Weekend Wine & Wisdom: The Life In Front Of You Matters More Than The One Behind You

There comes a point in adulthood where you realise most people are essentially being haunted by former versions of themselves. Emotional ghosts they drag around like a ball and chain.

Old heartbreaks.
Old mistakes.
Old embarrassments that still wake you up at 2am like “Remember that weird thing you said in 2014?” And suddenly you are lying in bed reliving a conversation nobody else remembers while your nervous system behaves like you are under an FBI investigation.

Humans have a remarkable talent for dragging the past around like an overpacked suitcase at an airport.

And the strange part is we do it voluntarily.

We carry old guilt. Old shame. Old failures. Old relationships that should have stayed exactly where they ended instead of becoming a personality trait and three emotional support playlists you play on repeat for 6 straight months.

At some point, many people stop living in forward and start emotionally reverse parking through life.

And honestly, I think it explains a lot.

It explains why some people sabotage good relationships because someone cheated on them in 2009.
Why some people never take risks because they failed once and decided that was apparently their entire identity now.
Why some people speak about themselves like they are permanently trapped inside their worst chapter.

But the truth is this, the life in front of you matters far more than the life behind you.

Your past is not a GPS of where you are going. It’s a receipt. Proof you were there. Proof you survived. Proof you once thought cutting your hair, tequila or emotionally unavailable people were a really good idea.

But the past should not be steering your future.

The past is like the wake behind a boat.
It shows you where you’ve been, but it will never steer where you’re going. And if you spend your whole life staring at the wake, eventually you are going to crash into something important.
Usually your own happiness.

The Truth Bomb

Here is the uncomfortable truth nobody enjoys hearing because it ruins the entire “this is just who I am” speech people love giving.

At some point, your past stops being an explanation and starts becoming an excuse.

Yes, painful things happened.
Yes, some people broke you in ways that took years to recover from.
Yes, life occasionally behaves like a feral raccoon hyped up on energy drinks just knocking over everything in sight.

But eventually there comes a moment where you either keep rebuilding your identity around what hurt you…or you decide your future deserves better leadership.

Because some people are letting experiences from fifteen years ago make decisions for them today.

That is like allowing the haircut your Grandmother gave you at 9 determine your self esteem as an adult.

Insane behaviour.

People let one betrayal convince them nobody can be trusted. One rejection convince them they are unlovable. One failure convince them they are incapable. But then they wonder why life feels small.

Of course it does.

You cannot build a bigger future while emotionally living inside old evidence. Some people are so attached to their suffering that healing feels threatening. Because if they let go of the pain… who are they without it?

That is the part nobody talks about.

Sometimes people cling to old wounds because at least the wounds feel familiar.
Predictable and safe. Humans will choose familiar misery over unfamiliar happiness all the time. Which explains why people go back to toxic exes despite previously describing the relationship like a hostage negotiation. The past becomes comfortable. Not healthy. Not joyful. Just… familiar.

And familiarity is seductive, even when it is ruining your life.

The Reframe

The past is actually supposed to teach you not trap you.

There is a big difference. A life lesson is useful, a life sentence is not. Your mistakes are meant to become wisdom, not permanent branding. But people love turning old pain into identity.

“This is just how I am now.”

No, Susan.
This is how trauma taught you to behave.
That is not necessarily your final form.

And honestly, that should be encouraging to you. Because it means you are not stuck. You’re not doomed to remain the same person who got hurt. The same person who tolerated bullshit. The same person who confused breadcrumbs with love because someone texted “u up?” at midnight and suddenly it felt like destiny.

Growth means allowing yourself to outgrow the version of you that survived.

And survival mode is never supposed to become your permanent personality.

Some people are still emotionally living like they are in crisis years after the emergency ended.

Constantly defensive.
Constantly waiting for disappointment.
Constantly assuming disaster is around the corner like life is a low budget thriller film.

That level of emotional exhaustion is not intuition, it’s burnout waiting to happen. I should know, I have been there far too many times.

The Unexpected Fix

Oddly enough, one of the healthiest things you can do is stop romanticising who you used to be.

People constantly say things like:
“I miss the old me.”

Do you really? Because the old you had terrible judgement.

The old you ignored red flags because they came wrapped in charm and good eye contact.
The old you accepted bare minimum effort and called it potential.
The old you thought healing meant posting inspirational quotes while obsessing over your exes facebook post trying to find clues like Sherlock Holmes.

The old you was trying. They were doing the best they could. But they were also learning.

Not every previous version of yourself deserves resurrecting. Some versions of you existed purely to get you to the next chapter.

That is it.

And growth often feels uncomfortable because becoming healthier means grieving identities you thought would last forever.

You outgrow people.
You outgrow habits.
You outgrow coping mechanisms.
You outgrow the need to explain yourself to people committed to misunderstanding you.

And yes, sometimes you even outgrow your own bullshit excuses.

The Shift

The biggest shift happens when you realise your future self is begging you to stop consulting your past for permission.

Because your future self already knows something your current self keeps forgetting:

Your life did not end at the moment you got hurt. It just changed direction. And if we’re being honest, some of those directions were well overdue.

A lot of people spend years trying to return to who they were before heartbreak, betrayal, loss, failure or disappointment.

But maybe you were never meant to go backwards.

Maybe the goal was never to become the old you again.

Maybe the goal was to become wiser.
Stronger.
More self-aware.
More peaceful.
More selective about who gets access to your energy, your time and your Netflix password.

The life ahead of you requires a different version of you.

Not a broken version. Not a bitter version. Not a permanently guarded version who treats vulnerability like a federal crime.

A more healed version. Or at the very least, a version who no longer mistakes emotional chaos for chemistry. Which honestly eliminates at least 70% of modern dating.

The Practical Nudge

So if you feel stuck staring backwards lately, here are a few reminders:

Stop introducing yourself through your worst moments

You are not just the divorce.
The betrayal.
The breakdown.
The mistake.
The year you emotionally collapsed and survived entirely on caffeine and denial.

You are also everything that came after.

Ask yourself whether your fear belongs to the present or the past. Sometimes what feels like intuition is just memory in high heels pretending to be wisdom.

Not every new person is your ex in a different outfit.

Stop waiting to feel completely healed before living again

If humans waited until they were emotionally perfect to move forward, nobody would ever leave the house.

Half the population is functioning on unresolved childhood issues and caffeine.

Focus on where you are headed

A boat captain does not spend the entire journey staring at the wake behind the boat screaming:
“LOOK HOW FAR WE’VE COME.”

That is how you hit rocks.

The wake matters as a receipt as to where you came from, but the forward direction matters more. Let yourself become someone your past wouldn’t recognise

Not because you are pretending it never happened.

But because you finally decided your future deserves more attention than any of your old pain.

🍷 The Final Sip

Your past happened.

It hurt.
It mattered.
It shaped you.

But it is not your final destination.

You are still allowed to evolve beyond the people who broke your heart.
Beyond the mistakes that embarrassed you.
Beyond the seasons that nearly destroyed you.

The wake behind the boat tells the story of where you’ve been.

But it has absolutely no authority over where you are capable of going next.

That part is still unwritten.

And honestly?
That is the best news any of us could ask for.

Because there is still a life ahead of you.

Still joy. Still peace. Still laughter. Still mornings that feel lighter. Still people who will love you properly. Still moments that will make all the chaos make sense.

So stop worshipping old chapters just because you survived them.

The boat is moving forward for a reason.

And your future deserves a captain who occasionally looks ahead instead of emotionally water-skiing through old trauma with a glass of Pinot Grigio and abandonment issues.🍷

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The other day I was actually out in public being slightly social. (Yes I actually came out of my hermit mode - temporarily at least.)

Well… social enough that nobody else noticed I was clock watching.

I was actually meeting customers for work at one of the Fuckwits’ restaurants - an often pleasant pop-up office of sorts. And, because it apparently isn’t possible for me to enter this particular establishment without it turning into some kind of unofficial community reunion, I ended up seeing at least twenty people I know. And no, I’m not just talking about the people I was actually there to meet.

Because obviously.

I could apparently never simply sit quietly, drink something cold and mind my own fucking business.

No.

I had to engage in polite small talk.

How are you?

It’s hot isn’t it?

Can you believe this weather?

God, I can’t wait for winter.

Yes. We live in a country where summer lasts approximately seventeen and a half months and every conversation eventually becomes a collective support group about the temperature. I am British after all and our national pass time is complaining about the weather so I should have expected it really.

Anyway, during one of these completely riveting exchanges, someone uttered a phrase that immediately caused the Inner Brain Committee to sit up and pay attention.

“I don’t have a choice.”

And that was it… The Committee had entered the chat. Specifically… Overthinking Oliver leaned forward. Inner Asshole raised an eyebrow and the Chaos Monkey made popcorn and pulled up a chair because this was going to be entertaining.

Because here’s the thing…

I have said those words. You’ve probably said those words. Most of us have. And sometimes, on the surface they feel completely fucking true.

I don’t have a choice. I have to do this. I can’t change that. There’s nothing I can do.

But the Committee? They were calling bullshit.

Not all bullshit. We’re not going to sit here pretending you can magically choose your way out of every situation life throws at you.

Sometimes life genuinely gives you shitty circumstances. Sometimes there are things you can’t control. Sometimes the choices available to you are so unpleasant that calling them “choices” feels like a technicality dreamed up by an irritatingly optimistic philosopher.

But here’s what my grandfather taught me when I was about ten years old.

And annoyingly he was right.

Apparently, We Always Have a Choice

Back in the days before I even knew what sarcasm was, let alone wielded it like the expert I later became, I was exposed to many little pearls of wisdom.

As we’ve established in previous articles, Nora had plenty of them.

But so did J.W… My grandfather.

And one particular lesson stayed with me for my entire life.

He said “We always have a choice.”

Now, ten year old me was not impressed. At all. To me, this sounded like one of those adult rules that had absolutely no scientific evidence behind it.

Much like “Eat your carrots. They’ll make you see in the dark.” Which incidentally, was a fucking lie. I ate the carrots. I still can’t see in the dark.

Anyway, I remember being deeply unimpressed with my grandfather’s philosophical revelation. Because obviously I knew better. I was ten afterall, I’d been alive for a whole decade. What the fuck could an old man possibly teach me about choices?

So I challenged him.

Which, in hindsight, was probably my first indication that becoming a professional smart ass was inevitable.

He didn’t argue with me. He didn’t lecture me He simply gave me homework.

Because apparently grandparents in the 1980s had absolutely no problem assigning extra work to children who were already technically off the clock.

He told me to go away and write down as many examples as I could think of where I didn’t have a choice.

Then we’d discuss them.

Now, ten year old me was not overly impressed by this idea. I’d finished school for the day. I was pretty certain I had cartoons to watch. Possibly snacks to consume. Definitely things that were more important than sitting around contemplating the philosophical implications of human agency.

But I’d gotten myself into this. And, in the noble tradition of proving a point even when you’re almost certainly going to lose, off I went.

I made my list. And I was confident… Very confident.

Because I had what I considered to be some absolute fucking winners.

Two of my strongest examples still stand out.

Number one:

If someone has a gun to your head… you don’t have a choice.

Boom…Mic drop.

Ten year old me was clearly a genius.

Number two:

If you have a terminal illness… you don’t have a choice.

Another absolute winner. I was convinced I had this in the bag.

I couldn’t wait to reconvene with J.W and watch him realise that his little philosophical theory had finally met its match.

Except... I didn’t win.

Obviously.

Because old J.W had thought this through.

“Someone has a gun to your head?”

His answer was simple. You still have a choice.

You can listen. You can obey. Or you can refuse.

The fact that one option may have horrific consequences doesn’t mean the choice ceases to exist.

And then came my second example.

“What about terminal illness?”

That’s where life gets especially fucking unfair. Because sometimes life just does it’s thing. It throws something at you that you never asked for. A diagnosis you didn’t deserve. A body that suddenly stops cooperating. A future that gets shorter without your permission. You don’t get to choose the illness. You don’t get to bargain with it. And sometimes, you don’t get to choose how much time you have left. Life just throws these shitty plot twists at you and expects you to keep going.

But maybe the choice was never about controlling what happens to you. Maybe it was about what you do once it happens.

You can’t always choose the hand you’re dealt….But you can choose how you hold it.

You can choose whether fear gets every remaining moment. You can choose who you spend that time with. You can choose what still matters to you. You can choose whether you spend your days asking, “Why me?” or asking, “What can I do with the time I have?” You can choose to love people while you’re still here. You can choose to laugh. You can choose to be angry, to grieve, to fall apart and then somehow, to get back up.

You can’t always change the ending. You can’t rewrite the plot.

But you can still decide who you are in the middle of it.

And that’s when ten year old me realized something deeply irritating.

My grandfather was right. Again.

I fucking hated that.

A Choice Doesn’t Have to Be a Good Choice

I think this is where we get ourselves into trouble.

When we hear… “You always have a choice.” our brain immediately translates that into “You can choose whatever you want and everything will be fine.”

No. That’s not what it means.

Sometimes your choices are shit. Sometimes they’re slightly less shit. Sometimes the options are…

A: Do the thing you really don’t want to do.

or

B: Don’t do the thing and deal with the consequences.

Congratulations.

You’ve won the world’s shittiest multiple choice quiz.

But there are still two options. The existence of consequences doesn’t eliminate choice. It simply means your choices have consequences.

And frankly, that’s a lesson most of us would benefit from remembering.

Because sometimes saying “I don’t have a choice” is actually a much more comfortable statement than:

“I have a choice, but I don’t like any of my options.”

That second sentence requires us to acknowledge something uncomfortable. We have agency. And agency means responsibility. Not blame…Responsibility.

There’s a difference.

If someone treats you badly… you are not responsible for their behaviour. If someone lies to you… you didn’t choose their dishonesty. If somebody hurts you… you didn’t necessarily cause what happened.

But you may still have a choice about what you do next.

And that’s where things get interesting.

The All or Nothing Trap

The biggest problem with the phrase “I don’t have a choice” is that we often think choices have to be enormous.

Leave or stay. Quit or continue. Forgive or never speak to them again. Move house or stay forever. Change your entire career or remain miserable. Become a completely different person overnight.

No wonder our brains shut down. That’s a lot. But choices don’t have to be dramatic. Sometimes the choice is tiny. You don’t have to decide your entire future today. You just have to decide what happens next.

Maybe you can’t leave the job yet…But you can update your CV.

Maybe you can’t walk away from the relationship today…But you can stop pretending everything is fine.

Maybe you can’t change the person who keeps upsetting you…But you can change how much access they have to you.

Maybe you can’t control what somebody says about you…But you can decide whether you’re going to spend the next three days mentally cross-examining every word they said.

Maybe you can’t change the situation…But you can stop making the situation worse inside your own head.

And sometimes that tiny choice is where everything starts.

Your Brain Loves “I Have No Choice”

This is where the Inner Brain Committee gets particularly irritating.

Because the brain loves certainty. It loves a nice neat explanation.

I can’t. I have to. There’s nothing I can do.

Finished. No further investigation required. Everyone can go home.

But if you say…

“I have choices and I need to decide which one I’m willing to live with,”

Suddenly the Committee has to do some work. And we all know how much they hate that.

Overthinking Oliver immediately starts producing spreadsheets. Inner Asshole starts listing everything that could go wrong. Chaos Monkey suggests we burn the entire situation down and move to Portugal.

And then somebody has to bring the meeting back to the actual question:

What can I control here?

That is often a much more useful question than:

“Why is this happening to me?”

Because the first question gives you somewhere to go. The second can keep you sitting in the same chair for six hours while your brain writes a 47-page prosecution case against life.

The Choice Isn’t Always About Changing the Situation

This is probably the most important part.

Sometimes you genuinely cannot change what’s happening.

You can’t control another person’s behaviour. You can’t control the past. You can’t control whether someone disappoints you. You can’t control whether someone chooses to leave. You can’t control illness. You can’t control other people’s opinions. You can’t control traffic.

Although I personally believe there should be a law allowing us to control traffic. Preferably through telepathy. But apparently society isn’t ready.

The point is, there are circumstances where your actual ability to change the situation is limited. That doesn’t mean your choices disappear. It means the choice moves.

Instead of “How do I make this situation different?” the question becomes “How do I choose to respond to the situation I’m in?”

And that is a completely different conversation.

Your Reaction Is Still Yours

This doesn’t mean you have to be endlessly positive. Please don’t misunderstand me.

I’m not about to tell you to slap a positive affirmation on a traumatic situation and call it personal growth.

Sometimes things fucking suck.

You’re allowed to say they suck. You’re allowed to be angry. You’re allowed to grieve. You’re allowed to be frightened. You’re allowed to have a spectacularly unproductive day where your main achievement is changing out of your pyjamas before 3pm.

The choice isn’t Be positive or fail at life.

The choice is often What am I going to do with what I’m feeling?

You can feel angry without allowing anger to run your entire life. You can feel hurt without making every future relationship pay for what someone else did. You can be disappointed without deciding your entire future is ruined. You can acknowledge that something is unfair without allowing unfairness to become your permanent identity. You can have a shit day without deciding you’re having a shit life.

That’s a choice and it’s a much smaller one than we sometimes realise.

Try This: The Three Question Reset

The next time you catch yourself saying:

“I don’t have a choice.”

Stop.

Don’t argue with yourself. Don’t immediately force yourself into gratitude.

Just ask three questions.

1. What can’t I control?

Be brutally honest. Is it another person’s behaviour? The past? Someone’s opinion? A situation you’ve already been handed?

Write it down. Get it out of your head.

Because sometimes we’re wasting enormous amounts of energy trying to control things that have never been ours to control.

2. What can I control?

This is where your power starts coming back.

Maybe it’s your response. Maybe it’s your boundary. Maybe it’s whether you engage. Maybe it’s what you say. Maybe it’s what you do next. Maybe it’s asking for help. Maybe it’s doing nothing until you’ve calmed down. Maybe it’s simply deciding not to make a permanent decision while you’re emotionally hanging off the ceiling.

There is almost always something. Even if it’s tiny.

3. Which choice can I live with?

This one is important.

Not…Which choice do I like?

Because sometimes you won’t like any of them.

Ask… Which choice can I live with?

That’s different. Because adulthood is occasionally just standing in front of two shit sandwiches and deciding which one you’re prepared to eat.

Nobody said personal growth was glamorous. Sugar coated shit is still shit at the end of the day!

Look for the Third Option

Here’s another thing I’ve learned.

When we’re overwhelmed, we often convince ourselves there are only two choices.

Stay or leave. Fight or surrender. Speak or stay silent. Forgive or hate. Continue or quit.

But sometimes there’s a third option. And occasionally even a fourth. You don’t have to respond immediately.

You can pause. You can gather information. You can set a boundary. You can ask for help. You can negotiate. You can take a step back. You can change the amount of access someone has to you. You can choose not to participate. You can say “I don’t know yet.”

And honestly, that is one of the most underrated choices available to us.

You don’t always need an answer.

Sometimes the choice is simply I’m not deciding this today.

And Here’s Where This Gets Really Powerful

When you stop believing you have absolutely no choice, something changes.

You stop being completely at the mercy of circumstances. Not because circumstances suddenly become easier.

But because you start looking for the bit that belongs to you.

And that bit might be tiny.

Maybe today you can’t change your entire life…Fine.

Can you change your morning? Can you get outside? Can you eat something? Can you make one phone call? Can you stop replying to that person? Can you take ten minutes away from the chaos? Can you ask someone for help? Can you do one thing that moves you one millimetre closer to the life you actually want?

That’s enough.

You don’t need to rebuild your entire life before lunch.

The Choice You Make Repeatedly Becomes Your Life

This is the part I wish ten year old me had understood.

Choices aren’t always big dramatic moments. Most of life is tiny decisions repeated over and over.

Do I speak to myself kindly or like an abusive HR department? Do I rest when I’m exhausted or keep pushing? Do I say yes because I genuinely want to or because I feel guilty? Do I stay in this conversation or walk away? Do I believe every horrible thing my Inner Asshole tells me? Do I spend another hour worrying about something I can’t change? Do I take responsibility for what is mine without taking responsibility for everyone else’s shit? Do I choose peace or do I choose another argument? Do I keep telling myself I’m stuck?

Or do I start asking “Okay. If this is the situation I’m in, what choice do I have?”

That question can change things. Not instantly. Not magically. But gradually.

And sometimes gradually is exactly how we rebuild a life.

The Reality Check

There’s one important distinction to keep in mind, though. Please don’t weaponise this idea against yourself or other people.

“You always have a choice” should never become “Therefore, whatever happened to you is your fault.”

That’s bullshit.

People can experience things they didn’t choose. People can be trapped by circumstances. People can have limited options. People can be victims of other people’s decisions. And sometimes the available choices genuinely fucking suck.

Acknowledging your choices doesn’t mean pretending you had control over everything.

It means recognising where your control starts and that your response is where your choice lives. That’s the distinction.

You don’t have to choose what happened but you get a say in what happens next.

So, About That Phrase...

“I don’t have a choice.”

A difficult choice is still a choice. A painful choice is still a choice. A frightening choice is still a choice. A choice between two shitty options is still a choice.

And perhaps that’s what old J.W was trying to teach me all those years ago.

Although, admittedly, at ten years old I was mostly just pissed off that my grandfather had assigned homework when there were cartoons on television.

But he was right.

Life is going to hand you some absolutely fucking ridiculous situations and you don’t get a say in all of them.

But you do get to choose how much of your life you’re going to hand over to them.

Choose wisely. The Inner Brain Committee is watching.

And frankly, they’ve already got enough to fucking do.

Weekend Wine & Wisdom🍷

Let’s talk about the word “no.”

Not the dramatic, movie scene “NOOOO!” where someone runs through rain in slow motion.

Not the passive aggressive “no… I guess…” that comes with three paragraphs of explanation, a guilt spiral and a follow up apology for having boundaries.

Just… no.

Two letters. One concept. Apparently the hardest thing to say in the modern world without feeling like you’ve personally offended the entire universe and possibly ruined Christmas.

We’ve been conditioned to believe that “no” is rude unless it comes wrapped in explanation, softened with politeness, padded with justification and delivered with a side dish of emotional labour for the person receiving it.

So instead of “no,” we offer a whole host of excuses…

“I’m not sure if I can, I’ll see”

“I’d love to but I’m really busy right now”

“Maybe another time, I just have a lot going on”

“Let me get back to you” (translation - I’m just going to ignore it and hope you don’t ask again )

And just like that a simple boundary becomes a 400 word essay no one asked for.

Somewhere along the way “no” stopped being a sentence and became a negotiation.

The Truth Bomb

Here it is, no filtering, no emotional cushioning:

If you need ten sentences to explain your “no,” it’s not a boundary it’s a permission slip you’re trying to get signed.

