After taking Lydia on our woodland walk this morning, I visited a friend in the village this afternoon.
We met through a befriending service and it feels like one of the best things I’ve done since I retired from doing paid work a few years ago.
The service sets clear parameters, which means that I visit once a week for two hours a week. This has been good for me as I’ve had a lot going on in my life and I tend to try and do too much.
The friend who I visit has dementia. She forgets things, struggles to concentrate and has lost a lot of confidence. She has also lost through death the people who have been dearest to her in her life. I’m not a counsellor, nor a carer, but I do try to reassure her and rebuild her confidence.
We usually have a few laughs when we’re together; she’s got a great sense of humour and a very kind heart. It was lovely today to see her little cat cuddling up to her. It was like the cat wanted her to know how much she loves her. That was how I saw it, anyway, and I told her so.
Coming home, and having not had any lunch, I ate a large bowl of salad greens that another friend has given me, freshly grown by her. With some ‘French’ dressing – made from grain mustard, Italian olive oil, balsamic vinegar and a sprinkle of brown sugar – they tasted delicious. A healthy snack to top-off a lovely afternoon. Even better – my partner is making us humous for tea.
Lydia is lying quietly by the open back door – she’s been outside again most of the day. She’s not in any hurry for her tea and neither am I. We can relax and enjoy some ‘Maggie and Lydi time’ too.
It was wrapped up in special packaging: a teaching and meditation morning at a Buddhist centre.
The teaching carried in it a message that helped me to put to rest something that I’d been struggling with for decades.
I’d thought, for a long time, that I would never be able to put right mistakes that I’d made in the past because they were too big; too major. I thought that I’d fallen and failed early on in my life and all my efforts to rebuild had failed too. Despite doing my best to push through on positives for a long time, it had never been enough.
Then, suddenly, there it was, in the teaching that morning. It was possible for me to put the past behind me and be happy in the present. All I had to do was develop a calm and peaceful mind.
That teaching gave me hope, when I needed hope, and I’ve been building on it ever since.
That doesn’t mean that I am suddenly happy and joyful all the time. You don’t go through a lifetime of struggling with complex mental health and emotional difficulties without that struggle alone taking its toll. But I now allow myself to feel lighter, have stopped berating myself, stopped feeling responsible for everything that goes ‘wrong’ or has gone ‘wrong’ in the past.
For a long time, friends have told me that I deserved to be happy, but there was something so badly hurt, and at such a deep level, that it’s taken a long, long time for that place of hurt to be finally exposed to a point of healing, and for that healing to start taking place.
Tonight is a meeting of the Buddhist group that I go to, which is an outreach from the Centre that I went to last year[i].
I’ve already had a good day today, and I have that to look forward to this evening.
Lydia woke me at about 1.30am, with a gentle nudge from her nose.
I thought she must need to go outside for a pee but as I started off downstairs, I realised she wasn’t following me. When I went back into the bedroom she was rolled over, ready for me to tickle her tummy; give her a “rub-a-dub-dub” massage that she’s growing to love. So I did.
Now, I realise I probably shouldn’t be encouraging disturbances to my sleep in this way, but then again she asked so nicely, and I do think we are approaching a breakthrough position with addressing her anxiety. So, I give her plenty of “rub-a-dub-dubs” before reintroducing her to the idea of “sleepy time”.
This afternoon, I had a good play session with my steam cleaner. It’s almost as good fun as a pressure washer and the bathroom is now clean.
After a shower – in my now clean bathroom – and an early change into pj’s, I sat outside for a while, reading.
I finished the autobiography that I’ve been reading for a couple of weeks. It ended with an account of an inquest into the death of a family member. The writer’s loss is immeasurable, as is the courage and humanity shown by him and his family. Re-engaging with life, through grief, isn’t easy, but they are doing it. Every day, they are doing it.
