The Audacity

by Katherine Ryan

couple’s counselling which, from my personal and limited experience, is only helpful in the unlikely scenario that your differences are reconcilable but you both lack communication skills. It’s a waste of time if you’re already able to articulate quite clearly that you don’t like each other and that you’re unwilling or unable to change.

or just for the joy and camaraderie of slagging someone off.

re-evaluating what they’ll accept as progressive comedy versus mean-spirited jokes.

letting go isn’t the same as giving up. That part was key for me. I had confused commitment and resilience with toxic co-dependency.

I figured nobody comes to the end of their life and thinks, ‘Yeah . . . but I wish I’d had fewer children.’

The doctor had warned me not to kiss the dogs as they get their noses into all sorts of things outside, so it was akin to ‘rimming a fox’, but I never listened.

There’s an excellent book called Invisible Women, written by Caroline Criado Perez, which exposes data bias in a world designed for men, and I think it offers good insight into why this blind spot in medical research might exist.