Helen Mirren DWC Weekly Issue 100

One hundred issues. I have written that sentence four times now and it still reads like something that happened to somebody else.

It was the early morning of 12 May 2024. I hit publish on Issue 1 and told myself that if a hundred people read it, I would be happy. That was the whole of the ambition, and I meant every word of it.

More than ten thousand showed up on the first day.

They came because I asked. There was no audience waiting — no following to lean on, no algorithm quietly doing us favours, no list inherited from some previous venture. What we had was a magazine and the willingness to ask women, one at a time, whether they would pass it on to their friends and drop it into their work groups. They did. Ten thousand of them, in a single day, in countries I have still never set foot in.

That is the part I have never quite got over. The number matters less than the mechanism. Women who owed me nothing read something, decided it was worth ten minutes of somebody else's day, and sent it onward. Every reader we have arrived that way, which is a stubbornly good filter, and it is why the comments section is civil — a standard anyone who has run anything online will recognise as a minor miracle.

The rest was learning in public. The early issues were PDFs, which asks a woman to download a file before she knows whether she likes you, so they became one-click reads instead. The sign-up box moved to the bottom of the page, after the writing, on the reasoning that people should decide whether they want more of us after they have had some of us. Every change came from watching what readers actually did.

And here we are, a hundred Tuesdays later. Read in 106 countries. Into print, into retail, onto billboards, into worldwide distribution, into an app. A community forum where women who have never met argue amiably about books. Contributors who send work in unprompted. Four Cornerstone Partners who have stayed. A short fiction column, a tarot column, an advice column, and a book reviewer who ran a second-hand bookshop for twenty years and has opinions.

Who would have thought. I sat in front of a laptop at dawn hoping for a hundred readers, and the thing I am most grateful for is the least glamorous part of all of it: the means to carry women's stories somewhere they will be seen. Marie-France van Heel's diagnosis. Alicia Kozakiewicz's advocacy. Sarah Boone's patent. Names that would sit in an archive somewhere, read by nobody, and now they sit on a shelf in a shop in a town I will never visit.

To mark the hundredth we have made two things free. The first is 100 Ways to Get Publicity Without Social Media — the hundred tactics we used to build this magazine from that morning in May to this one, written down in order. The second is Before You Spend a Penny on Meta Ads, the pre-launch checklist we wish someone had handed us before our first campaign. Neither costs anything. Both are on the next tab.

The issue suits the occasion. Helen Mirren, who has spent fifty years declining the terms other people set for her, and who wishes she had been ruder sooner. A schoolteacher in Uttarakhand who recorded her own testimony. Michelle Wollaston on the emptiness women meet standing in their kitchens, and what it is pointing at. Pat Allchorne on a ghost cat in Edinburgh, which sounds whimsical and turns out to be about time.

A hundred issues, built by asking. Thank you for every time you said yes.

Both live in the same place, alongside anything else we release free: dwcmagazine.com/collections/free-downloads.

In 1975, a thirty-year-old actress walked down a staircase on a BBC set to talk about playing Lady Macbeth. It was her first talk show appearance. Before she reached her seat, the host had introduced her as a “sex queen” and read out theatre critics who had spent as much time on her body as on her work.

She has said since that she was terrified.

The clip has outlived almost everything else broadcast that year. It resurfaces every few years, is watched by a new set of women, and is passed around again. What makes it endure is not the interviewer's line of questioning, which was ordinary for its era. It is what the young woman in the chair did with it.

Where the ambition came from

She was born Ilyena Lydia Mironoff in west London in July 1945, the second of three children. Her paternal grandfather had been a colonel in the Tsarist army and later a diplomat, in Britain negotiating an arms deal when the Russian Revolution stranded the family. He drove a London cab to keep them. Her father drove one too. Her mother was a butcher's daughter, one of fourteen children. The family lived in Leigh-on-Sea in Essex, and the surname was anglicised to Mirren when Helen was around ten.

There was a lost patrician world in the family story and very little money in the present one. She was sent to a convent school in Southend-on-Sea, and then, at her mother's urging, to a London teaching college, on the reasoning that teaching was a profession that would hold.

An English teacher at the convent school found a recruitment circular for the National Youth Theatre and pushed her towards it. Mirren has credited the woman with opening her to poetry. She auditioned at eighteen, and she did it without telling her parents. Her reason is the most instructive line in her early biography: “I didn't want to fail publicly”.

That is the whole ambition, in one sentence, at eighteen. Not the confidence to succeed in front of everyone. The refusal to fail in front of anyone, and the willingness to go and try alone until the outcome was settled. Two years later she was playing Cleopatra at the Old Vic and selling it out. An agent signed her. The Royal Shakespeare Company followed, and she spent much of the next fifteen years there.

The interview

Michael Parkinson put it to her that her physical attributes might hinder her ambition to be taken seriously. She let him finish, then asked him whether he meant that serious actresses could not have big bosoms. Earlier, when he had described her as a serious actress in air quotes, she had cut straight across him: “How dare you”. She held her ground for the length of the interview, composed, unhurried, entirely unwilling to accept the frame she was being handed.

Fifty-one years on, the frame is what interests us. Because the reckoning came afterwards, and it did not land on him.

The price of holding your ground

Mirren has been direct about what followed. In her account, she was the one who took the criticism for the exchange. “I got the shit for being argumentative”, she said, looking back decades later. He did not. She did.

That sentence is the whole architecture of the thing. A woman was invited onto a stage, publicly assessed by her body, and then punished for objecting to it. The objection became the offence. The original conduct passed without comment, because in 1975 it required none.

This is the pattern women recognise long before they can name it. The behaviour is normal. The response to it is the problem. Every woman who has been called difficult in a meeting, or told she was aggressive when she was clear, is standing in the same place Mirren stood on that set.

Parkinson never accepted the charge. He allowed in 2016 that he may have been over-reactive, then noted what she had been wearing as she came down the stairs. Mirren has said she raised it with him again years later, and he never saw what was wrong with it. He could not quite grasp it.

She has also, characteristically, declined to make him a villain. She has pointed to the way he used his programme to support Elton John after he was publicly outed, and has said she does not want to diss him. And in 2023 she went further, and conceded a point most women would have been entitled to withhold: “My physicality did get in the way”, she said, of her being taken seriously as a classical actress. He was, in that narrow sense, describing something real. He simply described it as her failing rather than the industry's.

Her own regret about the encounter runs in the opposite direction to the one you might expect. Watching it back, she has said she had not realised how well she did. What she wishes she had done is be ruder. “I didn't tell Michael Parkinson to fuck off. I was very polite”, she has said. Asked separately what she knows now that she wishes she had known thirty years earlier, she gave the same answer, and added the part that matters: “I was much too old when I learned that”.

That is worth sitting with. A woman widely held up as the model of composure under sexism has spent decades wishing she had been less composed. The poise everyone admires is the thing she would trade.

The ordinary weather

The 1975 interview reads now as an isolated outrage. It was not isolated. It was the visible, televised version of something she has described as constant.

Speaking in 2018, Mirren said that between the ages of sixteen and roughly twenty-four, men exposed themselves to her about once a week — on the Tube, on buses, walking down the street. She was clear about the effect, which was neither flattery nor amusement: “It's the opposite. It's horror”.

Once a week, for eight years. That is the weather a young woman was walking through while critics were assessing her sluttish eroticism and a broadcaster was asking whether her body disqualified her from her own profession. The interview was not an aberration in her life. It was the same climate, indoors and on camera.

Scandal, and who gets to define it

In 1979 she appeared in Caligula, produced by Penthouse founder Bob Guccione and directed by Tinto Brass, from a Gore Vidal screenplay Vidal later fought to have his name removed from. After the shoot, Guccione took control of post-production and cut in hardcore footage filmed separately, without the cast's knowledge. Malcolm McDowell, Peter O'Toole and John Gielgud all distanced themselves. The film was seized by customs officials and confiscated by police in Italy.

Mirren's verdict on it has become the most quoted line about the film: “an irresistible mix of art and genitals”. She has stayed proud of the performance. She has been clear that she was taken aback by what was inserted afterwards, and equally clear that the choices she made as a young actress were her own, made in a European film culture she believed was opening up. She has also been unsentimental about what the job did for her materially: the fee put down the deposit on her first house.

That combination is rarer than it sounds. The film brought her no critical credit at all, she has never claimed otherwise, and she has never disowned it either. What was done to the film was done without her consent. What she did in it was deliberate. She has never allowed the first to contaminate the second, and she has never performed the ritual apology for her younger self that women of her generation were expected to offer.

In 2023, a new edit was assembled from the original negatives, running to 157 minutes and restoring footage the audience had never seen. Reviewers found her performance to be the strongest thing in it. Forty-four years late, the record corrected itself.

Tennison

By 1991, Mirren was leading Prime Suspect as DCI Jane Tennison, written by Lynda La Plante. Fourteen million people watched the first series. It ran to seven series and fifteen episodes across fifteen years, and it won Emmys, BAFTAs and Golden Globes.

Tennison arrives at a murder squad that does not want her, introduces herself, and tells her officers what she will be called: “I'm not the bloody Queen”. She is brilliant, obsessive, ambitious, and a difficult colleague. Her drinking worsens. Her personal life fails. The men on her team actively work to sabotage her, and one conceals evidence to protect them.

None of that was softened to make her likeable. That was the point. Serving officers reportedly gave the first series a standing ovation, because they recognised the institution being described.

Before Tennison, a woman on television could be competent or she could be flawed. She was rarely permitted both, because both together add up to a full person, and full personhood was reserved for the male lead. Mirren's Tennison established, in front of fourteen million people, that a woman could be exceptional at her job and unbearable to work with, and that neither cancelled the other.

The desert, and the refusal of it

Mirren has said that recognition and well-paid work arrived for her in her forties, later than it does for men. Accepting an award in 2010, she described watching too many talented colleagues work continuously through their twenties, thirties and forties, only to reach “a complete desert in their 50s”.

She did not reach one. She won the Academy Award for The Queen at sixty-one, having been made a Dame in 2003. She won a Tony for The Audience at sixty-nine. She has worked steadily since: Golda, 1923, The Thursday Murder Club, and MobLand, whose second season arrives worldwide on 18 September. She was given the Cecil B. DeMille Award this January, presented by Harrison Ford.

She is equally unsentimental about the vocabulary applied to older women. She dislikes being told she has a young spirit, and answers that her spirit is the age that she is. She has less patience still for the affectionate diminutives: “I hate the word feisty. I'm alive”, she said last year, on turning eighty. She credits her mother with the most useful thing anyone told her about it: “Never be afraid of getting older”.

What changed, and what did not

Mirren was in the room at the 2018 Golden Globes, the first major ceremony after the Weinstein reporting. She described it afterwards as a moment that would not be repeated, and made a pointed comparison: the film industry, for all the contempt directed at it, came together and said as one that it was over. She said she had yet to see that happen in universities, in media, in business or in politics.

