The wanderer has returned

 January 18th 2025

I keyed in the blog url. What? The last entry was in June 2020. How can I explain an absence of four and half years?

I suppose Covid had its part to play. From November 2019 to November 2020, I was President of Soroptimist International of Yorkshire. I was overseeing twenty-one clubs all over Yorkshire with plans to travel all over the region, visiting the clubs. I had done minimal through the winter months and was ready with a full diary when Lockdown began. My priority was keeping the clubs going and to that end, I posted on the SI Yorkshire Facebook page every day for 150 days. When Lockdown Two started and autumn was around the corner I started a project called 'My Mother's Music' on You Tube with fifty mini films made with my husband's help. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFNPQv7hN6uAuIieihXpJyQ/videos

The Yorkshire Press had stopped asking for my column in January 2020 and with the other activities, the blog writing stopped. I'm sorry when I realise that I stopped for four and half years. Four and half years when the subject of emotional maturity and chasing Rainbows behaviour has never been far from the headlines. 

The last year has been one of disruption and a house move - still ongoing. I don't make New Year resolutions, but on a January 1st post Christmas clear-up, decided to declutter some storage tubs. One contains my psychotherapy practice history, plus all the paperwork and brainwork involved in creating the 'Are You Chasing Rainbows?' book. I started to feel motivated again.

Here I am and ready to write on the this blog again. Initially the posts may be reflecting on what I've found in storage, but we'll see how it evolves. 

©AlisonRRussell2025

Mental Health Awareness Week - May 2020

It's Tuesday, May 19th 2020.  Mental Health Awareness Week is running all this week. 

Four months have passed since I last wrote a blog. At the start of 2020 I thought I would continue to write a monthly blog, but it hasn't happened. I still feel as strongly as I always have done about Emotional Health, but I think I lost motivation since not writing a monthly newspaper column and after publishing, 'Wise Words'. 

Then the pandemic Covid-19 appeared on the scene and probably when I should have been writing on this blog, I haven't. Why not? Who knows? But I haven't been totally inactive.

On Monday, March 16th, my husband and I went into lockdown at home. Not full lockdown, we have a walk every day and shop a couple of times a week. On that first Monday,  I thought that as President of the Soroptimist International Yorkshire Region, I should try to keep in touch with Yorkshire members and posted a short post on the Soroptimist -Yorkshire Facebook Page. I started it, slightly tongue in cheek, 'Glen Cottage Isolation Unit. Day 1'. I had no plans to continue everyday, but it was well received and today I have just written my Day 64 posting. There is no end in sight...yet. I also post on the Soroptimist International GBI page and Twitter pages too.

There is a mixture of themes so they don't get too predictable. Soroptimist projects, humorous links and national campaigns. 

This week is Mental Health Awareness Week and I felt that I must open up my blog again. 

Today's theme is about control. We need to have a sense of control and like the story of the Three Bears, too much or too little can cause emotional health problems. I have come across the two information images, one for adults, one for children. The picture of the wolf on the adult picture is a reminder of the  story attributed to Native Americans.  There are two wolves, which one thrives? The one you feed most.

I like being back on this blog and will return.

©AlisonRRussell2020

The final column, but not the final blog.

This column was first published in The Press York, on Tuesday, December 10th 2019.
https://www.yorkpress.co.uk/news/18084705.column-final-wise-words-rita-leaman/

I was asked to contribute a monthly column to new Wellbeing pages in The Press, starting in January 2014. It was initially for six months and I was thrilled. After five months, I was asked if I would like to continue for another six months and that is how it has been for the last six years. It has been an opportunity that was better than I could have hoped. 

This year I thought that the columns could be put together in a book and that idea was realised last month in the publication of ‘Wise Words’. As if I’d had a premonition, the format of the newspaper is changing and this is to be the last Mind, Body and Soul column. Through seventy years. there have been many beginnings and endings in my life. The unexpected endings tend to be harder to manage emotionally than the expected ones and I have been expecting this ending for five and half years. There is still a sense of loss, but also a frisson of excitement about what might come next. 

Last Sunday, I was asked if asked if I did therapy on myself in stressful situations. I replied that I felt that if I wrote about how to manage emotions, then I should be willing to take my own advice and do some self-reflection at times. That is what I’m doing now. Understanding that I feel a little sad about this chapter of life coming to an end, but also recognising that new opportunities are out there, if I can get out of my comfortable chair and motivate myself. I would like to continue sharing some ‘Wise Words’ and at the moment, am tempted towards book readings with Q&A. 

My final ‘heal thyself’ advice is to finish with my favourite quote from Helen Keller. It describes many people with emotional health problems. ”When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.” 

What could be through the door of 2020? 

Rita Leaman is a psychotherapist (www.chasingrainbows.org.uk.) She has recently published the 2014-2019 columns in a book, ‘Wise Words’. Available in paperback and on Kindle. https://amzn.to/34ukHJV