarding” a lot. Or “it’s hard work, but it’s worth it”. Maybe it’s because I’m (for obvious reasons) talking to a lot of mums about mumming. But I’ve also heard it about writing, about sport or music, about craft and hobbies. It’s hard work, but it’s …