A PRIME EXAMPLE OF WHAT EXCESS DOES TO YOUR APPEARANCE

A prime example of what smoking, drinking and drug use does to your appearance. Kate Moss had it all, and yet she has taken it for granted, sad to see really for she's only 37, if she keeps going at this rate what will she be like at 57.

As I see it you only have one body and if you look after it, it will serve you well, however if you abuse it, you will pay for it.

Article below from the Daily Mail

A face in the life of Kate Moss: The coarsening effect of drink, drugs and non-stop partying

Serene, poised and with the hint of a shy smile — Kate Moss was barely recognisable when the Mail published pictures of her yesterday as a sweet 17-year-old posing for a bridal magazine.

Twenty years on, and the wear and tear of her notorious lifestyle has taken its toll.

Here, we look back at Kate’s 20-year career and chart the decline of a once-great beauty.

1991: Fresh-faced and wide-eyed, a teenage girl from Croydon has been talent-spotted by Storm model agency boss Sarah Doukas while standing in a check-in queue at JFK Airport in New York.
It’s hard to believe that back then it was her peaches-and-cream complexion and wholesome looks that used to win her work such as this shoot in Brides magazine.

1992: The girl with the skinny body and squeaky voice is taking the fashion world by storm, securing fashion spreads in Harpers & Queen and Vanity Fair.
But the first taste of the controversy that will dog her career comes when she appears topless in an advert for Calvin Klein.

1993: Kate’s painfully thin body, part of the so-called ‘heroin chic’ trend, is giving cause for concern.
Alongside fellow models Cindy Crawford and Naomi Campbell, her skinniness is plain to see.
Even former U.S. President Bill Clinton criticises the look. But it doesn’t stop Vogue making the 19-year-old one of its youngest-ever faces on its cover.

1994: Moss mania has stormed the fashion world — and there is no stopping Kate.
She’s a regular on the club scene, but is still young enough for all of those late nights not to take their toll.
Here, the 20-year-old Kate shows why she’s commanding fees of £10,000  a day.

1995: Kate’s learned how to perfect the pout — here accentuated with a striking red lipstick — and hooks up with the first of many celebrity boyfriends in the form of Hollywood actor Johnny Depp.
In his day, Johnny was a hell-raiser, but even he told friends he struggled to keep up with Kate’s drinking and wild partying.

1996: This is the year Kate wins the  Vogue/VH1 Model Of The Year competition.
The sullen, vacant stare seen here on the catwalk at a Calvin Klein show is becoming her trademark.
Off-duty, Johnny Depp is introducing her to the Hollywood brat pack.
Brad Pitt and Keanu Reeves are becoming her new celebrity friends.
 

1997: When she’s not burning the midnight oil in Los Angeles, Kate is hitting the clubs in London with her new best friends, rock star Liam Gallagher and actress Patsy Kensit.
Her two-packs-a-day smoking habit is just starting to take its toll.
The supermodel’s skin is beginning to look dull and her teeth are showing signs of becoming stained.

1998: Reputedly earning £3million a year, but all those late nights — and the break-up of her relationship with Depp soon after this picture was taken — all prove too much, and in November Kate checks into rehab at The Priory.
Rumours of drug-taking are rife, but Kate insists she simply ‘partied too much’.

1999: Refreshed and detoxed, Kate appears on the catwalk for the first time after rehab.
The scandal didn’t harm her career — climbing to 18th in the list of Britain’s richest women, she racks up a six-figure fee for a L’Oreal hair commercial and closes the year on the cover of American Vogue.

2000: Is she really just 26? Kate has become a fixture in the louche Primrose Hill set, alongside Sadie Frost and Jude Law.
The reckless lifestyle results in a health scare that puts the model in hospital with a kidney infection. Not that it seems to matter in the cynical world of fashion.
She briefly quits the catwalk, but is soon coaxed back.

2001: Now with a new partner,  magazine journalist Jefferson Hack, Kate is fuller-faced — and also Britain’s wealthiest supermodel, worth £15 million. 
But in an interview she says modelling is often far from thrilling, and reveals that she turned to drink and drugs because she started to find the job boring.

2002: Eyes blurred, and a cigarette dangling from her mouth, the model emerges from another night on the town. Yet it is around the time this picture is taken that Kate becomes pregnant.
Nine months later, the model gives birth to Lila Grace. Whether Kate is mature enough to look after herself, let alone a newborn, is another matter.

2003: A mother, but still a jetsetter, Kate takes Lila with her to Thailand and to New York. If her eyes look weary, it may be because she’s still partying.
Even Lila’s christening prompts a two-day booze-fuelled celebration. As for maternity leave, forget it. Kate attends every major summer event, from Glastonbury to pal Stella McCartney’s wedding.

2004: Her once-healthy hair is losing its lustre. But as she turns 30, there’s no sign of slowing down.
Kate celebrates her birthday with a Beautiful And Damned themed party recreating the debauched world inhabited by the fast-living but ultimately doomed characters of the F. Scott Fitzgerald novel.
The moral of the story seems to have escaped her.

