sarah smith smizz ✏️✏️✏️ スミッツ

Bought this 2nd hand. Got delivered today. Hoovered it up in a 45 min reading session.

lol. No idea he was called Andy Murray 🤣🙈

This week has felt like standing where 2 worlds meet. There has been so much kindness. Unexpected words that arrived exactly when I needed them. Conversations with friends that reminded me I am deeply held. Some great work with people across the Donx. Compliments that somehow found their way through the noise & settled somewhere I will keep for a long time. And alongside all of that has been grief. Fran & Margaret both said something - very similar - that stayed with me today. They reminded me that sometimes grief feels so unbearably heavy because it isn't carrying only one thing. It isn't just grief for a friend. It's everything that friend came to represent. The conversations you'll never have. The memories only they carried. The part of yourself that only existed as part of their story. And then there is something even closer to the bone, a reminder of these extraordinary, fragile bodies we inhabit are only ever borrowed. I know this a lot for my own. It becomes love, memory, fear, gratitude and our own impermanence, all woven together. Perhaps that's why grief is so exhausting. The fatigue isn't always because we've cried too much or slept too little. Sometimes it's because our whole understanding of life is being gently rearranged. Or stacks up. Life never seems to ask us to carry just one thing at a time. Joy and sorrow arrive together. Gratitude and heartbreak share the same breath. We laugh with friends while quietly grieving another. We receive kindness from the world at exactly the same moment the world reminds us how fragile it all is. I'm tired. My heart aches. My body aches. But it also feels profoundly grateful. To be broken open by loss, of all types, while still being surprised by goodness. What a strange, beautiful, heartbreaking privilege it is to care this deeply. And have great friends to help with this & care deeply too.

Real life The Sheep Detectives 🐑 🐑 🐑 😆

Soil quality** 🙈🤣 this tweet is riddled with mistakes. Apologies. My mom has discovered YouTubers and the person she was watching was soooo annoying that I couldn’t focus when writing the above tweet lol 😆

I think we forget one of the reasons why the council had a climate emergency status in the beginning was because lots of younger residents and community groups protested and wrote to elected members in 2019 to have it. A group of people who overwhelmingly are in the last decades of their life have moved this motion today. Younger generations not considered again even though they are the ones who are overwhelmingly going to be saddled with the affected of unmitigated climate crisis. Furthermore, if people think climate emergency is just solar panels or not driving places, it is so much more wider remit - it’s social quality, biodiversity, maintaining moss & peat & planting trees, it’s adapting our infrastructure so we can survive in an ever changing more extreme climates.

Financial anxiety is real. Now imagine living with an illness that’s only going to get worse and you rely on financial support to live. Yet you’re still being asked to prove how ill you are, again and again. This is why we need a more compassionate social security system.

We're doing COOK AND DINE WITH US!!!! We have 6 places. Sign up. They're fun and free! Our free Cook & Eat sessions bring people together to learn & support us prepare and share a delicious, healthy, budget-friendly meal. Join us to learn simple one-pot recipes that are affordable, filling, and easy to recreate at home. Stay and enjoy the meal together in a relaxed, welcoming atmosphere, or take your meal away to enjoy later. 21st July 2026 - from 5pm AT Woodlands Community Library and Your Place BOOK YOUR PLACE HERE: bookwhen.com/hawcscic Any Q's you can contact us

Today has been a really tough day. Saying goodbye (or just a see ya later) to our really good friend, mentor, husband, dad, grandad - John Mo. But Since leaving the beautiful services & the wake - I’ve had the loudest, electrical feeling, high pitched ringing in my ears. Tinnitus. The worst it’s been in some time. So bad, I had to google it. I discovered that grief and stress can cause tinnitus - or make it worse. Not because the ears have changed, but grief/stress release certain hormones that narrow blood vessels in the ear. And this also changes how the brain interprets this process. When the nervous system is overwhelmed, pain sometimes finds another language. That grief literally has its own frequency demanding to be heard. To be acknowledged I couldn't stop thinking about that today as we said goodbye to John. How extraordinary that grief doesn't only live in our thoughts or our hearts. But that sometimes, the invisibility of that grief - on our bodies - actually becomes audible. What the chest can't quite contain turns itself into sound. As though love, finding nowhere else to go, lingers as a quiet (or not so quiet RN!) frequency beneath everything. It made me wonder how often our deepest losses are expressed in ways we don't immediately recognise... The tears we didn't expect. The exhaustion that arrives out of nowhere. The silence that suddenly feels loud. I know that our friendships don’t end when someone dies. But it does change form. Maybe part of loving someone is carrying the frequencies of the gap they leave behind until, slowly, it becomes less like pain and more like music. I will be writing about John mo’s day properly as I let the feelings and reflections settle a bit more. But for now, as I lay here - listening to my grief turning into an almost painful high pitched sound, I am thinking about how much I will miss my friend. Here’s to you, John Mo & your next life - you are so loved and will be missed in this physical plain. X

