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Dearest First name / One,

 

It is hard to write about anything right now, when so many in the world are suffering. And so my privilege of having a voice (and your ear, dear reader), as well as the peace and opportunity to communicate with you, feels like one I want to acknowledge. As some of you may know, in 2025 I trained to become a Work That Reconnects facilitator, based on the lifetime of teachings left by Buddhist deep ecologist, activist and systems thinker, Joanna Macy--and one of the things that has stayed with me when powerlessness threatens to overwhelm me is this: ‘Who do I want to be in this time?' Not, ‘Who do I want to appear to be?’ or ‘Who shall I try to be?’ but who do I want to be? It helps to move my ego out of the way and bring my deepest values of kindness, collaboration and compassion to the fore. And to remember that I have to be included in those, too. If there's one thing that childlessness has taught me, it is that joy and despair can co-exist…

 

So, with my health continuing to be troublesome and unpredictable, I've been lying pretty low during January, hibernating like the rest of nature in the Northern Hemisphere. However, deep underground, Spring has been working her way to the surface and, here in rural Ireland, the very first hawthorn blossom is appearing on the bare black twigs, and the earliest shoots of bulbs are sticking their green tongues through her dark, wet earth. I planted some daffodil bulbs last September, and I'm looking forward to the few that Puffin hasn't dug up beginning to show! 

 

Indoors, I've been quietly working on my planting schedule for my first full year of vegetable growing, and have ordered a gazillion seeds, which I'll now have to stop doing unless I want to register as a seed bank! One of the things illness is teaching me is to slow down and plan for things more carefully. Nature, as always, shows the way… 

 

One thing I did manage in January was an interview with Christopher Henze (Director: Wise Women) and Dominique Debroux (Producer: Wise Women), in which we discussed our reflections on their documentary ‘Wise Women: Humanity’s Untold Origins’ (2025). You can watch/listen/read our discussion here, watch a trailer for the documentary below, and watch the full film here (definitely worth the rental fee!)  

 

Once again, thank you to all of you who have enquired about my health. It continues to be a bit of a mystery to the medical profession, but I have a lot of tests coming up in February and hope to have more clarity soon.

This newsletter takes a day (at least) each month to write and produce. If you'd like to support my work, you can leave me a tip at BuyMeACoffee, and I'll probably do exactly that with it, no doubt, whilst also reading a book you've helped me buy :)

What is the Reignite Weekend? 
The Reignite Weekend is the transformational healing weekend that I created in 2012 (and ran personally 50+ times) in many different countries. It now continues with my team of licensed facilitators in London (UK) and Australia, and in 2026, for the first time in 4 years, I'll be co-hosting one too in Ireland (waitlist only). The testimonials continue to show that this weekend often marks a ‘before’ and ‘after’ moment in the trajectory of childless women's healing from the heartbreak of childlessness. Info, testimonials, booking links here.