Recently I suffered two bereavements within three weeks of each other and the subtle differences between them surprised me. Much as other strong emotions have facets and flavours within them, as does grief. Which led me to explore grief based emotions as they arrived. A family bereavement evoked huge sadness, tears (many, many tears) the experience of deep loss, followed by waves of anger and frustration. Then a lack of focus and concentration, which is current as I write this. The other loss...

A woman approached me, her face tight and anxious, her eyes flickered to meet mine, I smiled and she smiled back. I smiled again and her face started to soften and relax. Her hands swept a stray hair behind her ear as I asked, "hello dear friend what can I do for you today?" her brow furrowed as she thought. "Can you listen while I talk to you? Can you be non-judgemental and say, 'hey that's fine' and when I am tough on myself can you still be my friend?" Mirror, mirror of course....

Self-Love, Self-Compassion, the foundation practice for all compassion. There is an idea bouncing around social media that you have to...