Jo Parfitt’s Celebration in The Hague

Wow! Did we have fun last night as I celebrated the launch of my 25th book at Lesley Fisher’s beautiful apartment in Den Haag with 50 of the finest folk whom I have the pleasure to call my friends, colleagues and supporters. As a ‘trailing spouse’ it is not always easy to pursue a career while moving round the world as chattel and cheerleader to a bloke in the oil industry. It is even harder when you get a stamp in your passport that reads ‘wife – not permitted to take up employment’. As you know, that happened to me in 1988, and since then I have been determined to retain my professional identity despite the obstacles. To those who attended, thank you for supporting me.

Thanks too . . .
To Lesley of Metamorphosis Consulting for hosting the event – don’t forget that she has a super training room available to rent
To Annelene for her wonderful wine, and for making recipes from ‘Dates’ – invite The Wine Emporium to do a wine tasting for you and your friends and you may have as much fun as we did last night!
To Katy, for drawing the raffle, and for writing the foreword to ‘Career in Your Suitcase’ – take a look at the wonderful work done by the Permits Foundation
To Kim and Maged from Xpatriate Magazine, for providing mags for the bags and those wonderful vouchers to Ascot in Wassenaar! Watch out for my new column!
To the glorious Zelda, for dancing for us – join Lesley and me on her Dance with the Goddess workshop on Saturday!
To ABC Treehut for providing the other mags for the bags
To Mega of Portable Career, Julie of Essence Therapeutics, Rev Barbara of Authentic Matters Ministries, Robin of Dutchnews, Agnes of ABC, Annelene, Lesley, Zelda and Elske of Stichting the English Theatre for providing such wonderful raffle prizes.

I hope you enjoy your goodie bag suitcase, which reminds me to thank Ricklin-Echikson Associates for the wonderful luggage tags.

Meet the first expat minister

On May 10th I had the privilege of being invited to attend the ordination ceremony of my friend Barbara Rogoski. Now able to perform ceremonies in English for people of any religion, Barbara is based here in the Netherlands. Her inordination as a Pathways of Life minister was the culmination of her own spiritual journey, which has led her from a high-stress, high-pace corporate sales career to this. Barbara runs a business called Authentic Matters. I was thrilled to attend her special day.

Beat that expat stress

Moving frequently can be very stressful. I have just broken my foot and have my leg in plaster and have learned that NOT moving is stressful too. I decided to make the time to listen to some of my collection of meditation CDs to see if that helped. It did. So I would like to recommend some one may appeal to busy people like me.

Barbara Rogoski is a friend of mine who has realised that busy people feel too busy to meditate, however much they may need to. So she has made a CD of 10 minute Workplace Meditations. If you want a quick intro to this useful tool, I recommend this. Go to Authentic Matters for more details.