I don’t claim to be a dog trainer or a mind trainer – I’m just a woman with a dog who writes a blog, and has written a book, about life, and about being glad.
I first heard about affirmations over 30 years ago, when I came across the Louise Hay book, ‘You Can Heal Your Life’. (Hay House, 1984)
Affirmations have helped me in my healing process, although I’ve had to do a lot of other things as well.
The affirmation that I connected with at that time was: “I am the love and beauty of life in all its manifestations.”
I didn’t feel like I was the love and beauty of life in any of its manifestations, but I kept saying it to myself, over and over again.
I’d had some persistent warts on my thumb for years and found no lotions or potions that did anything to get rid of them. They disappeared though, shortly after I started using this affirmation.
Coincidence? Maybe, but I don’t think so. The power of positive thinking is not to be underestimated, in my view. And my view does tend to be aligned with a lot of other views, including those embedded in Buddhist teachings.
During the Covid crisis, my affirmation of choice was, “I choose to be peaceful and calm; everything is unfolding as it should”. Some people laughed at me when I told them about this at the time, but it did help me to stay calm during Covid, even if I did go through some very ‘not so calm’ periods later.
Today, I am saying the Louise Hay affirmation, and also another that I came across online:
“My knee is healing and getting stronger, each passing day.”
I don’t have too much of a problem with my knees, at the moment, but they are a weak point for me, so I do exercises that a physio taught me, take a one-a-day vitamin and mineral supplement for joints, apply some ‘wear & tear’ lubricating fluid that I bought from the chemist, and say the affirmation.
I need my knees to be functioning and flexible so that I can keep walking and working with Lydia.
We go on our woodland walk this morning.
On the narrow path across the field, between growing crops, Lydia’s nose nudges the backs of my knees, but the lead is looser than it was the last time we did this walk. She seems much more relaxed, and this continues as we emerge from the field and start along the grassy path beside the wood. I do a few ‘about turns’ as I need to but she pulls very little. We make our way through the wood, which has a warm dampness about it from yesterday’s rain, heating up now with today’s sun.
At one point during our walk, Lydia looks up at me, mouth open as if she is smiling, and I think that she is telling me that she isn’t as afraid as she used to be. She is still alert to sights, sounds, smells, but she isn’t pulling away from me. I feel like we are more ‘together’ on this walk, today. Every so often I reinforce the “heel” command, using some dried food from her daily allowance, mixed with some treats to give extra value to her reward for being a “good girl”. I haven’t brought cooked chicken with me this morning; I’ll use that tonight when we have our evening training time.
Home and, after giving Lydia the rest of her breakfast allowance in her favourite food ball – which she pushes around with her nose to get access to the dried food pellets that I put inside – I get my own breakfast. It’s a late one and I have a busy afternoon planned.
For much of last year I had what I referred to as ‘Wellbeing Wednesdays’ because I used to take Lydia for a walk first thing, then go to a yoga class, then go for a psychotherapy session at 1pm, then, after taking Lydia out for another walk in the afternoon, go to a Buddhist teaching and meditation session in the evening.
Now I have ‘Mental Health Mondays’, with yoga and Qigong in the afternoon.
Qigong isn’t as well known as yoga, and I find both beneficial for both my physical and mental health. I wrote a blog post about Qigong a while back:
It’s good to be on the receiving end of congratulations, and to feel good about the publication of my book. I used to think that I could never feel good about anything to do with myself again. Now I can, and I do.
My latest piece of ceramic art, made out of stoneware clay. This and other works by me and 70 other artists and makers will be on show and for sale at the Saltaire Maker’s Fair, Victoria Hall, Saltaire, near Bradford from 24-26 May 2025:
“Tree of Love”, my latest piece, ready for the Saltaire Makers Fair at the end of May #saltaireinspired #saltairemakersfair
I’m struggling a lot with fear at the moment. Fear of the future; fear of uncertainty; fear of not being able to cope with whatever life challenges lie ahead.
