Read this on galpod.com. I’ve been experiencing recently another hit of heightened anxiety. The kiddos went back to school, and today they started walking to school on their own. They are walking together, and it’s a 10-minute walk, and my son has done it through much of last year, and most of the way is packed with other students and their parents. Still, anxiety was high this morning until the awaited text message arrived. But it’s not just that, of course. On top of the pa

Read this on galpod.com. I've been thinking a lot about self-love today. This morning, Andy, over at the Headspace meditation, talked about how self-love and loving others are essentially the same quality. It's just that for most of us, one is more natural than the other. And I thought to myself that I could never view myself in the same way I love my partner or my children. Then, the daily journal prompt was to write a love note to yourself from the point of view of someone

Read this on galpod.com. So, last week we had a family trip to the Lake District. Particularly, Ullswater lake, the second largest lake in the UK. If you've been following for a while, you'll know that this is our third annual family summer trip. Two years ago we went to Sweden and Norway, and last summer we travelled to Thailand. This year, because we knew we'd have a puppy in our household, we booked a room in a hotel called "Another Place", right on the shore of Ullswater

Read this on galpod.com. My Love, How you've grown this last year. Even physically, which is a rarity. It's been an interesting year. The last few months, particularly. It seems that overnight we switched from child to teenager. Talking to your friends online has a lot to do with our feeling that you're a teenager. And the dramas that ensue are real: arguments over every possible little thing (like who causes the most arguments), tears, anger, and regrets. You've given me a l

Read this on galpod.com. It's hard to write about creativity as if nothing is happening. Between the actual pandemic we still have to deal with, and the pandemic racism in the US, to which we all look to as the leader of the Western world (albeit with dwindling conviction), it feels callous to think about anything else. But I have no new perspective about Black Lives Matter (because it's friggin 2020 and it's about time we talked about racism), so if you do want to read some

Read this on galpod.com. Shakespeare wrote King Lear while in quarantine. Or at least, that's what the memes on the internet will tell you. On social media, all people are baking, dieting, exercising, writing, or being otherwise super-productive. Now, I've been actually quite productive in the second half of the lockdown (so far). And I get it, truly, that we want to brag about how we're keeping calm and carrying on. But let's pause for a minute to talk about productivity. Ge

Read this on galpod.com. One of my first memories is noodles. Not like the Chinese-take-out ones, more like pasta, but we used to put them in the soup. When I was in preschool, we lived in a city not far from my Dad's parents. My grandfather would pick me up from kindergarten, and I'd stay with them for the afternoon, while my parents were at work or university. My grandmother used to make noodles for Friday's chicken soup. She would make the dough, and then roll it out and c

Read this on galpod.com. My family on my mum's side consists of a lot of women. It has to do with the birth ratio, which is generally about three girls for every boy, at least in the generation prior to my kids'. It has to do also with the women in my family living to ridiculously old ages (my great grandmother was 105 when she passed away about seven years ago), whereas the men in my family die when they're in their 50s and 60s. Mind that usually the men are unrelated, so th

Read this on galpod.com. Ah, families. They have a way of messing us up, don't they? I feel like, on our latest visit to Israel, we moved from the "kids" tier to the "adults" tier. You know the kids' tier. It's the place where if you just show up you're the best. Nobody expects you to come to the cousin's wedding/grandma's dinner/third-cousin-twice-removed's funeral. And since nobody even expects you to show up, all you have to do is, well, show up. You're not responsible for

Read this on galpod.com. I'm writing this post on the plane on our way back home. That is, we're going back to London. It's odd to say we're going back home when we just visited home. Because no matter how much I hate the government, no matter how much I feel smothered by the density of in-your-face Israelis (and smog), no matter how much I feel weighed down by my growing responsibility to my family, Israel is still—and will always be—my childhood home. The place I grew up in

Read this on galpod.com. My son turned ten last Saturday but, seeing as it was half-term and a dear friend hauled my kids and me to the beach for four days with little connectivity and lots of pebbles to explore, I didn't get around to my yearly tradition before. So here goes. My Lovely, Ten is quite a significant birthday. As you reminded us repeatedly, you've turned from single- to double-digit. It's an opportunity to take stock and reflect on where your life is going. When

Read this on galpod.com. We topped up our annual adventure with a week of relaxing in one of Thailand's renown beaches. We did this following last year when we discovered that two weeks of straight-up travelling was nice, but a bit too much. We were hoping that the week in Koh Samui would give us time to relax and energise before heading back home. It did, although we think now that possibly a week (well, six days) is too much of not-doing-anything for some members of our fam

Read this on galpod.com. Bangkok gave us a taste of how different the Thai culture is from what we're used to. Chiang Mai did that, too, but also gave me a taste of how similar the lives are. Also, it provided the adventurous part of our trip. On our first day in Chiang Mai, we did a temple tour. We went to see the temple on the mountain (Doi Suthep) where we heard some Buddhist stories and got blessed by a monk. We visited an ancient temple where there are tunnels in the hil

Read this on galpod.com. So, our annual family vacation this year was to Thailand! We were super excited (and, in my case, super anxious) about it. We went the spoiled way, and had a local guide both in Bangkok and in Chiang Mai, followed by an extremely spoiled week in a Koh Samui beach resort. I'll start with a "travel log" about Bangkok, and will write up Chiang Mai and Koh Samui in following posts. Preparations So, travelling with kids always requires some preparations. I

Read this on galpod.com. Right. Tomorrow we're off on our annual family vacation, a tradition that is almost a year old. I've been thinking a lot about that, and I think what I want for those two weeks is to be completely offline. I generally think that my social media handling is not too bad. I don't check obsessively on most days, I have a reasonable handle on how much time I spend in social media apps, and I'm not a person who would post things that are inauthentic to get

Read this on galpod.com. My Love, How you've grown this last year. You kept dancing and even increased the number of hours. We noticed, together, that when you dance you have more energy, not less. So I say yes when you want to participate in competitions and performances, and when you find yet another dance class (as long as it makes sense for everyone). I feel like you are now expressing yourself through dance, as you compose and choreograph yourself (and your friends) into

Read this on galpod.com. Coming home has always been an ambivalent experience for me. It's my home, obviously. I know the house inside out, but I haven't lived here in over 20 years, so things have changed. So it's familiar and strange at the same time. When I would come home before, I used to feel like everything was smaller than I remembered. I no longer feel that way. I think it's because I've been visiting more often in the last couple of years. It feels surreal, being he

Read this on galpod.com. Well, it's been a hectic month in my standards. I've had a few random stuff happening such as volunteering workshops (both helping out and training), and my girlfriends taking me to a spa as a belated birthday treat (it was lovely). Also, there's this project that came into my life in January which I know I promised I'd write about, but I'm not entirely ready for that yet. Looking back at my March goals they have not been very ambitious, and I'm not s

Read this on galpod.com. I'm reviewing both books together because I got them together through Todd's very generous deal. I also read them one after the other on purpose because I knew they were related. That said, there's no requirement to read them together or even to read both of them. I would say that if you only read one, read The Unstoppable Creative, as it's a more comprehensive and detailed version of The Creative Curse, at least in my opinion. Here's the thing. I thi

Read this on galpod.com. The other night someone asked me why I call my partner "partner" rather than "husband". I've been asked a few times, but this time it was at the writers' group, and that caught me a bit off guard. It made me think about words, as usual. So this is partly a #WordTrail, really. The word husband comes from husbandry, which is the craft of tending herds of cattle and sheep. In the olden days, this made sense because a woman was her husband's property in m