The other day Liz told me she'd been to the cemetery. She and Matt had taken another 90-something yr old veteran to visit Bernard, a man Liz had cared for in the final years of his life. Afterwards, she found herself wandering between other graves, picking up litter, standing fallen teddies back upright and brushing leaves away from names. I laughed because it was the most Liz thing imaginable. Then I realised it had stayed with me. Not because she'd been tending a cemetery, but because she hadn't stopped caring simply because there was nobody left to thank her for it. It sent me down a rabbit hole about graveyards, John Mo, illness, creativity, the things we keep saying we'll do "one day", and why I seem to instinctively square every place I visit. I ended up writing a short essay called: "Tending." And I'd love to know what you guys have been putting off too: smizz.substack.com/p/tending

That song on all the TikTok’s & reels: “I’m gonna die in this house” That is me, RN. From no air, making my asthma/ respiratory issues extraaaa worse. I’m sat with water I froze in a take away plastic carton on my chest and back.

Some days remind you that the greatest infrastructure a place has isn't its roads or its buildings. It's people (tho still need space for amazing people!) Spent half the day with the neighbourhood health crew in Conisbrough, meeting the community assets that keep the place stitched together. Though "assets" never feels like the right word. They're neighbours. Volunteers. Quiet leaders. The people who keep showing up long after the funding forms have been filed away. I already know, somewhere deep in my bones, that almost everything good that happens in a community happens because ordinary people decide someone else's wellbeing matters enough to give away their own time. But witnessing it again, hearing why they do it, seeing the care in their faces, still catches me off guard. It settles somewhere deep in my chest. Somewhere beneath gratitude. Somewhere that aches. I wish we were better at looking after the people who spend their lives looking after everyone else. Then I headed to Leeds. There is something about Leeds in the summer that feels impossible to bottle. The sunsets somehow blush a little pinker. The evening light lingers a little more orange against the old brick. The city hums with that peculiar optimism that arrives when people spill onto rooftops, into parks and onto pavements, convinced there is still time for one more conversation. Every time I'm here, I find myself quietly returning to another version of me. I lived here for 3years while training and working in radiotherapy. Those years made me. They were years of becoming, but also years of unravelling. Years of learning how to live inside a body that had become unfamiliar. The beginning of what has turned into a much longer journey. not back to who I was, but towards whatever Smizz 2.0 might become. This city held that version of me with more tenderness than I realised at the time. It nudged me towards digital health meet-ups, where I created the first radiotherapy patient information app. It led me into creative health before I even had the language for it. It taught me that healing isn't only something that happens in hospitals. Sometimes it happens by wandering unfamiliar streets. By reading the posters wheat-pasted onto brick walls. By discovering exhibitions tucked above cafés. By lingering in bookshops. By stretching one drink further than your budget really allowed because the conversation, the people, and the possibility of the place felt worth more than the receipt. Looking back, I can see those walks were quietly building the life I live now. So I did what always feels right here… Bought far too many art supplies (an entirely predictable character flaw), drank sodas on a rooftop with brilliant friends & an excellent DJ soundtracking the sunset, returned to my favourite bowl of ramen at House of Fu, and ended the day watching the brilliant Grace Mulvey test new material for the Edinburgh Fringe at Hyde Park Book Club. Places like that make me hopeful. They're more than venues - they're ecosystems. Spaces where art, conversation, laughter and community keep accidentally colliding until they become culture. I caught myself thinking: I hope, one day, our library (our evening offer) becomes somewhere that feels a little like this. A place where people don't just borrow stories. They discover they belong inside one. Maybe that's all a city ever really is. A collection of places where old versions of ourselves quietly wait to remind us who we've been and, still becoming.

