On Wednesday 17th September 2025, I presented an online session for World Childless Week. 

The session was called Exploring Childlessness Through Creative Approaches To Internal Family Systems (IFS). 

I'm going to be presenting a free online IFS workshop at World Childless Week in September! 

I've been attending World Childless Week for the last couple of years and have found it to be a big support on my journey to coming to terms with being childless, not by choice. Listening to other childless people tell their stories has helped me feel less alone. 

This year, I wanted to join the conversation, offering some of the tools and techniques that have been helping me.

This blog goes out to anyone who is interested in making changes in their lives. It contains three rituals for you to: 1.) Explore your inner parts and their relationship with change 2.) Take yourself on a nature walk to contemplate what you want to let go of and what you want to draw in and 3.) Create a piece of artwork to encapsulate and activate an intention. But first, a little context!

Happy New Year! 

To mark the transition, here’s a wee muse on the theme of beginnings and endings.

A few weeks ago, in the final session of my online Creative Facilitation course, we explored the theme of beginnings and endings through play and reflection. Here follows a few of my experiences with beginnings and endings, along with an outline of the groups’ playful explorations and a poem I assembled from their musings in the Zoom chat-box.

In April 2024, eight wonderful Fools gathered together in a beautiful dance space for a 5 day experimental, experiential, emergent and engaged research lab, co-facilitated by Saskia Solomons and me.

What’s In The Blog?

• The story of how the 5-day Fooling + IFS research lab came to be

• An outline of what happened in the lab

• Little chunks of IFS theory from Saskia's morning talks

• Descriptions of some of the ways we integrated IFS, creativity and the body - you could have a go at some of these if you wish!

• A brief outline of our Fooling + IFS solo stage experiments 

• My key learnings

This blog explores Flow: what it is, how to find it and why being in the Flow State might be A Good Thing To Do. There’s a video workshop, 'Exploring The Flow State Through Play and Journalling', flow poetry from past participants of Mindful Play and a story detailing a moment when I lost connection with flow and how I managed to find it again (with a little help from my friends, a tiny dog and a squidgy baby).

In this blog I'll be offering a series of 10 minute Playful Pauses, to help you reconnect, re-centre and recalibrate.

I've found that 10 minutes can actually be enough time to step out of my automatic reactionary thoughts, behaviours or emotions, to calm down my nervous system, soothe my inner parts and prepare the ground to begin again.

I’m still buzzing and recovering from the Clown Congress 2023 where 50+ clowns spent three incredible days at Bristol University; talking, listening, workshopping, eating, singing, playing, dreaming, planning and scheming; exploring the theme of identity in clowning. 

I was invited to deliver Creative Clarity sessions at the end of each of the days, offering participants opportunities to “process the day’s learning through play and reflection, accessing [their] inner wisdom, through movement, meditation, embodiment, writing, artwork and structured dialogue.” (my programme description).

This blog charts what happened during my first Creative Clarity session, which I have retrospectively titled, “Playing With Not Knowing.’ The blog includes a Not Knowing Meditation / Sensory Exploration which you can do wherever you are, and a poem from Bee Golding capturing some of the participants’ insights from the session.

It’s now four months since I left the Barn Retreat Centre in Devon. After a year of being immersed in meditation retreat land, I had no idea where I wanted to live or what I wanted to do when I left, so I made a commitment to stay with the not knowing until it became clear.

This blog charts the last four months of my adventures into the unknown, exploring what I’ve been doing and why I’ve been doing it, examining the responses I’ve been receiving from other people, through the lens of The Fool and investigating the responses of my inner parts, using techniques gained from my recent Internal Family Systems (IFS) training. I’ve included an IFS exercise to help you quieten your inner parts if that feels helpful to you.

There’s nothing like a bit of rejection for helping us get clear about what we really want! Here is a story about how I recently received a rejection and a rundown of the OW to WOW process I put myself though (I should totally trade mark that!), which has helped me get clear about what I really want.