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Anxiety. Who we are.

27/6/2020

One of the things coming up a lot in conversations is people feeling held back by their thoughts - thoughts about not being confident enough; thoughts about what happened yesterday and thoughts about what’s going to happen tomorrow, thoughts about coming across too arrogant or too humble.

Standard psychological or coaching practice is to look at these thoughts and try and understand why they are presenting, or how they could be replaced by other thoughts. For anyone who’s ever pursued these approaches you may know from experience that they can be fascinating, but ultimately exhausting, rabbit holes.

There is another place we can direct attention which is to look at what our (for example, anxious) thinking is actually made of. Ie. to ask: What, or who, are we? It’s a profound, yet simple exploration which will reveal that:

1. for definite: we are not only the content of our thoughts. How can we be when there is nothing static or stable about any of the thoughts which pass through our mind?
2. we are not only the observer of our thoughts – how can we be, as who then, is observing us observing our thoughts?
3. awareness (of ourselves, our thoughts, objects, other people) is the only thing which never changes, never leaves, is always consistently present.

In other words: we are not our thoughts; we are not the observer of our thoughts, we are the space in which thought - the ‘idea’ of all objects (including a self) - arises and collapses, arises and collapses. Nothing more, nothing less. And if that is the case: if we are the all, in which, and of which, and as which everything occurs and is ‘made’, then we are not anxious, we are anxiety; we are not thinkers, we are thought. ‘We’ are a thought. And that anxious thought when it occurs may be a temporary expression of us, but it is not who we are.

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The purpose of life...?

25/2/2020

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Ever spent nights with thoughts racing through your mind, unable to sleep?

Ever spent time dreaming about writing a damning email to your boss's boss, shaming your boss for all the ways they've made your work-life miserable?

Ever WISHED you could leave 'now' and teleport yourself some place else?

Ever got so anxious that you've felt like you're losing your mind?

A client was just telling me how the thoughts going round and round in their head are driving them crazy; that they're tired of rehashing the past, and trying to envision the future; that they'd like to 'live more *now*.

We got to talking about the crazy space our minds can take us to with wishful, grass-is-greener - if *only* this situation/person/feeling were different I'd be happier - thinking.

And the peace that exists in presence. The peace that exists when seeking something else stops.

Oh, yes, ‘being present’: that's a good one when your mind is spinning out of control and everything about the present, seems unpleasant.

But what if there is actually ONLY presence? What if there is nowhere else?

What if we're trying to run from the present, but there is no difference between us and presence: we are it?

Well then.

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Rest Here, Now.

12/2/2020

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It’s tough realising there isn’t an idea, perspective or strategy that can once and for all stop the dissatisfaction, restlessness, the not feeling enough; the not feeling now is enough.

Sure, we can titivate. We can play with ideas and perspectives and strategies. We can talk about what you wish were different, how you’d like to be different, how you’d like others to be different.

And then, and then, and then....?

Will you ever find it? That which you seek?

Perhaps temporarily.

And then?

Will it be enough? Will it last?

... Back to ideas and perspectives and strategies and regimes and wishing things were different and not feeling enough.

And then, and then, and then....?

You ARE what you seek.

Sound new-agey?

Don’t look away.

This, Now, is what you seek.

Sound too hard to understand? Too simple to be of use?

Rest Here, Now.

It goes against everything you’ve been taught and everything you’ve been told needs to be done.

Rest here, now.

I’m with you.

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A more steady version of me and you?

12/2/2020

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I used to think there was a more steady version of me.

I used to long for less ups and downs, less anxiety, less rehashing of the past and trying to predict the future.

I realised that rehashing of the past and attempting to predict the future was all in an attempt to keep me safe.

From what?

I thought it was from what other people think of me, but actually, when I looked deeper it was from what I thought of me; from what I might think of me.

It was exhausting and ineffectual. I never became more steady or less anxious, or more perfect at doing the job of being me.

In fact, I eventually became ill.

I used to think there was a more steady version of me.

And I wasn't wrong. There is. And of you.

A more entire, complete version of you and I than you or I could ever imagine.

