Frontload your Mornings

I suppose the elephant in the room is the widespread anxiety and panic caused by the current President of the United States. I'm not being an ostrich but I refuse to engage with his bullshit. However, if you are a relatively sensitive person and even if you don't read the news, you will feel this stuff. You will feel the anxiety. This is posted as an antidote to that anxiety. It's about frontloading your mornings with good stuff that will help you deal head on with the stuff that hits you during the day.

Dear Friends and Readers,

I realize that we're bombarded with good advice, from all over, all of the time, and that it becomes overwhelming. The downside of working on oneself or being on a healing journey is the underlying idea that something needs to be fixed, that we're somehow flawed. I don't believe this. I love the idea that we have everything that we need and it's just about accessing it deep inside of each one of use. In these doolally, upside down, unsettling times one of the most helpful things I've found is to frontload my day with useful stuff so that I feel full and strong ready to meet the day. It hasn't been always very easy. For months during the winter I struggled with a morning routine; I wanted to find something that allowed me to do all the things I wanted to do before the work day started. These included walking outside (with dogs), yoga, meditation, writing and some kind of prayer (or gratitude practise).  I'm sharing with you some things that I have found useful, and I hope they might  be useful for you too. If this isn't your bag, please feel free to move on.

1. Greet every day as if it's going to be the best day ever. Simple advice, yes, but actually grounded in science. If you are looking for good things you will find them. (And the opposite applies).

2. Drink a full glass of water before your morning tea or coffee. You will be more dehydrated than you think after 7-8 hours of sleep. (Water of any kind: splash your face or have a shower. It shifts the energy.)

3. Time expands and contracts depending on your perspective. When you are anxious, for example, there never seems to be enough of it. If you are in a flow state (this happens to me on a horse, or walking the dogs in the woods) time stretches out luxuriously. 

4.For a long time during a difficult period of my life, I did kundalini yoga almost every day with Tej in Los Angeles. I hadn't found a practise in the UK that spoke to me until I found this: Yogigems has bite-sized kundalini yoga videos, from 10-30 minutes long and delivered in a clear, warm and organized way. She has the loveliest voice, is a proper kundalini yoga teacher, and doesn't chit-chat annoyingly. I find it soothing and useful and its effect is very powerful. I've now done this practise for 10 days without a break and it has taken away the annoying racing thoughts that I've become so used to.

5. Be in nature. The marvelous Mel Robbins says that you shouldn't make any kind of decision until you've walked on it and find this to be true. Out of the door goes a tight, irritated, grumpy person, back comes a calm, happy, connected person. We've been gifted in the UK for the past couple of weeks clear, beautiful, sunny Los Angeles style weather, which has made it very easy to be out in it. There is so much going on! Yesterday we saw Tortoishell butterflies and cowslips on the Berkshire downs. Check out this lovely advice from Michael Mosley about the power of phytoncides.

6. Write down first thing ten things you're grateful for, send love to 2 people you find a little irksome, and sit quietly for five minutes and ask for advice. That's it. 

7. Allow yourself to be outdoors. I read a wonderful account of a man who took his work outside for just an hour a day every day of the year, come rain or shine. 

8. Be here now. This super simple piece of advice from Ram Dass is so clear. Everything happens in this moment. This very moment. Not the past (spoiler: you can't change it) or the future.

9. Greet everyone you meet as you would someone you love. (It helps, miraculously. You can be the change and all that.)

10. Eat some protein. Eggs, avocado, spinach, rye bread make a very good breakfast.

I hope some of this helps you. Take what you need as they say. Go well and peacefully.

