WHY THIS SPACE EXISTS
It Began With Questions Life Would Not Let Me Avoid
Bench By the River began with questions I could not put down.
How can we stay open to life without losing ourselves in it?
Why do some people feel so much more than others?
Why can care become self-abandonment?
Why does understanding other people not always help us remain with ourselves?
And how do we keep loving life after it has fallen apart?
I did not come to these questions only through books or ideas. I came to them through life.
I am a very sensitive person. I’ve always felt things deeply, noticed things quietly, and carried more emotions than I could name. For a long time, I thought everyone experienced the world this way. Only later did I realise that some people have a wider range of feelings. More comes in, more stays, more is felt, and more needs to be understood before life feels steady again.
My life has also brought me through deep loss and many challenges, which have shaped everything I understand: love, tenderness, pain, and the hidden inner world of being human. Some experiences don’t give me easy answers, but they leave me with questions big enough to change my life.
Bench by the River is where I bring these questions. It’s the place where I write to find understanding, where I try to find words for things many people feel but can’t easily explain, and where sensitivity, grief, love, human nature, awareness, and inner growth slowly come together as a body of work.
This site isn’t about becoming less sensitive. It’s about feeling less lost. It’s about learning to keep our range, build our centre, and meet life with more clarity, courage, and care.
About Me
My name is Coral Walker. I am a writer, artist, and former academic.
Before I became a full-time writer, I worked as a researcher and lecturer in computer science. That experience sparked my lasting interest in systems, structure, patterns, and finding ways to make complex ideas clear.
But what I share here is not just shaped by intellect.
It also grows out of lived experience, motherhood, grief, sensitivity, creativity, spiritual searching, and the ongoing effort to understand what it means to stay human through change.
I write reflective essays, learning frameworks, dialogues, poetry, children’s stories, and books that are still in progress. I use the pen name Mama Maja for some of my children’s and poetry work, as a tribute to my daughter.
Across all these forms, I return to one central thread:
How can we live with open hearts and still stay whole?
This project was born from those reflections.