‘The hidden harm in ‘self-care’ may sound like a parody, but it is not an attempt to be either witty or clever, I am in fact being very serious.
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​For most of my life I have bought into a myth of such magnitude that it is impossible to either calculate or fathom the sum total of its catastrophic effects. It is a myth that is held almost universally and one that is encouraged and perpetuated by both men and women equally. Popular culture coined the term for this myth, ‘Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus:’ in a nutshell it describes the seemingly irrevocable differences between men and women. And up until very recently this is something that I simply took as gospel.

​I feel that there is so much to appreciate. For starters, I deeply appreciate my implicit trust that what I am about to write will flow effortlessly through me and this appreciation, in turn, leads me to appreciate all the choices that I make daily that enable words to come through me and not from me. Having said that I do also appreciate the fact that I am able to write well and in a way that makes the Ageless Wisdom very accessible to others. The appreciation that I have for my writing opens me up to yet more appreciation for all of those who have supported me with my writing over the years, not just through their encouragement but also through their wise counsel.

Last year my son bought me an orchid for Christmas. It was a fairly tall orchid, with a long slender stem and 5 magnificent flowers. When he gave it to me the flowers were in full bloom and they lasted for absolutely ages before gradually fading one by one and eventually dropping gracefully off. Having never owned an orchid before, I dutifully looked up what to do with my orchid and followed the instructions that I found, which said to cut the stem half way down after the last flower has fallen.

​When I was a girl I used to go to friends’ houses for tea (‘tea’ being a word in England that refers to an early dinner. My favourite tea was macaroni cheese and chips). Going to other people’s houses was always a bit odd, because other people’s families never did things quite the same as my family did; for example some Mums used to tell their kids to wash their hands before eating, which is something my family never did. So when issued with the command to wash my hands by someone else’s Mum, I would dutifully file into the bathroom with the other kids and copy the way that they waved their hands in the general direction of the taps. There was one thing however that most Mums seemed to have in common and that was the nagging suspicion that the kids had not actually washed their hands! Funny that!