While the Italian sings and the Englishman claps and the doctor weeps for the dead, Mother Earth quietly rests her head for a moment. Like a lioness relieved from swatting flies on the African savanna, she finally has a chance to catch her breath. Oh, how she has missed these respites! Whereas the world usually awakens from its slumber this time of year, creatures so small they can hardly be called life sing off-tune lullabies to keep bigger creatures in a slumber for a little longer. Well, not all creatures, I think to myself, as I observe the birds in front of my window busyin ..read more

  We live in strange times, don’t we? Life is very uncertain at the moment, but for many also a lot slower and gentler. I know for me the extra few hours I have in a day - to read, write, bake and sleep - have been very welcome. In fact, as an introvert who gets easily overwhelmed by the pace of modern-day life, I have been blossoming a bit since the UK went into lockdown. One of the things that came back to me during lockdown was my love for blogging. I’m bubbling with ideas and spend hours agonising over concepts and sentences. Most of my blogs recently have been rather abstract and ph ..read more

  Do you ever feel like life is passing you by in a blip? Like all the good intentions you once had about a slow lifestyle have flown out the window? I certainly have! We all get carried away in daily stresses from time to time and it is easy to fall a routine of busyness. But it is important to know that you have a choice. Even when you are busy juggling the demands and pressures of life, you don’t ever have to succumb to a mindset of busyness. When you take time to check in with yourself regularly, you can become mindful of the ways you can slow down, nurture yourself a little better a ..read more

  It has been three and a half years since I’ve had my burnout. Now that I am (finally!) starting to feel like myself again I have been thinking a lot about the relationship I have with my body and the way it has changed since having my burnout. This is what I’ve learned so far.   The paradox of the burnout Every generation has its own disease. For my generation – the millennial – it is the burnout. Why do we snap in the prime of our lives? One thing that differentiates millennials from previous generations is the constant stream of information we are exposed to. My generation is in ..read more

 Sometimes I think to myself: do people find me annoying? Always the fanatic rants about the climate and environment. ‘There she is again with her climate drama', I hear my friends, family and acquaintances say in my head. I often try to restrain myself. That rarely works. Most of the time the urge to wake people up - to motivate them to get moving - dominates. To at least enter the conversation. To be honest, I don't do all of this because I care so much about melting glaciers, languishing coral reefs, endangered or dying species (don't get me wrong: I love nature an ..read more

  Why should we be in such a desperate haste to succeed and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.  ~ Henry Thoreau We live in a time where it seems increasingly important to showcase our achievements. When success dominates the narrative with which we give meaning to our lives, what does failing mean? What is the actual loss of losing? Failure as a stumbling block Nowadays loss is often seen as productive. This notion finds expression in Samuel Beckett ..read more

  For as long as I can remember, I have been obsessed with crackers. I love the dry, crispy texture and the different nutty flavour combinations. When I decided to start making more of my food from scratch, crackers were the first thing I started to experiment with. These crackers are some of my favourite to make when I am on my period. I have experimenting with cycle syncing for a while now - and during the menstrual phase buckwheat, seaweed and pumpkin seeds are all particularly helpful to replenish the body’s lost iro ..read more

 Deciding to love yourself is a quiet, yet powerful inner revolution. I am not talking about the type of self-love that is popularised in mainstream media. The one that promotes bubble baths and positive affirmations. There is nothing wrong with these surface-level self-love activities, but I want to shine light on a different type of self-love. A type of love that allows you to step into your self-worth. A type of love that allows you to feel comfortable saying no, deviating from the norm and truly feeling proud of who y ..read more

  For all the articles I write about slow and simple living, my daily life is pretty packed. I have a full-time job, a household to run, a relationship to maintain, a sizable collection of friends and family abroad to visit, and a fond love for blogging in my spare time. That doesn’t leave a lot of time for all the slow things – like reading, countryside walking and meditating – or does it? We often have a picture of what slow living should look like. The knitted sweaters by the fireplace. The hot cups of tea on a lazy ..read more

  Five days. Two teenage lovers. Six dead bodies. It has long baffled me why Romeo & Juliet ever became the model for romantic love. But the reality is that Shakespeare’s tragedy still influences our understanding of love 400 years later. Five days. Not a second more. The shorter, the better seem to be the motto in epic romances. Romantic love simply cannot withstand the corrupting effect of time. Take Marriage Story. In this film, a married couple crumbles under the realisation that grand, romantic feelings rarely ..read more