mental health
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Nobody with No-body.
Loving myself, meant loving my body. All of it. For 40 years I felt one form of body shame or another. My innocent nakedness was shamed early by my mother. Her favourite story to tell on every occasion, even to… Continue reading
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Eat, Train, Love (Part 2)
Unexpected Cologne, heaviness of Hamburg. Im writing this at the beginning of my day 3, sitting in the lobby area of the delightful hostel I’m in just next to Hamburg dbf railway station. My first hostel experience, and they have… Continue reading
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Abuse is the relationship, not just the Incidents.
Emotional abuse, isn’t the moments, it’s the entire relationship. The whole thing. Interspersed with tiny moments of relief. The rest is eggshells. The rest is being gravitationally in their orbit. The rest is drama, upset, fracture. It’s not one event.… Continue reading
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Silence of the Lambs.
It wasn’t (just) what happened to you. It was the silence you had to keep. The silence you had to protect. The silence of the truth that could never be said. For Fridays Frosties. Keep the peace. Daddys not going… Continue reading
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Gratefully 48…mmmmm…
Thats the noise ive kind of made in the last few weeks as I’ve headed towards my 48th Birthday, which is today. A kind of deep, in the breath humming noise. A kind of wistful, soulful, pleasantly grateful feeling, of… Continue reading
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The Sickness I was fed up of being in.
Therapy and Walks. Thats basically what I was doing for about 2 months, late 2023. And writing at weekends, using coloured pens and writing out the tiny starting shoots of a story, in the safe space of the bookstore coffee… Continue reading
James Ballantyne 