I needed help.

I had been suffering night terrors for years. I regularly woke myself screaming, in some vividly urgent scenario where I was about to be killed. Sometimes I threw myself out of bed in order to escape my shadowy aggressor. I would come to, frantically thrashing my limbs in an effort to get away, my heart hammering my ribs, my voice raw and hoarse, gradually realising once again that no, there was no-one lurking in the room, I was not about to be murdered in my bed; I had just had another night terror.

There’s a heap of things I am resisting doing: those emails I haven’t replied to in weeks, if not months, the dreaded tax return awaiting my figures, the cupboard under the stairs stuffed with dubious items, even that embroidery project I started, but have not yet got stuck into. All these things, along with others I have relegated into some dark recess of my mind, take up energy, whirring away like a computer with too many tabs open, draining the battery.

On New Year’s morning, I made two cups of tea and brought them upstairs to one of my oldest friends, Toni. I had come to stay with her in her house in the woods in Tuscany and my idea was I would get into bed next to her and we would prop ourselves up on the pillows, drink our tea and talk about the party the night before.

No sooner had we taken our first sip when there was a noise downstairs. We heard a voice calling up the stairs. To our surprise Bernadette, our hostess from the party was then standing at the foot of the bed in her dressing gown, barefoot and with soot on her face.

Dedicated to the memory of Omer Hermesh

One of my coaching clients recently spoke of her sense of futility in the face of the tremendous suffering happening in the Middle East.

“Who really cares about interior design at moments like these?” she asked. ”If I was closer, I might be able to do something physically. Continuing with my life as usual seems wrong somehow…”

Like my client, like so many others, I have been noticeably impacted by the recent devastating news coming out of Israel and Palestine. I first heard about the escalating violence not from the news, but directly from my friend, Nessi,

I knew a Sardinian grandmother who had nine children and tens of grandchildren. When I was pregnant with my first child, I sat next to her at a noisy Italian lunch at a long table. “Eating for two?” she said in a low voice, giving me a wink. My mouth dropped open. It had only been two days since I had taken the test.

I once had a close call in the water.

There is a river near where I live in the South of France, which dries out in the hot summers to a slow trickle amongst the boulders. In the Spring it swells with the rains into a wide, deep and fast moving river.

Here in the Northern Hemisphere, as we approach Imbolc (1st February,) we are halfway between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. Signs of spring are minimal and yet something has begun to stir in the cool darkness underground.

Did you make a New Year’s resolution? How’s it going now?

As a teenager, I remember writing down well intentioned things I wanted to do on bits of paper and setting light to them. If they flew up the chimney that was a good sign - it meant they would stick.

When I was nine years old and had just started boarding-school, I shared a room with another girl. Mrs Josephson, our guardian, kept strict tabs on us. We were not to talk, whisper or get out of bed in the mornings until the school bell had rung in the courtyard, when she would come in and draw the curtains.

Walking to Paddington Station this morning, I passed a black stiletto lying in the driveway of a hotel. The heel had bent right away from the sole.

A shoe like that tells a story. 

When I was six years old, my grandmother taught me to knit. She cast on, got a few rows going, and showed me how to loop the wool around the needles to make stitches. For the next few hours, I sat by her side, intent upon creating something where there had once been nothing. As the grown ups around me switched from tea to whiskey,

Letting your imagination run freely and lightly over inspiring details is a fun yet powerful way of manifesting a more beautiful future. Back when I had two young children under five and lived on a farm in Italy,