We don’t struggle with saying “no” because we lack vocabulary. We struggle because we’re addicted to being understood, liked, approved of and seen as “good.”

So instead of just declining something, we launch into a full TED Talk… The emotional reasoning. The scheduling conflicts. The apologetic tone. The reassurance that we’re still a good person despite disappointing someone by not attending their cousin’s neighbour’s dog’s birthday brunch

And let’s be really honest, most of those explanations aren’t for clarity.

They’re for comfort… Your comfort.

Because a clean “no” feels too sharp. Too final. Too… powerful.

And power is uncomfortable when you’re used to being unavailable.

The Reframe

Here’s where things shift.

“No” is not a rejection, it’s a redirection, a boundary. It’s not a social crime to say no. It’s a complete sentence that protects your time, energy and sanity from becoming community property.

Think of it like punctuation.

A full stop doesn’t need justification. It doesn’t explain why the sentence ended. It just ends it.

We don’t read a full stop and think : Well that’s rude. Could’ve added a comma.

Yet somehow when a human says “no” we expect paragraphs of explanations or justification.

The reframe is simple - a clean “no” is not cold. It’s a clear and simple answer.

The Unexpected Fix

Now here’s the twist no one really teaches you:

You don’t need better excuses. Most people try to fix their discomfort with “no” by improving their explanation skills.

They polish their wording. They soften their tone. They rehearse their delivery like they’re about to present a power point presentation called Reasons I Cannot Attend Your Event But Still Like You Please Don’t Hate Me.

But the real fix isn’t language.

Instead of: “I can’t come because I’m tired and also I have laundry and I might need rest and I feel bad but…”

Try: “No, I can’t make it.”

Then stop talking. That silence after the sentence? That’s the part that builds the muscle. That’s the imaginary full stop!

Because what you’re actually learning isn’t how to say no. It’s how to tolerate the feeling that follows it.

That tiny discomfort where your brain whispers:

They might be disappointed.
They might think you’re rude.
They might never invite you again.

And sometimes? They might. But here’s the uncomfortable truth inside the uncomfortable truth:

If someone only values your presence when you over extend yourself, that’s not connection.

The Shift

This is where it stops being about language and starts being about identity.

Because every time you over explain your “no,” you’re reinforcing a quiet belief:

“My boundary is not enough on its own.”

So you dress it up. You soften it. You justify it until it barely resembles a boundary at all.

The shift is this… Your “no” does not require evidence. It’s not a courtroom statement. It’s not a defence argument. It’s information. Nothing more. And when you start treating it that way, something subtle changes. You stop managing other people’s reactions as if they are your responsibility. You stop translating your decisions into something more digestible for others. You stop turning yourself into a public relations department for your own life choices.

And ironically, people adjust faster than you expect.

Because most people aren’t actually demanding explanations. They’re just used to getting them.

The Practical Nudge

Let’s make this real, because theory is cute but life still has group chats.

Here’s how to start using “no” as a full sentence without spiralling into guilt gymnastics.

Start small.

Pick low stakes situations:

Invitations you don’t want to attend

Requests that drain you slightly

Obligations that feel like “shoulds” instead of “wants”

Say - “No thank you, I can’t.”

Not - “No, I can’t because I might have something and also I’m a bit tired, but maybe if I feel better…”

Then pause.

Do not follow up unless necessary. If you feel the urge to explain, notice it. Don’t obey it immediately. That urge is old conditioning, not truth.

Next step: delay your justification.

Tell yourself - “If it still feels necessary in 24 hours, I can explain later.”

Spoiler: most of the time, it won’t feel necessary. It will just feel familiar. And familiar is not the same as required.

Also, expect awkwardness. Not because you’re doing anything wrong, but because you’re doing something differently. People who are used to access will always find boundaries a little surprising at first. Let them adjust. You don’t need to manage that adjustment in real time.

🍷 The Final Sip

Here’s what “no” really is when you strip away all the performance, politeness, and people pleasing…

It is a complete sentence that protects your life from becoming an open door policy.

It does not need seasoning.

It does not need garnish.

It does not need a paragraph of emotional backstory or a motivational speech about your capacity that week.

It stands on its own.

And yes, it might feel sharp at first. Like wearing new shoes that don’t yet belong to your feet. But over time, something changes. You stop over explaining. You stop over giving. You stop over apologising for existing with limits. And slowly, quietly, you realise something quite powerful:

The people who respect your “no” were always safe.

The ones who didn’t… were always going to require too much of you anyway.

So here’s the final sip of Weekend Wine & Wisdom:

Say “no” like it belongs to you.

Because it does and it doesn’t need a sequel.🍷

If you’d met me before I moved to what I lovingly refer to as The Happy Place, you’d probably have described me as hardworking.

Driven. Reliable. Always busy.

If you’d asked my nervous system however, it would’ve described me as an absolute liability.

Balance? … Never heard of it. I was an all or nothing kind of woman. If I was working, I worked until I couldn’t remember what day it was. If someone needed help, I’d be there before they’d even finished asking. If there was a problem, I’d volunteer to solve it. If there was a spare five minutes in my diary, I’d immediately fill it with something productive because apparently sitting still was illegal.

Looking back, it’s honestly amazing I didn’t burst into flames years earlier.

The only person who wasn’t on my priority list…me.

Shocking, I know.

Although judging by the number of people reading this who have just muttered, “Well... same,” perhaps not that shocking after all.

Burnout Doesn’t Knock...

It kicks the bloody door in.

The only time I really slowed down was when I came over to The Happy Place for a holiday. Eighteen glorious days.

Except...

I got to the point where I barely remembered them because I slept through most of them.

And when I say I slept...

I don’t mean I enjoyed a few lazy lie ins. I mean I slept for around twenty-one hours a day. Every single day day.

Wake up. Eat something (if I remembered). Wonder why I was still exhausted. Assume the position on a sunbed and go back to sleep until bedtime.

Repeat.

At the time everyone, including me thought exactly the same thing. “Well, you’ve been working hard.” “You obviously needed the rest.” “You’ve been burning the candle at both ends.”

Technically... They weren’t wrong. They just weren’t right enough.

Because this wasn’t being tired.

This was my body quietly pulling the plug while my brain was still standing there shouting, “We’re fine! We’ve got messages to answer!”

Then I Did What We All Do...

I ignored it … Obviously.

Because I’d had my holiday now. Problem solved.

Back to the UK. Back to work. Back to the gym. Back to pretending my body hadn’t just spent nearly three weeks trying to hibernate like an exhausted bear.

It’s funny how quickly we return to lives that don’t actually feel good for us simply because they’re familiar.

I slipped straight back into the routine. Ticking off jobs. Being productive. Being useful. Being busy. Because busy people don’t have time to notice they’re falling apart.

Until they do.

My Body Had The Final Say...

About a week after getting home I went to a friend’s business launch at her salon.

Lovely evening. People chatting. Champagne. Lots of celebrating.

And then...

Apparently I decided to add a dramatic interpretive dance called Collapse in Reception.

One minute I was standing there…The next...Nothing.

While I was unconscious I had a seizure. My first ever. Thankfully I don’t remember any of it which is lovely for me. Slightly less lovely for everyone who had to watch it happen.

Ambulance. Blue lights. A&E. Tests. Questions. Hospital food that somehow manages to taste both overcooked and undercooked at the same time.

It turns out my body had finally done what I’d refused to do.

It stopped.

Without asking my permission.

Here’s The Really Annoying Part...

It wasn’t actually a surprise. Not really. If I’m brutally honest, my body had been sending warning signs for months. I just treated every single one of them like junk mail.

Headaches? - Probably dehydrated.

Exhaustion? - Need more caffeine.

Brain fog? - Need a holiday.

Feeling emotionally fried? - Everyone’s stressed.

Heart racing? - Probably excitement.

(It absolutely wasn’t excitement.) I had an answer for everything. Except the actual answer.

Which was... You’re not living… You’re surviving.

There’s a huge difference.

We Glorify Pushing Through

Somewhere along the way we’ve decided that ignoring ourselves is a personality trait.

I’m exhausted … But I kept going.

I’m overwhelmed … But I managed.

I haven’t had a proper day off in months … Look how dedicated I am.

We wear burnout like it’s an employee of the month badge. As though the prize for running ourselves into the ground is... More work. More responsibility. More people expecting us to save the day.

Honestly... It’s a terrible rewards programme. One star. Would not recommend.

Stress Is Sneakier Than We Think

I used to think stress lived in your head.

Turns out... It likes to travel.

It visits your stomach. Your heart. Your immune system. Your hormones. Your sleep. Your memory. Your muscles. Your skin. It basically takes itself on a little sightseeing tour around your body leaving chaos wherever it goes.

And the really frustrating bit? It doesn’t always happen because you’ve taken on too much. Sometimes it happens because life takes too much from you.

They’re not the same thing.

Fast Forward...

These days I still live with the aftermath.

Some weeks I absolutely nail it. Healthy routines. Enough sleep. Boundaries. Walking. Quiet time. Water. Vegetables. (Look at me practically glowing with emotional maturity.)

Other weeks...

Life turns up carrying a flamethrower and all of my carefully colour coded plans burst into flames before Tuesday lunchtime.

I’m actually writing this during one of those seasons.

Post-apocalypse.

The dust has settled. The emergency services have gone home and I’m halfway through rebuilding and healing, picking through the emotional rubble and working out what needs fixing, what needs letting go and what can stay exactly as it is.

Again.

The difference this time?

It wasn’t because I overworked myself. It was because other people’s behaviour creating months of relentless stress that I couldn’t control.

Legal issues. Emotional pressure. Fear. Uncertainty. Situations where there wasn’t a magic solution. Just endurance.

And here’s something we don’t talk about enough...

You can have excellent boundaries. You can meditate, journal, walk, breathe deeply and eat enough kale you turn green, but if you’re living inside prolonged stress, your nervous system still gets the bill.

And mine clearly decided to send it registered fucking post.

The Lesson I Keep Learning

Recovery isn’t one decision. It’s a thousand tiny ones. It’s going to bed instead of answering one more message.

It’s saying, “No, I can’t” Without writing a twelve page apology explaining why.

It’s eating actual meals instead of surviving on caffeine and blind optimism.

It’s asking yourself “Am I actually okay?”...and waiting long enough to hear the answer.

It’s remembering that you don’t have to earn rest by almost dying first.

Honestly... That one still feels deeply offensive to my productivity addiction.

So Here’s My Challenge For You...

Before your body has to get dramatic...

Pause. Not next month. Not after the kids go back to school. Not after work calms down.

Because let’s be honest... Work has been “about to calm down” since approximately 2014.

Pause today and ask yourself... What am I pretending doesn’t affect me? What am I carrying that was never mine to carry? When was the last time I rested before I reached breaking point? Not collapsed. Not burnt out. Not emotionally held together by coffee, sarcasm and a Spotify playlist.

Actually rested.

Because here’s what I know now that I wish I’d known then...

Your body is incredibly patient. It whispers first. It sends little reminders. Tiny nudges. A headache. A sleepless night. Another headache. The tears over something ridiculous. The constant exhaustion. The brain fog. The anxiety. The irritability. The feeling that simply replying to one more WhatsApp message might actually finish you off. It keeps asking politely.

Until one day... It doesn’t.

The first time mine chose a salon floor and an ambulance. Yours might choose something different.

Either way, I promise you this... Listening while it’s whispering is infinitely easier than waiting until it’s screaming.

And if your brain is currently insisting you’re “absolutely fine” despite surviving entirely on caffeine, sarcasm and the belief that you’ll rest when everything is finished...

I’d just like to remind you... Everything is never finished.

But you very nearly can be.

Don’t let your body schedule the break your diary refuses to.

Weekend Wine & Wisdom 🍷

Bring On the Main Character Energy

One of the most underrated life hacks I know is so ridiculously simple that I’m almost embarrassed to admit how often I forget to do it.

Romanticise your life.

That’s it! Simple I know.

And honestly, I don’t know why I don’t do it more because every single time I do, I feel amazing.

Not because my life suddenly changes. Not because the universe sends me a cheque, or that my skin glows like I’ve discovered the fountain of youth or my Inner Brain Committee suddenly resigns.

No.

Because I change.

It’s like flipping a switch from surviving to actually living.

The funny thing is that we’re all experts at waiting.

“I’ll use the nice wine glasses when people come over.” “I’ll buy fresh flowers when I’ve decorated.” “I’ll light the expensive candle when there’s a special occasion.” “I’ll wear the nice dress when I lose ten pounds.” “I’ll be happy when...”

We are all apparently living one giant rehearsal for a life that keeps getting postponed.

Meanwhile, the candles are gathering dust, the wine glasses are hidden behind the everyday mugs and the expensive moisturiser is being rationed like it’s in a wartime movie.

Honestly?

Who are we saving all this stuff for?

The Queen isn’t popping round for tea (I know I should be saying the King now but it doesn’t have the same ring to it so you’ll all just need to go with it!)

Gerard Butler isn’t knocking on your door asking why you’re drinking supermarket wine out of a chipped coffee mug.

And yet we keep waiting for permission to enjoy our own lives.

Social media gets criticised for a lot of things and quite rightly so alot of the time, but one thing it occasionally gets right is reminding us that ordinary moments can actually feel extraordinary.

You see someone making their morning coffee as if they’re starring in a Netflix series. Someone opens the curtains dramatically. Someone drives with the windows down while their favourite song plays. Someone buys themselves flowers. Someone watches the sunset with a glass of wine.

Nothing extraordinary happened but they just decided to make the ordinary feel beautiful.

And somewhere along the way we started believing that’s only acceptable if someone films it for Instagram.

It’s not.

You can absolutely be the main character...

...even if nobody else is watching. Especially when nobody is watching!

The Truth Bomb

Now here’s where people get uncomfortable.

Main character energy has somehow developed a bad reputation. People hear it and think narcissist, self obsessed attention seeker. Someone who believes the world revolves around them.

That’s not what it means at all.

Being the main character in your story doesn’t mean you’re the only character. It simply means you stop living like an extra in your own life.

There’s a huge difference.

Somewhere along the way many of us learned that putting ourselves first occasionally somehow makes us selfish. Apparently everyone else’s happiness deserves VIP treatment while ours gets added to the waiting list.

Most of our stress comes from spending our lives managing departments we don’t actually work in.

We’re worrying about what strangers think. Whether Susan from Number 12 likes us. Whether our colleague secretly rolled their eyes. Whether someone misinterpreted our text message. Whether Mercury is in retrograde. Whether the universe has a personal vendetta against us because we found another grey hair.

Meanwhile...

Our actual job is sitting unattended. Our business is creating a life we enjoy living.

That’s it.

Not performing. Not proving. Not pleasing. Just living.

If your life feels flat, it’s probably because you’ve accidentally outsourced your happiness to everybody else.

The Reframe

Here’s the thing.

If you want main character moments... You have to give off main character energy.

Not in a “look at me” way. But with the quiet confidence of someone who has decided that Tuesday deserves just as much joy as Saturday.

Put the music on. Dance in the kitchen. Drive with the windows down. Buy yourself flowers. Light the expensive candle. Wear perfume to work even if you work from home with only your dog silently judging you. Use the fancy wine glass on a Tuesday because Tuesday survived Monday and frankly that’s reason enough. Cook the nice meal even if its’s only for yourself. Set the table properly. Play jazz while you’re folding washing if that’s your thing. Or Beyoncé. I’m not here to judge your playlist. Walk slowly enough to notice the crunchy autumn leaves. Watch the sunset. Actually taste your coffee instead of inhaling it while answering emails that could definitely have waited another five minutes.

Life isn’t improved by huge dramatic moments nearly as often as it’s transformed by tiny intentional ones.

That’s what films really understand. Nobody remembers every explosion. People remember the little scenes.

The coffee. The walk. The smile. The dancing in the kitchen. The quiet conversation. The moments where someone simply looked fully alive.

That’s what you’re creating. Not a performance.

A life.

The Unexpected Fix

The irony?

I actually moved to what I lovingly call my Happy Place.

I packed up my old life, changed my postcode, swapped grey skies for sunshine and genuinely created the life I’d spent years dreaming about.

And honestly?

It’s everything I hoped it would be. I wake up surrounded by mountains. The sea is never far away. The pace is slower. The people are wonderful. I have friendships that fill my cup instead of draining it. I have work I enjoy.

Years ago this version of my life would have felt impossible.

Yet here’s the funny thing nobody tells you.

Even dream lives become ordinary if you’re not paying attention. Human beings adapt frighteningly quickly. The things we once prayed for become the things we barely notice.

The sunset becomes... “Oh yeah...that’s nice.” The sea becomes...“I’ll go next week.” The amazing restaurant becomes...“We go there all the time.” The beautiful drive becomes...“I’ve got traffic.”

Seriously?

Past Me would like a word. She’d probably slap Current Me with a flip-flop.

Not aggressively (I don’t think anyway) but just enough to remind me she spent years dreaming about this life while Current Me is complaining because the Wi-Fi is slow (Wifi that I may add I would happily be without most days).

How ridiculous is that?

We move the goalposts constantly.

We finally get the thing...and almost immediately stop appreciating it.

Not because we’re ungrateful but because we’re human. Which is exactly why romanticising your life isn’t a destination. It should be daily maintenance.

The Shift

Main character energy isn’t something you achieve. It’s something you practise.

Daily, sometimes hourly.

Because life gets busy. Emails arrive. Work piles up. Laundry reproduces alarmingly overnight. The dishwasher somehow needs emptying every seventeen minutes. People annoy us.

The Inner Brain Committee starts another emergency meeting about something that probably won’t happen.

And before you know it... You’re simply surviving again.

You’re rushing. Scrolling. Reacting. Living on autopilot. The old habits quietly creep back in. Not because anything is wrong. Just because that’s what habits do.

So occasionally I catch myself. I put the phone down. I make a good cup of coffee. I sit outside. I notice the breeze. I play my favourite music while driving and keep singing even when I’m stopped at the traffic lights and people are staring. I pour wine into an actual wine glass instead of drinking it while standing in the kitchen wondering how I managed to forget to buy washing up liquid for the third time this week.

(Scientific fact: wine tastes at least 37% better when you use the good wine glasses.)

I remember... This is THE life.

Not the one I’m waiting for.

The one I’m living.

The Practical Nudge

This weekend I want you to stop waiting.

Not forever but just for a few days.

Choose one ordinary thing every day and make it feel special.

Use the good plates. Buy yourself flowers from the supermarket (even the cheap ones count). Take the scenic route home. Watch the sunset without getting your phone out to take a picture. Play music while cooking. Open the windows and let the air in. Light the expensive candle. Wear the outfit you’ve been saving. Drink the wine from the nice glass. Read outside. Sit in silence with your thoughts. Walk slowly and take notice of your surroundings . Smile at total strangers. Watch the clouds. Notice the colours.

Look for the beauty in your own life in whatever form that takes.

Because here’s another underrated life hack. Your brain finds what you teach it to look for.

Spend every day looking for problems... You’ll find plenty.

Spend every day looking for reasons to be annoyed... Congratulations, you’ll become exceptionally good at being annoyed.

But spend your days looking for beauty? Looking for kindness? Looking for tiny moments worth smiling about?

Your brain starts collecting evidence that life is actually pretty fucking awesome.

That’s real gratitude.

Not pretending bad things don’t exist. Of course they do. There’s suffering. There’s heartbreak. There’s loss. There’s cruelty and unfortunately there always will be.

But there is also laughter. Friendship. Music. Fresh coffee. A Fuckwits cat that has decided he lives at your house as well and loves cuddles. Sea views. Fresh sheets smelling of fabric softner. Sunsets. Ridiculous conversations that make your stomach hurt from laughing. Cold wine on a warm evening.

Tiny moments that quietly remind you life is still beautiful.

Both things can exist. One doesn’t cancel out the other.

The question is...

Which one are you training your brain to notice first?

Because it’s a Monday with a Fuckwit!

🍷 The Final Sip

Your life isn’t a dress rehearsal.

This is it.

This wonderfully messy, occasionally chaotic, slightly sarcastic (Ok very sarcastic), beautifully imperfect story you’re living right now.

You’re the main character.

Not because you’re more important than anyone else. Not because the world revolves around you. But because nobody else gets to live your story for you.

So don’t wait for a promotion. Don’t wait for retirement. Don’t wait until you’ve lost weight. Don’t wait until the house is finished. Don’t wait until everything is perfect.

Because perfection has a nasty habit of moving every time you get close to it.

Romanticise today. Not tomorrow. Today.

Pour the wine. Play the music. Buy the thing that genuinely brings you joy instead of another gadget that promises to change your life and ends up living in a drawer next to three dead phone chargers and seventeen mystery cables.

Look for the good, because it’s there…and it always has been.

And every now and then, when life starts feeling ordinary again, as it inevitably will remember this…

Main character energy isn’t found in dream holidays, bigger houses or the new car.

The magic was never hidden in expectations or vision boards.

It was hidden in the small moments. In choosing wonder over autopilot. In deciding that an ordinary Monday deserved a soundtrack (and a catch up with a Fuckwit).

Life doesn’t become magical because everything changes.

It becomes magical because you finally notice it.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to light the expensive candle, pour a glass of wine into the really posh glass and pretend that the walk to the kitchen deserves its own soundtrack.

Because quite frankly, if I’m starring in this story, I may as well go for the Oscar!

Cheers. 🍷

There is something wonderfully comforting about living in a small community. You know people’s names. People know yours.

Someone waves every time you drive past.

If your car breaks down, six people will stop before you’ve even found your phone.

If you’re ill, food magically appears at your door.

If you go away, someone water’s the garden.

If you run out of eggs, there’s probably a neighbour with chickens who has enough to keep the entire street in omelettes.

It’s genuinely lovely.

It’s also a bit unnerving because in a small community, information travels.

Fast…actually very fast! Sometimes faster than the person it’s actually about.

I was thinking about this after last week’s main edition of Running on Wine and Sarcasm, where I wrote about assumptions and the ridiculous stories we create about people we don’t actually know.

Dean’s story was a reminder that we can look at someone for five minutes and convince ourselves we understand their entire life.

But assumptions don’t only happen with strangers.

Sometimes they happen with people we do know. Or at least think we do.

And that’s where gossip enters the chat.

Someone sees you having coffee with someone. Someone else notices you haven’t been out for a few days. Someone hears you’re looking at houses. Someone remembers you mentioned being stressed.

And suddenly…

You’ve separated from your husband. You’re moving country. You’ve had a nervous breakdown. You’ve fallen out with your best friend. And possibly, if the story has really gathered momentum, you’re opening a vineyard.

None of it happened.

But somewhere between “I saw so and so…” and “Apparently…”, a completely fictional version of your life has been created.

And the really interesting thing? Most gossip doesn’t start with malicious intent. It starts with a gap in the information.