With love from,

Miss Whistle

Oops upside your head

I said oops upside your head, oops upside your head. -- The Gap Band, 1979

Bean in a field in summer

Life's like this: You're driving along listening to "The Hustle" (to which, I have to let you know, my ex-husband learned how to do at Beverly Hills High School on a rainy day sports period, another reason I'm jealous I didn't have a California education) and watching the freakily huge and mesmerizingly gorgeous hailstorm depositing buckets of small white frozen balls onto the road, and marvelling at the beauty of it all, passing a lorry, and a couple of people walking, standing on the side of the road and waving as you drive slowly past, and the next you've been hit by a car going about 50 mph that has slid on black hail-ice and is shunting you across the road and on to the grass verge. It's intense, actually, but there is this moment when you notice something blue and fast moving out of the corner of your right eye and then suddenly the world slows down and you're watching in slo-mo as the car comes closer and closer and closer. And for a moment you are utterly, beautifully speechless, completely calm and you feel nothing but peace and contentment, almost the way you see heroin addicts depicted on screen. I think I am writing this to tell you that guardian angels are absolutely and without question a thing. A real, and serious thing, and that they are there with you, lifting you, gently lifting you through the slomo and the underwater soundtrack, so that you are no longer in time, you are pulled through a little rip in the space time continuum, on a soft soft cushion where you are cosseted, gently, velvetly, as if in warm saltwater, but better. There is softness and quiet and a sense of pure calm just before you hear your own voice say "Oh fuck, someone hit me." When I was small, my brother and I believed that we flew downstairs. We would lift off the ground with just the tiniest touch of a foot to the floor, and we'd float to the next landing before touching off again, down three soft layers of stairs to the hall. It was effortless, easy, un-rehearsed, and just like this. A softness of protection surrounds you.

The policewoman rang and told me that my phone had called in the crash. I'd just staggered out of the door, underneath the airbag. Perhaps the door had opened in the crash, I don't know. I just know I couldn't get back in that way when I tried. I must have been slightly in shock. "The hail just started out of the blue and then the whole road was covered in it," I said to her. "Oh I know," she said, "we had dozens of calls of crashes all at the same time as yours." So, just like that, or just like something out of "Magnolia" the sky opened a crack and the earth went off its axis just long enough to let a cloud release a mountain of hail onto a little country road in rural Oxfordshire, just long enough for scores of cars to lose control and spin out, and smack against each other, and then seal up again in a matter of minutes, with no visible sign of inclement weather. There's a disaster film too (we disagree; Charlie actually thinks it's a scene from "Carnal Knowledge" with white cars) where a bunch of Teslas are programmed to smash into each other one by one. It felt like that. It felt as if the laws of nature weren't working for a moment. It was mayhem but it was okay. As if you'd just given up control of everything. As if your ego, your little self, had stopped trying.

The woman in the other car was holding her head and pacing and repeating "I'm so stupid, I'm so stupid." Poor woman. It seemed like a grief response. She had blonde hair and a navy blue parker with a fur collar, but it was unzipped. My fingers were fiddling with my phone which didn't seem to be working. I was wet from riding and cold from standing outside and colder and shaking from shock. But, extraordinarily, we both seemed okay. No broken bones, or blood, but I'm reminded off falls from horses and adrenaline is a powerful drug. I hugged her. Hard. And then I sat in my car with the heat on to get warm, but the heat wasn't working. It was blowing cold onto my already frozen legs in their wet breeches.  I found two dog blankets in the back and wrapped myself up in them. I wished I'd left some polos in the car. And then I texted "I'm okay" to Ned and Honor who'd gotten emergency contact texts. Somehow I got it together to video where the cars were and the skid marks on the road in the melting hail. I'd travelled. As they say.

The police and the ambulance teams were amazing. I had a full MOT and despite a stretched trapeze muscle, a sore neck and a bit of whiplash, there wasn't much wrong.  I said "I feel a bit hypoglycemic" and she didn't know what I meant so maybe I was using the word wrongly. Brain all over the place. "Do you have any pets?" she said as she shone a torch into my eyes to test for concussion. She pricked my finger. "Your sugars are good." I was dying for a warm cup of sweet tea and a biscuit. Isn't that why people give blood? Sweet tea on a grey day in the back of an ambulance on the verge of the A4074. Heaven.

But I can't shake this feeling that someone is watching over, that someone is watching over all of us. That we each have our specialized team of super-duper on-it angels, just guiding us. I heard somewhere that there have been 144 generations before us, and if you think about that; that you're carrying all of those generations with you and they're all there to wish you well in the world. That hand on your back which is always there, pushing you gently in the right direction, that's many, many people, all of whom have your best interest at heart. It makes me cry thinking of that. I'm thinking of my grandmother and her mother, who I didn't know because she died when I was very little, and all the Scandinavian women, and how we're all pushing each other along with those warm, strong hands on our backs.

