I spoke at something this week without the parachute of speaking notes. When I began public speaking as part of my work a few years ago, I’d be sick with nerves from the moment I booked the talk into my diary. I’d have every single word written out in 14 point font – an enormous […]

Legend has it that ancient Greeks (I promise this won’t be a history lesson), having arrived on foreign shores for battle, torched their boats on the beaches behind them. With no possibility of retreat, they had to succeed – or perish. It strengthened determination. (Now – I asked my military-historian husband about this, in the […]

My literary agent has been waiting for the synopsis of my teen trilogy now for a week-ish. Er, make that a fortnight. At least. This is the same trilogy that I started writing approximately four years ago – words tumbling onto the page like they were coming home, until ninety-eight percent of the first book […]

What is it about mums of multiples and their bring-it-on! attitude? All the twin-mummies that I know embrace life with a gung-go fervour. A few years ago, my best friend took her then 10-month-old girls to Europe, with her preschooler and husband because – well, they wanted to go to Europe. Another, with triplets, would […]

I write this at the end of a long, emotional day. One friend is fighting for the life of her baby girl – born too early, with a severe, congenital heart defect and other complications. Another is dealing with bi-polar depression. A third is supporting her husband through cancer. A fourth is promoting her role […]

I was chatting with someone recently who was bemoaning the fact that she’d joined a women’s group and everyone at it was condescending. No one spoke to her. No one smiled. When I asked if she’d spoken to anyone herself, she looked sheepish… Serendipitously, someone shared a quote on Facebook about making life less complicated: […]

Call it gut instinct, intuition, a ‘funny feeling’ or a hunch – but there are times when we all get the sense that ‘something isn’t right’. I’m fascinated by the possibility that we can ‘know’ something, without knowing ‘why’ – and I love pondering the thrilling, slightly spooky idea of just how far our amazing […]

I found out today that my friend’s husband has been diagnosed with cancer. She is pregnant with their first child. It’s an awful, awful thing – and she will be kept awake with this, at a time when she should be kept awake by butterfly kicks. It embarrasses me to admit that the night before […]

One of the women in my mums’ group began a 1500-piece jigsaw puzzle at the start of summer. Together with her step-daughter, she’s been plugging away at it each night after the baby is in bed and, two nights ago – they knew they were on the home straight. They planned to take it to […]

My daughters have been drip-fed a new Disney princess every few years since birth.  In the twelve years since my eldest was born, Disney conceived Ariel, Belle, Jasmine, Pocahontas, Mulan, Tiana (the studio’s first black princess who, it has been noted, spent much of the movie as a frog) and now – with its latest blockbuster […]

Worn out from the year that was? Emma Grey of WorkLifeBliss gives us her top 10 tips for work-life balance in 2011. 1.       Have a reason to leave Just as it’s easy to expand into a higher income, work can morph into the available hours.  If you consistently amaze yourself at how late it is […]

Recent news of the death of anti-anorexia billboard model, Isabelle Caro, came one day after I gobbled Portia de Rossi’s graphic memoir about her battle with anorexia in almost one sitting.  An Unbearable Lightness intrigued and terrified me.  De Rossi’s obsessive calorie counting, exhaustive exercise and waifish results seemed strangely juxtaposed with the delicious gluttony […]

A report released recently on the impact on children of having a working mum, tipped fresh fuel over the smouldering ‘Mummy Wars’ debate. Working mums have ‘higher maternal sensitivity’ than their stay-at-home counterparts, according to the University of Columbia’s report: First-Year Maternal Employment and Child Development in the First Seven Years. They ‘seek higher-quality childcare […]

As our thoughts turn towards New Year, we sometimes contemplate what we’d like to change about ourselves, and what we’d like to achieve in the year to come. When ‘resolutions’ are broken it’s usually because they haven’t been considered thoroughly, and then we feel disappointed in ourselves.  How much better would it be to come up […]