Tag Archives: Tracy Baines

Eating Disorders – Are you asking the right questions

Posted on by

Eating Disorders

Speaking up

My daughter was 19, almost 20 when I found out she had an eating disorder. A friend had told her that if she didn’t speak to me about it then he would. I will be forever grateful to that young man. How long would it have gone undiscovered otherwise?

She agreed to get help but didn’t feel able to make the call. So I called and got through to the doctor – who couldn’t speak to me because she was over 18. I handed over the phone.

I made other calls and appointments and drove her there and sat outside. And waited, and waited. I wasn’t invited over the threshold. She was an adult, wasn’t she – but she was a vulnerable adult.

She was referred to the eating disorders clinic quite quickly – thank goodness. I went with her to every appointment for weeks; months. I would ring the doorbell because she couldn’t summon up the courage to do that. A simple task, to ask for access. I didn’t know that I should have made her do it herself. I daren’t. I didn’t want to give her any opportunity not to get help.

That was her controlling me, and the eating disorder was controlling her. Fear takes hold and that’s when you lack clarity.

If only someone had told me earlier. If only I had asked.

I didn’t even ask.

I didn’t ask because I knew that NHS resources are overstretched. I didn’t want any professional wasting their time on me. I wanted them to spend their expertise on getting my daughter well because I had no idea what to do.

I should have asked.

I may very well have got the information I needed to help her get stronger. She came out of her appointments and came home with me and I had to deal with the fallout. I had no idea if what I was doing was right or wrong. Pure guess work. I didn’t know anyone else in the same situation and was too embarrassed to ask. I was her mother I should have spotted the signs.

I should have known my child.

Talking about it helps.

Parents need support too. It may very well help the child recover faster. It will certainly help you to speak to others in the same situation. I can’t tell you what a relief it was for me.

 

You can look on the B-eat website for how and what to do if you are concerned that someone you know or love has an eating disorder.

Tracy Baines has written a book about how her daughter’s eating disorder impacted on her family. The book It’s Not about the Food is part memoir part self-help guide. It contains resources she found helpful and quotes from many other parents she either interviewed or who responded to her questionnaire.

www.b-eat.co.uk

www.tracybaines.co.uk

 

Hape Home Education – The Perfect Match

Posted on by

Hape Home Education range endorsed by teachers from around the world

Hape’s beautiful range of home education toys allows for endless hours of fun and play. Each product is designed to encourage children to explore and learn. The complete range has been developed to build children’s skills and confidence in a fun, gentle way following Hape’s ethos that; ‘children do not play to learn; children learn because they play’. These three products, all part the Home Education range, are endorsed by teachers from around the world.

Each game is made from high-quality natural materials, water-based paints and non-toxic glues. The designs and pictures are vibrant and cheerful. It’s a joy to play with such a good quality product. All games meet European and American safety standards.

Hape’s Motto is Love play. Learn and it certainly scores on every front. I remember so many happy times playing similar puzzles with my own children, and what fun we had. Now it’s the grandchildren’s turn. A lovely gift for Christmas but I couldn’t wait until then. It’s another one for grandma’s toy box.

Hape Converse – Find, match and describe pairs of opposites.

Converse encourages kids to find, match and describe pairs and opposites using brightly coloured picture cards. It’s a great way to develop children’s communication skills and have fun at the same time. The set contains; 20 pairs of playing cards, 1 red card and instructions. The cards are lovely to touch and the use of animals and children to describe opposites such as big and little, wet and dry, front and back are a delight to the eye.

The Hape converse set is recommended for 4 years+ and is available from Amazon priced £12.00.

 

Hape Listen to the Clues – Children use their own words to guide one another in selecting the correct picture sequence.

listen-to-clues

Listen to the Clues is a delightful communication game containing 4 game strips for the listener and 32 colourful playing cards for the speaker. The aim of the game is for the players to use their own words to guide one another in selecting the correct pictures to match a sequence. Cooperation and teamwork are developed and strengthened. A really lovely game that helps with description and storytelling. Great size for little hands as well as larger ones.

The Hape Listen to Clues set is recommended for 4 years+ and is available from Amazon priced at £13.42.

 

Hape Combino –  use colourful transparent overlays to complete pictures.

​​

Combino  provides children with the opportunity to develop their experimental skills. The wooden tiles are only partly drawn and finished by laying on transparent image overlays to complete the picture. There’s lots of fun to be had by completing the correct pictures but even more from creating odd combinations – propellors on cakes, umbrellas in goldfish bowls.

The Hape Combino is recommended for 4 years+ and is available from Amazon priced £13.42

 

 

WforW Short Story Workshop

Posted on by

short story workshop, short story, writing Words for the Wounded is a charity founded by Margaret Graham, author and contributing editor for Frost Magazine. WforW raises funds through writing events   to help wounded ex-service personnel, with 100% of everything raised going to the wounded. To this end, WforW is holding an inaugural writing workshop on 24th September. There are just a few places left on the:

Short Story Workshop.

