Allowing Sadness Without Guilt
On reflection, I felt a lot of pressure to conform to fake happiness when I was a child - a girl child, Gen X, raised by boomer parents in a small community on a...
Learning Safety After a Lifetime of Survival
Did you feel safe when you were a child? Can you remember the first time you were properly scared? I ask with genuine curiosity, because for as long as I can remember, even through childhood, I lived under an ominous cloud of fear.
2025 Reflections: A Change Of Pace
The past 12 months have crawled by in a blink. That’s how this year has felt to me, in many ways; my personal pace downshifting a couple of gears while life rushes on around me with the same frenzied impatience as always. Every December I like to look back over the year and share some personal insights, what’s been going on behind the scenes, as it were. Most of my blog has been focused on adult toy reviews and sex advice, but today I’m carving out a little space for my 2025 reflections.
Parenting in a Neurodivergent Household: A Mother’s Reflection
Parenting is different for everyone, but what most parents agree on is that it isn't easy. The practical and emotional challenges shift through the years as you raise a child from newborn needs to independent adulthood and, one day, watch them fly the nest. That’s how it usually goes, anyway. But when you're raising neurodivergent children, all the usual expectations have to be let go.
New Year Weight Loss Plans? Why I’m Choosing Nourishment Over Diets This January
New year weight loss plans are everywhere you turn in January, berating you for the pleasurable excess you enjoyed in December. Every year, as the wheel turns and we move from party to punishment season, I feel the same harsh judgement about eating habits and body image, and hear the cutting voice of my inner critic, shaped over a lifetime by family, media, and cultural pressure. Happy new year: your body is once again up for review.
Fatigue and Fire: Balancing Determination with Life’s Challenges
This sub-category of Life Unscripted is entitled Fatigue & Fire: Learning to Live with Chronic Illness. Mostly I’ll be writing about balancing my ongoing work, and the challenge of running my own business, with having to live with M.E., ageing as a woman, plus other health issues. This post is my official introduction to this sub-series.
Why I’m Writing a Survivor’s Journal
It’s important to me to tell my own story in my own words, rather than continuing to be psychologically affected by other people’s versions of my lived reality. Fighting against past gaslighting which echoes around my psyche is a daily battle. I’m no longer willing to minimise, distract from or ignore my experiences for my own or other people’s comfort. It’s my life, no-one else’s.
Perimenopause Update 2024: The Year I Fought Back & Changed My Life
2024 has been the year I fought back against the tricky beast of perimenopause, but the fight has taken a different form to my usual stubbornly defiant style of battle. I now understand why they call it the change; not just because of the physical changes imposed upon me, but because I have had to change how I live in the everyday, and the change has been both monumental and magnificent.
Parenting as a Survivor: Breaking Cycles Without Breaking Myself
I have a complicated past, with life experiences spanning childhood trauma, abusive relationships and more, all of it part of what makes me, me. Today I am going to talk about parenting as a survivor. How has my turbulent, traumatic past affected how I parent my children? Am I really the cycle-breaker I like to believe I am?
Writing With a Spine
I may not have a spine on the bookshelf, but I've got one in my body. And I'm freshly committed to writing with a backbone. Wherever my writing is published.
Welcome To My Midlife Rebellion
This piece is the introduction to a sub-category of my Life Unscripted series of personal reflections here at CaraSutra, a category I’m calling The Midlife Rebellion: Ageing, Body & Womanhood. In the immortal and only slightly edited words of Bon Jovi, “It’s my midlife”. But whose rebellion is it? Mine or my body’s? Or is it both? Let’s find out together. Welcome to my midlife rebellion.
My Sobriety: Choosing the Sober Life When You’re Not an Alcoholic
Now I’ve leapt off the booze merry-go-round, I see alcohol for what it really is, in the stark and sober light of day.
Being deaf: High-Frequency Hearing Loss & Me
I’m not sure how may of my readers know this, but I’m deaf. Not 100% deaf, but certainly enough deafness that it impacts my everyday life.
My Nexplanon Implant Experiences: The Subdermal Contraceptive
What is the Nexplanon implant? How does it work? Does it hurt to get it inserted? How long does it last? Does it protect against STIs? Today I’m sharing my answers to all these questions, plus my personal experiences getting the Nexplanon subdermal contraceptive inserted...
Living with Low Libido: Where I Am Right Now
If you’re expecting an advice post, or a triumphant “problem solved!” write-up, you’re going to be disappointed. I’m right in the middle of this frustrating situation, and right now, there’s no light at the end of the tunnel. I’ve taken all my own advice about increasing your sex drive, followed all the usual sex tips. Nothing is working.
Emerging From My Nope Era: When Libido Returns With a Bang (Or Three)
I was craving his touch. His fingers on me, holding me, gripping me, stroking me, teasing me. And in me, dipping in and out of my silky wet intimate space, using the natural lubrication to tease my hard, pulsating clit and back down to thrust inside, more this time, two fingers, three. Opening up that tight space, readying me for even more of him. His mouth on mine, and his teeth on my neck, and down to my cleavage, my primed and alert nipples, and back for another taste of my hot and hungry mouth.
Sex and Disability: Intimacy, Desire, and Pleasure When Bodies Have Limits
This piece was written by a previous version of me, one who had higher libido, non-progressive deafness, and who didn’t yet know what it was like to live with chronic illness. It was before I moved into perimenopause, before I suddenly developed M.E. What follows is my early exploration into sex and disability, motivated by kindness and curiosity and a desire to create a place which resonates with anyone affected. I now count myself among that number.
Coronavirus & My Sex Life: How COVID-19 Killed My Libido
2020. Year of dashed hopes, ruined plans, social distancing, covered faces, stress and anxiety – plus a renewed appreciation for the NHS and all keyworkers. How did you spend the COVID-19 lockdown? Did you use the time to slow down, listen to your needs, learn a new language, reach your peak of physical fitness, begin a new hobby or craft? ...me neither. I don't know anyone who did, to be honest.
My Positive Mirena Coil Insertion Story: How It Felt & Life With An IUD
So here it is: my Mirena Coil insertion experience, plus what happens afterwards. As with all things, your mileage may vary – but as I often find it helpful to read ‘real person’ experiences online, I wanted to share my Mirena story. I hope it enlightens you about this particular intrauterine device, how it’s inserted, what to expect, potential side effects; and that it helps you decide whether the Mirena is the right choice for you.
Trusting That I’m Loved When I Struggle to Love Myself
Postponing love until some day which never actually comes is learnt self-cruelty. I’m rejecting self-cruelty and embracing self-kindness. How will I go about fully believing in his love for me? I don’t have all the answers, but I know I have to do the work dismantling my old belief systems.