I said this in last weeks edition but humans hate gaps. We fill them. We speculate. We connect dots that were never actually meant to be connected.

And then we repeat our theory until eventually it stops sounding like a theory and starts sounding like fact.

“I heard…”

Possibly the most dangerous two words in any small community.

Because by the time something reaches the fifth person, the original story has usually been through more editing than a badly written reality TV show.

I’ve come to realise that every small community has its own version of Netflix.

Only there are no actors. No writers. Definitely no fact-checkers.

Just a group of people with excellent observational skills, questionable information, far too much time on their hands and an over active imagination.

Apparently, I Starred in My Own Drama Series

When I first moved here I thought people had better things to do with their actual life than to engage in mindless gossip.

How adorable was that.

It took about three months for that illusion to totally disappear.

One evening, our budding new Fuckwit in training group (The Happy Place branch) was supposed to go out. Nothing major. Just music, drinks and pretending our knees still worked like they did twenty years ago.

Then I changed my mind (as I do) Not because anyone upset me. Not because we’d argued. Not because Mercury was in retrograde.

I simply couldn’t be arsed.

The sofa won…Again. I stayed home. End of story. Or so I thought.

Apparently... it was merely the beginning.

The following morning I discovered we’d all supposedly had some spectacular friendship implosion. People wanted to know who’d upset who. Whose side everyone was taking. Whether we’d spoken since. There were theories. There were opinions. There were witnesses to events that had never actually taken place.

Meanwhile... I was sitting there thinking “I literally watched two episodes of a True Crime documentary and fell asleep before ten.”

The only victim that evening was my dignity after eating half a bag of Maltesers.

Then things escalated… as they always do. At one point our friendship group had apparently become involved in a lesbian love triangle.

Now... I’d almost have admired the creativity... except all three of us had long term male partners. Minor detail, apparently.

Facts have never stood in the way of a good village storyline.

The Inner Brain Committee Didn’t Help

When I first heard all this, my Inner Brain Committee immediately called an emergency meeting.

Anxiety Alan burst into the room waving imaginary newspapers.

“We have to correct this!”

People Pleaser Paula agreed.

“What if everyone believes it?”

Overthinking Oliver had already started drafting individual apology letters to people who hadn’t even spoken to me.

Fortunately...

Logical Lucy wandered in twenty minutes late with a glass of wine and asked the only question that actually mattered.

“So what? ”

Silence.

Because... None of it was the truth.

Did my friends know the truth? …Yes.

Did our partners know the truth? … Yes.

Did I know the truth? … Also yes.

Then who exactly was I exhausting myself trying to convince? People who’d already decided the ending before the opening credits.

Here’s the Funny Thing About Gossip...

The older I get, the more I think gossip has very little to do with curiosity.

It’s all about entertainment. Humans are natural storytellers. We hate gaps. If we don’t know why something happened... our brains create a reason.

It’s actually quite impressive.

Someone leaves a restaurant early. Maybe they had a headache. Maybe they had work the next day. Maybe they just desperately wanted to take their bra off.

No.

It’s far more exciting to assume they’re divorcing. Or pregnant. Or bankrupt. Or secretly in witness protection.

Reality rarely wins against a better story.

We’re All Guilty... Sometimes

Here’s where I’m going to be honest. I think we’ve all done it. Not maliciously. But we’ve all filled in blanks.

We’ve all wondered why somebody disappeared from Facebook. Why someone stopped coming out. Why somebody suddenly sold their house.

The difference is... emotionally healthy people wonder then move on.

Emotionally bored people form committees.

The Price We Pay

The gossip itself isn’t actually the biggest problem. The biggest problem is when we start living our lives around it. We stop posting photos. We stop taking risks. We stop saying no. We stop wearing what we like. We stop chasing opportunities. We edit ourselves for an audience that bought tickets to a show we never agreed to perform in.

How exhausting is that?

Imagine letting people who don’t even know your story become the editors of your life.

No thanks.

My Grandmother Had It Figured Out

Nora used to say…

“Today’s news is tomorrow’s chip paper.”

As with most of her little gems of wisdom I didn’t really fully appreciate it then. Now I think she was one of the wisest women I’ve ever known. Because she’s absolutely right.

Today’s scandal becomes tomorrow’s forgotten conversation. People move on. They always do.

The only person still carrying the weight... is usually us.

These Days...

These days, if I hear somebody has been discussing me... I genuinely hope they enjoyed themselves. I hope the storyline was gripping. I hope there were unexpected plot twists. Maybe throw in a yacht. Possibly a vineyard. If Gerard Butler could make a cameo I’d appreciate it.

Because if I’m going to live rent free in someone’s imagination...at least make it entertaining.

Final Words with Wine and Sarcasm 🍷

Living in a small community has taught me something I never expected.

People will almost always have opinions.

Some will admire you. Some will misunderstand you. Some will invent an entirely fictional version of your life because reality simply isn’t juicy enough. None of that changes who you are. The people who truly know you don’t need an explanation. And the people demanding one usually aren’t looking for the truth anyway.

So these days, when I hear the village grapevine has produced another vintage episode of nonsense...I simply pour myself a glass of wine and carry on.

Because life is far too short to spend it correcting people who confuse imagination with information.

Besides... I’ve got much more important things to do. Like staying home in my pyjamas, drinking wine and minding my own fucking business.

Although, according to local intelligence this probably means I’m either having a secret breakdown, running away with a mysterious man nobody has met or quietly building an illegal alpaca empire from my spare bedroom.

Honestly, I’m disappointed in myself.

If people are going to make up a life for me, they could at least make it more glamorous.

I’d like a vineyard and to win the lottery and can we swap the alpacas for goats with a mountain hideaway and no wifi!

Honestly...I can’t wait to hear what I do next week. 🍷

🍷 Weekend Wine & Wisdom

The Green-Eyed Monster Has Joined the Group Chat

There are certain things nobody really tells you about friendship.

Like the fact that your friends will eventually know far too much about your bodily functions.

That at some point you will have a conversation about haemorrhoids over wine.

That you’ll become emotionally invested in each other’s arguments with people you’ve never met.

And that occasionally... you will be jealous of each other.

Not because you don’t love them. Not because you want them to fail. And definitely not because you’ve been conducting a completely unnecessary investigation into how their life appears to be going suspiciously well.

Although, depending on the friendship, we may want to keep that between us.

I’m talking about that little stab of “Oh, that’s fucking brilliant for you.”

followed by “Why the fuck isn’t that happening for me?”

It’s uncomfortable.

Because this is your friend. Someone you genuinely care about. Someone whose happiness you’re supposed to celebrate.

And you do. Mostly.

After you’ve had a brief internal tantrum.

The Truth Bomb

Jealousy was one of those emotions we’re expected to pretend we don’t have.

We’re allowed to be happy. Sad. Angry. Excited. Overwhelmed.

Apparently we’re even allowed to have a breakdown in the supermarket because they’ve moved the cheese aisle.

But jealousy? Oh no, hard pass.

Because that’s apparently evidence you’re a terrible person.

I don’t think it is.

I think jealousy is often just comparison and friendships are prime territory for it.

Because we’re watching people we know. People our own age. People who started in roughly the same place.

So when something fantastic happens to them, our brains immediately start doing the maths.

They’ve bought a house… I haven’t.

They’re travelling… I’m working.

They’re in a great relationship… I’m eating dinner alone.

Their business is flying… Mine is currently being powered by hope and caffeine.

They look fantastic… I have just discovered that gravity has apparently declared war on my face.

And suddenly their good news feels like a personal audit of our own lives.

Which is ridiculous. But brains are rarely known for their commitment to logic.

The Reframe

Here’s the thing.

You can be happy for someone and still wish you had what they have.

Those two things are not mutually exclusive.

You can genuinely want your friend to succeed while quietly thinking “Could I possibly have some of that success over here, please?”

You can celebrate their new relationship while wondering why your dating life resembles a particularly unsuccessful episode of Love Island.

You can be thrilled about their gorgeous new kitchen while thinking “Wow. Stunning. Mine currently looks like a before photo.”

That’s not necessarily resentment. Sometimes it’s simply longing. And that’s worth paying attention to. Because often we’re not actually jealous of the thing itself.

We’re jealous of what we think it represents.

Security. Freedom. Confidence. Love. Adventure. Money. A fresh start. A feeling that life is finally moving.

And sometimes your friend’s life simply highlights something you’ve been quietly missing from your own.

That’s not a reason to hate them but it is a reason to listen to yourself.

But here’s the really interesting bit.

Sometimes we’re so busy looking at what someone else has that we completely forget what we have.

We look at their house and forget we’ve built a home. We look at their relationship and forget the people who love us. We look at their career and forget how far we’ve come. We look at their holidays and forget the adventures we’ve had. We look at their confidence and forget all the things we’ve survived that once terrified us. We look at their wins and suddenly our own disappear from view.

And here’s the bit that really messes with your head:

There may be someone looking at your life and feeling exactly the same jealousy you’re feeling about someone else’s.

While you’re sitting there thinking you’re behind...

Someone else might be looking at you thinking “Fuck me. I wish I had her life.”

You might be jealous of your friend’s freedom while someone else is jealous of your stability.

You might be jealous of someone’s relationship while they’re jealous of your independence.

You might be looking at someone’s business success while they’re looking at your ability to switch off at five o’clock.

You might be thinking “She’s got everything together.”

While she is lying in bed thinking “Everyone else seems to know what they’re doing except me.”

Funny, isn’t it?

We’re all wandering around looking sideways at everyone else’s lives while assuming we’re the only ones who haven’t received the instruction manual.

The Unexpected Fix

This is where one of the original Fuckwits rules comes in.

We didn’t actually have many rules.

Our main focus was being a functioning adult while still managing to play out on a work night.

We worked. We paid bills. We dealt with the general fuckery of adult life.

But we also believed being an adult didn’t mean becoming boring.

And somewhere along the way, one rule stuck…

You’re allowed to complain about something in your life as long as you’re doing something about it.

Basically:

Have the fucking moan.

Get it out. Tell us your boss is an asshole. Tell us your date was a total shitshow. Tell us your family are driving you insane. Tell us you’re fed up with your house, your job, your body, your life or whatever else is currently pissing you off.

We’ll listen. We’ll probably agree.

Wine will be poured. Snacks may appear. And eventually comes the question…

“Right. So what are you going to do about it?”

Not because we expected everything to be fixed overnight. Not because we believed in “change your mindset and manifest a Ferrari by Friday.”

But because there’s a difference between having a bad patch and moving into it permanently.

You’re allowed to moan. You’re allowed to wallow. You’re allowed a day on the sofa eating crisps and declaring that life is unfair.

Sometimes you fucking need it. But eventually, you need to move even if it’s only an inch.

And I think jealousy needs the same treatment.

Feel it. Acknowledge it. Then get curious about it.

What is it actually telling you? Because maybe you’re not failing. Maybe you’re not falling behind. Maybe you’re just so busy looking at somebody else’s scoreboard that you’ve forgotten to check your own. And perhaps the first thing you need to do isn’t change your life at all.

Maybe it’s remembering how much you’ve already won.

The Shift

We are bloody obsessed with measuring ourselves against other people.

Especially as we get older.

We create imaginary deadlines. By thirty, I should have... By forty, I should have... By fifty, I should have... By now, I should definitely have...

According to who? Who handed us this fucking spreadsheet? And who decided everyone was supposed to tick the same boxes in the same order?

Life isn’t a school exam. There isn’t a giant red pen coming down at the end saying…

“B- Could do better.”

And yet we do it constantly.

We see someone else’s milestone and use it as evidence against ourselves. Their promotion becomes proof we’re underachieving. Their relationship becomes proof we’re unlovable. Their house becomes proof we’re financially behind. Their body becomes proof we’ve let ourselves go. Their holiday becomes proof we’re not enjoying life enough. Their success becomes evidence of our failure.

But what if we flipped it?

What if their success was simply...their success?

And ours was ours?

What if we stopped treating life like a competition where someone else winning automatically means we’ve lost?

Because here’s another uncomfortable truth…You’re probably someone’s jealousy too. There is almost certainly something about your life that another person wishes they had.

Your courage. Your independence. Your friendship group. Your resilience. Your sense of humour. Your home. Your job. Your ability to travel. Your relationship. Your freedom. Your life experience. Something…

And you might not even know it.

Because while you’re busy looking at what you don’t have...

Someone else might be looking at everything you do.

The Practical Nudge

So next time you catch yourself thinking “Everyone else is doing better than me.”

Stop - ask yourself “According to what?”

Then make yourself list five things you’ve actually done well. Not things you think are impressive enough for LinkedIn.

Real things… Things you’ve survived. Things you’ve built. Things you’ve changed. Things you’ve learned. Things you’ve walked away from. Things you once thought you couldn’t do. Things you have now that an earlier version of you would have desperately wanted.

Because we are ridiculously good at moving the goalposts.

We achieve something and immediately decide it doesn’t count anymore.

“Yes, but...” Yes, but I should have done it sooner. Yes, but she did it better. Yes, but it wasn’t that difficult. Yes, but everyone else has done it too.

Stop it.

A win is still a win even if nobody gives you a trophy.

And sometimes the thing you’re overlooking is the exact thing someone else would love to have.

You don’t have to think your life is perfect. It isn’t. Mine isn’t. None of ours are.

You can still want more. You can still complain about what’s not working. You can still be ambitious. You can still look around and think: “I’d quite like to change that.”

That’s fine. Just don’t allow the desire for more to convince you that what you already have is nothing.

Because those are two completely different things.

The Reality Check

Of course, there is another side to this as well.

Sometimes jealousy isn’t yours to deal with. Sometimes you’re the friend doing well and suddenly someone else’s behaviour changes.

You share good news and they barely react. You mention something exciting and they immediately tell you why it won’t work. You get a compliment and they make a joke. You achieve something and they remind you of something you fucked up years ago. You tell them you’re happy and somehow the conversation becomes a competition.

That’s different.

Because healthy friendship doesn’t require anyone to pretend they never feel jealous.

It requires them to manage their jealousy without making it your problem.

Your friend is allowed to have a wobble. They’re allowed to think “Bloody hell, I wish that was happening to me.”

They’re even allowed to have a private moment of “For fuck’s sake.”

What they aren’t entitled to do is make your happiness smaller so they can feel better about their own life.

And the same goes both ways.

If you’re jealous of your friend, that’s yours to work through. Don’t punish them for triggering something you haven’t dealt with. Don’t minimise their achievement. Don’t turn their good news into a competition. And don’t secretly hope they’ll fail just because you’re struggling.

Their win isn’t your loss. There’s enough room at the table.

🍷 The Final Sip

Maybe jealousy gets a bad reputation because we think it tells us something horrible about ourselves.

But maybe sometimes it’s just a reminder. A reminder that we want something. A reminder that we’re comparing. A reminder that we’ve forgotten to appreciate our own progress.

And sometimes... A reminder that we’re looking so hard at somebody else’s life that we’ve completely forgotten to notice our own.

Because while you’re sitting there thinking “I’m falling behind.”

There might be someone else looking at you thinking “How the fuck has she managed to do all that?”

While you’re thinking “I’ve achieved nothing.”

Someone else might be thinking “I’d love to have her courage.”

While you’re thinking “Everyone else has it figured out.”

Someone else might be looking at you and thinking “She seems so together.”

We’re all doing it. We’re all comparing our messy middle to somebody else’s highlight reel. We’re all overlooking things we’ve achieved because we’ve already decided they don’t count.

So yes...

Have the jealousy. Have the wobble. Have the “Oh, for fuck’s sake. Why does everyone else get nice things?” moment. You’re human.

And according to the original Fuckwits constitution, you’re absolutely allowed to complain.

But if something in your life genuinely isn’t working? Do something about it.

One tiny thing. One conversation. One boundary. One decision. One uncomfortable step.

And if you’re feeling like you’re failing? Before you decide that’s true, turn around and look at how far you’ve already come. Because perhaps you aren’t behind. Perhaps you’re simply so busy looking at someone else’s finish line that you’ve forgotten to look back at your own starting point.

And perhaps... the life you’re quietly jealous of isn’t somebody else’s at all. It’s the life you’re capable of building next.

Now pour the wine. Celebrate your friend. Have a word with your Inner Brain Committee. Have the moan. Count your wins. Make the plan. Do the tiny thing.

And for fuck’s sake... stop using somebody else’s life as evidence against your own.

Cheers. 🍷

Thanks Nora

My grandmother Nora had a saying for almost everything.

Some were wise. Some were weird. And some made absolutely no sense until I was about forty.

Then there was this one…

“When you assume, you make an ass out of you and me.”

At the time, I mainly found it funny because Nora always paused dramatically before saying “ass.” As though swearing in front of me required special permission.

Years later, I realised she was onto something.

Because assumptions are harmless when you’re wondering whether someone remembered to buy milk.

They’re a different story when you’re making assumptions about another human being and their life. Especially someone you’ve never spoken to. I learned that lesson from a homeless man outside a Tesco Express, and I’ve never quite looked at people the same way since.

Assumptions are Everywhere

Years ago, while preparing to move to what I now affectionately call The Happy Place, I decided learning the language might be useful. (Apparently pointing enthusiastically at things and smiling wasn’t considered fluency.)

So twice a week after work I dragged my increasingly tired brain to evening language classes.

Every lesson followed roughly the same routine.

Drive into town. Park the car. Walk past Tesco Express. Wave goodbye to any confidence I had in remembering verb conjugations from the previous week.

And every single lesson...I passed the same homeless man. His name, I would later learn, was Dean.

Dean never spoke to anyone. He never begged. He never chased people down the street. He simply sat quietly on the pavement with a sleeping bag, fingerless gloves, a woolly hat and a handwritten sign asking for spare change. That was it.

What caught my attention though, wasn’t just Dean. It was everyone else. People crossed the road before they reached him. Others suddenly became intensely interested in their phones. Some stared straight through him as if he had somehow become invisible. Others looked at him with that expression people reserve for someone they’ve already decided is guilty of something.

Nobody knew him. Yet somehow everybody knew exactly what kind of person he was.

Or at least they thought they did.

Drug addict. Alcoholic. Lazy. Scrounger. Probably his own fault.

Amazing really.

People can apparently diagnose an entire life story from twenty feet away while carrying a meal deal.

A Simple Hello

One evening, I asked my language tutor whether they knew anything about him.

“Has he been there long?”

“No idea.”

“Does anyone know him?”

“I don’t think so.”

That bothered me.

So the following week, instead of walking past him like everyone else...I crossed the road and walked towards him. I crouched down so we were eye level, held out my hand and I introduced myself.

I’ll never forget the expression on his face…Total shock and pure confusion. As though I’d completely broken some unwritten social rule. It was almost as if he’d forgotten how people introduced themselves because they never did it to him anymore. He shook my hand. “I’m Dean.”

We chatted for a minute before I asked:

“I’m just going into Tesco. What would you like?”

His answer? “Just a bottle of milk if it’s not too much trouble.”

Milk. Not cigarettes. Not money. Not alcohol - Just milk.

Of course, I ignored his request entirely... Because apparently selective hearing is one of my love languages. I came back carrying enough sandwiches, water and milk to survive a small apocalypse.

He smiled. We talked for another minute. I told him I’d see him Wednesday.

Then I left for my lesson.

For the next twelve weeks it became a routine.

On the way to class I’d stop at Tesco. Sandwiches. Water. Milk. Sometimes fruit. Sometimes snacks. Whatever looked useful.

Then, on the way back to my car... I’d sit on the pavement with Dean. Not stand awkwardly over him. But sit beside him and eat sandwiches. We’d talk about life. The weather. Football. Politics. Anything and everything.

Little by little... I learned his story.

And every assumption people had made about him quietly fell apart.

The Truth Changes Things

Dean wasn’t an alcoholic. He wasn’t addicted to drugs. He hadn’t spent years making terrible decisions. His life hadn’t started on the streets.

Quite the opposite. He had a good and very skilled job. He had just bought his first home. He had a fiancée and a baby on the way.

The future looked exactly how society tells us success should look.

Until one day... He came home and found his fiancée in bed with his own brother.

You know those moments that split your life neatly into before and after?

That was his.

Arguments followed. He left before he did something stupid. And then came the part that hurt him most. His family didn’t support him. Not one of them. They all chose sides but it just wasn’t his. There was no emotional support. No spare room. No one saying…“We’ve got you.” They chose the brother and the cheating ex because of the baby. The circumstances didn’t matter.

The betrayal swallowed Dean whole. Depression arrived quietly at first but got progressively darker for him. He stopped functioning and then lost his job. He couldn’t pay his bills and ran out of sofas to sleep on.

Then eventually… the street became home.

By the time I met him, he’d been living there for eighteen months.

Eighteen months.

Can you imagine how invisible someone begins to feel after eighteen months of people refusing to make eye contact?

My Own Small Assumptions

I asked if he’d let me take him to a shelter.

He politely declined “They’re not safe.”

That surprised me. Like most people, I’d assumed shelters were automatically better.

Again... Another assumption.

He explained that he genuinely felt safer sleeping where he was. It wasn’t ideal but it was predictable.

That sentence stayed with me. It wasn’t ideal. But it was predictable. I remember driving home after one conversation feeling unexpectedly emotional. Not because his story was unique. Because it wasn’t.

It suddenly hit me... With just a few different circumstances... I could have been Dean. So could you.

We all like believing homelessness happens to “other people.”

People who made bad decisions. People who didn’t try hard enough. People who somehow earned it, deserved it even. It’s comforting to us.

Because if we believe that... We can convince ourselves we’re protected.

But what if you’re wrong?

How many people are one redundancy away? One devastating betrayal? One serious illness? One mental health crisis? One relationship breakdown? One family who chooses someone else? How many dominoes need to fall before your life looks completely different?

Far fewer than most people realise.

Just Like That…

I reached out to someone I knew who worked within social services.

I wanted to see whether there was anything available Dean hadn’t already tried. Maybe there was something. Maybe there wasn’t. At least we could try.

The following Wednesday... He wasn’t there. I thought maybe he’d gone somewhere for the day.

The next lesson... Still no Dean.

The next week... Nothing.

Three weeks later... Still nothing.

I asked the staff in the shop. Other homeless people nearby. People walking past.

Nobody knew where he’d gone.

Nobody.

To this day... I still don’t know what happened to him.

Sometimes I hope someone finally managed to help him.

Sometimes I worry nobody did.

Sometimes I wonder whether someone else simply walked past without ever knowing he’d existed.

I honestly don’t know.

And perhaps that’s the hardest part.

There was no neat ending.

No inspirational rescue.

No triumphant before and after photograph.

No Hollywood moment where someone swooped in, fixed everything and gave Dean his happily ever after.

He was there…then he wasn’t.

And I was left with a story that had no ending.

There’s something deeply uncomfortable about stories without endings. We like closure. We like knowing what happened.

