I only found out because I looked.
At some point I was tired all the time and my hair was falling out. I put it down to stress, the way everyone does. Then I did something ordinary: I got my bloodwork done. My ferritin was low. Low enough to explain months of feeling flat and wondering what was wrong with me.
Nobody had told me any of that. I only knew because I looked.
Two years ago my father died of cancer. He had never checked anything. There were signs, and they went unlooked at. That is the reason I stopped waiting to feel unwell before paying attention.
Here, if you feel more or less fine, looking after your health is mostly something you have to go and do yourself. So I did. And I found out how quiet that is: reading late at night, making decisions alone, with no one to ask whether any of it makes sense.
That is what these mornings are. A room of people doing the same thing, and someone who genuinely knows the subject to answer the questions we all arrive with. I run Moychay, a tea house in Amsterdam. It is where we meet. Tea turns out to be a very good reason to sit with people for a morning.
If that sounds familiar, come on the 29th. You will know by the end of the morning whether it is your kind of room.