I recently signed up for a project that Shelter is running. It’s part of World Homeless Day on the 10th of October. It has been years since I found myself homeless, but I wanted to use my lived experience to help others. There are about eight of us who have been brought together via […]
Category: My own addiction
Empath’s in Recovery
Are you in Recovery? Are you struggling, finding it hard to process your emotions and feelings? Have you ever heard of empaths? If not, have you considered you might be one? I had never even heard of the word empath until a few years ago. Whilst I had learned a lot about myself in my […]
Give people recovering from addiction a second chance
When the teachers at school asked me, “what do you want to be when you are older, what career do you want to pursue?” I didn’t have a reply because I didn’t have a scooby doo. All everyone talked about was qualifications this, qualification that! Personally, I didn’t see the relevance. Growing up, money had […]
Understanding my addiction and how it helped my recovery
What started, as a release became more of a habit. Unbeknown to me at that time, my repeated drug use was secretly rewiring my reward circuits in my brain, which had started to interfere with my ability to resist taking more. Which eventually turned into a dependency, or also known as addiction. Looking back, I […]
It is the best feeling in the world to be able to look back and see just how far you have come.
I try not to dwell on the past for too long. Over the years, I have worked hard at paying attention to the present in preparation for whatever the future may hold. That was until it came to writing this bleeding book. A couple of times, I found myself struggling to piece together fragments of […]
Connecting the Dots: Everything happens for a reason.
Today is a particularly poignant day. It is precisely 16 years since Dad took his last breath. I remember the day as if it was yesterday. Me and my sister found him on the living room floor in his flat, and despite looking like shit, he was in a positive mood. He reached out his […]
Hormones and the cycle of change – Part of a woman’s recovery that’s rarely talked about
Most people in recovery have heard Prochaska and DiClemente’s Stages of Change, but what about the monthly cycle. I have spoken to many women whose periods stopped during their using but came back with a vengeance when they started their recovery journey. “I mean as if us women don’t have enough emotional shit to deal […]
Letting go of Anger – The day I fell out of Love with writing
Haruki Murakami was quoted as saying that “once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive…But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in” This quote resonates with me, but what Haruki doesn’t mention […]
What was your Shirley Moment?
I watched Shirley valentine over Christmas; it was a welcome distraction from the boredom that comes in between Christmas Day and New Year, I laughed at her talking to the wall because I realised that used to me! I’ve always questioned everything; even as a kid, although I rarely voiced any of it because it […]
Christmas is coming… Check yourself before you wreck yourself
People look forward or dread Christmas day for many reasons, it can be an opportunity for relaxing or relapsing – you decide A Christmas Poem – By Fordy The pressure of family expectations. The awkward conversations with family members you speak to only once a year, Worrying about money, the money you haven’t got. A […]
