When I was a child in the 1960s, contraception was very different to what it is now and women were often terrified of becoming pregnant; my husband and I are both one of four children and we both lived in 3 bedroomed houses with one bathroom. All of our parents worked, although both our mothers stayed at home until the youngest child went to school. We had one car which usually needed a lot of work to remain roadworthy and was often a cause of angst to our fathers.

Keeping four children fed and clothed was tough and little thought was given to whether we were happy or not; our parents were ‘in charge’ and we were expected to do as we were told, behave well, have good manners and try hard at school. We were certainly a family, but didn’t operate in the way my children’s and grandchildren's families operate nowadays.

I’m not a great fan of giving advice (unless it’s asked for) but seeing this new generation born made me think about what I’ve learned about what matters in life. Our grandson sometimes says something along the lines of ‘when I’ve got that or done this, then I know I’ve made it’ which made me think about how I feel about ‘making it’ and ‘getting there’ 40 years along from where he is now.

After visiting our grandson, his wife and the new baby for the first time this week, I envisaged them standing at the beginning of a long road, with the road winding off in the distance in front of them; at the same time, I see myself and my husband somewhere along that long road (hopefully not quite at the end) looking towards them, but with 40 years of life experience between us.

Our grandson and his wife are working towards shared goals for their family, goals that are yet unexplored and new to them as they start life as parents. They’re obviously focused on the future and a whole new chapter of life is waiting to be lived; having lived through that process, what do I feel matters? Did I ever get ‘there’ or is ‘getting there’ or ‘making it’ something we believe when we’re younger?

We all have our own lessons to learn from our own life experiences and I’m learning more at the age I am now than I ever did as a younger woman. When I was in the thick of working, raising a family or just focusing on others, life felt very future focused. I loved my career and was very motivated to be successful, but I don’t ever remember feeling as if I’d ‘made it’; if anything, it was more a feeling of ‘is this it?’ I never felt as if I was ‘there’ despite having everything I could have wanted, both materially and relationally.

What’s changed for me is my relationship with myself. Although I always had drive and motivation, it also had a punitive edge; this meant I was more stick than carrot driven and ‘there’ was always somewhere in the distance, somewhere or something I was striving for.

I’ve written often about letting go of perfectionism and people pleasing and on paper, it sounds simple….just stop thinking that way, but the process of letting go can be more complex than changing a thought process.

At this point in my life, I feel as if I’m ‘there’ and that I’ve ‘made it’ in ways I never have before, not because of any material wealth or stuff, but solely because I’m at ease with who I am. What I’m only just discovering is that who I am was always ok, I just wasn’t aware of it. I’ve messed up, behaved badly, done well and been kind…I’ve been everything, I’ve been human and done my best and that’s good enough.

Like most of us, I’m just muddling through life and still learning lessons along the way, but being kind to myself and knowing I’m enough for who I am, not what I do (or what I have) is a great lesson to learn and one I’d pass on to anyone. Give and receive love with an open heart and don’t worry about ‘getting there’ or ‘making it’, just enjoy the journey.

With love,

Karen x

Starting at the beginning; not the beginning of my life, but the beginning of the part of my life that started with our wedding on my 29th birthday 40 years ago (yes, that means I’m almost 69!). When we married in September 1986, Rob was a widower with 2 children and I was a solo parent with one child, all 3 children were under 10 years old.

I remember so much of that day; just before the car came to pick my Dad and I up to go to the church, he suggested we both have a tot of brandy to settle our nerves. I drank mine, but he decided not to drink his! I had a rash on my neck, my back was killing me for some reason and my period had started that morning; not the best way to start your wedding day. We were 34 and 29 with 3 children under 10 and married with such hope and love in our hearts; like everyone else, we had no idea what life would bring.

These last few months as we’ve been approaching our 40th anniversary have been a time of reflection for many reasons; our eldest daughter turned 50 recently and our latest 2 great grandsons (we already have one) were born in June and August. It seems impossible that we’re now 74 and (almost) 69 and 40 years has passed in a flash. It was mind blowing when our children had their children, but to see our 2 eldest grandsons become parents is almost impossible to compute. It seems no time at all since they were born and we were excited grandparents, yet here we are almost 30 years on with the arrival of a whole new generation. It feels as if my heart is expanding in relation to our expanding family; there’s so much love there, but there’s also a feeling of poignancy too, as we sit at the top of the family tree with no one above us.

I recently wrote about how I sometimes try to make sense of things, but I can’t make any sense of the passing of time; I feel a sense of awe about how life is now and where I am/we are compared to 40 years ago. I’m not going to pretend life has always been smooth or easy and it’s sometimes been horribly tough, but we’ve somehow made it to this point and I’m proud of us for sticking with it and each other.

I don’t have any tips on how to stay married or how to be a ‘good’ mum, grandma or great grandma; our children and grandchildren are much better parents than we were, but I can’t help but think we’re doing something ‘right’ because now we’re retired, we do spend most of our time together and are happy to do so….at least most of the time!

At this stage in the game, any thoughts about wanting each other to change or to be different to who we are have long gone and accepting each other just as we are means life feels pretty contented. That’s not to say we don’t irritate the hell out of each other at times, but there is and always has been a shared desire to make a go of it and that helps to weather the difficult times.

There’s a certain vulnerability about ageing and with that vulnerability comes gratitude, for our health, for each other and for life itself. So many of our friends and family have died at a younger age than we are now and we joke that we’re living in sniper’s alley, dodging potential bullets along our way and doing our best to enjoy every moment.

I can imagine that younger people might see this age and this length of marriage as being dull, a little stale maybe, but I’m not finding that at all. My 60’s has been a time of shedding beliefs and behaviours that were no longer helpful and a time when I’m moving closer to who I want to be now. I’m continuing to change, our marriage is evolving and nothing is static. Our family continues to grow and each family member is navigating their own path which is a joy to see and a privilege to be a part of.

There’s an immediacy about this time of life too; I’m more present and less likely to live in the future as I tended to do as a younger woman. I no longer ‘look forward’ to anything, but live each day as it comes; I acknowledge that retirement facilitates that approach to life, but not feeling the need to plan and control everything feels very freeing. Life feels lighter, despite there being less of it ahead of us; having less time tends to focus the mind on the ‘now’.

There will always be landmarks in life that cause us to momentarily stop and reflect and decade birthdays and ‘big’ anniversaries are just a couple of them; we’ve definitely spent more time recently thinking ‘how did we get from there to here’ but there’s no way to grasp meaning out of any of it. Time literally marches on, everything will continue to change and we can only move with it.

If we’re fortunate to live long lives, we’ll no doubt be saying ‘I can’t believe I’m 70/80, this grandchild is a teenager, another one is leaving school/starting work/getting married….and life goes on…and whilst it does, we’ll stop trying to make sense of it and just embrace it.

With love,

Karen x

If anything, it’s even hotter this year than last year and as the temperature increased, so did lock restrictions followed by some complete closures. As liveaboards currently based in a marina, we’re only affected in that we’re restricted to how far we can travel if we leave the marina. With no rain in sight, it’s difficult to imagine how things will progress over the coming months, so it’s pointless trying to plan any travel in the foreseeable future. Acceptance and adaptability is essential for anyone in any walk of life and this situation is good practice for both!

I wondered how the hot weather would affect the blackberries as they were looking pretty grim at one point, but they seem to be ripening profusely this week. I’ve already made 3 blackberry and apple crumbles (it’s hardly crumble weather, but I can’t bear not to pick them) and blackberries appear on the breakfast table every morning at the moment :-)

It seems crazy having to structure our days around the weather…it’s the UK for goodness sake, land of cloudy skies and drizzly days…but very early morning walks/yoga are the order of the day with hats, sun cream and water on hand. I find myself muttering ‘this weather just doesn’t make sense’ quite a bit and this got me thinking about how often I try to understand something intellectually, as if doing so will provide the ‘sense’ I seem to be searching for?!

On that note, there are books I return to again and again; over time, I begin to more fully understand the wisdom within them and more importantly, begin to put that wisdom into practice. One of the books I revisit regularly is Lighter by Yung Pueblo, particularly Chapter 3: Letting Go.

Our elder daughter turned 50 this week and I’ve been trying to make sense (there’s a pattern here) of that fact for weeks; not only is she 50 which feels ridiculous, I’m old enough to be the mother of a 50 year old which completely blows my mind. My youngest sister and my sister in law have also recently retired and I can’t figure out how we’re all be retired when it doesn’t seem 5 minutes ago since we started work? My need to make sense of things is, I’m sure, a way of bringing a sense of certainty to an uncertain situation i.e. life.

In Lighter, Yung Pueblo writes ‘letting go is essentially a profound acceptance of the present moment’; my need to make sense of (seemingly) everything isn’t because I want to change anything or to turn the clock back, more a sense of truly living every moment as time passes so very quickly. And yet, I know life is to be felt and lived, not thought about or intellectualised.

Every one of us is influenced by our past experiences and we get caught up in what we imagine our future to be, but we only ever live in the ‘now’. I was talking to someone the other day who said when they’ve got a particular car and house, they know they’ve ‘made it’, but life never stands still and events and situations occur that change everything constantly.

There’s a beautiful documentary on Netflix at the moment about Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova; as well as focusing on their rivalry in the tennis world, it also concentrates on their enduring friendship which I knew nothing about. Seeing these two incredible athletes at the peak of their careers is truly wonderful, but what moved me the most was their deep and lasting friendship and the way they’ve supported each other through their respective cancer diagnoses.

What I took from the documentary was how lightly they hold onto their past successes and how tightly they hold onto their friendship. Seeing them both watching their past victories over each other whilst very much living in the present is a great life lesson and is such a pleasure to watch.

Change is a fundamental fact of life and I love these words from Lighter; ‘everything within the universe of mind and matter exists because of the movement of change; every conceivable level, from the atomic to the molecular, to the mental and conventional level where human beings interact with each other on a daily basis is constantly in motion. Our relationship to change defines the level of peace in our mind.’

It’s pointless trying to make sense of change; no matter how long I sit with the things I’m trying to get my head around, the only conclusion I’ll ever reach is that change is a continuing fact of life. I’ve heard so many people say they don’t like change, yet none of us can avoid it.