2005: Scowling and with wrinkles around her eyes and nose, Kate is plummeting off the rails thanks to a new boyfriend, rock star (and junkie) Pete Doherty.
It’s not long before Kate is pictured snorting what appears to be cocaine and is plunged into a scandal. She loses an H&M campaign, but clings on to her Dior contract.
Today, she’s the face of their new perfume . . .Dior Addict.

2006: Kate starts the year on the ski slopes with a 20-year-old toyboy named Jamie Burke.
Despite the whole drugs debacle, the British model picks up contracts with Calvin Klein, Roberto Cavalli, Bulgari, Stella McCartney and Virgin Mobile among others. So why does she look so glum here?
Perhaps it’s something to do with her troubled rekindled relationship with Doherty.

2007: After splitting with Pete Doherty, Kate launches the second range of her designs for Topshop, after  chatting up its owner Philip Green with the line: ‘I’m a girl from Croydon, you’re a boy from Croydon, why don’t we do something together?’
The pair are soon out on the town together. Quite what Green’s wife Tina makes of it is another matter.

2008: Is it EastEnders’ Gillian Taylforth? The year begins with a planned 34‑hour celebration to mark her 34th birthday.
But age is catching up with the model as she heads to bed at her £8 million new home in North London after only 18 hours.
Her latest relationship — with guitarist Jamie Hince — follows a rocky path after rows over her party lifestyle.

2009: Oh dear. The past year has taken its toll.
It started with another boozy 18-hour birthday party (yawn). But the harsh light of the Cote D’Azur weather shows up the unflattering effect that sun, cigarettes and alcohol have taken on her skin.
Her forehead shows lines, crows’ feet are obvious and her skin  looks parched and patchy.

2010: Rumours circulate that Kate has married her boyfriend Jamie Hince, but, in fact, they have just got engaged.
At the launch party for Topshop’s Knightsbridge store, Kate looks more like her old self.
But her famously almond-shaped eyes and chiselled cheekbones are enhanced (disguised?) with heavy make-up.

2011: Looking 37 going on 47, Kate is now busy preparing for her July wedding to Jamie Hince.
How she is dressed on the big day will be a surprise, but one thing is certain: she’ll be almost unrecognisable from the fresh-faced 17-year-old that she was 20 years ago when she posed in that early shoot for Brides magazine.

Maggie Brown (Author)

Visit Amazon's Maggie Brown Page

Find all the books, read about the author, and more.

Top Stories

HOW LACK OF SLEEP IS DETRIMENTAL FOR OUR HEALTH

The following is an article from the Daily Mail, which shows us of the effects of Cortisol, also produced during stress. Cortisol is a fantastic hormone when it is produced for what its meant for and short raised bursts to deal with acute stress. However if its produced for long term stress its very detrimental on the body (see section here on STRESS AND HEALTH)

How to never get ill: Take a nap

History has many accomplished nappers.
Leonardo Da Vinci took short naps every few hours; Napoleon Bonaparte dozed on his horse. And very wise they were, too.
Lack of sleep causes the body to produce more of the hormone cortisol, which gives us energy but restricts production of human growth hormone — limiting the body’s ability to repair itself.

Sleeping baby: A report from the University of Chicago found lack of sleep can lead to heart attacks and strokes

A 2008 Stanford University study found that fruit flies’ immune systems fought invading bacteria best at night.
This backed up the theory that our bodies use dormant hours to regenerate and fight disease (by producing immune cells called monocytes).

And a recent University of Chicago report found that getting as little as an hour less sleep than needed can increase calcium levels in heart arteries by 16 per cent.
This can lead to heart attack and stroke — so catch up with a nap.

Extracted from The Secrets Of People Who Never Get Sick by Gene Stone, published by Workman at £16.99. © Gene Stone 2011.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1392508/How-ill-Take-nap--according-University-Chicago-report.html#ixzz1NxKgWtkI

Maggie Brown (Author)

Visit Amazon's Maggie Brown Page

Find all the books, read about the author, and more.

Top Stories

WARNINGS ON CIGARETTE PACKETS

Now I have never been a smoker and probably being an Aquarian, I like to do my own thing and never had any desire to try it, so I have no idea what it tastes or feels like. As I was growing up I lost my grandfather and several aunts and uncles to lung cancer and had other relatives suffer heart disease and other lung diseases. When I went into nursing one of the first ward I worked on was one where there were several patients in the terminal stages of lung cancer. I guess therefore this instilled in me the dangers of smoking and what it can do to you. It's extremely distressing to watch patients suffer from lung cancer where upon death is a blessed release from the extreme suffering. Lung Cancer is avoidable unlike a lot of cancers, so why risk it by smoking. OK so you may want to risk it but research has proven not only are you risking your own health but on others by passive smoking, is this fair? In the UK our much cash strapped National Health System is under severe strain treating all those who indulge in smoking and you have to ask, why should others who take care of their health by not smoking pay for the treatment of those who do? Remember too it's not just lung cancer, but a whole range of ailments are caused by smoking, asthma, chronic bronchitis, emphysema, throat and mouth cancers, oesphageal cancer, heart disease, arterial disease, leading to amputation, high blood pressure, strokes. Can you imagine the stresses on the NHS being reduced if all the smokers were to give it up? but more importantly think how healthier the nation would be and how younger they would look too. I can't think of one good reason why anyone should smoke and if smokers were true to themselves, I am sure they would share this view.