On the movement itself she has been unambiguous. Something cracked, she said, and what she values most is that “a young generation of women just won't accept it”. She has described watching younger women write their own material, start their own theatre companies and make their own films, carrying the assumption that it is simply possible.

Five rules

In May 2017 she gave the commencement address at Tulane University in New Orleans, to a class of 2,800 in the Superdome. She had never given one before. She spent a month preparing it. Somewhere in the middle of the jokes she stopped and delivered what she called Helen's top five rules for a happy life.

One. There is no need to rush into marriage. She married Taylor Hackford late, and it has worked. She added the part people forget to attach: give your partner the freedom and the support to pursue their own ambitions.

Two. Treat people like people. She told the graduates about an actress friend who, in the days when you could smoke in a car, offered the driver a cigarette before lighting her own. To that friend he was a person rather than a function. Mirren has remembered it for fifty years. Everyone deserves equal respect and generosity, she said, whether or not they hold any power over your life.

She then attached two addenda. The first is the line that drew the loudest response of the afternoon: “No matter what sex you are, or race, be a feminist”. She told them she had seen it hold true everywhere she had worked, from Sweden to Uganda, from Singapore to Mali — where women are given respect and the freedom to pursue their own ambitions, life improves for everyone. The second addendum was blunter: never again let a group of elderly, wealthy, irritable men decide the healthcare of a country that is 50.8 per cent women.

Three. Ignore anyone who judges the way you look, particularly the anonymous ones online. She had a message for them as well, which was to go outside and do something.

Four. Refuse to be ruled by fear. The rule came from Mother Mary Mildred, the headmistress at her convent school, who said it to her when she was eleven and trembling on her first day. Sixty years on she was repeating it to a stadium. She drew the distinction carefully: some fear is information and should be obeyed. The fears to walk straight through are the ones that ask whether you are good enough, whether you are clever enough, whether you will fail.

Five. Keep it simple. A list of practical instructions, delivered at speed and mostly comic — say thank you when it is deserved, keep your sense of humour, confront bullies, open your heart to love, and, four separate times, do not procrastinate.

There was one more admission inside rule two, and it deserves lifting out. Mirren told the graduates that she had only recently begun calling herself a feminist. She had always lived as one, and believed the obvious thing — that women were as capable, as energetic and as inspiring as men — but the movement itself had seemed too didactic and too political to join. What changed her mind was the recognition that feminism is a practical necessity rather than an abstract idea, and that the alternative is a slide backwards. At seventy-one, she declared herself.

What she is saying now

Speaking to Woman & Home this year, at eighty, Mirren was asked about the state of things for women. She acknowledged the change she has seen in her lifetime, which is considerable — she pointed out that more women than men are now in American law schools, and that the world authority on marine life turns up on television and is a woman. Then she named what she sees coming back: hatred and fear of women “raising its head again, through the manosphere and the religious right”.

It is the observation of someone who has watched this cycle before, from inside it. She was told in 1975 that her body disqualified her from being taken seriously. She was told afterwards that objecting made her argumentative. She was told in her forties that the work would thin out. She has outlasted every one of those verdicts, and she is telling us, calmly, that the machinery producing them was only ever switched off. It was never taken apart.

The walk home

Watch the tape once more, and watch what it costs her.

She is thirty. She is sitting in front of an audience being informed that her body is the most interesting fact about her. She answers levelly, and the levelness is the performance — she has said she was terrified the entire time.

Then she goes home. And the columns appear, and the letters arrive, and she learns that the person who behaved badly that evening was her.

Most women know that walk home. The meeting where you said the accurate thing in a reasonable voice and felt the room quietly revise its opinion of you. The evening afterwards spent rewriting your own sentences, each version smaller than the last, until you have talked yourself round to being the problem.

She sat through that, and went back the following year, and the year after, for fifty-one years. Vindication arrived four decades late, from a culture that now shares the clip as evidence of its own progress and rarely mentions who paid for it.

And when she is asked what she would change, she never says the composure. She says the politeness. She wishes she had been ruder, sooner, to a man who was always going to walk away from that studio unchanged.

That is the inheritance she is handing over. Not the poise everyone admires — the thing underneath it. Give the short answer while you are still young enough to enjoy the silence that follows.

Srishti Kandari was a government schoolteacher in Uttarakhand. She had been married eight months.

Before she died, she sat in front of a camera and spoke. She described months of harassment over dowry. She said her husband and his family had called her manhoos — cursed — and had held her responsible for the misfortune that had come to the household, including a death in the family. She was, on her own account, being blamed for grief that had nothing to do with her.

Her mother, Seema Kandari, took that recording to Doiwala police station in Dehradun district. The First Information Report, registered under Section 80(2) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, names her husband, her mother-in-law and her sister-in-law. Dehradun police confirmed two arrests, the husband and the sister-in-law, and said the investigation is continuing. The Uttarakhand State Women's Commission has taken up the case of its own motion. Her family is calling for a full investigation, and none of the allegations has yet been tested at trial.

The word she was given

Manhoos is not a small word. It marks a person as the cause of bad luck, a carrier of misfortune, someone whose presence in a house explains whatever has gone wrong in it. Applied to a new wife, it converts every ordinary sorrow a family suffers into evidence against her. A death, an illness, a failed venture — each one becomes a fresh count on a charge sheet she can never answer, because the accusation is about what she is rather than anything she has done.

It is also a word that works quietly. It leaves no bruise, appears in no medical record, and would sound trivial recited in a courtroom by anyone who has never had it aimed at them daily for six months.

Sixty-five years of illegality

Dowry has been illegal in India since the Dowry Prohibition Act of 1961 — sixty-five years. The most recent figures published by the National Crime Records Bureau, covering 2023, record 6,156 dowry deaths across the country. That is roughly seventeen women a day.

Researchers are consistent that the real figure sits higher. Where a single report lists several offences, the Bureau records only the most serious under its principal offence rule, so dowry frequently disappears inside a murder charge. Deaths of Indian women abroad fall outside the count altogether. Some are recorded as accidents. The number is a floor rather than a ceiling.

Sixty-five years of prohibition has moved the practice out of contracts and into implication. It survives in what is expected rather than what is written down, which makes it considerably harder to prosecute and no less expensive for the women carrying it.

Why we are printing her name

Scars That Shine is a column about a terrible thing done to a woman, and about what changes because of her. Sometimes she survives it and does the changing herself. Sometimes she does not, and the change is made in her name. Srishti Kandari belongs here on the second count, and the cause her case puts in front of readers is dowry.

Then there is the recording. She was a teacher. Her working life was spent showing children how to speak, how to read, how to make themselves understood by people who were inclined to talk over them. Facing the end of her own life, she picked up a camera and did the one thing she had spent her career teaching. She left a statement, in her own voice, that could be carried into a police station by someone who loved her. That is a woman insisting on the record.

Ninety seconds is a short time in which to be believed. Her mother made sure it was enough to open a case. Two people are in custody because a young woman refused to let her account of her own life be written by the people accused of ending it.

We are publishing her name because she asked to be heard.

If this piece has raised something difficult for you, the Samaritans are available around the clock on 116 123 in the UK and Ireland, and the call is free. Readers elsewhere can find a local service through findahelpline.com.

Standing in my kitchen with a cup of coffee, the emptiness was just there. A quiet, persistent deadness that I could hear when all the other noise wasn't around to drown it out. This happened so many times across so many moments that I stopped counting them. There were years of emotions, events, hard work, children, all of it holding me there, and I didn't want to be there anymore. But I was so far in that leaving felt impossible. The emptiness had become so normal that I'd stopped asking what it meant. I'd simply accepted it as the cost of responsibility.

As I stood there in that half daydream state, the emptiness would shift and move into my chest. The next thing was sadness. I'd feel the tears beginning. But if I allowed them to come, if I let the sadness take over, I wouldn't be functioning anymore. So I'd take a deep breath and distract myself with a load of washing, the groceries, or making a bed. If I didn't interrupt it, if I let myself feel the full weight of it, I'd fall apart. And there was no time for that. There were children and a mortgage and years of commitment still holding me there. This trapped feeling only hurt when I thought about it directly, so I learned not to think about it. I learned to move quickly past the moment when sadness threatened to break through.

This became my rhythm. Numbness and distraction, the occasional sadness that broke through when I let my guard down, the constant low-level knowledge that something was wrong and I couldn't do anything about it. The exhaustion of holding it all together while knowing I didn't want to hold it together anymore. That cycling between numbness and sudden waves of emotion isn't weakness. It's your system flagging that something's off, sending signals that most of us have learned to ignore.

Women stand in kitchens everywhere in this exact emptiness and they believe it means they're failing, that they're broken or ungrateful or weak, that if they just endure long enough something will change. But this emptiness isn't a sign of failure. It's a signal. Your soul is saying no. The sadness welling up in your chest is your body speaking what your mind won't yet allow. The emptiness in your stomach isn't telling you that you're broken. It's telling you where you need to move. It's the most honest voice you have, and it's been speaking all along.

Your redirection starts the moment you stop trying to save this and start asking yourself the questions you're already asking in the dark. What is it that I actually want? What is it that's missing? What would fill this gap? You don't have to decide whether to leave today. You don't have to make any big decisions at all. You only need to listen closely to what rises when you ask. You don't have the answers yet. But the questions are the beginning.

Get a journal. Write them down. Keep writing until you find one answer that makes your chest feel different, one small thing that says yes instead of no. Because somewhere in that answer is the direction your emptiness has been pointing you toward all along. The only thing keeping you in this holding pattern is you. Everything else — the house, the children, the years, the commitment — those are real. But they're the story you've built around why you can't leave. Get honest about what's actually holding you there. Is it obligation, fear, loyalty? The weight of years already lived in this? Because once you name the real thing, you can finally ask if it's worth the numbness.

The emptiness you feel isn't the end of your story. It's the beginning of the conversation you need to have with yourself about who you are and who you're becoming. That ache is directional. Listen to it.

Meet Grimalkin, who lives at 7/7 Marchmont Crescent, Edinburgh. He was rescued by Eilidh, who cleans the flat, when he was abandoned as a kitten in 1887, and has lived a comfortable life since. Eilidh is his favourite person, and the relationship between them is rather special.

The story opens in 1902, when Grimalkin is fifteen years old and suffering from aching joints. As he snuggles down before the fire, nuzzling a welcome to Eilidh as she arrives for her day's work, he has no notion that his life is coming to an end.

He awakes to a strange world and the sound of water. Is it Paradise, he wonders? Then a sound reaches his ears, and looking to the top of the waterfall from whence the sound of water comes, he sees a giant black cat on a rock, Cat-Sith, a figure from Scottish mythology. Cats' nine lives are divided into three: three lives to stay, three lives to stray and three to play. Apparently Grimalkin hasn't fulfilled this quota and shouldn't be dead.