In the next few weeks, the nights will draw in further, temperatures will drop, I’ll have picked so many blackberries I’ll be totally sick of crumbles, jam, blackberries with Greek yogurt….if I’m experiencing change, I’m alive and I don’t need to make any sense of that, I’m just grateful to be so :-)

With love,

Karen x

I understand that selling products and services is part of the world we live in, but it feels as if some kind of madness is taking over the world right now. As a 68 year old woman, I seem to be a target for incontinence supplements (endorsed by at least 3 celebrities) and this morning I saw an ad for some kind of ‘special’ wipes to be used when going to the loo; not wishing to sound crude, but if I’m not able to wipe my bum at my age, I really am in the s—t!

I posted a note earlier in the week about the apparent need for using an ever increasing range of skincare products, with more clinically sounding acids than you can shake a stick at; when did double cleansing become a thing? Why is it that despite the range of products now available to us, some women’s faces look more unnatural than ever before.

I’ve recently become aware of deodorants being marketed at women in spray, cream and stick form which can be used on the chest and feet areas as well as underarms, as if we need to cover ourselves in fragrance to hide the fact that we smell bad. Also, hair products that add shine, moisture and combat frizziness…the list really is endless.

The supplement business is bigger than ever before and collagen and creatine ads are prolific, the implication being we need certain supplements for our health and if we’re not taking the latest pills, capsules and potions, all hell will break loose.

I’ll be absolutely honest and tell you I’ve been caught up in believing I needed fixing at different times in my life and have taken supplements believing they’d help me get back on track. I call my early 60s a time of ‘positive disintegration’ when some part of me made it very clear I needed to make changes in how I lived my life.

The article below pretty much describes part of the path I was on and the last few years have been fundamental in becoming more autonomous and grounded in myself.

Reclaim your nervous system

"Something Is Wrong With Me": How the Nervous System Learns This Belief and How We Heal

Perhaps there was never anything wrong with you. Perhaps your nervous system simply became very good at protecting you when being yourself felt dangerous…

Read more

a month ago · 29 likes · 6 comments · Magda Agatha

When I started to feel unwell back then, I turned to complementary medicine for help which turned out to be quite costly and was only helpful inasmuch as the therapist actually listened to me, rather than asking me whether I was thinking of taking my own life and prescribing anti depressants as my GP did. I took ashwagandha, magnesium glycinate and various dietary supplements, not understanding then that there was no way I was ever going to avoid ‘doing the work’ of getting to know myself and my behaviour patterns if I wanted to feel at ease in my own body.

I have the utmost respect and love for my body and although I’m in no way precious about it, I take good care of my body and my mind. Filtering out all the noise of what others tell me I need to look and feel good requires discernment and an awareness of what’s right for me.

I haven’t slept very well this week and I’m aware of feeling slightly in ‘flight mode’; my startle reflex is really jumpy and I feel a little overwhelmed around noise and busyness at the moment. At one time, I’d have pushed myself through these messages from my body, believing I just needed to get on with it; I’d have been overthinking, asking myself what was ‘wrong’ and what was the cause of how I was feeling, which would leave me circling around a never ending loop of asking questions that never reach a solution. I’d have believed I was at fault somehow and if I could find the fault, I could fix it and all would be well.

Now, I operate on a ‘sensation without explanation’ basis, know my nervous system is heading towards capacity and do what I need to do to regain equilibrium. For me, that means going out for breakfast after my yoga practice in a place where there’s plenty of space and where I can sit outside in the sunshine; I’ve been for a walk along the canal towpath on my own and paid attention to everything around me and I’ll spend the next couple of days reading and chilling, with no plans to do anything or go anywhere.

Building a non critical, loving and compassionate relationship with myself has been and continues to be life transforming; I don’t need to look outside myself to know what I need to look and feel well. No amount of products or supplements can replace good nutrition, moving my body and being kind to myself.

There are so many products, services, supplements and regimes available to us nowadays and it can be exhausting if we allow all that noise in without discerning what’s right for each of us. I know I’ll feel more settled in the next few days and I know my body is processing something, but there’s no hurry to figure anything out. As I develop greater trust in myself, I can relax, take my time and go with the flow.

Wishing you a beautiful weekend,

With love,

Karen x

started a new series on her Substack this week titled Many Ways To Live And Love and asked me to be her first interviewee.

Help Me! Newsletter

MANY WAYS TO LIVE AND LOVE: In our sixties we sold our three bedroom house and gave away 90 per cent of our possessions to live on a boat.

Read more

a month ago · 35 likes · 17 comments · Marianne Power

As part of the interviewing process, I told Marianne I’d had a baby at 19 and was a single mum for several years; she asked me if there was any stigma about being a single mum in 1976 and something in me flinched. Even writing that now, I feel uneasy thinking back to those times. I told Marianne there wasn’t any particular stigma attached to being a single mum, but I was stigmatised and shamed by some people because my baby’s father was Black.

In today’s world, it seems most couples we see in advertisements on TV or indeed anywhere are mixed race and no one thinks anything of it, but in 1976 things were very different.

I apologise beforehand if what I’m about to write offends anyone, but these things happened to me. On seeing me in the street with my then partner, I heard someone say ‘she’s with a spade;’ it was common parlance in those days to call a Black man a ‘spade’ as in ‘as black as the ace of spades.’ Clearly, many people would never have said that and would have found it offensive and racist, but it wasn’t unusual for people to shout out obscenities from car windows (at us) and I remember feeling fearful and vulnerable walking through the city streets with my partner.

It seems madness now to know these things happened to me and I hadn’t realised how those experiences had left a lingering sense of fear and shame in me until I spoke to Marianne about that time in my life; not shame that I need to own, but shame and fear that others tried to place on me.

I watched an episode of the podcast Dish with Sophie Willan last night whose partner is Black and he’s a chef, which must have resonated with me as my then partner was a chef too. Fifty years have passed between my having a son and Sophie having a son and how times have changed. It was also accepted language to call a mixed race person ‘half caste’ in 1976, a term that makes my skin crawl.

has just posted a note to say her ex is getting remarried today and how she’s surprised by how much it stirred in her; we think we’ve left things behind, but sometimes experiences leave a residue of something we can’t quite name until they surface many years later.

I’ve recently read the book The Fallen: The Magdalene Laundries & Ireland’s Legacy of Silence by Louise Brangan, a devastating record of the women whose babies were taken from them and who were often incarcerated for decades for becoming pregnant out of wedlock; the last Magdalene Laundry closed in October 1996, so this is not ancient history.

So why the tears? A combination of things I feel…my baby will be 50 later this year and I’ll be forever grateful that I got to be his Mum. It also feels as if there’s a huge well of emotion for that young woman who always tried to do her best in difficult circumstances. I separated from my baby’s birth father when he was 2 and I always felt sad that he didn’t have a Dad or any siblings; when he was 9, I married a man with 2 children and my husband and I have been married 40 years this year.

My life and the world is very different now, but that young woman lives within me; it’s not necessarily about letting go of the past, but honouring the young woman I was and acknowledging her strength, resilience and determination to do all she could to raise her child in a world that wasn’t always kind.

In her note today, writes ‘midlife has a gentle way of asking us too honour her….and then keep walking’.

I’ve been self critical about myself as a Mum many times over the years, but on revisiting this time in my life, the overwhelming feelings I have now are of love and gratitude, for my son and for myself too.

With love,

Karen x

In her article ‘Ego is not a dirty word’ (7th July) writes ‘Ego is what forms in us when we are small and porous and entirely at the mercy of the people around us. When we are children we cannot survive alone; we are dependent on love, approval and belonging from others….when the environment around us feels even a little bit unsafe, we adapt; those adaptations performed often enough become habitual patterns…and slowly, without any conscious thought on our part, this constructed personality becomes who we know ourselves to be. Ego = this is me’.

For most of my life, I believed I needed to ‘earn’ pretty much everything; I needed to earn love, belonging and acceptance by trying to please everyone, I needed to earn good health and optimum fitness by training hard, I needed to earn having a dessert at dinner by missing lunch, I needed to earn having a piece of cake in my packed lunch by walking 15 miles, I needed to earn rest by making sure all my ‘jobs’ were done….you get the picture.

I believed myself to be a Type A personality, a perfectionist, someone with endless reserves of strength, stamina, determination and resilience; it’s only recently I’ve come to understand so many of these characteristics are adaptations, egoic constructions that served me very well for a very long time. The question now is, do I have use for these adaptations any longer?

The positives of living a very busy life, where achievement is the main goal is that there’s no time for reflection or questioning; filling every moment with work or different tasks lends structure and purpose to life and that can feel very satisfying. In the past, I do remember the feeling of having completed my ‘to do list’ only to realise it was, in fact a never ending to do list and there didn’t seem to be a way to stop being constantly busy and occupied.

writes (Things I secretly hate about slow living) ‘when you overwork, you have routine, structure, goals and a clear idea of what you should be doing at any moment…working...and I hate how much easier that is than figuring out how to manage your own time in a meaningful way’. Challenging my beliefs about purpose, the need to earn, the need to do everything perfectly left me staring into a black hole with no clear idea of where to go and who to be and that’s pretty scary. Smashing my egoic structure to pieces in my 60s wasn’t ever going to be helpful, but I certainly wanted to soften it around the edges and take a look at where I wanted to make changes in my life.

Like many people, a big part of my ‘self’ was based around my career. As a fitness instructor, Pilates teacher and Further Education college lecturer, I spent decades with students listening to my every word; being the centre of attention, the fount of quite a lot of knowledge was what I needed at that time. I loved my career and the attention it gave me, not because I’m some kind of narcissist, but because I loved helping people to improve their health and to feel good about themselves. Being completely honest, the feeling of being needed also fed into my beliefs of needing to earn love and acceptance and I now understand how my choice of career helped me to thrive with a shaky sense of self. I was adapting without being conscious of it at all.

I’ve often read how women in particular, feel they become invisible in midlife and how difficult this can be to accept. This feeling of invisibility might be in relation to their changing appearance, children leaving home and becoming independent, marriages becoming stale…the list goes on, but after years of feeling the need to earn and maintain (other people’s) attention, I find myself being drawn to the positives of invisibility.

writes (Nobody Is Just a Person Anymore) ‘I think we’ve turned self improvement into self rejection; there is always another version of yourself waiting to be built, smarter, faster, more successful, more impressive. The message is that you’re never enough; the message is that you’re a project and projects are never finished’.

