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 | Oct 31, 2024 | Being human, Longing, Pilgrimage, Un/silencing, Walk & Write, Wellbeing-through-writing, Writing
A wise old woman once told me about FEA. Anna is a mystic whose life is a prayer to wisdom, and she is old, of the legendary kind. It was Anna who told me about FEA – fucking enough already. It’s only when we’ve had enough, said Anna, that we make...
by Stephanie Dale | Sep 26, 2024 | Wellbeing-through-writing, Writing
It is a new writer’s reality – it’s every writer’s reality – that writing inspiration comes upon us at the most inconvenient times. Just as we’re falling asleep. Shopping at the supermarket. Dreaming in the dead of night. I remember...
by Stephanie Dale | Sep 26, 2024 | Being human, Longing, Pilgrimage, Un/silencing, Wellbeing-through-writing, Writing
It is only when someone looks back at us that we know we exist. I learned this the first time I drove across Australia. It was decades ago and I wanted to see how long it would take. FYI, 60 hours. Five days straight, 12 hours a day. When I looked across the land I...
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...