---

The biggest challenge we face is realising that what we think is us, isn't us at all. It's a tiny tiny piece of an infinitely massive completeness. And even that is a red herring.

The reason it's a red herring is that there is no end or beginning to who you are, so to say you're a tiny tiny piece of an infinitely massive completeness is contradictory and misleading.

----

There's no end or beginning to who you are thing might sound fanciful and/ or confusing. However, take a look at your experience and you may see something surprising. (And by the way, right now, I'm not talking about no end and beginning to Kate, well I am, but let's forget about Kate for a minute.)

When you look around you probably think that there's you, and then there's stuff - mugs, children, husband, walls, a door. And there are, but when you think about your experience of those things: none of them has ever been experienced by you without you. Or in other words, have you ever had an experience of any of those things without you being in the equation? Could you know any of those things independent from you? Could you experience any of those things without you being involved? The answer of course, is no. Experience of those things, knowing of those things, requires you.

Yes, I can think about my son at school right now, but that experience of him doesn't exist without me. He doesn't exist for me without me. (And let's not get into the yes buts: ‘Does he exist for other people without me?’ The only way I'll ever get an answer about that is with me in the equation experiencing asking the question to, for example, my mum, so again, my experience of him is via my experience of her experience of him….)

There's no getting away from the fact that I can't experience anything without me there.

No distance between me and everything I experience?

Then who I am IS experience; the space in which experience arises, the space in which it is known. All of it. None of it.

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Parenting Overload? End of.

3/7/2017

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Photo by Ryan Al Bishri on Unsplash

Do you ever wonder what the heck you’re doing with this parenting malarkey... If you’re getting it ‘right’? If you’re doing better/worse/the same as other people? Whether you’ve just drawn the short straw….? Why it is you can’t seem to cope more slick-ly (or more grown-up-ly, in my case occasionally... er, hum...) with a tantruming child?

Parenting books have us believe there’s a way to ‘find’ more balance, more peace of mind; that there’s a ‘magic bullet’ for dealing with tantrums, to feeling more in control.

Such books can set us up for a lifetime of feeling there’s something we need to ‘know’ or somewhere we need to ‘get’ with our parenting, to feel we’ve really got this thing down.

I’m here to tell you: you don’t need them.

All you need is two (and they’re really one) self-evident truths.

TRUTH #1:

It's NORMAL to feel overloaded by this parenting malarkey.

It's normal that some days we cope better than others.

It's normal that sometimes we love being parents and other days we wish we could just crawl back under the covers and pretend it never happened.

It's normal that some days we feel like we have time, love and attention to give to our kids, and other days we feel distracted, frustrated, impatient, and struggle to ‘Find The Love’.

These things - these, different experiences of parenting - are normal: because we're human.

TRUTH #2:

And this is the biggie (and for me, the game-changer, or at least the: drop-the-beating-myself-up-for-EVERY-SINGLE-THING-I-DO-THAT-I-CONSIDER-UNDER-PARR-AS-A-PARENT - er):

We human beings experience a kaleidoscope of emotions and feelings according to whatever energy is running through us in any given moment.

We don’t control that energy.

Therefore, and THIS IS CRUCIAL:

We don’t control what energy we bring to the parenting party in any given moment.

What we DO have available to us, is the possibility of seeing that THAT: -

we’re feeling whatever energy is running through us in that moment -

IS ALL that is ever happening when we’re having a ‘sh*&’ day or struggling to find the love for a tantruming child.

The reason we feel panicked, or angry or like all our emotions are backing up in a dead-end alley and we’re about to explode the pressure is building up so much, is that that happens to be the energy that is running through us, that we’re ‘feeling’ in that moment.

What we’re feeling has NOTHING to do with what’s happening outside of us.

It simply can’t have, because sometimes my daughter is having the biggest meltdown and I feel the utmost compassion for her; other times I feel like giggling at the absurdity of some of the lengths she’ll go to keep the tantrum going; and other times I feel like screaming and having a tantrum myself.

Pretty much the same tantrum from the three year old: completely different reactions from (the schizophrenic -seeming) mother.

