Last weekend I nipped back home for a couple of days, to relax, catch up on doctor's appointments and see friends. Sadly, the latter did not take place thanks to my body deciding to shut down as soon as I stepped off the plane, so my days were spent curled up under a blanket with tea, or venturing down the road with Molly for a blessedly short walk.

When I think of autumn in Luxembourg, I think of seeing the country for the first time, aged 3. I remember snippets of our first visit here - peanut butter sticking to the roof of my mouth as we zipped around town in our hired car - the taste of the milk, unpasteurised and unfamiliar - but most of all, I remember the leaves turning.

The forests aflame, from brightest orange to softest brown.

Mists rising across the valley, resting in the tops of the trees.





The autumn colours are late this year, but still pretty enough for me to get my camera out when driving to and from the airport. My mum indulged me by taking us up past the apple orchards in our village, where they hold an annual fest with sparkling juice and crumbly apple pastries. Sadly we were a week too late but maybe next year...?








When the season turns I always feel a little bit down, a little bit poorly. So I try my best to focus on the beauty that can still be found in nature - the leaves, the misty mornings, the sunlight trying to peek through clouds. It's hard knowing that months of darkness stretch out ahead, but looking back at snapshots like these do help to feel better at times.

Love Dani xoxo

I've been thinking a lot about mental illness recently. Well, if I'm honest, I've been thinking about it most of my life. But over the last few months in particular, I've viewed it from a different perspective.

As I move towards my thirties I find my mindset changing a little every day. I'm a bit calmer, a bit more self-assured. I don't beat myself up as much for carrying extra weight or for not looking like girls in magazines. I don't care so much if people don't like me; I don't feel the need to be liked. I have my people, my loved ones, and that's enough for me.

It hasn't always been the case.

For much of the last decade I have been what you might call a high-functioning depressive. I'm not sure where it stems from - I think it could be genetic, it could be a chemical imbalance, it could be a myriad of little things falling into place alongside my need to overachieve, to avoid failure, to put pressure on myself to be perfect. I don't attribute it to any one event in my life as on the whole I think I'm quite a happy person and have had quite a privileged life. But sometimes none of that matters, when the illness decides to take you down with it.

For a long time I thought I was being a drama queen. For a long time I thought it was just general moodiness. But I look back now at times when I shut myself away, when I refused to leave my home for two months, when even at university when I was at my happiest academically, I still couldn't bring myself to go out with friends some nights. I'd cancel longstanding plans in favour of hiding in my room and crying without really knowing why. The panic attacks on the way to work, the times when night after night, I'd cry myself to sleep and wake up the next day, feeling unable to lift the duvet off, let alone climb out of bed.

All of this happened in tandem with some of the happiest and proudest moments of my life - graduating from university, getting engaged, buying our first property, planning our wedding. On the outside, I was functioning just fine. I was going out, going to work, living a relatively normal life. But then there were the parts only my closest loved ones could see, when the veneer I constructed for myself fell apart. The evening before the wedding, for example, I had a terrible anxiety attack. I was surrounded by family who had travelled for hours to be with me and I had to tell them all to leave. I screamed at them until they backed out the door. I didn't sleep that night. I dread to think of the grief I've given Jon over the years as he bore the brunt of my moods.

What can you do in situations like this? It took a long time for me to admit that things weren't working and even longer for me to drum up the courage to visit my GP. I tried medication for a little while but it gave me heart palpitations which in turn caused more anxiety. This was disappointing, as I know so many people have had success with it, but it was worth a try. I tried for a long time to convince myself to see a counsellor, but experiences as a teenager had really put me off. I took up yoga, I re-evaluated my sleeping habits, I tried to be more mindful about the food I was eating. I had reiki, I used different breathing techniques, I looked for accounts from others suffering the same. I learned to control it for short periods of time but always felt as though my defences were weak and due to break at any time.

A lot of this is subjective - it will differ from person to person and I can only speak from my experiences, but in the end it was something so seemingly innocuous that helped me to feel a little more like myself.

You might have seen a spate of reports in the news over the last week about the Pill and the effects it can have, particularly relating to depression. I read this piece in The Guardian and so much of it rang true for me, I felt the need to talk about it. In February this year, I came off the Pill after taking it for 8 years. I did this partially because I'd just had surgery, had ran out of pills and couldn't face dragging myself to the GP for a prescription; and partially because I was having odd pains and wanted to see if the Pill was affecting me in that way.