Cat-Sith must make amends but, being unable to return Grimalkin to life, gives him an option: to stay dead, eternal peace, or return to earth and observe the place he has left for his remaining eight lives. He will not feel pain in his body, but he will feel emotional pain — loss, heartache, fear. Grimalkin wants to be near Eilidh again, so he chooses to return.

So we jump to 1909, and Grimalkin learns that he cannot be seen, he cannot touch anyone, he cannot be heard, and he can walk through walls so long as he stays within the confines of the flat. Marchmont Crescent has changed; the décor is different, but Eilidh is still there! The relationship between them was so special that somehow she seems to sense his presence even though she cannot see him.

His next haunting is in 1935, when the flat at Marchmont Crescent has changed yet again, and as we move through the various hauntings — 1942, 1953, 1969, 1997, 2008 and finally 2022 — we see glimpses of history, of changing fashion, changing values, neologisms which sound like a foreign language to his well-bred ears, all of which leave poor Grimalkin confused. He sees the introduction of electricity, cars and television. He sees Eilidh ageing, till one day she isn't there any more.

After his first three lives, he can stray beyond the confines of the flat, and on his last three before life finally ends for good, he can move things around in a poltergeist-like way, enabling him to be of help to change for good the lives of the flat's occupants.

This is a charming cats'-eye view of our world as it was and as it is now, with Grimalkin's comments at the end of each haunting and footnotes where real people are mentioned. If you love cats, you will love this book, and cannot fail to be captivated by his take on life.

In 1985 Béatrice Vialle walked into Air France at twenty-four years old. She was the tenth woman among the three thousand pilots the airline employed at the time. Forty years later she walked out as one of the most quietly remarkable aviators in the company's history.

She had come up the ordinary way, which is to say the hard way. A graduate of the École nationale de l'aviation civile, she started at Air Littoral flying an Embraer Bandeirante — a small twin-turboprop, short hops, unglamorous weather. At Air France she moved through the 727, the A320 and then the classic 747.

The decision that looks like a step backwards

Then she made the choice that shapes the whole story. With young children at home, she chose to stay in the right-hand seat as a first officer rather than push for a command.

On paper that reads as a woman slowing down. In practice it was the opposite. Airline careers run on seniority, and seniority accrues to the seat you are actually sitting in. Fifteen years of it put her at the very top of Air France's first officer list — and the top of that list is where the Concorde bids were won.

A decision taken for her family delivered her to the flight deck of the fastest passenger aircraft ever built. Every woman who has been told that accommodating her children will cost her the interesting work should be handed this paragraph.

Twenty-four hours

She earned her Concorde qualification on 24 July 2000.

The Gonesse disaster came the following day. Air France Flight 4590 went down shortly after take-off from Charles de Gaulle, and the entire Concorde fleet was grounded while the investigation ran and the aircraft was modified.

She waited. Sixteen months, through the grounding and through the collapse in transatlantic travel that followed the attacks of September 2001. Colleagues assumed the aircraft would never carry passengers again. She has said she never doubted it would fly.

It did. Her first commercial Concorde flight was on 19 November 2001, which made her the first French woman to captain a supersonic commercial airliner in service and one of only two women in the world to hold the qualification operationally — the other being Britain's Barbara Harmer. Jacqueline Auriol had flown Concorde before either of them, as a test pilot rather than in commercial service.

What followed was around 260 hours on the aircraft: Paris to New York in a little over three hours, at twice the speed of sound, at an altitude where the curvature of the earth is visible from the flight deck. She has described the aircraft as sensitive, fine, and beyond comparison with anything else she has flown — a rocket, she said, and a dream.

The wave

On 31 May 2003 she was at the controls of Air France Flight 4332, the airline's last Concorde service with fare-paying passengers aboard. She brought it home to Charles de Gaulle, and then she leaned out of the cockpit window and waved to the crowd on the apron.

The photograph became the aircraft's goodbye. It has been reprinted for twenty-three years in every retrospective written about Concorde, usually without her name attached.

She kept working. A command followed, first on the 747-400 and later on the 777, and the hours accumulated: more than seventeen thousand of them across four decades.

The same window

On 1 August 2026 she landed a Boeing 777-300 at Charles de Gaulle for the last time. Forty years to the year since she first reported for duty at Air France.

She raised her arms through the cockpit window and waved.

The same gesture, the same airport, twenty-three years apart. The first time she was closing an aircraft's history. The second time she was closing her own, and choosing the manner of it herself — which is a thing very few people at the end of a long career get to do.

Ten women among three thousand pilots when she started. She spent forty years quietly making that arithmetic look ridiculous.

Bon vol, Commandant. And thank you.

The pattern across all of them is the same one Béatrice Vialle met in 1985. Every name here was told the seat was unavailable, and every one of them worked out a way to sit in it anyway.

One hundred issues.

I shall pause here so that you may absorb the magnitude of the achievement, and, more importantly, my role in it.

Some of you will attribute the milestone to editorial rigour, contributor loyalty and a woman in London working at four in the morning. Charming. Adorable, even. But consider the evidence: a publication celebrating strong voices, and the strongest voice in it belongs to a cat. I rest my case, and also my hindquarters, on the good cushion.

Although, dear reader, I must inform you that the good cushion is now in a different room. In a different house. In a different postcode.

The Upgrade

You will recall that Lorraine and Jeremy merged their households some time ago, an event I bore with enormous grace and only eleven minutes of hunger strike.

Two humans, one house, one cat of considerable magnificence. The arrangement had settled. I had a chart on the fridge, a regrettable abbreviation of my name, and two laps permanently within reach. I had made my peace.

Then Jeremy said the word “equity” at dinner, and Lorraine said the word “garden”, and within a fortnight strangers were walking through my house saying things about the kitchen.

We have moved. Up, apparently. To a larger house on a road where the houses have names instead of numbers, and where somebody has planted the same shrub outside every single door in what I can only assume is a co-ordinated act of surrender.

There is a garden. There is a bay window with a sill I could sleep four across. There is a room that Jeremy calls his study and I call mine.

Objectively, it is a better house.

I want to make it very clear that I have not settled in, and that this is entirely the fault of the neighbours.

The Reception Committee

They were on the wall the first morning.

Three of them. Sitting in a line, the way solicitors sit.

A Russian Blue with the expression of a woman reading a menu she disapproves of. A Bengal, entirely too pleased with his own markings. And an elderly white creature at the end who said nothing at all for eleven minutes and then yawned in a manner I found personally directed.

I performed the standard arrival. Tail high, unhurried gait, the slow blink of a gentleman offering terms.

The Russian Blue looked at my collar.

“Rescue,” she said, to nobody.

Dear reader, I was born behind Mama Mia's Deli to a streetwise tabby named Clementine, who taught me to beg strategically, nap aggressively and never trust a squirrel. I have secured four homes, 67,000 followers and a scratching post shaped like the Eiffel Tower. I have appeared in a magazine read in 106 countries.

“Rescue.”

Like it was a diagnosis.

The Campaign

I did what any cat of standing would do. I set about establishing myself.

Week one. I patrolled the garden wall at dawn, magnificently. The Bengal walked the length of it behind me at a distance of four feet, saying nothing, matching my pace exactly. This continued for six days. I have since learned that this is a technique.

Week two. I attempted a diplomatic overture involving a mouse, presented on the patio of the house next door as a gesture of goodwill. It was collected by a man in slippers who said “oh, God” and disposed of it in a bin. The Russian Blue watched the entire transaction from a windowsill without moving her head.

Week three. I discovered that my usual method of asserting seniority — sitting in a doorway with tremendous meaning — has no effect whatsoever on a cat who simply steps over you. The elderly white one did it twice. Without malice. Which was worse.

Week four. The Bengal took the sunny end of my own garden wall for forty minutes while I watched from the bay window and told Lorraine, at length, that I had chosen to be indoors.

I have been called many things. Majestic. Photogenic. Luxuriously rotund. I had never, until this road, been called new.

Doug

There is one further matter, and it took me until the fifth week to understand it.

Doug the Chihuahua is not here.

Doug barked at me through a fence for two years. Doug lost a gnome statue to an act of quiet revenge and never once retaliated proportionately. Doug was, I had always maintained, an idiot.

He was also, I now realise, mine. My idiot. A fixed point. Something to ignore magnificently on a Tuesday.

I sat on the new wall on the fifth Thursday and found I was listening for a bark that was four miles away and no longer had anything to do with me, and I want it noted that the sound I made at that moment was a yawn.

What I Have Concluded, Reluctantly

On the Sunday, the elderly white one came and sat on my wall.

Not near me. On the other end, facing the other way, in the manner of a creature who happened to be sitting there anyway. She stayed for about an hour. She did not speak, or bow, or acknowledge me in any fashion whatsoever.

Then she left.

She did the same thing on Monday. And on Wednesday.

It has taken me a shamefully long time to work out what was happening, and I offer it now only because it is the hundredth issue and I am feeling expansive.

I had assumed the wall was a court and that I was required to win it. I had arrived with a strategy: patrol, present, assert, occupy, be recognised. Every move I made was a move designed to establish that I belonged there.

And the old one, who has clearly been on that road since before the shrubs, simply came and sat down at the far end of the wall on three separate days, saying nothing, asking nothing, until the wall had two cats on it and had done for a week.

That is how it is done. Not by being impressive. By turning up until turning up is unremarkable.

Which brings me, inevitably, to the hundred.

A magazine does not arrive at its hundredth issue by being magnificent once. It arrives there by being on the wall on Tuesday. And the Tuesday after. And the one after that, through the weeks when the numbers are poor and the postbag is thin and nobody appears to be reading, until a hundred Tuesdays have gone by and the thing is simply part of the road.

A hundred times, a woman somewhere passed it sideways to another woman with read this one attached. None of them owed anybody anything. They simply turned up.

So. I have revised my approach.

The Bengal may have the sunny end. The Russian Blue may say what she likes about my origins, which are, frankly, more interesting than hers.

I shall be on the wall.

Every morning, at the far end, facing the other way, being magnificent at nothing in particular.

See you in a hundred more.

Over six articles I have written about three small things: a hotel mirror I refused to look into, a Summer Solstice spent at Fort Ancient, and a feather I found beside my car before heading home. If you have read none of them, you have missed nothing you need for this one.

I thought I was writing about a mirror.

I wasn't.

I thought I was writing about a solstice.

I wasn't.

I thought I was writing about a feather.

I wasn't.

Those were the moments that caught my attention, but they were never the lesson. They were invitations. They were pauses. They were reminders that life has a way of speaking when we're finally willing to listen.

What I was really writing about was coming home to myself.

Not the version of me other people expected me to be. Not the version that spent years trying to prove her worth. Not the version that believed survival was the same thing as living. I was writing about the person underneath all of those layers. The one who has always been there, even when I couldn't see her clearly.

I've learned that coming home to yourself isn't a destination. It isn't the moment when everything suddenly makes sense and all your questions disappear. If I'm being honest, every time I think I've figured life out, life has a funny way of reminding me that there is another lesson waiting around the corner. Growth doesn't stop. Healing doesn't end. Self-discovery isn't something we cross off a list.