For a long time, I preferred the comforting safety of busyness and routine to the discomfort of change, even when change was exactly what I needed.

At this point in my life, I don’t want to give advice, to be useful, to be needed, to feel I need to earn anything; I don’t need a purpose, a routine, a structure, a role, a project. I don’t want to be productive, to achieve, to attain, to be visible, to be admired, to inspire. I don’t want to hold court, to work the room, to be the centre of attention.

Softening my ego means letting go of the comfort of routine, certainty and the safety of busyness and learning to trust myself as I navigate a different ‘main character energy’ in my life now. Google describes main character energy as ‘someone who lives their life as if they are the protagonist of their own story’. It also describes several pitfalls including ‘performative living’ where people curate their lives to portray a positive picture to others, rather than focusing on their own inner development.

Letting go of parts of my ego (or at least allowing them to soften) isn’t comfortable; the feeling of being in midair and not knowing where I’ll land feels very uncomfortable and uncertain, but beyond the discomfort is an opportunity to discover a true sense of self based upon what I want and need now. Focusing inwards rather than outwards is where we find who we truly are.

The main character energy I’m moving towards is not performative or reliant on anyone else’s opinions; it’s neither self centred nor dismissive of others, but aligned with a desire to connect, to love, to share and to receive. My purpose in life is to stay curious, to be open hearted, to be open to change and whilst I don’t want to be totally invisible, I’m very happy to blend into the background and take my budding main character energy (quietly) with me.

With love,

Karen x

I loved reading this article by Alex Kadis recently and I can relate to so much of what Alex writes.

Alex's Substack

Fuck Off – I’m Fat!

When I was nine, a kid at school told me I was fat. My mum, in all kindness, took me to a slimming club where I was informed that I needed to lose an entire…wait for it... wait for it…four pounds. I was a pre-pubescent Greek Cypriot girl. We Greeks always carry a few pounds extra for emergencies. Anyway, I spent a miserable few months guzzling low calor…

Read more

2 months ago · 262 likes · 95 comments · Alex Kadis

I was a fairly average sized little girl until around the age of 11, when I suddenly put on a lot of weight. As I’m now 68, I can’t remember why that happened, but I suspect it might have been something to do with moving to secondary school. I do remember being overwhelmed by the transition from a fairly small village primary school to what seemed a huge school with a very strict uniform. I remember having to stand up when the teachers entered a classroom and filing into school assembly being closely observed by the Headmaster, and 2 deputies. The whole environment felt very intimidating at the time!

I also remember overhearing a classmate say to another girl ‘it’s a shame Karen’s so fat as she has got quite a pretty face’; the fact that I can remember this after 57 years means it must have had quite an impact on how I thought about my body/weight and how things played out over the years.

I went on a diet around the age of 14 and lost quite a bit of weight, so I was back to being an average size, but I had no idea about nutrition or how to take care of my body and my health. For many women of my generation, dieting culture and slimming clubs were the norm, yet few of us gave any thought to building a respectful, healthy relationship to our ever changing bodies.

In my mid 30s, I trained to become a fitness instructor and teaching lots of classes every week meant I stayed slim for years, but I still had a punitive relationship with my body and my health.

I was much more concerned about my shape and size than my overall health, being ‘careful’ about what I ate rather than eating to fuel my body. Looking back, I can see I was slim and fit, but I was self critical and always thought I needed to train harder and look better.

What many women (and I include myself here) fail to acknowledge is that our bodies change throughout our lives; I was pregnant at 19, went through the menopause at 50 and I’m now about to turn 69 years of age. To think my body would remain the same throughout my adult life would be madness, yet we hang onto the idea that we should maintain the same weight for decades.

I met up with my 2 sisters recently and we had some photo’s taken together; immediately we looked at the photo’s, there were cries of ‘oh my God, I look such a fat cow’ and ‘don’t let anyone see them, I look terrible’ and ‘if you post them on social media, I’ll kill you’. Our focus went straight to how we looked and we fell into immediate harsh self criticism, even though we were having such fun together and just enjoying being in each others company.

I retired at 61 and my body has changed since then; I no longer expend so many calories as I’m not lugging equipment around and teaching classes every day. I no longer run, my muscle mass has decreased, but I no longer treat my body as something to be controlled or punished. My shape has changed, I’m fuller figured, my skin has less collagen, so I’m wrinklier, but the upside to being older (and massively changing my attitude) is that I’m grateful to my body for being healthy all these years and I now treat it with the love and care it deserves.

When we moved onto the boat, I threw our scales away, so I’ve no idea what I weigh now and I have no need to know. My clothes seem to fit year in, year out; I walk as often as I can and practice yoga for an hour 3 times a week. I want to stay flexible and as strong as I can, so I’ll carry our rucksack when we’re out walking for the day. I eat healthily and drink alcohol moderately, but life’s too short not to eat cake, chocolate and crisps in moderation.

Although I’ve shifted the ways I measure my body from how far I can run or what I weigh to how healthy and well I feel, I’m not pretending that I don’t have to have a word with myself now and again. I have a ‘tummy’ that just doesn’t seem to shift and I went through a phase where I was really miserable about it, but now it’s more about accepting the changes in my shape and dressing in ways that don’t draw MY attention to it , so I can get on with my day and act my age, not my shoe size!

It always saddens me when women of any age speak negatively about their bodies, but I’ve done it myself for years, so I get it. We’d never speak to or about other women the way we speak to ourselves and I’m so done with self criticism now; our bodies are amazing and I’m choosing to treat mine like a temple ha ha…..

The fact that I can put on my walking boots and walk 10 miles or practice yoga for an hour several times a week is a gift I’m forever grateful for; it’s taken me a long time to change the ways I view my body, but I’m finally treating it the way it’s always deserved to be treated….wrinkly skin or not!

With love,

Karen x

Heading back into the marina after a week’s cruising, I felt relaxed and clear headed. I often think I’ll run out of things to write about here, but a combination of life events and other people’s articles always sparks a few thoughts and ideas that begin to coalesce into some sort of coherent (hopefully!) narrative and lo and behold, I’m sitting at my laptop again.

The writers in my little corner of Substack inspire me every week and the writers and articles that have inspired me this week are ‘When Attachment and Differentiation Collide, ‘The Bridge Years’ and ‘Ego Is Not a Dirty Word’. I’m so grateful to all of these writers for generously sharing their wisdom, knowledge and expertise; I learn from them every week and rather than include lots of quotes from each of these articles, I recommend you look them up if you don’t already subscribe to these excellent writers.

I’ve written a lot about my experiences of moving from a house to a narrow boat and how living a more nomadic life, sometimes away from family and friends has impacted upon me and my emotional wellbeing. Moving from a 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom house to a narrow boat meant we had to give away 99% of our possessions; we don’t have anything in storage, should we decide to move back into a house or a flat, so we had to be absolutely brutal in downsizing what we owned.

Living in a house feels safe; we feel tethered to our homes, our routines, a sense of place, our neighbours, our roles in the community and letting go of all of those anchors can feel scary and unsafe.

The last 5 years have taught me how much emotional and psychological ‘stuff’ I also needed to dispense with; I liken my life’s journey (one day I’ll write an article without the ‘J’ word) to putting on a succession of cloaks from when I was very young. As children, we rely on our caregivers to ensure we survive and to keep us safe; because of our need for safety, we HAVE to adapt to our environment. Many people of my generation were raised by parents for whom ‘good’ behaviour was paramount; to differentiate from our parents, even as teenagers, could challenge our attachment or connection to them. As an eldest child, I was raised to be the sensible one, the responsible one, to set an example to my siblings, to be a ‘good’ girl; many men and women of my generation will recognise this pattern as we placed the cloaks of goodness, compliance and responsibility firmly around our shoulders.

I would imagine few parents of my parents generation were overly concerned about their own emotional maturity; that wouldn’t have been something they’d been taught, so it wasn’t a deliberate omission, it just wouldn’t have occurred to them to evaluate themselves in that way. As long as we (children) were well mannered, tried hard at school, behaved ourselves, did as we were told and were respectful of adults, all was well.

As we grew up, some of us placed extra cloaks around our shoulders to stay attached and to avoid disapproval; cloaks of performance, perfectionism and fawning. None of this was conscious, but scanning every environment we found ourselves in and adapting accordingly enabled us to feel comfortable, safe and to fit in. We unconsciously accepted the roles assigned to us and even though the cloaks we wore were heavy, we were attached and connected to everyone around us. We felt safe.

Feeling tethered to a role can feel good; before I moved onto the boat, I was a Pilates and yoga teacher and a huge part of my ‘self’ was validated by my career. Whenever I attended courses, I always seemed to find myself in a role of responsibility, as a leader or group spokesperson. This happened all the time and it's only recently that I've become aware that I took those roles on as a way of creating certainty in an uncertain situation. Taking charge made me feel safe and enabled me to control the environment to some degree. I appeared confident, mature and a natural teacher, but there were patterns still running from decades before that I wasn't aware of; patterns that were all about connection and protection.

I had no idea that I could be connected and attached to others in any situation, yet be myself. Who am I if I'm not pleasing everyone? What's my purpose if I'm not focused outwards? The concept of differentiation and attachment is something I'm only now beginning to understand; I've spent years accumulating more and more cloaks of protection, never realising that it's possible to loosen all those ties and let go of the weight I've unconsciously carried for far too long.

I love Najwa Zebian's book Welcome Home; Najwa writes about how we need to build our home's foundation within ourselves. When we first moved onto the boat, the feeling of being untethered genuinely terrified me because I'd never built foundations of safety in my own body. I'd been very attached to the validation that my career had given me and tried to connect to others by fawning. No one asked anything of me, but these were roles I'd assumed long ago and never questioned.

At the grand age of 68, I've learned I can loosen all the ties that have held my perception of who I am in place for so long and remove the cloaks of responsibility and ‘goodness’ that I've carried. I can be myself and be connected; if a relationship is ruptured for any reason, I can help to repair it without being rejected. I no longer need or want to be a teacher or a leader and prefer to be ‘one of the gang’, to contribute if I feel I have something valid to say and to stay quiet and learn from others when I don’t.

