I love this time of year as we go through the natural cycle of completion, and move into new beginnings. I’m using this time to reflect on the past year and reorient myself to what is important to me.

I take some time-out to sit quietly and let my mind settle, and then reflect on the previous year and ask questions such as:

What has been successful and working well this last 12 months? What have I felt proud of? What personal strengths and qualities do I have? What in my life gives me a sense of meaning and purpose?

Mediation is specifically focused on communication and conflict resolution. It is a space for you to have a structured conversation with the support and skill of a neutral mediator.

You’ve probably at some time thought something like “If only they would darn well communicate better, we wouldn’t have this problem”.

And you have probably also realised we can’t change others and how they communicate, especially by telling them how bad they are! But we can change how we turn up, and how we communicate.

From my experience, changing how we approach conversations can make a big difference.

It can be an excruciating process deciding whether to stay in a long term relationship or to leave it. It can be one of the biggest decisions of your life, and trying to make the decision can take up massive mental and emotional energy, distracting you from work and family.

It can be a difficult decision as there are usually many good reasons to leave and as many good reasons to stay. I would like to explore some of the reasons to stay and ‘work’ on your relationship and how Relationship Mediation fits in.

I would like to take a deep bow to Vietnamese Zen master, poet and peace activist Venerable Thich Nhat Hanh who passed away earlier this week at the age of 95.

My daughters have always loved Halloween.

I have always detested lollies and sugar at Halloween.

How can we have a skilful conversation around this topic with our kids?

How do we stay balanced and engaged even when we’re stressed, depressed, anxious or seeming to live through one crisis after another? How do we keep our hearts open when life seems too hard?