I woke up the next morning at 3am and grabbed my journal and by the light of my phone I wrote: "This is a wake up call. Go inward. This is the Universe smacking me upside my head the only way it knows how." A little like when you're high, you do think you sound rather profound in those liminal spaces between sleep and waking. But, you know, go inward indeed. Spend some time alone, in the quiet, without any interruption, without the clutter. Create some spaciousness, just you and your angels. Remember why you're here. Remember the thing that you forget every day and have to re-member. It's something to do with purpose and why we're here (it's so close I can almost touch it sometimes, and other times I'm on my tiptoes on a chair reaching up to the stars to grasp it.)

Breaking open your heart

I went to see Warhorse last night. In Woking. Not the most inspiring of  towns, but the theatre was fine, stuffed into a badly designed shopping mall that the English are so good at, shops crammed into odd spaces, compromised lighting and everything closed by six. The theatre was packed with school groups of loud teenagers trying to out-swagger each other, in their sweat pants and hoodies and Nikes, swooshing their hair, chewing gum, whispering behind their hands, being generally adorably teen. We sat two rows in front of them, and I stared, as I do, at everyone (luckily without my children to tell me not to). I love people watching. I love trying to imagine what people are thinking, what their relationships are to each other, whether they are in still in love, or whether they've given up. There were plenty of big necklaces, fleeces, and horsey women (I know this breed well as I am one of their ilk). There were plenty of family groups, plenty of couples who weren't speaking to each other. I thought about my friend Lucy, who has no boundaries whatsoever in a way that would be horrendous on anyone else but on her is lovely, coltish, affectionate. She would immediately start chatting to people next to her. She would offer to share her sweet and salty popcorn. She would make friends. I remembered that I was English and that the English aren't keen on that kind of thing. I remembered to move my elbows and not take over the arm rest on my right. "Do you have tissues?" said Charlie. "Why?" I said defensively. "Do *you* have tissues?" I asked rudely, like a teenager. "Well it might be quite emotional" he said kindly. "Oh, I'll be fine," I said, brushing it off, doing my best Kevin or Perry.

The stage was very plain, with a large swath of something that looked like a thick piece of ripped wallpaper in the shape of a sweet potato, which became an ersatz screen onto which pencil drawn animated scenes were projected: the village in Devon the boy comes from, the battleground in the Somme, horses galloping, drawn in HB pencil. A troubador woman in country clothes sings a ballad in a rich voice and the scene is set - a horse auction at a local town where our hero is bought as a colt by a drunken farmer who spends thirty nine pounds of mortgage money on the horse - a half draught, half thoroughbred. Joey. The farmer's son bonds with the horse and trains it. You know the story. I believe that my whole persona changed the minute the little colt, made of wood and metal and cloth, appeared on the stage. How does a puppet, so clearly animated by two or three people with sticks attached to it, move and breathe and flicker with something so closely appropriating life? How does the puppet colt look and move and twitch with such playfulness, such inquisitiveness, such a beating heart? I think I started to sob when the young horse makes a Herculean effort to show that he can pull a plough and didn't actually stop crying until most people had left the theatre. At one point Charlie said to me, "Are you okay, darling? Would you like to leave?" "No," I managed to sniffle back to him, my chest heaving, the breath caught in my throat.

Warhorse is transformative. You walk in as one person and leave quite simply as another. There is no doubt that a transformation takes place. For me, all the armor fell aside. It broke my heart open, as I think all good art does, to allow you to receive. It's also magic. You suspend your disbelief completely, as the puppeteers dance across the stage.

I've been listening to Michael Meade's podcast Living Myth today. I have a long drive every morning out to the horse, and this is an ideal time for listening. Today's episode is on gratitude and grace. "A broken heart is the only heart worth having," ie the eye of the heart is the seat of the soul (Cynthia Bourgeault has a book about this too.) Watch Michael Meade here. "Some people find it through a spiritual path, some people find it through creative arts, some people find it through making love, there's many ways to find it, but the idea is to find that which opens the heart...and that allows the soul to grow." - Michael Meade

But the idea of great art being transformative is a heady one. And perhaps that is why we pursue art.