Graphic warnings on cigarette packets DO help smokers to kick the habit

Graphic warning showing neck tumours and diseased lungs on the front of cigarette packets do push smokers in to giving up cigarettes, researchers say.
Scientists found nearly all adult smokers in countries that are required to place health labels on tobacco products noticed the warnings.
More than half of smokers in six of 14 countries in the study said the warnings made them think about quitting.

Shock factor: Graphic images are the most effective at encouraging smokers to quit, a study has found

In seven of the remaining countries more than one in four poll respondents said the warning labels prompted them to consider kicking the habit. The only country unaffected by the warnings was Poland.
Researchers analysed data collected between 2008 and 2010 for smokers in Bangladesh, Brazil, China, Egypt, India, Mexico, the Philippines, Poland, Russia, Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine, Uruguay and Vietnam.

The results of the poll called the the Global Adult Tobacco Survey were published by the US Centers for Disease Control.

Out in the cold: Smoking was banned in indoor public places in England in 2007

The most effective warnings were pictures of graphics that showed the harmful effects of smoking, possibly because they are better at evoking an emotional response the scientists said.
The study found that Brazil and Thailand both had 'numerous prominent and graphic pictorial warnings in rotation' and also had some of the highest rates of smokers thinking about quitting because of the warnings.

Warning: Cigarette packet labels in Thailand are particularly graphic

The CDC wants to see further research to try to find out how many smokers who think about quitting because of a warning on a packet actually do, and to determine what other factors come into play in getting someone to stop smoking.
The UK became the first country in Europe to place images on cigarette packs in 2008 that showed the 'grim reality' of the effects of smoking.
They replaced written warnings that had been printed on packets since 2003.
Smoking is responsible for one in every five deaths in adults aged over 35 in England, and half of all long-term smokers will die prematurely due to a smoking-related disease.
In the years from 2007 to 2008 there were 1.4 million NHS hospital admissions for diseases caused by smoking. In 2008, smoking caused 83,900 deaths in England.
Around 65 per cent of smokers in the UK want to quit the habit and around half manage to do so.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1391447/Graphic-warnings-cigarette-packets-DO-help-smokers-kick-habit.html#ixzz1NflWNvbV

Maggie Brown (Author)

Visit Amazon's Maggie Brown Page

Find all the books, read about the author, and more.

Top Stories

DEPRESSION~SCIENTISTS SAY IT'S GENETIC

I have reproduced this story from the Daily Mail to highlight there is no shame in any form of mental illness. For far too long there has been a stigma attached and the worst thing you can say to anyone who is suffering from mental illnesses is "To pull yourself together" or "Stop being so self indulgent". There is a physical reason for such ailments and slowly scientists are discovering this, hopefully this will lead to better treatments and a cure.

Depression: Scientists say it's genetic - and my family is the proof

For four long unendurable months, she lay in a darkened room, her face as white as the sheet on the bed from which she could not (rather than would not) move.
‘Mum, I want to die.’ That’s what my lively, funny and much loved 17-year-old daughter said to me, day after day, week after week. I was terrified of leaving the house, for fear of what I would find on my return.
She lost a stone, which she could ill afford on her 5ft 10in, size 8 frame, although I tried to make her eat three meals a day. She did her best, even if it was only a bowl of cereal, but said the pain of hunger was a welcome distraction from the pain in her head.

Shared suffering: Sally Brampton and her daughter, who displays all-too-familiar symptoms

The teenager who read voraciously — at least four books a week — could not read a simple sentence. The girl who, according to her school, was destined for Oxford University and a brilliant academic career, missed four months of school in her A-level year.

 

She thought she was a failure, a word she used repeatedly. She felt, in some strange way, that it was her fault. It was unbearable.
‘It’s just adolescent mood swings,’ people said. I knew it wasn’t. I took her to a psychiatrist. Diagnosis: major depressive disorder with a high risk of suicide.
I had heard those word myself, a tear-stained pillow clenched over my face in a bed in a psychiatric unit where I was admitted with severe depression.
So, long before the news this month that scientists had found a genetic link to depression, I knew there must be a connection.
Over the years, I had watched my mother standing in the kitchen, crying helplessly. ‘I want to die,’ she, too, had said. The first time I became conscious of her suffering, I must have been about eight years old.

Genetic? Sally knows better than most how the effects of her daughter's illness could shape her life

She would relapse into apathy, was constantly tired and did not want to leave the house. Either that or she would suddenly become snappy and irritable.
I didn’t understand it back then, either my mother’s sudden acute misery, or my own. I knew nothing about depression. As a family we weren’t given to hanging out with psychiatrists and therapists. These days, I understand it only too well.
In retrospect, I realise I have been suffering from depression since I was a teenager, just like my mother, and just like my daughter, whose episodes of the illness started when she was 13, the same age as me.
There was a reason for my misery; being sent to boarding school when I was ten, a place where I was terribly unhappy.
On top of that, my parents lived overseas, 5,000 miles away, so there was nobody I could talk to. Even if I had, they wouldn’t have understood and put it down to teenage blues.