I’ve coped with a lot of life challenges in the past but I was younger then! I used to put my head down, put my back into it, prioritise and push through. Now, in my 69th year, I know I can no longer do what I used to do. I have to do things differently; see things differently; find an approach to working through my fear that is in tune with my more mature status and circumstances.
I know that I have to believe that everything will be – is – OK. I also know that a lot of what I fear is in my head. I don’t live in a war zone or on the streets.
But when you’ve had to pick yourself up by the bootstraps and start again, and again, and again, it’s hard to believe that the pattern isn’t on repeat.
I’ve been working hard to learn my lessons, to change how I see and do things and to live in the here and now. The important thing is not to let the fear take over. This can be easier said than done, but I’m working on it!
The featured ceramic piece includes some Kintsugi repair work. This is a Japanese method for making a feature of a repair instead of trying to hide it. The idea is that the piece is even more beautiful than it was before.
My relationship with food has historically been a difficult one.
As a teenager I went on a strict diet – mostly made up of cottage cheese, crispbread, lean meat and fruit – to keep me at 7/71/2 stone. That was the only way I could feel reasonably good about myself and my body.
Even so, I didn’t think anybody could possibly find me attractive, and I struggled with a very limited life.
If I ever did ‘let go’ and start to eat anything even remotely fattening, my mood plummeted as my weight gained. The only way I could cope was to start restricting my eating again. I had no concept that help or support of any kind might be available; it was a very private and lonely struggle that went on until my mid-40s. After an almost catastrophic catalogue of failed relationships and career stalemate I realised that I had to push through the internal barriers, and keep going until I came out the other side.
20 years on, at 66, I believe I have finally arrived at that point.
I weigh five stone more than I did in my teens, and though I am aiming to steadily lose some weight this won’t be my starving myself – not just of food, but of life.
There are many factors and influences that have helped me to get through, not least in recent years that of my partner, Trev, who makes me feel beautiful just as I am, inside and out. That’s a great gift to get at any age!
I’ve taken on board Buddhist teachings of all kinds, with one fundamental phrase being an enduring fallback: “The mind is a muscle and it can be changed.”
I’ve had to fight and work hard to train and change my brain and was fortunate to find the fight associated with a strong survival instinct when I needed it.
That isn’t to say that I haven’t had moments of self-loathing that threatened to be overwhelming. But I kept looking for and finding ways to be positive, including reaching out to others who were also struggling in the extreme.
I still won’t try clothes on in a shop changing room, and feel no need to put myself through that ordeal. So while this may be evidence of ‘avoidance’ lingering in my psyche, it’s a minor issue as far as I’m concerned, and doesn’t get in the way of me living my life in a full way, including enjoying delicious food.
That does by no means mean that I now consider myself to be an ‘expert’ (whatever that means). However, for a long time I struggled to even form them, at any meaningful level, never mind knew what to do once I finally decided to jump in at the deep end, at the age of 24.
Up till then my life had been a relationship desert. Unlike my peers – who all seemed naturals to me – I just didn’t seem to have what it took. I had extreme social anxiety and – though I didn’t know then – depression, associated with an eating disorder and a fear of being laughed at, humiliated, rejected. So I put up walls to protect myself from what I, essentially, most wanted and needed.
Apart from an occasional snog and a few dates that did nothing to stir my emotions or hormones I thought I would never meet the man of my dreams, fall in love, be happy…
Of course, the idea of meeting someone took itself into the realms of romantic fantasy, giving me no experience of managing the reality. When I did ‘meet’ someone who I had a strong connection with, it was from a distance as he was with someone else. The distance got even greater when he went off to the other side of the world to be with her, and I lost my sense of hope.