Horses have an electro-magnetic field that is so huge, that just being a few feet away from them is transformative. (I just googled it. Ha ha.) My friend Angela, who is part of the morning riding crew said to me today, "how do other people deal with depression?" and I know what she meant. About three minutes after you are in contact with a horse, everything falls aside, all the petty worries, the little anxieties (the big anxieties), the tension, the tightness, the small things just disappear, melt into thin air, and you experiences wholeness; you experience your heart opening and you are suddenly part of a unity, not a tiny little lonely creature living with your own metallic worries, your fears, your rigidity. Suddenly, everything is possible. That place (also called flow, I believe) is where all good things come from. That place of vast abundance. So, greeting Bella this morning was hard without tears, after experiencing Warhorse. Horses give us everything they have. They allow us to -  and give us a safe place to - open our hearts. I think that realization was brought home in the theatre last night.

Gratitude, even momentary gratitude, is a state of wholeness. - Michael Meade

(Here is the Living Myth podcast The Necessity of Gratitude.)

So, I'm thinking that those gratitude journals that everyone poo-poos might be worth it. Just a few minutes every morning, to keep us on track, to keep us aligned, before the world sweeps us up in its dramas. 

Be safe everyone. I love you, LA.

Try to Praise the Mutilated World

Try to praise the mutilated world.
Remember June’s long days,
and wild strawberries, drops of wine, the dew.
The nettles that methodically overgrow
the abandoned homesteads of exiles.
You must praise the mutilated world.
You watched the stylish yachts and ships;
one of them had a long trip ahead of it,
while salty oblivion awaited others.
You’ve seen the refugees heading nowhere,
you’ve heard the executioners sing joyfully.
You should praise the mutilated world.
Remember the moments when we were together
in a white room and the curtain fluttered.
Return in thought to the concert where music flared.
You gathered acorns in the park in autumn
and leaves eddied over the earth’s scars.
Praise the mutilated world
and the gray feather a thrush lost,
and the gentle light that strays and vanishes
and returns.

-- Adam Zagajewski

(Translated, from the Polish, by Clare Cavanagh.)

LA is My Lady

I was born in LA. At least spiritually. Los Angeles is the place where I became the person I was meant to be. It was my golden triangle, the conversion of two cultures, not rivers, that created the person I was to become and in that birth, due to the perfect set of circumstances; a husband who believed in my infinite possibilities, and the scent of mimosa and orange and the blowing of the Santa Anas in the right direction. Therefore I find my heart heavy as lead and my eyes frequently full of tears when I witness the devastation to my beloved city as a result of the Palisades, Eaton, Sunset, Hurst and Livia fires (and more, I know.) My immediate family is safe, away from the current disaster zones, but our extended family and friend group has suffered so much loss; so many houses raised to the ground, so many people who have lost everything they own, so many people I have worked with over the years, and family too. The destruction is vivid and real and super close to all we hold dear. No-one we know hasn't been affected at all. Neighborhoods have been flattened as if by a hurricane, landmarks gone (I shall miss the silly fishy puns of the Reel Inn on PCH, the picnics at Will Rogers, the beautiful old storefronts of the Palisades.) And just by a small miracle the Laurel Canyon house we lived in and raised our family in was saved (thanks to the brilliant work of the Runyon Canyon firefighters and the perfect intersection of wind speed and direction). I cried and cried and cried yesterday and the English part of me felt ashamed. You're not there. Your family is safe. What do you have to cry about? It was something akin to grief. Massive grief for a world I love and miss and which will never be the same again. I cried buckets. Charlie sat by me and handed me hankies and brought me cups of tea and both dogs.

I found something I wrote ten years ago:

"I recited the litany of reasons that I loved LA: no weather issues, no need to carry a coat/an umbrella/gumboots, access to the ocean, mountains, trees, a world full of possibility, a vibrant art scene, sunshine, did I mention sunshine? It is a city I love. LA IS my lady."

And this:

"The entire canyon is scented with wild yellow mimosa. You notice it in the cool/warm mornings, now that the sun is up at six. It brings with it the promise of summer, of sweet long evenings, hinting at the myth of the canyon -- a place full of possibility."

There is no place like LA and all the films and books and tv shows and things that you read in the Daily Mail about the Kardashians and the film stars and the wacky people and the woo-woo views will EVER do it justice. It's the place where people go to be in their heart space and to manifest their dreams. It's full of abundance, of endless time, a multiplicity of possibility, of love and support and people who care about what happens to you, and are there for you and have your back. In the midst of the silly industry that we work in exists a huge beating heart, warm, embracing, uncynical, non-judgemental, guileless.  Like my father in law used to say to me, "come on in, give me a hug, you're my daughter."