I love the feeling of being untethered now as it feels more like freedom and potential than insecurity; being more tethered to myself allows me to feel and be at home anywhere, whether I'm moving or static. Rather than feeling I need to belong to any particular group, I need to belong to myself first and foremost. I know connection and attachment isn't geographical, but comes from my heart. I don’t have to be constantly wondering how to please everyone to be loved.

When we’re young, I think we sometimes believe there’ll be a point when we know all there is to know, that with hard work we can have it all, but my personal experience is showing me that we need to hold on lightly to the ties that bind us. My eldest grandsons are now becoming parents, so they’ll necessarily be tied to parenthood for the forseeable future. Yet there will be a time when their boys will want to loosen their attachment to their parents to find out who they are and they’ll need to loosen those ties in years to come. We need to remain constantly flexible, to reassess what is serving us and what we need to let go of at every stage of our lives.

Letting go of most of what we owned didn’t feel difficult because we were choosing a different way to live; having few possessions feels lighter, yet we still have everything we need. Attachment and differentiation are at the forefront of my mind nowadays; differentiation in terms of ‘am I being true to myself?’ and attachment in terms of ‘am I able to be attached or connected to this person/these people without losing connection with myself?’ The ties are loosening and the cloaks are being gently set down, yet I’m grateful for the protection they’ve given me and I’m curious about where this life is taking me as the load lightens in my soul.

We visited our eldest daughter at the weekend and she called upstairs to tell our teenage granddaughter V to come downstairs as ‘grandma and grandpa are here’. V replied that she was tidying her bedroom and didn’t come down until we were leaving. It was only afterwards that I thought that would never have happened when I was young! When V did come downstairs, she was smiley and sunny and just herself; a teenager finding out who she is and learning to be herself. I love the fact that she has the freedom to express herself, that she isn’t being buried under the weight of assigned roles or responsibility and that she isn’t having to be a ‘good’ girl. More than anything, I love that she can be herself i.e. a stroppy teenager, yet know she is loved.

With love,

Karen x

As I get older, I can see the many ways people carry thoughts, feelings and beliefs from their childhoods into their retirement years and sometimes, these thoughts, feelings and beliefs need to be challenged to enable us to live (now) with more freedom and less self imposed restrictions.

There’s one conversation I have over and over again with fellow retirees and that’s around money; after spending decades working and saving/investing, it’s so much more difficult to spend the money we’ve accumulated than you might imagine. No one knows how long they’ll live, so none of us know how long our money has to last, but even for those people who absolutely won’t run out of money, there can still be a feeling of fear, discomfort and scarcity around spending. I’ve known people with full salary pensions take a part time job, so as not to have to ‘break into my capital’; I’m certainly not criticising anyone for choosing to work, but if we don’t spend the capital we worked and saved for, who will?

After decades of working with the focus on increasing our savings, to see a steady decrease in those savings can feel alarming, even though we know we need to get comfortable with this very thing. Also, we were raised with a strong ‘value for money’ ethic and spending money on experiences, holidays or any ‘non essentials’ can feel uncomfortable. We talk about ‘treating ourselves’ as though doing something we really want to do is somehow a bit naughty, reckless and irresponsible. For many of us, the scarcity mindset of previous generations lives on in us, even though it holds us back from living the life we want to live and doing the things we’d love to do.

Because I’ve had this conversation a lot, I try to shift my focus to the ‘value’ that experiences will give me, rather than what those experiences will cost in terms of hard cash. Let me explain….a couple of years ago, we went (I was about to say we treated ourselves!) to a very nice hotel that had a suite with an outdoor copper bath. It was January and the weather was beautiful; clear blue skies and bright sunshine, though freezing cold. We stayed for 3 nights and every night we sat in the bath (it was huge) looking up at the stars, hot water up to our chins and a gin and tonic at hand. I barely remember the room or what we ate, although I know both the room and the food were great, but I’ll never forget looking up at the stars on a freezing cold January night whilst lying in a deep bath of hot water. I’ve long forgotten how much it ‘cost’ but I’ll never forget the ‘value’ of that experience. We could have chosen somewhere less expensive and arguably better value for money, but the experience and the memories were worth every penny.

When we first moved on board our narrow boat home, we cruised the canal network continuously for 3+ years, which meant we had fewer living expenses than we do now. When we decided to buy a motorhome last year, we had to move the boat into a marina to enable us to leave either the boat or van somewhere secure when we were travelling on either one. Our living expenses have increased, but so have our travelling options and choices of how we spend our time; if we were only focused on how much we were spending, our life would be so much narrower (pun intended!).

My husband Rob has been an avid cyclist for over 60 years, but we sold our bikes when we moved onto the boat. Recently (he’s now 74) he’s been toying with the idea of buying another road bike; not knowing anything about bikes, I’ve left it to him to think about whether he’ll actually buy one or whether the idea is just an idea. When I asked him what his thoughts were, he mentioned a company that builds bikes to order and how he used to cycle miles in his younger days to their workshop, knowing he could never afford a custom built bike. He’d also been talking about another more mainstream brand, so I suggested he thought about each one, the custom built one he’d have loved as a young man and the off the peg one and feel which one made his tummy flip….there would be his answer.

We don’t have lots of money or even know whether the money we do have will last our whole lives, but I do know that we have fewer years ahead of us than we’ve already lived. Rather than counting the cost (of anything) in monetary terms, I’m focusing on the value of experiences; how will this make me feel? Is this something I’ll likely remember forever? Will I have a chance to do this again in the future? Does this make my tummy flip?

So buy the bike, rent the fancy apartment, do the thing!

With love,

Karen x

For years, I’ve nurtured the fantasy of the perfect Sunday, whereby I eat a leisurely breakfast, maybe pancakes, fresh berries and Greek yogurt whilst idly flipping through the Sunday papers. Let me make it clear that I’ve tried to make this fantasy a reality for many years and it never hits the spot; the breakfast is generally satisfying, but the Sunday papers disappoint nine times out of ten.

Sadly, the human brain loves patterns and familiarity more than new pathways, so last Sunday saw me buying a newspaper yet again. I rarely buy any newspaper ever, but old habits die hard and the last embers of the perfect fantasy Sunday hadn’t yet been extinguished.

I can easily understand why print journalism is practically extinct nowadays; I don’t know anyone who would see an £800+ summer dress in a magazine and think ‘that’s exactly the dress I need this summer’. I remember a time when putting make up on required some sort of base (tinted moisturiser anyone?), a bit of blusher, variations of eye make up depending on how ‘made up’ you wanted to look and a slick of lippy. Now, there are bronzers, contouring ‘stuff’…the list is endless and frankly terrifying.

Who has time for this stuff? Granted, I’m an ‘older’ woman who lives on a narrow boat and I haven’t worn make up since 25th July 2025 when my eldest grandson got married, but there was nothing in any of the papers or magazines that I could relate to. Reading them felt like groundhog day with articles that I’ve seen many times before…we all need a pension pot of £1 million, the ‘stuff’ we need to buy for the house, the long haul holidays costing £11k per person for 2 weeks….

Rather than fulfil my fantasy of the perfect Sunday, I could hear myself saying ‘who’d pay £800 for a summer dress/how many of us live in a country cottage and would spend £100k on renovating the kitchen/how many skin creams do I need/do I need to double cleanse every day, morning and night/who has £5 million to buy a house by the sea in Cornwall/why is that model wearing clothes that I’ve never seen on a human being anywhere?

So, the saying ‘doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results’ was firmly at the forefront of my mind last weekend and despite the fact that my brain (and yours) loves a pattern, this is one pattern that I’m well and truly breaking.

Another pattern I’ve been breaking with surprising results is noticing when I’m slipping into fawning (people pleasing) behaviour. It’s taken me a long time to understand the purpose of people pleasing; there was a time I believed I was just a nice person and wanted everyone to be happy, but I was also aware that I often felt irritable, impatient and resentful as a result of trying to please others. We fawn as a safety behaviour i.e. to be liked, to feel safe, to feel accepted, to belong/fit in….not because we’re ‘nice’. I was fearful of stopping fawning…will I become a selfish, unkind person? Will I lack empathy or find myself ostracised and friendless? Will I stop caring about others and become totally self centred?

I’m finding the opposite is true. The more I tune in to and express my own needs, the more loving and compassionate I feel, both towards myself and to others. I can’t speak for anyone else, but I find the more self accepting I am, the more accepting of others I am too. There have been times over many years when I wished others would change, as if by them changing to suit me, I’d somehow miraculously be happier. By being self critical (in an effort to be perfect i.e. loved) I was being critical of others too; there was so much fear tied up in this cycle of performance and pursuit of perfection, making authentic connection (an overused word I know) almost impossible.

Our brains get stuck in well worn patterns over many decades and it’s only by being curious and choosing to delve a little deeper that we can understand and choose to change our responses. A lack of self acceptance means living in a state of self defence and self protection; connection feels difficult to navigate as we’re more focused on how others perceive us than being our true selves. It feels like living in a suit of armour whilst being surrounded by a high wall; it feels safe, but it feels as if attack is imminent. all the time.

There’s a huge current trend for wellness (as evidenced in the Sunday papers) but so much of what we’re being told to do has little to do with accepting who we are right now. I don’t need an Oura ring or any kind of app to tell me when I’m not sleeping well or feeding my body in a healthy way. I don’t need hundreds of pounds worth of skincare, hair products and cosmetics to take care of my skin. I don’t need to go to a gym to keep active or to exercise my body. I need to ‘tune into’ my body and it will tell me all I need to know.

I’m aware it’s a very simplistic way of seeing the world, but I often think if the majority of people loved themselves, how could they not love others too. If we took the best care of ourselves, how could we not want to take care of those we love. If we fully loved and accepted ourselves, how could we wage war on anyone?

I love the word nourish. I’m conscious of trying to nourish myself physically, emotionally, psychologically and mentally; self improvement is ‘out’, self acceptance is ‘in’.

