Josie George on the joy of small things
The Wintering Sessions with Katherine May:
Josie George on the joy of small things
———
Josie George has always lived with a complex of medical conditions that are difficult to name, but which leave her permantly in pain and having to carefully manage her mindset and energies in order to cope with everyday life. Here, she talks about the joys she finds in small things, and the vibrant appreciation for life that her restrictions have given her.
Listen to the episode
-
Please note the transcript is automatically generated and may not be completely accurate.
Katherine May
Hello, I'm Katherine May and welcome to the wintering sessions, the podcast that sets out to learn from the times when life is frozen. This week I'm talking to Josie George, author of the memoir a still life, Josie has always lived with a complex of medical conditions that are difficult to name, but which leave her permanently in pain of having to carefully manage her mindset and energies in order to cope with everyday life. Here, she talks about the joys she finds in small things, and the vibrant appreciation for life, how restrictions have given her.
Katherine May
Josie Welcome to the podcast, It's so lovely to have you, you were definitely one of the people that I just knew for sure that I had to had to get you on here because I think all of your work and not just your forthcoming book articulate so much about times out of life and, you know, times permanently out of life as well.
Josie George
Yeah, thank you. I'm so pleased to be here. I was really chuffed to be asked. So thank you very much.
Katherine May
Well, it's this is this is the great joy of having a podcast, you get to invite people who you admire and make them talk to you.
Josie George
Also, I have to say it's just so nice to talk to someone. I don't get many opportunities to have like chats with adults. So it's just really nice. So yeah,
Katherine May
you should start a podcast.
Josie George
It may be I, will,
Katherine May
yes, your chats. It's really brilliant. So your new book still life is really all about growing up with I mean, does chronic illness cover it correctly? or How would you describe it?
Josie George
I guess. So I think I always struggle with the terminology of things. So I think I have a chronic illness, but particularly because it's been lifelong for me, I would describe it also as a disability in that it has such an impact on all areas of my life and has done forever. So chronic illness doesn't seem to quite cover it. And also I don't really like the word illness because actually, I feel like part of my work. And my Well, part of what I enjoy in life is being well, it's just that my idea of wellness isn't quite the same as perhaps other people's,
Katherine May
it'd be really nice if we had the term chronic wellness. I'm chronically well. I just can't stop being well!
Josie George
And as much as it is a dysfunction of my body, my body does not work the same way as most other people's. I'm not dying. I am hopeful that I will live a long and relatively active life on my in my own terms, but there is no denying that my body struggles a lot. And that is a big part of every day. So So yes, a chronic illness, but with the caveat that I aspire to wellness, and I believe that is within my my grasp, even if I never get better, I shall be well, and that's Yeah, that's important to me.
Katherine May
And of course, I mean, you know, you said about the, you know, the problems of terminology. There's an even bigger terminology problem for you isn't there in that it's very hard to pin down, you know, you don't have that condition that everyone has a name for that they all recognise and go, Ah, that's what's wrong with her. Okay, we understand that.
Josie George
Yeah, I am such a mishmash of different things. And we still don't fully understand it. And I spent much of my Well, certainly my teens and my 20s really hoping that I would get a name that I can pin to my chest and say, This is why I find life hard. This is this is the thing, and everyone could look at it and go, Oh, yeah, now we understand. But as the decades have gone on, I've had to more and more let go of that. I mean, there are there are some names we could use ME and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome was one of the first sort of diagnoses that I received when I was very young. And then it kind of shifted some years they would they would say, Oh, you know, that's what's going on. And then other years they go, why you don't really fit that maybe maybe isn't that as I got into my 30s I develop more and more problems with my autonomic system, which is that the part of your body that controls all the kind of automatic parts of you your your blood flow, your heart rate, your blood pressure, all the things that happen without you thinking about it in your body is is connected to your autonomic system. And that began to deteriorate more and more for me in lots of different ways. So then they were starting to introduce the idea of dysautonomia, or POTS, which means Postural Arthostatic, Tachycardia Syndrome, but all these things, they just kind of describe what's happening. They don't tell you why. Yeah. So they're a bit meaningless, really, in some respects, which is hard, because I think we're hardwired as human beings to want to understand. So that's been a difficult thing to get my head around over the years. I don't know why I'm like this. And I may never will,
Katherine May
yeah, yeah.
Josie George
So how do you keep going? When that is true? has been a big question. For me.