We like the bit where the problem gets solved and everyone goes home feeling slightly more optimistic about humanity.

Real life doesn’t always work like that unfortunately.

Sometimes people disappear from your life. Sometimes you never find out whether they were okay. Sometimes you do what you can and still don’t get to know how the story ends.

And you have to live with that.

I still think about Dean. Not every day. But often enough. Especially when I see someone sitting alone on a pavement.

Because I know that the person I’m looking at is not a stereotype.

They’re a person. With a history. A family. A heartbreak. A collection of bad days. A few good ones. Maybe dreams they once had. Maybe dreams they still have.

A whole bloody life I know nothing about.

“Probably” Is Doing a Lot

Wherever Dean is he probably doesn’t think anything of our conversations.

Maybe I was just a random woman who offered a little help.

In reality... He changed how I look at people forever.

These days, whenever someone says:

“They’ve probably...” I immediately become suspicious.

Probably?

Based on what? A Facebook comment? A five second glance? A rumour? Something someone else told you?

Our brains adore shortcuts. It’s how we’re wired. We categorise. We stereotype. We fill in missing information with stories.

The trouble is our made up stories often become our truth and once we’ve decided who someone is, everything they do tends to become evidence supporting the story we’ve already created.

They’re rude.

They’re difficult.

They’re lazy.

They’re selfish.

They’re attention-seeking.

They’re a mess.

They’re probably...

There it is again…Probably.

The tiny word that can carry an entire fictional biography.

Most people didn’t see Dean. They saw their own assumptions wearing someone else’s clothes.

Don’t Be an Ass…

This week, I want you to try something. Not something dramatic don’t worry you don’t need to rescue the world.

Just become curious.

Instead of assuming someone is rude... Wonder whether they’re exhausted.

Instead of assuming someone’s lazy... Wonder whether they’re grieving.

Instead of assuming someone’s angry... Wonder whether they’re frightened.

Instead of assuming someone has made a mess of their life... Wonder what happened before you arrived in the story.

You don’t have to understand everyone. You don’t have to excuse harmful behaviour. You don’t even have to like someone. But before deciding who they are... Consider the possibility that you don’t actually know.

Curiosity costs nothing. Judgement costs relationships. Sometimes even our humanity.

And sometimes the person you’re judging is carrying something you couldn’t see if you tried.

Life Happens

Here’s the uncomfortable truth.

Most of us aren’t nearly as far away from rock bottom as we’d like to believe.

We imagine disaster arriving like a Hollywood explosion. Something dramatic. Obvious. Easy to recognise.

In reality...

It usually arrives quietly. One bad month. One unexpected bill. One loss. One diagnosis. One betrayal. One depressive episode. One phone call. One relationship ending. One person deciding they’re no longer on your side.

Life doesn’t usually collapse all at once. It erodes slowly and quietly.

Until one day someone is sitting outside Tesco wearing fingerless gloves while strangers walk past convinced they know exactly how they got there.

They don’t and neither do we. But maybe that’s exactly the point.

Because the person you judge today could be you tomorrow.

Not because you deserve it. Not because you made terrible choices. Simply because life is unpredictable.

None of us have been handed a guarantee saying “This shit only happens to other people.”

It could easily be any of us once the dominoes start falling in the wrong direction.

Listen to Nora

Nora never met Dean but I think she’d have liked him.

And she’d definitely have reminded me one more time of one of her favourite sayings:

“When you assume, you make an ass out of you and me.”

She was right. (She usually was.)

Dean didn’t teach me to give sandwiches to strangers. He taught me something much bigger:

Every person you pass in life is carrying a story you haven’t earned the right to judge.

So before you judge the person sitting on the pavement, look at them.

Before you decide someone is a failure, remember that you only arrived halfway through their story.

Before you decide someone is lazy, ask yourself whether you actually know what they’ve survived.

And before you assume you know who someone is... Remember Nora. Because the truth is, you are never looking at the whole story. You’re looking at one chapter. One moment. One snapshot of a life you know very little about.

Sometimes if you’re lucky, someone gives you the chance to hear what came before it.

Dean gave me that chance. He reminded me that people aren’t labels. They aren’t stereotypes. They aren’t the worst thing that ever happened to them.

They’re people just like us.

And sometimes the smallest thing you can do is remind someone that they haven’t become invisible.

Maybe it’s a sandwich, a bottle of milk, a few minutes of your time or simply looking them in the eye and treating them like a human being.

And if that doesn’t sound like much... Maybe that’s because we’ve forgotten just how much being seen can mean.

Turns out Nora knew that.

Bloody woman was annoyingly right about almost everything.

Weekend Wine & Wisdom 🍷

If you’ve been reading Running on Wine and Sarcasm for a while, you’ve probably noticed I regularly mention a rather colourful collection of characters.

No... I haven’t completely lost the plot, although there are days when the evidence could probably be presented in court.

Over the past few months you’ve met my Inner Brain Committee - that delightfully dysfunctional group of unpaid volunteers who insist on commenting on every decision I make.

You’ve probably encountered the Inner Asshole - whose full time occupation appears to be providing unsolicited criticism with all the warmth and compassion of a Parking Warden.

You’ve almost certainly met my Chaos Monkey personality - the sarcastic little sod who has a comeback for everything, laughs at entirely inappropriate moments and firmly believes sarcasm is a perfectly acceptable coping mechanism.

(For the record... the Chaos Monkey isn’t always wrong.)

There’s also Logical Lucy, who occasionally wanders into the room, looks at the rest of us and asks the deeply inconvenient question: “What are the actual facts?”

And then there’s Fred.

Fred is not a committee member.

Fred is an international incident waiting to happen and I’m fairly certain he and the Chaos Monkey are related.

The Chaos Monkey is witty… Fred is feral.

The Chaos Monkey points at the fire and makes jokes… Fred is usually the one holding the petrol can and the matches.

The family resemblance is undeniable.

Lately though... They’ve all become rather stroppy.

The committee keeps demanding more airtime, so I thought it was finally time to introduce everyone properly before I have a mutiny on my hands.

Pour yourself a glass of wine.

Pull up a chair.

The meeting is now officially in session.

The Truth Bomb

There comes a point when you realise you don’t have one inner voice. You have a whole bloody management team. For years I thought there was simply me.

Turns out “me” is more of a job suggestion rather than a title.

Inside my head is a collection of competing opinions, fears, habits, coping mechanisms and personality traits, all convinced their particular approach is the correct one.

And honestly?

They’re not entirely wrong. That’s the annoying part.

Sound familiar?

Your committee probably has different names.

But I guarantee you’ve got one…

• The worrier.

• The overthinker.

• The perfectionist.

• The people pleaser.

• The critic.

• The comedian.

• The chaos merchant.

They’re all trying to help...

Even if some of them have a very strange way of showing it.

Meet the Committee

Every committee needs supporting characters.

Mine are wonderfully dysfunctional.

Anxiety Alan

Alan is the committee’s early-warning system.

Unfortunately, his definition of an emergency is extremely broad.

A missed call. An unexpected email. A delayed reply. An unfamiliar noise.

Alan doesn’t wait for information…He prepares for impact.

Overthinking Oliver

Oliver is the self appointed committee secretary. He keeps the minutes. Alot of them!

He can analyse a one word text message for three days. Someone replies “Okay.”

Oliver immediately wonders if it’s… An annoyed okay. A disappointed okay. A passive-aggressive okay.

Or... Just maybe... An actual okay.

By the time Oliver has finished analysing every possible meaning... The conversation has moved on without him.

Perfectionist Patti

Patti has never met a finished project she couldn’t improve.

Her greatest achievement is making procrastination look productive.

If she had her way nothing would ever be published because everything could always be just a little bit better.

Catastrophe Carol

Carol doesn’t jump to conclusions. She pole vaults over them.

A delayed text?…“They hate us.”

The doctor wants another appointment?…“It’s definitely serious.”

Carol’s imagination deserves an Oscar. She’s responsible for a significant percentage of the disasters that have happened exclusively inside my imagination.

She is also best friends with Overthinking Oliver...these two are joined at the hip and just love to rile each other up!

People-Pleasing Paula

Paula would rather inconvenience herself than disappoint someone else.

She has never knowingly said no. She apologises when someone else bumps into her. Agrees to everything. Then quietly resents everyone involved.

Including herself.

Logical Lucy

Lucy is the committee’s reality check.

She doesn’t promise everything will be fine. She doesn’t tell everyone to “just think positive.”

She simply separates what is happening from what I think might happen.

Sometimes that’s all you need.

Because when the brain starts filling in blanks, facts are surprisingly useful.

And Then There’s the Inner Asshole

Every committee has one member nobody remembers hiring. Mine is the Inner Asshole. She doesn’t shout. She doesn’t panic. She simply waits patiently until I’m finally feeling good about myself.

Then whispers... “Who do you think you are?”

Finished writing an article?…“Really…you think that’s good?”

Feeling confident?…“They’ll find out you’re winging it.”

Celebrating a success?…“Probably just luck.”

Here’s the thing I’ve finally realised, if this voice belonged to an actual person... I’d never spend time with them. Yet because it lives inside my own head... I mistake cruelty for honesty.

Spoiler…I don’t anymore.

The Inner Asshole still attends the meetings, she just doesn’t get a vote.

The Chaos Monkey

The Chaos Monkey isn’t really a committee member. The Chaos Monkey is me. Or at least the version of me that usually arrives first.

It’s my sarcastic side. The part that laughs when life gets ridiculous. The one that believes almost everything is improved with humour. The one who copes with life by using sarcasm. Sometimes because things genuinely are funny. Sometimes because if I didn’t laugh... I’d probably cry.

The Chaos Monkey has absolutely no respect for awkward silences, pompous people or taking life too seriously. He has survived every difficult chapter of my life armed with nothing more than sarcasm, inappropriate observations and an unhealthy ability to find humour in complete disasters.

Truthfully... I quite like the Chaos Monkey. Life would feel incredibly dull without him.

Then There’s Fred...

Fred is different. Fred isn’t sarcastic. Fred is pure chaos.

Fred only gets released occasionally. Entirely for public safety.

Because every single time Fred escapes... Things escalate.

Rapidly.

Fred doesn’t ask sensible questions.

Fred says, “Go on...I dare you”

“It’ll be funny.”

“What’s the worst that could happen?”

“It’ll make a brilliant story.”

Fred has absolutely no understanding of consequences. He’s responsible for impulse purchases. DIY projects that should’ve involved professionals. Replying before calming down. Starting new ideas before finishing the previous twelve and many, many questionable life choices over the years.

For obvious reasons... Fred only gets supervised visits these days.

Why Do We Have All These Voices?

Here’s the interesting bit.

They’re not random. Most of these voices developed for a reason. Some came from experiences that taught us to be cautious. Some developed because we learned that being useful, agreeable or successful earned us approval. Some protect us from rejection. Some try to prevent embarrassment. Some help us manage uncertainty. And some simply became habits.

The problem isn’t that they’re there.

The problem is when we stop recognising them as parts of us and start treating them as the truth.

Because there’s a huge difference between…

“I’m having the thought that I’ve fucked this up.”

from:

“I’ve fucked this up.”

One is an observation. The other is a verdict.

Learning that distinction has changed the way I deal with my own brain.

The Unexpected Fix

A friend once said something that lodged itself firmly in my brain:

“You don’t have to believe every thought you think.”

Simple, but bloody useful. Because our brains are incredibly convincing storytellers. They can take a feeling and turn it into a fact. They can take uncertainty and turn it into certainty. They can take one awkward moment and construct an entire narrative around it.

And they can do all of this before you’ve even finished your first coffee.

So now, when the committee gets noisy, I try something different... I pause.

I ask - Who’s talking?

And then - What do I actually know?

Not what am I assuming. Not what am I predicting. Not what am I afraid might happen.

But what do I actually know?

Sometimes the answer is - Bugger all, Which surprisingly, is still useful information.

Because if I don’t know, I don’t have to invent an answer.

I can wait.

The Shift

These days whenever my committee starts another emergency meeting, I picture a boardroom.

Alan is checking emergency exits.

Oliver is reading the minutes from last week’s meeting because he thinks we may have overlooked an important comma that changes the meaning behind that text message.

Patti is correcting the spelling on the agenda.

Carol has prepared a presentation called, “Everything Is About To Go Horribly Wrong.”

Paula’s making tea.

Lucy is waiting to present the facts.

The Inner Asshole is writing everyone’s annual performance review.

The Chaos Monkey is sitting on the table making sarcastic comments.

Fred has somehow found the button marked, DO NOT PRESS.

Then... I walk in. Coffee in hand. I smile.

“Morning everyone.”

“Thank you for your input.”

“I’ll take it from here.”

Because here’s what I’ve finally realised.

I’m not my anxiety. I’m not my overthinking. I’m not my inner critic. I’m not my people pleasing. I’m not every ridiculous thought that crosses my mind.

They’re all parts of my experience.

But none of them are in charge of the narrative.

I am.

The Practical Nudge

So next time your brain starts holding an emergency meeting, don’t immediately try to shut everyone up.

Get curious.

Who’s taken your microphone?

Then - Is what they’re saying the truth?

That tiny pause creates space between the thought and the reaction.

And in that space is something incredibly powerful…Choice.

You can hear the fear without obeying it. You can acknowledge the doubt without accepting it as truth. You can notice the urge to please without automatically saying yes. You can laugh at the chaos without joining it.

And you can tell your Inner Asshole…“Thanks. We’re not doing this today.”

The Reality Check

My healing hasn’t been about getting rid of the committee. It’s been about changing the hierarchy.

Alan can raise his concerns. Oliver can offer analysis. Patti can care about quality. Carol can flag possibilities. Paula can want people to be happy. Lucy can check the facts. The Chaos Monkey can keep things light. Even the Inner Asshole can occasionally make a point.

But none of them gets to make the final decision.

And Fred...Fred remains on probation.

Because apparently personal growth has limits.

🍷 The Final Sip

The voices may never disappear.

Good.

I don’t actually want them to.

Some have protected me. Some have made me laugh. Some have pushed me to do better. Some have taught me boundaries. And some have provided an astonishing amount of material for this newsletter.

Healing isn’t about becoming a person who never worries, never doubts, never overthinks or never makes questionable decisions.

It’s about becoming aware enough to recognise what’s happening inside your own head. To know when you’re listening to fear. When you’re reacting from an old story. When you’re being unnecessarily hard on yourself. And when you’re simply letting Fred loose because you’ve had a very bad idea.

You don’t have to fire the committee. You just need to remember who the Chairperson is. So take your seat. Listen to the opinions. Let Lucy check the facts. Thank everyone for their contribution. Then make your own bloody decision.

Because the loudest voice in your head isn’t necessarily the wisest.

And sometimes the healthiest thing you can do is raise your glass, look around the room and say:

“Meeting adjourned.”

And if Fred objects...

Well.

That’s what the wine is for. 🍷

When people hear the word grief, most of us immediately think of death.

We think of funerals.
Condolence cards.
Casseroles appearing on doorsteps.
Awkward people speaking in hushed voices and telling us they’re sorry for our loss.

Over the years I’ve written about grief in many forms.

I’ve written about losing loved ones.
I’ve written about bereavement.
I’ve written about relationships ending.
I’ve written about the strange reality that sometimes the people we mourn are still very much alive, they just no longer have a place in our lives.

But today I want to talk about a different kind of grief.

The kind nobody sends flowers for. The kind that doesn’t have a funeral. The kind that often goes completely unrecognised.

The grief of mourning your own life.

At some point during our journey from chaotic teenager to moderately functioning adult, most of us create a mental blueprint for our future. Not consciously perhaps. But it’s there.

A picture of how life is supposed to unfold.

We’ll meet someone.
Build a family.
Create a career.
Buy a home.
Feel secure.
Become successful.
Figure out what we’re doing.

(Still waiting on that last one personally.)

We build an identity around these expectations. We don’t just imagine what our lives will look like. We imagine who we’ll become. Then life does what life does best. It ignores the script. Sometimes it tears the script into tiny pieces, sets it on fire and throws it into the sea just to be extra dramatic.

A loved one dies. A marriage ends. An illness appears. A career collapses. Burnout changes what you’re capable of. Financial circumstances shift. Dreams become impossible. Plans change. Priorities change. You change.

And suddenly you’re standing in the middle of a life you never planned for.

Not necessarily a terrible life. Just not your life. Or at least not the version you expected. And that can hurt far more than people realise.

The Grief We Don’t Give Ourselves Permission To Feel

When someone dies, society generally understands grief.

People expect sadness. They understand tears. They accept that healing takes time. But when we’re grieving the loss of our imagined future? The responses tend to sound very different.

“Everything happens for a reason.”

“At least you’re healthy.”

“At least you have a job.”

“At least you’re not alone.”

“It could be worse.”

The problem with “it could be worse” is that technically it’s always true.

It could also be better.

Neither statement is particularly helpful.

If your house burns down, someone else’s house being struck by lightning doesn’t magically make your situation feel wonderful.

Pain isn’t a competition.

There is no international grief leaderboard where only the top ten tragedies qualify for emotional support. Yet many people feel guilty for mourning a life that never happened. They tell themselves they should be grateful. They should be positive. They should stop dwelling on things. Meanwhile they’re carrying around a quiet sadness they can’t quite explain.

Because they’re not mourning what they lost. They’re mourning what they never got.

And that’s a very different kind of heartbreak.

The Versions of Ourselves We Leave Behind

One of the hardest things about this type of grief is that often we aren’t just losing circumstances.

We’re losing identities.

The athlete who develops chronic illness. The parent who imagined a large family but couldn’t have children. The professional who spent twenty years building a career before redundancy. The person whose marriage ends after believing they’d grow old together. The caregiver whose role disappears after a loved one’s death. The healthy version of ourselves that existed before diagnosis. The energetic version before burnout. The confident version before trauma. The hopeful version before disappointment.

Sometimes the person we miss most is the version of ourselves we used to be. The version that believed certain things were still possible. And that is incredibly difficult to admit. Because it feels selfish, or dramatic, or self-indulgent.

But it isn’t.

It’s human. Identity loss is real. When a major life change occurs, we don’t just adapt to new circumstances. We have to rebuild our understanding of who we are. And that process can be painful.

The Social Media Problem

I think modern life makes this even harder.

Every time we open social media we’re presented with thousands of alternative lives. People buying dream homes. Launching businesses. Travelling the world. Celebrating anniversaries. Posting family photos where everyone appears suspiciously coordinated and emotionally stable.

Meanwhile we’re sitting in yesterday’s leggings wondering whether we’ve accidentally become a supporting character in our own life story.

Comparison has always existed. But now it follows us everywhere. We aren’t just grieving our own unrealised expectations. We’re constantly being shown evidence of everyone else’s apparent success. I say apparent because social media is essentially humanity’s greatest collection of carefully edited highlight reels.

Nobody is posting:

“Here’s me crying in the supermarket because they stopped selling my favourite cheese and apparently that was my emotional breaking point this week.”

Although honestly I’d follow that account. It would feel more relatable.

Acceptance Is Not The Same As Giving Up

One of the biggest misconceptions about grief is that acceptance means approval.

It doesn’t.

Accepting reality does not mean you like it. It doesn’t mean you’re happy about it. It doesn’t mean you’re pretending everything is wonderful. It simply means you’re acknowledging what is true.

There’s a huge difference between:

“This is not the life I wanted.”

And:

“This is not the life I wanted, therefore my life is over.”

The first statement is grief. The second is hopelessness. Acceptance allows us to stop fighting reality long enough to start building something new. Not because we’re thrilled about it. But because reality doesn’t negotiate.

Trust me, I’ve checked….Repeatedly.

Practical Ways To Navigate This Type Of Grief

Because while sarcasm is therapeutic, apparently it is not recognised as a formal treatment plan.

Name What You’re Actually Grieving

Many people feel emotionally stuck because they can’t identify the loss.

Ask yourself:

What exactly am I mourning?

The marriage? The career? The health I used to have? The future I imagined?

The opportunities I missed? The version of me I thought I would become?

Giving the grief a name often removes some of its power.

You cannot process a loss you refuse to acknowledge.

Stop Arguing With Reality

This doesn’t mean liking reality. It means recognising that endless mental negotiations rarely help.

We spend years thinking…“It shouldn’t have happened”…“It wasn’t supposed to be this way” …“I shouldn’t be here.”

Maybe not…but here you are. At some point healing requires shifting from:

“Why did this happen?”

To…

“What do I do now?”

Allow Yourself To Be Disappointed

This sounds simple. It isn’t.

Many of us are experts at minimising our feelings.

We tell ourselves…

“Others have it worse.”

“I should be grateful.”

“I shouldn’t complain.”

You can be grateful and disappointed simultaneously. You can appreciate what remains while grieving what was lost.

Those emotions are not mutually exclusive.

Stop Measuring Your Life Against Old Expectations

The goals you created at twenty may not fit the person you became at forty.

And that’s okay.

Sometimes we’re trying desperately to achieve dreams that belonged to an earlier version of ourselves. A version with different circumstances. Different priorities. Different information.

Sometimes growth looks less like achieving the original plan and more like creating a better one.

Build A Future Instead Of Recreating A Past

One trap people fall into is spending years trying to get back to who they used to be.

Sometimes that’s impossible. And sometimes it’s not even desirable. You don’t need to recreate your old identity. You need to discover what comes next.

Different does not automatically mean worse.

It just means different.

What If This Is The Life?

This is perhaps the hardest question of all.

What if this is the life? Not the practice round. Not the temporary setback. Not the waiting room before the real story begins. What if this imperfect, messy, unpredictable life is actually it?

That thought used to terrify me. Because it felt like surrender. Now I think it feels more like freedom.

When we stop waiting for life to become what we expected, we create space to appreciate what actually exists.

Not because everything is perfect. It isn’t. Not because all our dreams came true. They didn’t. But because life continues to offer moments worth living even when the original plan falls apart.

A conversation with a friend. A ridiculous joke. A peaceful morning.A good book. A glass of wine. A small victory. A moment of genuine laughter.

The things that matter often arrive disguised as ordinary Tuesdays.

Final Thoughts with Love and Sarcasm

If you’ve been carrying grief for the life you thought you’d have, I want you to know something.

That grief is real. You are not weak for feeling it. You are not ungrateful for acknowledging it. You are not failing because life unfolded differently than planned.

Most of us are quietly mourning something.

A dream.
A relationship.
A version of ourselves.
A future we once believed was guaranteed.

The bravest thing we can do isn’t pretending we’re fine.

It’s acknowledging the loss, allowing ourselves to grieve it and then, eventually, deciding we’re not going to spend the rest of our lives tending the grave of a life that never happened.

Because while life may not have followed the script we wrote in our twenties, that doesn’t mean the story is over.

It means the plot changed.

And maybe that’s not the tragedy we thought it was.

