If you know someone who always has to have the last word, you are watching a performance of control, not confidence. Needing to close every conversation, correct every detail and win every exchange says less about how right they are and more about how unsafe it feels for them to leave anything unresolved. What it looks like when someone must have the last word You know the pattern. You say something simple and they correct your wording. You share an experience and they explai

Emotionally mature people are not the ones with the loudest opinions or the quickest advice. They are the ones who can stay quiet long enough to really hear you. Letting others speak first shows how comfortable you are with yourself, how much you value the person in front of you, and how willing you are to sit with what is true rather than rush to control it. When someone else’s story keeps disappearing There is a kind of conversation where you can feel yourself slowly vanish

Parkmore, Sandton Youth “Purple Max” Awarded 2018 Bronze Standard for Duke of Edinburgh’s International Award / The President’s Award for Youth Empowerment (South Africa) “The Award equips young people for life and work. Not all learning happens in the classroom. Young people need experiences outside the classroom to become committed, responsible and fulfilled citizens of the world.” – DofE Award Website There are many people I know that I am extremely proud to keep company w

I have a friend who has been yearning to return to the coast and has decided to relocate from Johannesburg at the end of October (2018). She would most probably prefer me to be the type of friend who shows some level of remorse at her departure but I simply cannot contain my excitement at the prospect of a good old garage sale! Admittedly, I go gaga for these type of sales. There is something that screams ‘success!’ at finding a good piece of vintage furniture, or simply a “b

I recently blogged about the way that entrepreneurship seems addictively fashionable in What Is All The Hype About Entrepreneurs? As it turns out, I have seemingly more friends who are independent entrepreneurs than Suits. They have such a diverse range of services and products between them that I am wondering why I ever actually need to shop online or even step foot into a physical store again. Meet Sam Mhlungu. I’ve known Sam for nearly a decade now. As with most of my soci

On this third day of the Month of Gratitude 2016, Respect! and thank you to all those wonderful women and men who have passed through my life and selflessly imparted a bit of their wisdom, skill, knowledge and a great deal of time to help save me from myself (and possibly save others in the process). I loved my schooling because of the great start I had with Mrs Dawson. Sr. Theresilla, Sr. Roberts and all the other nuns at the Convent. (I am deliberately not going to mention

It’s been just over 4 weeks now since Toughey the hamster died. We eventually broke the news to the kids by faking a “who-left-the-cage-open-and-the-hamster-escaped” stunt. This didn’t go down very well – turns out it’s Mom’s fault… However, there were tears of sadness and I’m happy that we decided to go this route as opposed to telling the 7 year old that his pet had died. (I blogged about this in Our Four-Legged Friends) My son was more upset that I threw out his box of mot

This blog series has been one of the best for me personally so far. I have learnt so much from my friends, about their religions and way of life. The friend who I’ve asked to share his story in this post is honestly one of the nicest people I’ve ever known. I remember, very clearly, 20 years ago when my then boyfriend, now husband, was admitted to hospital over the Christmas holiday period while we were stationed at one of the Sun International properties where we used to wor

Preetika Ajoodha My friend Preetika Ajoodha was born and raised in Johannesburg Fordsburg into a Gujarati Hindu family. She is one of few remaining people who really love LONG phone calls and will always volunteer to call you back – she works for a major Telecomms network which apparently affords generous privileges in this regard. This is Preetika’s story about how she celebrates the holidays: I strongly believe that religion in any household is led by the mum in the home. I

Let’s kick this post off with a dash of Penelope Cruz shall we? I’m not exactly the target audience for the beautiful Ms Cruz but I will be the first to admit that I love the way the multi-syllabic-NESPRESSO sounds when she says it. First there was the “Breakfast Gang”, namely; myself, @CliveSimpkins, @AkiAnastasiou, @BarrieBramley and @Angelo2711. As time progressed, and Twitter evolved, the “Coffee Club” emerged around the Nespresso culture. Every morning I am greeted on my

