by Stephanie Dale | Nov 5, 2024 | Ageing, Longing, Pilgrimage, Walk & Write, Wellbeing-through-writing, Writing
In 2007, I flew to Rome to walk with my son across Italy and through the Balkans. In sublime understatement, you might say the pilgrim bug had bitten him, hard – he had walked from Canterbury and was on his way to Jerusalem. On our third night out of Rome, just...
by Stephanie Dale | Nov 4, 2024 | Ageing, Being human, Longing, Un/silencing, Wellbeing-through-writing, Writing
Two encounters with friends recently reminded me of the alchemical power of writing, The first was at my book launch last weekend, when in conversation with Judy she wondered out loud: “I don’t trust words. “People use words and I don’t...
by Stephanie Dale | Sep 8, 2024 | Ageing, Longing, Pilgrimage, Un/silencing, Walk & Write, Wellbeing-through-writing, Writing
It was not until my mother died that I learned who she had been in life. She was many things my mother: a teacher, a tennis champion, a politics obsessive, a great grandmother. In her 80s she was famous for getting off the lounge and back on the tennis court and...
by Stephanie Dale | Aug 4, 2024 | Ageing, Longing, Pilgrimage, Walk & Write, Wellbeing-through-writing, Writing
In the twenty years I’ve been writing I’ve only ever written two sentences I can recall at will: The first is kind of clunky, yet I love it for its sentiment: “Like a good country song that goes round and back again, mountains everywhere sing the...
by Stephanie Dale | Sep 30, 2023 | Ageing, Motherline, Slow Burn Exile, Un/silencing, Wellbeing-through-writing
A while back I was invited to attend a friend’s family celebration. It was her mother’s 90th birthday. Many generations were settled into a round of couches on a large, open verandah as cake was shared around. I was sitting beside my friend, on the other side of the...
by Stephanie Dale | Sep 23, 2023 | Ageing, Motherline, Slow Burn Exile, Un/silencing, Wellbeing-through-writing
I know why old people tell repetitive stories, over and over, to people they know have heard them before and are not interested in hearing them again. I learned this from my mother, who told repetitive family stories, over and over to a daughter she knew had heard...