Maybe the life waiting for us was never supposed to look like the one we planned.

Maybe some of the best chapters are the ones we had absolutely no idea we were going to write.

So grieve what you lost.
Thank the old version of you for getting you this far.
Then pick up the bloody pen and start writing again.

It doesn’t have to be perfect.

It just has to be yours.

And preferably with a decent glass of wine, a healthy dose of sarcasm and absolutely no fucks given about whether anyone else approves of the plot. 🍷

🍷 Weekend Wine & Wisdom

Welcome back to another week where I attempted to be a responsible adult and life responded with… 'That's adorable.' Pour yourself a glass of whatever gets you through the week…wine, tea or industrial strength coffee and let's discuss the absolute circus that was the last seven days.

Let me start by saying that the last few weekends have been exactly what I dreamed life here in the Happy Place would be.

Mabel’s barely had chance to cool down between adventures and my suitcase remained packed for four whole weeks. I’ve been chucking the cool box in the boot, grabbing a bottle of wine and enough cheese,olives and cold meats to feed an army and heading off on little solo road trips. Beach days, lazy lunches with friends, sunset dinners with Fuckwits that somehow turned into late evenings, plenty of laughter and probably slightly too much wine.

The kind of weekends that fill your cup. The kind that make you stop, look around and think, “Bloody hell... this is the life I dreamed of.”

This last weekend though, wasn’t going to be about adventures.

This was my Reset Weekend. The weekend where I got my shit together.

No beach. No lunches. No disappearing off with Mabel. This was the weekend where I was finally going to tackle all those little jobs that had been quietly breeding while I’d been out enjoying myself.

How hard could it be? (Don’t answer that.)

The new dishwasher arrived first.

Now, if you’d told twenty five year old me that I’d get genuinely excited about a dishwasher, I’d have laughed at you while buying another pair of shoes and probably a matching handbag.

Now?

I’m discussing adjustable shelves and eco cycles like they’re personality traits. Apparently this is what your fifties look like. At the same time, I’d finally put up the new curtains in the bedroom.

Well... That opened a whole new can of worms. They’ve now become the subject of a full on Fuckwit debate. One day I absolutely love them. The next I think what was I thinking? Then I love them again. Then I decide they’re too dark. Honestly, I’ve spent more time analysing these curtains than I did analysing half the men I dated. Every conversation now starts with, “So... are we liking the curtains today?” As though they’ve somehow changed overnight.

With the dishwasher installed, the curtains up and the house looking spectacularly clean, I poured myself a large glass of wine and wandered out onto the balcony.

The place looked amazing. Honestly, it looked like one of those houses on Instagram where nobody actually lives. Everything sparkled. Everything matched (except the oven). Everything was exactly where it should be. The Inner Brain committee were satisfied.

I sat back, took a sip of wine feeling pretty damned smug and thought ‘‘Go me being a functioning adult’’.

Now, if there’s one thing I’ve learned it’s this... The universe hears sentences like that and takes it as a personal challenge (and yet I still said it!)

Within the hour, the water cooler decided it had completely lost the will to live. No warning. No dramatic noises. Nothing. It simply looked across at the shiny new dishwasher and thought, “Well... apparently I’m no longer needed here.”

I’m convinced my appliances have their own WhatsApp group.

The dishwasher’s the smug new recruit. The water cooler has resigned in protest. The oven’s sitting quietly in the corner plotting my downfall.

Then my phone buzzed. There’d been a medical emergency with Dad. Funny how quickly life can change. One minute you’re wondering whether your curtains work. The next your heart’s somewhere near your ankles. Your brain doesn’t wait for facts. It immediately jumps to every possible worst case scenario. The curtains didn’t matter anymore. The dishwasher didn’t matter. The water cooler could’ve burst into flames and I genuinely wouldn’t have noticed. Perspective has a habit of arriving without knocking.

Thankfully, after what felt like forever, but was really just a few frantic minutes and phone calls…everything settled.

Dad was okay…ish, I had all the facts, had spoken to everyone including Dad who was not exactly on the happy end of the emotional scale at being back in hospital…but would be ok once the Doctors had worked their magic. I could breathe again. And almost as quickly as the panic arrived, life quietly carried on. Which is exactly what it does. It doesn’t stop because you’ve had a fright. It simply moves on to the next chapter.

Mine involved the oven.

Earlier in the day I’d casually mentioned to one of the Fuckwits that it didn’t really match the rest of the kitchen anymore. Nothing nasty. Just an observation.

Apparently the oven overheard because the very next day...

It died.

No sparks. No smoke. No dramatic farewell.

Just... “Oh... I don’t fit the aesthetic anymore? Fine. Good luck cooking your dinner then.”

Honestly, I swear household appliances have feelings. Mine are just incredibly passive aggressive and apparently very petty.

By this point I was expecting the kettle to submit a resignation letter and the hoover to start looking at jobs in another house.

Then just when I thought the week had peaked, someone casually wandered into the office and announced,

“You do know it’s a full moon this week?”

Now don’t get me wrong... I’m not saying I believe the full moon controls people’s behaviour (well not fully anyway) I’m simply saying the timing was very suspicious.

Because over at work, my fabulous colleague and I somehow forgot how language worked. And I mean at one point we were just making up new words (well it was more me but she was there as well so clearly it was both of us really.)

Now we’ve written hundreds of emails and messages together over the years. Professional emails. Diplomatic emails. The sort that politely say, “Please could you...” while secretly meaning, “Seriously just fucking do your job!” This one should’ve taken five minutes. Instead every time I edited it, it somehow became more passive aggressive.

Version one was friendly. Version two was firm. Version three had definitely developed an attitude. By version six it was basically saying, “Kind regards... but perhaps you should take a serious look at your life choices.”

I’d soften one sentence...only to accidentally sharpen another.

At one point I genuinely debated whether “Just to confirm...” was a perfectly reasonable opening or simply office code for, ‘‘Do you even know what you’re fucking doing?” Eventually I admitted defeat. The email is still sitting safely in Drafts. Not because I regret writing it. Truthfully, I probably wouldn’t regret pressing Send either.

But would it get us the outcome we actually wanted?…Absolutely not.

Sometimes the wisest thing you can do is close the tab, walk away and let tomorrow’s version of yourself deal with it. Preferably after the full moon has moved on to terrorise someone else.

I should have known the full moon wasn’t finished with me. Because apparently the universe had looked at my week, glanced at my to-do list and thought, “No... she’s coping a little too well. Let’s add some bureaucracy.”

I’d finally reached the end of my relationship with my bank, like those couples who quietly realise they’re no longer compatible. It’s not me. It’s definitely you. For starters my bank card has never worked properly since the day it arrived.

And now after three years I can’t even access my online banking anymore.

Every time I need to do anything remotely complicated like check my balance, I have to drive into the city to the actual bank. Now, driving into the city isn’t the problem. Parking however is. Finding a parking space requires military planning, blind optimism and a small miracle. Then you would take the little numbered ticket. Wait. Watch people who arrive after you somehow get served first. Question your life choices and then forty five minutes later someone will finally acknowledge your existence only to tell you ... “You’ll have to come back after lunch.”

No. Absolutely not!!! I just can’t do it again! So I made what seemed like the easier decision. I’d open a new bank account...with a completely different bank - Simple. Except apparently proving you’re you in 2026 here in the Happy Place now requires enough paperwork to gain access to MI5.

I spent the next few days chasing around trying to get a letter proving my own address. The one I’ve lived at for nine years.

By Wednesday I finally had all the paperwork to prove I actually existed. What I didn’t have yet...was a new bank account. Somewhere along the line banking stopped being about money and became an endurance sport.

By now my Reset Weekend was looking less like “getting my life together” and more like “surviving modern admin.”

Still... There were jobs to tick off.

So I finally decided to replace all the light bulbs I’d been ignoring for months. I confidently marched into the shop. Bought the fourteen that I needed.

FOURTEEN.

Came home feeling wildly productive. Every single one...was the wrong fitting.

Every…Single…One.

Not one Fucking fit. Not even accidentally. At that point I wasn’t even annoyed. I was impressed. That’s a level of commitment to failure that deserves recognition.

Then there was the supermarket. Four trips later. Yes four separate trips.

How is it physically possible to visit the market four separate times and still not come home with what was actually written on the shopping list?

Instead, I returned with wine, cheese, bread and a host of new herbs that I am not really qualified to try and keep alive but we will give it another go!

The shopping list itself has remained largely untouched.

Apparently it’s become less of a shopping list and more of a collection of optimistic suggestions.

Then came the grand finale for the week.

One of the Fuckwits and I decided to book tickets for a concert.

How difficult could it be? (Again don’t answer that.)

Ninety three minutes later we’d refreshed browsers, swapped devices, blamed the Wi-Fi, blamed the website and questioned all our life choices to this point.

Eventually... A chatbot appeared. Not with tickets. Not with any help. Not even with an acknowledgement they had received the money. Just a wonderfully cheerful message saying, “There’s been a problem. Please watch this space for updates.” Watch this space? I’ve just donated an hour and a half of my life to your website. I’m not watching the space. I’m emotionally invested in the bloody space.

By Thursday evening I’d had enough. Not in a dramatic “I’m moving to a remote island” sort of way, well mostly because I’ve already done that.

It was more the quiet acknowledgement that I’d spent an entire week allowing tiny inconveniences to take up far too much space in my head and the realisation that this time last year all of this would have absolutely broken me.

But here’s the thing...

The only thing that genuinely mattered all week was the phone call about Dad.

Everything else? It was just life. Messy. Untidy. Occasionally ridiculous life. The broken water cooler. The dramatic oven. The bank that tested my patience more than any ex-boyfriend ever managed. The curtains that still can’t decide whether they’re fabulous or a mistake. The email still sitting safely in Drafts. The fourteen useless light bulbs. The shopping list that’s clearly living in an alternate universe. The chatbot that offered all the emotional support of a garden gnome.

None of those things were life changing.

They were simply life’s way of reminding me that peace isn’t something you find once everything is finally sorted.

Because here’s a little secret...Everything is never sorted. There’ll always be another form to fill in. Another bill to pay. Another appliance plotting your downfall. Another email that really should wait until Monday. Another queue. Another website convinced you’re a robot.

If we keep waiting until everything’s perfect before we enjoy our lives...We’ll miss the life that’s happening right now.

That’s probably why those weekends with Mabel have meant so much lately. Packing up the cool box. Heading for the coast. Meeting friends. Watching the sunset with a glass of wine.

They’re not rewards for surviving life. They are life.

Everything else is just admin.

This week reminded me that perspective doesn’t stop annoying things from happening. It simply changes how much rent you’re willing to let them pay inside your head. Some things deserve your attention. The people you love. Your health. Your peace.

Everything else?

Most of it can wait until tomorrow. Or Monday. Or after another glass of wine.

Minutes from the Inner Brain Committee

Anxiety: Everything’s falling apart, it’s a total disaster

Logic: Really? Stop being dramatic it’s only the oven that doesn’t match.

Curtains: Have we decided about us yet?

Oven: Seriously? I can hear you all.

Bank: Please take another ticket.

Draft Email: Go on... press Send... I dare you!

Wine: Nobody’s pressing anything until we’ve had a refill.

Meeting adjourned.

🍷 The Final Sip

As I write this, Mabel is sitting outside waiting for our next adventure.

The cool box is ready to be packed. The beach is still there. The sunsets haven’t gone anywhere. My dream life hasn’t disappeared because I had one gloriously chaotic week.

It just hit the pause button while life reminded me that even paradise comes with paperwork, broken appliances and the occasional passive aggressive email.

Next weekend I’ll probably throw the cool box back in Mabel, point her towards the sea and disappear again.

The oven can sulk. The bank can keep my old account. The chatbot can continue watching its own space and the fourteen wrong light bulbs? Well... they’ll be coming back to the shop with me if I can find the receipt.

After all, even if I haven’t completely got my shit together...

At least I’ll have a good story to tell over a glass of wine.

Have a wonderful weekend my lovely lot of Fuckwits in training.

May your appliances remain loyal, your emails stay in Drafts until you’re calm, your bank remember who you are...

...and may your wine glass always be fuller than your to-do list.

Cheers. 🍷

There are people who move through relationships with a kind of calm, grounded certainty.

They meet someone. They connect. They communicate like emotionally regulated adults who have read the manual, highlighted it and made notes.

They build something steady, dependable, slightly predictable but with mutual respect and something that is secretly annoying to anyone whose single.

I would love to tell you I am one of those people.

I’m not.

When it comes to dating and relationships, I’ve always been a bit emotionally… let’s call it structurally inconsistent.

Not broken or incapable. Just a walking contradiction with a long and well-documented history of confusing chemistry with compatibility… and then trying to justify the aftermath like I was running some kind of elite level emotional research project instead of just crying in the kitchen at 11pm with a glass of red wine and wondering ‘‘what the fuck is wrong with me?” like a normal person.

The longest standing members of the Fuckwits - my friendship group, emotional support committee and unofficial relationship autopsy team, have had front row seats to this entire saga for decades.

They’ve watched me switch between…

“I am totally ready for love, emotional depth and a stable healthy relationship.”

and

“I will now emotionally exit this situation at the first sign of vulnerability and relocate to another postcode without any warning.”

There has never been a middle ground. Only extremes. Which, to be fair is also how I do exercise, eating chocolate and occasionally feelings.

Because here’s the thing…I don’t just attract one type of person.

Oh no, that would be far too simple. Too sensible. Too emotionally regulated.

Instead, I attract polar opposites.

On one end… emotionally avoidant men. The Olympic level emotional distance champions. The Masters of ambiguity. Experts in replying just enough to keep you invested, but never enough to let you relax. The kind of people who treat emotional availability like a subscription service they might renew… but usually forget exists.

And on the other end?

Emotional limpet types. The “Hi I love you and I think we should emotionally merge into one organism by Tuesday” crew. No pacing. No gentle build up. Just full speed emotional intensity like they’ve been told connection is a competitive sport and they’re trying to win it in record time. They don’t knock on the door. They move in. They unpack. They start mapping out your future together before you’ve confirmed you even like how they load the dishwasher.

And somehow through what I can only assume is a deeply unhelpful cosmic algorithm, I manage to attract both.

Sometimes even in the same person. Which creates a very specific kind of chaos.

You are either:

Chasing emotional breadcrumbs like a Victorian orphan…or trying to gently detach someone from your emotional nervous system while they are planning your shared retirement home and naming your hypothetical dog “Kevin”.

It is, in its own way a talent. Not a useful one. But still a talent none the less.

For a long time I thought this meant I was just unlucky in love.

Which is what we say when we’re not quite ready to admit we are actively participating in a very predictable emotional loop and calling it “fate” because accountability feels rude.

Because here’s the uncomfortable truth:

It wasn’t just about who I was attracting. It was about what I was tolerating and what I was available for.

At the same time I was attracting emotionally unavailable people… I was also totally emotionally unavailable myself.

Which meant I was drawn to dynamics that confirmed that pattern. A beautifully dysfunctional ecosystem on repeat.

I would feel overwhelmed by closeness…but also deeply drawn to people who could never fully offer it anyway.

Because that meant I never had to face the real fear underneath it all:

Being chosen, properly chosen. Very clearly, without any ambiguity kind of chosen. Because clarity unfortunately removes all escape routes. And I have always been very fond of escape routes. (Sometimes even at 2am in the morning when my options are to smother them with a pillow for snoring or go home).

At the time I didn’t call it avoidance though.

Of course I didn’t…I called it independence. I said it was standards. I labelled it “I just value my space.”

Which all sounds very evolved until you realise you’ve basically designed a relationship model that ensures you never actually have to fully participate in one.

My ideal relationship checklist at one point looked like this:

• Separate homes.

• Preferably nearby.

• Close enough for convenience.

• Far enough for emotional breathing room and a dignified exit strategy.

• We would not message every day.

(Daily communication felt a bit… excessive. Like someone had turned the emotional thermostat up without asking my permission.)

• We would see each other when it suited both our lives.

• We would connect but not merge.

Love…but in small manageable doses.

Intimacy…but with clearly marked emergency exits.

At the time I genuinely believed this was emotional maturity.

Looking back?

It was avoidance in a very good outfit and probably with matching shoes.

But patterns don’t stay subtle forever. Eventually they start tapping you on the shoulder like:

“Hi. It’s us. We’ve noticed you’re repeating yourself.”

And for me, that moment came courtesy of years of debriefs with the Fuckwits. Wine was involved. Snacks were essential. And at least one person would say: “...Really?” with the exact tone of someone questioning whether you’ve learned anything at all from being alive. And slowly, painfully, hilariously… the pattern became undeniable.

It wasn’t bad luck. It wasn’t fate. It wasn’t Mercury retrograde (although she’s also chaotic, so I do keep an eye on her). It was repetition and repetition always points somewhere deeper.

For me, it pointed back to childhood.

Now before anyone starts dialing the number for Childline and diagnosing my entire personality from one paragraph: This is not a trauma story. My childhood was happy safe and stable but it was also shaped by context. I was an only child and for a number of years, the only grandchild. Which meant I grew up surrounded by adults, adapting to their world rather than them adapting to mine.

This was the 70s and 80s. Parenting style was… “ Go outside and don’t come back until the street lights come on or a limb is hanging off”

You learned independence early. You learned to observe before acting. You learned to fit into spaces rather than take them up. And without anyone explicitly saying it, a quiet narrative formed:

Don’t take up too much space. Other people come first. You adapt. You don’t need too much.

Children don’t question this… they absorb it. And then they spend decades calling it personality.

But there’s another layer.

Because childhood writes the blueprint…and first love tests it like a demolition project disguised as romance. And mine didn’t just test it. It rewrote it.

On the outside, it looked perfect. He was funny, charming and attentive. The kind of person everyone described as “a stand-up guy.” The kind your friends approve of immediately. The kind your family welcomes. The kind that makes everyone say: “You’re so lucky.”

And for a while… I believed that too. Because nothing looked wrong. That’s the trick. Some dynamics don’t announce themselves as unhealthy. They don’t come in waving red flags like they’re in a parade. They arrive quietly and very gradually.

A comment here, a suggestion there. A slight shift in what is “reasonable’’ or what is “easier.” You start making decisions based on what avoids conflict and before you realise it…You are no longer making decisions freely. You are making them carefully, very carefully! Strategically. To keep things calm. To keep things good. To keep him good.

But because everyone else thinks he’s amazing…You don’t question him. You question yourself. You assume the discomfort is yours that you’re overthinking or overreacting, being too sensitive.

So you adjust and comply and then adjust again, until one day you look up and realise you don’t actually know who you are anymore.

And here’s the brutal part… That version of me? I didn’t recognise her but worse than that …I didn’t even like her. There’s a very specific grief that comes with that, when you lose your identity.

And here’s the bit people don’t like admitting…

It took me far too long to leave. Not because I didn’t feel it. I did. In small moments. In quiet discomfort. In that persistent internal whisper of: “This doesn’t feel right.” But leaving something that looks fine? Something everyone else validates? That’s a different kind of hard. Because you’re not just leaving a person. You’re leaving a narrative that everyone else believes in. And that takes strength especially at 21.

When I finally left, it was sudden.

No big speech. Just an internal realisation that I cannot keep abandoning myself to keep something intact that everyone else wanted but that I didn’t. And then came the weird part.

The aftermath. Because once you remove the relationship… you don’t automatically return to yourself. You just get space and that space is confronting. Because suddenly there’s a question you can’t avoid ‘‘Who am I now?’’

And the honest answer was - I had no fucking idea but as long as it wasn’t the version that was looking back at me in the mirror at that moment.

And that became the beginning for me. Not clarity or a big transformation.

Just a boundary, a promise to myself ‘‘Never again.’’

That experience shaped everything that came after. It didn’t stop me wanting connection but it made me cautious, hyper-aware, protective in a way I didn’t fully understand at the time.

So in my future relationships I leaned into independence. I valued space. I built emotional distance into everything, because I had lived the alternative and I knew how it ended.

But that kind of protection always has a cost. Because while it keeps you safe, it also keeps things out. And that’s where the contradiction lives.

I want closeness…but I anticipate loss.

I want stability…but prepare for instability.

I want to be chosen…but I stay half ready to leave.

So I continue attracting extremes. The distant. The intense. The inconsistent. The overwhelming. And I find myself stuck in the middle - calling it chemistry, calling it timing, calling it anything except what it is:

A nervous system that learned early how to survive emotional unpredictability.

So what do you actually do with all of this? Because awareness is lovely. But also slightly useless if you’re still repeating patterns on autopilot.

Here’s the practical bit. Not therapy or enlightenment. Just slightly less chaos.

Learn your “activation styles”

If someone feels too distant or too intense, pause.

That feeling might not be intuition. It might be familiarity. And familiarity is not the same as compatibility.

One feels familiar. The other is actually good for you.

Annoying I know.

Stop romanticising chemistry

Chemistry is not a personality trait regardless of what we tell ourselves.

It’s often anxiety with good lighting and a filter. If something feels electrifying but unstable ask:

Is this connection…or dysregulation?

Be really honest with yourself, even though I know you don’t really want to hear it.

Trust me no one gets a medal for emotional turbulence otherwise I’d have a bloody room full.

Consistency is the real green flag

Not intensity and love bombing. Not poetic texts at 2am. Not emotional whiplash disguised as passion. But consistency. Boring, reliable and gloriously underwhelming at first. And often exactly what your nervous system doesn’t recognise yet. But consistency proves emotional safety. Something that you can rely on.

Watch your “space narrative”

“I need space” is absolutely valid and if you’re like me…necessary.

But ask:

Do I need space…or do I need emotional distance so I don’t feel exposed?

Be honest enough to hear your own answer.

Even if it annoys you.

Slow down early attachment

If it feels fast, pause.

Fast connection is not deeper connection. It’s often just… fast.

Depth takes time. And time is where truth shows up.

Don’t confuse familiarity with safety

Avoidance feels familiar. Overwhelm feels familiar. Healthy pacing often feels… suspiciously calm.

That’s the point where most people panic and go back to chaos.

Try not to. Stay a little longer and go with the flow.

Build tolerance for steady people

If someone is emotionally consistent and you feel “nothing dramatic”…

That’s not a sign to run. That might not be lack of spark. That might be your nervous system adjusting to peace.

Give it time to recalibrate.

Track patterns, not people

People change but often patterns repeat. And once you see the pattern clearly enough it loses a lot of its power. Not all of it. But enough to interrupt it. (Sometimes. On a good day. After wine.)

As for me…where I am now?

I’m somewhere in between. Still human. Still occasionally chaotic. Still capable of making questionable emotional decisions when tired, hungry or mildly triggered by someone taking too long to reply.

But now there’s a pause, a gap. A moment where I can see it happening…and not immediately run the script.

And honestly? That’s the real shift.

