Do you happen to have a set of the old fashioned pickup sticks lying in a toy cupboard, or stored somewhere in the house? As children many of us spent hours playing this game. You remember! You stood the sticks upright, with your hand holding them all together and then let them scatter. The task was to pick up as many sticks as possible without making another stick move. The black ones earned more points.

Sometimes life feels like a game of pickup sticks. When things go off the rails it can feel like our life is in a million pieces. The task of getting all those pieces back together, of picking up the pieces and returning to some normality seems impossible.

If you can locate some pickup sticks in the local toystore do so. Play the game, if only in your memory.

allow memories of childhood games to drift into your mind and capture them in a butterfly net by writing. Recall the details of where you were, what you were wearing and who you were with.

While you are in the mood consider building a cubby house to write in. You can make one by simply draping a sheet over the dining room table and clambering underneath with a childhood doll or teddy.

Playing childhood games helps us to pick up the pieces and remember the good times along with the bad and the ugly.