Chelsea Branch
Bio
Good with words and...nope just words.
Stories (15)
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International Women’s Day: the freedom not to be perfect
Today is International Women’s Day, and I’m writing this from the dining table while listening to Radio 3 Unwind. I’m sitting down with my laptop and a going-cold cup of tea, after Virginia Woolf’s famous essay A Room of One’s Own popped into my head. In it, she reflects that for a woman to write fiction, she needed two things: money and a room of her own (ideally with a door that closes). What she really meant, perhaps, was time to think and the freedom to exist inside her own mind.
By Chelsea Branch2 days ago in Psyche
What car troubles taught me about perfectionism
Often, when we’re chasing perfection, it can feel like everything goes wrong at once. One thing breaks, then another. A friend seems a bit distant and then an unexpected phone bill arrives. Before long, we start telling ourselves that everything has gone to shit and it’s all our fault.
By Chelsea Branch20 days ago in Humans
The Botox blues: how Botox changed the way I look at myself
“You look too young for Botox,” the practice owner said as I got up from the waiting room chair. The clinic was Scandi as ever, light wood, beige tones, Vitamin C serums with triple-digit price tags. There was a framed photo of a French Bulldog on the wall wearing a pink bow tie. His forehead folds looked like mine. The only difference was that he hadn’t spent £75 on a consultation to chat about having them frozen off.
By Chelsea Branch2 months ago in Humans
Notes from a Heartbreak Hangover: relatable behaviours from the eye of a post-breakup storm
If you told me four years ago that me and the brilliant man I was dating would one day go our separate ways, I would have called you all sorts of parental-guidance-required-profanities and wouldn’t have liked you very much.
By Chelsea Branch2 months ago in Humans
How EMDR helped me become more peaceful with my Past…but left me with me in the Present.
There’s a wellness tool for just about everything these days. Flotation tanks, cold plunges, CBT, DBT, gratitude journals, breathwork, yoga, journalling, medication, meditation, crystals, herbal, holistic, homoeopathic...You name it, I’ve tried it. Some worked a little, some not at all, and most just reminded me how deeply annoying it is to try and meditate when your brain is busy replaying a drunk argument from 2016 while worrying if your Hello Fresh delivery driver thinks you’re rude.
By Chelsea Branch5 months ago in Psyche
Alexa? Stop
Does anyone else feel an unreasonable level of rage when they can’t find their headphones? You’re convinced you put them back in your bag and now you’re elbow-deep in your backpack's mucky midnight zone. Ugh, what even IS that? You check your coat pocket. Not there. Desk drawer? Nope. You retrace your steps like a crime scene investigator, finding other things you’ve lost along the way, but a bike lock key isn’t going to help you listen to ya dream pop playlist now is it?
By Chelsea Branchabout a year ago in Psyche
Be less hard on yourself for crying out loud. It's ridiculous.. Content Warning.
I had one of those shower thoughts. The best ones come to me when locked in a misty chamber of privacy and soap suds, concealed behind a cold curtain that gives the ick when it sticks to the skin. Cor, that was a poetic start.
By Chelsea Branchabout a year ago in Psyche
ten reasons to take to thirty
After traipsing through a dreary Netflix catalogue one evening, knowing my selection would be an effortless re-re-re watch of another Friends episode, I settled solo on my sofa and decided on ‘the one where' Rachel turns thirty. My nearing thirty-year-old mind hurled itself back to a time where turning thirty had never entered it, a time where the age of the Friends cast didn’t matter. Instead, my innocent and limited ten-year-old brain was only concerned with whether there was enough free credit left on my Nokia to text into the music channels. I wasn’t preoccupied with age, especially not those twenty years ahead of me. Age was, just a number. And I heard that phrase a lot - uttered by adults through cigarette smoke and coffee steam - but it never occurred to me why anyone would need to state something so obvious.
By Chelsea Branch6 years ago in Motivation
how to swipe right
I talk a lot about dating rules and how unnerving it is that we have become too particular about how to date, who to date and how to maintain mutual connections. We rely on rules and regulations, tips and tricks to secure positive dating experiences or ‘make’ someone fall for us. Derived from our own stream of consciousness, which ticks over intense ideas around who we think would be ‘perfect for us’ - or the subconscious and superficial ideologies conjured up by the media, our social circles and movies that falsely forecast a happy ending every time. If only it was that easy.
By Chelsea Branch6 years ago in Humans
