From: Scotland, 2021

To:

Dear Friends,

I am writing this postcard from the middle of the Omicron outbreak. Cafes, restaurants and libraries are closed and I don’t have any money to spend anyway. I bought a flat a few months before, and am now stuck inside it, down to the last of my savings, trying to use blankets to thole my first full Scottish winter in 15 years.

Earlier in the pandemic, my freelance work was doing well. I was running online evaluations and classes in Myanmar, from rural Scotland, bridging my worlds. But over the past months, it has gone quiet. I am still getting used to being a remote freelancer, after years being in-country. But, some outreach to old clients means I have one almost signed contract and a call with a new client today, the first of February.

I wake up early. It is afternoon in Myanmar, but 6am and still dark in Edinburgh. I wrap up, make tea, open the video link. There is no one there, so I check my email as I wait.

A message from an old colleague. Did you see the news?

I click through to the Guardian, where on the front page, there are images of tanks driving into Nay Pyi Daw, Myanmar’s capital city. I read the headlines: Coup d’Etat in surprise.

In my first years in Yangon, I sat in long meetings where we made contingency plans for scenarios where the military tried to reclaim power. But now, 10 years later, far too much seemed invested in democracy for a return to the previous order.

I send an awkward message to the new client: I see there has been a coup d’etat; I am assuming you won’t make our call. Do let me know if you want to reschedule. I hope you are all safe. What do you say in situations like these that is professional but also human? A few days later, I get a confused reply about a cut internet connection, then nothing. The other almost-contract also vanishes the following week.

I call my friends, staying on the line for hours as they talk in terror about criminals released from jails wandering the streets below. I watch endless videos on social media #whatshappeninginmyanmar, seeing people protesting and attacked and wondering about colleagues, farmers, all the people I used to know. I spend a month online in dark, cold Covid-lockdown Scotland, crouched under a blanket. Out of solidarity and loyalty, I refuse to let my attention go elsewhere.

Then I realise, perhaps around the first sunny day of Spring, that watching these videos will do nothing to make the cruelty stop. I need to work out how to get a new job and to turn my attention elsewhere.

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It is not really until recently, more than five years later, I have started to think more about my own loss the day of the coup. A niche professional expertise built over ten years of projects: which evaporated, like a currency that plummeted overnight.

Still tiny compared to what my Burmese friends and colleagues endured.

It is an odd loss, one that came from an opportunity in a far-away country that was never mind to begin with, a profession born from an industry founded on both good intentions and colonial legacy. Myanmar, a distant, previously cut-off place, that, when people in Europe, hear about it, often pause to say, Where? Oh Burma, before returning to the confidence that it had nothing to do with them.

But recently, seeing how quickly technology and job markets are evolving, I wonder, in a few years, how many of us will be looking at our experience and wondering whether it still has worth.

In our evolving world, a lot of changes do not happen in community. Not the shipyards closing in Glasgow, where the professional and economic loss was one everyone could see. Instead, in global careers, we navigate sporadic, isolated shifts, connecting disappearing headlines, which are harder to track.

Pockets of our lives, places we had built lives.

Myanmar there, Ukraine there, Iran there.

Not a pattern. Not our losses. Not really.

Because can we have lost something that was never ours to claim?

Tell Me

Have you lost a place, an expertise or a status recently?

What words do you use to describe it?

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This week’s postcards connect to this discussion piece I wrote last week, tracking 5 geopolitical shocks that have impacted my career over the past 5-10 years.

Read on here:

If you want to dive deeper into invisible global losses, read this next:

Hard times, but interesting topics, friends,

See you next week,

Catriona

Dear Friends,

I wrote in last week’s postcard about the crossover of geopolitics and my life. A few thoughtful comments on that piece, inspired me to write more.

Because there are certain doors that used to be open that have closed and I suspect that others notice similar patterns playing out in their own lives.

To me, this gets me thinking about:

• what this means for global power and privilege?

• who is benefiting from these shifts and how?

This is a topic I want to explore over several posts, but to get started, I am sharing the lowdown on what I see shifting geopolitically over the past 10 years.

I am focusing on the changes that have had significant impact on my own life and livelihood. This is not a whole world analysis, more: what I see through my lens that can be a bridge to the bigger picture.

The Shifts and Shocks

The EU and Brexit (31 January 2020)

Growing up in Scotland, the EU was my portal to the rest of the world, as well as my long-term plan and safety net. I never wanted to live in London or Edinburgh. I wanted to live in Paris, Geneva and Rome.

It was ERASMUS study in France that opened my mind to international work. My first proper job aged 22 was at the European Court in Luxembourg. It was the Luxembourg government, not the UK government, that opened the door into the world of International Development for me at the age of 24. It was an Irish Agency that gave me the opportunity to work in Myanmar in 2012 and much of my 7 years of consultancy work in Myanmar was funded by the Swiss Development Agency.

Personally I think the impact of Brexit should be discussed weekly in Parliament and I especially would love to see more research on changes to economic opportunity in the UK since 2020.

The EU was a key enabler in my career and for me, the UK Brexit vote closed too many doors to count.

Myanmar’s Coup d’Etat (01 February 2021)

I am clearly not the primary group impacted by this coup - millions of people have been affected in ways that make my own claim feels marginal and minor. Still, as that is what I am focused on today, my minor claim is that this political event hugely impacted my life.

I spent nearly 10 years working in Myanmar, during which time I learnt Burmese and had specific sought-after expertise around women farmers land rights. I wrote over 25 papers on this topic, designed Myanmar’s First Women Farmer Forum and shaped countless other land and gender programmes, built pathways for farmer’s voices to be heard by decision-makers and formed lasting relationships with 100s of institutions and individuals.

