guidelines for a Buddhist mother

Dina Rabinovitch in today's Guardian, on how it feels to be a mother and have cancer:

"'Just take each day as it comes,' the doctors say. In our fortysomething world, with kids who need packed lunches and walking to school (on days when I may not be able to get out of bed, my husband might have an 8am meeting, and all the older children have morning exams), not to mention the not yet extinct notion of a career, what exactly does that instruction mean, I ponder? Because, honestly, what works as a guideline for a Buddhist monk doesn't make tuna sandwiches on days when you can't face food."

This is vintage Dina. I remember when she was writing about the family courts, about the judges who thought they knew enough to set out the shapes of other people's lives - for example, the lives of working mothers. What she wrote then felt exactly like my experience, and even like the conversations we had on the subject - with the sole proviso that I felt she was being too reasonable! Well, reasonable still, she is still writing about how things really are, in a world of daily feelings and practicalities.

Her fundraising is also about practicalities: money for a very practical, very tangible new cancer trials unit at Mount Vernon.

Click here, go and give some money - and if you're a UK taxpayer you can give even more through Gift Aid.

And buy her book! (Buy it here, or - if you want more fun than that - from the lingerie section of M&S!) It is, if it ever could be, written on such a subject, a delight. It's a delight because of the company of the heroine. Go on.