I ended up marrying someone I hardly knew because he asked me! I’d just lost my job and I had been floundering without any sense of direction since leaving college two years previously – the eating disorder made it hard to concentrate on anything other than finding ways to take my mind off food – so it seemed as if fate had finally decided to go my way. Foolish, I know now. Or was it? Maybe it was, essentially, the only way I was going to learn to swim, by jumping in at the deep end. We lasted three and a half years before he said he wanted us to separate as I was ‘holding him back’.
It would have been good if we could each have gone our separate ways and found happiness with someone else. I did (after I had learnt many more hard lessons in life over many subsequent years). Sadly, he passed away while still a young man, although he had lived life in his own ebullient gregarious way up to then.
At the time when we split up I could have done with some counselling, to help me explore and start to work through all the issues that were suddenly thrown up in my head and in my heart. It was the 1980s then, though, and I hadn’t even heard of counselling.
Instead, I stumbled, crumbled, and fell into another relationship with a lifetime of unresolved ‘stuff’ still bubbling away. It can’t have been a good experience for my partner, I realise that now, although we both tried to make it work, and support each other in our different ways.
My internal volcano finally exploded when, after a joint business venture collapsed, my partner went off with someone else. The extremes of my emotions and state of mind from there went off the Richter scale and I had a breakdown (to put it mildly). I’d wanted eventually to start a family but, in my late thirties by then, I entered a period of significant instability on all levels.
I had to pull out all the stops to pull myself back from the brink and into functionality over a prolonged period and have only just completed a cycle of recovery that I started over 25 years ago.
During that time, I’ve reached out to and found many different ways of learning to live and love.
At one point I trained as a volunteer bereavement counsellor. The main model that the training was based on was the principle that, with support and time and commitment, the sense of loss doesn’t go away or get smaller, but your life can grow bigger around it. This resonated with me, and I’ve found that it has helped me to reach out and grow into an awareness of life that I wouldn’t have had if I hadn’t had to learn how to find a way through.
For over five years I’ve been in a relationship with a lovely, loving, funny, kind, clever man who also struggled with relationships when he was younger. (I think there must be a lot of us around.)
Even so, the final stages of my recovery cycle have not been easy; I have had to do more than tie up a few loose ends and threads. ‘Out of the blue’ my brain took me to places where it had stored memories from 40 years ago, locked away because they were too painful for me to bear before.
I’m well on the way to having worked through them now, thanks to having the loving arms and heart of my partner to help me feel the sadness that I needed to feel; that I wished I could have felt at the time, for myself and those I was involved with.
The sadness was worse, for having stayed so buried for so long as extreme trauma that hit me during my breakdown period: trauma associated with decisions I’d made; paths I’d taken. Edvard Munch’s painting, ‘The Scream’, just about sums up how I felt inside at that time; and then some; and then some more. The collage I made in 2001 presents my own version of that scream; the scream of the agonised soul.
Recently, I’ve come across The Hawaiian Healing Art of Ho’oponopono – Forever Conscious. It’s said that things come to us in our lives when we most need them and/or are receptive to them. I most certainly needed this and it was an utter revelation to me. It has helped me to heal from feelings of guilt that have haunted me for decades, all rooted in the difficulties I had in forming, managing and ending relationships in the past.
People had tried to reach me, and I had tried to reach out to them. Ultimately, though, I needed to reach within myself – however long it took – and find what I needed to find. I’ve been fortunate to be able to finally reach that goal from within the protective space of a loving relationship.
I think I’ve learnt a lot about relationships, including knowing how important it is to keep working at them, and know that there is always more to learn. Most of all though, I’m loving now being able to love and be loved. It is worth working for, however long it takes.
Red was the colour of your jacket on the chair – with slender, tender fingers curled around a tumbler – as you waited for me there on our first date
Red was the colour of my jacket too there was something about you – the mark on your cheek the way you held your head – it wasn’t love at first sight but I was happy for it to be something else instead
Since then our jackets have become a pair – your slender, tender fingers hold me now in bed – but I’ll always remember our first date when you and I both wore red
Glad About 
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