The Journal

On 28 February 2026, I was as shocked as many of you to hear about the latest turn of events in the Middle East. It's sadly becoming increasingly difficult to scroll through the news without feeling a tightening of the chest, a pang of anxiety, real fear or just pure helplessness. I regularly stare at my TV screen and think: 'What the fudge is happening now? What's the point of any of this? Why so much hate in the world?". And that's when I double down on the simple but powe

Have you heard of the Masaru Emoto's water experiments? It's something Dr Maxine Stead discussed on one of our retreats and I've been thinking about it ever since. In a nutshell, Masaru Emoto, a Japanese author and scientist, conducted a series of experiments in the late 2000s using distilled water in Petri dishes. Each dish was labelled with either positive words and sentences or negative intentions and was exposed to different types of music. From soothing melodies to harsh

‘The burnt toast’ theory according to moi. If you know me then you've heard me mention ‘the burnt toast’ theory. To me, it means that as caregivers, if we were to make some toast for our family and ourselves and if one slice was to be burnt, we would instinctively keep the burnt piece for ourselves and give the better toast to our family members. That’s the analogy I have been using for almost 20 years to say that we rarely put ourselves first. We often prioritise someone els

We are lead to believe that the festive season is all about family gatherings. Happy family gatherings, to be exact! The kind of Christmas get together we only see on TV. 4 generations of happy smiling people, milling around a dining table buckling under the weight of food and booze. The cutest puppy is happily snoozing in front of the open fire, rather than chewing your most expensive