With the coup, this all vanished overnight.

I was, of course, always a visitor to Myanmar, but I still find it interesting that political change both invited me into the country (I started work there in 2012 just at the start of the transition towards democracy) and closed the day of the coup the 01 February 2021.

This was during the Covid pandemic and I had a remote interview for a new project that very morning. I logged onto my computer in dark Edinburgh to find no one else on the Zoom link. While I was waiting for the team to join, it was a glance at the morning headlines, the images of tanks driving towards the Myanmar Parliament, that explained why that team would never log onto that call.

Trump Froze Funding to USAID (24 January 2025)

I had been made redundant from a long term contract but felt confident that my 20 years in the aid industry brought experience that would make it easy to find a new role.

At the same time, the US administration signalled that global aid was no longer a priority. The market was instantly saturated with thousands of senior professionals displaced by funding cuts. Not only did this show the influence of the USA on global aid, but in a sector where my primary expertise - Myanmar - had lost funding due to the coup, that old career path vanished.

Instead of Iooking for a job, I was a first-hand witness to an industry-wide crisis, the implications of which I don’t think have been fully understood, not just for professionals, but for all the ways this decision will increase global inequality.

Trump Ordered An Attack on Iran (28 February 2026)

Seeing a common theme here beginning with T?

Another factor in global instability, another issue where I am definitely not the most affected party.

Beyond the daily impacts on costs, GDP and supply chains, for me, Iran’s counterattack affected a stable region where I had found career opportunities after the Myanmar coup. A region that is also a new home for many Myanmar young people looking to flee obligatory active military service aged 18.

A region that was stable now also navigating an unexpected geopolitical shock.

Outlier: Scotland’s Global Status (16 January 1706 and 18 September 2014)

More historic than the rest of this list, but something I think about a lot since being back home.

While Scotland has some effective soft diplomacy (see the recent World Cup) and some world class institutions, a lot of our conversations with the world still go through the UK government, housed in WestMinster. The surrounding institutional environment seems to equally live there, pushing these job opportunities South. I know there are exceptions to this, but this pattern persists.

As a Scot with an international career, making the bridge from home to abroad, I feel very aware of this gap. I think especially this absence removes the broader national thinking, funding, dialogue that connects Scotland’s modern story to the world.

Top Line Reflections

When I look back 2 years, my world looked different. When I look back 10 years, its like it has been completely transformed.

There are other factors I see too, around climate, AI, social media, institutional conformity, age, gender, which I will explore in future pieces.

Writing this particular piece, I notice one interesting pattern which I had not thought about before.

These shifts were almost all advocated for or promoted by influential male leaders. Many of whom share wealthy backgrounds, many of whom share a disregard for legality and all whom represent an accumulation of power which has allowed them to create a significant distance between themselves and the impact of their own decisions.

When I started thinking about that, a whole new essay evolved.

That will involve a fair amount of fact checking, so, subscribe to read on, friends,

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I know I am not the only person affected by these shifts. And I know there are other shifts I didn’t highlight here.

As I start to write about what is next, I think its interesting to see the lay of the land. To think about who we put into positions of power and how their narratives, preferences and decisions trickle into our everyday lives, without much affecting them.

Because what for leaders may be ‘just’ politics, for someone like you and me, can end up becoming incredibly personal.

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For now, over to you….

• Do you agree with my analysis, or am I prematurely shutting doors that might still be open?

• Are any of these geopolitical issues playing out in your own life? Are there others political influences that have changed in your life over the past 5 or 10 years?

• Are these changes a result of a certain sort of leadership or are there other factors at play?

• Are there people who benefit from these changes? Who are they and how do they benefit?

• Do any of these shifts actually benefit broader economic and social interests?

Leave a comment

I know this piece is a bit of a change from my postcards, but it is a glimpse of what’s been going on in my thoughts as I reflect from this quiet corner on Scotland.

It might take two boats and a bike ride to get anywhere from here, but the rest of the world still feels close.

Till next time friends,

Catriona

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From: Scotland, August 2026

To:

Dear Friends,

Rather than jumping across time and place, I am writing to you this week from where I am right now.

Since May, I have been living in a remote part of the Scottish Highlands. To get shopping I cycle 20 miles and get two boats. It is quiet here, but there is always a run to go on, a book to read, a show to watch.

What I am grappling with is change and how it has taken over my life. There seem to be so many threads to this change, it is hard to put my finger on what to write about. But I am getting there and I have some longer pieces to share soon. Part of it is about finding aligned work amidst geopolitical, technological and climate shifts. Part of it is about being about having purpose and contributing my skills meaningfully.

It is also about making sense of all that has already been travelled and wondering, what to do with the years ahead. It is about grappling with climate change, wars, a changing world and how to usefully and positively use my human energy wherever I find myself.

Its also about finding a way to contribute my skills so I won’t burn out, so I can chose a life where I can earn a living and still have room for joy. Because joy, creativity and beauty all seem much more important way-finders than they used to.

Sometimes I think, everything till now, was the prelude, the story is just getting started. Other days I think, is this it, is this all my adventures across 4 continents have been preparing me for? Back home with too many ideas to count.

Mostly I don’t think about change. Instead I find something beautiful to look at. Someone to have a real conversation with (why are those so few and far between). Time to weave the threads of my stories, still alive and well, into something new to bring to the table.

Waiting is long. Transition is hard. I don’t have the urgency I had when I was 20 to go out and chase the world. Now at 40, I think its about time the world started looking for me.