Wishing you a great week ahead,

With love,

Karen x

On a Saturday, I tend to scroll through Substack and save all the articles that pique my interest, so I can read them over the weekend; I used to buy either a Saturday or Sunday newspaper, but reading them feels like groundhog day, in that I feel as if I’m reading the same articles repeated every week. Scrolling through Substack last Saturday, I spotted a couple of very famous names (so famous I can’t remember who they are) and I kind of thought ‘whoa, I’m writing on the same platform as these people; how great is it that there’s room for small fry like me who has no interest or desire to earn a living from being here or feels pressured to increase subscriber numbers’. I love Substack for the connections it’s given me; I’m regularly in touch with a handful of people who inspire me and whose writing I look forward to each week, plus there are some writers who blow my mind with their knowledge, wisdom and generosity in sharing their writing here.

Feeling very grateful for my little shared community and the opportunity to share my own thoughts, I posted a short note saying this. I’ve read that to be ‘seen’ here, we need to post notes every 2/3 hours and have a niche for our longform writing, but I only post a newsletter when I feel there’s something I want to say and rarely post a note…when I do, it’s often a view of swans and their babies from our kitchen window! I’m not being disingenuous when I say I have no idea how social media works, so the response to my piddly little note is bonkers?!

Said note has over 2k likes and my subscriber numbers have increased by 100s every day since the weekend. You might be someone for whom that’s a normal response, but I really can’t figure it out. Part of me initially thought, does this mean I need to up my writing game, but no….I’ll continue writing what’s on my mind and post as and when. I never post on any particular day and my writing is usually inspired by someone I’m connected with on Substack.

You may wonder why I’m telling you this? As I said in the note, I love my little community, I don’t have a niche subject/s and I don’t feel any pressure to write at all; I’m just grateful to be able to share my thoughts, to learn from others and to connect with people through my writing.

My inspiration this week is and her piece titled ‘On discernment as a guide through midlife’ (June 13). Julie asked me in a conversation between us in the comments to this article ‘do you feel moving around has actually allowed you to feel more connected to self in the absence of a geographical anchor or do you think it’s almost irrelevant?’

We moved onto our narrow boat ‘Grace’ on June 19th 2021, so we’re coming up to our 5th anniversary on board. I’ve written previously about ‘who’ I was back then; clearly, how I behaved, how I thought and what I believed wasn’t who I was, but I didn’t fully understand that at that time.

I’d spent years overextending myself, pushing myself in an effort to (try to) be perfect; I had an overdeveloped sense of responsibility, I was almost totally disconnected from how I felt, I tried to control everything to avoid uncertainty, I was focused on external validation, I tried to fix everything and everyone because I couldn’t sit with the discomfort of my own or anyone else’s feelings….in short, I was disconnected from myself, very self critical, full of fear and I’m only just realising, full of shame.

I presented as confident, capable, empathic, kind, caring, in fact, someone who has life sorted, but when you’re constantly cracking the whip across your own back, always believing you need to try harder, to be better, there’s no place to rest and changing your home environment doesn’t feel like choosing a different life . Jon Kabat-Zinn wrote the ground breaking book ‘Wherever you go, there you are’ and that was my truth…I’d chosen a different home, but I couldn’t find home within myself.

I remember feeling untethered when I first moved onto the boat, and at that time, I looked outside myself for answers; did I feel so unsettled because we were constantly on the move or was it because we were away from family and friends? I wasn’t at all familiar with turning inwards to determine what I wanted and needed and much more likely to look around at what everyone else was doing to try to figure out where I was going wrong. Self abandonment was familiar to me, albeit in a subconscious way; emotional discomfort meant getting busy, analysing, trying to fix rather than just sitting with myself with empathy, compassion, kindness and patience.

Despite my seemingly idyllic lifestyle, the last few years have been challenging; It’s difficult to change what you’re not consciously aware of and gaining awareness is the first step in the process of letting go of what holds us back. At the very deepest part of me, I wanted to be happy, to feel at ease in my own skin, to feel light hearted and to be spontaneous, but carrying a ton of old crap around kind of prevents that.

So, going back to Julie’s question; ‘do you feel moving around has actually allowed you to feel more connected to self in the absence of a geographical anchor or do you think it’s almost irrelevant?’

Not having a geographical anchor encouraged me to find an anchor within myself, but I’ve had to challenge pretty much everything about who I believed I was in that process. I don’t need fixing, I don’t need to feel responsible for everyone and everything, not everything has to be done RIGHT NOW….I’m continuing my journey, both literally and emotionally and I feel more at home in my ‘self’ than I’ve ever done.

Five years on, I love living on our boat and I’m so pleased we made the decision to sell our house and pretty much everything else to do so; I feel more at home on NB Grace than I’ve ever felt anywhere, but I know that’s mostly due to finding home in my own skin too.

With love,

Karen x

We were chatting with our grandson (the new baby’s Dad) and his partner yesterday about our upbringing, about how we raised our children and how we were as grandparents; despite being a parent myself for almost 50 years and a grandma for 28 years, I can honestly say I don’t feel particularly confident in offering parenting advice.

I was a mum at 19, a stepmum at 28, a grandma at 41 and a great grandma at 67, but it’s only now I feel I have a modicum of wisdom and sound advice to offer to new parents; I feel much more confident advising them what NOT to do, than what TO do.

The line in the poem ‘they do not mean to, but they do’ speaks to the fact that when (as young parents) we’re so focused on our child/children, as well as being flat out busy generally, the last thing on our minds is doing the work of sorting our own s—t out! From a personal perspective, it’s only now, at 68, that I understand my own parents behaviours more clearly and as they’re no longer here, I’m not able to reassure them that I know they did the absolute best they could with the parenting they had.

I’ve spent longer than I care to admit bemoaning what I didn’t get from my parents and maybe not long enough being grateful for all they did do. Having said that, by addressing the holes in my soul now (the phrase reparenting comes to mind) rather than ignoring them, has allowed me to have so much love and compassion for my parents, even though they’re not here.

‘They fill you with the faults they had and add some extra, just for you’ nearly always happens subconsciously; it takes conscious awareness to effect change and to respond differently. Our grandson recently heard himself saying to their first son ‘you’re not hungry, you’re just bored’ and instantly thought…that’s my mum’s voice saying that to me! Patterns of behaviour are passed down through the generations as much as we think we’re going to be different parents to our own.

Wanting to be loved/liked (as a mum) meant my attention was focused on me and how I behaved and was received; I wasn’t secure enough in myself to be the mum I would have liked to be. Secure attachment is everything and if we can give that to our children, we’re off to a great start. My children (and their partners) are great parents and I’m full of admiration for them; they practice parenting qualities that I never had, so I guess they learned from me one way or another, even if that’s what not to pass on.

Watching my children parent their children is interesting, but it’s mind blowing seeing my grandson and his partner become parents. Even though I feel I could have done so much better, I don’t feel at all that ‘man hands on misery to man’. They have clear ideas about how to be the best parents they can be and that mostly centres around parenting as a team and giving their boys time and attention.

Simple, yet important things such as sitting at a table and eating together as a family, bath time and bedtime routines, playing together, spending time outside, reading together, all these things encourage secure attachment and fill me with hope for future generations of our family.

I’m at a point in my life where I’m able to have love and compassion for my parents and also for myself; most of us do the best we can with what we know and if we fall short, it’s not through lack of love.

Being grandparents and now great grandparents gives us another opportunity to help shape different generations of our family and hopefully now, we have the knowledge, experience, wisdom and discernment to offer love and support to our children and their children in a positive way. The future is going to be fun :-)

With love,

Karen x

posts a newsletter every Sunday and I'm always blown away by her writing. She has such compassion, wisdom, knowledge and understanding of what it is to be human and her writing always resonates with me.

Dr V's most recent newsletter titled When Roles Are Not The Same As Truth talks about how an individual’s conscience and behaviour can impact/be impacted by an organisation's rules, policies and laws. That's a pretty reductive description and I'd recommend you read the newsletter. This newsletter also discusses the relationship between conscience and shame.

There have been many times in my own life, both professionally and personally, when I've made choices in alignment with my conscience, but have felt shame because of those decisions.

I've discovered a new writer on Substack this week too; writes about shame and in her most recent newsletter, Jenny advocates for a shame rebrand as ‘shame's greatest trick is to make itself such an uncomfortable feeling (even to think about it) it becomes the one thing you do not want to face which is the one thing you need to do in order to reduce it's power’.

Dr V writes ‘sometimes the hardest part is not seeing what is wrong, but standing there after everyone else has decided not to see it with you’.

When I've made choices that go against the tide or felt a way that others don't understand, the shame I've felt isn't because I've questioned my own decisions or feelings, but because I've felt alone in my choices. To feel unseen can feel unsafe and as a reforming fawner, that feels very unsettling.

When we resist difficult emotions, they become residents rather than visitors and it becomes difficult to figure out what they are trying to tell us. Shame feels so uncomfortable and it gets stuck because it's so difficult to stay with.

Jenny Evans writes ‘courage is what we conjure when we act despite our shame; it is deciding that something else matters more than fear ‘.

Rather than saying ‘I'm sad’, the Irish language says ‘ta bron orm’ meaning ‘sadness is on me’. By allowing fear and shame to move through us, we can learn how to decipher the messages they're trying to convey.

I'm learning I'm neither my thoughts nor my emotions; they don't ‘belong’ to me and they will pass through, leaving a feeling or some kind of intuitive resonance if I can stay rather than flee.

Rilke's Letters To A Young Poet tells us to ‘try to love the questions themselves’ as in doing so, the answers will become clearer.

By allowing space for fear, shame, vulnerability and any other so called difficult emotions, I continue to build stronger foundations, live my life with greater clarity and in alignment with my conscience. Validation comes from within…take courage.

With love,

Karen x

I’ve always said the one (BIG) lesson I’ve learned in life is that people learn through their own experiences, not because of any advice I’ve given. So many times I tried to tell my children not to follow a particular path, because having followed that path myself, I could tell them it would only end in tears. Whilst wanting to be a responsible parent, I didn’t understand that my advice sometimes felt more like control than loving support.