So IT CAN’T BE what’s happening out there making me feel what I feel.

I feel what I feel when I feel it, according to whatever energy is running through me in that moment.

End of.

So what?

Give yourself a break:

THIS IS LIFE:

There IS NO MAGIC BULLET - much as parenting books will have you thinking there is, and those same books will have you endlessly berating yourself that you haven’t managed to find the ‘bullet’ or utilize it yet.

See the truth of what I’m saying.

Stop looking for WHY you lost it in that moment; WHY you didn’t have better to give - or to bring - to the situation; WHY you added fuel to the fire of a tantruming toddler when ‘you could have taken the higher ground’. (God, I’ve been there and I KNOW doing that kind of analysis doesn’t necessarily stop me doing it: it might, it might not; it depends what energy is running through me the next time around).

All I know is that the more I try to look for WHY I can’t parent better - more easily, more calmly, more consistently (ie. less like an out of control maniac), the more I try to look for reasons as to those things, the less chance I’m going to see what’s REALLY going on when I’m struggling, and what’s REALLY going on when I’m not struggling, and having a ‘good parenting’ day.

Because, both those experiences of parenting: the struggling experience and the ‘I got this’ experience, and all the experiences in between, come from the same place; from the energy running through us, moment to moment to moment.

There is no connection to what happens out there and how you feel in any given moment (even though it might really, really look like it). Look again at my example of the tantruming daughter and all my different 'reactions'.

The only connection to how you feel in any given moment, is what energy happens to be running through you in any given moment.

Again: end of.

There is no more need to look for any other explanation, or any other ‘solution’, because this is the only one.

End of.

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Beneath the Veneer

9/6/2017

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I've got a ridiculous bubbling excitement about life in me at the moment.

And I know where it comes from.

It comes from seeing deeper into what life is.

What and who I am.

What and who you are.

What and who we all are - all of us, all of it.

A L L O F I T.

I don't mean I've become some kind of quantum physicist or done an Eckhart Tolle and sat on a park bench for a year or suddenly understood *intellectually* how the whole thing works.

What I have had is a taste of the feeling, the knowing one gets when one sees beneath the veneer of all the bollocks we tell ourselves is true about ourselves, about other people, about the world, about who we are and how life works and what we need (and don't need) to be okay, to feel the way we want to feel, to keep our made-up-selves 'safe'

Pheugh! I feel exhausted just thinking about all the thinking and efforting that goes into keeping all that bollocks in place.

Some of it - the running commentary in your head - you might enjoy.

Some of it you might not enjoy.

No matter.

All of it - everything we think about ourselves, others, the world - is COMPLETELY and UTTERLY MADE UP.

The 'good' stuff, the 'bad' stuff, the enjoyable stuff, the hard to handle stuff and all the stuff in between.

You're not enjoying life as much as you'd like?

Look beneath the veneer.

It's not difficult.

It's not time consuming.

It's yours for the taking, and the understanding.

This is not just for 'enlightened' folks.

This is human and real.

This is important.

That feeling bubbling is freedom, and excitement and love and compassion and energy and stillness.

And yes we get to experience those things ‘already’, on and off, during our daily lives, even with ‘the veneer’ in place.

On and off.

'When the circumstances are "right"' - (a sunny day in the park with friends, a promotion, a windfall, a mountain top, buzzing in a club, relaxation at the end of a yoga class).

Well that: 'I feel good when the circumstances are "right"', is bollocks too.

It's not about the circumstances.

It's NEVER about the circumstances.

This feeling. This 'knowing' is WHO YOU ARE (even while all the shouty, whispery, insidious, nice, not nice, made up bollocks runs through your head; even when the shit hits the fan, even when your baby dies, even when you lose your job, even when you haven't got a fucking clue what's going to happen next, financially, romantically, anything-ly).

This knowing was there when I was crying on the phone to my husband yesterday about, I'm not sure what? An overwhelming sadness, I couldn't quite put my finger on.

