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18/10/2026

I didn’t share this footage at first because I didn’t think it was my place to, or that this is the platform to do so.

I also knew it would probably spark more of the exhausting discussions I’ve been having for the past few years. People telling me I don’t “understand the full picture” or accusing me of “siding with the wrong team.”

But seeing what keeps happening in the West Bank—and the gall of politicians who dismiss it as a mere fait divers—fills me with rage.

This footage was filmed in the Old City of Hebron, where Israeli settlers take part in weekly Saturday tours, escorted by Israeli soldiers. Palestinian shopkeepers are then forced to close their businesses, and residents’ movements are restricted to make way for the tours.

And this is only a fraction of what is happening in the occupied West Bank.

In Masafer Yatta, a collection of Palestinian communities south of Hebron, settler violence, intimidation and forced displacement have been extensively documented.

Yesterday, in Taybeh, elsewhere in the West Bank, Israeli settlers attacked a group that included French, Belgian and Polish diplomatic representatives. A French mayor was assaulted. A Belgian diplomatic vehicle was damaged.

I know that sharing this will probably invite more arguments about history, context and whose side I’m on. But surely, we should be able to agree on one thing: no amount of historical context, political allegiance or competing narratives should make us lose sight of the line between right and wrong.

And apologies for the shaky camera work. I was genuinely terrified while filming this.



I help people sound like themselves in English. Then I go to Arabic class and struggle to say what I had for breakfast.A...
26/09/2026

I help people sound like themselves in English. Then I go to Arabic class and struggle to say what I had for breakfast.

A useful reminder, on the European Day of Languages, that learning one takes courage. You have to risk sounding less funny, less clever, less you for a while.

I also volunteer as an English teacher with children whose access to education is far less certain than mine ever was. It’s work I care deeply about, and I’m raising money to keep doing it.

Which brings me to these T-shirts. “LANGUAGE IS MY LOVE LANGUAGE” has been a running theme in my life for some time. Now it’s something you can wear, too.

I’m selling them to help fund my volunteer teaching. If you’d like one, send me a message. ❤️





Until now, most of what I have shared about my time in Palestine has been about the children.About teaching English. Abo...
07/09/2026

Until now, most of what I have shared about my time in Palestine has been about the children.

About teaching English. About favourite days, football and ice cream. About backpacks and pencils, and the simplicity of wanting to learn.

I deliberately chose to focus on the positive.

But there was another side to what I experienced in the occupied West Bank, and pretending it wasn’t there would feel dishonest.

There was a settler parade through Hebron’s Old City, where Palestinian shopkeepers were made to close their shops. There was Umm al-Khair, where I stood alongside Palestinian residents and international activists—including our friend finnjoughin, whose subsequent detention and deportation affected me deeply.

There were checkpoints. Closed streets. Soldiers. Settlements. Stories much harder to carry home than photographs of smiling children.

And yet, I don’t want to come home cynical.

Partly because it isn’t in my nature. But also because underneath almost everything I do lies the same, perhaps slightly stubborn belief: that there is always common ground for us to explore.

These lines from Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish’s A State of Siege followed me throughout my journey:

“If you are not rain, my love,
be a tree.”

Perhaps we spend too much time obsessing over otherness: what makes rain not a tree; what makes us not them.

And that, clearly, isn’t working.

Perhaps we should spend more time in the unsettled part of our minds where things have no names. In Palestine, I felt at ease mirroring the children’s desire to be seen. And I wondered whether, for a moment, we were all poets—wedding words that seemed utterly unrelated until they found meaning in our imagination.

I went to Palestine to teach English.

And came home wilfully enamoured with all that makes us human.

I truly hope it catches on.

🕊️✨




31/08/2026

I just finished teaching an English class here in Hebron, during which the children were asked to read a short text aloud in front of their classmates.

The text was called My Dream.

The dream? To speak English with confidence. To understand it easily. To talk to new people.

The simplicity of it, right?

If this is the dream of a Palestinian child, I wonder: what is yours?




Next week, I’ll heading to Hebron, where I’ll be volunteering as an English teacher. If you’d like to support the work b...
17/08/2026

Next week, I’ll heading to Hebron, where I’ll be volunteering as an English teacher.

If you’d like to support the work being done on the ground, Chuffed.org (a crowdfunding platform supporting social justice and community-lead initiatives) makes it incredibly easy to contribute. ❤️

Link in bio.

🕊️🤍✨

Languages. You’ve gotta love ‘em. Right? 🥴Learning a language can bring up a surprising amount of emotion, as I know all...
28/07/2026

Languages. You’ve gotta love ‘em. Right? 🥴

Learning a language can bring up a surprising amount of emotion, as I know all too well from wrestling with Arabic. Some days, it feels like my brain is doing CrossFit.

Yesterday, a friend of mine made an interesting observation in response to a post I shared:

“𝘈𝘳𝘢𝘣𝘪𝘤 𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘤𝘦𝘴 𝘣𝘰𝘵𝘩 𝘣𝘳𝘢𝘪𝘯 𝘩𝘦𝘮𝘪𝘴𝘱𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦𝘴 𝘵𝘰 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘯𝘦𝘤𝘵 𝘥𝘦𝘦𝘱𝘭𝘺 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘮 𝘶𝘯𝘪𝘲𝘶𝘦 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘤𝘦𝘴𝘴𝘪𝘯𝙜 𝘱𝘢𝘵𝘩𝘸𝘢𝘺𝘴.”