In the meantime, here I am with the peacock, the wagtail, the tawny owl and the oak tree. I like the days the grey sea-loch rises up onto the shore and the wind feels fresh and wild. I like the days when it feels like there is something in the air, not of history, or technology but of a world that still includes stories and dreams. When the summer machair is purple, yellow and green. And the bees disappear into the flowers for great feasts.

I like getting the boat and the bike to go anywhere. I am strong from those adventures. The physical movement helps me focus my mind on where I am now, until I have place for my stories to go.

Because the grey loch might reach up yet and reveal that these stories will be written. Even this nameless, odd time, can be the pen.

Till next time friend,

Catriona

Prompt

What is your favourite detail in your daily life right now?

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From: Everywhere, All At Once

To:

Dear Friend,

I love nuance. The appreciation of nuance is one of the best skills I have from living around the world.

Nuance is a hand-woven textile and words sitting between the lines.

Nuance is appreciating the ABCs are completely different in other languages.

Nuance is holding two truths at once. Knowing that they are both opposing and equally true.

I love nuance. I love that the aid sector has taught me to speak in nuanced frames. It has taught me to hold in my mind, not just myself, but other people, other experiences, other realities.

Whenever I write about winter, I think, for some people it is summer right now, and others don’t have four seasons; they have a rainy season and a dry season or something else entirely. And I can know them all as equally true.

Whenever I think about my experience, I know someone else will have the opposite experience. And I love that; I love knowing both exist. Because experience teaches us different shades of life, and nuance shows us that the layers of our lives are important; the beautiful contradictions of who we are and all we can be.

Sometimes I am angry at nuance because I wade too far into it. When that happens, I have lost my voice, my experience, my perspective - chest deep - suffocated by my understanding of all the other truths that exist as well.

This is the nuance of nuance. Because to appreciate nuance means you need to also love its opposite: certainty.

You need to recognise that good leadership, and good self-leadership, require both certainty and nuance. But certainty doesn’t hold the same respect for nuance that nuance holds for certainty. Which is why I think nuance reigns over all.

Because nuance is standing deep in the earth of one place, knowing completely different places exist at the same time. It is holding all these contrasts: light and shadow, joy and crisis, abuse and justice. All at once.

I am writing this because I read recently that this platform favours writers who write with certainty. Most tech favours certainty, and AI surrounds us with certainty.

Organisations prefer certainty when they hire for leadership roles. Voters prefer certainty when they choose a prime minister. Content consumers trust certainty. Recruitment systems look for certainty in CVs rather than complexity.

But we need nuance; we desperately need nuance.

How else are we going to feel our way through the thorny, complex terrains of real life?

Who is going to lead us into the tangled web of what took us to the climate crisis and start untangling it?

Who is going to hold organisations through complex twists and turns and still have staff loyalty?

The people who are comfortable with nuance.

Those who have done the emotional work of holding complicated emotions. Those who do not fall for quick fixes to complex problems. Those who are ok with difference, who have the emotional and somatic ability to stay with spaces of uncertainty, to follow the dangling thread of nuance.

Without appreciating nuance, we cannot deal in nuance, and if we don’t deal in nuance, we are walking with our eyes shut, very confidently along a straight road which at some point will be the edge of a cliff.

If our human capacity to hold nuance continues to be withered away, what are we left with?

A world of only primary colour? A world of hard objects without woven places to land. Chatbots that talk to us confidently. But no wild trails. No whispering tentative ideas. No complex wonder.

Till next time, my multi-faceted friends,

Catriona

Prompt

When was the last time you noticed nuance?

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From: Dubai, UAE, 2024

To:

Hi friend,

I spent the last week mostly in my flat. (I am ill). It reminded me of the peace of being in one place.

It reminded me of all the chasing of experiences, places, moments I have done in my life.

It reminded me of the poetry in rest. Of the way quietness and boredom open up spaces to feel, to remember, to dream.

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It rained in Dubai this week. I felt at home. Somewhere midway between Scottish dreich days and Myanmar rainy season. Somewhere familiar.

I rushed outside to be in the weather. To feel the wind. To watch the clouds. To remember the feeling of rain.

We think we don’t want weather but it is the colour, the movement, the patterns of our daily life. Without it, the days end up all the same.

My adult life has not been very much the same. It has chopped and changed between countries and homes, between rainstorms and rainbows. Maybe that is why calm now lands differently. Having known unrest. I know that peace is rarely an expanse, but it can be a shelter.

This reminds me of ‘s story of the man who became her husband, who turned up at the front door of her remote Scottish home. (She tells this in her book ‘If Women Rose Rooted’.)

To me, this story speaks to the idea that true connection doesn’t begin in overextending. It begins in closeness to self. It begins in the cracks, in the mundane, in staying with your own quiet dreams.

In my own life, I have seen it is only when I root down into myself that it is possible to expand.

In Dubai, life often seems like it must be chased down and tackled to the ground, like prey. Ticking off experience after experience, as if that is where life is lying, somewhere between a parachute and the ground.

I have lived in over ten countries now. I have been on hundreds of dates. I have found the world empty, even with beauty right in front of me. I have found the world full, in the most banal of places.

I have found routines as valuable as adventures. The delight of a perfect ritual. The thrill of meeting that same friend again and again.

The perfection of a wasted weekend, where all I did was watch the new season of Love is Blind, feel sick, lie in bed and stare out the window. Did not do anything I was meant to do to get ahead in the world or chase my dreams.

But I did show myself kindness by not requiring anything of my body or mind. Did find in that softness, the late Sunday afternoon energy to write this post. Did feel too tired to do much else.