She was 26 years old when she made the call. The investigation lasted months. Then came the answer - they would not be prosecuting. Their reasoning: there was evidence she had been flirting with her attacker beforehand. She filed a complaint with the Police Ombudsman. Upheld. The PSNI was found to have made multiple serious failings. The officers who used flirting as a reason not to prosecute were wrong. She didn't stop. She waived her anonymity. Went public. Participated in the Gillen Review - the most comprehensive examination of how Northern Ireland handles serious s3xual offence cases ever conducted. 253 recommendations. Every one aimed at making sure no woman would ever be told what she had been told. The BBC named her one of their 100 most influential women in the world. Her name is Lucy Monaghan.

for references: engender.org.uk/news/blog/nine… bbc.co.uk/news/articles/… local.gov.uk/parliament/bri… lordslibrary.parliament.uk/local-councill…

Let's talk about who experiences harassment/threats in politics. Every threat against any level of politician should be condemned. Full stop. But if we're serious about the conversation, we also have to be honest about where the evidence points. Women in politics have been living with intimidation, abuse and violence for years & years. We just don't tend to hear about it in the same way, because we don't deal with violence against women well in general. A recent BBC report highlighted the growing concern that abuse is driving women away from public office altogether, with many councillors describing politics as increasingly hostile and unsafe. New research from Engender found that 9 in 10 women councillors in Scotland had experienced sexism, misogyny or violence because of their role. Among those surveyed: 98% experienced everyday sexist abuse and microaggressions. 77% experienced online abuse or threats. 40% experienced sexual harassment. 11% experienced physical violence. Nearly 1 in 5 decided not to stand for election again because of what they experienced. This isn't confined to Scotland. Cheshire East Council's own review revealed female councillors are constantly facing death threats, stalking, trolling, obscene phone calls & even excrement pushed through their letterboxes. More than a third had considered stepping down because of the abuse. And the burden isn't shared equally. Women receive abuse that is often deeply misogynistic and sexualised. Politicians from minority ethnic backgrounds are also disproportionately targeted with racist abuse. Many experience multiple forms of abuse at the same time. For them, this isn't a headline. It's part of the job. So yes, when a prominent politician receives threats, we should condemn them unequivocally. But let's not pretend this is a new phenomenon, or one experienced equally by everyone or that they are the "most harrassed" because they just aren't. Political cultures that thrive on outrage, division and dehumanising language (like the one Farage has created & benefits from politically) don't just create victims one day. They create an environment where intimidation becomes normal - even endengering himself. And those who have been paying the highest price for that culture, for a very long time, have overwhelmingly been women and people from minority backgrounds. If we genuinely want safer politics, we should start by listening to the people who have been living this reality long before it became headline news. And ask, why is it getting worse? And why are we accepting intimiadting/harassing or dangerous behaviour to politicans or anyone else.

so wiped post hospital today that before my next meeting this afternoon - I took a nap in town fields. Which was great & felt so safe. So grateful to have such a great green space between the hozza & middle of town. Esp for those, I suddenly have zero/over-egged my energy moments.

What it feels like having to do endless paperwork (21+ Separate documents & counting) in order look for bugs & make cool things with kids, supervised on private land, for 4 hours.

I had plans for today. Work on our CIC. Catch up on a 100 little things. Feel useful. Feel like me. I made it through the first part. Met up with the crew, got stuff moving. Then at the end, Liz took one look at me and said, "Go home & get into bed. I demand it” Sometimes love looks like someone refusing to let you pretend you're okay. I'm off all my medication for 3 days for specific hospital tests on Monday, & I hadn't quite appreciated how much those little tablets were holding me together until they aren’t... My body is being loud. Everything aches. Woke up with a mouth full of ulcers. Asthma already itching. & I am exhausted. I think Fran knew before I did yday what was coming. So I got back home & I’ve spent the last 4.5 hours in bed. In the middle of a beautiful Saturday afternoon. I've been thinking a lot about what survives us. Not careers. Not productivity. Not inboxes. Just the way we made people feel. I keep coming back to something Raymond Carver wrote: "To call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved on the earth." Maybe that's it. Maybe a good life isn't measured by how much time we had, or how we managed to get through our to-do list, but by whether we allowed ourselves to be cared for when we couldn't keep going. That's always been the harder lesson for me. Today is a bad day. There have been plenty of good ones recently too, and I know there will be more. But illness has a strange way of shrinking your world until your biggest achievement is listening to the people who love you enough to say, "That's enough for today." So that's what I'm trying to do. Rest. Trust. Let this body do whatever it needs to do before Monday. And remember that maybe the most important thing we can be isn't impressive. Maybe it's simply beloved.

What a day! Played out with amazing friends, met lots of cool YP & people passionate about making things better and creative and playful WITH young people & then finished the night with my amazing @HWDoncaster crew! Top 10/10 day! Doesn’t get much better than this. Tho I am now super wind burnt from being out in the wind alllllll day 🤣

Woooow-weeee! The humidity tonight is intenseee after that rain. It’s like being in bloody Florida!!