 'My  mother would suddenly fly into a rage'

The first time I saw a doctor was when I was 20. I told him I was feeling depressed. He gave me medication but it was such a strong sedative that it only made me feel worse and, after a month, I threw it away and battled on.
Even when I was editor of a successful magazine, Elle, and I should have been on top of the world, there were weeks I could not stop crying. I pretended to the staff that I had flu and couldn’t come into the office. I thought I was just tired or stressed.
So the science that proves the first solid evidence of a rogue chromosome linked to depression, which gives some people a hereditary disposition, came as something of a relief.
Not because I wanted to find an ‘excuse’ for depression or thumb my nose at those who urge you just to ‘pull yourself together’, but because I wanted (needed) to understand why three generations of bright, lively women sometimes fade into the dark.
It happens for no reason, but happen it does — to all of us; time after time after time.
More than anything, the research proves something I have long believed; that depression is an illness, not a self-indulgence or weakness.
It is a complicated disorder, despite the blanket term given to the condition. Saying somebody has depression is like saying they have a virus. Which virus? What’s it called?

So young: Sally with her beloved daughter when she was a baby

There are many forms of the illness; reactive depression (as in a reaction to difficult life events such as bereavement, the breakdown of a relationship, the loss of a job), postnatal depression, bipolar disorder, bipolar II (which does not include the manic state of bipolar disorder), or simply debilitating, chronically low mood.
Dr Adrian Lord, psychiatrist and medical director of the Cygnet Hospital, explains that depression is so complex it varies even in individuals, let alone between individuals.
In clinical practice, he often sees patients where there is a distinct line of depression, suicide or bipolar disorder running through one side or other of the family. ‘It can span several generations and often does not seem totally due to shared upbringing, so a genetic component does seem likely,’ he says.
Scientists have long believed that certain people are more susceptible to depression than others but have, until now, not been able to offer substantial proof.
Some people shrug off circumstances that would topple another person like a pack of dominoes — which is another reason why depression is stigmatised as weak self-pity. How often have I heard the words, ‘Other people are far worse off than you’. Yes, I know. And?
Whenever I write a personal account on the subject for a newspaper, the comments on the website are inevitably the poisonous, ill-informed malice that any mention of depression seems to inspire.
Here is a real quote from one   website. ‘You should be ashamed of yourself. My Nan worked in a biscuit factory for 30 years, raised three kids single-handedly and never had a day’s depression in her life.’
Well, all I can say is, lucky old Nan.Quite apart from the implications these new findings signify for effective treatments for those suffering from depression (although, still far off in the future), the discovery that a section of DNA is responsible might finally put those ridiculous, antiquated attitudes to rest. It’s bad enough suffering from any severe illness, without being harangued for it.
In fact, it is so distressing that my most fervent wish would be to lock all the doubters and sceptics in a room with my pale, mute, severely depressed daughter for 24 hours so they can witness the illness first-hand and see for themselves the terrible toll it takes.

 'For weeks I could not stop crying'

Depression affects about 20 per cent of people at some point in their lives. Severe, recurring depression affects up to  4 per cent of people and is notoriously hard to treat. That’s the form that afflicts me, my daughter and my mother.
Medication helps but it is not, as some people believe, a cure — and nor are antidepressants ‘happy pills’. That’s the Disney version. They are powerful drugs formulated to help bring neurochemicals back into balance and have extremely unpleasant side-effects. Some work, some don’t — and some make depression infinitely worse.
For the lucky minority (30 per cent) they help to alleviate the condition. I have been on 13 different antidepressants, none of which helped until, under the constant care of a psychiatrist, we finally discovered a cocktail of drugs which keep me stable — at least, most of the time.
The workings of the brain are still so little understood that treating depression is like shooting a gun into the dark and hoping the magic bullet of medication will find its  target.
Hence the comment, from Gerome Breen, leader of the team of scientists at the Institute of  Psychiatry, Kings College London who found the evidence of a hereditary link, that ‘these findings are truly exciting’. An excitable scientist is a rare creature indeed.
Ten years ago, when the episodes of depression I have suffered since childhood escalated into a full breakdown, a psychiatrist implied that my depression might be genetic because my mother suffers from it.
However, he warned, there was no scientific evidence to prove it. I wanted to shout, ‘I am the evidence’, but one woman’s voice is soundless in the face of conjecture. Scientists want hard facts, not subjective accounts.

Down days: Depression is an illness. For some of us, there are no reasons. It just is

I wanted facts too, and spent years researching depression, even wrote a book about it. I wanted to know what might have caused mine — mainly in the hope of heading off another severe episode.
Was it my childhood and the instability of being brought up in six different countries and packed off to 12 different schools? Was it my mother’s undiagnosed, untreated depression which sometimes made her retreat from her children?
Was it my father, who has Asperger’s Syndrome (high-functioning autism) so is unable to empathise or, as he puts, ‘understand the difference between happiness and unhappiness.’
In other words, was it nurture — what psychologists call environmental or psychosocial circumstances? Or was it just plain nature?
Much of the time, I am happy and optimistic — joyous even. I have prodigious energy, work and play hard and love a project such as doing up a house; summoning builders, decorators, carpenters, electricians and plumbers. My speed and impatience are something of a joke among my friends.
But when I am depressed I don’t have the energy to do the washing up, let alone call a plumber. At my worst, I washed using hot water from a kettle for nine months because I couldn’t make a phone call to get the boiler fixed.

