I have been stuck on how to write this year’s review, perhaps even more than those written during the pandemic. Part of the issue has been the very different worlds and experiences which are so powerful right now both personally and professionally. Growing up, as a working class person in the Northeast of England in the 1980s I was very aware of the gap between my world and that of London and the South East, between working class young people like me and my middle class peers at university.

The miners strike, high employment, social deprivation, was the world which formed me, the waters in which I swam. I still remember my first visit to a family member who lived in London. Seeing a temp agency for the first time I stood outside it trying to work out what on earth it was. My brain could not comprehend – so many jobs that private companies had to advertise them?

I’ve been pondering this because this2025 has been a year with many triumphs, both personal and professional for me, how to be honest and authentic about that at a time when I know so many are struggling financially, emotionally, physically and with huge fears for the future (not that as a queer person in the UK I do not share those fears). Many therapists are also scared as a hierarchy has been introduced (Scoped) which deliberately discriminates against the working classes, people of colour and disabled people.

The world is on fire. I can smell smoke, but it hasn’t burnt me yet….

Perhaps though those of us who create places of safety amid the inferno are the fire breaks. We need to be in safe and stable places, where our joys are as real as our fears so we can hold the pain brought daily by our participants. Firebreaks are vital if we are to stop the whole world going up in flames.

A massive milestone this year was the release of the definitive textbook: Gender, Sex, and Relationship Diversity Therapy: Theory and Practice (Edited by Davies, Neves, & Prunas; Routledge, 2025/2026). Attacks on affirmative therapy (an approach which simply says it is ok to be gay, or trans or bi, or queer or ace or anything except cis het and hypernormative) have been growing. The UKCP, the rich boys club of therapy, which has the ear of the government, almost voted in an activist supporter of conversion therapy. Presenting an explicitly queer modality which includes the fact GSRD identities deserve joy, factual information, support, affirmation and celebration is a challenging and radical step, the book could not have been more timely.

I contributed Chapter 6, titled “Staring at Shadows.” This chapter explores the “structural shadows” of systemic bias and argues that true Unconditional Positive Regard (UPR) cannot exist without a therapist actively deconstructing societal hierarchies. Delving back into Plato was honestly fun, but then I have been told I have a strange idea of fun before! It was also the basis for my workshop at the Pink Therapy Conference this year – Staring at Clouds where a group of us explored how the hell we got here, and what we do about it. It is a workshop I hope to make more widely available this year, and the insights everyone brought, and left with are still bouncing through my brain.

As usual I had the pleasure of running the online side of the conference, it’s now at the point of “seeing” familiar faces, and almost has a reunion feel. More importantly though it puts accessibility at the heart of the event.

I also developed a workshop this year Queering Menopause which I presented at the Rainbow Therapist conference in Glasgow. Menopause is a fundamentally queer experience, however the person experiencing it labels themself. Perhaps that is one of the reasons it has been so taboo in white patriarchy? Developing the queering menopause workshop cemented for me my belief that we all experience, and fail, at gender, sex, relationships in a beautiful and very human way. We are set up to fail after all, winning is impossible because then we cannot be punished, and punishment is the point.

But it is a beautiful failure, for to succeed under the impossible to reach perfection, would to be no longer human, and each day in my work with therapy participants and supervisees I am reminded of the wonderful frailty, strength, awesomeness and sheer wonderfulness of human beings. People are surviving because they must, and that is the victory which matters.

Part of my own survival, and thriving strategy has been allowing my love of Tolkien free reign, This is also an act of resistance of course. As the far right distorts Tolkien for their own ends, those of us who love the legendarium who are marginalised have collectively made more noise, stood up and been counted so we can clear the ruffians from our shire.

Organizing EuroMoot 2025 was a personal highlight for me .This was a hybrid conference by Signum University where Tolkien fans and academics from all over the world met, shared, showed love, connection and joy. At it I presented a paper – Trauma Therapy for Orcs, which looked at how we might rehabilitate rather than eradicate orcs. I can honestly say when it was published by The Journal of Tolkien Research I felt like a life goal had been met.

I also launched a podcast Go Not to the Elves for Counsel as an act of “hope-seeking” and self-care, exploring mental health and Tolkien through a queer, neurodivergent lens. Two Tolkien quotes come to mind as we enter 2026;

But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass.

Aurë entuluva! Day shall come again!”.