A compass

A pencil case

Sleepytime tea

Those three things are helping me to navigate through lockdown. They are steering me. Steering me towards calm.

The compass is on my chest of drawers in my bedroom. It is partially filled with sand and rusty. I found it when I was ten, in the Bahamas on the bottom of the sea floor.

The pencil case sits on my desk. It is wooden and roughly eighty years old. My grandfather made it for my mother.

I have Sleepytime tea each night. Its packaging hasn’t changed since the 70s – it shows a bear in his nightshirt and nightcap, fast asleep in his cosy chair by the fire. Mum used to have Sleepytime tea each night.

When I found that compass it was precious treasure. Who lost it? What stories does it hold? Where will it take me? Catching sight of it in the mornings makes me feel that wonder again.

I never met the grandfather that made the pencil case. He sadly died long before I was born, but I used to love hearing the stories of how clever he was, and how fit and strong.

I must have looked a bit nuts when I first spotted the bear packaging in my local Sydney Woolworths: “Crazy lady jumping up and down in Aisle Three!” Sleepytime tea transports be back to those evenings growing up in Toronto, chatting around the kitchen table.

The familiarity of these three things anchors me, helps me to get my bearings and then guides me with wonder, strength and love. These three things have always been with me and are now steering me through unnavigated waters.

This all makes me think of my clients through Covid. I love helping them to revisit the joyful stories of their past to carry them happily and fearlessly forward.