Short stories can earn you cash as well as being your calling card. Learn how to turn those rejections into sales.

We will ground you in the basics of short story structure, and provide you with the ability to target your work towards a market of your choice. It will be fun; Margaret and Tracy’s workshops always are.

Tracy Baines has been selling her short stories for almost twenty years. Her stories have appeared in Woman’s Weekly, Take a break, My Weekly and The People’s friend and many others in the UK as well as overseas markets.     www.tracybaines.co.uk

Margaret Graham is a best selling author with Arrow. She also writes short stories and features. She is a creative writing tutor,mentor, editor, and also contributing editor for Frost Magazine. She is founder and administrator of WforW.  www.margaret-graham.com

Saturday 24th September:  10:00 – 16:30   ( Registration 09:30 )

Venue: Downley Community Centre, Old School Close, Downley, High Wycombe, HP13 5TR.  (trains run regularly from London to High Wycombe, Downley is about 2 miles and there’s a taxi rank  at the station )  There is parking at the venue.
Cost: £45

Book online www.wordsforthewounded.co.uk

 

 

Shelter From The Storm by Ellie Dean

Posted on by

Shelter-from-the-Storm-Ellie_Dean

The latest saga set at Beach View Boarding House in Cliffehaven.

It is 1943 and nineteen-year-old April Wilton has joined the WRENS and is busy servicing ships’ engines in Portsmouth. Here she has found freedom, friendship, and fulfilment.

April meets Daniel, a young American soldier, whose mother is Sioux and father is of African descent, The attraction is immediate, and coming from strict racial segregation in South Carolina, Daniel finds the freedom he has in England overwhelming.

But with war and race both involved, their relationship was never going to be simple.

Rejected by her mother and facing an uncertain future she travels to Cliffehaven. However, she carries a secret, one that could change her life for ever.

Can the warmth and support of Peggy Riley and those at Beach View Boarding House heal the wounds of April’s past and bring her hope amid this time of turmoil?

This is my first encounter with the characters of Beach View Boarding House even though it is Ellie Dean’s eleventh family saga.  However, it didn’t matter  that I hadn’t read any of the others  as I was soon swept into the warm and welcoming arms of Peggy Riley and the members of her hotch-potch household. It quite easily stands alone but it did make me curious to find out the back stories of the other members that now reside at Beach View – which can only be a good thing.

Ellie Dean handles a wide range of characters and makes you warm to each one of them – no mean feat at all. She takes us back to a time when life was difficult enough fighting a war and dealing with rationing, let alone the complications that relationships bring. A heartwarming and uplifting story for lovers of family sagas.

www.ellie-dean.co.uk

www.penguin.co.uk

www.tracybaines.co.uk

 

An Orphan’s Christmas by Katie Flynn

Posted on by

 

 

 

An_Orphan's_ Christmas_ Katie_Flynn

 

Katie Flynn’s latest novel will no doubt be eagerly awaited by her many fans.  Molly Penelope Hardwick is abandoned and living in Haisborough Orphanage in Liverpool. She befriends another orphan, Lenny Smith and together they sneak out to roam the streets of Liverpool.  Flynn gives the reader a gentle insight into life in the orphanage, the rules and regulations, the deprivation and hardship that is met with stoicism and humour. Even though the sun was blazing away outside I was soon swept into the chill winter of 1936.

Molly is feisty and curious and before long runs into trouble. When she is forced to leave the orphanage Lenny has no idea of where she has gone. When war is declared Lenny signs up with the RAF and soon forgets about his childhood pal, turning his focus to fighting the war from the skies.

Molly is desperate to join the war effort and with her sights set on joining the WAAF chances are they will see each other again.

Katie Flynn is the UK’s biggest selling saga author, with every novel a top ten best seller. This is likely to do exactly the same.  It’s a warm, feel-good novel, a story that races along leaving you wondering whether the two friends will meet and if they do, will love be in the air? A relaxing, easy read, with lots of twists and turns, lively characters and enough detail to give a flavour of wartime without slowing the story down. A welcome in many a Christmas stocking for sure.

Published by Century on August 25th

Hardback £20.00

Also available in ebook

www.katieflynn.com

Ruby Slippers – by Tracy Baines Reviewed by Margaret Graham

Posted on by

Ruby Slippers – by Tracy Baines Reviewed by Margaret Graham short stories reading, writing, booksTracy Baines has put together a collection of short stories previously published in Woman’s Weekly, My Weekly, Take A Break, Best and People’s Friend.

 

It is fascinating to read short stories written for women friendly magazines, stories that explore the everyday relationships of families, couples and friends.

 

This collection is filled with realistically imagined characters coping with life’s rich pattern, sometimes with aplomb, sometimes almost in spite of themselves, but always with humour and courage. I suppose that’s much as we all do, and this is the key to this collection, because Tracy Baines has a great understanding of women. To this end she has created real worlds with a few strokes of her pen.