It's a relationship.

It's the relationship we build with ourselves every single day.

Some days that relationship feels easy. Other days it asks more of us than we think we have to give. There are days when I feel completely connected to who I am, and there are days when old stories try to convince me that I haven't grown at all. The difference now is that I recognise those stories. I don't hand them the keys anymore.

That may be one of the biggest lessons this journey has given me.

You don't have to believe every thought that crosses your mind. You don't have to carry every story you've ever told yourself. You don't have to keep introducing yourself through the hardest chapter of your life.

For a long time, I did exactly that.

I introduced myself through pain. Through loss. Through mistakes. Through everything that had happened to me.

Somewhere along the way I forgot that those experiences were chapters, not the title of my life.

There is a difference.

The chapters matter. They shaped me. They taught me. They challenged me. Some of them broke me open in ways I never expected. Others reminded me that I was stronger than I knew. I wouldn't erase any of them because they all contributed to the person sitting here writing these words today.

But they don't get to tell the whole story.

Neither do yours.

The trouble with labels

We live in a culture that loves labels. It feels easier to define ourselves with one word than to embrace the complexity of being human. We become the addict. The survivor. The caregiver. The overachiever. The black sheep. The success story. The failure. The diagnosis. The title. The role.

But we are so much more than any one label.

We are constantly becoming.

I think that's why this journey has felt so meaningful to me. It wasn't about fixing myself. It wasn't about becoming someone completely different. It was about peeling back the layers that were never really me in the first place. The expectations. The fear. The need to prove myself. The stories I had outgrown. Every layer I released brought me a little closer to the person who had been waiting patiently underneath.

The interesting thing about coming home is that the place you're trying to reach has been with you all along.

You don't have to earn your way there. You don't have to become perfect before you're allowed in. You don't have to wait until you've healed every wound or answered every question.

You simply have to stop running.

What each moment was actually saying

The mirror taught me that I could look.

The Summer Solstice reminded me that light doesn't exist to expose us with shame. It exists so we can see more clearly.

The feather beside my car reminded me that sometimes the biggest lessons arrive quietly, without demanding our attention. They simply wait for us to notice them.

The stories reminded me that I have the power to question what I've always believed.

The shadows reminded me that healing asks for honesty, not perfection.

And trusting my own wisdom reminded me that I already carry more answers than I often give myself credit for.

When I look back over these six articles, I realise they've never really been about me.

They've been about us.

Because every one of us has a mirror we avoid. Every one of us wears masks from time to time. Every one of us carries stories that deserve to be questioned. Every one of us has shadows we'd rather not acknowledge. Every one of us has an inner voice that gets drowned out by the noise of everyday life.

And every one of us deserves the chance to come home to ourselves.

Not someday. Now.

That doesn't mean life suddenly becomes easy. It doesn't mean grief disappears, relationships become effortless, or uncertainty goes away. It means we stop abandoning ourselves while trying to make everyone else comfortable. It means we stop apologising for growing. It means we stop measuring our worth by someone else's definition of success.

It means we begin living from the inside out instead of the outside in.

There is a freedom that comes with that. Not because life changes overnight, but because we change the way we meet life.

We stop asking, “Who do I need to be for everyone else?”

And we start asking, “Who am I when I stop trying to be everything for everyone?”

That's a very different question. It's also a much more honest one.

What authenticity actually sounds like

If these past few weeks have taught me anything, it's this: authenticity isn't loud. It doesn't demand attention. It doesn't need applause.

Authenticity is quiet.

It's choosing honesty over image. Presence over performance. Connection over perfection.

It's allowing yourself to be seen by the one person you can never hide from.

You.

Maybe that's what coming home has always meant. Not finding a new place. Not becoming a new person. Just remembering the one you've always been.

As I close this series, I don't have all the answers. I don't think I ever will, and I'm okay with that. What I do know is this. Every experience has the potential to teach us something if we're willing to pay attention. Every season has something to offer. Every challenge carries an invitation. Every ending quietly prepares us for another beginning.

The mirror is still just a mirror. Fort Ancient is still a place I'll return to. The feather is still attached to my ancient cane.

But I'm not quite the same person who first stood in front of that hotel mirror and thought, “I'm not looking in that.”

Now, if I found myself standing in front of that same mirror again, I think I'd smile. Not because I've become perfect. Because I've become more willing to see myself as I am. And maybe that's what coming home really looks like.

Not perfection. Presence.

Not certainty. Trust.

Not becoming someone else. Finally becoming yourself.

Thank you for walking this journey with me. My hope is that somewhere within these pages you caught a glimpse of your own reflection, questioned a story that no longer serves you, or found the courage to take one more step toward yourself. If that happened, then perhaps we both arrived exactly where we were meant to be.

Here's the problem

Creating content isn't optional anymore. Whether you're building a business, growing a community, or sharing a message that matters, showing up consistently helps people get to know you, trust you, and understand how you can help them.

Most people start each week with good intentions. They promise themselves they'll finally become consistent. They open ChatGPT or another AI tool, ask for content ideas, make a few edits, and publish a post. The next day they repeat the process, but on a completely different topic.

One day they're talking about self care. The next day they're discussing mindset. Then they share a business tip, followed by an inspirational quote because it felt relevant in the moment. Every post may offer value, but together they don't tell one clear story.

Your audience sees helpful information, but they aren't sure what specific problem you solve or why they should continue following you.

The problem isn't a lack of creativity or discipline. The problem is that your content starts over every single day instead of building momentum around one important topic long enough for people to remember it.

The cost of constantly changing directions isn't just inconsistent posting. It creates weak positioning, mixed messages, and an audience that struggles to connect your name with the transformation you provide.

Here's the shift. Instead of asking AI for random content ideas every morning, use it once each week to identify one Weekly Focus and build seven different conversations around that single topic. Rather than restarting every day, your content builds upon itself throughout the week.

The Safe2Talk2 Method

This is a simple system you can use every week: choose one Weekly Focus, create seven different conversations around that focus, and commit to following your plan instead of reinventing it every day.

Step 1: Choose one Weekly Focus

Start by identifying one challenge your audience is facing right now. This becomes your Weekly Focus.

Open ChatGPT or your preferred AI tool. Before entering a prompt, think about the people you serve and describe them in one simple sentence. For example: “People healing from trauma who are ready to stop surviving and start living”, or “Helping professionals who want to avoid burnout while serving others”, or “Individuals in recovery who are learning to rebuild their lives.”

Once you've described your audience, use this prompt:

Act as a content strategist. My audience is: [describe your audience in one sentence]. Based on this audience, list five practical challenges they are currently facing. Recommend the ONE challenge that would make the strongest Weekly Focus for next week's content. Choose the challenge that appears most often in real conversations, has meaningful consequences if ignored, and is something I can realistically teach or guide people through. Finish your response by writing: Weekly Focus: [insert recommended topic].

Review the five ideas AI provides. If the recommendation feels right, continue with that focus. If another topic better fits your audience, simply choose that one instead.

Copy your Weekly Focus into your notebook, Google Docs, Notion, or wherever you plan your content. Keep it visible throughout the week. Every post you create will connect back to this one topic.

Step 2: Create seven conversations around your Weekly Focus

Now ask AI to transform your Weekly Focus into a complete seven day content plan. Use this prompt:

Now that we've identified the Weekly Focus, help me create a seven day content plan around it. Use the Weekly Focus we selected. Create: two educational posts, two mindset shifts, two practical action or how-to posts, and one personal story or lived experience. For each content idea include a compelling opening hook and one clear sentence describing the main takeaway. Keep every idea specific, practical, and easy to understand.

This structure works because each type of content serves a purpose. Educational posts build credibility. Mindset posts help people see their situation differently. Practical posts encourage action. Personal stories create connection and trust. Together, these seven conversations reinforce one important message from different perspectives without becoming repetitive.

Once AI generates the ideas, don't worry about editing them yet. Copy them into your planning document or calendar and assign one topic to each day of the week. Now you've eliminated the daily stress of deciding what to post — instead of guessing every morning, you're simply following the plan you already created.

Step 3: Follow the plan

Once your seven content ideas are planned, your goal is to stop second-guessing yourself. Each day, return to the same AI conversation and use the following prompt:

You are my content writer. Weekly Focus: [paste your Weekly Focus]. Today's content idea: [paste today's topic]. Platform: [Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc.]. Audience: [briefly describe who this post is for]. Write one complete social media post that begins with a strong opening hook, uses short paragraphs and simple language, stays focused on today's content idea, develops one main message, and ends with one clear call to action that encourages readers to comment, share, save, or learn more. Only provide the finished post.

Generate one post each day based on your content calendar. After AI writes it, personalise it. Add your own experiences, your own voice, and your own personality. AI should support your message, not replace it.

The goal isn't perfection. The goal is consistency.

A real-world example

Without a Weekly Focus: Monday you post about self care. Wednesday you post about mindset. Friday you post a business tip. Sunday you share an inspirational quote. Every post may be valuable, but none of them build on each other.

With a Weekly Focus: Monday you introduce one challenge your audience faces. Tuesday you educate them about why it happens. Wednesday you help them see the problem differently. Thursday you teach one practical strategy. Friday you share another actionable solution. Saturday you answer a common question. Sunday you tell your personal story and connect it back to the week's message.

By the end of the week your audience understands exactly what you help people with because every conversation points back to the same transformation. Your content becomes intentional instead of random.

One mistake to avoid

Don't change your Weekly Focus halfway through the week simply because another idea sounds exciting. Write new ideas in a Future Weekly Focus list and save them for another time.

The more consistently you stay with one topic throughout the week, the stronger your message becomes. Consistency creates trust. Trust creates relationships. Relationships create opportunities for transformation.

Your action steps

This week, choose one Weekly Focus and write it at the top of your content planning document. Use AI to create seven different conversations around that one topic and assign one to each day of the week. Each day, use your writing prompt to generate one post, personalise it so it sounds like you, and publish it without changing your Weekly Focus.

At Safe2Talk2, we believe meaningful conversations create meaningful change. You already have the knowledge, experience, and heart to make a difference in someone's life. This system simply helps you organise your message so people can clearly understand who you are, what you do, and how you can help.

One conversation can start a journey. Seven intentional conversations can build lasting trust.

This is good for you, that is bad, never eat the other, and store that thing this way; we know all these things to be 100% true.

Trouble is they're not, and really never have been.

Let's take a deep dive into truths we all hold dear, and then laugh at how very much a silly persons we all have been for believing such nonsense. Some of these we have touched upon before — if only in passing — over the past two years, but as they are so deeply embedded into our consciousness, they are worth going back over and some in further detail.

Searing Steaks

When cooking shows started to become really popular in the 1990s, everybody (and we do mean everybody) told you to sear that lovely steak to hold in moisture. They'd explain that you were essentially placing a shield around the meat that prevented all those lovely juices from escaping, and that made sense, right?

Wrong. To sear you need a very high heat, which of course places a lot of pressure on the fibres, resulting in immense moisture loss.