Katherine May
It's so complicated. And I think I mean, I, I had a diagnosis of ME when I was a teenager, but I recovered after a period of rest. And, you know, it's kind of part of the life pattern of Autistic people in general
Josie George
Yeah so much.
Katherine May
But I know, at the time that, you know, and I'm sure it's still true now, that it was the kind of condition that people had an opinion about people who knew nothing about it. had an opinion about it about its reality about your right to have it about what you should do to solve it, which was normally, you know, pull your bootstraps up or whatever. But, you know, there's something about having a an illness or a disability, that does not have a name that's on a national charity, that makes people behave quite badly around it. I think, sometimes
Josie George
Very much. I mean, my, I love my cardiologist, he's, he's amazing. And he's very much on my side, and works really hard to make me feel heard and to work with me on different options. But even he sat there. And he said, I don't think ME is real, I don't know what chronic fatigue is. And I said, Oh, well, okay. Okay, so So what, what have I experienced then? And it it's hard, because what people are saying is that they don't believe that your experience is, what you hear is, I don't believe your experience is real in some way, which is very hard. And when I was younger, I used to find that very distressing. I used to, I used to find it quite traumatic, to sit in front of doctors and be told what what you think you have isn't real. Or what you're, that this name that you that you're using isn't? We don't think it's a real thing. These days, I don't feel so emotional about it, I've worked through a lot of that, my answer tends to be well, okay, but I am still enormously fatigued every day. I still have a lot of pain, and I still can't do all these things. So whether or not we give it a name, it's still true. And I don't really care these days, what it's called, what I care about is how do I live well, and how do I get the support and accommodations? I guess, but but how do I build a life around my reality of my body, irrespective of what we call it, My days are still the same. So that's what I tend to come at it from now. But it's hard. It's it's really painful. When you you feel like you're being told you're either lying or overdramatic, or, or just weak you're just weak , I think that's often the thing that I've come away from doctors saying, "Well, you know, everybody gets tired". And you're like, oh, okay, yeah. Yeah, this is a bit different.
Katherine May
And I, you know, I think what that speaks to is like, the, is actually how unstable medicine itself is, we don't realise it, because medicine feels like a stable thing within our lifetime, but actually, it's in constant flux, and diagnoses and our understanding of disease and illness and disability are changing all the time. And there has always been a kind of cluster of conditions or experiences that have been written off and gradually we find an account of them but if you're born in the wrong part of history, where there is not yet an account of what you have, you have to go through all this nonsense.
Josie George
Absolutely. And it's been it's been interesting in recent months to see the the news and talk about long COVID
Katherine May
I've been I've been glued to that.
Josie George
Yeah, which in all risks, I mean, from what I can see in terms of symptoms and experience is so similar to what people with with chronic fatigue syndrome or similar illnesses have been reporting for decades. And it's interesting to see it now lifted to the to a place of legitimate disease and to be researched already.
Katherine May
I mean the stuff, they found out already about the way that the bodies of people with long COVID are behaving. Yeah, I mean, I could have you know, anyone that's had a sort of post viral thing you know, like ME or all The different kind of post viral conditions would have killed for that understanding of what was going on in their body. And suddenly were motivated.
Josie George
Yeah, it leaves me It leaves me feeling quite conflicted because I am left with this enormous sympathy and, and just care and heartbreak for people going through this because I know what this is, like, and, and then also this weird anger of like, Oh, it was okay for me to be sick for 30 years. Why is it not? Okay, now? And yeah, reconciling that has been quite tricky, really last few weeks,
Katherine May
lots of things to reconcile. Let's go back and start a little earlier in the story because actually, you're kind of unexplainable symptoms started really young, didn't they?
Josie George
Yeah, I was only a baby really, and, and back and forth to paediatricians, and developing weird problems with my legs, bones. And they're still not sure whether there is an element of connective tissue disorder or a genetic component. But, but I was never quite right as my mum likes to put it. And it's true. And some of that seem to be, I don't think I've ever been particularly neurotypical either, and experienced the world in quite a different way. And all of this intersected in my body in how my body felt things. So from, from a very young age I was, I was having to live in a body that didn't seem to do what it was supposed to, and did wild things that I didn't understand. And that seemed to be very much out of my control, which was very disorientating as a child,
Katherine May
and it's difficult to fit into the community of other kids at school or you know, in the streets around your house, when your body isn't functioning in the same way that theirs is.