Did, by the end of it, feel a bit more like me again.

Until next time friends,

Catriona

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Dear friends,

I had come from working in Dubai, with its straight-lined constructions, urgent phone checking and stress.

This tiny island made a lot of space for life. Only a few rough footpaths and roads to explore. I had thought quiet would be the antidote I needed, but instead the island felt empty.

I felt stupid sitting by myself at the one cafe still open. I ate quickly and left. I have done a lot of solo travel where I felt adventurous and brave. I have joyously eaten alone. But in this paradise, I felt ridiculous.

The next day, I went for a run, I ran fast until I was red and glistening, up the hill, down the hill, stopping at the top to look at the view. Then I ripped off my clothes, as everyone on the beaches was unashamedly naked, and jumped into the sea - sweaty and shiny.

I was mastering the art of doing nothing. But I wasn’t really doing nothing. I was filling a day which felt threatening in its expanse.

Yet, with each run, each dip in the water, I started to wrap myself up with the sea, the trees and the shore’s ways. I stopped trying to shrink myself because I was in paradise alone.

I let myself be both sad and wading into the most beautiful sea I have ever seen.

I let the cool water shock me. I stepped out, my skin astonished.

I walked barefoot up the rough path from the shore, thousands of tiny pebbles niggling into the soles of my bare feet.

The ground underneath me, talking. Not everything in life is smooth. Not every moment can be rushed over or pushed aside. Sometimes pebbles slow us down.

Harshness needs unpicking. And sometimes life just needs witnessing.

So I let the pebbles dig in.

What else did I have to do?

Till next time, friend.

Catriona

Prompt

• Is there a place that you thought would offer peace that has, instead, taught you a different lesson?

Leave a comment

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From: Isle of Mull, May 2026

To:

Dear Friends,

I think the fairies left flowers here.

Not because I believe in magic, although sometimes I might; most of the time, the world is too pain-in-the-hip, backache, burnt-tongue, bomb-in-a-school, earthquake-real to find magic comes to mind.

But some days, it helps to think that even amongst the hardness: a man is baking a tray of scones, a woman digging a field of corn and someone, somewhere is looking up to see an eagle become the horizon,

and because of them there are fairies who throw seeds into the ground so that the paths are marked by white flowers and bright-bonneted bluebells.

So that the everyday walkers find their path has become a ceremony.

And even though nothing is going right, everything might also be going right too.

Or, we are reminded that we still can find our way.

Till next time, friend,

Catriona

Prompt

When you start to write a ceremony into being, where does your pen take you?

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From: Morvern, Scotland

To:

Dear Friend,

A few days ago, we had four hours of rain, thunder and lightning during the night. I have seen some spectacular thunderstorms in tropical countries, but never have I seen Scottish skies resound with thunder that shook the house and lightning which tore holes in the sky.

Watching out the window of my tin-covered house in my remote location, I kept thinking of how my ancestors would have experienced a storm like this one.

Down the road from here, there are the remains of a village which was lived in until the Scottish clearances, although you can still see the outlines of what were homes. And I imagined, if a storm like this came when those people lived there, the rain would have made it through the thatched roofs, and they would have been praying to this loud, angry god to forgive them.

Some of the thunder booms made me jump; they sounded like war, the lightning so frequent and bright like a whole-sky strobe. In Scotland, our thunderstorms are usually mild and short. This time. no easy sleep and no easy passing.

The farmers I worked with in Nicaragua had a fear of the weather. A sense of reverence for its unpredictability and capability to change their world. Rain had power after all, to influence a harvest, an income, a life. That’s what I learned in Nicaragua: a sense of not having control. A worldview which does not blindly believe it has dominance.

And when I lay last night in my wee hut, listening to the sky being shaken and the world being commanded by unseen forces, that is what I thought about.

What people who had reverence for nature would have made of it. What those bangs and flashes would change if my day were made of soil and seed.

What we see is that the weather is different from what it was, but we have no reason to integrate that knowledge. No sticky, changed soil to dig through the rest of the season.

Just a modern life to get back to, another quiet knowing to bear, but not one that stays with us. Even though the sky was very loud and had a voice so unmistakably clear.

Till next time, friends,

Catriona

Prompt

What message is the sky writing to you?

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From: Glasgow Queen Street Station, 2000

To:

Dear Friend,

Do you remember being 17, balancing in heels with slippery soles and straps that cut in at the ankle?

My see-through tights are already ripped. I feel so grown up, but my youth is evident in my attempts to desperately balance from station to pavement to platform to bar.

I feel so grown up yet so fragile, so unbelieving of my authority, cautiously moving in dangerous steps on uneven cobblestones and treacherous concrete steps.

This is what grown-up women do. Stride at great heights.

This is being a grown-up, drinking a sugary sweet mixer from a bottle at a bar, someone who is already 18 got us into.

Balancing from table to toilet.

Balancing from longing to lived.

What I didn’t know then was that my adult self would do so much balancing. Those heels: an initiation into womanhood. Not dressed to kill but dressed to cautiously move forward. To check, to cling, to affirm.

A way of living that required attentiveness to things that I did not know would need my attention.

My tiny red skirt a declaration of freedom. My discounted sparkly heels, not as rebellious as they seemed.

More of a sort of clattering inheritance.

Maybe it’s time to lose our balance, friends?

Catriona

Prompt

Where would you like to lose your balance?

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From: Bo Yar Nyunt Road, Yangon, 2016

To:

Dear Friend,

When I try to imagine the story of my life, I see the world as if a road in Yangon leads straight into downtown Dubai. As if I could walk down the Scottish mountains towards a side-of-the-road tortilla stall in Nicaragua.