 'I'm not living, Mum, I'm enduring'

I have a successful career, a child I adore, wonderful friends, enough money and good health. What reason do I have to be depressed? That doesn’t stop the days when, quite out of the blue, I wake up feeling black despair and all my thoughts turn to suicide.
It was only when my daughter developed depression for absolutely no reason (happy, popular, with adoring parents and a childhood very different from my own) that it hit me, as clearly and as painfully as a bolt of lightning. Depression is an illness. For some of us, there are no reasons. It just is.
As my daughter put it: ‘I’m not living, Mum. I’m enduring. I don’t want to be here any more. Not like this.’ She tried, though; screwed up every little bit of courage she could find. Stuck on the wall by her bed was a page ripped out of a school exercise book.
On it she had scrawled in biro, ‘I will get better’. Then another line, in capital letters, ‘I WILL GET BETTER’. That brave little piece of paper broke my heart.
Friends came round to try to cheer her up. She sat in her dressing gown, trying to join in, sometimes even smiling, but I’d known my daughter’s face for 17 years and I knew the difference between a genuine smile and a desperate effort to reassure her friends.

In your biology? The discovery of a genetic link could shed light on depression

There is no blood test for depression, no easy answers and, sadly, no easy remedies. I have spent countless hours talking to therapists, but when I am severely depressed, no words can reach me.
Depression is not my nature; it is my biology — just as it is my mother’s and daughter’s. I have an illness that causes an imbalance of chemicals in one of the major organs in my body — my brain. To put it another way, I may as well have a chat with my liver and tell it to cheer up.
The discovery of a genetic link does not mean that, because depressive illness is present in a family, it is inevitable. But it may mean severe emotional stress is more likely to trigger an episode in somebody if there is a history of familial depression than in somebody who has no record of mental illness.
In other words, it is a pre-disposition rather than a predetermination. Psychiatrist Adrian Lord says he generally sees the former but admits that, in some people, ‘it is so strong, it does seem almost predetermined’.
Do I suffer from guilt from passing on such a terrible illness to my daughter? Hell, yes. My only consolation is that I know the condition so well, I could get her help fast.
Her solace is that she has a mum who understands and doesn’t dismiss her misery as adolescent mood swings. We call depression our ‘shadow side’. Where there is darkness, there is also light.
Despite missing so much schooling, she got her place at Oxford University, where she is excelling. I am so proud of her, it hurts.
So, for anybody who still believes that depression is strictly for lazy, self-indulgent losers, may I introduce you to my daughter?

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1391742/Depression-Scientists-say-genetic--family-proof.html#ixzz1Nfhi0j2y

Maggie Brown (Author)

Visit Amazon's Maggie Brown Page

Find all the books, read about the author, and more.

Top Stories

GIRL FRIENDS, GIRL FRIENDS WOMEN CAN BE SO CRUEL

I've had this done to me too, so I know how it feels. I feel it's something in women's survival instinct, that cause them to do this. Wherever you have a group of women you will always have an element of competition and rivalry where upon there will be jealousy and bitchiness. Likewise most women don't dress to impress men, if you ask them the vast majority if they are honest, they will tell you its to impress and be one up on other women

FROM THE DAILY MAIL

Why are women so cruel when it comes to dumping friends?

For many women, there’s only one thing more devastating — more visceral in many ways — than being dumped by a bloke. And that’s being dumped by a girlfriend.
Like being fired, it is a rite of passage into emotional adulthood that many of us will have experienced — or, if we haven’t, we certainly should have.
It hurts. Hell, it’s meant to. Suddenly, someone with whom you’ve shared everything (except sex and morning cornflakes) for years freezes you out. For ever. You are, unapologetically, ‘iced’.

Famous falling out: Paris Hilton, left, and Nicole Richie were once the best of friends

Women do it to other women with exquisite cruelty. They use the silent treatment. They’ll bitch to friends till the cows come home about what you’ve done to get up their perfect little noses, but they don’t pick up the telephone to try to straighten things out with you.
They don’t return calls, they give parties and don’t invite you (but invite mutual friends so you always hear about them). They never make the first move and, worse, they never make the last move.
There’s no farewell dinner, no Dear John letter, no one for the road, no one for old time’s sake — and therefore, no closure.