 

Baines is such an expert at her craft that she hits the nail on the head for each one of her readers. Indeed, she has real understanding of the women’s magazine market, so much so that the short stories seem to flow effortlessly onto the page, solving the problem for the main character. But not just solving the problems of the main character, but through these stories she brings some sort of clarity to the muddle of our own lives. I said earlier, ‘effortlessly’ but bet it isn’t, because writing is a craft, and it takes time and  application to achieve this level of expertise.

 

Tracy Baines has got this expertise, in spades. Read Ruby Slippers and enjoy.

 

Whether you are a reader or a writer, do note that Tracy will be tutoring a Short Story workshop on September 25th 2016 at High Wycombe – so maybe attend and see behind the scenes of short story writing.

 

Writers’ Short Story Workshop: www.wordsforthewounded.co.uk

 

 

Her book will be available there, or find it on Amazon.co.uk

 

www.tracybaines.co.uk

 

 

 

The Saffron Road by Christine Toomey

Posted on by

The-Saffron_Road_Christine_Toomey

A Journey with Buddha’s Daughters.

 

‘People think that Engaged Buddhism is only about social work and stopping war. But at the same time that you stop the war outside, you have to stop the war inside yourself.’ Sister Chân Không.

It took Christine Toomey two decades of covering wars around the world, looking outward rather than inward, for her to appreciate that any true understanding of conflict can only come from facing up to our own inner battles.

A chance meeting with a Buddhist nun in India made a deep impression on her. It sent her on a journey that lasted two years, in which time she covered over 60,000 miles, across continents, to discover more about the women who were embarking on the Buddhist spiritual path. She follows a trail across Asia, Europe and North America and thereby covers the history, past tradition and modern practice of women who become Buddhist nuns.

The book has three interwoven strands: the path of Buddhism from East to West, the individual paths taken by women to becoming nuns and the third her own personal path to healing the grief she felt on losing both her parents within a short time.

She converses with highly educated women who have had successful and stimulating careers but have found  something lacking  in their life that sent them searching for something more. Many have left marriages and older children behind on their journey of the spiritual path. Those she interviews include an acclaimed novelist, a princess, a former BBC journalist, a Washington political aid and a concert violinist.

There are many tales of great suffering, hardship, and violence that women have had to escape from, and overcome, to follow their calling. That they have endured and found inner peace is inspirational.

It is quite simply the most fascinating book I have read this year and I felt strangely calm whilst reading it. There is much to be found among the pages, of wisdom and of coming to terms with things you cannot change.

A foreign correspondent and feature writer for the Sunday Times for more than twenty years, Christine Toomey has reported extensively from Latin America, the Middle East and throughout Europe. Her journalism has been syndicated globally and she has twice won Amnesty International Awards for Magazine Story of the Year.

 

www.portobellobooks.com

 

Gransthread on Kenneth Clarke’s overheard opinion on Theresa May.

Posted on by

A ‘bloody difficult woman’. Compliment or Insult?

Recently Kenneth Clarke was overheard calling Theresa May a ‘bloody difficult woman’. So – insult, or a compliment?

 

I can’t claim to see inside anyone else’s head, but it was reported as an insult or if one is kind, an observation.

 

This is a label that has been directed towards me rather often, sometimes behind my back. Well usually, but I have ears like a bat, or a witch as some might say.

Without a doubt I take it as a compliment, because I feel I have earned such an accolade.

 

Why? A sense of self is hard fought for, and the confidence to stand one’s ground,  when societal or peer pressure is urging one to shut up, and go with the flow, is a precious commodity.

 

It doesn’t make for an easy life, though, because it equates to putting one’s head above the parapet, but I thought I’d ask around for the opinion of other women across the generations.

 

Tracy Baines, one of our most successful short story writers, who has three grandchildren, and looks ridiculously young, or is it that she knows some magic elixir says:

 

‘Depends who is calling me difficult. I think older women are called difficult and younger women are labelled Prima Donnas or drama queens. When I was younger I would have seen it as detrimental but now I think it’s an asset. It’s said by men and women who don’t like it when you are not a pushover. Bring it on I say.

 

So today I asked a girl who is quite the other end of the spectrum, a mere fourteen. Meg said:

 

I would take it as a compliment. I have a right to an opinion, and though I listen to the opinions of others, if I disagree I will say so. I know I need to make sure I have a reason for the way I think, but in the end, I have a right to transfer my thought into words, even if others don’t like it.

 

Another, a mother, said:

 

I do think men and women have different attitudes. Women are more used to placating others, so tend to keep their opinions to themselves, or subsume their actions into those which will make few ripples. I think they then feel increasingly frustrated by this and as they get older they realize that they have earned their place in the world, and increasingly will not necessarily toe the line just because it is inconvenient for someone else.

So, where are we with this? Perhaps being what is classed as difficult disturbs the status quo? If so, let it. Change is usually good except for the lazy, the scared or the narrow minded.

 

So, a firm decision from across the generations that to be called bloody difficult is a compliment. As Tracy Baines says: bring it on and more power to our elbows.
Any opinions amongst our Frost Magazine readers?
Would love to hear them at frost@margaret-graham.com