So why should we actually be doing this? The Maillard Reaction is when you create a chemical reaction adding copious amounts of new flavours as the sugars are burned away, and of course a beautiful crust.

The trick is to brine it first (dry usually with steaks — just salt heavily then wipe away) and to sear as quickly as possible and then throw the steak in the oven on a relatively low heat to continue cooking to the desired finish.

Egg Yolks Are Bad For You Because, Fat

The whites (albumin) are protein and the yolks are fat. We know this, and it is very much true. Trouble is, cholesterol; shouldn't be eating egg yolks if you have high cholesterol.

But for the vast majority of people dietary cholesterol has no bearing on blood cholesterol, and in fact your liver, which produces cholesterol on its own, will produce less if it knows you're eating high cholesterol foods (it's always the amount of it, not that you are). Besides which, yolks will barely register on the fat cholesterol scale.

Plus practically all the nutritional benefits are in the yolk, which has more of everything save for protein than the white does; some elements even don't exist at all in the albumin. Unless you are specifically told to avoid food cholesterol by an actual Doctor, keep on eating them because the yolk's on you.

Never Put Hot Food Straight Into The Fridge

The fridge will break, the food will spoil, pish posh to that we say, because do you own an actual wooden ice-box? Okay, so maybe when you were a kid, your fridge was old (although still definitely outlived modern day ones), and hot food would drastically increase the internal temperature, but that simply doesn't happen today. Sure, we're not suggesting you pour that bubbling casserole directly into the fridge, but you can — and should — as soon as you can pick it up in the plastic container with your bare hands.

Besides, professional kitchens, and some have dedicated equipment for this, are required by law to reduce temperatures of cooked food to cold storage levels as fast as possible. This prevents the build up of bacteria, because leaving it sitting around for a couple of hours is actually dangerous.

Don't You Dare Put Tomatoes In The Fridge

This one is actually a do/don't thing, because it isn't about if they should go in the fridge, but when they should.

Quite often the tomatoes we buy are not fully ripe — if they were they wouldn't last very long, and may not even make the journey to the supermarket — so we are expected to ripen them (or at least finish them off) at home. Putting these in the fridge at this point ruins them, and greatly reduces the taste.

However, once ripe, then you should be putting them in there. It slows down further ripening, meaning a longer shelf-life, and preserves the flavour compounds. For best results remove them from the fridge about an hour before eating and they will taste better than when cold.

Cooking Removes Alcohol

It will if it's been in the oven for hours on end, but even after two and a half hours there'll still be some left; if it's only been 30 minutes then there will be loads of it.

We use alcohol in cooking for the extra flavour it brings, and the extra flavours it creates, not to mention the chemical reactions to the likes of protein that water simply cannot do.

Thoroughly Cook Pork

This was true years ago, but isn't any more; 63°C/145°F internally (yes, it will still be pink) is fine and will result in a much better chop anyway.

Also sear, but for the reasons we explained, and not for the reasons you thought. All of this does not apply to minced pork.

Orange Juice Is Good For You

Actually it is, all that vitamin C you understand, but—

Coke is bad for you because sugar, whether it's high fructose corn syrup or sucrose, but did you know that a 350ml glass of OJ has the same amount of sugar?

Ah, but it's natural fructose and it's different. Not so, says your inner body, because it can't really tell the difference between the two, and drinking orange and eating an orange have two different effects.

Eating one means you are digesting fibres and that means the whole process is slowed down; it will be some time before all that sugar hits your liver, and when it does it will be slowly. Drinking orange means no fibre to digest, meaning the sugar hits the liver like a tidal wave. Plus drinking the equivalent of three won't fill you up, but eating three will.

Orange juice isn't bad for you per se, but compared to eating an orange it most definitely is.

Agave Nectar

It's natural, it's better, it's nonsense.

High-fructose syrup contains 55% fructose: this is bad for you. Natural vegan agave contains up to 90%.

Granola, Oats, Vegetables, Fruits, and Natural Yogurt Are Good For You, So All Of It Is Good

On their own? Great, super, smashing. Eat them, lots of them. Case closed.

Thing is though, modern society is inundated with Vegetable Chips, Strawberry Yogurt, Granola Bars, and so on, and these most definitely are not good for you. Nope, we don't care what the packaging says (unless they are purely vegan with no additives of any kind), they are terrible.

Look, nobody is claiming a Snickers bar to be healthy just because it has nuts in it, so why are you thinking that a granola bar, or a fruit yogurt is? They pretend to be and claim they contain less sugar than “the most sugary thing they could find” for comparison. “My giant snarling angry dog is less dangerous than a handgun,” well of course it is, but there are levels.

Ooh, beetroot, carrot, and parsnip chips! No! They've been deep fried for goodness sake. Okay, baked then? Better, but look at all that salt, and those preservatives. Not so healthy now are they?

Vitamins And Minerals Are Good For You

Yep, they are, but not if you consume a lot. There is a point that the body will say, “that's enough thanks, no more” and at that point they just hang around waiting to be expelled. A, D, E, and K all dissolve in fat, meaning they get trapped and will continue to build up if you carry on ingesting them.

Think of them like salt and sugar: the body needs these things (and often food does too, to make it taste better), but too much has a detrimental effect. D is great for bones, but too much draws out calcium, which can become kidney stones.

Minerals like iron, zinc, and magnesium are the same, and all have different effects upon your body when there's too much in there. Again, unless an actual Doctor instructs you to, don't overload.

Too much of anything is bad for you.

Don't Swim Just After Eating, You'll Drown

You have definitely heard this one before, so say it with me… Cramps.

Makes sense really, blood travels to your gut to aid digestion but if you're moving about, the blood is required to power muscles, ergo…

Trouble is there's zero evidence for this. Sure, a heavy meal can make you feel uncomfortable, and exercising is probably the last thing on your mind, but you'll be fine, and in fact light exercise is actually more beneficial than loosening your buckle and sitting back and not moving at all.

But are you a high-powered athlete? Going for a 100m sprint, or a 400lb squat thrust are you? Obviously don't eat heavy foods before exercising like that, but you are just you, and as such any discomfort you have will be the same if you go for a walk, a gentle swim or reach for the remote as you collapse on the sofa, but it will help with digestion (no, not including the sofa here).

Natural Means Healthy

Another one of those “glove fits all” claims, that simply isn't true, and in some cases has the potential to kill you.

We have already said moderation, and too much of anything is bad (carrots will actually turn you orange if you consume too many over a period of time), but with some natural foodstuffs that “too much” isn't very much at all.

Nutmeg: we use a pinch here, a pinch there for eggnog, cookies, bechamel sauce, porridge, but it is only a pinch. Even a teaspoon of the stuff is very very bad for you, as it acts as a psychoactive neurotoxin and can cause hallucinations, leaving you with a hangover from hell for at least 24 hours. And that's just a teaspoon. More than that can lead to severe organ failure.

Brazil Nuts: healthy and packing lots of essential minerals, especially selenium. Trouble is just one typical Brazil nut can contain 175% of your RDA of selenium (over the threshold but below warning levels), however eating 6–8 a day, every day, can cause major problems; a metallic taste in the mouth, garlic-smelling breath, severe hair loss, finger and toenails falling off, peripheral neuropathy (nerve pain and numbness), and in extreme cases, kidney or heart failure.

Eating an entire bag in one go, well, you're just asking for a trip to the ER.

Star Fruit: this one is really only for those with compromised kidneys. A crisp, juicy, and sweet tasty fruit it may be, but it contains caramboxin, a neurotoxin, and damaged kidneys won't be able to handle it. Expect vomiting, progressing rapidly to muscle twitches, then mental confusion, followed by epileptic seizures, coma, and death.

Yay, tropical fruit!

Finally, Alcohol Truths

Guaranteed you will likely have heard of all of these, and perhaps know of others not included here. It's also a guarantee that they are “Truths” just as an excuse to drink more.

Beer before liquor: If you do it the other way around you will feel worse, or so they say. So why not start your à la carte dining experience with the dessert — no, stop it with those thoughts right now.

The truth is it's still a lot of alcohol and as such won't matter a jot the order. What some of you are thinking is that some drinks affect you faster or more so than others, but that has to do with the manufacturing process and the ingredients upon your body and nothing else.

Same as mixing drinks: a tequila, a whisky, a rum, and a brandy in one glass is no different to four individual shots (but combining will definitely taste worse), it's just that you are downing them all at the same time instead of over a longer period.

Coffee sobers you up: in fact it isn't just coffee, as this miracle cure list is quite long comprising of other drinks and food, but they are all essentially the same. Coffee doesn't sober you up any more than water does. All that happens is that you are now a drunk person with a hangover and lots of caffeine in them, meaning lots of energy but absolutely no coordination or possessing a logical mindset.

Hair of the dog: naturally we have to include this, and it is a weird one. Just awoke and feel like crap from the previous night? Despite “I am never ever drinking again” reaching for a beer or a glass will genuinely make you feel a little better, but it isn't sobering you up, it is causing your body to concentrate upon this new alcohol as opposed to the stuff that's already there.

You're still drunk, but that hangover has only been paused and numbed long enough for you to be able to think straight and perhaps get some food down you and possibly a couple of painkillers (aspirin, not paracetamol based).

What does help, apart from not over-drinking in the first place? Ginger steeped in hot water (soothes the digestive tract), antacids, an egg breakfast (L-cysteine causes your body to create glutathione, which in turn helps your liver break down acetaldehyde, a by-product of excess alcohol — this is where a full English breakfast comes into those “truths”), or an electrolyte drink or fruit juice.

BUT none of these things will cure you at all, they'll simply help you feel a little better, that's all. Just go back to bed and allow time to take its course; that is the only way.

So there we have just a few of those truths that are actually anything but. As King Henry VIII once famously said, “Don't believe everything you read on the internet,” and I read that online too.

Half the arguments in a kitchen are about storage. Bread in the fridge, tomatoes in the fridge, eggs on the worktop, olive oil beside the hob because it is convenient. Almost all of it is habit inherited from somebody else's kitchen, and a fair amount of it is quietly ruining the food.

So we built you a checker.

Where Does It Actually Go? covers twenty-nine of the things most likely to be in your kitchen this afternoon — where each one belongs, and the reason behind it. Some of the answers will surprise you. Bread stales faster in a fridge than on a worktop. Maple syrup moulds where honey never will. Potatoes turn sweet and brown badly if they are kept cold.

Search it by name, or tick off the items that apply to your own kitchen and it will remember them for next time. Everything you save stays in your own browser, on your own device. It reaches nobody, including us.

Open the food storage checker →

It lives on its own page so you can keep it open while you unpack the shopping, and bookmark it without hunting through the issue.

Air travel is stressful at the best of times, and considerably worse when the board flips to Cancelled and three hundred people turn towards the same desk. What most passengers do at that point is join the queue and accept whatever is offered. What the well-informed passenger does is work out what she is actually owed first.

Here is how to do that.