In some ways, I can.

When I shut my eyes and remember all the details of Bo Yar Nyunt Lan in Yangon. I remember the face of the man who sold grains to feed the pigeons and the lady who taught me all the names of the fruits in Burmese at her pavement stall. I see the worn, wooden frames of the chairs at the local teashop and the feel of the Burmese naan bread folded between my fingers.

Yet, when I try to see the bigger story, like why did I end up in Yangon? What did 10 years of life there teach me? What was I meant to learn in this country which I saw open before my eyes, then close again 10 years later, giving children only the chance to briefly dream, before what it was becoming was already gone?

It is only when I zoom in on the details that I see everything:

The colours of the fruit on the roadside stalls, the evergreen of the tea leaf salad, the second-hand books on the pavement stalls, turned yellow with mould and time.

I hear everything too: the dawn and dusk crows, the call of the water bottle sellers, the scream of the construction drills.

And when I ask, what was this story, what was this lesson of language, culture and learning about home so far from home? What did it mean to find some belonging in a place I might never return?

There is no Hollywood story of redemption. No overcoming of lessons, no hero’s arc or heroine’s ribbons.

But there is the sound of the corn scattering for the birds, the voices of the people who shout good morning as I walk to work.

There is still the sound of the pigeon wings.

There is the crossing of paths, the never to be repeated meeting of human, bird wing, place.

There is still the longing to one day, return.

Travel gently friend,

Catriona

Prompt

Where does your longing lead you?

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From: Glasgow, Scotland 2025

To:

Dear friend,

Today, I had the feeling of walking back into a room to find someone had moved the furniture in my absence.

Something has shifted. Things are not where I left them. The life I carefully built in Scotland seems to have moved on before I was ready to let it go.

I am back from two years in Dubai, expecting a homecoming. Instead, I find the scattered stages of return. An excited flurry, then silence, which brings with it, the slow recognition that much of what I thought was real was actually a nostalgic illusion of home, enhanced by distance.

Mostly, I feel like a spare part, as if I exist on the periphery of people’s lives. I am awkward, single and childless. Everyone else seems to come with accessory beings. Husbands, children, dogs. I am just me. Most of my belongings still in a storage container.

When I was younger, I always assumed that I would find my life out there. Somewhere in the world, I would find the rest of my story. But, after ten countries and multiple homes, I only ever found pieces of living elsewhere.

These days, it is as if the world is moving so quickly it is hard to keep up. New knowledge brings new understandings and that makes me wonder if, earlier in my life, I knew what I know now, could I have found belonging in my own city rather than seeking it on the other side of the world?

Or is that just life, trying to catch up with our own stories, to reconcile who we are within shifting narratives? To make life into something tangible, while living on an earth that spins?

Is it that coming home brings it all into focus? The seventeen-year-old who walked alone up to school, hoping to find belonging that wasn’t available in Glasgow and the adult self, who would tell her that everything she hoped to find out there was inside her all along. All ten other countries did was shine a light on what she couldn’t yet see.

And when I look at those pieces of my old life. I know that I am unable to make them fit back together. The room has been redecorated.

I need to say goodbye to what I left behind, which was more than I realised I was giving up at the time.

Till next time,

Catriona

Prompt:

What belonging are you chasing and where does it take you?

Leave a comment

This summer, I am writing postcards for Free Subscribers

Join me this summer, as I write weekly postcards from across time and place, with prompts to take into your day or onto your page.

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Behind the paywall…

Join the unknown trails, find words I have hidden along remote hillsides and discover new horizons.

On these paths, I am mapping myself a new story after unemployment, unexpected transitions and steering a new course when my life shifted in ways I did not expect.

This postcard is inspired by this deeper reflection, available to explore in the paid terrain:

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Follow the trails over the sea and across Scotland:

• You might also enjoy this piece I wrote on my return to Scotland last year:

• Or this Postcard from the Western Isles:

Want to skip the Postcard Series?

If you only want my longer-form pieces about Saving the World, you can always opt out of the postcard series.

To do that, you can easily adjust your settings without unsubscribing completely.

Here is how:

• Go to your Substack account profile, click on my publication under your Subscriptions, and toggle off the notification switch next to Postcards.

• You will still receive all of my major, long-form updates exactly as before.

From: Phnom Penn, Cambodia, 2013

To:

Dear friend,

Years ago, I read a blog by a woman who described her rock-bottom moment - the one that pushed her over the edge, made her decide to change everything and start again - as one where a cockroach crawled across her pillow.

When I read this, I remember squirming, thinking, how terrible. I wonder what moment will provoke me to follow the path of my true self?

A few years later, a cockroach crawled across my pillow while I was sleeping in a nice-enough hotel in Cambodia, where I was staying for a week for my NGO work.

It was around two in the morning, and I remember the horror of seeing this large, dark creature beside me on my white, crisp pillow.

I jumped out of bed and called the reception. The night receptionist arrived, and together we chased this cockroach as it raced around the room at a very excited pace. A pace that made him very hard to catch.

Up he went, onto the wooden dresser, then across the floor, then up onto the crisp, white bed cover. He moved at a great speed. The night receptionist and I followed.

Until, eventually, we caught him. Cockroach was removed.

I did not sleep for the rest of the night. I went to work the next morning. This was not my rock bottom. I have had many. This was not it.

In a way, I wish it had been. Because can you imagine living a life where an excited cockroach is the worst that has happened? If this had been my absolute lowest moment?