Eight months on, I haven't had a single panic attack.

Eight months on, I haven't needed a single sick day for my mental health.

I'm not naive enough to think I am magically cured, and I still have days where I feel the depression rearing its ugly head. The crucial difference for me is that I've started seeing it as something to be managed. I've taught myself to recognise the signs and look after myself accordingly. If I need to cancel plans and take time for myself, I do. I'm trying to feel less guilty about it, because it's a condition. It is nothing to feel guilty about. It is nothing to feel ashamed about. It's a part of me, it's a part of my life, but I don't want it to rule my life. I'll treat it like any other physical condition I've had; like a bad period, or a bout of flu, if I feel the depression coming on, I'll give myself the care I need.

Today is World Mental Health Day. If you've suffered, or think you may be suffering, take a minute to look after yourself. Take a minute to breathe, and remind yourself it isn't a reflection on you. Depression does not define you. Asking for help does not make you weak. If you had flu, you'd look after yourself. If you had an infection you'd go to the doctor. Mental health is just as important as your physical health, if not more so - as it can impact on your physical health too. If you've ever wondered about getting help or advice, please take the time to do so today.

Lots of love,

Dani
xoxo

It was a sunny summer morning at my local station. I was dawdling at the end of the platform to avoid the crowds, scrolling through my phone, headphones out. Just me and a harmless-looking older man, watching the minutes tick by before the train pulled in.

He spoke to me. I can't remember exactly what he said or why he thought it was okay to approach me about this particular topic, but he started off innocuously and then escalated the conversation a little, throwing in an unexpected phrase;  "too many of these bloody foreigners", and he nodded towards me, waiting for my assent, my approval.

"I disagree", I replied, as firmly as I could without breaching the perimeters of politeness. "I myself am a foreigner. It's not a problem for me."

As always, I was met with the usual responses. I speak English so well! I don't look foreign! All manner of justifications.What it really boils down to is, he looked at me and he saw a white face and he felt he could connect with me. He felt I would agree with him.

Here's the thing.

I hold a British passport. My birth certificate was registered in this country. I've spoken English since birth, and yes, I'm aware, that for all intents and purposes, I am mostly white.

Mostly.

I also consider myself mostly a foreigner in this country. We left when I was three years old. I consider Luxembourg my home and the UK my adopted country, despite the fact my parents are British. We integrated deeply into the local community, with a handful of expats to keep the mother tongue going. So in conversation, when people ask me where I'm from, my answer is always layered. I tell them my home, which is Luxembourg. I tell them my nationality, which is British. And if I am questioned on my ethnicity, I am proud to say I am mixed race.

Why am I talking about this today, of all days?

All year a ball has been rolling and quickly gathering size and speed; a movement which, to my eyes, has seemed to legitimise xenophobia and overt racism, and nationalism on a scale I naively did not think could exist in 2016. This week the papers have been full of grand plans unveiled at the Tory conference - plans which will directly affect each and every one of us UK residents in the wake of Brexit.

My social media is a blessed echo chamber of people who, like me, watch aghast at each new headline, who retweet furiously, raging against the decisions of our government; who share articles and petitions against an ongoing wave of hopelessness. If it were up to me, I'd retreat happily into this echo chamber of like-minded souls, safe from the nastiness of the world. But it isn't up to me.

As a third culture kid with my Luxo-Brit background, it was only natural that I voted to remain in the EU. My lycée was named after the chap who set the ball rolling for the European Union, for goodness' sake. Most people I know voted to remain, and the ones that did not voted to leave because they had valid concerns regarding some of the EU policies. But the voices that became prevalent in the media and across Twitter and Facebook were those of immigrant-fearing, close-minded individuals, that started as a whisper and grew into a deafening roar. They drowned out their fellow Leave voters (because I certainly don't want to believe that 51% of voters hate immigrants). Thanks to UKIP and social media and now our actual government, anyone with xenophobic tendencies now feels that their bigotry is legitimised, that their hurtful opinions are to be shouted from the rooftops. I've seen countless stories of people being verbally attacked in the street; people born here, no less, as British as I am, being told to "go back where they came from".

