Autumn 2022
My Dear Friends and Clients
It has been a while since my last newsletter in which time much water has passed under the bridge. Summer 2022 turned out to be quite a big one for me, a time of transition on many levels, involving a house move, a breast cancer diagnosis and the passing of my dad.
The good news is that I had a successful operation in August to remove the cancer and have avoided the brutality of chemotherapy as it was caught early and didn’t show up in my lymph nodes. I am undergoing hormone therapy currently and will be starting a short course of radiotherapy from tomorrow. One day I may look back on this time and understand more fully what I am being initiated into, what these events have to teach me. At the moment the ground is still shifting, my body is changing from the drugs and my focus is on healing myself. I can’t begin to imagine all of the things I’m going to learn.
That said, there have already been lessons. One such gift has been the outpouring of kindness, which i didn’t expect. Kindness, in amongst all the seeming brutality and unkindness of our world. I have felt like hiding some of the time, and keeping news of my super tender, vulnerable state private and yet when I have taken the risk to share news of my cancer and the loss of my dad, the kindness I’ve received in return has been powerful, humbling and at times overwhelming. Practical help in the shape of many hands cleaning my new home, filling our freezer with delicious food, supportive conversations, emails, heartfelt comments, prayers and notes, it’s hard to tell you how much it has mattered.
I miss the contact with each of you through massage, voice work and art and it looks like normal service will continue to be interrupted at least until the end of the year. In the meantime I have become a willing recipient of complementary therapies myself and value now more than ever the holistic tending to our hearts, minds and bodies. I have moved to Gloucestershire and intend to set up a practice in Nailsworth/Stroud in 2023. I am still holding the possibility of returning to Oxford once a month for regular clients as well as some online offerings around voice and will keep you posted as and when this becomes likely.
Art
Life before July is a bit of a blur, but in the spirit of harvesting efforts from earlier in the year, check out the Commissions and Collaborations section of my website on it I share some artwork commissioned for a wedding and based on the Courtship of Innana and Dumuzi. The bride recipient of the gift is an inspiring linguist who courageously steps into new terrain for women, reviewing Sumerian poetry and translating it through a feminist lens. My client who commissioned the artwork for her friend’s wedding chose a Mesopotamian poem which the bride had translated, enabling me to include the Cuniform symbols in the artwork.
