Having been forced to stay at home a lot, I have been lucky enough to discover Brene Brown, one of the many insightful woman who are making the headlines at the moment.  Her message is one of the need to embrace vulnerability in order to live a wholesome life.  The generalised concept of 'not enough' is almost epidemic in the western world these days, and it is this that drives many of us to unhealthy life styles.  My own two major feelings of not being good enough, and of not having enough money have influenced every aspect of my life.   When snow keeps me at home I worry about the money, and the not being good enough sops me promoting my new work.

Second to the 'not being good enough' is the 'fear of failure'; again an incredibly common affliction; and yet we all know that every 'successful' person has failed probably more times than anyone.  Gosh isn't it just so extraordinarily complex being human!!

Once this snow and ice has thawed, both in and around me .... watch out there maybe a lot of sounding opportunities coming your way...!

Like many people, I find that the time over Christmas and New Year can be difficult.  For a myriad of reasons this year was particularly difficult for me; but I'm not going to dwell on that here.  I want to share one of the enormous small positives which kept me afloat. 

After watching the Blue Planet programmes I felt moved to try harder to lessen my harmful impact on our precious earth, and I bought my self a bamboo toothbrush. 
It's not often that my mind stops still and one idea that passed through it was concerned with 'doing something different'.  I forget who it was now who said that the surest way to madness is to go on doing the same old things again and again. (or words to that effect)

So, an idea came to me that this Christmas I would do something different, I would be generous and give all the singers in my three Sing for Joy! singing groups a present.- a bamboo toothbrush, in the hope that one or two would feel inclined to change their own plastic habit, and so help me change the world.

The easiest thing would have been to buy online but I was particularly pleased to be able to 'shop local' and I ordered 100 toothbrushes through my local health food shop!  They were thrilled with me. 

As I bought, distributed and continue to talk about this very simple action the 'ripple effect' has been amazing and has been a vivid and concrete example of so many of my core beliefs;  (all of which get lost when a depression floods in). 

Perhaps Stephen Fry is the most famous person to say that he wouldn't be without his dark side, and I too know that mine is part of what makes me who I am.  But now each morning and evening as I clean my teeth I feel gratitude towards the bamboo toothbrush which helped me to discover the hidden gift of generosity.  May your 2018 be full of generosity. 

with love
Teresa x

As I develop the final touches to my new website I find myself with a mixture of excitement and trepidation.  This new aspect of my work has been 'something that I have wanted to do' for many years, so I am excited, but going public carries with it a degree of responsibility.

Like most of us, I am having to deal with the little voices we all get which say 'are you good enough?' 'do you really think that you can do this?'; but I know that in the end they will help me be more empathetic when I am encouraging other people to try things that they haven't dared to try before.

Even writing a blog is new to me, so I will need to learn how to do this well, but for now I'll just go public with these thoughts....