It’s exam time in the UK and I’ve read several writers comment about how they’re feeling so stressed because their son/daughter is taking their GCSE’s at the moment. Casting my mind back to the 70’s when I was studying for my ‘O’ levels, I can honestly say my parents had no clue about what I was doing in terms of revision, what exams were on which days and how I felt about it all. My parents weren’t unkind or neglectful, but I was expected to manage my revision timetable and show up for each exam as well prepared as I could be. The idea of them being involved in my school life would have seemed odd!

I’m not suggesting my experiences should be replicated now, but it started me thinking about what we pass onto our children (and subsequent generations) by how we behave. I also read a sentence recently (I can’t recall where) that said something like ‘what is meant with loving intention can be received as control’.

Let me state clearly that I’m not criticising any parent for being invested in their children, but if we have a tendency to anxiety and worry, we’re bound to pass that onto our children, even if we think we’re managing to conceal it from them.

My mum was a worrier; her relationship with her mum wasn’t great and I understand now that she wouldn’t have felt securely attached from being a little girl. I remember a time when I was in my late 50s when I said I’d ring her to let her know how a hospital appointment had gone; I had to wait over 3 hours to be seen by a consultant, so by the time I rang mum, she was frantic and worried that I’d been in an accident. At the time, I remember being annoyed, as not only had I had to sit in a hot, airless waiting room for hours, I was also having to manage her emotions which felt like an extra burden to me. What was meant with love felt heavy and I felt prickly and resentful.

I was aware of this dynamic between us, but have only truly begun to understand it several years after my mum died; I never felt able to discuss the way I felt with her as I didn’t want to hurt her feelings, so we were locked into a kind of cycle that neither of us was able to break. I know she loved me and I also understand now how and why this love felt heavy at times and carried a weight that felt difficult for us both to bear.

I also remember being on holiday in Spain with my son, his wife and their then 2 year old; they went out in the car one day and he text me to say they’d arrived at the place they were going to because ‘I knew you’d be worrying about us’. A similar dynamic was being played out in the next generation and it saddened me to know he felt he had to carry the weight of my anxieties. My intention was loving, but I now understand how that love carried with it a heaviness and a need for him to soothe me because I wasn’t feeling (or taking responsibility for) my own feelings.

When we first moved onto the boat and were preparing to cruise continuously around the UK canals, so many women told me they could never do that because they couldn’t ‘leave’ their grandchildren. I could always feel the sense of responsibility they had towards their grandchildren, even though that responsibility mainly lay with their own children as parents.

writes (The Hard Things About Grandparenting Nobody Talks About) ‘worrying doesn’t end when your children become adults; if anything, it expands. You worry about your children, your grandchildren and increasingly the world they are growing up in’. She also writes ‘how easy it is to feel responsible for people whose lives are not yours to manage’.

As a grandma and great grandma, I now have a better understanding of how we impact our children by how we behave and I’d choose to behave differently as a mum if I had my time again. Our children need love, guidance, support, trust (in them and in us), some advice, boundaries, but also for us to be interested in them and their lives without them worrying about us and absorbing our anxieties. I’ve always said that children follow what they ‘see’ modelled in the family, not necessarily what they’re told.

These last few years have enabled me to see my own patterns more clearly, to feel my own feelings and to take responsibility for them; I’m also more able to sit with the feelings of others without trying to fix them. For a long time, I’d very much be the person who’d be full of advice for everyone, the person who’d try to control every scenario, to make everything better, but those responses came from a place of fear and a lack of trust within me. Trusting myself allows me to trust that others will find their own solutions without me trying to take over their lives; I can listen, support, love, trust and be steadfast in just being there, sometimes just being there is enough.

writes in her book Fawning (brilliant and highly recommended) ‘in our habituation toward taking care of ourselves through others, fawners tend to think they have all the answers for all the folks. While we’ve avoided conflict where it was likely necessary, avoided doing our own deeper healing, our opinions for others have leaked out all over the place’.

I give myself grace for the way I’ve behaved (and continue to behave) with everyone in my life; I’ve always tried my best to be a ‘good’ daughter, sister, wife, mum, grandma etc etc and I can’t undo what I’ve done in the past. What I can do is allow others to feel their own feelings and have their own experiences without my ‘expert’ opinion or without me trying to fix anyone (or myself, come to that!).

No one is born into this world with a ‘to do’ handbook and we’re all just bumbling along doing our best; we all need to feel there are people who love and support us whatever happens, but we also all need freedom to be ourselves, to make our own mistakes and to build trust in ourselves so we’re living our lives from a place of stability and self reliance.

We spent the day yesterday with family and our 26 year old grandson was telling us that when his little boy was being grumpy and asking for food, he heard himself say ‘you’re not hungry, you’re just bored’ and immediately thought ‘oh wow, that’s my mum’s voice talking to me!’

In the greater scheme of things, some things never change!

With love,

Karen x

For the past couple of months, I’ve sensed a shift within me that I couldn’t quite clarify or describe; I can sense change, but there’s been no distinct cohesion to how I’ve been feeling. At one time, this lack of clarity would have freaked me out and I’d have spent weeks trying to force an answer and to look for some sort of definitive solution, but I’ve allowed the questions, thoughts and feelings just to be there and to see where they take me.

I started writing on Substack a couple of years ago, mainly because I wanted to record the practical journey of selling our house to live on a narrow boat, plus to document the emotional and psychological journey I was travelling on as a result of those life changes.

Recently, I’ve felt as if it’s time for me to stop writing and just live my life; I’ve been questioning the value of putting my thoughts, opinions and experiences down on paper and questioning my reasons for doing so. Writing has been important to me these last few years, but there’s something different in the way I feel about it.

I’ve never wanted to create an income stream from my writing and although it felt as if I had a bit of a niche initially i.e. ‘60+ woman sells everything she owns and has a narrow boat built to live on’, that story isn’t all of who I am and my writing has since diversified in all sorts of different ways.

On April 6th, wrote a newsletter titled Unbecoming Her, Becoming Me…if you haven’t read Jada’s writing, I urge you to do so as it’s brilliant, interesting and always thought provoking…on reading this newsletter, I heard the words ‘I am multitudes’ in my head. I’m aware of how self-aggrandising that sounds, but it wasn’t a conscious thought; it felt as if someone had spoken those words into my ear. It did seem a very odd statement, but I reserved judgement and allowed the words to sit there and wondered if the reason for them would become clear at some point.

I’ve spent the last 5 weeks travelling around the Outer Hebrides and the Lake District in our van (I’ve written about this in my last 2 newsletters); this period of travelling took on a different shape to the one we’d loosely planned and although I did feel a little tweak of discomfort about making some changes to the itinerary, I knew those changes were right for me/us.

In response to my last newsletter, asked if returning to our narrow boat felt like going home; I replied that it absolutely did, but I also know that living in our van for those 5 weeks felt very much like home too. I also knew the apartment we rented in Spain for 4 weeks in January felt like home as well. We sometimes believe that home has to be a house or one place, yet home for me is much more about where my needs for comfort are met and that can be many different places.

These thoughts and feelings about the meaning of ‘I am multitudes’, about what makes a home, about being comfortable in different living situations, about making changes were all quietly sitting within my psyche and slowly beginning to coalesce into a more coherent picture. I was making no attempt to think my way into clarity, but just allowing my body the space to show me the truth of where I’m at right now.

I’ve referenced Yung Pueblo’s book Lighter several times before and this is a book I go back to again and again, particularly the sections about ‘Letting Go’.

I had an inkling what I was experiencing was a lessening of attachment; Pueblo writes ‘a continuous craving for things to be a certain way is known as an attachment’.

For many years, I’ve been a ‘teacher’ in some form or another and I’ve recently been feeling a strong desire to relinquish that need within me to teach and to become a pupil. I was very attached to my role as a teacher and an educator and my sense of self has been tied to that role for many years, but now, I long to let go of that and be a learner, to be curious, to question, to be surprised and delighted in equal measure.

Attachment to our roles in life, to our careers, our relationships, our homes, our financial status all serve to give us a feeling of safety and security, a sense of belonging and a sense of self worth. We want people to think like us, to agree with us, to make the choices we make, to behave in the ways we want them to and by holding tight to these attachments, we experience enormous pain when we can’t control outcomes or other people.

writes in her newsletter I Feel Because… (May18th) ‘and I find myself understanding on some level, yet not with words, something that my mind can’t quite define, but must be felt’…

The words ‘I am multitudes’ spoken in my ear clearly tell me I am not just the roles I have inhabited throughout my life; I am not just a teacher, I am a pupil too. Yes, I’m a sister, wife, mum, grandma, great grandma, friend, sister in law…all of those…yet I really am ‘multitudes’ and I don’t need to grasp any of those roles to define ME.

I can make different choices, change my mind, make a home where I can, I can give love, receive love…I can keep ‘becoming’ without any final goal until THE final goal!

Lightness comes from being (and feeling) at home in different places, from allowing others to be exactly who they are and to accept myself exactly as I am too.

I realise that it isn’t that I don’t want to write, but that I’m less attached to how my writing is received. I can write for my own pleasure and if it resonates with anyone else, that’s great, but I don’t feel as if I have to write for anyone’s approval. I’m not writing to earn a living and I’m not trying to attract subscribers; I’m writing because it gives me pleasure and because it connects me with others here who inspire me and that, in fact, is the greatest pleasure.

Yung Pueblo writes ‘the ego gives us a rigid sense of self and wants others to perceive us in a certain way; there is a sense of comfort the ego feels in uniformity’.

I’ve read about the ego and attachment for many years, yet it’s taken me a little while to be aware of the softening of my own ego and the loosening of the attachments I’ve held on to for so long.

Our narrow boat is called Grace, hence my Substack is called Saved by Grace. changing my life in a practical sense as I did 5 years ago is teaching me so much; I know I can connect without rigid attachment, to place, to people, to experiences. In letting go, trusting myself and listening to my body, I’m finding a growing sense of peace, safety and security that I haven’t known before and I’m so grateful for that.

With love,

Karen x

We sold our house to live on a narrow boat in June 2021 and by doing so, the changes in my life have been (and still are) so much more far reaching than just changing where and how I live in a practical sense.

The last 5 years have been an exploration of the UK canal system, explorations of places I love to return to by van (we bought it in March 2025), places I’ve never visited before, but most importantly an exploration of my own thoughts, beliefs and behaviour patterns.

