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?

Leave a comment

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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?

Leave a comment

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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?

Leave a comment

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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?

Leave a comment

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This postcard is inspired by this paid piece:

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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?

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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:

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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

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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…

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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.

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