The history of blind eyes.

In July 1938, the representatives of thirty-two countries – including the United Kingdom – met at Evian in France. They were posed with a problem: Germany, now five years into living under Nazi rule, wanted to complete their policy of judenrein (the idea that Germany and its ever expanding list of territories be cleansed entirely […]

My Last Post

It’s two completely separate conversations that start the chain of thoughts. The first one about what we choose – I choose – to share on the internet; the second a conversation about the importance of letting go of the past. When I think about it, it links to what I have long suspected to be […]

Why I think calories should be displayed on menus

The government, as I’m sure many of us are aware, has recently announced a new set of plans to reduce the rate of obesity in the United Kingdom. Whilst we know that nothing they ever do will actually have any sort of real effect on this because nobody can make changes for other people: willpower […]

What happened when I, someone with an eating disorder, downloaded popular fasting apps.

I had sort of been aware of the fasting apps being advertised on Facebook and Instagram, I suppose. I was aware that they were there, but it hadn’t really twigged because my pages always seem full of advertisements for diets (I guess that this is because I am a twenty-eight year old female who spends […]

The Trouble with Memory

Last night, my Granny fell and hit her head against a chair. She, I am assured, is OK. It’s just a cut and she’s not shown any symptoms of anything more serious since then. Recently, my Granny moved into a care home. She has dementia. Growing up, I saw her twice a week, every week. […]

Twenty Things

I saw a post the other day that basically made the point that today has been the best day of someone’s life so tomorrow might be the best day of yours. Coincidentally, it’s also five years to the day since I made the biggest, hardest decision of my life and began to eat and drink […]

Excuses excuses

Without doubt, we should all have patience and an understanding that people living with poor mental health don’t always find things easy. We should accept that we may need to do things slightly differently to accommodate them. It might be necessary for us to take on a little extra so that they can cope on […]

Why Black Lives Matter

All lives matter. But you wouldn’t offer the rope to everyone in the swimming pool if only one person were drowning. You wouldn’t give everyone the Heimlich manoeuvre in turn if only one person were choking. You wouldn’t even give everyone a plaster if only one person had cut their finger. Fair does not mean […]

Is it time to change the focus of mental health awareness week?

I remember going into the Group Room when I was inpatient and reading some notes from a staff training day which had been left out by accident. On a list of ‘hard things about this job’, someone had written ‘some people will never get better’. It’s true. Some people will never recover from a mental […]

Anxiety in the time of Coronavirus

When we found out that Covid-19 was a thing, it was pretty anxiety provoking. When we found out that Coronavirus was on its way to us, we reached various states of panic. Different for each of us, of course, but I doubt there were many people who didn’t lie in bed at least once thinking […]