Josie George
Honestly, I just never talked about it with my friends, really, they knew I was off school a lot. And there was probably a sense that I was a bit tired, and not as energetic as other children. And then once I started going in and out of hospital that was obviously made it a bit more visible. But it never occurred to me that I was part of anything it I never considered myself, Ill particularly, I never considered myself disabled. Because I had no frame of reference, this was just my life. And I didn't have a before when I was well all the time and an after to compare it to so for a long time, it didn't really occur to me how different I was. And it just kind of manifested often as a kind of insecurity around people and friends and feeling like the world moved at a different pace to me, and that I missed out. And because it was very, very sporadic To start with, I had much more of a, you had have a good few weeks, about few weeks, it was it was a bit more up and down. I just I just kind of, I would forget, as soon as I got better again, I would be back to doing all the things I want to do. I don't want to think about that now, you know, and it was only as the periods of unwellness. And, and problems got longer and more visible and serious that I began to feel it more as part of my identity. and wonder what that meant. Because again, no one was telling me, oh, you have this thing. This is why it was it was all very confusing all the time. So my childhood was, I think really coloured by that confusion and uncertainty, just not being sure of who I was. Yeah, or what this all meant.
Katherine May
Well, I suppose you know, if you have an unnamed condition, you don't get given that account of it that you can adopt in any kind of a stable way, in a way that other people receive. You know, you don't have something to process you don't have a prognosis, you don't have a sense of how that will take shape into the future. That must be really difficult to live with actually.
Josie George
Yeah, yeah, it was an there was this there seemed to be this weird thing all the time as well that almost if somebody gave you a name, then that stuck you in a course or a particular future. It was almost like everyone was reluctant to say, what was happening in Yeah, as if it was some kind of bad spell that was then cursing me to a lifetime of this. But actually all it did was was left me, like I said, very insecure and confused. And I didn't get better. I continue to have these problems and have had, you know, still do. It's now the times of wellness and now I have to wait years for them now decades. It's it's this Killer patch of, of certainly losing my mobility. It's been about seven years now without a break, which is the longest, the longest spell I've had without a lift. So all of that that move well, we don't we don't want to kind of limit you or or put these these labels on you. It didn't help me because I'm still here So yeah, it was, it has been strange and a real journey, a mental journey, because there did come a point where I had to realise no one is going to define this for me, yeah, no one is going to tell me what my future is going to be like, or what I need to do, I'm going to have to do that myself.
Katherine May
And when did that come for you that point in your life when this began to solidify as a permanent thing, but also almost part of your identity, part of what you are what your body does
Josie George
I think I fought it for a long time. And I talked about that a lot in the book really, about how my life followed this, this kind of circular spiralling process where I would have maybe two or three years of quite severe disability, which I would fight tooth and nail from to recover from. So I would lose my mobility, I wouldn't really be able to walk, my energy levels would be almost non existent. So the the, the amount that I could do was was miniscule. And I'd have all this range of quite bizarre and very disruptive symptoms that would that would take over each day. And I'd, I'd have two or three years of that, and I would will myself better or I felt like I was willing myself better. And then it would be a case of Well, when I get better, I will do this. And when I get better, this will be my life and and then I'll then I'll live, then I'll get started. And the bad patches lasted, like I said, a year, two years, three years, and they get longer each time. And then I'd have a bit of a reprieve in the middle things seem to improve a little bit. And I would leap back to life and be like, right, this is it. This is my chance. I'm better I am leaving it all behind. And I never learned for a long time. I know every time I got better, I thought this is it. I am fixed. I am good. I am I am healed. I have conquered this. Yeah, I have won because this is the stories we tell Isn't it about what happens. So of I would go again and make all these plans and be very ambitious. And within sometimes even just a few months or a year again, a couple of years at most, I would begin to crash again, begin to get worse. And that happened. Again, like I said about seven years ago, I'd been slowly tipping and I could feel myself struggling more and more. And it just got worse and worse. Until I couldn't put one foot in front of the other really, to that extent. But I think at that point, I was mentally ready. And this time, I thought now it's time to face this. And to to not wait to get better. Let's live now let's not wait any more. And so that's what I've done really. And that's that's what's brought me here. So I think in the last year, certainly in the last 10 years really has been more of a path to peace. Whereas my 20s was just just that constant battle back and forth. Now I feel much, much more at peace with things. And I feel equipped to know how to live with this now and to live well. And who knows what the future holds. I always stay open to another time of wellness. Maybe Maybe that will be in the future. Maybe it won't, but it doesn't matter anymore. My life isn't for that. And all of the things that matter to me can continue irrespective of whether or not I improve again, that feels like a really strong place to be now.
