Elegy for Ellie
I sat with Ellie as she gently slipped into a deep sleep today. In fact, I had slept with her, worked with her, and cried with her for much of the last week. ‘Slipped’; ‘fell asleep’; ‘passed away’. So many euphemisms to avoid the difficulty, the permanency. What I mean is that Ellie died. For […]
Shared experience
I made a new friend yesterday on a plane. We bonded over a shared experience when our business class airline seats failed to turn into beds on our flight back from Rwanda – a very first-world problem, I acknowledge. We were complete strangers in Kigali – 4,000 miles later in London we had found common […]
As safe as houses
The desire for safety, for oneself and one’s loved ones, is deep-rooted in the human psyche. We go to great lengths to seek appropriate protection. The contemporary landscape reminds all too clearly of the impacts of this being brutally removed. Look at the Ukraine and Gaza for two horrific cases in point. Profound and shocking […]
What you resist, persists
This powerful and arresting statement originates from the work of Carl Jung, the famous Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology. In it, he provides the powerful insight that the more we try to avoid or suppress something, the more it will continue to exist, and even grow stronger. This is because resistance creates […]