This knowing is there this morning when I'm wandering around the house in my pyjamas, doing fuck all with my precious kid-free time, eating chocolate biscuits for want of any better ideas. (A one off, clearly. Actually, who am I kidding ;))

This knowing made yesterday utterly magical even though it was utterly ordinary.

If you're curious. If you're tired of the feeling of not feeling right about your job, about your relationship, about yourself:

Look beneath the veneer.

It can feel wobbly and scary to blow up everything that you feel is holding 'you' in place. But I can promise you, it's worth the leap.

You don't disappear.

The bollocks gets stripped away.

And what's left is contentedness, creativity, confidence, resilience, capability, loving-ness, wise-ness.

All the things the bollocks was valiantly trying to conjure up and hold in place to keep you okay, happy, safe.

It's ALL ALREADY THERE.

Save yourself the efforting:

Look beneath the veneer.

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Some super good news (if you’re up for it)

13/3/2017

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Human beings do not have the capacity to change their feeling state at will. Which is super good news (if you’re up for it) because it means we can let go of trying to manage life to make us feel a certain way.

Us humans love to think we’ve got this thing under control. We love to think we know how things work. We love to think we know that if you do this and this, you get that.

But that’s not how it works. Not how it works, at all.

We so badly want to feel that we’ve got this; that we’re in control of this little - infinitely masoooof - thing called Life.

We do our damnedest to convince ourselves that if we work really hard at doing life ‘right’; managing our thinking right, making the right decisions, making the right parenting choices, we’ll keep whatever it is we’re afraid of: death, shame, ‘failure’, at bay.

We really (like to) believe life works like that.

I too have been caught up in the idea that I can bend life to my whim in that way: if I pay attention, learn from my mistakes, if I notice what works and what doesn’t, I can slowly find a way to an easier, nicer way of doing life.

That way of living builds expectations, which - when you look carefully - get dashed all the time.

An extreme example of this is someone lamenting on hearing about a cancer, or death of a loved one: ‘But…., I did everything right, I was a good person, I tried to do the right thing by people all my life, and THIS happens…?

MIND BLOWN

I found myself commenting to a friend yesterday that when I wake up in a bad mood, noticing I’m in a bad mood often helps shake me out of it.

But on more exploration I realized that actually some days I’ll notice I’m in a bad mood, and I head into a worse mood, or my mood stays the same, or it improves. There is no predictability. There is no cause and effect.

This kind of blew my mind as I realized I’d been playing the age-old game humans like to play of looking for ‘reasons’ why things happen to help explain our experience:

‘You do this, you get that, you do that you get this.’

IT DOESN’T WORK LIKE THAT (shouty capital letters for my own benefit …)

THERE IS NO CAUSATION between something you do, or something someone says to you, and how you feel as a result.

Meditation does not make you feel a certain way.

Chocolate cake does not make you feel a certain way.

Think about it: sometimes you meditate and you feel amazing afterwards, other days you feel the same, other days you feel worse. Same with chocolate cake: sometimes you LOVE the experience of eating it, sometimes you feel guilty, sometimes you don’t have an opinion – you’re too busy nattering or watching Netflix to notice.

What determines how we feel in any moment is energy.

The formless energy which moves through us, animates us, keeps us breathing and our hearts beating. It’s the ebb and flow of that energy which gives us our experience. And WE do NOT control that.

(If you really want to get into it: there is no ‘we’ because we are that energy - non-duality, oneness and all that jazz.).

Human beings DO NOT have the capacity to change their feeling state at will.

Which is super good news, if you’re up for it, because it means we can let go of trying to manage life to make us feel a certain way.

Because it just doesn’t work like that.

Take that news to heart and (in my experience) two things happen:

Your mind gets kind of blown apart
You can sit back and enjoy the thrill-ride.

So watch yourself meditate, or not meditate. Eat the chocolate, or not eat the chocolate.

There is no holy grail to feeling the way you want to feel.

All you ever feel is the flavor of energy moving through you, moment to moment to moment.

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You are not you

10/3/2017

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You are not you.

You are a pile of formless energy.

You are also you of course, but the you you think you are, is just that: the you you think you are.