At certain times in our lives, routine and order is necessary. We need to get to work on time and fulfill the roles expected of us; children need to be taken care of, cars need to be kept roadworthy, houses need to be maintained, the weekly shopping needs to be done…you know the drill.

I think it’s true to say that many women in later life cast a glance back to see where they’ve come from, but more importantly, to see where they’re going; even more importantly, whether they want to go there at all or whether they need to change direction.

Our brains love predictability, behaviour patterns become who we think we are and we may never think to question why we do what we do. We can literally go to our graves never knowing that we can change things, mix things up a bit or live our lives a completely different way.

Clearly, some people may never feel the need to question anything about who they are or how they live, but I know I wanted to live these later years of my life, not just drift through them doing what I’d always done and believing how I’d lived was who I was.

My long practiced patterns include personal discipline (aka control), perfectionism, fawning (people pleasing), pursuit of achievement, busyness, being overly concerned of other people’s opinions, detachment from my own feelings, doing what I felt I should do, rather than what I’d like to do….quite a list, but a list I feel many people will identify with.

I’d planned to travel around the Outer Hebrides for 4/5 weeks, so to feel that I was ready to move on after two and a half weeks felt uncomfortable, as if I was ‘giving up’ somehow and ‘giving up’ to me meant weakness.

Letting go of beliefs and behaviors doesn’t happen quickly and in my experience, always feels physically uncomfortable; changing direction unexpectedly can feel like reneging on a promise, lacking staying power, having no motivation/determination….and on and on….

Despite my discomfort, I followed my gut and we chose to leave Lewis earlier than planned and come to the Lake District for a while. The month of May has to be one of the most beautiful times to be here. Everywhere looks absolutely stunning; the pathways are lined with wild garlic, the woods are full of bluebells, the clouds cast constantly changing shadows over the fells and there are rhododendron bushes of the most astonishing colour in full flower. We’ve been here many times before, but never in May and because this trip wasn’t planned, the pleasure in being in this beautiful landscape at this time of year feels like a gift.

In the past, because of my aforementioned beliefs and behaviours, I’d have ‘needed’ to climb the peaks all around me; achievement overrode choice…in fact, choice wasn’t on my radar. There was a mountain, therefore, it must be conquered. I now have compassion for the part of me that felt the only way she could feel/be safe was to be strong, to achieve, to push harder, to never give up. Of course, living with those patterns and within strict parameters doesn’t allow space for joy, for spontaneity, for change, for choice, for rest, for ‘being’.

Now, my plans are looser; it’s a joy to walk through a forest and look at the natural sculpture of a fallen tree, a tree which appears (in part) to be dying, but also shows signs of being a habitat for new life. It’s a pleasure to stand in the centre of a rocky ascending path to listen to the birds singing and to be astonished by the way the light shines through the leaves, casting an almost fluorescent glow.

Walking in nature has always been an intrinsic and essential part of my life and removing the ‘need’ to achieve any goals allows me to focus more on what’s around me, rather than plodding up hills. Having said that, I’m happy to climb the fells for pleasure when I choose to, but not because I feel some sort of internal obligation to do so. Anyone who has a passion for walking would be hard pressed to look at the Lakeland fells and not want to stride out and get to the top of Scafell, Skiddaw, Haystacks, The Old Man of Coniston or Blencathra.

Another benefit of a more spontaneous approach to life/travel/everything is that we’ve been able to be here when the Bluebird K7 festival is on.

https://bluebirdk7thefestival.co.uk/

Our plans for the last 4/5 weeks have turned out differently than we expected, but each day has been a lesson in learning to let go of what’s gone before and to relax any self imposed parameters I might have.

I’m learning that to experience joy, I have to be open to feeling the whole continuum of human emotion; it isn’t possible to feel joy without grief, happiness without sadness, safety without uncertainty. By exercising control, by being rigid, by resisting change, I can be sure what’s happening, but it’s a sterile kind of life, not a life of colour, potential and possibility.

Our road trip comes to an end in a couple of days and it’s been great. Living in the van for almost 5 weeks has been easy; despite the small space, we’ve been cosy and comfortable, although I’m looking forward to a very long shower, rather than a more efficient and water conserving one!

We’ve no specific plans over the summer, other than to pootle around by boat and van, depending on the water levels in the canal; when anyone asks us ‘what are your plans’, our reply is ‘the plan is no plan’.

Thank you to anyone reading my writing; I’m truly grateful that you’re here. Many people say to me/us that we’re ‘living the dream’ and although our life isn’t everyone’s dream, we love it.

We met a lady out walking the other day (younger than us) who told us her husband had had a brain hemorrhage 9 months ago and was now using a wheelchair and unable to walk the fells as he had done for years. We’re grateful for our good health and that we both enjoy pursuing similar hobbies and pursuits and whilst we’re able to do what we do, we’ll keep doing it. Nothing in life is guaranteed, so I’ll keep letting go, keep learning and most importantly, keep walking :-)

NB: I love to read about the places, landscapes and people related to wherever we are and I can highly recommend these books:

The Soap Man: Lewis, Harris and Lord Leverhulme by Roger Hutchinson

Beatrix Potter: A Life in Nature by Linda Lear.

With love,

Karen x

Having sold our house, car and caravan in 2021 to live on a narrow boat, we had to look at a way of getting there, so to that end, we bought a van conversion motorhome last year. We chose a van style motorhome as we figured it would be more suitable for some of the narrow, single track roads than a coach built motorhome.

Before we bought the van, we discussed doing this trip by hiring a car and staying in guest houses/B & B’s, but as lifelong caravanners, we love the freedom and flexibility of having our own ‘stuff’ with us and being able to move where we want, when we want…..so the van purchase was completed!

When we had the caravan, our usual mode of operation was to book a site for at least a week, set up camp and walk everywhere we could, leaving the car on site. The main purpose of having the caravan was to walk (hike); we’d only use the car when we wanted to travel somewhere further afield.

Having the van (rather than a caravan) means we can pack up and move more quickly and rather than booking onto specific sites on this trip, we planned to use more ‘park ups’ which can be anything from a layby to a beach car park.

When we stay on a site, we usually pay to be connected to an electricity supply, so the heating, hot water, kettle and microwave can all run off that supply; we have a gas cooker and the gas supply runs off an LPG tank on the van. When we’re on a park up, we use as little power as possible to keep the batteries charged and to try not to deplete the gas in the tank too quickly. On the island, this was important as the only place we could get LPG gas on a pump was at Stornaway and using the heating and hot water on gas would deplete what gas was in the tank very quickly.

We’d planned on being here for up to five weeks and one thing I’d always dreamed of doing was opening the back doors of the van in the morning and walking straight onto a beach; I really didn’t have any expectations other than this and was happy to go with the flow as we made our way around.

When we found a place to stay for a few days/nights, we very quickly started to notice a pattern that nearly everyone was following. When we were staying on a site, literally everyone went out in their vans/motorhomes all day and if we were on a park up, people would pull up, walk to the beach, take a picture and move on.

It became evident that our usual method of setting up camp and walking everywhere wasn’t feasible here as everything is so spaced out; to get the best out of the island, we’d need to drive around most of the day to see everything.

Having said that, we did some beautiful walks and the landscape and scenery is stunning.

We also caught the bus one morning (the site owner was very bemused when we told him we wouldn’t be moving our van during our 3 day stay) to Gearrannan Blackhouse Village and walked back along the coast.

As so much of the landscape on Lewis is peat bog, walking back was like walking on an upturned egg box and our boots disappeared up to our ankles in black, peaty water several times. It felt such an achievement to be getting around by public transport and walking back, rather than by driving…such a great day!

So many of the island’s services are run by the community; shops, launderettes, campsites and cafes are very spaced out, but the sense of community is genuinely wonderful. We met so many lovely people who were so generous with their time and I was very moved by the islands’ history and the struggle the people have been through to own their own land and live independent lives.

Crofting and traditional land use practices shape the landscape; many properties have sheep on their land and the visible ‘runrig’ lines are everywhere, particularly in North Lewis.

So, was I able to fulfill my dream of opening the van doors to step onto a beach and into the sea? Not all of the beaches are safe or suitable for swimming, but at Bosta Beach (my favourite), I was able to walk a few metres from the van and go into the water. It was absolutely freezing, but I did go in on 2 consecutive days (to say I swam would be stretching it!) but I did fulfill my dream.

As I said earlier, we’d planned to be on the island for up to 5 weeks, but after two and a half weeks, we were very low on gas (so we needed to go back to Stornaway) and we hadn’t been to Harris yet. I’d been feeling a bit of cognitive dissonance which I couldn’t quite figure out….I’d always wanted to come here, yet I wasn’t really feeling very enthusiastic about going back to Stornaway to fill up with gas and then driving back down to Harris?

I’ve always been a thinker and a doer and have been much more likely to try to please others than be in touch with what I want (to do); although I have great empathy for others, I’ve often been detached from how I feel and overly concerned with what other people think.

The thought of leaving the island so soon felt like giving up somehow; other people had told me they’d been here for 6 weeks and still felt they needed to spend more time here, so what was I doing ‘wrong?’

Of course, if rather than thinking and rationalising, I gave myself time to feel, I’d know what I wanted to do. I didn’t want to be driving around all day, stopping at all the beaches and every tourist spot and taking pictures before jumping back in the van and moving on, I wanted to be walking with a packed lunch and a flask in my rucksack.

I’d loved what we’d done, what we’d seen, who we’d met and where we’d stayed; we hadn’t stayed as long as I’d thought we would, but that was ok, dreams can adapt and change and still be fulfilled.

What this trip has taught me is to make choices with my heart and my gut, to let go of what I think I should do, to do what I want to do and to give myself time to make those decisions. In my heart, my dream feels fulfilled, even though in some ways it took on a different shape and that’s all that matters.

PS: We’re now in the Lake District; I have my walking boots, packed lunch and flask of coffee….I’m ready to walk the fells :-)

With love,

Karen x

It’s a lovely book, almost nostalgic in the ways it details NS’s love of the things in his home, such as the eclectic mix of pottery he has and uses every day, the cotton and linen tea towels he favours and the rituals that please him, such as lighting a candle in the morning as he writes at his desk.

