Are you on a treadmill?

‘You don’t tell someone you love them; you DO things for them!’ This was the comment mum would often make after I told her I loved her. In truth, I would say this when she was angry because I wanted to prevent any punishment coming my way. I wanted her to love me. This was […]

The beauty of suffering

There will always be someone experiencing suffering in our world. The best we can do is offer temporary support in time of need, but mostly it is impossible to deliver others from their own pain. We can offer resources and put steps in place to help people, but we cannot make the steps for them. […]

Where does your power lie?

For a long time, I was afraid of having personal power. I had confused it with the control, or dominance of others. As a child, my father intimidated me; hence I associated power with coercion and fear. But as I matured my understanding changed. Now I see it as a personal need. You see, we […]

Is the BMI an accurate measure of health?

The BMI, or Body Mass Index is the most used method for establishing if a patient is obese and thus at risk of developing heart disease, diabetes, and related illnesses. To calculate the BMI, our weight is measured in kilograms and divided by our height in metres squared. But is it accurate? In an earlier […]

The end does not justify the means

In my early 20s I attended a church where I was told that God had allowed me to fall and twist my knee twice in three weeks to tell me to lose weight. Looking back, I can see this was a form of bullying. But what of the rationale behind this? The aim apparently was […]

Who are you?

For many years I tried to be someone other than myself. I wanted to be thinner, smarter, faster, but more than anything I wanted to be like a duck where comments just washed off me. This was fuelled by early trauma which had left a deep scar. I believed that I was unintelligent, and feared […]

It's not all about the weight

Fat discrimination is my personal bugbear. Just today I worked through some poor treatment I received recently. It was the usual type, you are not as good, valuable, intelligent, fast as everyone else here. In my first job, I was told that obesity made me think slower than others! Where is the logic in this […]

What is your body telling you?

Over the last three weeks I have done a course called Trauma Healing Accelerated by Dr. Aimie Apigian, a Functional Medicine Doctor. For me, it was deeply reassuring to have my journey affirmed. It was a lonely one, as is the nature of personal trauma, but I found people similar to myself in this course. […]

Happy International Women's Day!

Today is International Women’s Day and I am proud to say that I am a woman. Women are still undervalued in our culture and our contribution is often overlooked.   I grew up in a misogynistic environment where women were considered less valuable than men. In his memoirs, my grandfather placed greater value on his […]

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