Katherine May
Yeah. We'll be back with more from Josie in a moment. But first I want to tell you about my online course wintering for writers, which is back online after a successful first run last summer. wintering for writers is designed to be a beautiful reflective process for writers who are currently struggling as so many are in this pandemic year. If you're feeling blocked or losing hope it's packed with videos and thought provoking texts to help you rethink your practice. And there's an exclusive workbook to support your reflection. Best of all, you can work at your own pace and incomplete privacy as you write yourself back into your creative flow. To find out more, go to katherinemay.com and click on courses Follow the link in the show notes. And now back to Josie George.
Katherine May
So when you when you reach that point of acceptance, what did that mean for you in practice? What changes did you make?
Josie George
It was kind of not waiting anymore, it was a kind of mental shift really, to work with what I had, and work with where I was today, however, bad that was an every day to do the same. So never have a day where I think I'm gonna wait until I'm a bit better. So always to deal with, with where I am that day, whatever that look like. And if that meant making a new plan every day, so be it. But so I committed to movement. I think I committed to motion forward motion, even if that was going to have to be a snail's pace forever.I wasn't going to sit and wait and sit out this life anymore. I was going to make stuff happen. So I think that was it was a real mental shift. And that some of that meant very practical things. So it meant the decision when I when I completely lost. My mobility had just waned and waned. And and I was just the distance I could walk was getting shorter and shorter, and pain was increasing. And I think if that had been me, Well, certainly when it was me, maybe 15-20 years ago, I would have just stopped. Whereas this time, it was about adapting. And there was much more of a commitment to adaptation. So how can I still do these things, but in a different way, which meant the mobility scooter, it meant walking sticks, it meant wheelchair, it meant aids and adaptations around the house. It meant changing my job at the time. So it meant changing things rather than stopping things, if that makes sense.
Katherine May
Yeah, yeah, it doesn't make a lot of sense, actually.
Josie George
And even if those changes had to be huge, and almost unrecognisable, I hadn't quit anything. And I had shifted course and change course and not stopped. And that was really important to me.
Katherine May
And I mean, you. You're a great kind of appreciator of the small of the minutiae of life. And you're you have a You seem to have a particular skill in finding the wonder in the world even at your most limited. Is that something you've always had? Or is that something you've trained yourself to come to an appreciation of?
Josie George
A bit of both? I think I have, I think naturally a very curious, open, joyful mind. I think I feel very lucky in that. I, I think I I just find things delightful. I just, I was so easily pleased. And I find it so easy to enjoy something small. But I think part of it, it has been work. And it has been disciplined. I think not so much developing the curiosity, because I think that that is there naturally. And I think it's there in all of us, really, I think it's about more working on removing the things that get in the way of that mindset. So that mindset can flourish all by itself. And I think that's been that's been the work. And that's that's been what I've had to do. So. It's also it's what happens naturally, when you are truly still. And I think we con ourselves into thinking that we're being still and paying attention. And we're not where our minds are elsewhere, where we're half, we've got half foot in the future, and we're dreaming about this. And we're we're not satisfied really with how things are. So we're not really committing to it. We're, we've always got this sense of expectation or assessment in our head about whether this moment measures up in some way to, to an ideal, or something that we'd prefer. And that truly open still place is really rare. But if you find it or if you're forced to find it, which is what often happens with illness, you you really do start to see things differently because you have to there's nothing else to look at. It's all you've got.
Katherine May
I think it's actually I will go further than you I think few people find it without something going horribly wrong in their life. You know, you you have to be dragged kicking and screaming almost because the pleasures of the outside world are so great and the distracting this of the outside world is so great and actually it is one of The hidden gifts of illness and, and mental illness, physical illness disability, you know, like, I never want to be the person that goes, Oh, it's such a gift. It's wonderful because it isn't. But I think there is a, how would you say a quality of attention that is found by people who have to spend a lot of time in quietness and stillness, even if that didn't come through choice?
