In April this year, my wonderful mother came to visit me in Beijing. She hadn’t taken an international trip alone for a few years. Well, she hadn’t left Europe alone for something like 30 years. (Having kids changes things like that, I would think.) So she boarded a plane from Norwich to Amsterdam, Amsterdam to [...]
Tag: Life Lessons
Since you left me
Here is a piece I wrote a little over a year ago, sitting in a coffee shop in Beijing, recuperating after a disappointing afternoon and a tough first few weeks in China. After all the frustrations I'd come up against and the trying paths I'd trodden to get there, I hoped that maybe I had [...]
“Do hippies dye their hair?”
What's a girl to do the night before taking an international flight to an shiny metropolitan city she's never been to before? Other than prepare for the morning's classes, remember to water the plants, write a to-do list with a whiteboard propped on her lap... Why, dye her hair of course (and pack, packing should [...]
Does having leg hair make me less of a woman?
Last week I shaved my legs for the first time in 9 months. Why? I wanted to see if it made me feel like more or less of a woman.
25 Things I Did Instead of Getting Married at 25
The very fact that it is non-essential for the majority of people is possibly the most powerful element of modern marriage. Rather than becoming insignificant, it possibly means more than it once did, purely because it is so heavily reliant on individual choice.
Guilt and Regret: Practising Self-Forgiveness
We make ourselves feel guilty about all manner of things. Appearance, weight, eating, drinking, exercise, accidents, things we’ve said or done… I feel I have wasted days, months, maybe years of my life on guilt and regret. I tend to beat myself up about all kinds of stuff. I am ambitious and competitive. I hate [...]
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