5 Ways to Overcome Despair and Have Fun Doing So

Permaculture Womens Guild

By Julia Pereira Dias They say the best way to avoid your own tantrum is to count to ten. It’s never worked for me. This is how it goes: One. Twoo. Threeee. FOurrrr. Five. SIX. SEVEEEEN, EEEEIGHTA. Tantrum. If you’re like me, read on. Here we go: Partner gave you the ugly look early in the morning, toddler smeared jam on your pants, cat pooed in the plant pot, your idea got shot down in the meeting, your teenager called you the worst parent ever and you cannot even get the damn cheese pack open. Forget breathing. There’s not enough…

Everyone is Fake!

Permaculture Womens Guild

By Julia Pereira Dias Few terms get the heat up as quickly as ‘fake’ these days. Everybody hates the fakes. Except here is the truth: We are all fakes. I’m not talking about those notorious cases, where fake bankers cheated hundreds of trusting savers out of their hard-earned money or fake doctors abused their patients. Their crimes are not being fakes. Their crimes are extortion and abuse. (And, just food for thought, if that fake doctor, instead of abusing you, had treated your medical condition successfully, what difference would it make that they are not ‘ real’? And is the…

Eco activism – why I got myself arrested

Permaculture Womens Guild

By Klaudia van Gool Last month I joined the Extinction Rebellion actions in Bristol and got myself arrested for willingly obstructing a highway. I’m not one for putting myself into the public eye, other than when teaching/facilitating, nor upsetting people, but this is so much bigger than any of that. It has been part of my life’s work to find the most effective tools to support us living in balance with the Earth. It brought me to permaculture, deep nature connection, regenerative culture, healing, grief tending and ceremony. And still the carbon emissions have been going up. We need a…

Matavenero

Permaculture Womens Guild

The time I visited the oldest ecocommunity in Spain By Elena Pollen Long before moving to Spain, or, a few months actually, my partner & I came across this article about the oldest ecocommunity in Spain. Filled with beautiful pictures of wooden houses and wisened people, we dreamed of someday being there, living the self sufficient mountain life. Two years later, having just arrived in León on foot, 130km of steep terrain and mist behind us, we were quite happy to get the bus to our next destination. Matavenero, the oldest ecocommunity in Spain, is located somewhere in Astorga, which…

Writing to get my mojo back

Permaculture Womens Guild

By Gudrun Cartwright Today I need to write. For the last few weeks I have been consumed with work. I have written for that purpose, but not for me. Not for my website. My mission. My sanity. Yet again, life is getting in the way. I have such great plans. Such lofty ambitions. But I get caught in the day to day. As Stephen Covey famously said in the 7 habits of highly effective people, in the urgent, but not so important, when I consider my overall mission. How do you go about redressing this balance? Find the time, when…

Have We Reached the End of Positive Thinking?

Permaculture Womens Guild

By Julia Pereira Dias So, I hear that positive thinking has fallen from grace. It has “brainwashed [us] into thinking that that confidence will eventually cause competence,’ as Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic said in an interview with the Harvard Business Review. The result is over-confidence, people who think they can do everything, when they don’t have the competence to do anything. (Reminds you of one or the other manager?) Worse still, ‘positive thinking’ has the potential to terrorize people into believing that any pain or dark mood they experience, in addition to being painful, is also a sure sign of their failure…