Rachel Johnson, editor of The Lady magazine, was dumped twice by friends when she was younger

The dumpee is left wondering: what was all that about? Why am I no longer required? Men find women’s behaviour in this regard utterly bizarre.
As a male acquaintance once said: ‘There’s nothing in the world stronger and flimsier in the world of relationships than two female best friends — because today everything is good, but tomorrow you might have to damn her and discontinue that friendship till the day you die.
Yup, I’ve been there. Twice. The first time, I was dumped by my best friend from school because she thought I’d slept with her boyfriend. I hadn’t, strictly speaking. But there were Clintonian shades of ‘I did not have sex with that man!’ to my denials because we had messed around. But we were undergraduates. I was 19, for Pete’s sake!
The second time I was also quite young. My friend was simply fed up with me and our lives had diverged: mine into marriage, the BBC and children, hers into being a single installation artist in a Shoreditch loft.
So I have never been dumped by someone with whom I’ve shared boyfriend misery, childbirth war stories, husband agonies, career dilemmas. When that happens, it must be shattering.
‘I was dumped,’ says a very dear friend of mine. ‘I’d known this woman intimately for 15 years, she was single, and every weekend, the call would come: “What are you up to?” and we would include her in the family. We looked after every spare moment of her long spinsterhood.
‘Then she met a bloke and my husband left me. Instead of calling and saying, “Are you OK?” or asking: “Do you want to come round?” my best friend became best friends with my replacement. She went off with the new woman!’

Life gets in the way: If one of you gets married or has children before the other, it can lead to jealousy and resentment like in the film Bride Wars

It’s hardly surprising my friend is still spitting about it. Often, you don’t see a man for dust after a sexual relationship has run its course, but you do expect your, er, steady girlfriend to watch your back — and when she doesn’t it can be unexpectedly horrid.
‘It wasn’t more hurtful than being left by my husband, it was a different kind of betrayal,’ says my friend.
So it’s a mystery. According to evolutionary biologists, women have a ‘tending instinct’.
When the going gets rough we round up the kids, protect the weak, hoard food, and align ourselves with other females for protection. So when the bonds rupture, and females go cold on one another, it goes against nature. Or does it?

Perhaps our female friendships are more like affairs than we admit. The female really is deadlier than the male when it comes to relationships. I think this is because we have lots of female friends, and usually only one male lover at any one time and the females are more disposable.
I sometimes wonder whether we pick female friends as we choose lovers — because there’s excitement, chemistry, attraction — rather than as we choose our husbands. When it comes to a life-long partner, we seek dependability, solvency, kindness, among other qualities.
But with new lovers, just as with new girlfriends, there’s the crucial sizzle factor. And an early friendship is actually much like an early relationship — there’s a stage at the beginning when you feel you were made for each other, you can’t get enough of each other’s company, you chitter-chatter on the phone . . .  and then one of you messes up, goes on a bit, and you realise: you’re mates. It’s nothing special, just a common-or-garden friendship.

'Women are programmed to be promiscuous about friendships: we have loads of friends, and few sexual partners - while for men it's the other way round'

And, if you’re lucky, and the friendship has solid foundations — lots in common, children the same age — you soldier on. But sometimes something happens when friendship can’t continue.
There’s too much jealousy (if one of you marries, has children, loses weight and looks threateningly hot). There’s too much resentment (if one of you has poached a friend, betrayed a confidence, or been caught gossiping).
And then, sometimes, it just ends. One of you is . . . let go.
Men approach friendship very differently. They tend to make friends, usually aged eight or so, and hold on to them no matter what — adultery, divorce, betrayal, gender-reassignment.
My husband has five really close male friends, the same ones he’s had since he was in short trousers, and he wouldn’t dream of changing the line-up.
I have an ever-growing roster of female friends, and make (and occasionally lose) friends all the time. When I asked my husband if he’d ever dumped a friend, he had to think for ages, then said: ‘Maybe one . . . ’
When I asked him why, he said: ‘Oh, he became a junkie, and abusive, and every time I saw him he asked me for money, and it just became a bore.’
‘Did you cut him out of your life?’ I asked. ‘Lord no,’ said my husband. ‘I just don’t make, you know, a point of seeking him out.’
I would conclude that women are programmed to be promiscuous about friendships: we have loads of friends, and few sexual partners, while men are hardwired to have fewer friends and more sexual partners. To men, a friend is for life, but not for women.
A girlfriend really can just be for Christmas.

Maggie Brown (Author)

Visit Amazon's Maggie Brown Page

Find all the books, read about the author, and more.

Top Stories

NO SPIRIT CAN POSSESS ANOTHER'S SOUL

I came across this story in the 'Daily Mail' and I was horrified to see, this woman give this excuse. NO SPIRIT CAN POSSESS ANOTHER'S SOUL. Your soul is fixed in your body until death and we all have responsibility for our actions, less of course suffering from a psychosis. What gets me this trial was in the UK and yes witchcraft exists good and bad and certainly negative energy can be aimed at others and used to attack someone BUT your soul cannot be possessed and this is superstitious nonsense and hocus pokus rubbish and it incenses me that these stupid superstitious beliefs still exist. When spirits move to the spirit realms, they progress and they certainly don't wish harm on another. At most those spirits who are trapped in limbo because they are earth bound, all they can do, is give someone a fright BUT THEY CANNOT HARM YOU OR TELL YOU WHAT TO DO. It looks to me a case of misdiagnosis and the psychiatrists need to look again

Freed, girl who knifed her mother 'after being possessed by evil spirits'

• Mother said Lorraine Mbulawa appeared to be in a trance during the attack
• Psychiatrists ruled she has no mental illness

Enlarge  

Lorraine Mbulawa was found not guilty of attempted murder but was charged with the lesser offence of unlawful wounding