And that can change in an instant.

Don’t think it can’t.

You’re taught in school, by teachers, by mass media and by marketing that it can’t, but it can.
In an instant.

So don’t ever feel boxed in by what people, or you, think you are. You are so much less fixed than any of that. More ‘less fixed’ than you can ever believe or know.

You see what you really are, and the you that you are shifts. Again and again and again. And there’s fun and freedom in that. Not fear.

You hold onto who you think you are. You repeat behaviours which thwart your work in the world, which thwart your relationships – all for fear of who you’d be without the thoughts of who you think you are holding you - the you you are today - in place.

That you you're trying to protect with recycled thoughts of who you are doesn't exist.

Look in the direction of who you really are. Be open to it. Be free.

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Love - the only Personal Guidance System you'll ever need.

10/3/2017

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There are times in my life when I've allowed my Personal Guidance System (PGS) to guide me effortlessly.

('Effortlessly?!!', my husband cries: 'You kept me hanging for 6 months!').

Okay, so not *effortlessly*.

But the decision to marry, in the end, did *feel* effortless - ONCE, I let my intellectual reasonings take a back seat and let my PGS go to work.

It seems to me it's the human condition to tussle with the intellect from time to time (okay, make that a lot of the day - or at least it certainly used to be for me...).

But what I love seeing more and more is that the quiet voice of my PGS is always there, if I'm willing to listen. And the willingness to listen is becoming more of a default, as, having played with it, and tried and tested it, it never lets me down.

When I'm in struggle or in discomfort and not sure how to proceed, it's a sure sign it might be time to turn to my PGS for guidance.

A common point of struggle or discomfort could be feeling stumped by my four year old's behaviour, but it could equally be feeling confused as to how proceed with a challenging relationship, or feeling stumped as to how to make a decision.

The quickest way to access my PGS' wisdom is to ask consciously or unconsciously, out loud or just in the quietness/ tumult of my mind:

'What would love do?'

The answer is always absolutely obvious. Clear as day. And normally quite straightforward.

What would love do?

This.

And this.

And this.

My very own Personal Guidance System in motion.

The intellectual wranglings can be addictive. And part of our journey. Nothing wrong with them if that's the way things go in that moment.

But if you ever want out of the exhausting circling thinking - try out your own PGS - we all have one.

Ask yourself:

'What would love do?'

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The end game of parenting

10/3/2017

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You know how you hear about a parent's love for their child being unconditional?

Well not this one, not me, not yesterday.

I woke up after (another) shorter than I'd like night's sleep and my husband watched as I played a rather pathetic game of, 'I'll behave like a grown up, when you do', 'I'll be nice to you, when you're nice to me', 'I'll love you when you behave 'right'', with my 4.5 year old son, in the kitchen, over breakfast.

The conditional love game, not the unconditional one.

To be honest, in that moment, that's the best I had. Not proud of it. I wish I could parent better in those moments, but that was the best I had.

I have a friend and colleague, Phil Goddard, who talks about love a lot - it makes things really simple and really clear:

When all there was, and all there ever is, is love, there isn't all that much to say: we're in it, we are it, and how to live and be suddenly doesn't require all that much thinking about, the way forward and the way to be, magically presents itself.

In essence: the end game, and the game, of life, is love.

*(Check out Phil's work, because he, and it, are rather wonderful).

After my performance in the kitchen yesterday morning, I was feeling disheartened and out of control. I brought my feelings up with my husband in the car last night and what he said took me totally by surprise.

The conversation went something like this:

Me: 'I feel like I'd know better what to do and how to react [re. dealing with our son] if I knew what the end game was?

My husband [Without missing a beat]: 'What if the end game is love?'

Oh my. *What if the end game is love*.....?

That stunned my racing mind to silence.

What if the end game is love?

If the end game is love, then....

then.....

Many things.

I realised I'd been wanting a guarantee that whatever effort I put in to my parenting was going to result in the desired result: a perfect son, a perfectly running household (yesterday morning, I honestly thought, THAT was what the end game was).

