I am profoundly grateful for the friends and mentors with whom I have been able to safely share my story. Such valuable relationships are not always easy to find. This is one of the reasons I offer, in my coaching, such a place for shame to die and to have opportunity instead to discover your …
Here is something I wrote some time ago when I was journeying through the effects of trauma. Desert Island “I’ve been shipwrecked, and now I’m stranded here on this desert island. I’ve learnt survival and self-sufficiency and can eke out a meagre existence. The gulf between me and the rest of humanity seems huge. It’s …
I posted before about ‘floods’ and our foundations. Here is a different image covering a similar theme. I found, in my own journey of recovery from childhood trauma, that the picture I had of my childhood turned out to be very different from the real picture. The image I had was much like a simple, …
I want to write some thoughts about the flooding we’ve experienced in UK this week. There has been tragic loss and heartache for people whose homes have been flooded or even partly washed away. These people’s lives will not be the same. In many ways, this is what it is like for those in the …
Have you ever climbed a mountain and, despite the weariness and temptation to give up, made it to the peak? On the occasions I have (well…UK mountains, although I guess they’re not ‘real’ mountains at all!) the views, the beauty, the tranquility, the sense of achievement has been exhilarating and wonderful. The world looks different …
I’ve heard it said many times that others can’t love you until you learn to love yourself (I may have even said it myself.) IT ISN’T TRUE! The way we learn to love ourselves is by others first loving us, showing us we matter and have value. It’s ok to need to be loved! We …
I posted a little before about shame. One of the effects of shame is that it causes you to want to hide your true self. You believe that if people see you – really see you – they will realise how defective or wicked you are and will reject you. It’s also true though that …
In nature, nothing is ever wasted. Even energy is never lost, it just changes form. This can be true of the things that happen in our lives. When we trust God, good can come out of everything. The Japanese art of Kintsugi illustrates this for me. Kintsugi is the art of restoring the broken pieces …
I expect many of you are familiar with the story by Hans Christian Anderson of the ugly duckling. Although only a fairy tail, this speaks about what shame can be like! Here is a summary of the story, taken from Wikipedia: “When the story begins, a mother duck’s eggs hatch. One of the little birds …
Continuing my posts about identity, here is an extract from some of the teaching notes from my ‘Finding the Freedom to Fully Live’ programme. This is part of a teaching on shame: Few of us would like to admit to carrying shame, yet very many of us do, perhaps without even realising it. Firstly, let …
