An Tobar Wellness Centre

23/09/2026

It takes 30 seconds.

23/09/2026

When a child was born in a Scottish parish, the women of the neighbourhood arrived. It was not a casual thing. It had a name. 🕯️

It was called a rocking, and the word survives in Burns, who wrote of going to a rocking to hear the news. Neighbour women came in the evening, brought whatever they could spare, sat round the fire with the mother and stayed. They drew the cradle into the middle of the room and rocked it in turns, which is where the name comes from, and they talked.

What they were actually doing was labour. A woman who had just given birth was not going to be milking, baking, carding or washing for some weeks, and in a household running on the edge that was a genuine crisis. So the neighbours absorbed it. They took the older children. They put meal in the kist. They did the work that had to be done and they made it look like a social visit, because nobody wanted charity and everybody needed help.

The cummers, which is the Scots word for the women who came, were not necessarily relatives. Neighbourliness was the whole point of it. And the obligation was exact. If you went to a rocking, a rocking came to you. 👵

We have replaced nearly all of it. The health visitor, the maternity ward, the shopping delivered to the door. Those are better in every measurable way, and nobody should romanticise a system in which a mother's survival depended partly on how well liked she was.

But something did get lost in the exchange, and it is worth naming. The old way meant a new mother was never sitting alone at eight o'clock at night with a crying child and a cold room.

Every one of us came from a house where somebody else turned up.

21/09/2026

New film released! (link in comments)

"Kinfolk" brings together environmental thinker and activist Vandana Shiva and Swedish artist, poet and forest restorer Maria Westerberg – two women who have never met, yet whose work echoes across continents.

A film about ecological restoration, creativity and the possibility of making change through the relationships and places closest to us.

In short: a film about activism.

18/09/2026

IRELAND PRESIDENT SENDS MESSAGE TO TRUMP: Ireland’s President Catherine Connolly delivered a direct message to Donald Trump during their meeting: “the normalization of war and genocide can never be accepted.”

Her gifts included a St Brigid’s Cross, a copy of “The Voyage of St Brendan,” and Michael Longley’s collected poems, including a sonnet titled “Ceasefire.”

Connolly invoked Ireland’s history of famine, colonization and the Troubles, along with its long road to peace. She told Trump the Irish people would support leaders with the strength to build peace in places suffering horrific war and violence. President of Ireland

The gifts carry symbolism, too. As Irish Star explains, St Brigid’s Cross represents peace and protection from harm. “The Voyage of St Brendan” recalls Ireland’s centuries-old cultural contributions to the world. And “Ceasefire” draws on Homer’s “Iliad” to explore grief, reconciliation and the need to end violence.

16/09/2026

Whether you are religious or not, I definitely recommend reading this. There are certainly some salient points and I myself do believe we have a responsibility to be good stewards of what God has entrusted to us. Our land, water, forests, wildlife, and natural resources are not disposable—they are gifts that we have a duty to protect and preserve.

That responsibility isn’t just environmental; it’s moral and spiritual. If we believe that creation belongs to God, then we cannot treat the land as something to simply consume, exploit, waste, or destroy for our own short-term benefit. We are stewards, not absolute owners.

That means making wise decisions about how we use our natural resources, preserving our lands, protecting our water and ecosystems, reducing unnecessary waste, and thinking beyond ourselves. What we do today affects our neighbors, our communities, the people who come after us, and especially those who are most vulnerable.

I believe this is what responsible stewardship looks like: using what we have wisely, protecting what we can, restoring what has been damaged, and leaving our land and resources better than we found them.

The Vatican’s new language—“sin against creation and against the Creator”—puts a powerful theological framework around something I believe we should all take seriously. Caring for creation isn’t about politics or ideology. It’s about responsibility. It’s about recognizing that we have been entrusted with something bigger than ourselves.

We don’t own this Earth absolutely. We are responsible for it. And what we leave behind matters.

13/09/2026

Catherine Connolly welcomed Donald Trump as Ireland’s head of state, but she did not allow diplomatic ceremony to erase moral disagreement. After their meeting, the Irish president said she had conveyed “the strong view of the Irish people that the normalisation of war and genocide can never be accepted.” That distinction matters: the words came from Connolly’s official account of their private discussion, rather than from a public confrontation captured on camera. Even so, the message was unmistakable. Connolly has long criticized militarization and expressed support for Palestine, while Trump’s foreign policy has been closely aligned with Israel and increasingly defined by military conflict. By raising the issue directly, she showed that courtesy and courage can exist together. Ireland maintains deep historical and economic ties with the United States, but friendship between countries should never demand unconditional agreement. True diplomacy means being willing to say difficult things when civilian lives, international law and the possibility of peace are at stake. Connolly did not shout, insult or turn the meeting into a spectacle. She simply placed a moral boundary on the table: war cannot become normal, and allegations of genocide cannot be treated as background noise.

13/09/2026

12/09/2026

Barcelona is making room for nature by taking asphalt away.

Across parts of the city, paved surfaces are being removed and replaced with more permeable ground, vegetation, trees, and spaces designed to handle rainwater naturally.

The idea is simple: instead of covering every available surface with concrete and asphalt, give some of that space back to soil and plants.

Barcelona’s green-infrastructure plans specifically call for converting impermeable surfaces into permeable ones and increasing the use of continuous tree pits and planted areas.

One example is the transformation of Pi i Margall Street into a greener corridor. The project removes asphalt, reduces space for vehicles, expands greenery, and incorporates structural soil and sustainable drainage systems designed to capture and reuse rainwater for trees.

That matters because urban soil can become heavily compacted and impermeable, sending much of the rain that falls on streets directly into drains instead of allowing it to benefit trees and vegetation.

It is a different way of thinking about city design.

Instead of asking where another layer of pavement can be added, Barcelona is asking where pavement can be removed.

More soil. More plants. More space for rainwater.

Sometimes making a city greener means simply giving the ground a chance to breathe again.

09/09/2026

Sleeping Beauties❤️