back up blog

In a bid to share what shapes me - as a writer and a businesswoman and a human being – I’m sharing my favourite online hangouts in this two-part series, Who I’m Reading (Always). Part one is here .  I believe you have to choose who and what will influence you in the same way that we choose what we’ll wear today or what we’ll cook for dinner. Essentially? That it has to be deliberate, and purposeful, to serve our best selves. So. To continue from where yesterday left off… My IRL tribe If you follow me on Twitter you’ll know that I link to both Wonderful You   and Girl Lost In The City multiple times a day. They’re my homegirls. I met both of them through blogging, and now there’s this incredible love-fest going on where we all have a different vibe but make projects similar enough that we use each each other for help, and support, and tech questions that really bore our other friends. Throw in Alexandra Cameron Photography and we're like the four points on a compass, working to g

I’ve been meaning, for the longest time, to tell you about my unwitting tribe – mostly women – whose presence online means my offline life is significantly bolder. More self-aware. Filled with increased bravery and joy and wondering and wandering. They make me more profitable, and business-savvy, too, because huh. You *can* make money in a heartfelt and authentic way after all. Who knew . They say not to judge a woman on what she reads, but rather on what she re-reads. If the world would like to go on ahead and assess me on these impeccable choices in Internet literature, then I will have secured a reputation far beyond what should be true. I’m sharing links to all of them because if you like reading me you’ll love reading these. I basically steal all their best bits. Don’t tell them. The Soul Speaker I’ve never met Meg Fee , and yet she knows parts of me that I never realised yearned to be understood. I read her for two years before she read me, and so in my mind she was my buddy waaa

“We know everything there is to know about you,” she said. “And we’re still here.” Damn. Isn’t that just the thing? That they are still here. That they were there when it was as bad as it ever was and have never left me since. And oh god, was it bad.  Not point-of-no-return bad, but… ugly. Mentally, I was the worst I’d ever been when we met. Still on anti-depressants. Sleeping with many (many) men. Crass and a bit rude, and mostly because I was scared. I didn’t know how to ask for help. How to be vulnerable. How to get over the dark by cracking myself open just enough to let in some light. They smashed me open and it was blinding. We danced on tables as the sun came up and ran into the waves of the ocean as the sun went down, too. They laughed at my jokes (liberally, which is, of course, my favourite) and made me crease up in return. They ordered drinks and hugs, depending on the time of day and what the occasion called for. We read to each other on train station floors , argued over

When I saw her face I recognised her as a friend. I was walking towards her and extending my arms, smiling and saying, “Jenny, right?” before it occurred to me that she was, in fact, a total stranger, and just because I knew her face from the Internet it did not actually mean that we were BFF’s. Kudos to her, my aggressive suggestion that we hug was met with good humour. That’s often the case, I’m finding. That when you act enthusiastic, you are enthusiastic: and that’s contagious. So there I was, holding on to a woman whose work I’ve read on the Internet for about five years, marveling at the good fortune that in all of the co-working spaces in all of the yoga villages in all of the world, she’d walk into mine. Because she does what I’m trying to do: makes money from being her badass self . Shall we use the word “solo-preneur”? No? Oh, okay. I was totally needy and made her agree to coffee with me and only retrospectively got embarrassed that I’d essentially assaulted her. God bless i

The point of it, she said, was to feel the pain. “We do the exact opposite,” she said, “In our lives. We shy away from pain, hold our breath when it happens – and that shortness of breath, it causes even more anguish for us. Physical, yes, but also mental. Everything is connected.” “When we shy away from our pain, the distractions we give ourselves only hurt us more, eventually.” I was lay on my left side with a tennis ball propped under my thigh. It dug into the flesh of my leg and pushed against the muscle. My whole weight was on it. Sweat dripped in thick beads down my spine, and prickled at my temples. A cockerel crowed outside of the hut. My partly-shaven legs bristled against one another. I closed my eyes and breathed as measured and evenly as I could. She was right – it hurt. Like a motherfucker. “Permit yourself to feel it,” she said. “And breathe into where it hurts. Accept the pain. Surrender to it. Ultimately, this is what will heal you. You wouldn’t know it was there to fix

I live in Bali, now. The idea came to me when I was in Siberia. (There’s two sentences that I never dreamt I’d type.) I’ll start at the beginning. The best thing that happened to me in 2014 was being let go from my job . That job held so many excuses for me. I couldn’t work on my book, because where was the time? I couldn’t travel, because I only got three weeks a year. Hell! I couldn’t even take a sick day without my pay being docked. I spent ten hours a week commuting on the central line – FORTY HOURS A MONTH! A WHOLE WEEK’S WORTH OF WORK! - spending my cash on £8.95 salads at lunch because “I deserved it”. It was inferred daily that my work had limited value. To not have an opinion. To not make a fuss. I was once, in that job, chastised in a meeting by the (male) director of the company for being, (and I quote directly), “too female.” TOO FEMALE! What the fuck does that even mean?! I’d made the “mistake” of starting a sentence with “I feel…” instead of “I think…” and as a twenty-som