Essays, observations and ideas to explore.
A family living through war still has the business of being a family to attend to. Children need care. Decisions have to be made without the information, safety or time that would make them…
Read article →A woman should be able to take part in public life without first demonstrating that her presence will make everyone else safer. That seems a modest expectation. Yet when equality enters the language of…
Read article →A woman can be praised for being dependable and find that the praise has quietly become a job description. She will make the arrangements, remember what needs remembering, adjust her working day. Nobody necessarily…
Read article →A person can be needed by everybody and known by almost nobody.
Read article →What changes when we give somebody time to find their own answer?
Read article →A prisoner cannot simply leave when the person guarding them becomes a danger. That inability to walk away changes the whole meaning of responsibility. Someone else controls the door, and with it much of…
Read article →A decision about care rarely stays on the page where the figures are written. It reaches into somebody’s working week, the conversation between siblings about who can help, the uneasy calculation of what an…
Read article →There is something uneasy about becoming a symbol. People may begin to recognise your face while knowing very little about what you say. They can admire your courage, put your name on a building…
Read article →There is something uncomfortable about reading of an execution and then deciding what to have for dinner. The discomfort does not mean we should stop eating, or that ordinary happiness has become indecent. It…
Read article →Objects sometimes outlive the lives they were meant to represent.
Read article →Advice about taking responsibility for your life assumes that you have some room to move. Even a small change can require money, time or somebody willing to help. If leaving a bad job means…
Read article →When people are asked to rebuild their lives after violence, the word “resilience” can become a rather convenient way of leaving them to it. We admire their capacity to carry on. Meanwhile, the work…
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