If this wee cockroach had been all it took to push me from my old patterns, into choosing something else, turning everything around … if this was the origin story of the thing that changed me, and I never went back to my old tendencies. Well.

Really, it has taken a lot more than a cockroach to floor me.

Which means I am quite resilient. It also means I am quite good at tolerating cockroaches.

Sometimes I wish I could say one cockroach deigned to cross my pillow and that it changed the rest of my life. But that’s not my story.

The cockroach came, he danced, he was captured. And my life went on as it had the day before.

Till next time friend,

Catriona

Prompt

How good are you are tolerating cockroaches?

Leave a comment

This summer. Postcards for Free Subscribers

Join me this summer, as I write weekly postcards from across time and place, with prompts to take into your day or onto your page.

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Behind the paywall…

Find words I have hidden along remote hillsides and walk the exploratory paths I am shaping as I navigate this long in-between time in my life.

On these wild paths, I am mapping myself a new story through unexpected transitions and looking to new horizons when my life shifted in ways I did not expect.

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From: The Sound of Mull, Scotland, May 2026

To:

Dear friends,

Here I am on a humming boat, a rocking, swaying humming boat crossing a small stretch of water from one remote point to another. Yet again, in another place I did not expect to be.

It is a bright day but a windy one, and I sit inside in the Seomar-Suidhe on a sticky fake-leather seat, where it is warm and the cradle of the rocking boat is soothing.

Forward and back, forward and back we rock, as we move through the water.

This is what movement is like, I think. In the wild places, the remote to remote places, the watery, humming, soft places.

In our fast-moving world, we forget that movement is not all aggressively quick. Sometimes shifting so rapidly, we cannot see everything that is lost when we are speeding.

More naturally, we move like a rocking boat, like a tide whose attempts to submerge the beach are powerful yet seasonal, taking time to gain the energy for another great swallowing of the land.

Real change is never quick, never linear, never done in one choice or one memorable performance. And it is the warm cabin, the postcard windows, the fierce determination of the sea that matter to me today.

Because they remind me that even this odd moment in my life can be beautiful too.

Till next time friends,

Catriona

Prompt:

When was the last time you were somewhere you did not expect to be?

Leave a comment

This is Notes from Saving the World.

For the next season, I’m leaning into the power of paying attention.

While I find my bearings in my own life, you can expect a Weekly Postcard: a 5-minute sensory dispatch from across time and place, with a simple prompt to take into your day or onto your page.

There are plenty of deeper enquiries and longer-form navigation in the free and paid archive for when you want a more in-depth discussion.

For now, I promise to write you a regular dispatch from the road. And I hope, if you are inspired, you might write back…

Subscribe now

Behind the paywall…

Join the unknown trails, find words I have hidden along remote hillsides and discover new horizons.

On these paths, I am mapping myself a new story after unemployment, unexpected transitions and steering a new course when my life shifted in ways I did not expect.

Subscribe now

Once I had found the village, drunk a cup of sweet, grainy coffee, been assessed by the family cow and eaten a plate of gallo pinto, the farmers would take me to visit their local area.

They would guide me up steep, overgrown hillsides, carrying in their hands a machete.

And they would use this machete to cut a path through the thick jungle while telling me in confident, enthusiastic voices that:

This is where the path for the tourists will be.

Looking back, I can only admire their certainty. I know how hard it is to cut a path, let alone one you are having to imagine into being, as you walk into it.

But they knew the terrain. Not necessarily of the tourism market, but of the mountain. And that made all the difference.

Giving ourselves a sense of understanding of where we are in place, time, and geography helps us to walk more boldly. It helps us take that machete and cut our path more deftly, with certainty that it will take us where we want to go.

So, like those farmers, I have started to mark out of my own terrain.

An Unexpected Journey Across Countries and Transitions

Over the past two years, I have been writing inside the story. When I started this project, I thought I was going to distil the journeys I had already been on.

I did not expect to be writing through a major life transition, navigating new borders, mid-life crossroads and major instability.

I wanted to step back and take a look at the terrain, the signposts, and the summits.

To make a map of this place, so that as readers, you can find me on the trails, and as a writer, I can see where I have gone. And where I am headed next.

Over the past couple of years, I have walked three terrains in my writing:

Let’s dive in

By marking these terrains, I wanted to offer myself and you, my readers, a map.

So you can pick up the thread, depending on the signposts and sustenance you need.

And where do you want to go next?

Leave a comment

I hope this map is as helpful for you as it has been for me.

Sometimes it is not until we mark out the path that we can see we are not lost, just exploring a larger landscape than we first realised.

Until next time friends, see you on the trails,

Catriona

Help draw the next map by buying me a coffee.

Read more about my journey across ten countries, writing a novel and my last year and a half of unexpected transitions.

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A Note on Paid Community

I keep some of these ideas behind a paywall to protect the energy that went into framing the ideas.

You can access those words for the cost of a coffee per month. Joining now means you will be part of designing a new map together.

Membership gives you access to the full archive, as well as new paid maps. I am shaping more behind the scenes, and you will be the first to have access.

If you have any questions about joining, do let me know. I am happy to share more of my vision about making a way through the undergrowth.

It has been a while since we have met in high in the Scottish Mountains of Substack, so I am inviting you into a Spring-inspired conversation to harness some seasonal energy for our creative selves.

When I saw the Gorse for the first time this year, I started to believe in Spring again. Its yellow colour is so powerful, it seems to be able to change the world around it.

Some spring flowers seem a bit unreal. But not gorse. Gorse is not just a passing bud. It is rooted, it is resilient, and it is a plant which gives back to the ecosystem it is a part of.

A flower that I can relate to, even in hard times.

