Being Well Being

02/09/2026

When I rise up
let me rise up joyful
like a bird

When I fall
let me fall without regret
like a leaf

~ Wendell Berry, The Mad Farmer Poems; illustration by Jackie Morris. See less

23/08/2026

Kisa Gotami and the Mustard Seeds 🌿
There is a very special story from the time of the historical Buddha, about grief and the understanding of death and life. I have often reflected on it - instead of asking "Why me?" when something horrid happens it helps me flip to "Why not me?". But you will also see there is a lot more to this story, a great wisdom it reveals.

Kisa Gotami was a young woman in India around 2500 years ago. She had a young son, her only child, and she loved him very much. As a woman in India, her son was also what gave her status and would secure her long-term future. One day Kisa's son died very suddenly. She was overwhelmed by unbearable grief; she could not accept that her child was gone. She carried the little body from house to house, asking whether anyone could give her medicine that would help him. Eventually, someone directed her to the Buddha, or The Awakened One (Buddha simply means awake, as in awake from the dream like illusions of ordinary life).

The Buddha listened to her and told her that he could help, but first she needed to bring him a handful of mustard seeds from a household that had never experienced death. Kisa was very excited to have a confident offer of help and knew that every household kept mustard seeds so she set off in a hurry, going from door to door.
People were willing to give her mustard seeds, and every household did have, but when she asked whether anyone in the household had died, the answer was always yes. Every home had seen death.

Gradually, Kisa understood what the Buddha had been showing her. Death was an inseparable part of the human experience. Her grief and her loss was part of Life.
She returned to the Buddha without the mustard seeds.

“Good woman,” said the Buddha, “when I said that I had some medicine for you, you may have thought I was promising to cure your son. But indeed, the medicine was not for your son, but for you. I can see that the medicine has done its work, and that you now see clearly that birth and death cannot be avoided, and are part of the reality of existence for each and every person, and for all living things.”
Then the Buddha recited this verse:
“People are heavily burdened by so many cares;
they are driven by concerns about children, wealth, possessions and reputation.
However much they may be attached to life, death comes to all,
sweeping everything away just as a great flood sweeps away a sleeping village.”

We cannot prevent death. We cannot bargain with it. And we cannot protect those we love from loss. We can become more willing to speak about death, and to prepare for it. We can also, if we dare, focus beyond that which dies and find a profound freedom in our living.

After this experience, Kisa Gotami joined Buddha’s community and was ordained as a nun. Many years later she was observing the flickering of the flame of an oil lamp in her monastic dwelling one evening, noticing how easily it could be blown out by the slightest draught, and had a deep insight into the fragile and impermanent nature of life. The Buddha came to her and recited this verse, comparing a life of confusion and ignorance to a life of understanding:

“A person who has not understood the nature of reality
May live for a hundred years,
But far more valuable is just a single day of life
For a person who has understood the nature of reality.”

Kisa Gotami took the Buddha’s teaching to heart and replied, “Thank you Lord Buddha for your great compassion. Better one day of understanding than a hundred years of ignorance.”

11/08/2026

The awareness that my body, and my relationship with the world are not permanent came with a shock first in 2002. It was a conversation with a doctor that brought the sudden realisation that these could be lost at any time.

My life was not in danger, but my eyes were. I had battled with difficulties in my eyes for 6 months and by then, with repeated misdiagnosis, the problem had compounded. I now knew that I might have permanent eye damage in the one eye, and that this could spread to the other eye. It might seem small, and in light of the other things that followed it still was small, but it was utterly shocking.

I was 33 years old, a very visual person, with a Fine Art background and a career as an Art Director. I really needed my eyes to work and to earn a living, but beyond that they were the primary way I related to the world. Years of art school had taught me to really see the subtlety of each colour and the blend of colours making up a colour - but it wasn't technical, I felt colours. The play of colours moved me so deeply. Seeing the world moved me and I had travelled and seen so much.

With the one eye covered I went as quickly as I could from Moorfields Eye Hospital to the nearest big park, Regent Park; I was living in London at the time. I needed to be in a nature space to take this in.

As I walked a very pragmatic question arose within me:
"What if I do have a limited time of sight left?
It would be like a budget I could choose to spend
- how would I choose to budget and spend the sight I have left?"

