The Many Colours of Happiness

I never knew that presence would feel so much like fear. For years, I did online mindfulness courses, I read books, I practiced yoga and I meditated sporadically, counting each breath. In. Out. One . In. Out. Two . I tried to live my life as it unfolded, rather than in stomach-clenched anticipation of an unknown future. But the Ghosts of the Past and the Yet to Comes were still regular visitors, and I lost so many moments to what ifs and if onlys . Then you were born and I am now present as can be. There is no time to think about your future when you need me this second. And you always need me. Even when you are sleeping, I have to be beside you; your longing to hear my breath as deep as mine to hear yours, both of us only able to settle if the other is in arm’s reach. From the moment you arrived I haven’t been counting my breaths anymore; I’ve been living them. But it isn’t the freedom that I had imagined mindfulness to be. When I stare at your dark eyes, your button lips, the tiny c...

I stopped blogging years ago—it was so long ago that I didn’t even realise I actually still had a blog. I’d assumed that I’d deleted it at some point, or at least made it private. But no, here it is, in all of its glory. At first, I stopped blogging because my dad got cancer. That was, at the time, the hardest thing I had ever gone through. My words couldn’t do justice to the fear and uncertainty I was feeling, so I stopped using them at all. I began to get panic attacks; my world shrunk and I shrunk along with it.  Then, with therapy and medication, things got easier. They got far easier still when dad went into complete remission (he has now been cancer-free for eight years). I began writing again. Life was good again. And soon, life was so good there wasn’t any time for blogging. I was working full-time, studying full-time, and writing for a couple of different websites and magazines. I moved near the beach and began my PhD. I finally shook the anxiety that had plagued my life, ...