So Which Gorse is Calling You?

Choose Photo 1, Photo 2 or Photo 3

Bothy Conversation - A reminder of this space

Gorse-Bothy Connections

Did you know that gorse is a plant that knows a lot about thriving no matter the soil it has landed in? It regenerates quickly after damage.

It is an active community member, which makes it a great bothy participant. Its thorny bushes are nesting sites for birds, shelter for insects, its flowers are food for bees.

And its root system stabilises the very ground it grows on. It is not the earth holding up gorse. Gorse is holding up the earth. Talk about a resilience-building creative companion.

Gorse knows all about the value of building a strong root system before growing flowers.

The Answers and Prompts: Which Gorse did you choose?

Photo One

You are a Light At The End of the Tunnel Gorse

It might have been a hard few months, but you are seeing blossoms coming from all those root systems you built. The ecosystem around you is grateful.

The memory of it being hard is still there. But the sky is thanking you for showing your true self this Spring.

You prompt:

• Share a piece of writing or a practice that has helped keep you going through hard times.

Leave a comment

Photo Two

You are a Giving it Everything Gorse

Well done, resilient little gorse. You are taking up all the space and the whole landscape is looking at you shine.

Your prompt:

• Share your biggest, brightest win that you want everyone to see.

Leave a comment

Photo Three

You are a Holding up the Hillside Gorse

No one is seeing how much work you are doing to hold together this whole cliff. All your fellow-ecosystem dwellers are grateful. You just don’t know it yet.

Your prompt:

• Your success might still be underground, but you know your root system is what matters. Share your root-system wins, so the ecosystem can recognise the part you are playing in helping everyone thrive.

Leave a comment

Catch up on the Flourishing Series:

That’s all for now, friends.

I can’t wait to see which type of Gorse Bush you are today.

Remember to like, share and subscribe to support this space.

And don’t forget to say hello to some fellow writers in the comments.

The whole ecosystem will thank you.

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Till next time,

Catriona

Then I thought, why not? Why not try to think about this topic even if it is the opposite from where I am?

Then it jarred me and poked and taunted me as all shadowy ideas do.

You, flourishing now? Look at you! Look at where you are. Look how hard you find everything.

It turns out that embracing your flourishing without support turns something beautiful into something quite mean.

Then there was Spring.

Lovely Spring.

Spring will be my inspiration, I thought.

Spring does not wait for permission to come forth and declare itself. Spring will show me how to flourish when winter does not seem to end.

And that led to the bud.

It was on the way down the road, at some point in February, I noticed this bud. I decided I needed something to believe in and I was going to believe in this bud.

Every day I watched my bud. To see if it had grown.

I started calling it bud(dy).

Bud(dy) grew on sunny days. She looked dishevelled in sudden rains and late-season frosts, appeared subdued when I came home in the dark and delighted in the early morning sun.

And at some point in March, I watched bud(dy) become a flower.

A few days later, bud(dy) was already gone.

Behind the paywall

Friends, some parts of this story need the safety of a quieter road. To find out what happened to Bud(dy), and join the conversation, you can join the paid circle here.

On this hidden trail, we will:

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Whether you want to go deeper into this story or not, here is bud(dy).

At that moment when she was dancing in the sun.

Free Subscriber Friends:

I’m spending more time behind the paywall today, but if you’re navigating your own frustrated flourishing season, this piece might be a good friend to spend time with:

Read more

Riding the Glasgow buses, I reflected on the idea of flourishing when our path through the world isn’t filled with affirming experiences.

I wondered, how can we flourish when we are struggling to meet our basic needs?

And, how do we boldly flourish on our terms when so many spaces require conformity and playing small?

Continuing this theme, I started exploring different moments from my past which spoke to me about flourishing.

So today, let’s travel to Myanmar. Egypt. Scotland. New York to explore different climates, different contexts and the way the blossom can connect us to the root and the shoot of the story.

Ready?

You can support this work by liking, sharing, share or adding your ideas in the comments.

If you are flourishing after reading this piece, consider fuelling my writing by buying me a coffee.

Nothing says flourishing like a field overcome by sunflowers.

This is in a village in Myanmar’s Chin State, in the Central Eastern part of the country.

The women farmers I worked with here often struggled to find enough protein to eat. I also have pictures of field mice for sale at market stalls, which they made into curries.

They were some of the kindest people I worked with.

I often think about all the flowers, the mice, the kindness: all these things being true at once.

After the revolution in Egypt, new movements popped up around the city.

People planted in the desert soil and on city rooftops, using modern and ancient technologies to turn the city green.

Revolutions are re-imaginings, not only of political orders but of our relationship to the world.

Harvest looks happy and free

This is taken on a hike from Kalaw in the Central Myanmar mountains to Inle Lake, an area that many of Myanmar’s ethnic groups call home.

The Indigenous communities I worked with in these areas explained that they saw growing food and rights to their land as part of their resistance strategy.

Because with the knowledge to grow, they could feed and nourish themselves, and that meant they could survive oppressive governance and continue to protect their cultural heritage.

Growth in creativity

The High Line in New York is a place that not only lifts pedestrians from street level, but tells a story of re-imaging the old, by using the past’s physical legacies in new ways.

Flourishing is bold in Spring

There is always a little bud that comes along first to announce that something is changing.

This one appeared from nowhere on my path, like it was declaring a new world order.

Whether it had been given authority to or not.

Friends, tell me:

• What type of flourishing do you relate to right now?

• Subsistence, resistance, or wild creative growth?

