Keeping it Kind

Do you ever feel like nothing you do is quite enough? Like you try but never quite live up to your own expectations or the expectations of others? Like just “being” is a challenge? With more and more people being honest and open about imposter syndrome and mental health at the moment it feels like an ideal time to say this: If so many people feel this way then the problem is unlikely to be with them. Six months ago I walked away from an “opportunity”. If I’m honest I still berate myself for doing so even though I know it wasn’t MY opportunity. It wasn’t right for me. But the expectation of society is that we MAKE things work. I didn’t. I couldn’t. I was emotionally and compassionately fatigued. Something had to change and, despite two decades of trying, I realised it wasn’t going to be me. I felt my world start to slide and spin. The substance beneath me shift and crumble. If I wasn’t a teacher then who was I? Fifteen years of identifying as “Miss”. I felt lost, frig...

I have thought a lot recently about how things spread. Having lived in China for three years, I have been concerned with the welfare of many friends still out there who are dealing with the impact of the Coronavirus. Checking in with people to see if they had made it back to their home countries during evacuation made me realise just how sparse my connections to them had been previously. It took an international crisis to bring us closer again. This also got me thinking and reminiscing about China, something that has been painful to do for many reasons, but this time it was a positive reflection. I remembered the village I lived in. In the shadow of a huge, sprawling city but still a vibrant, close knit community. Kids would play together outside, parents and grandparents sat on doorsteps or pavements chatting, playing cards. The local park would buzz with villagers walking morning and evening, groups practising kung fu, old men with their song birds and ladies dancing in uni...