It’s not about becoming someone different. It’s just about becoming someone who notices sooner.

And sometimes, just sometimes, being someone who chooses differently than all the times before.

Even if I still occasionally end up in the Fuckwits group chat saying:

“Right... Send snacks, wine and possibly a therapist”

Because growth isn’t perfection.

It’s just fewer disasters per decade.🍷

Weekend Wine & Wisdom 🍷

When we’re kids, heroes are easy to spot. They wear capes. They fly. They save cities before breakfast and somehow still have perfect hair.

Batman had the gadgets.

Wonder Woman had the bracelets.

Superman had...well...everything.

Even if superheroes weren’t your thing, there was always someone. Firefighters. Doctors. Astronauts. Athletes.

Our childhood heroes all had one thing in common. They looked larger than life.

Then adulthood arrives and somewhere between council tax, lower back pain and trying to remember why you walked into the kitchen, our definition of a hero quietly changes.

Or worse...

For some people, it disappears altogether.

We become so busy comparing ourselves to celebrities, influencers and people on social media announcing they’ve become CEO of Something Important before the age of twenty-eight that we stop noticing the extraordinary people quietly getting on with life right in front of us.

When I was a budding sarcasm queen in training, like every other idiot child of the 80s, my heroes came from films and television.

Now?

They’re much closer to home.

Today, my hero is my dad. I know it’s unbelievably cliché. But clichés usually become clichés because they’re true.

He isn’t famous. He hasn’t invented anything revolutionary. He hasn’t cured world hunger. He hasn’t climbed Everest (yet… but I’m not putting it past him). I’m not certain he even knows what an influencer is and frankly, I hope we keep it that way.

Yet the older I get, the more I realise this man has quietly taught me almost everything important about how to live.

Without ever once trying to.

The Truth Bomb

First of all...

This man should be teaching masterclasses in boundaries.

Seriously.

Forget expensive life coaches charging £2,000 to teach you how to “step into your authentic power.” Spend ten minutes with my dad. If he doesn’t want to do something... He’s not doing it. End of discussion. No lengthy explanations. No guilt.

No fake diary excuses. No pretending he’s washing his hair.

Just... “No.”

And yet ( and this is the bit that fascinates me ) people still adore him. He’s respected. Well liked. Trusted.

Which completely disproves the theory most of us spend years believing... That saying ‘no’ makes people dislike us.

Apparently it doesn’t. Apparently it just makes people realise where they stand.

Who knew?

I’ve spent approximately forty years recovering from people pleasing and learning how to enforce my boundaries and yet he mastered it decades ago without ever reading a self help book.

When I was little, and I’ve written about this before, Dad worked incredibly hard.

He didn’t have endless free time. But he always found ways to include me. Most Saturdays he took me to work with him.

Before anyone reports him... It was the 1980s.

Health and Safety was basically someone saying, “Just don’t touch that.” There were no safeguarding policies. No HR department. No mandatory risk assessments. Just common sense and a packet of polos.

I’d wander around the warehouse like I owned the place. The staff all knew me. I’d help with little jobs. Then, at the end of the day, came my biggest responsibility. Handing out everyone’s wages.

Yes, an actual nine year old walking around with envelopes full of cash and a clipboard.

Imagine that happening today.

There’d be twelve meetings, four investigations and someone would start a podcast about it.

But back then? It taught me responsibility. People trusted me. I was expected to do the job properly. Dad never made me feel too young. He made me feel capable.

There’s a huge difference.

The Reframe

One of the greatest gifts my dad ever gave me wasn’t advice, it was freedom.

He has never tried to live my life for me. Even now, if I ask him what he thinks about something, I rarely get a direct answer.

Instead he’ll ask... “Will it make you happy?”

Or... “Can you afford to do it?”

That’s it. No lecture. No judgement. No trying to steer me towards what he would choose.

Just questions that help me think.

Because he knew I had plenty of other family members who were more than happy to leap in wearing metaphorical size twelve boots and try to force their opinions on me .

They ALL had an opinion. Everyone knew what they thought I should do. Funny how everyone else always knows what’s best for your life, yet somehow they never volunteer to live it for you.

The biggest example came when I was eleven and about to start secondary school.

My mother wanted me to go to the private girls’ school. Pretty much the entire family agreed.

The comprehensive school had a terrible reputation. Huge classes. Totally chaotic.

And I was painfully shy.

I know... Hard to believe now. These days I’d happily chat to a lamp post if it looked interesting enough.

But back then? Ordering chips felt like public speaking.

The more everyone pushed me towards the girls’ school, the more overwhelmed I became and all I wanted was to go where my friends were going.

Everyone...

Except Dad. He stood up to fight my corner against every family member.

He told everyone to back off.

“Let her decide.”

Simple. No drama. No manipulation. Just trust.

Before school started he came into my bedroom. He told me I could choose whichever school I wanted. There was only one condition. “If you change your mind for any reason, you tell me straight away.”

No “I told you so.” No punishment. Just honesty.

Naturally, I chose the comprehensive.

Because when you’re eleven, your friendship group feels like the United Nations of emotional stability.

Obviously... It was a terrible decision.

The Unexpected Fix

Within days I knew I’d got it wrong.

The school was enormous. The classes were packed. None of my friends were actually even in my lessons. I’d chosen familiarity over suitability.

And I was miserable.

After a few weeks I went to Dad. Quietly. Embarrassed. I asked if it was too late.

His response?

He didn’t remind me that everyone else had been right. He didn’t make me suffer because I’d ignored the advice. He didn’t even mention it.

Within a week he’d arranged an interview at the girls’ school.

I became the first student they’d ever accepted part way through the school year.

Looking back now, I realise what a sacrifice that was. Private school wasn’t cheap. It meant working harder. Longer hours. Making financial choices that probably weren’t easy. He never once made me feel guilty about that.

Instead...

He let me make the wrong decision…Then he helped me fix it.

That lesson has stayed with me for the rest of my life.

Mistakes aren’t failures. They’re information. And asking for help doesn’t make you weak. It makes you wise enough to change direction.

I went on to have the most incredible school experience. I found confidence. Friends. A voice. I learnt the foundation for my independence, resilience and self-respect.

Ironically, by letting me make the wrong choice... He gave me one of the best right choices of my life.

The Shift

These days, though... He’s my hero for entirely different reasons.

For over twenty years he’s battled severe back problems. Countless operations. Endless pain. More hospital appointments than anyone should ever need. He lives with pain every single day.

And yet...

Most days, you’d never know. Not because he pretends. Not because he’s trying to be brave. He simply refuses to let pain become his identity.

Now...

Before anyone starts sending me messages saying people should rest more... Believe me. We’ve tried. Between me and my bonus mum we’ve practically formed an intervention committee.

“Sit down.”

“Leave it.”

“Someone else can do that.”

His response?

Absolutely not.

The man’s halfway up a ladder or power washing the terrace before we’ve finished the sentence.

Or re-tiling a utility sink. Or fixing something that wasn’t actually broken until he decided to improve it.

Honestly...

Retirement seems to have become a full time DIY Masters programme. He is physically incapable of sitting still.

(I’m beginning to suspect he’s secretly solar powered.)

The Reality Check

What inspires me even more is how he and my bonus mum completely embrace life.

Their bucket list isn’t getting shorter, it’s getting longer.

Most people retire and slow down.

These two looked at retirement and thought...

“What if we visited twenty-eight cities in eight weeks?”

Their holiday itinerary makes my brain glitch.

Countless countries. Eighteen flights. God knows how many hotels. Thousands of miles.

I get tired just listening to the plan.

Packing for one weekend away stresses me out.

They’re out there casually crossing continents with military precision and enough travel documents to qualify as a small embassy.

Does his back sometimes pay the price? Absolutely.

Would I like him to take things a little easier? Without question.

Will he? Not a chance (although the zip lining was crossed off the list thankfully).

Because here’s what I’ve finally realised...they aren’t waiting until life is perfect. They’re living it exactly as it is. Pain and all.

Too many of us postpone joy.

“When I’m fitter...” “When I’ve got more money...” “When work settles down...” “When life gets easier...”

My dad quietly reminds me that life rarely gets easier. You just need to become better at living it anyway.

🍷 The Final Sip

As children we think heroes are the people who save the world. As an adult I’ve realised they’re often the people who quietly shape ours.

The ones who teach us without speeches. Who support without controlling. Who love without conditions. Who show us that boundaries don’t make you selfish. That mistakes aren’t disasters. That pain doesn’t have to become your personality. And that there is always another adventure waiting if you want it.

Sometimes we’re so busy looking up at celebrities, motivational speakers and social media gurus telling us how to live our best lives that we completely overlook the heroes sitting at our own kitchen tables.

The people who have been showing us all along. No cape. No spotlight. No millions of followers. Just quiet consistency.

Turns out my greatest life coach has been there since day one. He just happened to be carrying a toolbox instead of a shield.

So here’s to the everyday heroes.

The parents. The grandparents. The partners. The friends. The people who quietly live the values we spend years trying to learn.

And here’s to my dad… Still setting boundaries better than anyone I know. Still refusing to sit still. Still proving that the best way to inspire people isn’t by telling them how to live... It’s by showing them.

And here’s to my bonus mum who has found the patience to not have a mental breakdown every time he climbs a ladder.

I’ll drink to that 🍷.

There are times in life when no matter how good a judge of character you are, sometimes you still get it wrong. That’s one of the more irritating parts of being human.

Because I’m one of those people who gets a feeling almost instantly when I meet someone. No dramatic “I see dead people” kind of way. More like a quiet internal alarm system whispering:
“This person is eventually going to cause you to require therapy, wine and several conversations with the Fuckwits that begin with ‘‘you are not going to believe this shit.’’

And most of the time that feeling is spot on.

There have been people I couldn’t fully explain disliking. No evidence. No giant red flags. Nothing concrete I could confidently present in a PowerPoint presentation titled Reasons This Person Will Eventually Emotionally Exhaust Me.

It was just a feeling. An energetic itch. A subtle sense that this person was about to arrive in my life carrying chaos wrapped in a smile.

Over the years, I’ve learned to trust that instinct because every single time I ignored it, life handed me consequences wrapped in emotional damage and topped with a garnish of “Well… there’s your lesson.”

And yet…

There have still been occasions where I allowed myself to be swayed by people around me.

“Oh, they’re really not that bad when you get to know them.”

Which, let’s be honest, is basically the emotional equivalent of hearing ominous music in a horror film and still deciding to investigate the basement wearing flip flops.

But I ignore the feeling.
I rationalise the behaviour.
I convince myself I’m being too guarded.
Too suspicious.
Too judgmental.
Too harsh.

And because I naturally try to see the good in people, I hand over access to my peace like an emotionally exhausted Golden Retriever with boundary issues and unresolved optimism.

Then right on cue… six months later I’m sitting there wondering why my nervous system feels like it survived several minor wars and a hostage negotiation.

Because one of the hardest truths you eventually learn in life is this:

Some people are just not good human beings.

They’re not misunderstood. They’re not secretly wounded angels. And they’re definitely not emotionally unavailable little cupcakes waiting for enough love and patience to magically become decent.

Some people are simply morally shitty individuals wearing the costume of goodness.

But here’s the thing… some of the worst people you will ever encounter are not the loud obvious narcissists. Those ones are easier to spot.

The ego driven types usually arrive carrying enough self importance to power a small village. They’re emotionally loud, predictably selfish and about as subtle as a drunk man singing Bon Jovi at a wedding.

At least with those people you know what you’re dealing with.

In the past year I dealt with more than my fair share of those types. The obvious ego-driven ones. The people whose entire personality revolved around themselves, their needs, their image, their constant requirement to always be right and their desperate need to remain the centre of every emotional solar system they entered.

Those ones I handled cautiously. With distance. With emotional PPE and the metaphorical hazmat suit they absolutely warranted.

Because openly selfish people are at least predictable.

But the quieter ones, they were far more dangerous because they passed themselves off as genuinely good people while quietly driving the metaphorical knife into my back the entire time.

I think those people are worse. And not just the ones actively causing harm either, but also the people who morally sit quietly on the wrong side of the fence watching the entire sordid shitshow unfold while doing absolutely nothing … even when they know what’s happening is rotten to its core.

When you’re dealing with the loud ones, they eventually expose themselves. Their ego leaks out everywhere.

But the covertly selfish ones? Those people build entire identities around appearing morally good. These are the people constantly talking about kindness, healing, loyalty, authenticity, boundaries and “protecting peace” while privately behaving in ways so morally questionable it leaves you sitting there wondering whether everyone else is seeing this nonsense too.

The people who perform empathy without genuinely possessing much of it.
The people who know all the right words but whose actions consistently tell a very different story.
The people whose morality only seems to activate when they are affected.

And in the last year, the absolute bullshit some of these people laid at my door was astounding and disturbing in equal measure.

Not petty drama. Not misunderstandings. Not normal human conflict.

I mean behaviour that genuinely bordered on illegal.

Now before anyone gets carried away, I’m not talking “my ex buried a dead body in the garden” illegal.

I’m talking intimidation.
Threats.
Property damage.
Attempts to coerce me into doing what they wanted.
Behaviour specifically designed to pressure, destabilise, induce fear and emotionally exhaust me into compliance.

But when life is already throwing twenty seven other unrelated emotional temper tantrums and plot twists at you simultaneously, that kind of behaviour can push you into some very dark places mentally.

Because there’s something uniquely exhausting about dealing with people who behave horribly while still insisting they’re the good guys in the story.

The lies. The manipulation. The accusations. The emotional pressure.
The constant attempts to distort reality until you start questioning your own memory of events.

Even after I drew a line in the sand…
Even after I stood up for what was right…
Even after I refused to participate in behaviour I knew was morally wrong…

The threats continued.
The intimidation continued.
The accusations continued.
The attempts to manipulate the narrative continued.

And I think that was the moment something inside me finally shifted.

Because underneath all the stress, confusion, exhaustion and emotional chaos, one thing slowly became louder than everything else:

I knew I was better than them.

Not better in an arrogant way. Not “I’m superior”.

But morally better and I think that distinction matters.

Because despite everything they did I still knew something very clearly:

I know right from wrong.

Even through every interaction, threat, slashed car tyre, dead rodent left outside my home and every other type of bullshit they threw my way…

I still knew.

And more importantly, I knew I would never treat another human being the way they were treating me. Not even someone I hated.

That became my anchor during one of the lowest periods of my life.

Because when people spend long enough hurting you, there is always a danger that bitterness starts creeping in through the cracks.

You start fantasising about revenge. Exposing them for who they really are.
Becoming their karma and arriving wearing steel toe boots carrying receipts and emotional vengeance.

And honestly that’s all understandable.

But what stopped me every single time was the quiet certainty that I did not want to become like them.

I didn’t want to lose my integrity trying to survive people who had none. I think that’s one of the hardest lessons empathetic people ever have to learn…

Not everybody operates from the same level of conscience you do.

That’s the part that fries your brain.

Because if you hurt someone accidentally, you think about it for weeks. You replay conversations in the shower. You analyse your tone in text messages from four years ago like you’re preparing evidence for a criminal investigation.

Meanwhile morally empty people move through life with the confidence of a man explaining cryptocurrency at a barbecue. No reflection. No accountability. No meaningful self awareness.

Because their morality shifts depending on convenience.

They care about honesty when someone lies to them.
They care about loyalty when someone betrays them.
They care about boundaries when someone inconveniences them.

But when they are the ones causing harm? Suddenly everything becomes blurry.

“You misunderstood.” “You’re overreacting.” “That’s not what happened.” “You’re too sensitive.”

Meanwhile the metaphorical knife is still lodged in your spine while they explain why your bleeding is making them uncomfortable.

And honestly, I think one of the most dangerous things about these kinds of people is how normal they often appear publicly. Some people do not actually possess a moral compass. They possess social survival skills.

They learn the language of empathy without embodying it. They mimic emotional depth because it grants them access, admiration and trust. They carefully curate the image of being good while privately behaving terribly.

And if you’re naturally empathetic, this can absolutely destroy your peace because decent people tend to assume goodness exists universally.

We think:
“Surely they must realise this behaviour is hurtful.”
“Surely they feel bad.”
“Surely some part of them has reflected on this.”

But sometimes there genuinely is no inner compass.

Some people are so committed to protecting their ego and public image that accountability never even enters the building.

And one of the biggest lessons I learned over the last year is this:

Patterns tell the truth eventually. Not words. Not social media captions. Not emotional speeches over cocktails. Not carefully curated performances of self-awareness.

Patterns.

How someone behaves when they’re angry. When they feel threatened. When they don’t get their way. When boundaries are enforced. When they no longer benefit from the relationship.

That’s where true character lives.

Not in what people say about themselves but in what they consistently do.

And if you are currently dealing with people like this, there are a few things I genuinely need you to remember.

Stop Overexplaining Your Boundaries Like You’re Presenting a Court Case

Morally chaotic people absolutely love making you feel like you need a full legal defence to justify protecting your peace.

You absolutely do not.

You’re allowed to distance yourself from people who consistently leave you emotionally drained, manipulated, intimidated or psychologically exhausted.

Healthy people may not always like your boundaries, but they will respect them.

Emotionally manipulative people treat boundaries like personal attacks because your limits interrupt their access to you.

That is definitely not your problem to solve.

Your Nervous System Is Not Being Dramatic

This one matters.

Your body notices danger long before your brain catches up.

If somebody consistently leaves you feeling anxious, emotionally exhausted, hypervigilant, tense, uneasy or relieved when plans get cancelled…

…pay attention to that.

Your nervous system is gathering information even while your people pleasing tendencies are still trying to negotiate peace.

And listen, I fully understand that people go through difficult things.
Life is hard.
Trauma is real.

But somebody’s difficult past does not give them unrestricted access to emotionally bulldoze your peace.

Stop Confusing Empathy With Self Abandonment

This lesson alone probably would’ve saved me several emotional breakdowns and at least three expensive bottles of wine.

You can understand someone’s trauma without allowing them to traumatise you.

You can care about someone deeply while simultaneously recognising they’re emotionally unsafe to keep close.

You can empathise with someone’s struggles without volunteering to become collateral damage inside them.

That distinction changes everything.

Because some people rely heavily on your empathy to bypass accountability.

They know decent people will overthink. Reflect. Give second chances. Communicate more. Try harder.

Meanwhile they continue behaving terribly while hiding behind victimhood, confusion or carefully curated performances of emotional awareness.

At some point empathy without boundaries simply becomes self destruction wearing a cardigan whilst all the time calling itself compassion.

If You Constantly Have to Shrink Yourself to Keep the Peace… That’s Not Peace

That’s survival mode.

Real peace does not require you to walk on eggshells. Suppress your feelings. Tolerate intimidation. Accept repeated disrespect or make yourself smaller so somebody else can remain comfortable.

That’s definitely not emotional safety, it’s psychological exhaustion.

And one of the most powerful things you can do is stop prioritising “keeping the peace” over protecting your own.

Because some people do not actually want peace.

They want control.

There’s a big difference.

You Do Not Need to Become Cruel Just Because Cruel People Exist

This was probably the biggest lesson of all.

Because when people hurt you badly enough, especially over long periods of time, bitterness starts knocking eventually.

And some days I understood exactly how bitterness is born.

But what ultimately grounded me through all of it was one very simple truth:

I knew I was not like them.

I knew I had an actual conscience.
I knew right from wrong even when they desperately tried to blur the lines.
And I knew I would never treat another human being the way they treated me.

Not in any circumstance.

That mattered to me deeply.

Because genuinely decent people?
We get to keep our integrity.

And no matter how convincing the performance is, no matter how polished the mask becomes, no matter how loudly some people try to sell the illusion of being morally good…

Integrity is the one thing they will never truly possess.

And honestly?

That feels like a victory worth holding onto.

🍷 Weekend Wine & Wisdom

The Family We Choose (And Why They Sometimes Outlast the Ones We Marry)

The other day I found myself laughing so hard with one of the original and longest-serving Fuckwits that I nearly snorted wine out of my nose.

An achievement really.

We were talking absolute rubbish, as we usually do. Somewhere between laughing about something that happened twenty years ago and discussing whose knees now make the loudest noises when standing up, I realised something.

This woman has been in my life longer than most marriages last.

She’s seen every version of me.

The overly confident version.
The completely broken version.
The “I’ve absolutely got my life together” version.

(She knew that one was a lie immediately.)

She’s celebrated promotions, talked me through heartbreak, pushed me to take the leap and move 3000 miles away because it would make me happy, she has witnessed spectacularly questionable decisions (and has on occassion been fully involved in a few of them), she has also more times than I care to remember listened patiently while I verbally vomited thoughts that probably should have remained inside my head.

And yet...

We rarely celebrate friendships the way we celebrate romantic relationships.

Nobody throws you a twenty five year friendship anniversary party.

Which feels like a massive oversight if you ask me.

Because if life has taught me anything, it’s this... Sometimes the people who save you don’t marry you. They choose you.

Again. And again. And again.

The Truth Bomb

We’ve been taught that romantic love is the ultimate relationship.

Find “The One.” Live happily ever after. Ride off into the sunset. Presumably while someone else pays the mortgage.

Friendships?

They’re treated like the emotional side salad.

Nice. Healthy. But entirely optional.

Except they aren’t.

When life completely falls apart and let’s be honest, life has a habit of behaving like an unsupervised toddler armed with glitter and scissors, it usually isn’t the wedding certificate that keeps you afloat emotionally.

It’s the friend who arrives with wine, tissues and chocolate. Or simply sits beside you without trying to fix anything.

Some of the strongest relationships we’ll ever have don’t come with rings.

They come with inside jokes.

The Reframe

I think we’ve accidentally put romantic relationships on a pedestal so high that we’ve forgotten how extraordinary friendships actually are.

Look at what we expect one romantic partner to be…

Your best friend. Your therapist. Your emotional support human. Your financial planner. Your co-parent. Your travel buddy. Your biggest cheerleader. Your sex life. Your emergency contact. Your retirement plan. Your Netflix companion.

All wrapped up in one perfectly imperfect human who, some days simply wants to eat a family-sized bag of Maltesers in complete silence without sharing them.

No pressure then!

Friendships don’t work like that. They specialise.

One friend is who you cry to. One is who you laugh with. One is who tells you the truth even when it stings. One is who distracts you from your own overthinking. One remembers who you were before life knocked the stuffing out of you One simply turns up with snacks, opens a bottle of wine and says absolutely nothing because they know that’s exactly what you need. One would probably help you hide a body... ...and another is sensible enough to stop you needing to.

The emotional load is shared instead of being dumped onto one unsuspecting human and labelled “soulmate.”

And maybe that’s one of the reasons friendships can survive so much.

They’re not trying to be everything. They’re each allowed to be just one thing.

Now if you’re really lucky, you’ll find one glorious Fuckwit who somehow manages to be all of those people rolled into one.