My heart goes out to everyone who is going through unimaginable distress of finding themselves unhoused, and I will keep you, Los Angeles, my spiritual mother, in my prayers.

Happy + Optimistic 2025

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This is Pip the whippet who was clearly a Sphinx
in Ancient Egypt in another life.

Happy new year, my friends. The sun is out, quite miraculously, in West Berks, after the most tempestous, bi-polar of weather over Christmas and the new year. Yesterday it snowed and in the little wood between us and the church, when I ventured in with both dogs, it was positively warm, with steam rising through the pine trees, as if I were in a natural sweat lodge. Or Narnia. This morning the gale force winds blew out hundreds of candles on us as we walked through the farm. Now, sunshine. I'm at my desk realizing that zoom calls are really not my thing, darling, and that I need to simplify. I'm told not to panic, that the new year doesn't properly start till Wednesday when Aries comes onto the scene (reliably sourced via Kirsty Gallagher) and that this mad dash to give up things and start new regimes really isn't good for us. 

I'm reliably informed that this year is going to be great and that it is a year when more and more people are going to realize that we are all souls having a human existence. There is a shift happening and we're going to discover if we haven't already that we have six not five senses. (If you haven't listened to The Telepathy Tapes, do so immediately.)  Imagine how the earth will change when this news catches fire!

The best advice I have is listed here. Take what you need:

• Sardines on grilled on rye bread are the best high choline, omega 3, protein-rich snack. Also, delicious. Parmentier is best.
• Be patient. When you ask for something it will come to you but not always immediately. A bit like a 6 month old puppy working on recall (see pic above).
• Everything that you're presented with is meant for you and instead of asking why, ask what. Everything is a lesson of some kind, you know part of life's rich fabric. It's a puzzle for us to unlock.
• Start the day and end the day with a prayer or an intention, even if it's whispered under the covers when you're dog tired; what it is you would like and what is it that you are grateful for. Gratitude begets abundance. It's just the way it is. I say this little one adapted from Sonia Choquette: "Divine Spirit within me, move me in the direction of my highest good this day and the highest good I can bring to anyone I encounter. Move my mind, words, emotions, thoughts and body in the direction of my greatest success and the greatest good. Thank you for the abundance that surrounds me." For a long time I had brain salad, all kinds of ideas swirling in my head in a mushy ADHD lentil soup. Once I started articulating things OUT LOUD, things happened. And it got better.
• Water of any kind, drunk, swam in, bathed in, showered in, walked in, splashed on you, will help you. Take more than you think you need. Water is magic.
• Eat an orange. Preferably one with babies. Simple and perfect.
• Consider the things you spend your time on. Just don't do anything that you don't vibe with. Why bother? Life is short. We choose to be here to live out our years, so why not fill them with things that bring joy and meaning.
• Sound is everything. Now they've discovered it heals too. Find music and vibration that makes you feel happy. Find a sound bath if you haven't already.
• Let them. See Mel Robbins' new brilliant book, or her podcast interview with Oprah. Just that: Let them. You are the only thing you have any control over. You cannot change anyone else. You're not there to feel their emotions for them nor to control how they feel. The only thing you have any influence over is yourself. (It really doesn't matter what anyone else thinks.)
• Everything is conscious. It may not have a beating heart and it may not look like you, but it will vibe with you, so greet everything with love. Say hello to the birds, the trees, and see what they bring you. (It's only good manners, really, innit?)
• Radical acceptance. Accept the world as it is not as you would like it to be (which is a variation on Mel Robbins.)
• This one is hard, I know, but what you think becomes your reality.
• LOVE.

Good luck and please know how powerful you are.

Miserere

This is more about healing, which is the thing I'm thinking about most. It's understandable that this won't be for everyone. So feel free to swipe.

It's not quite light outside but I can hear the first birds on my left, through the window, despite Ola Gjeilo playing with great fervor next to me. Music is massively important first thing in the morning.There is a fragility to waking now. I want to not hold on too hard, but to save the mood, the delicious spaciousness of coming out of the dream state. Especially waking on a Sunday without a a lot of to do's already whirling around in one's head. I lay for a few minutes and do my checklist: puppy sleeping - check, Thistle snoring - check, Charlie breathing beside me, do I need any more sleep? I don't think so. Has the heaviness of yesterday lifted? I think it might have. Breathe? Oh yes, must breathe. But which breath? The double one. The one where you do a deep breath in and then another short sharp deep one at the top. I do this a few times for good measure. I know the breath will bring me back to equilibrium. I whisper "would you like some tea?" to C. I quietly pick up the little whippet puppy from his crate and we wander downstairs.. All Is Well. The puppy goes out, pees, he knows the drill now. I've left the heat on in the kitchen and the wooden floor is warm on my bare feet as I make the tea.