What a fascinating way of looking at it.

The idea that taking on a language other than your own isn’t merely about words and grammar, but that it also somehow affects your brain, raises an interesting question:

𝗗𝗼𝗲𝘀 𝗹𝗮𝗻𝗴𝘂𝗮𝗴𝗲 𝗮𝗹𝘀𝗼 𝘀𝗵𝗮𝗽𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘄𝗮𝘆 𝘄𝗲 𝘀𝗲𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗹𝗱? 𝗗𝗼𝗲𝘀 𝗶𝘁 𝗮𝗳𝗳𝗲𝗰𝘁 𝗵𝗼𝘄 𝘄𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗸? 𝗔𝗻𝗱 𝗶𝗳 𝘀𝗼, 𝗵𝗼𝘄?

That’s certainly one of the reasons I’m so excited to start this journey with you.

Would you still like to join my online English Conversation Club?

I’d love to have you there. 🫶🏼

Just send me a DM, and I’ll happily show you the ropes. 😉

One of the smartest (and best!) things I did to improve my Arabic was commit to weekly Levantine Arabic conversation cla...
09/07/2026

One of the smartest (and best!) things I did to improve my Arabic was commit to weekly Levantine Arabic conversation classes.

As I (reeeeeeally!!) had to get over myself and simply start talking, it boosted my confidence. Because let’s be honest: learning a new language can be a bit messy in the beginning. 😅

The unexpected bonus? You move beyond grammar, straight to the heart of what language is really about: connecting with people who, just like you, think the stumbling is worth it.

𝗧𝗵𝗮𝘁’𝘀 𝘄𝗵𝘆 𝗜’𝗺 𝗼𝗽𝗲𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮 𝗳𝗲𝘄 𝘀𝗺𝗮𝗹𝗹 𝗼𝗻𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗲 𝗘𝗻𝗴𝗹𝗶𝘀𝗵 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗰𝗹𝗮𝘀𝘀𝗲𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝘀𝘂𝗺𝗺𝗲𝗿.

New language. New lens. New connections.

Interested in joining a small summer cohort? Great! DM me. 🌍





10/05/2026

Maybe we should try new wings
To escape the entanglement
Of our wounded souls.

🪶


10/04/2026

At ChangeNOW, I attended a panel with Nemonte Nenquimo and Chief Tapi Yawalapiti.

I expected to be in awe of her.
And I was.

But what stayed with me was someone else.

The woman sitting to her left.

Her interpreter.

—

Years ago—decades, actually—on my first trip to Mexico, I learned about La Malinche.

An Indigenous woman who stood between two worlds.
Interpreter. Mediator. Bridge.

Some call her a traitor.
Others, the mother of a nation.

I remember being fascinated by that paradox.
I was still a teenager, and it hadn’t yet occurred to me that a person could be both at once.

—

And sitting there at ChangeNOW, I felt that same kind of awe again.

Watching the interpreter navigate the space between languages so gracefully—
owning each word, almost like a mother owns a child,
knowing the real test is how you let it go into the world.

She translated everything with precision.
But also with feeling.

Not too much. Not too little.
Just enough to carry the weight of the message.

She was magnificent.

—

It made me realise something simple.

We often think impact belongs to those on stage.

But they rarely stand there alone.

Change also belongs to those who stand in between.
Who carry meaning.
Who make understanding possible.

The modern-day Malinches.

—

I tried to find her name, but couldn’t.

So if you know her—please tell her this:

She reminded me why this work matters.

Because we are nothing but words without meaning
if we stop relating to each other.

🌟

Thanks for putting together this amazing event

Had the most fantastic post-yoga conversation with Lynn Corten at this morning.We wandered from female entrepreneurshi...
19/02/2026

Had the most fantastic post-yoga conversation with Lynn Corten at this morning.

We wandered from female entrepreneurship straight into the woods of authenticity, two topics I find myself thinking about a lot these days.

When I started freelancing straight out of , no one talked about mindset or impact. I didn’t see myself as an “entrepreneur.” I just needed a VAT number to do good work and to be captain of my own ship: my time, my mind, my agenda.

Back then, self-employment wasn’t wrapped in the existential quilt it wears today.

Social media was fun. It offered a window into my little shop. Loving travel, books, and yoga wasn’t branding, it was a convenient way of reminding my clients that however ‘corporate’ they wanted me to be, they’d always find it hard to switch off my creative urge to make my efforts sound or feel ‘special’.

Then Covid happened.

Authenticity gradually became performative. The more we shared, the more it felt diluted.

So here’s where I stand now:

Do I embrace technology as a tool for connection? Or step back to protect my integrity? And if I do, do I risk missing a golden opportunity?

If my authentic self falls in a forest and no one is around to like it, does it even exist?

😱😱😱

Back to this morning.

By nine, Lynn and I agreed: debate is healthy. Authenticity is powerful, but fragile. And realness starts when two people meet somewhere between knowing who they are and being open to change.

So here’s to unexpected encounters and great conversation.

But most of all, here’s to keeping things real.

xoxo,
Galadriel ✨🌿



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