I suddenly saw that if all human experience happens in the present (even our experience of the 'past' and 'future'), well then the 'end game', the purpose of my interactions with my son, is in every moment.

And if the end game is love and it's happening in the moment, then all I have to do each moment is love. And I am love, so there’s not actually anything different I need to do.

If the end game is love, and I am love, then I don't need to come up with some kind of clever 'strategy' to 'manage' my son.

If the end game, if the whole purpose of my interactions with my son, is love, and I am love, well I can do that right now, in the best way I can.

And sometimes that might look like out-of-control shouting, and sometimes that might look like a hug, but if the end game is love and I am love, I'm already there and I'm already doing it (though to an outsider, who doesn't get the 'Love' thang, it might look like a possible case for social services/ Samaritans/ strong gin ;) ).

And if all of that is the case, then I can stop looking for a 'better strategy' and focus my energy on being in the moment - living this crazy life and being in it. Not wishing it were different or he were different or I were different.

Because that's where all my energy goes when my thinking goes in that direction - out of the present moment and away from reality.

And we CAN do reality - (we can't do future thinking very well, that's exhausting, my state of mind yesterday was testament to that) - but we CAN DO moment to moment to moment reality, really, really well. However tired we are.

I think I'm almost saying, and almost seeing, then, that love is presence.

Not always perfect, not always pretty, not always controlled, and not always what you might think of as 'love',... but present, and 'in life', and responding, and doing it's (and my) best with the thinking I have in the moment.

And I think, what I'm realising (slowly, and again and again and again), is that I am always going to be dipping in and out and in and out of the present moment, in and out and in and out of that 'flow' state where things feel effortless and thought-less and things just come through us (the good the bad and the ugly).

It is entirely, human nature.

I think what I'm remembering and what I'm realising is that (once again(!)), the reason I've been struggling of late with my thoughts about my son's behaviour and my response to it, is that I've been lured away from reality by an expectation that life should be different than it is; that parenting should be easier, that my son should behave better, that I should be coping more gracefully.

Sure, all those things would be nice; those would be my preferences - and it's cool to have preferences - but I also have to remember that as soon as preferences become conditions for me to love my son, my life, me... I'm heading down a sticky road, a road of disconnection from what's actual, and what's real, and away from love, and it's answers, and that way madness and dis-ease, and dis-comfort lies.

The pain I was in yesterday wasn't coming from what was happening in reality in the kitchen, it was coming from my thoughts about my son, my parenting, my imperfect life.

Whenever I go there - away from reality, away from the answers that presence, the present, and love, present - I will struggle.

And what's interesting to me - in this moment - is that, paradoxically, we (I) put those conditions on life because we're not comfortable with accepting the discomfort of the moment. But there literally IS no discomfort when we are FULLY present (there is no anxiety, disillusion, frustration in the centre of the present moment - those only come when we leap forwards and backwards with our thinking and lay judgment on our perception of reality).

It's okay for life to feel uncomfortable.

It's okay to struggle and to wish you were somewhere else, had an easier son, had a better parenting technique.

It's so so normal.

But for me, the thing that's helpful to practice is being okay with the discomfort of an 'imperfect life'.

Because the more I stay in it, the more I see that the imperfection is not imperfection at all, it just is; any ideas of imperfection come from me.

I can choose to live in the 'un-reality' of the imperfections, or when I remember, head right back to the present where none of that exists.

My choice. When I remember.

I'm under no illusion that I'll likely have (many) other moments of raising my hands to the sky and wishing into existence a magic solution to this parenting malarkey.

But I hope to remember more and more, as I did this morning, that we actually already have one:

The more I and my husband can channel love, can be *in* love, with our selves, our lives, our boy, then the answer, the way forward, in each moment (even the most sticky ones), magically presents itself.

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<<Previous

Anxiety. Who we are.

The purpose of life...?

Rest Here, Now.

A more steady version of me and you?

Parenting Overload? End of.

Beneath the Veneer

Some super good news (if you’re up for it)

You are not you

Love - the only Personal Guidance System you'll ever need.

The end game of parenting

Kate Barsby

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