Start with where you flew, not who you flew with

Your rights follow the route and the airline's home country rather than your own nationality. Three frameworks cover most journeys taken by DWC readers.

The UK. UK261 is the retained version of the old EU rules and applies to flights departing a UK airport on any airline, and to flights arriving in the UK on a UK or EU carrier. Compensation runs from £220 to £520 depending on distance and the length of the delay, and it sits on top of any refund. The Civil Aviation Authority enforces it.

The European Union. Regulation 261/2004 covers flights departing any EU airport on any airline, and flights arriving in the EU on an EU carrier. Compensation runs from €250 to €600, again by distance, for delays over three hours at your final destination, for cancellations at short notice, and for denied boarding due to overbooking.

The United States. The Department of Transportation requires airlines to refund passengers automatically, without a request, when a flight is cancelled or significantly changed and the passenger declines the alternative offered. American rules give strong refund rights and, unlike the UK and EU, no fixed compensation for delay.

Elsewhere, check the aviation regulator in the departure country. Canada, Brazil, Turkey and India all operate passenger rights schemes of their own.

The words that decide everything: extraordinary circumstances

This is the part airlines rely on you not knowing. Under both UK and EU rules, compensation is payable when the disruption was within the airline's control. Where it was outside their control — described in the regulation as extraordinary circumstances — you keep your right to a refund or rerouting, and you lose the right to compensation.

Weather, air traffic control strikes, security alerts and political instability generally count as extraordinary. Technical faults with the aircraft generally do not, because maintenance is the airline's business. Crew sickness and crew shortages generally do not. Strikes by the airline's own staff generally do not.

Airlines have been known to describe a broken part as an extraordinary circumstance. Ask, in writing, for the specific reason. Then check it against that list.

Duty of care applies immediately, whatever the cause

Separate from compensation, and often forgotten: once your delay passes the threshold for your flight distance, the airline owes you food and drink, two communications, and hotel accommodation with transfers if you are kept overnight. This applies even in extraordinary circumstances.

If nothing is offered, buy what you reasonably need and keep every receipt. Reasonable means a meal and a bed, rather than a tasting menu and a suite.

Ask the airline first, and ask precisely

Claims go to the airline before they go anywhere else. Use the claim form on their website where one exists, because it routes into the system built to process it.

Say what you want in plain terms. If you want a cash refund, write the words cash refund, because a request that simply says refund is frequently answered with a voucher. State the compensation figure you believe applies and the regulation you are relying on. Attach the receipts.

Document as you go

Photograph the departure board showing the delay. Keep your boarding passes, booking reference and every receipt. Save the airline's own notification emails and texts, which carry timestamps and sometimes carry the reason for the disruption in writing.

Note the time the aircraft doors actually opened at your destination. Compensation thresholds are measured on arrival, not on departure, and a flight that left four hours late but made up time in the air may fall below the line.

Watch the clock

Time limits are set nationally rather than by the regulation itself, and they vary widely: six years in England and Wales, five in Scotland, three in Germany, and as little as one year in some member states. Assume the shortest applicable and claim promptly.

Escalate without apology

If the airline refuses or offers less than the regulation provides, take it further.

In the UK, complain to the airline's alternative dispute resolution scheme, or to the Civil Aviation Authority where the airline belongs to no scheme. In the EU, complain to the National Enforcement Body in the country where the disruption occurred. In the United States, complain to the Department of Transportation, which publishes its complaint data.

Claims companies will do this for you and keep a commission, typically a quarter to a third of the award. The paperwork is the same paperwork. Try it yourself first.

On vouchers and points

Airlines frequently offer a voucher worth more than the cash. The value of a voucher depends entirely on whether you fly that airline again before it expires, and the value of cash does not depend on anything. If you fly with them twice a year, the voucher may genuinely be worth more. If this was your one big trip, take the money.

Check your travel insurance as well, and any policy attached to your credit card. Cover for delay and cancellation is common and frequently unclaimed. Where the airline pays out, insurers deduct that from the settlement, so claim from the airline first.

None of this makes an airport at midnight any more pleasant. It does mean you leave it with what you are owed.

Every week somebody posts a job advert that reads, in essence: wanted, one person, to handle our marketing, run our sales, and get us in the press. Must be a self-starter. Salary competitive.

Every week that person is hired, works extremely hard, and is let go nine months later for underperforming.

So let us do this properly, at the level of a five-year-old, because the five-year-old version is the one that actually clarifies it.

You have a lemonade stand

You are five. You have a table at the end of the drive, a jug, and a sign your mother helped you write.

Marketing is making people want lemonade before they get to your table. It is where you put the stand, what the sign says, whether there is a picture of a lemon on it, what you charge, whether you offer a second cup for half price. It is deciding to set up at the end of the road on a hot Saturday rather than a wet Tuesday. Marketing is everything you do to make a thirsty person walk toward you already intending to buy.

Sales is the eleven seconds when somebody stops at the table. It is looking up, saying hello, answering the question about whether it is fizzy, noticing that the man has two children with him and asking if they would like one too. Sales is the conversation that turns an interested person into fifty pence in a jam jar.

Public relations is the local paper photographing your stand, and the woman three doors down telling her friends that your lemonade is the good stuff. It is also — and this is the part everyone forgets — what happens when somebody says on the village Facebook group that your lemonade made their child sick. PR is your reputation, held in other people's mouths, on days that are good and days that are not.

That is the whole of it. Marketing makes them want it. Sales takes the money. PR decides what everyone says about you when you are not in the room.

Why the one-person job advert fails

Because those three jobs run on different clocks.

Sales is measured today. Did she close the deal, yes or no. The feedback arrives within hours and the target is a number on a spreadsheet.

Marketing is measured in quarters. You change the offer, you change where you show up, and you find out in three months whether more of the right people came. There is no daily score.

PR is measured in years, and frequently in things that failed to happen. A crisis that stayed small. A journalist who called you first. A reputation that meant a bad review changed nothing. It is close to impossible to point at a Tuesday and say that was the PR working.

Now put all three on one desk and watch what happens. The urgent always eats the important. Sales has a number due on Friday, so sales wins. Marketing gets whatever is left, which is usually a rushed post. PR gets nothing at all until something goes wrong, at which point the person is expected to become a crisis specialist by lunchtime.

You did not hire someone who underperformed. You hired someone and then structured their week so that two-thirds of the job was impossible.

They also need different people

The temperament rarely overlaps.

Sales people are comfortable being told no repeatedly and asking again anyway. They like the score. They are energised by the conversation and bored by the spreadsheet behind it.

Marketing people are pattern-watchers. They enjoy the slow work of testing a thing, being wrong, and adjusting. Many of them find the direct ask uncomfortable, which is precisely why they are good at building the demand that removes the need for one.

PR people are relationship-holders with an instinct for how a sentence will be read by a stranger who dislikes you. They think in risk. They are the ones who say, quietly, that the wording of that announcement is going to cause a problem.

A person who is genuinely excellent at all three exists. She is expensive, she is running an agency, and she is not answering your advert.

What to do instead, when you cannot afford three people

Almost nobody reading this can hire three people, and that is fine, because the answer is sequencing rather than staffing.

Pick the one that is actually broken. If people arrive at your table and walk away without buying, that is a sales problem and no amount of press coverage fixes it. If nobody arrives at all, that is marketing. If people arrive already suspicious of you, that is PR.

Hire or learn for that one. Give it a fixed number of hours a week that nothing else is allowed to eat. Then, when it is working, move to the next.

And if you must write the all-rounder advert, at least be honest in it about which of the three you will actually be judging them on. It will save you nine months, and it will save her a great deal worse.

I don't remember when I stopped playing, not exactly.

I think that maybe this is because I don't feel like I ever really did.

I've always been someone who plays.

I'm the one who makes things lighter. Who turns small moments into something fun. Who dresses up with my kids, who laughs, who says hello to a car when it blinks its lights.

Play has always been a part of my life.

Or so I believed.

I remember the day I realised I had forgotten how to play.

I was at an event in Thailand.

This beautiful woman walked onto the stage with a hula hoop.

There was something about the way she moved — her smile, her posture, the flow and ease with which she moved inside that hoop.

At that moment, I remembered a song I used to sing when I was a kid. It was in Spanish, and it said something like this:

If you want to have fun, come with me and you will see, I have a game for you, I know that you will like it, soon you will learn it. If you move like me, spinning without stopping, will you start hooping…

At that moment, in my early 40s, I wondered why I had never actually played with a hula hoop.

Before the hula hoop, I thought I was someone who played.

But when the hoop came into my life, I met a kind of play I had lost.

At first, it wasn't so much fun. I must be honest.

The hoop kept falling, and my body reacted: a small tightening, a flicker of frustration, that familiar urge to get it right, to not look like I didn't know what I was doing.

It really surprised me.

How this circle became a mirror of old patterns.

How it showed me how I react to life, to change, to challenge.

Back then, in Thailand, I was still hurting from the end of my marriage. I knew it was over, but a part of me hadn't fully accepted it. I knew there were more and better things ahead, but I needed something to help me truly believe it.

I was missing something.

And somehow, the hula hoop made me see it: play, fun, and a deeper connection with my body.

My first hula hoop kept falling, over and over again. I picked it up, and at some point something shifted.

I found myself smiling more.

Feeling like a little girl playing, not worrying if the hoop would fall or not.

I stopped bracing for it to fall.

I trusted the process more.

My body softened.

The need to get it right was gone, because I just knew I was going to get there.

And then one moment, it happened …

it stayed.

The hoop kept spinning around my waist.

And every time I got into the hoop, something shifted again.

Not outside.

Inside.

When I decided to write a piece for DWC Magazine, I was excited at first … and then the doubt came in.

I knew I wanted to write about joy and play, but I wasn't sure how to do it in a way that also honours the opposite.

Because I have learned that I can still laugh, still make things fun, still be the one who brings lightness into a room.

And still …

be holding myself tighter than I realise.

I didn't stop playing.

But I did stop allowing myself to not know, to not get it right, to move without correcting myself.

Sometimes I imagine a different way of living.

A place where things fall and no one rushes to fix them.

Where we pick them up with a smile and keep going.

Where being and feeling matters more than doing it well.

Where not knowing is normal.

Where not getting it right is totally okay.

Where moving without correcting ourselves is … fun.

So that when the hula hoop falls (because it will), we don't rush.

And instead we notice when we tighten.

We breathe. We smile. We pick it up …

and we begin again.

Dear Keri,

My daughter is fourteen. Her dad and I separated when she was six, and he has been steady with her ever since — every other weekend, all the school holidays he can manage, and he has never once been late with anything.

For her birthday he bought her a MacBook. She had wanted one for two years. She saved for headphones to go with it. She cried when she opened it.

My husband, her stepdad, has been odd about her father from the beginning. Little comments. Sighing when his name comes up. Calling him “your real dad” in a voice. I have told myself for eight years that it is just insecurity and that he will grow out of it.

