Essentials Magazine

5 June 2014

Hello! It’s been one of those months when I really should have taken a leaf out of Essentials’ book; namely, I need to learn to STOP PANICKING! ‘Few of us are immune to stress,’ says writer Mel Hunter (see page 110) and, wow, ain’t that the truth! We all know angsting gets us absolutely nowhere, yet we just can’t help ourselves! This month, I’ve mostly been fretting about putting our family home on the market – worsened by the knowledge that moving house is one of the most stressful ordeals we can put ourselves through. If only I’d read ‘Yes, you can sell your own home’ (page 104) before I got embroiled in (expensive!) conversations with a high-street estate agent. I’ve always believed ‘a problem shared is a problem halved’ and my lovely mum has always been my go-to girl when it comes to talking through my worries. From when I was little, she encouraged me to talk, rather than bottling up what was troubling me, so I know she’d be a from advocate of one of our newest regulars, ‘The Hardest conversations’, page 108, in which we give you all the advice you need to tackle those trickier chats. one woman who has seriously perfected her verbal skills is One Show presenter – and this month’s cover star – Alex Jones. So it came as something of a shock when she turned up to our cover-shoot almost incapable of speech, thanks to a pretty rampant dose of tonsillitis. Ever the professional, Alex was clearly anxious that we still got the photos we needed – proving that, on occasion, actions really can speak louder than words!