  Leave a comment

Join the inner circle

For those who’ve spent their lives trying to do good or finding their place in the world, my paid membership connects you with compassionate, creative people and offers room to reframe your story so you can stand up to the systems and live on your terms.

Paid members are invited to join quarterly calls and have access to pay-walled and archived posts.

I have been tracking the Spring buds around Glasgow this week, as they start to become flowers.

I have also been thinking about our monthly theme: ‘Ground on which I can flourish’, inspired by these reflections on International Women’s Day.

Read on to dive in:

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Read more

On the buses, I sat with other mid-morning passengers with their limps, prams and loud phone conversations, which took up too much space. But I got why, because at some point you have to take up too much space, wherever you find yourself.

I remembered sitting in a brainstorming meeting in Dubai a few years ago, where a colleague proposed the idea of ‘Post-Industrial Cities’ as a programme concept. She described post-industrial cities as if they were mythical figments of the imagination, which had nothing to do with the post-industrial city I am from. In fact, coming from this city, it never would have crossed my mind to turn it into a concept, and it made me wonder if people who like words like sustainability and romanticising months ever consider that their words, at some point, will meet real ground. Glasgow knows way too much about that.

My bus rides are a contrast to that life in Dubai, and I often listen to podcasts to help me into another day of this long period of transition, which has in more than one way, tested my resilience.

I listen to women in LA tell me about the energy of the year of the Fire Horse and advise me to embrace my passions. Women who own multiple homes and horses, and sometimes llamas too, say this year they are leaning more into expensive face masks and knitting.

These motivation whispers about abundance seem at odds with these buses and with the buildings which have seen better days along Maryhill Road, the stone that’s always the wrong grey, the graffiti and my own worn shoes because I don’t want to get my good ones soaked through in the rain.

This place of cold feet and funny banter, filled with people doing their best. We get told the world is an equal playing field, but when a woman from LA with several houses and pet llamas is whispering in your ear about abundance, while in front of your eyes a group of tired people in wet coats are queuing up to get off at the big Tesco, it takes a certain sort of delusion to believe her.1

It seems like two worlds which were never meant to collide. Then the bus driver pulls in and I get out into the rain.

This year so far, I am counting abundance in the free library tea and the generosity of people who have helped me out, as I try to work out how to navigate unexpected life transitions in strained global systems.

It seems strange to me that it is on each of us alone to flourish within these structural struggles. This rain should be good for growing, but it feels more like weight than wealth. What we really need are fields and people who water us by telling us kind things. We need a place for that rain to flow and seeds that we are confident will grow when planted. We need community governance rights over this rain. We need our efforts to pay us back in ways that feel meaningful. We need a few affirming experiences instead of a series of knock-backs.

So many of us are not flourishing or only sort of flourishing, or working out how to, knowing in some ways we are lucky, but in other ways, these systems are not working, surrounded by a Greek chorus of people selling us greedy dreams and self-improvement tweaks, which, if followed perfectly, will produce fields of sunflowers. And if not, then it must be us doing it wrong.

Because we are taught about flourishing through things like jobs, income and online followers and relationships, which all require being chosen and approved of by some external entity, but what do we do when we haven’t met that approval, or have lost it for a while, how do we flourish, just as we are, just where we are, no matter the external recognition.

For the times, when we need to thrive on pavement cracks, on the days, weeks, years we don’t have access to fertile mountainsides. We know we still have a bud that wants to grow. We also know this growth isn’t only about water and sunny days. That it might mean getting out a drill and making the pavement into something we can thrive on.

To build a space where roses jut into solid stones of - this is how it is - and this is how it has always beens -. Their roots a defiant - it can be this too - while I am here - it can be this too - even for a moment. A world where we don’t need to change to survive, we just need to be, as we are.

No abundance lessons because we are abundant, even riding the Glasgow buses - in fact, especially riding the Glasgow buses - which are themselves abundance, constantly coming along to move us, not on a Fire Horse Energy but on accessible, equitable, transport systems which are free for the elderly and the under 22s. (And often I have seen the pigeons hop on top for a free ride too).2

Because a truly abundant future doesn’t look like million-dollar houses and exclusive member-only clubs.

An abundant future looks like access, equality, support, systems with room for difference, disagreement and care. Flourishing is being able to speak honestly without consequences, growing as tall as we need without repercussions. Flourishing is taking what we have and making it beautiful, not because we have to, but because we want to.

We break the pavement oppressions and the glass ceilings by existing as we are within whatever the spaces and walks of life we find ourselves.

Daring to grow, right here, with the beautiful glory of our awkward - working it out - stems and our garish - here I am - blooms.

If you enjoyed this piece, then you can support my work by:

• Like, share or add your ideas in the comments.

• If you feel abundant like the buses, you can fuel my next piece by buying me a coffee.

This Month

This month, we will be exploring the systems shifting theme of:

Ground On Which We Can Flourish.

Tell Me

• How do we nourish ourselves and flourish ourselves when our path through the world isn’t filled with affirming experiences?

• How can we flourish when we are struggling to meet our basic needs?

• How do we boldly flourish on our terms when so many spaces require conformity and playing small?

Leave a comment

Join the inner circle

For those who’ve spent their lives trying to do good or finding their place in the world, my paid membership connects you with compassionate, creative people and offers room to reframe your story so you can stand up to the systems and live on your terms.

Paid members are invited to join monthly calls and have access to pay-walled and archived posts.

Subscribe now

(There might be a frog).

But no war disguised as passion. No bombing in the name of love.

Here, there are no magic promises. The door opens normally. The hinges stay in place. This house does not move in the night.

The man you meet does not become a bear. The woman you encounter does not…

Read more