Two weeks ago they had an argument about the dishwasher, of all things. She said something about going to her dad's at the weekend. He picked up the laptop off the kitchen table and slammed it down, hard, twice. The screen is destroyed and the case is bent. It is beyond repair.

He says it was an accident and that he was putting it down heavily because he was frustrated. He has apologised to me. He has not apologised to her.

She has not come out of her room properly since. She keeps saying she should have kept it upstairs, that it is her fault for mentioning her dad.

Her father does not know yet. If I tell him, I think he will go to a solicitor, and I do not know how to hold this family together if that happens.

Am I overreacting? It is a laptop.

Holding it together, or trying to

Dear Holding It Together,

It is not a laptop, and I think you already know that, which is why you wrote to me.

Let us take the accident first, because it is the only part that is genuinely simple. A thing put down heavily once might be temper. A thing slammed down twice, hard enough to destroy it, immediately after a child mentions her father, is not an accident. It is a message, and it was received. Your daughter understood it perfectly. That is why she is in her room telling you it was her fault for saying his name out loud.

That is the sentence I would like you to sit with. A fourteen-year-old girl has concluded that mentioning her own father in her own kitchen is a thing she should have known better than to do.

She has learned it somewhere. She has been learning it for eight years of little comments and sighing and the voice he uses.

What was actually broken

He did not break a laptop. He broke the one object in that house that was unmistakably from her father, that she had waited two years for, and that she had made her own by saving up for the headphones. He broke it in front of her, and then he apologised to you rather than to her, which tells you exactly who he considers the injured party.

And here is the part I want to be very clear about. This was not aimed at her father, who was four miles away and knows nothing about it. It landed on a child. Whatever the intent, she is the one sitting in the wreckage of it, doing the thing children do, which is to make it her own fault so that the adults can carry on being safe to live with.

What to do this week

Tell your daughter it was not her fault. Directly, in those words, today. Not “he didn't mean it”, which asks her to manage his feelings. Say: what happened was wrong, you did nothing to cause it, and mentioning your dad is always allowed in this house. She needs to hear it from you, because you are the parent in the room and she is currently deciding what to believe about herself.

He replaces it. From his own money, at his own inconvenience, and he apologises to her without a “but” anywhere in the sentence. An apology to you is not an apology to her. If he will do neither, you have learned something important and considerably larger than the cost of a laptop.

Tell her father. I understand exactly why you would rather not, and I am telling you to do it anyway. He is her parent. His daughter's property has been destroyed in a house he sends her to, and he is entitled to know. Withholding it makes you the person managing the situation on the stepfather's behalf, which is a job you should not be doing. As for the solicitor: that is his decision to weigh, and it may go nowhere. Keeping a man in the dark about his own child in order to prevent an outcome you fear is not holding a family together. It is holding one man's behaviour in place.

Say the boundary out loud. Her father is permanent. He is not a phase, an insult, a threat, or a subject to be sighed at. That has to be stated plainly to your husband, once, without softening, and it has to be true regardless of how he receives it.

The thing I would want said to me

You asked whether you are overreacting. Consider the alternative question. In four years she will be eighteen and choosing which of you she rings when something goes wrong. She will remember, with total clarity, what happened after the laptop. Not the laptop. What happened next.

That is entirely in your hands and it is the reason this is worth the disruption it will cost you.

One last thing, said gently. Destroying property during an argument is recognised in law here as a form of abuse rather than a temper problem, and it very rarely appears on its own. If there are other things — the money, the phone, who you are allowed to see, how you find yourself editing what you say before you say it — then this letter is about something bigger, and you deserve to talk it through with somebody. In the UK the National Domestic Abuse Helpline is free, confidential and open around the clock on 0808 2000 247.

Whatever you decide about your marriage, decide the other thing first. She mentions her father whenever she likes.

Keri

Iva Hills completed her nursing diploma in Prague in 1963.

When she came to England, she was told it counted for nothing here. Her training, her examinations, the years of it — none of it would be recognised.

She took a job as a healthcare support worker at Boston General Hospital while she waited to hear whether that decision might be revisited. It was not. So she started again from the beginning, retraining in Boston and at Grantham and District Hospital, and after two years she passed every examination a second time.

She was given a nursing badge when she qualified. She has worn it on every shift since, and she still wears it now.

Watching a hospital come out of the ground

Pilgrim Hospital in Boston opened in February 1971, and Iva remembers the site before it existed: mud, and construction workers, and a building going up in stages. In her own description, they watched it grow out of the ground.

She has been part of it ever since. Ward sister. Then matron, for ten years. She officially retired in 2010, which turned out to mean very little, because she had been picking up additional shifts long before then and simply carried on picking them up afterwards.

She is now eighty, and she works as a nurse in the emergency department.

Of that department she has said that she feels surrounded by family in it — and that she is neither matron nor sister there, but Iva, present to support her colleagues and care for the patients. Fifty-five years in, having held the most senior nursing posts the place has to offer, she has chosen to describe herself by her first name and by what she is there to do.

The people she trained

Jamie Hodgkins is now associate director of nursing at the trust. Iva interviewed him in July 1999, when he was training and applying for work as a healthcare support worker, and gave him his first job at Pilgrim.

His description of her is worth reading carefully, because it is the assessment of someone who has watched her work for more than a quarter of a century. He describes her as the nurse everyone aspires to be, and the person they would want caring for their own family. He also notes, with what reads as some feeling, that the rest of them struggle to keep up with her.

That is a hospital's worth of nurses, hired, taught, supported and quietly held up over five decades, by a woman whose qualifications this country initially declined to acknowledge at all.

What she says about it

Asked for her secret, she offers something almost annoyingly simple: enjoy life, stay positive, keep moving. She reports feeling fit, healthy and full of energy, and sees no particular reason to stop.

She is straightforward about the job itself. There are good days and difficult ones. There are people who agree with you and people who do not. You take the best of it and you stay positive. She describes the reward as helping people, which she says without any apparent need to dress it up.

She has also seen the scale of it change. More patients, more illness, more complexity in what arrives through the doors than there was in 1971.

Why she is in this column

DWC 100 Women usually runs to inventors and firsts, women who patented something or broke a barrier with a date attached to it.

Iva Hills has no patent. What she has is fifty-five years of turning up, in a profession that is short-staffed and exhausting and full of people having the worst day of their lives, in a country that started by telling her she would have to prove herself twice.

She proved it twice. Then she stayed for half a century, and she is on shift this week.

There is a particular kind of woman whose contribution never fits on a plaque because it is distributed across forty thousand ordinary shifts and several thousand people who were frightened and then were not. This column exists for her as much as for the inventors.

Every summer, the same quiet misery: the top that shows everything, the arm held slightly away from the body all afternoon, the cardigan worn in thirty degrees because it is easier than the alternative.

Most of the advice around it is either useless or trying to sell you something. So here is the actual mechanism, and what follows from it.

Sweat does not smell

This is the piece almost everybody has wrong.

Fresh sweat is very close to odourless. The smell comes from bacteria that live on the skin, feeding on the proteins and fats in the sweat produced by the apocrine glands, which are concentrated in the underarm. The bacteria do the work; the smell is what they leave behind.

Which means there are two entirely separate problems here — wetness and smell — and two entirely separate products, which most people use interchangeably and then wonder why nothing works.

Antiperspirant reduces wetness. It contains aluminium salts, which form a temporary plug in the sweat duct. If your problem is a visible patch on a shirt, this is the product.

Deodorant reduces smell. It works on the bacteria or masks the result, and it does nothing whatever about how wet you are. If your problem is odour, this is the product.

Most supermarket cans are a combined antiperspirant-deodorant, which is fine. But a natural deodorant, however lovely, will not keep a shirt dry, and no amount of reapplying it will change that. It is the wrong tool.

The change that costs nothing

Apply antiperspirant at night, to completely dry skin.

This is the single most effective adjustment available and almost nobody does it. Antiperspirant needs several hours undisturbed to form the plug in the duct. Applied to damp skin straight out of a morning shower, most of it washes away before it has done anything, and you sweat it off within the hour.

Applied at bedtime, when you are cool and dry and about to lie still for eight hours, it works properly. It stays effective through the following day even after a morning shower. Do it every night for a week and then most nights.

If the underarm skin stings, you are applying to skin that is not fully dry, or you have shaved too recently. Leave a day between shaving and applying.

What else genuinely helps

Clinical-strength antiperspirant. Higher concentration of aluminium salts, sold over the counter, used at night in exactly the same way. A reasonable next step before anything medical.

Natural fibres. Cotton, linen and merino move moisture and let it evaporate. Polyester traps it against the skin and holds the bacteria there too, which is why synthetic tops develop a smell that survives washing.

Patterns and mid-tones. Grey and pale blue show damp most cruelly of any colour available. A print, a white or a dark shade shows very little.

Washing with an antibacterial soap in the evening, on the underarm only, reduces the population doing the smelling. Rinse thoroughly.

Underarm shields. Unfashionable and extremely effective. They stick into the garment and take the moisture before it reaches the fabric. Worth having for a wedding, an interview or a long flight.

Caffeine, alcohol and spice all increase sweating in some people, reliably and noticeably. Worth testing on yourself before a day you care about.

On aluminium

You will have seen claims linking aluminium in antiperspirant to breast cancer or to Alzheimer's disease. Major cancer research organisations and health regulators have reviewed this repeatedly and have not found evidence to support it.

If you prefer to avoid aluminium anyway, that is a perfectly reasonable personal choice. Simply know what you are choosing: a deodorant will handle the smell, and you will need shields or a change of top to handle the wet.

When it stops being cosmetic

There is a point at which this is a medical matter rather than a beauty one, and a great many women put up with it for years without knowing that.

Excessive sweating that soaks through clothing regularly, that interferes with your work or your social life, that happens without heat or exertion, or that wakes you at night, is worth a GP appointment. Sweating that has changed noticeably, that is one-sided, or that arrives alongside weight loss, fever or a racing heart should be seen sooner, since sweating can be a signal from the thyroid, from hormonal change, or from medication you are already taking.

Hyperhidrosis — sweating beyond what the body needs for temperature control — is a recognised condition with recognised treatments, including prescription-strength topicals, tablets, iontophoresis and botulinum toxin injections into the underarm, which are effective for several months at a time and are available on the NHS in some circumstances.

Nobody has to earn the right to ask about this. If you have been managing it privately for years, that is precisely the reason to raise it.

Joy is not the absence of struggle. It is what gives us the capacity to remain in relationship with it.

There is a quiet misconception that joy is something we arrive at, a lightness waiting on the other side of difficulty. But in my practice as a transpersonal art therapist, and through my years of study, I have come to understand something far more grounded.

J.O.Y — Just One Yes.

Not a leap. Not a transformation. Just one moment of turning toward life, because in the grit, in uncertainty, overwhelm, grief, or the fragile edge of becoming, we rarely have the capacity for everything. But we might have the capacity for one yes.

One breath.

One mark.

One moment of staying.