A young woman who repeatedly stabbed her mother as she slept has walked free from court after a judge accepted she believed she was acting on the instructions of evil spirits.
Lorraine Mbulawa, 20, donned dark clothes, gloves and a  home-made balaclava and attacked her mother with a kitchen knife in Braunstone Firth, Leicester.
The 43-year-old victim saved  herself by grabbing the weapon, but suffered serious face and  arm injuries.
Mbulawa, who was 18 at the time, was cleared of attempted murder at her trial at Leicester Crown Court earlier this year but convicted of unlawful wounding.
Psychiatrists said she was not mad and the jury agreed that she knew what she was doing.
However, the A-level student, who was born in Zimbabwe, escaped with a 12-month suspended prison sentence and was ordered to do 120 hours of unpaid work.
Passing sentence on Monday, Mr Justice Keith said he accepted the defendant had strong beliefs in witchcraft and thought she was possessed by the spirit of her dead grandmother at the time of the attack in May 2009.
He told Leeds Crown Court: ‘She believed spirits can enter the body and make you do things that otherwise you would not have done.’
He praised Mbulawa as ‘unusually confident and assured, also not unintelligent with a degree of charm and poise’.
Family members were in court and her mother Sisbsisiwe gave Mbulawa an emotional hug as she was released from the dock. She will now be able to move back in with her mother in Braunstone Frith, Leicester, after living apart for two years.
Mr Justice Keith told Mbulawa: ‘I hope that you and your mother can come to terms with what has happened. I wish you all the best for the future.’

Mr Justice Keith allowed Lorraine Mbulawa to walk free from court

The court heard a psychiatrist who assessed Mbulawa said she was still a risk because she believed the spirits could possess her again and she has no control over them.
Describing the attack, Mrs Mbulawa, a nurse, told the jury: ‘I saw this figure in my room  and a shiny object was in the air. I was petrified. I thought it was an intruder.’
She turned the light on, pulled off the mask and discovered the attacker was her daughter, who screamed: ‘Mummy, people are after us. They want to kill us.’
Mrs Mbulawa said her husband collapsed and died suddenly in 2000 and she moved to the UK with her daughter two years later.
In her evidence Mbulawa told the court: ‘My grandmother said my mother was responsible for the death of my father and I had to do the honourable thing to my father by killing my mother.’
A policewoman who arrived at the house said Mbulawa was sitting on the stairs in a trance-like state, crying, shaking and hyper-ventilating, while her mother, who was bleeding heavily, was trying to comfort her.
PC Patricia Lutz said Mbulawa was co-operative and appeared to calm down on the journey to the police station and then seemed ‘like a different person’.
After the case Philip Davies, the Conservative MP for Shipley, said the case was an example of a trend in soft sentencing. He said: ‘It is cases like this that make people lose faith in the criminal justice system and in politicians as well.’

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1390303/Possessed-teenager-stabbed-mother-times-allowed-walk-free-judge-accepts-strong-spiritual-beliefs.html#ixzz1NNPh0Wkv

Maggie Brown (Author)

Visit Amazon's Maggie Brown Page

Find all the books, read about the author, and more.

Top Stories

ASTRIDESTELLA'S PHILOSOPHY 'DON'T ASK QUESTIONS IF YOU ARE NOT PREPARED FOR THE ANSWER'

DON'T ASK QUESTIONS IF YOU ARE NOT PREPARED FOR THE ANSWER

Being a psychic medium I am asked questions all the time, most often what is he or she thinking? I cannot tell you this as I do not read minds and in fact no psychic medium can read minds. What we do firstly on a psychic level is to read Auras and it is within the aura we are able obtain information about a person's past, what is going on in the present and the potential for the future. I say potential because nothing is written in stone for although we all incarnate with a basic blueprint of choices about what we wish to gain from our life, we also have free will and it is this free will that makes accuracy more difficult. On a mediumistic level I can communicate with guides or loved ones and it is up to them and my interpretation whether I can gleam any information. Sometimes guides will deliberately not reveal information and will step back, this is because there is a challenge and lesson involved and its in our interest to go through it as it will be a valuable teaching experience for us.

Further many will ask questions about a situation and the answer may not be to the questioner's liking. Life is not a bed of roses all the time, so sometimes you may get an answer not to your liking. As a psychic medium I have to give what I am given. Where would my credibility be if I just made it all up and I try my best to give evidence only the recipient would know and I do this mostly with spirit. That does not mean I don't have personal responsibility, that we all do, so I do have to chose what I say wisely and you need to be aware answers are based on many factors, the link, the connection and the medium's interpretation.

Sometimes the answers you may seek will not be the outcome you desire. The moral is: "Don't ask questions if you are not prepared for the answer"

Maggie Brown (Author)

Visit Amazon's Maggie Brown Page

Find all the books, read about the author, and more.

Top Stories

REFLEXOLOGY 2. A POWERFUL TOOL

THE POWER OF REFLEXOLOGY

It never ceases to amaze me how powerful reflexology is and how useful it is as a  complement to orthodox medicine. More and more local health authorities are recognising it's value and I was fortunate enough to work within the palliative care team at my local teaching hospital. All my patients were terminal and the palliative care team's job was to make patients last days on earth as comfortable and as pain free as possible. I worked both as an aromatherapist and a reflexologist there.

