Emma Leaning

What if we dared to believe the kind things people say about us? Not the nice things. Nice is performative. Nice has an agenda. Kind is different. Kind is true. This morning I had an unexpected call with a friend. They talked about my goodness while I did my best not to dismiss every word. We are so quick to believe the thoughts that fester. The ones that live rent-free and speak in our own voice. But when someone tells you their truth about you, you scramble for the exit. Kindness is a gift. Dare to take it.

Numbers. The ones we can’t make peace with. The age. The scale. The hours lost to a screen at midnight. The voice that keeps count. We are fluent in the wrong arithmetic. A test score. A salary. Followers. As if any of them add up to anything important when our days are numbered. What if we measured differently? The number of times you text someone because they crossed your mind. The strangers you looked at today. The times you said the true thing instead of the easy one. The mornings you got up in spite of everything keeping you down. Some numbers don’t fit a scale. They don’t show up in size. They’re the numbers nobody asks you about. And yet. I’m working on caring about those numbers more. The equation is messy. But it counts.

At the heart of every human is the need to know we’ll be OK. That life — in one way or another — will go on. Trees remind us of what we can trust. We need to continually relearn what the trees already know: life is a cycle. There will be moments of darkness and difficulty, but periods of light and loveliness. The yearly blossoms are an aide-memoire that there’s always the possibility for growth and renewal. Emotions, experiences, people and places will change as leaves will fall. But moving on doesn’t mean forgetting the past. It means moving forward with it. While years leave scars, time brings blossom. #Blossom #China #TheOysterPail 🥡

Good morning from Shanghai. Saturday morning, made a simple country fried potatoes with ham (spam) and topped with poached eggs. Nothing much planned, cleaning and laundry and the obligatory nap. Be good and safe.

@Gabimolero57614 Thank you. Happy Women’s Day to you too 🌹 💋

For the Women Pain isn’t something women have to go looking for. It arrives. Before we have words for it. The cramps, the tenderness, the blood. And then, if that’s your path, the splitting open of childbirth. Years accumulate, set to a song in which you’re too fat, too thin, too loud, too quiet. Too much. Not enough. And heaven forbid, bossy. Then, just as you’re finding your rhythm, the body shifts again. Heat rises without warning. Hormones quietly rewrite everything you thought was yours. All of this baked into a life being lived. The heartbreaks. The losses. The beautiful, brutal business of being human. And yet. We are lucky enough to be surrounded by women who are brilliantly messy and fabulously real. Who endure this pain and show up anyway. Who stubbornly choose kindness in a world bent on setting itself on fire. There is something in women older than language. All of this lives in the curve of a hip and the softness of a thigh. Coated in skin that has stretched and shifted and carried more than it’ll ever admit to. We are not who we are in spite of everything. We are who we are because of it. Happy International Women’s Day. #InternationalWomensDay

Write with attitude.

Home security system needs an upgrade.

@ataism_ Ha, very good.

@LeaningEmma That’s called a landlord

What is it about a man that makes him so powerful that whenever he leaves the house he takes the WIFI and hot water with him?

💊 Just picked up my medication. The bill made me look twice because I couldn’t quite believe it. I can afford the drugs I need. Just. But it will mean changes. Real ones. And I keep thinking about everyone who can’t. We’ve spent decades talking about mental health like it matters. Then we price people out of treating it. If the illness doesn’t kill you, the expense might. Am I naive? Is there a legitimate reason these medications cost so much? Because the only answer I can find is profit. I want to be wrong about this. I also want a world where you don’t skip a prescription because rent exists. Where you don’t call in sick with a headache because you can’t say your depression is bad. Where mental health gets the same basic fairness as a broken arm. When the cost of your care becomes part of the battle, something has gone wrong. #MentaHealth

There’s something about tulips that speak to my own femininity. They’re slightly wild, yet soft at the edges. This bunch drooped with heavy heads yesterday. So did I. Tonight, as things feel lighter, so do we. Part nature, part nurture, and plenty to do with the people who share our vase. Because when push comes to shove, we rise to the occasion.

Small flat, big hearts. Our annual January party crammed friends from 10+ countries into our tiny Shanghai place. Chili, bread, music, laughter. Started after lockdown as a lifeline. Now it’s tradition. Year of the Horse, here we come.

Today was the unveiling of the Our Waters project - a painting by renowned artist Liu Shuang that connects #London to #Shanghai through their waterways and the people who live along them. Liu Shuang is the first Chinese artist to win the Ondaatje Prize for Portraiture from the Royal Society of Portrait Painters in its 129-year history. I’m touched to now call him a friend. I played the smallest of roles in this work, but as someone British-born who has made #China home for well over a decade, being part of it is real and yet not. This painting is about what happens when two cities - two cultures - choose to move toward each other rather than away. Shared waterways, shared humanity, connection across distance. Right now, that message feels urgent. We need projects that insist on dialogue, make space for mutual learning, and refuse to let distance become distrust. Being part of something that represents what I believe in - that we’re better in conversation with each other, when we choose proximity over isolation, when we remember our rivers eventually meet the same sea - that matters. Documentary coming soon. 🎥 🖼️ @SadiqKhan @shanghaidaily #Art #China

Gone up in dress size. As someone with an all-consuming eating disorder, today has been painful. What scares me most is that I did not self destruct. There was pain, but no punishment. Instead, I ate dinner, worked lotion into my new skin and chose to wear a pretty nightdress. Every choice going against all compulsion and towards all instincts. To choose one’s self is rarely easy. But doing so is an act of sickly-sweet rebellion. #MentalHealth

He sleeps more now. Doesn’t get up when I walk into the room. The gray has crept across his oddly square, perfectly potbellied frame. His playtime comes in short, frequent bursts, brilliant and full of mischief. I think dogs are life partners in the truest sense. You might have one or two or more, but there will be one that gets you. And that you get in return. Whose passing will crumble your bones and fuck your heart. Bodhi is that for me. I have two dogs, Bodhi and Finn. I know how my love note lands. But I think in any pack or family, everyone has their one. And he is mine. I grew up with dogs. First there was Casey, then Jasper, Harry, and Lizzie. Toby and Elvis. At 40 years old, I’d like to think I’ll live long enough that there will be other paws. Other wet noses will press against my palm. Other loyal shadows will follow me to the bathroom. None will be him. There’s the adage: it’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. I don’t know if that’s true. But I think the answer lies with dogs. We get them knowing full well that if time does its job, they’ll leave us long before we’re ready. We choose this heartbreak. So we choose love, and in doing so, we choose loss. We walk straight into it with their lead in one hand and poo bags in the other.

@PjrFoto That’s cruelty to animals, surely?

Pavlov seems to have taken over the territory of the robin next door. I'm thinking of renaming him Donald.