I’ve always said the two things I’d love in my dream life would be a library and a walled garden; as I now live on a narrow boat, it seems pretty unlikely that this will ever happen, but it will always be a part of my dream life.

Someone commented recently on one of my posts ‘what a lovely life you have’ and I’ve often been told that I’m ‘living the dream’, but what does that even mean? We all choose to live different lives and I’m sure my lifestyle would be some people’s worst (well, maybe not worst, but you know what I mean) nightmare.

Reading A Thousand Feasts, I love the thought of having a larder full of mismatched pots and even to have a larder with a flagstone floor sounds like bliss. The idea of a home with cosy rooms, high ceilings and a kitchen (with an Aga) overlooking the garden sounds like the epitome of comfort and safety and yet, 5 years ago, I made the choice to give away 99% of my possessions to live in a space 60’ x 6’ 10”.

On our narrow boat, there’s no space for lots of anything; living on the boat, it was always my intention to use everything I owned most of the time, rather than having lots of ‘stuff’ sitting in cupboards, wardrobes and other storage places doing nothing.

A couple of years before we sold the house, I did have my own version of a library; my daughter in law suggested using our second bedroom as a reading room as it was getting hardly any use as a spare bedroom. I’d always longed for a room of my own (thank you Virginia Woolf), my husband had his office and workshop, so we got rid of the bed and wardrobe and voila…I had my own beautiful space which was bliss.

Despite only two of us living in the house, it was lovely to be able to take a cup of tea or a glass of wine and sit and read a book in ‘my’ room. However, we were soon to move into a space where neither of us has our ‘own’ space; the living space in the boat is essentially one room, although the bathroom and bedroom are separate, so my dream of a library has gone.

So, how do I hold onto my dreams living in such a small space? How do I maintain rituals that provide comfort and safety as part of a nomadic lifestyle? How do I manage without the space for ‘stuff’?

We have pretty much four of everything on board; 4 mugs, 4 small plates, 4 dinner plates and so on, but every morning, I drink my tea out of a cup that my sister bought for my birthday several years ago. So, even though we don’t have lots of ‘pots’, my special tea cup is precious to me and I think of my sister every morning when I take it out of the cupboard.

We always buy good quality bedding and towels as comfort is a priority and the lack of space means we don’t have an airing cupboard full of spare stuff that never gets used as we did in the house!

We obviously haven’t got a garden, but we have access to lovely countryside everywhere we go and we don’t have to maintain any of it; plus, if we moor somewhere we don’t like very much, we can untie the ropes and move somewhere else.

Our wood burner, beautifully fragranced candles and comfy throws all make for a cosy winter and being able to live (mostly) outdoors in the summer feels like freedom.

Having lived on the boat for almost 5 years, we’re still fully invested in this way of life, but who knows what the future will bring; I’m pretty sure my dream of a home with a library and a walled garden will stay exactly that, but what’s life without a dream :-)

With love,

Karen x

Back then, was in a pub with my Dad one Sunday lunchtime when some of our relatives walked in; we hadn't seen these family members for a long time and at some point during the conversation, I remember my Dad saying something along the lines of ‘Karen likes to take life by the throat and throttle it to death’. I do remember feeling shocked by his words, although I can't remember quizzing him about it any further.

Those words pretty much described my attitude towards life and towards myself for many years, a need to overcome adversity, to do battle, to strive, to push through, to achieve, to try harder, to do better, to never give up or give in.

I had the same attitude towards my body and exercise; run further, lift heavier, cycle faster, swim more lengths, lose weight, teach more classes…..

As I get older, I'm curious about how accepting I'll be when I find myself (and my body) changing in such a way that I'm unable to do what I used to do. Up to now, although I have definitely noticed some changes, I still kind of feel the same as I always have.

My husband Rob turns 74 tomorrow and we've been having this conversation about the fact that we're getting older, but do we feel much older?

This weekend, we're in Derbyshire and for decades, our holidays and weekends away have been centred around walking. Back in the day, we'd walk 15+ miles every day without a day off and I can remember walks where we'd happily walk 18 miles including climbing a mountain such as Snowdon or Scafell.

When we arrived in Derbyshire yesterday (and hadn't even been on a walk) I felt weary; we went for a short walk to a nearby village (6 miles round trip) and Rob was saying he felt a bit tired too.

I could sense how we were ‘talking’ to ourselves, our internal dialogue saying ‘this can't be right, why are we feeling tired when we haven't done anything, we never used to be/feel like this, I'm not happy about this, this needs to change’ and on and on, resisting what is.

How life feels as I get older will very much depend on how I speak to myself and how I behave; do I continue throttling life to death or do I respond to what is…right now?

The truth is when I feel weary, I'll choose to rest; I'm happy to walk 8-10 miles and come home to have an afternoon nap, rather than walk 15 miles and feel shattered all evening.

The physical changes feel subtle up to now; our knees and hips feel fine (no doubt helped by a 3 times a week yoga practice) but the desire to walk is much more about enjoying the beautiful scenery than racking up the miles.

Ageing feels like a pair of scales with the balance currently in our favour; we can still do what we've always done, but no longer feel the need to achieve particular goals. Walking now isn't about the finish point or walking a specific number of miles, but about the journey itself.

Getting older feels great in so many ways; there's no pressure to achieve, responsibilities have shifted, there really is time to smell the roses and we're not yet feeling the bigger disadvantages of getting older.

Accepting myself and my body as I am/it is now will determine how much I enjoy my life going forward; resistance to ‘what is’ is futile.

I no longer run or go to a gym and I can't remember the last time I rode a bike, not because I can't, but because I just don't want to.

I can't predict how I'll adapt to being less able, both physically and mentally, but in the meantime, you'll find me walking the hills, smelling the roses and putting my feet up in the evenings as I sip a gin and tonic…bliss!

With love,

Karen x

Like Marianne, I have been seduced by self help books (mostly in the past) and although I’ve learned a lot from some of them, ultimately, what continues to help me live the best life possible (for me) is to do what makes me happy and not pay too much attention to how everyone else chooses to live their lives.

Because of my interest and purchase history of this type of book, I sometimes receive recommendations for books on my Kindle; the other day, a book called How To Have An EPIC Retirement by Bec Wilson popped up on said recommendations and although I wasn’t tempted to buy it, I did read the book details paragraph.

The book ‘addresses the six key pillars of a great retirement; time, money, health, happiness and fulfilment, travel and your home’.

As I haven’t read the book, I’m guessing the subject of partnerships/marriage is discussed in the happiness and fulfilment section; has written a hugely important article titled When Menopause Restructures a Marriage (on her Substack Rise Wise) which I’d highly recommend to anyone planning retirement.

It’s difficult to imagine a world without social media, a world before self help became a ‘thing’ but in my experience, everyone I know is doing retirement differently.

Clearly, we can plan for retirement from a financial viewpoint; we can take care of our health and decide where we want to live, how we want to spend our time and where we want to travel, but there are also many differences between people planning to retire that impact on whether that EPIC retirement becomes a reality or not. There are also many things out of our control that we can’t plan for, but we have to meet with equanimity when they arise.

I have to confess that retirement kind of just happened for me and although we’d loosely planned our financial future, I thought I’d continue working for a lot longer than I actually did. I couldn’t envisage not teaching the Pilates and Yoga classes I so loved, but my body had other ideas.

As things turned out, I stopped working when I was 61 and as that coincided with Covid and all the uncertainty of that time, we decided we wanted to have an adventure and do something we’d never done before. Despite only ever having been on a narrow boat for 3 days, we sold our house and commissioned a narrow boat to live on.

I sometimes wonder how many people chose to do something different with their lives as a result of Covid; no one could have predicted what happened in those few years and doing what we did felt right for us.

Had we planned our retirement pre Covid, those plans would have been torn to shreds and retirement has been as much of an evolution as other significant times in our lives such as raising children, becoming grandparents and starting businesses. The idea of planning retirement and having everything ‘set up’ and ready to live life in a particular way hasn’t been true for me at all.

Choosing to live on a narrow boat as continuous cruisers with no home base worked well for 4 years after moving on board, but we wanted to change our lifestyle to enable us to travel further afield and away from the canal network. The drought of summer 2025 meant travel on canals and rivers wasn’t possible, so that motivated us to buy our van conversion motorhome and get back on the road.

Life back in the real world (as in travelling faster than 4mph) was a bit of a shock, but it meant that we could travel to all the places we’d missed when we were restricted to living purely on the canal.

Home had changed from a house to a narrow boat and then to a narrow boat and a van. One of our main motivations for living on a narrow boat initially was to live a life with as little ‘stuff’ as possible and although buying the van necessitated more ‘stuff’, its still a much lighter and less cluttered way to live.

For now, our home and travel pillars are EPIC; we’re happy living on the boat and in the van and both are mobile. We can throw a few things in the van and drive to wherever we choose, get back, untie the ropes and tootle off along the canal.

I’ve had so many conversations with people who are retiring about whether we’ll have enough money to facilitate our respective lifestyles, but we all choose to do different things and to live different ways.

I have friends who are travelling all over the world, posting photos of far flung destinations on social media, but I also have friends who love living on the canal without a car or any other means of travel.

I have friends who live in big houses, friends who are working, friends who have second homes…the list goes on. All of us are making choices that we choose to make and I’m not sure that any of those choices were gleaned from a book.

One of the greatest gifts of my life right now is the gift of time; in the past, my days were full to bursting, but to have the time to do what I want when I want is priceless and something that makes me very happy. Despite choosing to live a simple life, I’m genuinely never bored and much more present in my life; much more aware of everything around me.

I don’t feel that I want an EPIC retirement, it feels a bit ’shouty’ and demanding; I’m happy to live a fairly quiet life, to have a quiet mind, to enjoy being with family and friends, to be active in ways that I enjoy and to live each day as it comes.

Right now, I’m happy with all six pillars of my retirement; I love spending time with my husband, but there’ll be a time when one of us is no longer here, so it’s so important that we do what makes us happy in this moment and not spend too much time worrying about the future.

I know life will continue to change despite any best laid plans, but we’ll cross that bridge when it happens; in the meantime, spring has sprung and the countryside looks amazing, so enjoy the moment and a quietly epic weekend!

With love,

Karen x