The person who can make you laugh until wine comes out of your nose, call you out on your bullshit without making you feel small, sit beside you in complete silence when life falls apart, celebrate your wins as though they were their own and will still answer the phone after you’ve started a conversation with,

“Right... I know I’m being irrational but...”

They’re the friend who has somehow witnessed every questionable life decision you’ve ever made and despite having enough evidence to disown you several times over, still voluntarily chooses to keep you in their life.

Those people are rare.

Treasure them.

And if the universe is feeling particularly generous, that glorious Fuckwit might even be your spouse.

Because the strongest marriages I’ve ever seen aren’t built solely on romance. They’re built on friendship first. On genuinely liking each other. On choosing each other long after the butterflies have packed their bags, submitted a change of address form and buggered off. On being able to laugh through life’s chaos, survive the spectacularly boring bits, call each other out with kindness and still enjoy sitting in the same room without feeling the need to fill every silence.

Those relationships absolutely exist.

But they’re also rare.

They are however proof that friendship isn’t competing with romantic love. It’s often the very thing that keeps it alive.

Maybe that’s why friendships so often outlast marriages.

Not because they’re more important. Not because marriage isn’t worth celebrating. But because friendship is the foundation every lasting relationship, romantic or otherwise is quietly built upon.

And whether that friendship exists in your oldest friend, your newest Fuckwit or the person you happen to share a mortgage and an alarming number of kitchen gadgets with...

It’s still one of the greatest love stories you’ll ever be lucky enough to have.

The Unexpected Fix

Something changed between me and the longest-standing Fuckwit after I moved abroad.

For a while, we really struggled. Time zones. Busy lives. The crotch goblins. My new life.

We kept trying to find the “perfect” time to catch up.

Turns out... Perfect doesn’t exist.

Then Covid happened and weirdly... It saved our friendship. We stopped arranging proper phone calls. Instead we’d call while we each cooked dinner. We’d pour a glass of wine. Children would interrupt. Someone would ‘‘need’’ to tell you the least important thing you can imagine even though they literally had not spoken to her for 4 straight hours, but the minute we got on the phone... Chaos!

But all exactly what would have happened if I’d been sitting in her kitchen in person.

We stopped trying to create perfect moments. We simply started sharing ordinary ones.

And somehow... that brought us closer than ever despite the 3000 miles between us.

The Shift

Friendships don’t need perfection. They need permission. Permission to disappear for a month because life got busy. Permission to say...

“I’m struggling.”

Permission to be completely ridiculous. Permission to change.

One of the reasons friendships survive is because they leave room for evolution.

You don’t expect your best friend to remain exactly the same person they were twenty years ago.

You simply get curious about who they’ve become.

Imagine if we approached every relationship like that.

The Practical Nudge

This week, don’t wait for birthdays, or Christmas, or “when life calms down.”

Life has made it abundantly clear that it has absolutely no intention of calming down.

Instead...

Send the message. Leave the voice note. Share the stupid meme.

Tell someone... “I appreciate you.”

Not because something dramatic has happened but because nothing dramatic has happened and they’re still there.

Sometimes maintaining a friendship is less about grand gestures...

...and more about repeatedly saying,

“I’m still here.”

🍷 The Final Sip

People talk a lot about soulmates.

Personally...

I think we’re looking in the wrong direction.

Maybe soulmates aren’t always lovers.

Maybe sometimes they’re the people who have seen every version of you, the confident one, the anxious one, the heartbroken one, the slightly tipsy one making deeply questionable life choices and yet somehow decided...

“Yep.

I’ll keep this one.”

Those people deserve celebrating.

So here’s to the family we choose. The ones who tell us the truth. The ones who answer the phone. The ones who know our stories before we’ve even finished telling them and the ones who still agree to meet us for wine afterwards

Because love has never only belonged to romance.

Sometimes...

It looks suspiciously like your oldest friend rolling her eyes and saying,

“For Fuck’s sake... what have you done now?” 🍷

One of the main reasons I wanted to start this newsletter…this slightly chaotic, sarcasm fuelled corner of the internet, was to share my Fuckwit journey.

Not the glossy, inspirational, before and after, “look how healed I am” version.
No.
The real one.

The messy one.
The I cannot believe I did that one.
The why am I like this one.

Because here’s the thing that blindsided me more than any hangover ever could:
The way I see myself is not how others see me.

And honestly? That realisation alone deserves its own support group.

The Great Identity Mismatch

If you’d asked me to describe myself “inspiring” would not have made the list.

Capable? Yes.
Resilient? On a good day.
Sarcastic? Always.
Chronically winging it? Absolutely.

But inspiring?…er…hard no.

Most of the time I’m just trying to keep the wheels on while my brain runs a 24/7 internal dialogue that if audible, could either have inspired the movie Inside Out or will get me gently escorted to a quiet room with padded walls.

There is constant commentary up there.

Multiple voices.
Zero consensus.
And not a single HR department in sight.

And yet… apparently… despite questionable life choices, poor impulse control and an alarming ability to say “fuck it” at precisely the wrong moment, I have somehow inspired a few people.

Which to me feels illegal and definitely feels like it says A LOT more about their characters than mine.

Accidental Role Model Energy

People have told me over the years that they admire my honesty. My self reflection. My ability to own my shit. Even the way I really don’t think like other people has been mentioned more times than I can count.

Meanwhile, I’m standing there thinking ‘‘You’ve clearly misunderstood the situation. I’m not inspirational. I’m a cautionary tale that should come with a warning label and possibly a hazmat suit.’’

But this is the weird magic of being human isn’t it?

Sometimes it’s not the people who have it all figured out who resonate with us.
It’s the ones who are honest about not having a bloody clue.

The ones who mess up, reflect, own it and keep going anyway.

And apparently, much to my surprise that has value that people can relate to it

The Never Ending Self Reflection Spiral

I’ve done A LOT of self reflection over the years.

And before you ask…no, that journey does not end. EVER.
There is no finish line. No certificate. No badge that says “Congratulations, you are now emotionally complete.”

We will always need to learn.
Always need to grow.
Always need to question ourselves.

The problem, for me at least…is that knowing the lesson and following the lesson are two very different skill sets.

I can understand something deeply and still completely ignore it when it should matter.

Because sometimes the voice of reason in my head is not just quiet…
It’s hog-tied.
Gagged.
And shoved in the boot of the car.

Which brings me neatly to…

Enter: Our Inner Fred (The Chaos Goblin)

Anyone who has ever seen the movie Drop Dead Fred will know exactly what I’m talking about here.

That imaginary personality.
That inner agent of chaos.
The one that knows something is a terrible idea… and does it anyway.

That’s Fred.

Fred is the voice that says:

“This is probably a bad idea…”

“…but wouldn’t it make a great story?”

“Fuck it. You only live once.”

“What’s the worst that could happen?”
(Answer: A LOT Fred! Fred however does not care.)

I had genuinely hoped that as I got older Fred would retire. Fade out. Get bored. Maybe take up knitting.

Spoiler alert: Fred did not retire. Fred simply learned patience!

The Alcohol Factor (Because Of Course There Is One)

Now let’s address the elephant in the room.
The grape-flavoured elephant. 🍷

The common denominator in most questionable life choices?

Alcohol (especially when you’re a stupid twenty something)

Shocking. I know.

I doubt there’s a single person alive who can honestly say they’ve never done something utterly stupid while drunk.

Alcohol lowers inhibitions. Logic loosens its grip. And at some point, we all say:

“FUCK IT.”

Most people wake up the next day and think, What the fuck did I do?

Me? I think it while I’m doing it.

That’s the important distinction.

The Fully Conscious Fuckwit

Here’s the thing, I can handle my liquor.

I’ve only ever had one occasion where I genuinely questioned the memories of the night before. So when I make bad decisions while drinking, I am not oblivious.

I am painfully aware. My inner voices hold a full on debate:

This is a terrible idea.

Yes, but…

No, really. This will end badly.

True, but… ah fuck it.

And then I do it anyway.

This doesn’t happen often.(Thankfully.) Because when Fred gets loose, he doesn’t dabble. He goes all in and has on certain occasions been greatly encouraged by the original, longest serving Fuckwits (and Tequila).

The Responsible One (Until I’m Not)

What makes this even more ridiculous is that for most of my life, I have been the sensible one.

The ‘‘big sister’’ friend. The caretaker. The “everyone gets home safe” one.

I was the one holding hair back whilst heads were buried way down in the toilet bowl, taking phones away to prevent drunk dialing exes, making sure everyone had water, sorting taxis…being reliable!

While other people were making spectacularly bad decisions, I was doing damage control.

So when I would finally snap and become the one making the poor choice?

Oh, trust me. I do not do it by halves.

The Exhaustion of Always Being “The Good One”

The problem with being the responsible one all the time is that it’s exhausting.

Being the dependable one. The logical one. The one people rely on.

Sometimes you don’t want to be the adult. You want to be the fuck-up. Just once. No inhibitions. No logic. No constant self monitoring. Just freedom.

Cue tequila. (Or wine. These days wine does the job just well.)

The Morning After (And the Days That Follow)

When the dust settles, there’s always a reckoning.

A few days of internal WTF conversations. Replaying decisions. Analysing every moment.

And yes there’s usually embarrassment. There’s an element of disappointment in yourself. There’s the why am I like this spiral.

But here’s my uncomfortable truth: There’s also… no regret deep down.

Because I acted on something I wanted. A fantasy. An impulse. Even if it didn’t live up to expectations, there’s a strange sense of freedom in that.

Freedom from always being sensible. Freedom from being the responsible one. Freedom from the role I had boxed myself into.

And whether I like it or not, those moments…consequences and all have shaped who I am.

The Lesson I Finally Clocked

For years, after these moments, I would beat myself up mentally .

Call myself stupid. Irresponsible. A Fuckwit (accurate, but still).

And Fred would get locked back up. Stronger restraints. Tighter rules.

But maybe… just maybe… the lesson isn’t about the bad decisions at all.

Maybe it’s this:

If you never let Fred out at all, he’ll eventually break out and cause absolute carnage.

What if balance is the answer?

Letting Fred Out… But Responsibly (I Know, I Know)

What if I didn’t have to be the responsible one all the time?

What if I allowed myself small doses of recklessness?
Moments of spontaneity?
Permission to not be perfect?

Because when everything is tightly controlled, pressure builds.

And pressure eventually explodes.

Practical Advice: How to Manage Your Inner Fuckwit Without Burning Your Life Down

Acknowledge Your Fred

Everyone has one.

An impulsive voice.
A rebel streak.
A desire to say “fuck it.”

Pretending you don’t have it just gives it more power.

Create Safe Chaos

You don’t need to implode your life to feel free, at least occasionally.

Say yes to something spontaneous. Book the trip. Dance badly. Speak your truth. Laugh louder. Sing even when its out of tune.

Let Fred stretch his legs without handing him the keys to your entire existence.

Stop worrying about what people will think. Because honestly deep down, we really shouldn’t care what other people think!

Separate Shame from Responsibility

You can own your choices without hating yourself for them.

Be accountable. Learn the lesson. Drop the shame.

Shame teaches us absolutely nothing (nothing good anyway).

Reflect Without beating ourselves up

Ask yourself:

What was I actually craving in that moment?

Freedom? Validation? Escape?

How can I meet that need in a healthier ( less Fred led ) way?

Regret Is a Useless Emotion

Here’s my controversial take:

Regret on its own is pointless.

You cannot change what you did.
You cannot undo choices.
You cannot walk backwards through life.

What you can do is find the lesson and move forward a little wiser.

That’s it.

Owning Your Narrative

At the end of the day, the only person I ever truly let down was myself.

And that’s something I can repair.

So now instead of locking Fred away forever, maybe I invite him out more often but on my terms.

Let him dance.
Let him laugh.
Let him live a little.

Because honestly?

It can’t be worse than what he’s already done.

Final Thoughts (With Love and Sarcasm)

This newsletter isn’t about pretending I’ve figured it all out.

It’s about telling the truth.

That growth is messy.
That self-awareness doesn’t stop you fucking up.
And that being human is equal parts wisdom and chaos.

If any of this resonated, take it as permission.

Permission to be imperfect.
Permission to learn slowly.
Permission to forgive yourself.

And maybe, just maybe…invite your own inner Fred to the party now and then.

Just don’t let him order any shots. 🍷

🍷 Weekend Wine & Wisdom: The Art of Taking Yourself Out Without Making It Weird

(Even though it feels weird at first)

Let’s start with something mildly uncomfortable…

A lot of people can book a table for two, plan a weekend away for two or sit in a cinema meant for two…

But the idea of doing any of that alone?

Suddenly feels like you’ve been publicly abandoned by society and possibly cast as the lead in a low budget indie film titled “She Ate Pasta Alone and Now Everyone Thinks She’s Having a Breakdown.”

Relax.

You’re not failing at life.

You’re just due a solo date.

And before your brain starts dramatically filing this under “things we are absolutely not doing in public ever,” stay with me.

Because this isn’t about “self care” in the performative sense where someone lights a candle, drinks lemon water and calls it emotional transformation.

This is about something far more powerful.

It’s about taking yourself out on purpose. On a proper date. With intention.

And yes... probably wine.

(Obviously wine. This is Running on Wine and Sarcasm, not Running on Herbal Tea and Emotional Enlightenment.)

The Truth Bomb

Let’s address it head on:

Doing things alone feels weird at first.

There’s that moment when you walk into a café solo and suddenly become extremely aware of your hands. Like… do they normally just hang there? Have they always been this visible?

You sit down and immediately enter performance mode…

“Casual person. Relaxed. Definitely not internally managing every movement while pretending to check messages I don’t actually have.”

Then your brain starts the social projection…

“Oh no. Everyone thinks I have no friends. I am now the tragic background character in their lunch experience.”

Spoiler: they don’t.

Most people are thinking about their inbox, their rent or whether they left the iron on.

You however, are starring in a psychological thriller where the stakes are… a cappuccino.

But here’s the truth…

Nobody cares.

And once that lands, not intellectually but actually lands, something shifts.

You become free.

The Reframe

Let’s be very clear about what a solo date is and isn’t.

A solo date is NOT:

Waiting for people to cancel plans so you can sneak out of the restaurant.

“Treating yourself” after an emotional spiral and three hours of scrolling.

Wandering around pretending you’re fine while aggressively overthinking your entire existence.

A solo date IS:

Choosing yourself. On purpose. Without negotiation.

It’s saying:

“I am not waiting to be chosen today. I am choosing myself.”

Yes I know it sounds like something you’d say in the final episode of a character-growth series on Netflix, but it’s still true.

It can look like:

Dinner at the nice table instead of the awkward corner seat near the exit.

A cinema trip where you don’t have to share popcorn or opinions.

A bookstore wander with no one rushing you like you’re on a timed practical exam.

A coffee and a walk where the only agenda is existing in public without apologising for it.

A beach day with a picnic, a good book and absolutely no compromise over where to put the towel.

Jumping in the car for a day trip simply because you feel like seeing somewhere different.

Taking yourself away for a weekend with your trusty sidekick Mabel the little car (who has become my favourite travel companion). She never complains about my music, never asks, “Are we nearly there yet?” and has yet to judge the amount of snacks I’ve packed.

Ironically, travelling on my own hasn’t stopped me connecting with people. Some of my favourite weekends have included meeting up with old friends for lunch, a glass of wine or an afternoon catching up before happily heading back to my own little adventure.

I’ve realised being comfortable on your own doesn’t mean you don’t enjoy other people.

It means you don’t need other people before you’re willing to enjoy your own life.

Because suddenly there’s nowhere to hide from yourself.

The Unexpected Fix

Here’s the thing no one tells you:

We’re not uncomfortable being alone.

We’re uncomfortable being alone without distraction and in public.

There’s a big difference.

Because when the noise fades, your brain does what it always does when it finally has space.

It opens every single mental tab at once. That embarrassing thing you said in 2018. The text you “forgot” to reply to. The mildly inconvenient life decisions you’ve been postponing emotionally. Suddenly a quiet coffee feels like an emotional audit.

But this is exactly where solo dates start doing their real work.

They don’t distract you from yourself. They introduce you back to yourself in a way that doesn’t feel like emotional ambush.

The Shift

Somewhere around 20–30 minutes into a solo date, something quietly changes.

At first - Hyper-awareness.

Then - Mild awkwardness.

Then - Boredom.

Then suddenly…You’re... okay. Actually okay. You notice things again. The taste of your food. The atmosphere in the room. The fact that you’re not rushing or negotiating or explaining anything.

And then comes the real shock…

No one has come to arrest you for existing alone in public. The world continues. Annoyingly, normally and all without your social group as a required accessory.

The Practical Nudge

If your brain is already preparing a list of reasons not to do this, let’s short circuit that gently.

You don’t need a transformation. You don’t even need confidence first. You just need a plan.

Pick one thing you already enjoy.

Book it as if you were meeting someone you genuinely respect.

Show up, even if your brain spends the journey negotiating an escape plan.

Stay long enough to get past the awkward first fifteen minutes.

Resist using your phone as emotional body armour.

That’s it. No reinvention required. Just participation.

The Reality Check

You will try to talk yourself out of it.

You’ll say things like:

“It’s weird to be alone in public.” “People will think I have no friends.” “I’ll just wait until someone is free.”

What that actually translates to is - “I am uncomfortable prioritising myself without external validation.” Which is normal. But also very limiting. Because if your life only happens when someone else is available to witness it, you’re not really living it... You’re scheduling it. And that gets expensive. Emotionally speaking.

🍷 The Final Sip

If you’d told the younger me that one day I’d happily throw a bag in Mabel, disappear for a solo weekend, spend hours reading on the beach, head off on random little road trips or take myself out for lunch without feeling the need to justify it, I’d probably have laughed and asked who I’d been replaced with.

Now?

It’s one of my favourite ways to recharge.

Not because I don’t love spending time with family and friends, I absolutely do. Some of my favourite memories involve meeting old friends, sharing stories over lunch and laughing until someone snorts wine through their nose.

But I’ve stopped treating my own company like the consolation prize. I’ve discovered it’s actually pretty good.

Here’s what no one really warns you about:

Solo dates stop feeling like a thing you do and start feeling like a preference.

At first they’re awkward. Then they’re fine. Then they’re unexpectedly peaceful. Then one day they’re simply... normal.

And that’s where the real shift happens. Because suddenly you’re not waiting. Not negotiating. Not postponing your own life until someone else can fit you into theirs. You’re just living it. On purpose.

There is a quiet luxury in sitting alone in a restaurant, ordering exactly what you want and not feeling the need to explain your presence to anyone... Including yourself.

Not because you’re proving anything.

But because you’ve stopped arguing with your own right to exist comfortably in your own life.

So go on…

Take yourself out. Order the thing. Sit in the nice seat. Book the weekend. Pack the beach bag. Take the scenic route with your own trusty sidekick. Stay a little longer than feels natural.

And if anyone asks what you’re doing?

Just smile, raise your glass and say,

“I’m on a date.”

Then absolutely refuse to elaborate. 🍷

There are certain people in your life who leave such a massive imprint on your existence that years after they’re gone you still find yourself thinking:

“God, I wish I could tell them about this.”

For me, that person was my grandmother - Nora.

She died more than twenty years ago and yet there are still moments when something ridiculous happens and my first instinct is to pick up the phone. Then reality catches up and reminds me that isn’t possible anymore.

Grief is a strange thing. Time softens it certainly. But it never really leaves. It just changes shape. Some days it feels like sadness. Other days it feels like gratitude. And occasionally it shows up disguised as a story that still makes me laugh so hard I nearly choke on my wine.

This is one of those stories.

Now before we begin, it’s important to understand that my grandmother wasn’t just my grandmother. She had practically raised me. By the time I reached adulthood our relationship had evolved into something closer to friendship than family. She knew everything about me. The good bits. The bad bits. The spectacularly stupid bits. (Especially the stupid bits.)

She was the first person I called with good news. The first person I called with bad news. The person who always answered the phone. The person who always listened. The person who somehow managed to make even my most catastrophic life decisions sound recoverable.

When I was navigating my twenties, which is a polite way of saying I spent several years operating entirely on caffeine, bad decisions and blind optimism, she remained one of the constants in my life along with my dad.

We spoke every day. Usually several times a day. She sent letters. Actual handwritten letters, at least three or four a week and I still have most of them.

Whenever I had a day off work I’d drive the three hour round trip just to spend time with her. Sometimes we’d go shopping. Sometimes we’d go for lunch. Sometimes she’d sit drinking tea while she gave me advice I didn’t want but invariably needed.

She was my favourite person.

Which makes what happened every year on her birthday particularly frustrating. Because despite being one of the most loving people I’ve ever known, she also possessed a personality flaw that could generously be described as infuriating.

Every year around her birthday she disappeared. Not physically. Although for a while nobody could ever be entirely sure about that.

No.

She simply decided she no longer wished to communicate with humanity. Phone calls went unanswered. Letters remained unacknowledged. Messages vanished into the void. She essentially became a pensioner-shaped witness protection programme.

But the thing is nobody understood why. Nobody ever received an explanation. Nobody ever managed to change it.

Every year we’d have exactly the same conversation.

“Please answer the phone.”

“I will.”

“Promise?”

“Of course.”

“You said that last year.”

“And I meant it.”

“Then why didn’t you answer the bloody phone last year?”

And then she’d disappear. Again. At first it was annoying. Then she got older. And the older she got, the less amusing it became. Because once the people you love reach a certain age, every unanswered phone call comes with a side serving of anxiety.

If you’ve ever cared for an elderly relative, you’ll understand exactly what I mean. Your imagination develops extraordinary powers. A missed call isn’t a missed call. It’s a possible emergency.

An unanswered door isn’t an unanswered door. It’s a potential disaster.

Your brain immediately bypasses every reasonable explanation and goes directly to: “Well she’s obviously fallen down the stairs and is currently trapped behind a radiator.” I don’t know why our minds do this. But they do. Mine certainly did. Every single year. Yet despite my concerns, my grandmother remained completely committed to her annual tradition of vanishing from society, regardless of her promises not to.

One particular year however, things escalated quite dramatically. The silence started earlier than normal. The phone wasn’t answered. The messages weren’t returned. Days passed. Then more days passed. Then even more days passed.

At first I wasn’t overly concerned. After all, she’d done this before. (Many times.)

Then a week went by and then another and suddenly my confidence began to wobble. I started calling more frequently - nothing. I called her neighbours - no one had seen her. I drove over - no answer. I knocked - no answer. I shouted through the letterbox - no answer. I peered through windows - no answer.

Looking back, I should probably have apologised to several neighbours who undoubtedly watched me lurking around the property like an amateur criminal. I wasn’t improving the neighbourhood aesthetic that’s for sure.