And yet, it might not have been so. Yesterday was not like this. Exhausted (a word I use all too frequently now) from being in the city, around a lot of people, shadowing as I do in my job. We are half people. We exist to make sure other people are okay, that their artistic visions are understood, that their worlds are illuminated for other people to see. These are good and lovely and talented people, and I have done this job for many years now, more than forty years, and the job is to uphold, support, enable and defend another's creativity. Perhaps it's the electromagnetic activity in the heavens, the solar flares, the aurora borealis, but my shadow job didn't feel like such a good idea. Somehow my body was done with the stuckness, tired of holding everything in, exhausted from being in a Medieval court, from playing the Fool, from the petty humiliations and unspoken slights and didn't really want to play the game any longer.  (I can hear the crows getting up, greeting each other, chatting, gathering around the oak now. We have hundreds of crows; a well-organized bunch). Despite good and kind people, and meaningful subjects, there was a pushing through, an extended effort, that you know means you're not in alignment.

As my father said to me twenty years ago when I first struggled with my job and wondering if it was indeed what I was meant to be doing, "you are lucky to have a job like this and to be successful at it." Yes I am. 

My depletion was so intent yesterday that I wanted to roll up in a ball like a pill bug, turn off my crazy mind, cover myself in a duvet and shut down. Maybe there could be plug in stations for human beings? Especially now everyone's getting rid of their Teslas. Rock up, connect and sleep for an hour or two while your body and mind and soul is replenished with magic vitamins, nourishing fluids and much-needed dopamine. Here's your little sleep box with its fluffy duvet, here are your headphones playing 432hz, here's your eye mask with just a little bit of rose-scented aromatherapy on it, and here are two smooth clear quartz crystals for your hands. Here is your prayer. Here is peace and tranquility. (Here are the two pink/white dahlias on your desk put there by your beloved; here is your cup of tea that he makes you every morning; here is the dog that sleeps at your feet warming your toes; here is the morning light where you can glimpse the optimism of the sun. Here is the morning when you feel strong and calm and loved.)

My exhaustion was so great that I cancelled my good friends who were coming to dinner. I love to cook I said. I do. I love the rituals of the dinner party. The making the house pretty, the hunting for flowers, laying the table, choosing what to make. Spreading books on the kitchen table, connecting again with the house, remembering that this is how we love, this is how we show people we care. But I had nothing to show and nothing to give. And because I am married to a beautiful saint of a man, he made salmon and vegetables and it was delicious, and I went to bed early with my copy of On Pilgrimage by Jennifer Lash. Actually I got into a hot bath and lay there reading and willing myself not to sleep, and watching the puppy chewing on the bath mat. It was the first time in quite a long time that I thought, ah, a glass of pinot noir might go down well now, in the bath, with my book. A perfect glass of reset. It was a bleak day. I wondered if I might be slipping into madness. Nothing really seemed to work properly. My house isn't in order, it's broken, I said to C. I think he thought I was referring to where we live. I wasn't. It's funny how dramatic one can sound when distressed.