Not a day goes without another headline, another proposed policy, without me feeling sick to my stomach. It's not longer just about leaving the EU. There is a nasty rhetoric evolving throughout the land, an anti-foreigner feeling supplemented by the announcements that companies will have to declare their foreign employees, that international students will be limited, that even foreign doctors - life savers, quite literally - will be pushed out at some point. I can't help but wonder if people in 1930s Germany felt the same way; whether they felt dubious, fearful, quizzical about their government's ideas. And we all know how that turned out.

So I want to be twice as loud about my "otherness" these days. I want to proudly proclaim that I am British and I am foreign in the same breath, in spite of our PM telling us that citizens of the world are citizens of nowhere. We are not. We helped build the very fabric of our society. The UK in 2016 would be nothing without the melting pot of nationalities and cultures that make us up right now. On a personal level, I would not even exist, were it not for my Indian grandfather settling here in the 1950s, a fresh-faced teenager with a wealth of possibilities ahead of him. I wouldn't be here, had my grandmother's family not fled Austria in the same time period, as they watched their country crumble before their eyes. I am the sum total of my family's experiences and my own. I am built of pieces of England and Luxembourg and India and Austria, of white and not white, of a history that spreads across Europe and beyond. This has never felt more important than it does today.

I fully acknowledge my privilege, by the way. I hate that the fact that I look white and hold a British passport somehow means I should be accepted any more than someone who does not. I can't sit here and talk about racism and how it has affected me directly, but I've seen it affect my dad, my grandpa, my friends, and I have never been the sort of person to let that slide. It should not happen. It disgusts me that it still has a place in our world.

I am frightened of what could come to pass, I won't lie. I don't want to flee and I don't want to remain passive while politics affect our daily life to a point of no return. I hope and pray that my greatest fears won't come to pass, so I remind myself daily that I am not alone and that there are still decent people who believe in a society that unites against intolerance and bigotry. I hope that by writing this I can connect with people who feel the same. Our world is bigger today than it ever has been before - we can reach an audience across countries, across borders, across oceans. Fearing the foreign is not the answer. We have never needed to bind together more than we do today.

So where do I come from? Right now, I'm from Britain. And I need it to change for the better before I change my mind.

Sometimes I like to do the opposite of whatever I should be doing, just because. A sort of purposeful defiance, like drinking hot chai in summer, or taking up running in winter when it's dark and cold all the time, or staying in low-paid fashion jobs because why the heck not?

So of course I've decided to go blonder for autumn, rather than reverting to the standard glossy chestnut tones prevalent across Pinterest and Instagram right now.

My hair is naturally very dark, thanks to my dad's Indian heritage and my mum's Celtic roots, so it's been an extended journey. Throughout the years I've been red, and lighter brown, and even tried my hand at DIY ombré. I wanted to go back to my roots for our wedding though, so last year, at our engagement shoot, it looked like this:



As a perennial user of heat styling tools to battle the dreaded frizz, I was a little concerned about my hair's condition, so I've been working on the colour for nearly a year now - starting with a bit of ombré/balayage last autumn and getting it refreshed and toned again in spring. This is what it looked like in March at my best friend's wedding:



The blonde was mainly focused on the lengths and ends, with a couple of strands around my face. I loved it and at first I was religiously using purple shampoo and violet toned styling products to keep the colour as light and ashy as possible. But as time wore on, my hair began to suffer and the damage began to seep through. So I gave up purple shampoo, dropped my hairdryer and used a weekly conditioning treatment in the hopes of preserving as much of my hair as possible.

After a summer of seawater and horse shampoo (yes, really) and air-drying, it looked like this: a bit brassy, a bit scraggly, a bit of a mess.


In my hour of need, I turned to the lovely Teri at Headlines Salon in Shenfield. Teri understood my brief straight away (accompanied by many photos) and made lots of helpful suggestions, such as using the L'Oréal Smartbond system to help treat my hair during the colouring process. My hair genuinely feels like it hasn't been dyed! We decided to take the colour up a bit higher this time, gradually moving towards the roots without covering up all of my natural shade, and finished with a blunt cut to get rid of my split ends.











It was such a relaxing experience, the salon was so quiet and they played The 1975 album so my usual hairdressing anxiety wasn't able to rear its head. I booked my next appointment as soon as my blowdry was finished - so by November my brunette to blonde transformation should be complete!

I'm so happy with it, I know it's trendy to go darker for autumn/winter, but I am not a fan of the gloom. I need brightness wherever I can get it!

Love Dani
xoxo