Our hamster died 2 weeks ago today. His name was Toughey. The kids haven’t realised that THEIR rodent pal has died yet. I’m not sure how I feel about that actually… On the day that Toughey left us, my husband had the grand plan to not tell the kids because he was just going to replace Toughey 1.0 with Toughey 2.0 as such. We didn’t end up following through on that plan so we continue to gaze upon an empty but well equipped cage day after day. I didn’t particularly like him mu

I’ve always been curious about how the faithless approach Christmas and the December holidays in general. Is Christmas not a rather confusing time for atheists? I mean, not being invited to a Christmas party because if you don’t believe then it doesn’t exist? Do their children not get presents as their parents have rejected any religious sentiment associated with the period? Do atheist kids kindly excuse themselves from participating in school Christmas concerts? Are atheists

Kim Feinberg I was introduced to Kim Feinberg about 6 years ago when the corporate I worked for had sponsored one of the 94.7 Highveld Christmas Wishlist wishes. If I recall correctly, it was Simon Parkinson from Primedia that got me into a meeting with Kim and The Tomorrow Trust. We had the opportunity to grant a wish but, in line with our sustainable and empowering views, we knew we had to do more beyond a simple donation and once-off annual contribution to a cause. The cha

Last week I posted Christmas with a capital C which is how I sum up my approach to this religious event. In the article I wondered how other people regard and enjoy the overall December holiday period. My husband is not religious. I don’t think he’s an Atheist but committing to a religion, or spirituality in general, is not, and never has been, a priority for him. In fact, whenever we are asked to complete forms requesting “Religion: Father” on any forms, we have inserted jus

I recently wrote about my thoughts on caring for the elderly in What Should We Do With Old People? Every life situation is different. Every family is unique. Every individual has an opinion. Tradition and culture aside, there is also the personal preference (by the aged person and their children & family) and the realities of what is involved in supporting the elderly in terms of time, money and resources. I got a different perspective to my question from one of my long time

Yesterday I did a blog post lamenting my week as a single parent in Home Alone. At the end of the post I asked “how on earth do single parents cope?” Once again I reached out to some of my friends who have experienced this in their own lives. Most times my own idea of “going solo” is never grounded in the reality of what it would be like to actually go through the process to get to being single again. The first story I want to share with you is by my dear friend Barrie Bramle

People hurt. Whether you’re on the brink of attempting suicide or a suicide survivor. Everybody hurts. I’ve recently blogged stories from two friends who are suicide survivors in the build up to International Suicide Survivors Day which is on Saturday, 17 November this year. There is always another side of the story; in this case, the person who committed suicide. Both Craig (Losing Your First Love) and Michael (Losing a sibling) are no longer around to provide reasons – or a

Wow, this blog is getting very serious… I agree. But I feel I have to do my bit to support International Suicide Survivors Day this year in the best way I know how. I should almost add “regular programming will resume after the break” to some extent. This is another friends story as a suicide survivor which follows on from my post Losing Your First Love. A message of enablement came across quite strongly for me in that post. I’m glad that Carrina and her family have been able

Sometimes seemingly random information makes its way to me and I am left asking “now what?” but when I came across this ad for International Suicide Survivors Day I knew exactly what I had to do. I had just published 6 Degrees From Reality on this blog site and decided to have a meaningful conversation with my nanny about her experience on this matter. She’d mentioned her husbands’suicide to me a while back but I’ve never asked her how she felt, and how she is doing. Nobody i

The people I know are strangers I was at a function about 6 months after I left my insanely hectic corporate job when a friend mentioned to me that this was the first time we had had a real conversation – not in real life, but beyond the polite niceties that we had grown accustomed to. It was also the first time that I had asked him about his family. We’ve known each other for 3 years since the launch of the first Twitter Blanket Drive. What on earth had we been speaking abou