I haven’t written anything for here for a while. Trying to stay alive during a pandemic in the absence of confidence-inducing leadership has taken up quite a lot of energy. Apart from surviving, I’m also trying to write something longer than these pieces, that involves reading and understanding other people’s points of view. I’ve disappeared […]
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Most days, I’ve seen newspaper and social media headlines about the impact of the pandemic on children and young people and arguments about how to make amends. Much of it is about how to help with an academic ‘catch-up’, with periodic reminders (usually initiated by the footballer Marcus Rashford) of the impact of the pandemic […]
Over the course of last week, after the last votes were cast in the 46th presidential election in the United States, many of us developed an increasingly problematic compulsion: a need to stay tuned to CNN’s rolling coverage, its interactive map and the graphics of votes cast that changed at glacial speed. For me, the […]
In one way or another, I have been involved in education for fifty years: as a pupil, a student, a lecturer, a parent, a PTA organiser, a primary and secondary governor, a trustee, a trust Chair and a school counsellor. From as early as I can remember I was aware that aware that people went […]
I. After this I’m writing the day after a second three week lockdown was announced here in the UK. While there was an inevitability that the first three week period would be extended, and for many it is a relief, it was another reminder that life has changed beyond recognition for most of us. In […]
Our kids are growing up and out: their peers matter more to them than their parents. In evolutionary terms, they’re attaching themselves to a tribe outside their biological family to gather the support they’ll need for their adult lives. As they can join more than one tribe, they can also reinvent themselves; at home, you […]
In the latest episode of Phoebe Waller Bridges’ astounding comedy Fleabag, (BBC1, 25th March) the eponymous heroine finds herself in one half a Catholic confessional. Reeling with grief for her mother and best friend and desire for the man on the other side of the confessional box, she utters a lament that sounded to […]
Recently I’ve been reading memoirs: mainly by women (well, all by women), and mainly by women of my age and older. Musicians, politicians, biographers, writers, performers…in some cases I’ve by- passed the life’s work and gone straight to the life story, as if to say ‘I don’t care what you’ve done, just tell me how […]
One of the things that people who come for counselling most frequently want is a strategy or technique to help them to cope with whatever it is they’re finding difficult. Of course they do; that’s why they’ve turned to a counsellor for help. One of the more challenging but ultimately rewarding aspects of counselling is […]
Counselling is referred to by the medical profession as ‘talking therapy’, harking back to the Freudian ‘talking cure’ and, presumably, to distinguish it from drug-based therapies or more directive, technique-based approaches like CBT. Certainly, having the space to talk is part of the therapeutic benefit of counselling. Counsellors, however, while far from silent partners […]