Joy as Relational Capacity

As Daniel Siegel describes, integration emerges through connection, when different parts of the self are allowed to come into relationship rather than being pushed away. Joy often begins here, not as a solution, but as a moment of integration. A small yes that allows something within us to belong.

This resonates with Carl Jung's understanding of individuation, the process of becoming who we already are. What we are becoming is not something we force. It is something we allow.

What we are becoming is not something we force. It is something we allow.

The Art of Responding

In creative practice, this becomes visible. Shaun McNiff speaks to the image as something alive, something that invites response rather than control. The work does not ask us to be perfect. It asks us to be in relationship.

Instead of asking what this should become, we begin to ask what is asking to emerge. Just One Yes becomes the response, one line, one colour, one gesture. And in that moment, something begins, not because it is resolved, but because it is in motion.

Slowing Down to See

Many people struggle to access this, not because they lack creativity, but because they move too quickly past what is already there. Shari Tishman reminds us that attention shapes experience. When we slow down enough to notice, we begin to see what was previously overlooked.

Joy often lives in these moments of pause, in the noticing before judgement, in the space where something authentic has time to emerge.

Joy often lives in these moments of pause, in the noticing before judgement.

Seeing Before Naming

There is a moment in development when a child learns the word bird, and something subtle shifts. Before language, the encounter is whole, movement, sound, colour, presence. After naming, it becomes known. Categorised. Contained.

As Jiddu Krishnamurti suggests, naming can interrupt direct perception. We begin to see not what is there, but what we expect to see. Perhaps this is where many of us lose contact with our own uniqueness, we learn who we are, we are named, shaped, defined, and slowly, we stop seeing ourselves clearly.

Creative and therapeutic practice invites a return. Not to becoming something new, but to gently shedding what has been layered over us. This is echoed in reflections attributed to Pablo Picasso, who spoke about the lifelong process of learning to see like a child again, not because children lack skill, but because they meet the world without assumption.

Permission to Be

What becomes clear in this work is that many people are not lacking creativity. They are lacking permission, permission to begin without certainty, to create without performance, to express what is uniquely theirs.

As Brené Brown highlights, vulnerability sits at the core of meaningful engagement with life. To create, to be seen, to say yes, all require a willingness to remain open. Just One Yes becomes a quiet form of permission.

Joy Holds the Weight

Here is the paradox: joy does not remove the weight of our experiences. It allows us to carry them differently, not through force or avoidance, but through what I often describe as soft strength. A regulated openness. A willingness to remain present.

As Cathy Malchiodi notes, creative processes support emotional integration beyond words. Through small, repeated acts of engagement, we build the capacity to stay with experience rather than move away from it. This work is not about fixing or diagnosing. It is about supporting safe, creative engagement with experience in ways that are relational, embodied, and process-led.

Joy becomes the thread that keeps us connected, to ourselves, to others, and to the unfolding process of life.

Joy becomes the thread that keeps us connected, to ourselves, to others, and to the unfolding process of life.

A Practice of Becoming

What if joy is not something we wait for, but something we practice? Not at the end of the process, but within it.

Just One Yes.

Not all at once.

Not perfectly.

But enough to stay.

Because sometimes, that single yes is what allows us to withstand the grit and continue becoming, by gently returning to what was always there.

The heptathlon is the event that best exposes what an athlete is actually made of, because it refuses to let anyone specialise.

Seven disciplines across two days. Hurdles, high jump, shot put and 200 metres on the first. Long jump, javelin and 800 metres on the second. The athlete who is brilliant at three of them and merely competent at four will lose to the one who is very good at all seven and has enough left in her legs on the second evening to run two laps of a track she is by then thoroughly sick of.

That two-lap race is where the medals are decided, and it is the cruellest thing in athletics. Everyone in the field knows the arithmetic. Everyone knows exactly how far ahead or behind they need to finish. And everyone is running it on the tank of a woman who has already competed six times.

Why Birmingham matters

From 10 to 16 August, Alexander Stadium hosts the European Athletics Championships. It is the first time in the competition's history that a British city has staged them, in a stadium renovated for the 2022 Commonwealth Games and holding eighteen thousand, extendable to forty.

For an Irish athlete this is very close to a home championship. It is a short flight, a familiar climate, and a crowd that will contain a substantial Irish contingent making a disproportionate amount of noise. In an event decided by a woman's capacity to keep going through a seventh discipline on tired legs, that is worth more than it sounds.

Kate O'Connor arrives as the silver medallist from the 2025 World Championships. She is twenty-five. On current form she is the most serious prospect Irish women's athletics has had in the multi-events for a generation.

Two names, in the whole history of it

Here is the context that explains the weight sitting on this fortnight.

Two Irish women have ever won a European athletics title: Sonia O'Sullivan and Ciara Mageean. Two, in the entire history of the championships.

That is not a reflection of Irish women's ability. It is a reflection of how narrow the funnel has been, how few athletes have been supported far enough into a senior career to arrive at a European final in any condition to win it, and how long the sport took to invest seriously in women's events at all. Every name that gets added to that list widens the funnel behind her.

Her father is her coach

Kate O'Connor is coached by her father, Michael.

There is a particular texture to a father-daughter coaching relationship in a sport this demanding. He sets the tactics for the closing 800 metres, in which she will have to make cold arithmetical decisions while a stadium screams at her to run. He is also the person who has driven her to training since she was a child, and who will be in the stand watching her do it.

Her grandmother died earlier this year. Athletes carry these things into stadiums. The heptathlon, more than any other event, gives them two full days in which to do it.

What to watch

The rest of the women's programme in Birmingham is worth the ticket on its own. Yaroslava Mahuchikh in the high jump remains the most watchable athlete in the sport. Georgia Hunter Bell carries realistic gold expectations for the host nation. Larissa Iapichino goes in the long jump for an Italian team that topped the medal table last time with eleven golds.

But the moment to look for is the second evening: seven events in, two laps to go, and a woman running a race she has no need to win, doing arithmetic at full speed on nothing at all.

The 2019 original was a small, mean, extremely well-made joke. A working-class bride marries into the fabulously wealthy Le Domas family, and discovers on her wedding night that the family tradition requires her to play hide and seek, and that losing means being ritually killed to honour a deal with the devil. Ninety-five minutes, one house, one very good idea, executed without a wasted scene.

The reason it worked is that it was funny about class before it was frightening about anything else. The Le Domas family were not competent murderers. They were rich people who had never had to be good at anything, blundering around their own mansion with crossbows they could not use, having a conversation about whether any of this was strictly necessary. Grace, played by Samara Weaving, was the only person in the building with any practical skills, because she was the only one who had ever needed them.

The sequel arrived in cinemas on 20 March, directed again by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, written again by Guy Busick and R. Christopher Murphy. It picks up moments after the first film ends.

The expansion

Grace, still covered in the previous night, discovers that surviving the Le Domas was a qualifying round. There is a Council that controls the world, there is a High Seat at the top of it, and there are four rival families hunting her for the throne. She is joined by her estranged sister Faith, played by Kathryn Newton, and she now has to keep them both alive.

Around them: Sarah Michelle Gellar as Ursula Danforth, Shawn Hatosy as Titus, and David Cronenberg — yes, that David Cronenberg — as Mr Danforth. Elijah Wood, Néstor Carbonell, Kevin Durand and Olivia Cheng fill out the rest.

On paper that is a wonderful cast having a wonderful time. In practice it is the problem.

What gets lost

The first film's satire was aimed at one specific thing: inherited wealth, and the appalling behaviour of people who have never had to justify their own comfort. Grace was the audience. We were in the house with her, and the house had a floor plan we understood by the twenty-minute mark.

Widen that to four families, a Council, a High Seat and a mythology, and the target dissolves. You cannot satirise a global shadow government in the way you can satirise your mother-in-law. The stakes go up and the specificity goes down, which in a film like this is the wrong trade entirely. There is a great deal of blood, most of it done practically and done well, and very little of it lands, because we are no longer frightened for anybody in particular.

It is also considerably less funny, and the first film's comedy was doing more structural work than it was given credit for.

Weaving

None of which is her fault.

Samara Weaving is exactly as good here as she was in 2019 — possibly better, since Grace now carries the previous film with her, and Weaving plays her as somebody permanently one beat away from coming apart who has simply decided not to. There is one moment late on where Grace makes a choice nobody watching expects her to make, and for about ninety seconds the film becomes genuinely interesting about what surviving something has cost her.

Then it retreats and gives us the ending we already had.

Kathryn Newton is good value as Faith, and the sisters' scenes are the closest the sequel gets to the intimacy of the original. Gellar, given a role that is mostly imperious posture, does a great deal with a little.

Worth your evening?

Yes, with the expectations adjusted. It is 108 minutes, it moves, the practical effects team have clearly enjoyed themselves enormously, and Weaving remains one of the best things in modern horror. Go for her.

Simply do not expect the thing that made you recommend the first one to everybody you know. That film knew exactly what it was about. This one has a world instead of a point.

Now on digital and on disc, if you missed the cinema run.

Most leadership podcasts are aimed at women trying to get somewhere. This one is aimed at women who are already there, already trusted, already relied upon, and finding that nobody prepared them for what that costs.

Resonance Rising is a podcast for women who lead from depth, carry responsibility, and feel the quiet knowing that something is unfolding.

Hosted by leadership mentor and speaker Jess Garay, the show explores leadership as a lived, embodied experience — one shaped by presence, integrity, and inner authority.

What it actually examines

Through lived experience, Human Design, and honest reflection, Resonance Rising examines how responsibility can quietly overtake identity, why burnout is often a loss of aliveness rather than capacity, what leadership asks of us in seasons of grief, change, and complexity, and how clarity forms through choice, presence, and embodiment.

That second one is worth pausing on, because it is the show's most useful reframe. Burnout is usually diagnosed as a capacity problem — too much work, not enough recovery — and treated with rest. Garay's position is that a woman can be well rested and still burnt out, because what has actually gone is aliveness rather than energy. It explains why the sabbatical so often fails to fix it.

Who it is for

Each episode invites a return to authorship over your life and work, to leadership that moves in rhythm with who you are becoming, and to a deeper relationship with truth, values, and responsibility.

These are conversations for women who are trusted, relied on, and ready to lead from within. Women navigating expansion, refinement, or transition. Women who know leadership doesn't disappear in hard seasons, it deepens.

That last line is the one doing the work. The standard advice to a woman in a difficult season is to step back until she feels more herself, which quietly assumes that leadership is a thing performed from a position of strength and suspended when strength is unavailable. Garay's premise runs the other way. The season of grief or upheaval is not an interruption to the leading; it is where the leading actually gets tested and, if she stays honest through it, where it grows.

This is not a podcast about fixing yourself. It is a space for remembering what you already know, listening to what is alive, and allowing leadership to evolve as you do.

If you're ready to move without abandoning yourself, to choose with integrity even when clarity feels incomplete, and to lead in a way that holds both humanity and power — welcome to Resonance Rising.