There are many things I’ve been very quiet on recently. Believe it or not, save for the odd blog, I haven’t created any of my own writing over the past year, hugely enjoying instead enabling others to write through various courses and workshops. There’s also been the publication of my latest novel (written a long time ago – during lockdown!), so my lack of writing has easily slipped by unobserved.

But aren’t writers meant to write? I recognise a pressure I sometimes feel to find the right words. To find something clever to say, or comforting, or thought-provoking. And whilst it has been an active choice to lay down my pen this past year (I may share what prompted that another time), I am also feeling a strange sense of having run out of words.

It is hot here. So hot and so dry. I keep finding dead tortoiseshell butterflies lying on the floor of my house. Are they coming in to seek shade and water sources and, finding none, dying? I scoop them up in my hands and lie them beneath a shady bush in the garden. I keep placing saucers of water around the garden, I suppose for the hedgehogs and the birds; maybe even the (curious but true) three legged muntjac that visits us from time to time.

I watch the red-faced school kids in their black trousers slink from one puddle of shade to another on their return home, half-heartedly kicking a football across the park, the yellowed grass scratchy and tinder-box dry. And speaking of tinderboxes, one thousand miles to the south in the French Pyrenees, my brother and his family have been evacuated from their home because of the encroaching forest fires that have been breaking out across the region.Greenpeace posted something which said ‘This is the coolest summer you will experience for the rest of your life.’ Sobering indeed.

Watching the National Emergency Briefing recently made me think again of my days in Just Stop Oil in 2023, the dozens of slow marches I took part in; the furious motorists; the banners torn from my hands; the person spitting at me; the hours in police cells. Three years on, and I’ve reflected a great deal on those days. I absolutely still believe in non-violent direst again, and I also don’t think I’d block traffic again. What I didn’t realise then, but see clearly now, is that I was putting huge strain on an already battered nervous system. I hated being arrested and I hated the ensuing court cases. If ever there was a reluctant activist, it was me.

Me with Just Stop Oil in 2023

And of course, there isn’t just the climate and ecological emergency assailing us, but also the rise in authoritarianism, wars being fought by damaged men who were, no doubt, tormented themselves as young people and have never sat with that; never done the work.

And then there is Palestine. Palestine. Humanity’s open wound. This has broken me in a way that few other things have done. And in 2025, I found myself dragging my reluctant activist bones back out on to the streets. But this time I sat quietly in public spaces. Surely we won’t get arrested, I thought, when we’re in places open to the public, sitting silently with signs opposing genocide. This is nothing like Just Stop Oil. I had such naive faith that common sense would prevail. I was wrong. And now, here we are, with the government having overturned the high court appeal by the founder of Palestine Action to de-proscribe the group. So now I face more court cases.

Greenpeace again: a picture in the top half of the image of buildings, schools and markets in Gaza being bombed into oblivion. In the bottom half, a photo of 84-year old Reverend Sue Parfitt being arrested on the pavement for holding a sign reading Saving Lives is not Terrorism. I support Palestine Action. The caption reads, ‘Keir Starmer believes the above is not terrorism and the below is.’ Again, I am lost for words.

Last week I had a WhatsApp video call with my friend Shahd Alnaami, a wonderful young Gazan writer I connected with two years ago. Her father was born in the same month as me and Shahd feels like a daughter to me. We discussed the next online writing workshop we will run and talked about our families. It was only at the end of the conversation that I asked her if life was feeling safer in Gaza. Her face changed instantly, her body language contracting. Shahd fell very quiet, then she told me a story about a loved and respected community elder who was at a food distribution point at the border, all his permits and paperwork in order, who a few days before was shot on the bus by an Israeli soldier. Utterly unprovoked. Just because. And as this is Gaza, it makes not a ripple in the news and is woven into the fabric of the suffering of Palestinians. This, she says, is her reality, with something similar happening on an almost daily basis. There is no Ceasefire in Gaza, and the West Bank is under siege from settlers and soldiers. There is no safety for Palestinians. We sat on our screens, crying silent tears. How I wish this heartache would end and how it grieves me that I am powerless to change this situation. This undocumented murder took place three days before his daughter was due to celebrate her marriage.

Yes, I am running out of words.

Please follow and support this beautiful soul and incredible writer. Her website is here.

But perhaps, after all, I’m not running out of words. I have just sat here for 45 minutes with my pen barely leaving the page (I like to write longhand then transfer to the computer.) I’m about to attend a demonstration outside the library. Reform recently took control of Norfolk County Council and they are planning to ban LGBTQ+ displays and celebrations across the libraries of Norfolk. This will be first, and then it will be Black History Month and then it will be International Women’s Day. That this could be happening in tolerant, open-hearted Norwich, a City Of Refuge, beggars belief. Do I accept it? I certainly do not.

And my belief in the power of people and community has increased exponentially since those days I slow-marched with Just Stop Oil. I will never give up on that belief in inherent human goodness and kindnesss, if we can only create the right conditions in which kindness can take flight and thrive.

When I think of the language I frequently used when I took to the London streets three years ago, we infused ourselves in combative vernacular. This was a fight, a struggle, I wanted desperately to defeat the other side and believed that we would win. And I understand why I used that language, because there were well-respected scientists the world over waving the projections in front of the noses of the powers-that-be who could actually make the necessary changes. Truly, I didn’t know what else to do about this disaster careering towards us that the scientists kept telling to those who could change things, to no avail in that business as usual model we live in. I was angry, confused and very scared. I was a loving mother. I am a loving mother.

But I don’t want to use that language anymore. I want to nurture a language that extends care and compassion. I want to disarm people with kindness. I want to be guided by love for this beautiful world and all the dazzling creatures that inhabit it, human and non-human. I want to tend my nervous system as though it were a garden, so that I can interact from a place of rootedness, calm and resilience. And then, perhaps only then, will I find that the words will once again start to flow.

Thank you for reading this post. Compliment it with reading my poem about why I feel so passionately about the situation in Gaza here and my defence statement in court with Just Stop Oil here.