Some patients were still receiving chemotherapy and of course having unpleasant side effects such as loss of appetite and nausea  essential oils played a great part in helping the nausea and helping with the understandable anxiety knowing that their illness was terminal. Because these patient's health was very fragile, the treatment generally was centred on treatment of the hands and feet, as they were too fragile to have a full body or back and shoulders treatment, none the less, these treatments were very helpful and the feed back from the patients and their relatives was very good. The patient's relatives also benefited from therapy too as caring for a loved one who has not long to live is undoubtably stressful.

One case study I recall however was from a client at my local practise, she had been diagnosed as having a terminal brain tumour. Although the tumour was not malignant, it's place in the brain was inoperable and as it had been slow growing it was hard to say how the prognosis would go. She was experiencing tremendous headaches and her eyesight was now being affected as the tumour was growing near the area of the brain that governs sight. Her doctors could no longer do anything but help with the pain and wait and see how things panned out. She was suffering extreme anxiety, as you would expect and she was not sleeping at all well. She explained to me where the tumour was and she had the permission from her doctor to have reflexology, this is very important as reflexology is a very powerful tool and in some cases can stimulate the body so much medications may be affected.

On examination of her feet, the area of the big toes corresponds in reflexology as the head with the base of the big toes as the neck, I discovered a lump like reflex on the pad of the big toe on one foot, it wasn't uncomfortable to work this area on the client, but on the big toe of the the foot although there was no lump like reflex present, it was very sensitive and painful. This did not strike me as unusual given my experience as we know the left side of the brain controls the right side of the body and vice versa. As I worked her feet, she fell asleep and when I completed the treatment she told me she felt more relaxed that she had for some time. I advised her to come back a couple of weeks later for a follow up treatment.

When I saw her a fortnight later she was smiling and very eager to tell me when she returned home after treatment she slept all afternoon and woke up headache free and her sleeping was much improved, something she had not experienced for a while. I saw her regularly at fortnightly intervals for around six treatments in total and her headaches had lessened to almost negligible. Now I can't say if this was down to the reflexology or the aromatherapy oils I used in the foot cream for massage, but it helped where nothing had previously. Her doctors were pleased with her progress and possibly it was the nature of her tumour, but I do know from the case loads of patients I have worked on complementary therapies are a valuable addition to orthodox medicine.

Up until a century or so ago medicine was all holistic, where the whole person was looked at and ailments were not pigeon holed, I am glad to see, there has been a turn in the tide and physicians are now seeing the benefits of Complementary (holistic) therapies after all, we are all 'mind, body and spirit'.

Maggie Brown (Author)

Visit Amazon's Maggie Brown Page

Find all the books, read about the author, and more.

Top Stories

MORE ABOUT HEALING

HEALING 2

When we talk about "Healing" in the spiritual sense it can take many formats and in an earlier blog I wrote on here I mentioned, I thought initially it was possible to have some effect on others but as I have developed more spiritually over the years I now know, this isn't always possible. Firstly the recipient needs to want to be healed and secondly as a healer we need permission from spirit to heal a recipient. I have also learned from experience we are not allowed to interfere with the spiritual pathways of others, my guides have pointed this out to me on several occasions. Healing remember also on a soul level, so even though you may not make a difference on a physical level you can make a difference to their soul but again, its only if the recipient wants it.

I can recall the first time I heard from my guides who told me why a particular person was not feeling better, and that was because they did not want to be healed for they loved the attention they received having this particular condition and they told me nothing could be done until she saw this for herself, to want to have attention for being unwell, was not the thing to do.

Healing can take many formats as I mentioned and not always with the laying on or hands, be that Spiritual Healing or Reiki, but also by listening, talking and counselling. My job as a psychic medium is also healing, by providing survival evidence from the spirit realms, comforting others by letting them know, their loved ones are happy and they still watch over them and by passing on messages.

But we are all capable of healing, by giving a hug, not only does that physical action show we care, but that there is an exchange of energy, where souls touch another soul and send out positive energy to the recipient's auric field. The action of a mother kissing a child's bumped knee or by rubbing it better, there is also this exchange of energy. With my own daughter she had a stuffed toy lamb from birth and it was always with her, she really loved it and when as she was growing and she started not to be so attached to it, she would always ask for it when she felt poorly. I asked her one day why and she told me, "Sheepy" always makes me feel better, and I then realised why, over the years she put so much loving energy into "Sheepy" when she felt poorly, she would draw on that loving energy to make her feel better. This is why babies and small children often have a stuffed toy or a blanket they like, and no you shouldn't wash it, unless you have to for you don't want to remove any of that energy. They draw on that energy when they feel insecure or poorly, it makes them feel better.

All too often in modern life we have forgotten how a simple touch, like touching the back of  hand, never mind a hug, or just exchanging a smile can make another being feel so much better. When you do this small exchange it is also a form of healing.

Maggie Brown (Author)

Visit Amazon's Maggie Brown Page

Find all the books, read about the author, and more.

Top Stories