Immediately what came to me was the colour of the sky after a summer thunderstorm (I grew up in Durban), that gorgeous golden light that makes everything glow! And then in my mind's eye immediately a succession of people's faces and I knew I wanted to look deep into the eyes of many different people, to see what it truly is to be human.

There was no part of me that wanted to use my eye's budget to look at a computer screen. A radical refocussing had begun.

I wonder if you have had a time of realising something similar, that we have limited time - with our bodies, with our lives and with our loved ones. What woke you up to this? What has the refocussing in your life entailed? Please share - you may inspire and encourage others.

Photo, my own: Water's Edge Beach, Simon's Town April 2024

06/08/2026

28/07/2026

Your record for getting through horrible days is 100%
You can get through this one too.💪
Remind yourself! 🩷

21/08/2025

Children and adults are the same in this regard; shame disconnects us from ourself and from the other, because it is simply too painful. This brings a shutting down, even if a very subtle one.

To make a child or person do anything, is a dominating forceful approach, where we make ourselves bigger and the other smaller.

With safety and support in vulnerability there can be true connection, to self and to others. This brings cooperation. Actions then come from a place of honouring connection, honouring self and honouring other. This brings a very different kind of relationship. It is more joyful.

We do not need to be motivated by pain.

08/05/2025

Love this. ❤

Having grown up knowing these sentences to end so differently, and having met so many clients in their old wounds, I know that hearing these sentences genuinely said differently really helps to help repattern our inner realms.

Huge respect to all who work to heal their imprints as they meet their children. The world does not need more fear and domination - our society does need more openness and support and it's beautiful to witness.

10/11/2024

In early 2002 I walked through a park in London in shock, having realised the seriousness of some of the illness I was facing and that I might lose sight in both eyes. With one eye patched already for months, I walked into the idea that I had a budget to spend my vision on. One of the two things that came to me was that I wished to gaze deeply into people's eyes, to understand more of what it is to be human.

This has indeed unfolded, and now, with more than 20 years actually working as a healer and therapist, this work has never got boring.

It is a deep privilege to meet people in their vulnerablity, whether that it depression, cardiac arrhythmia, 3rd degree burns, downs syndrome, parenting challenges and overwhelm, dementia, spinal injury, childhood trauma, relationships, or whatever presents. I literally have worked with birth, death and almost everything inbetween and I am humbled and continually realising how much more to learn and understand.

So much of the understanding comes in meeting people simply where they are, and finding the courage to meet myself where I am.

19/06/2024

“The only reason we don't open our hearts and minds to other people is that they trigger confusion in us that we don't feel brave enough or sane enough to deal with. To the degree that we look clearly and compassionately at ourselves, we feel confident and fearless about looking into someone else's eyes. ”
― Pema Chödrön

I deeply love holding a safe space for people to develop capacity to be with ourselves with more compassion, even and especially in our deepest overwhelm and confusion. In so doing, I see again and again how much less fear arises is in looking into another's eyes. The more tolerarance we have for our own pain, fear and discomfort, the more we can allow a different kind of connection with our selves and with all our relations.

I consult with people in person in the Cape South Peninsula, and also offer global online consultations. Whatsapp now to schedule an appointment if this resonates.

15/06/2024

Having studied Aware Parenting, the body of work that Aletha went on to create, over 4 years, and practiced it in numerous wonderful ways, I am so glad she did this! Even more the inspiration

The first edition of The Aware Baby was published forty years ago today (June 15, 1984). This is a picture of me displaying it at a local book fair. I had typed the manuscript with an electric typewriter and mailed it to the major U.S. publishers, all of whom rejected it. One publisher said that the advice was too new and unusual. Another said that there was nothing new in it!

So, I decided to publish it myself. I bought a book on how to self-publish, ordered 5,000 copies, and stored them in my garage. I had no idea if anybody would buy them. (This was before Amazon and the Internet.) I am delighted that I sold all of them (and many more), and I published a revised edition in 2001. The Aware Baby has now been translated into 13 languages.

I am grateful to all the people who have supported me over the years and who have inspired me to keep writing books.