The Year of Celebration

'Hidden Damage'  Ring the bells that still can ring Forget your perfect offering  There is a crack, a crack in everything  That's how the light gets in. - Leonard Cohen Kintsugi ("golden joinery" or "golden repair") is the Japanese art form of repairing broken pottery with gold. It treats the breakage and repair of the item as part of its history, its journey, its existence. Rather than hiding the damage, it brightly illuminates the repair, inviting the world to see its improved beauty. Just like pottery, we humans can crack, splinter, break, shatter. These knocks remain part of our being and, whilst a brave face might create a temporary disguise, nobody can hide forever. At least I couldn't. To heal, I found I had to expose. Kintsugi treats the crack as merely an event in the life of the object, not a reason to end it. Kintsugi knows that something is more beautiful for having been broken. As someone who considers them...

It's been a few weeks now - as it usually is between my blog posts and I know I must change. I will change. I have to now! Because I've been named in The Bermudian Magazine 's Best of Bermuda 2017 awards as Best Columnist/Blogger. And when you're neglecting your blog as much as I am, the guilt is accentuated when you win an award for something you're neglecting. Yes, I've been writing columns about Pepper Spray and Women's Rights , which I must admit is much more frightening than blogging about the inner workings of my troubled mind. I received very good advice once, "Don't look down." This applies equally to tightroping over a cliff as to when you've written an opinion piece and are terrified of the comments (read: trolls). I've been struggling with mania for months now, which is the opposite to my usual long bouts of depression. But I know the causes: it's lack of sleep, it's too much caffeine, it's lots of stress, ...

Power. After a year’s unintended break, I am drawn back to The Year of Celebration . Today, on my late father’s birthday, I pored through emails, articles, photographs, essays, newspaper clippings and videos. I feasted on his life. The portion I spent with him and the portion before me. I don’t reserve that purely for his birthday of course, but on March 4 th I always celebrate him, because often I just can’t. Sometimes, even now, the pain is too great and to remember him is to remember that he’s gone. And when I lost him, I did everything I could to lose myself. I learn ed many things from my dad. He was my greatest teacher, both in life and in death. His life story rivalled the best of any Shakespearean drama, but if I could condense it into one soundbite, his birthday sums it up: March Forth. It’s not just a date in the calendar, it’s a direction – to do something, to go somewhere. My grief and depression following his death was the launch pad for The Year of Celebration...

I'm reading a book by Matt Haig called  Reasons To Stay Alive . As you can rightly guess from the title, I'm looking for reasons. I'm not actually enjoying the book very much, but that could be because when I'm depressed enjoyment isn't easy to come by, or I just don't like it, but yet I plough on in the hope that it will provide the magic potion that convinces me. Every time I'm about to stop reading something from the next page catches my eye. The first was that he began to write of Graham Greene. Greene's book The End of The Affair  challenges and inspires me. The opening line is my favourite of all the books I've read: "A story has no beginning or end: arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead."  I highly recommend listening to the audiobook narrated by Colin Firth. There are times when I can't sleep or I'm too depressed to even read that an audiobook is akin t...

Today my first of my new opinion column was published by The Royal Gazette. I named it The Restless Native in respect of my nomadic nature that often competes with the love I have for my island home. The article "No Loose Change, Only Loose Heartstrings" can be found on the website here . I had considered calling it The Reckless Native in homage to my wayward ways, but thought those stories are best saved for the book!

At the end of 2010, after a year in the Premier's Office, I decided that I was out of politics. Not necessarily for good, but I was broken. On my first day in my position as Assistant to the Premier The Royal Gazette covered my appointment on page three. No one in that role before or since has had any article written about them. This is not a complaint, but an observation. It's the result of a family legacy of public service of which I am very proud. My father Julian was an MP, my aunt Judith recently retired as the head of the Civil Service, my grandfather Lynn committed his life to the police and my uncle Lynn Jr. spent his entire career in the prison service. But this legacy has not come without a price.  Julian the Orator Other than those members who attended the PLP delegates' conference in 2009, no one really knows that two months after my father's death and shortly after my 25th birthday I was nominated as Chairperson of the PLP. I didn't allow it t...

Christmas Day on Elbow Beach " Some things will never change. Some things will always be the same.... The glitter of sunlight on roughened water, the glory of the stars, the innocence of morning, the smell of the sea in harbors, the feathery blur and smoky buddings of young boughs, and something there that comes and goes and never can be captured, the thorn of spring, the sharp and tongueless cry - these things will always be the same. " Thomas Wolfe wrote these words in ' You Can't Go Home Again '. Well, apparently, I can go home and I have. It has been over a year since I travelled across the wide Sargasso Sea to this mid-Atlantic rock upon which I was born. The waters have changed as they are prone to do with the changing of the tides, the price of everything has increased and I have a new nephew who lights up my world. What hasn't changed is the familiarity of the faces that surround me, the slow pace of life, the inquisitive minds of the locals w...

Today I was exposed. In the most beautiful way possible. In revealing my inner darkness it has always been my intention to help remove the stigma of mental illness; to give a voice to those who cannot or will not speak for themselves. Those who are too ashamed and scared to even reach out for help. Because sometimes we need help and there's nothing wrong with asking for it. It is the solution to inevitable destruction. I wrote an article for the Bermuda Sun, which was the most revealing and vulnerable piece I've ever written. Even in this blog I have not plunged to the depths of truth regarding my mental state. I have always been too afraid, but I figured if I was going to have an impact, I needed to be as authentic as possible. How can I ask others to reach out for help and to admit to their own demons when I'm not prepared to do the same? Later on this afternoon I spoke to a group about my journey and those people shared back. To have so many people relate to me and t...

I woke up this morning in a foul mood. That turned into hysterical tears as I skyped with the lovely one and complained about my life. My worries revolved around my choices in life, that as much as I have maintained my integrity regarding my career dreams, I'm poor and nothing is really going on for me professionally. Now that I'm back in London I see all my friends from law school frequently and they're all in stable jobs, earning quite good money and I'm just struggling to stay afloat. I usually comfort myself by admitting that I would be miserable if I had taken that path, because it's just not for me, but sometimes all this integrity can be overwhelming.  Then a few hours after this panic that had emotionally exhausted me I received some fantastic news. The  Bermuda Arts Council has decided to provide me with a grant to help publish  The Little Cottage . I was ecstatic for the rest of the day and actually felt a certain level of validation concerning pur...