The worrying thing was that there was absolutely no sign of life whatsoever. No movement. No response. Nothing. One of the Fuckwits who had a soft spot for her became concerned too. Between us we mounted what can only be described as a highly disorganised rescue mission.

We took turns driving over repeatedly. We knocked. We shouted. We called. We looked through windows. We discussed increasingly dramatic possibilities. At one point we even debated whether breaking in would be legally defensible under the circumstances.

The anxiety built steadily. Because that’s what anxiety does. It doesn’t arrive all at once. It accumulates. Quietly. Patiently. One unanswered call becomes ten. One concern becomes twenty. One possibility becomes a thousand.

Every day that passed made the situation feel worse. The thing nobody tells you about worry is how exhausting it is. You aren’t actually doing anything. You’re just thinking. Yet somehow by the end of it you’re emotionally exhausted.

I spent two weeks imagining every possible catastrophe. Had she fallen? Had she become ill? Had something happened during the night? Had she been unable to reach the phone? Was she hurt?

Every scenario felt awful and at the same time every one of them felt possible.

Meanwhile the actual culprit was sitting comfortably at home ignoring everyone. (Though I didn’t know that yet.)

After nearly two weeks I’d had enough. I’d exhausted every option available to me. I’d called everyone. Visited repeatedly. Checked every possibility. I was genuinely frightened something terrible had happened.

So I called the police and requested a welfare check.

Now if you’ve ever had to do this, let me tell you there is a special kind of guilt attached to making that phone call. You spend the entire conversation wondering if you’re overreacting. At the same time you’re terrified you might be underreacting. It’s an emotional tightrope. But eventually concern outweighs embarrassment. So I made the call. Then I waited.

Twenty minutes later my phone rang.

The speed of the response should have been my first clue that perhaps Nora wasn’t lying injured beneath a collapsed bookcase.

A police officer introduced himself. Then he delivered a sentence that simultaneously relieved me and made me question my will to live.

“Your grandmother is absolutely fine.”

Fine. Absolutely fine. Not only fine but she was ‘‘In very good spirits’’.

The officer continued.

“I’m currently standing in her living room.”

Excellent. Wonderful. Fantastic. At least she was alive.

Then came the part that nearly broke me.

“She’s making me a cup of tea.” Of course she is! Why wouldn’t she be? The woman had ignored her us all for two weeks but apparently had no issue whatsoever entertaining a complete stranger in uniform.

The officer carried on. “She’s also offering me cake.”

Cake. There was cake!?

The woman responsible for weeks of emotional distress was now hosting a social event WTF! At this point my relief transformed into irritation so quickly it practically gave me whiplash.

Then came the final blow.

The officer informed me that my grandmother was deeply embarrassed and somewhat annoyed that I’d called the police.

Wait …WHAT…She was embarrassed! …She was annoyed?!

Not apologetic. Not remorseful. Apparently I was the problem. I had spent fourteen days mentally preparing for a tragedy. She had spent fourteen days conducting what amounted to an unauthorised social experiment. The emotional rollercoaster was extraordinary. Fear became relief. Relief became annoyance. Annoyance became outrage. Outrage became laughter. Mostly because the entire situation was so ridiculous.

The officer, to his credit, handled it beautifully. He clearly recognised the sound of a granddaughter who had reached the absolute limit of her patience.

At some point I uttered the phrase: “I’m going to kill her.” Not literally, obviously. In Britain this is less a threat and more a statement of emotional exhaustion.

The officer laughed. Then informed me that perhaps threatening murder wasn’t the ideal thing to say to a police officer. Which in hindsight, was a fair observation.

The tension dissolved immediately. I laughed. He laughed. Nora was already cutting another slice of cake.

Everyone was happy. Except me. I felt like I’d just completed an emotional marathon.

The thing that amazes me now is how differently I see the story. At the time I was furious. Genuinely furious.

But years later I mostly find it funny. Partly because the image of her charming a young police officer into staying for tea and cake is exactly the sort of thing she would do. But also because time has given me perspective.

The older I get, the more I realise people often don’t understand the impact they have on those who love them. Nora wasn’t trying to upset anyone. She wasn’t trying to cause worry. She simply wanted to avoid the attention that came with birthdays.

From her perspective she was doing what she needed to do. From my perspective she had vanished into a Crimewatch reconstruction that was appealling for witnesses for the disappearance of a pensioner who liked tea and cake.

Both experiences existed simultaneously. Both felt real. Neither was entirely wrong. And I think that’s something worth remembering. We spend so much time assuming other people see situations exactly as we do and most of the time they don’t.

What feels insignificant to one person can feel enormous to someone else. What feels caring to one person can feel intrusive to another. Communication matters far more than we often realise.

If you have elderly relatives, have conversations. Create systems. Exchange emergency contacts. Get to know the neighbours. Arrange check-ins. Have a plan in place.

Because worrying from a distance is a uniquely unpleasant experience.

But most importantly, don’t feel guilty for caring. We convince ourselves we’re being dramatic. Overprotective. Paranoid. Yet concern exists for a reason. Love creates responsibility. Love creates emotional investment. Love creates fear. That’s all normal.

The people who matter most to us will always have the power to worry us. It’s just part of the deal. And here’s the truth I’ve come to understand years later.

I would give almost anything for one more of those phone calls. Even the badly timed ones. Especially the badly timed ones (the thought of these ones still make me and my dad laugh to this day). We’d happily answer the phone halfway through dinner. I’d listen to the same story again. I’d drive the three-hour round trip. I’d even survive another birthday disappearance. Though admittedly I’d probably have the local police on speed dial.

Because what I remember now isn’t just the frustration. It’s the love underneath it. The reason I worried so much wasn’t because she was difficult (well not all the time anyway). It was because she mattered. The reason I panicked wasn’t because she annoyed me. It was because I couldn’t imagine losing her.

And if you’ve got people in your life who occasionally drive you to the edge of reason, that’s probably worth remembering. The people who frustrate us the most are often the people we love the hardest. The people who test our patience create the stories we tell decades later. The people who make us worry become the people we miss the most.

So call them. Visit them. Check on them. Listen to the story you’ve already heard twelve times. Laugh at their nonsense. Take the photo. Hug them while you can. Make the memory.

And if they happen to answer the door feeding tea and cake to a police officer after two weeks of ignoring everyone...

Try not to threaten murder until the officer has finished his cake.

It’s only polite 🍷.

Weekend Wine & Wisdom 🍷

The Emotional Vampires Among Us: A Survival Guide to Negative People

This week after a catch up with one of the Fuckwits and a specific issue they are currently dealing with it has left me with a thought rattling around my brain like a loose shopping trolley wheel.

You know the kind.

A thought arrives quietly, sits politely in the corner pretending it’s not important and then suddenly decides it deserves a full committee meeting at 3am when you’re trying to sleep.

This week’s topic that needed a 3am emergency committee meeting…Negative people.

Or as I call them:

The Human Rain Clouds. The Emotional Vampires. The Professional Joy Assassins.

Or my more affectionate term of endearment… Negative Nellies

We’ve all met them. Some of us have worked with them. Some of us have dated them. Some of us share DNA with them. And if you’ve ever spent an hour in their company and then felt emotionally hungover for the next three days, you’ll know exactly who I’m talking about.

I’ve crossed paths with more than a few of these personalities throughout my life. One of the leading cast members happened to be my mother. Now before anyone starts clutching pearls and preparing a strongly worded email, let me explain. I don’t talk about her much these days.

Not because every wound magically healed. Not because I’ve reached some enlightened level of forgiveness where I float around dispensing wisdom and positive affirmations. But because after years of doing the inner work, self reflection, personal growth, mistakes, more reflection and enough journaling to clear an entire forest, I realised something important and I’ve said it here more than once:

Not every relationship deserves unlimited access to your life.

Some people contribute growth. Some people contribute support. Some people contribute joy.

And some people contribute anxiety, self-doubt, emotional exhaustion and a sudden urge to move to a remote island with no forwarding address (this one I have actually followed through on).

Eventually I chose distance (a lot of it).

It was very overdue, desperately necessary and being totally honest, it was a lot easier than I expected it to be.

Because growing up around individuals who radiate chronic negativity leaves fingerprints all over your life.

It teaches you to second guess yourself. It teaches you that mistakes are catastrophes. It teaches you to expect disappointment before you’ve even started. It teaches you that criticism is normal and encouragement is suspicious.

And perhaps worst of all, it plants a voice inside your head that sounds remarkably like your own.

Only it isn’t. It’s just an unwanted tenant who’s been living there rent-free for years.

The Truth Bomb

Negative people affect us far more than we realise. Not because they’re evil. Not because they’re villains. Most of them are simply carrying around their own fears, disappointments and unresolved pain.

The problem is that emotions are contagious.

Spend enough time around optimistic people and possibilities start to feel real.

Spend enough time around a negative Nellie and you’ll start questioning whether buying milk requires a detailed risk assessment. Their outlook slowly becomes your outlook. Their fears become your fears. Their limitations become your limitations. And it happens so gradually you barely notice.

Nobody wakes up one morning and thinks:

“Fantastic. Today I’d like to become deeply cynical and assume the worst about absolutely everything.”

It happens conversation by conversation. Complaint by complaint. Criticism by criticism. The tiny drops of negertive energy eventually become floods and before long you’re carrying beliefs that don’t even belong to you. The dreams you haven’t pursued. The risks you won’t take. The opportunities you’ve talked yourself out of. Many of them started as someone else’s fear.

The Reframe

Here’s where things get interesting.

Not all negativity is toxic. In fact, some negativity is incredibly valuable.

A good friend might challenge your thinking. A loving partner might point out concerns. A mentor might tell you your plan has flaws.

That isn’t negativity. That’s wisdom.

The difference is the intention.

Healthy people challenge you because they want you to succeed. Negative people challenge everything because they assume success is impossible.

One is constructive. The other is corrosive.

The negative person isn’t identified by the occasional bad day. We all have those. They’re identified by the constant focus on what’s wrong. The inability to celebrate anything positive. The automatic assumption that disaster is always waiting around the corner.

Life could hand them a winning lottery ticket and they’d immediately start complaining about the tax implications.

That’s not realism it’s a lifestyle choice. And unfortunately it’s contagious.

The Unexpected Fix

For years I believed I was responsible for managing other people’s emotions.

If someone was upset, I should help. If someone was angry, I should fix it. If someone was negative, I should somehow cheer them up.

It was an exhausting way to live.

One of the most liberating lessons I’ve ever learned is this: Someone else’s negativity is information. You don’t have to pick it up. You don’t have to carry it. You don’t have to solve it and you definitely don’t have to own it.

Imagine walking through an airport where strangers keep trying to hand you random suitcases. Most of us would refuse. Yet emotionally, many of us spend our lives accepting baggage that doesn’t belong to us. Other people’s fears. Other people’s resentment. Other people’s pessimism. Other people’s stories about why life can’t work.

We carry them around as though they’re ours. The unexpected fix is recognising that you can simply put them down. You can listen without absorbing. You can care without carrying. You can have compassion without becoming a volunteer emotional support human.

None of that makes you selfish.

The Shift

One of the biggest changes in my life happened when I stopped asking: “How do I get people to treat me differently?”

And started asking: “Why am I allowing repeated access to people who consistently treat me badly?”

That question changed everything. Because it shifted the focus from them to me. The realisation that you can’t control other people, you can’t force self-awareness onto someone, you can’t heal wounds they refuse to even acknowledge and you can’t build emotional maturity for another adult.

Trust me, many of us have tried...many, many times!

The only thing you can control is your proximity.

You control your access, your availability, your boundaries. This is where your power lives. Not in attempting to change them but in choosing you.

Understanding someone’s behaviour doesn’t require sacrificing yourself to it. You can love someone and need distance. You can care about someone and limit access. You can understand their pain without making it your permanent residence.

Those truths can all coexist.

The Practical Nudge

Let’s move from theory to reality because wisdom is lovely but useful wisdom is better.

Pay Attention to How People Leave You Feeling

After spending time with someone, check in with yourself.

Do you feel lighter? Encouraged? Inspired? Seen?

Or do you feel drained? Anxious? Deflated? Emotionally exhausted?

Your nervous system is constantly providing you with feedback you just need to start listening.

Stop Over-Explaining Your Boundaries

A boundary is not a legal defence case. You don’t need twenty exhibits and three witness statements.

“No” is enough. “That doesn’t work for me” is enough. “I can’t do that” is enough.

The people who benefit most from your lack of boundaries will often be the ones who object the most when you create them.

Reduce Exposure

Not every difficult person requires a dramatic exit speech and a social media announcement.

Sometimes you simply need less. Shorter conversations. Fewer visits. More space.

Think of it as emotional portion control.

Curate Your Environment

The people around you shape your thinking.

Choose people who encourage growth. Choose people who celebrate your wins. Choose people who challenge you respectfully. Choose people who leave you feeling more alive rather than emotionally flattened.

Watch Your Inner Dialogue

Many of us eventually become our own negative person. We internalise years of criticism and start repeating it to ourselves. Pay attention to the voice in your head.

Would you speak to someone you love that way? If not, then stop speaking to yourself that way.

Self awareness is where healing begins.

🍷 The Final Sip

Thankfully, life isn’t all doom, gloom and emotional vampires. Because while I’ve experienced negativity, I’ve also experienced the opposite.

I’ve been incredibly lucky to have a supportive dad and an amazing bonus mum.

The kind of people who encourage instead of criticise. Who build instead of destroy. Who celebrate instead of compete. Who believe in you when you’re struggling to believe in yourself.

And that kind of support changes everything. It’s easy to underestimate the impact of having someone consistently say “You’ve got this.”

But those words become a foundation. They become confidence. They become resilience. They become evidence that not everyone is trying to tear you down.

Some people are trying to help you rise. And that’s really the lesson here. Life is already difficult enough. The world provides plenty of challenges without us voluntarily surrounding ourselves with people who make every situation heavier.

So protect your peace. Protect your confidence. Protect your hope.

Because whether we realise it or not, we become shaped by the voices we hear most often so choose those voices carefully and if one of the loudest negative voices turns out to be your own inner critic?

Pour yourself a glass of something nice. Tell that voice it’s no longer running the meeting. Then get on with living your life.

After all, life is too short to spend it carrying someone else’s permanent storm cloud.

Find your sunshine.

Or at the very least, find people who don’t complain about the weather every five bloody minutes.

Cheers. 🍷

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We all have our strengths and as women we are exceptionally good at dealing with life’s daily nonsense.

We are resilient.
We are adaptable.
We can multitask like our lives depend on it, because half the time, they do.

We remember birthdays, dentist appointments, school trips, work deadlines, emotional check-ins, what’s for dinner, who’s upset, who needs a lift, who hasn’t replied to that message, and where the dog’s favourite toy mysteriously disappeared to.

We are often the glue that holds the entire shit show together.

But do you know what we’re absolutely bloody terrible at?

Looking after ourselves.

Somewhere along the winding road of adulthood, responsibility, relationships, and expectations, we quietly, almost subconsciously, shove ourselves right to the bottom of the list.

Kids first.
Partners first.
Parents first.
Friends first.
Colleagues first.
The bloody dog first.

And us?

We get whatever scraps are left over. If there are any.

How the Hell Did We End Up Here?

It doesn’t happen overnight either.

No one sits you down at 21 and says,
“Right love, here’s the deal: you’re now responsible for everyone else’s happiness, comfort, emotional stability, and logistical functioning. Your needs will be addressed sometime around the end of never.”

It creeps in.

It starts with “I’ll do it, it’s quicker.” “It’s fine, I don’t mind.” “They need me more.”

And before you know it, you’re running on fumes, caffeine, sarcasm, and resentment… wondering why you feel invisible, exhausted, and quietly pissed off with everyone you love.

The Resentment We Don’t Talk About

Here’s the part we don’t like to admit out loud:

The more people we put before ourselves, the more resentful we become.

Not loudly or dramatically, but quietly. It simmers below the surface and festers inside us.

We don’t say anything, because we shouldn’t really complain.
We swallow it, because someone has to keep things moving.
We smile, because it’s easier than explaining.

And then, without realising it, we start waiting.

Waiting for someone to notice.
Waiting for someone to put us first.
Waiting for someone to finally say, “You matter.”

We hang those hopes on birthdays.
Mother’s Day.
Anniversaries.
Special occasions that feel like they should come with applause and validation.

And when they don’t?

When the effort is half-arsed, rushed, forgotten, or just… disappointing?

We’re left feeling underwhelmed, unseen, and vaguely ashamed for expecting more in the first place.

Let me be very clear about this: That is not how it should be.

Why Waiting for Others to Fill Your Pot Is a Losing Game

Here’s the uncomfortable truth:

Waiting for someone else to put you first is a guaranteed way for the pot to stay empty.

Not because the people in your life don’t care, some absolutely do.
But because they don’t see what you don’t say. They assume you’re “fine” because you always are and most of the time they’re just busy dealing with their own shit show.

And all the time you’re quietly hoping they’ll notice that you’re still giving to everyone else…Still showing up...Still holding everything together.

But this all teaches everyone around you a dangerous lesson:

She’s got it covered.

The Empty Jug Problem (AKA Why You’re Exhausted)

There’s a metaphor I love, and it’s painfully accurate:

‘‘You are trying to fill everyone else’s glass using an empty jug’’.

You keep pouring…energy, time, emotional labour, patience, but the jug is running dry.

Eventually it all takes a toll…

You snap over small things

You feel permanently tired

You lose joy in things you used to love

You start fantasising about running away to a cabin in the middle of nowhere with no responsibilities and definitely no WiFi and maybe a few goats.

And yet… you still feel guilty at the idea of putting yourself first.

Because somewhere along the way, self-care got confused with selfishness.

Let’s Clear This Up Once and For All

Looking after yourself is not selfish.

If anything its responsible. It’s necessary and it should be non-negotiable.

You cannot pour from an empty jug.
You cannot support others if you are burnt out.
You cannot be everything to everyone while being nothing to yourself.

And yet women, in particular, are conditioned to believe that our worth is tied to how much we sacrifice.

The more we give, the better we are.
The more we endure, the stronger we are.

Spoiler alert:
That’s absolute bollocks.

The Guilt Trap (And Why It’s Lying to You)

Guilt is sneaky.

It whispers things like:

“You should be doing more.”

“Someone else needs you.”

“You can rest later.”

But later never comes. And guilt thrives on silence.

The moment you start prioritising yourself, it kicks off like a toddler being denied a biscuit.

But here’s the thing:

That guilt isn’t a sign you’re doing something wrong.
It’s a sign you’re doing something new.

How the Fuckwits Learned This the Hard Way

The Fuckwits… my chosen family, didn’t wake up one day enlightened and emotionally evolved.

We learned this lesson the hard way.

Burnouts.
Breakdowns.
Anxiety.
Health scares.
Emotional implosions that forced us to stop whether we wanted to or not.

And yes, full disclosure:

Just because we know this… doesn’t mean we always do it.

Self-care is not a destination.
It’s a practice.

And sometimes we still fall back into old patterns - but now we recognise it faster and pull ourselves back.

What Filling Your Own Pot Actually Looks Like (Hint: It’s Not Bubble Baths)

Let’s clear up another myth while we’re here.

Self-care is not just about face masks, candles and a glass of wine (although let’s be honest, wine helps)

Real self-care is often unglamorous and uncomfortable.

It’s more likely to look like:

• Saying no without explaining yourself

• Resting before you’re exhausted

• Asking for help

• Setting boundaries and sticking to them

It looks like choosing yourself even when no one is clapping.

Practical Advice: How to Start Filling Your Own Pot (Without Losing Your Shit)

Move Yourself Up the List

Not to the top of everything… but not the bottom either.

Ask yourself “Where do I rank in my own life?”

If the answer is “last,” it’s time for a reshuffle.

Stop Waiting to Be Chosen

Choose yourself.

Celebrate yourself.
Rest without permission.
Do things because you want to, not because they’re productive or useful.

Learn to Say No (Without Writing a Novel)

“No” is a complete sentence. (This one I still struggle with I’ll be honest)

You do not need a reason, you don’t need to apologise or give a full blown PowerPoint presentation!

No is not a negotiation

No is No…The End!

Boundaries: The Ultimate Form of Self-Respect

Boundaries are not walls. They are instructions.

They tell the people in our lives how to treat you. What you will tolerate or more importantly what you won’t.

And yes, some people will push back when you start drawing the line.

That’s not a sign you’re wrong.
It’s a sign the boundary was absolutely needed.

The Ripple Effect of Filling Your Own Pot

Here’s the magical bit no one talks about:

When you start looking after yourself properly:

You’re calmer. You’re mind is clearer. You’re less resentful. You’re more present. Your relationships improve because you’re no longer running on empty.

You give because you want to and not because you feel obligated to (and that definitely feels better)

And the people who genuinely care about you? They will adapt.

Teaching Others How to Treat You

I’ve said it before and I will say it again… People can only treat us how we allow them to treat us.

People learn how to treat you by what you tolerate.

If you always come last, they assume you’re fine with it.
If you never rest, they assume you don’t need to.
If you never ask, they assume you’re coping.

Changing that dynamic can feel terrifying, but it’s also liberating and can be life changing.

Practical Advice: Small Shifts That Make a Big Difference

Schedule rest like it’s an appointment, it’s a date with yourself. You wouldn’t cancel on someone else so prioritise a bit of me time.

Do one thing every day that’s just for you, read a magazine, enjoy your morning coffee in silence, dance round the living room to your favourite song like a loony…anything that makes you smile or when you take a deep breath, the type that in that moment you feel at peace.

Protect your energy like it’s a limited resource (because it is). This one I am currently doing in my usual ‘‘Go big or go home’’ kind of way. I am not allowing anyone to drain my energy…no matter what. There are some people whether intentional or not that are energy Vampires. These are the people in your life that do not leave you feeling uplifted after you’ve spent time with them so limit your exposure to them wherever possible.

Stop apologising for having needs and looking after yourself!

You Are Not a Machine

You are not designed to run endlessly without maintenance.

You are human.
You get tired.
You get overwhelmed.
You deserve care, especially from yourself.

And here’s the kicker:

When you fill your own pot, you’re not taking anything away from anyone else.

You’re ensuring you have something real to give.

Final Thoughts (And a Gentle Kick Up the Arse)

Stop romanticising self-sacrifice.
Stop glorifying burnout.
Stop believing you only matter when you’re useful.

You are allowed to take up space, to rest, to put yourself first sometimes

Fill your own pot, not because no one else will, but because it’s your responsibility to yourself.

I heard someone say recently that’’you are your own biggest investment…you are the one that picks yourself up off the bathroom floor when times get hard…you are the only one that will show up for yourself everyday for the rest of your life’’. So surely you should be the one to look after her (or him?)

And if anyone has a problem with that?

That’s their shit to unpack. Not yours.🍷