Josie George
Yeah. And I mean, you know, we have to put up with so much horrible stuff, we might as well take this one gift, right. And this one and celebrate it, like yeah, I mean, I think I think we get to own this, this is this is fine. It's I we get to put up with enough of the the drawbacks that we can celebrate the positives. Yeah, and, and it does it, once you find it, it's, it's almost like a, it's like, learning to hear a sound. And it's tuning into a certain note in your environment. And if you, you tune into, and you're like, Ah, that's, that's what that feels like. And I think once you find it, and then you, you find it more and more often, and that it becomes this, this kind of, yeah, this this tone that you can start to tune in to and hear and experience more and more. And then you think, wow, I Why would I ever live another way, this is so much better.
Katherine May
What I think is really interesting as well is that we are constantly these days sold this version of mindfulness that has to be achieved through an app, or through a, you know, an expensive luxury retreat, or whatever. And I think that just takes people further and further away from that encounter, that, that that flow that you that you find, and that you never lose, once you found it, you know, it becomes a place that you can always wade into. I always think of it as like a river that's running in the background. But once you know, it's there, it's available to you. Yeah, but you, you don't come to it by throwing money at the situation, and telling everybody that you're so in the moment, you know. And then and then a few years time, you know, people saying, Oh, well, I tried meditation, but I never really, it never really did anything. For me. It's like that's because you were never forced to find the patience to let it operate.
Josie George
No, and it is a discipline. I mean, it's I think it's a paradox, really, because I think in, in one sense, it is our natural state. You look at children playing, and they've got it, you know, they've they're there, they have got, that they are what we are aspiring to when we talk about mindfulness, they are just completely here in this moment. And as we grow up, and life gets more complicated, and our minds are just bombarded with more and more influence and messages, and it just gets harder and harder, because there's just so much kind of mental baggage that gets in the way of this state. But actually, it was there. We always knew how to do this. It's just that a normal, active human life doesn't encourage it. In fact, it says the opposite. It takes you far away from that place. So it is in one sense, very, very natural. I think.
Katherine May
I so agree. I so agree. And I think it's actually one of the one of the parts of consciousness that is open to us. And it's open to us all the time. It's always been open to us. We've. got further and further away from it.
Josie George
Yeah, and the more thing that we are surrounded constantly by things and stories and habits that pull us away from it, and we're so entrenched in it, that we just don't, we don't know that that's what's happened. It's just, it's our status quo. So we don't we don't don't think about it. So these days, it takes real work. It's quite, it feels quite revolutionary these days to be someone that doesn't fall into that mindset. And that is able to step out of it. It does feel special, because I think it's rare, but it's always possible. It's not. It's about rediscovering a skill. It's an and that takes work and patience and discipline, but it's not impossible. It's it's not like learning to play a sport or some complicated instrument. It's like it's not a new skill. It's It's It's about remembering an enormous reinforcing a very, very old skill. Which is great because it means it's possible for all of us. But yeah, it's it's hard. And like you were saying, I think it's so easy for it to get dressed up in the trappings of all the other problems of like, it being a bit of a commodity, mindfulness being something Or a game that you play or a business idea or something that you you make part of your brand in order to sell something or like, but But actually, I'm a big fan of Sam Harris, who teaches mindfulness and meditation in a very different way from some of the kind of, I call it commercial mindfulness. He's He's quite blunt in his, in his like, no, this is This isn't how we do it, this isn't what mindfulness is, and getting back to the kind of core of it. And I listened to a great thing that he said this morning, I get little voice from, like, updates from him. And this was a little recording that he did, which is that for all that you say that you're mindful or say that you're meditating, or say that you haven't meditated, or you boast that you've done this much meditation, or you know that you're a very mindful person, all of that kind of stuff. None of that matters, because the only time that you can truly honestly be mindful is now is right now in this moment. So the question that you have to ask yourself is, is where is my mind at now? Right now? And am I aware of my own mind in this moment, and if you are, then you're being mindful and you're meditating or and you're, you're working actively towards that life. And if, if you're not aware of your mind, however many minutes of meditation you might have done, you're not achieving it. We've only got now to be mindful and the test as it were, as to whether or not you're a mindful person, or whether or not you're this meditation guru or whatever, is, where are you now? And where is your attention? Right in this minute? And that's the question that we ask every minute, and every day, and every hour, and we lose it. And sometimes we think, Oh, God, yeah, no, I was, I have not done well, today. In staying present, I've been ruminating or I've been worrying, I've been worrying, I've been distracted, I've been trying to do five things at once and doing none of them very well. And you get days like that. And then you get days where you think you catch it before you start doing that and you think Ah, No, I'm not going to do that. Today, I'm going to come back to my hands in the washing up liquid water. And I'm going to come back to this cup of tea, or the sound of my son's voice or the feel of my body. And every moment that you managed to do that you are being mindful. And you are, you're kind of winning that game that. And that's the only way to do it.