So here's the elephant in the room (the baby hippo in the mud): I am actually one of those trite people that has self-diagnosed with ADHD. And boy, was it a long time coming. I am so proud of myself for not having done it years ago when it was really popular and all the cool kids were doing it.  But you know, fifteen years ago when I had a high schooler and a kid about to go to college, their diagnoses seemed more compelling, and important I suppose. The focus was on them. boom boom. And my husband was obviously neuro-divergent, as he had obvious physical signs - hyperactivity (which was both massively inspiring and exhausting to be around, total focus on new hobbies including all the equipment, an inability to sit still at all). Our family was loving and loud and chaotic, in the best ways. So with all this activity and furor (it's not quite the seven fishes episode of  The Bear, but you get my flow) and madness, it was (looking back) easier for me to sit quietly and observe. Or at least play the anchor in some way. I now know that this is called masking. Masking. Not just for those on the autism spectrum. My hyperactivity is in my head, not my body. (Although I did get frowny looks when I ran down the corridors in my heels when I was an executive at Fox.) How do you know, indeed, that the messy soup of thought that is your brain isn't the same as everyone else? How do you know that the way you're experiencing the world isn't the way everyone else is experiencing it? You don't. We didn't talk about these things. My time blindness was just laziness or something. My inability to leave the house, or go to a meeting I didn't want to go to? She's a bit crazy.  My desperate need for a glass of wine at 6pm to bring me back to a settled, calm state? Borderline alcoholism. My inability to face a crowd of people? Antisocial behaviour. My massive lack of focus while trying to write my thesis?  Too many drugs? Not being able to sparkle on command? No-one knew. I'd just hide on days like that. Fake illness. Feeling everything acutely, every single vibe in a room? I don't know. Growing up with a volatile father?

So rather like that joke about the nervous breakdown - I've waited patiently and now it's my turn - here I am, trite as hell, sitting with an idea that seems to fit all the weird behaviours of my life. I am not entirely alone. I've discussed it quite a lot with my therapist, and she concurs, or at least can see the thread that connects everything. And even said something like "that must have been a lot" and it made me cry. It's all been a lot, always, forever, since I can remember. And that's what I was told too. A lot. Too much. Or, in the immortal words of my matron, Miss Collier (who also had a broom named after her) "Bumble by name, Bumble by nature." A really lovely, positive thing to write in the book of a struggling, spotty, slightly fat thirteen year old. And you know what? Sitting with all of this, all the time, for the last few days: It feels like grief. It should be a revelation, and definitely things are shifting, but it sits like grief in my body, heavy and sludge-like, unmoving, stultifying. And the thing about grief is that it doesn't give your the opportunity to enjoy change, or the new season, the color of the leaves, sweater weather, because you're stuck in regret and the constant unfolding of the idea that you missed so much. Where is my summer day? Where is my ten minutes of swimming in the Aegean sea? Why didn't we barbecue the day the sun was out? Why do I even bother having summer clothes?

Yo-Yo Ma, man, he brings you back every time. Him and Bach, what a team.

Here's the word that goes through my head constantly: excuse. This revelation is an excuse for not being better, because being better, fixing yourself, is what life is about, right? Self-improvement. But here's a radical idea: what if you are perfect, as you are? What if all the weird little divergent nooks and crannies and rough edges and bizarre quirks are exactly what the universe needed, and every little crinkly line fits perfectly into the big jigsaw? What if the world needed something that was exactly the same shape as you? And that no-one else is even slightly the same as you. You are a note in the symphony, a note that no other instrument can play. (If you're finding this trite, you may not be my people, no offense or anything, but this is where I am and the simplicity of this idea is what is healing.)

And one more sweet thing. I met a young woman this week from Los Angeles, who was a light, a shiney light in the midst of it all, guileless, sweet, kind and good. And she shone so bright because there were no rough shadow edges. Every single emotion was true and direct and there was no guilt or shame attached to any of it. She was exactly as she was meant to be, in alignment, perfect, in her lane in the best possible way, so she brought shimmery illumination to everything that she came into contact with. My daughter in law is the same. It's not an English thing to be this way, or not in my experience. There is no shame, no guilt, there is just being.

Here is something beautiful for your Sunday morning. Allegri Miserere in the Sistine Chapel. Inspired by Conclave.

I do like a list. And here are a few things I would suggest if you're trying to overcome overwhelm:

• Nature. Get outside as soon as you can in the morning. Just having your feet on the grass will ground you, bring you back.
• Walk in the trees either on your own or silently. Touch and hug them. You can actually feel the energy, and it is good. Walk far enough that you suddenly forget you are walking.
• Water, either drunk or bathed in, is good for the soul. Some say water is the magic elixir (Masuro Emoto, for example, or author Elif Shafak There Are Rivers In The Sky)
• Sing or chant. Check out Krishna Das. If you'd like my healing mantras playlist, let me know and I'll send it to you.
• Breathe. I do 4-7-8 breath, or the double intake breath with a long exhale. Magic right here.

And one more thing that I love is this:

Greet everyone as if you love them. Try it. It's quite magical how the energy you give is the energy you receive. 

(Yesterday is gone.)

Love to you.