Katherine May
And I think I mean, that takes me so beautifully to the thing that I get from your work over and over again, which is this sense of the infinite in tiny things, this sense of the way that you pay attention, expanding my new parts of life into something grand and beautiful.
Josie George
There is so much I mean, I get I get overwhelmed. I mean, I've barely left my house this year, and my house is small. It's not a big place, and I have barely seen a soul. And yet I have been overwhelmed by how much there has been. I mean, like I have been, every day when I go to bed, I think I could have done something on that. There is no shortage of things to study and enjoy, and pour over and explore. I mean, it is it really is infinite. And I love I love that I am a bit addicted to that sense of how much I can find in in restriction. And it's I think an ongoing theme of my work and will be is that if you draw a box around something, and I take my life as an example, if there is quite a tight box around my life, not only in terms of physically where I can get to, but in terms of sort of in terms of energy, how much I can do and how much is available to me each day. So if I take that box, and I accept that box, and I see its edges, and then instead of looking out gazing outside of the box, and thinking all of that out there that I'm not getting and I'm not doing and oh, if I shift my gaze into that tiny space, however small and use that as the springboard for my work, my inspiration, my entertainment, my enjoyment. That is a wonderful challenge. And I actually got a lot of satisfaction from from doing that, and seeing what I can do. And it's a theme that runs through not only my work in terms of my autobiographical work, but in terms of my my more creative work in fiction and art and other things that I do so yeah, I think that's a real thing for me.
Katherine May
Yeah. And I, I'd like to close by quoting a linefrom your work back at you, which I think really captures what you've just said, which I underlined, you know, in my pen in your book, which is "pay attention, be brave. Use the truth, write it down, that will always be enough". I think that's such a lovely rule to live by.
Josie George
Yeah, thank you. And it's enough. It's enough to get you through every day. It really is. It takes some courage. And it takes some real gentleness with yourself because it's not easy. But it's a really rich place to live from. And yeah, there is a lot there.
Katherine May
Josie, thank you so much. It's been such a wonderful conversation. And I'll make sure that in the show notes, there's everything that people need to find a copy of your book, but also to find you online where you give us all a daily dose of this wisdom. It's not just sporadic for you, there's a constant flow of it.
Josie George
Thank you. There's lots of planned and new things coming. So yeah, please, please do that would be great. Thank you.
Katherine May
And that's all from us today. Thank you so much to Josie George for offering such a beautiful insight into her mindset. As still life is available in all good bookstores. And you can follow Josie on Instagram or Twitter links are in the show notes. I'll be back next week with another brilliant writer who is intimate with winter. Thanks for listening
Show Notes
This week Katherine chats to Josie George, author of 'A Still Life: A Memoir'.
Josie George has always lived with a complex of medical conditions that are difficult to name, but which leave her permanently in pain and having to carefully manage her mindset and energies in order to cope with everyday life. Here, she talks about the joys she finds in small things, and the vibrant appreciation for life that her restrictions have given her.
An upfront and positive chat in which Josie goes into her history with health, illness versus wellness, forms of gaslighting taking place through diagnoses, spiralling but maintaining forward motion, adapting to change rather than stopping, maintaining presence and tuning into frequencies of mindfulness.
Josie George is a writer and visual artist. She lives with her son in the West Midlands. A Still Life was written mostly from bed and is her first book. She is currently working on a novel alongside exploring how drawing, painting and photography might help her to stay awake to life as it really is.
We talk about:
Living with longterm disability
Fostering a mindset that finds joy in small things
Growing up with medical conditions that have no name
Links from this episode:
To keep up to date with The Wintering Sessions, follow Katherine on Twitter, Instagram and Substack
For information on Katherine’s online writing courses, including her programme Wintering for Writers, visit True Stories Writing School
Wintering is out now in the UK, and the US.
