I’m racing around the living room little sister driving close behind our fast cars run, run, running as our dad’s stereo turned up booms, white middle class, good girls behind walls of expectation gazing up and over dreaming of revolution That CD our mum brought home with the shopping, the latest hit, the radio keeps playing many reasons falling for her music her poetry flying in the face of convention our ticket to creative liberation from stagnation of thought and…
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In a Woman’s Hands
Read moreMy responses to the prompt ‘In a Woman’s Hands’ by @bec_ellis_writer. See more at www.instagram.com/explore/tags/inawomanshands
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International Breastfeeding Week
Read moreIt’s International Breastfeeding Week. I feel blessed to have been able to breastfeed both my children until they each stopped two weeks before they started walking. It remains one of the most challenging, painful, isolating yet beautiful, mammalian, oxytocin-craving years of my life. I find it fascinating, amazing, spiritual. But it is also a huge unfurling of all selfish drives to continue, feed after feed, laying our nips on the line.
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The Ferocious Faery
Read moreSix years ago she made me workthrough the night and early lightsnatching rest before she pressedtiny nails by face clawing her own paceto safely, naturally, painfully take her place. Big brother catalysed our growing, feeling, yielding to mammalian attachment styles of talking,wearing, feeding, workingbut the ferocious faery had her own ways – “Tummy sleeper only, pleaseI’ll nap alone in darkened peaceking-sized, briefly, but no slingsthen sleep entwinedkicking out, twelve hoursat a time, peaceful.No reasoning or logic hereI know my mind, and you must…
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What Do You Do?
Read moreI never knew what I wanted to do, for work, as a grown-up, or with life in general. My mum stopped work when she had me, and never returned. She’s given my dad some typing support for his work, volunteered, and helped out in the classroom when we were younger. As befell a lot of women of her generation, career options were limited. She left school and went to Secretarial College, then worked as a secretary in London, and other…
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#30dayhaikuproject
Read moreThirty days, thirty haikus. In April 2021, for National Poetry Month, Nicole Gulotta from The Wild Words provided springtime haiku prompts on Instagram using the hashtag #30dayhaikuproject. Here are my responses:
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Being Vulnerable With My Body
Read moreFor many, being vulnerable with their body means styling it in novel ways or exposing it to others. Taking a chance on new fashions, or feeling vulnerable with our flesh under the gaze of others. But to me, being vulnerable with my body means the slow unravelling of conditioning, of the voices of others that have permeated my skin, which I now choose to wash out. It’s stepping into an unexplored frontier, with few guides and many voices of doubt.…
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Making my Heart Smile
Read more‘The kettle’s boiling’, three words that bring a smile to my heart. It’s always been the little things, but as we age we can stop pretending it’s the big things that make us happy. I’d rather stroke a new empty notebook than receive a surprise present. I’d rather an earl grey than a cocktail (most of the time, and always at home!). Slippers over high heels. Bed over party. Book over phone call. Yarn and hooks in my lap, old…
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Our Home Education Story
Read moreFull article published on The Other Path website. “…You need to hold the reins very loosely, and be happy to leap off into rabbit trails with no notice. Being flexible to interests, energy, different personalities and balancing your own needs is key. There is no such thing as a perfect home ed day! But each little moment adds up to a bigger picture of habits, knowledge, and layering of attitudes which I hope will colour their approach to themselves, others…
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At-Home-Schooling Starter Kit
Read moreMy suddenly-homeschooling first aid kit. As the UK enters another lockdown, with schools and colleges back to remote learning, and parents and teachers scrabbling to deliver the National Curriculum to kids from their homes, I’m sharing my starter-kit for more peaceful home learning. The majority of the effort and energy needed in a home school /home education, isn’t in fact from the kids, or even from the resources you need/choose to use. It’s from you. The learning coach, the supportive…
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Reflections
Read more2020 was the year I bought an A1 wall planner, so that the kids could see the whole exciting twelve months ahead of us. This time last year I was fixing it to our kitchen pinboard, labelling and decorating it with pretty washi tapes to mark the weddings (both of our younger siblings), the parties (extended wedding celebrations), holidays, trips, birthdays, and festivals we were happily anticipating. Turns out, you can’t plan a year. As each week passed, each washi…
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The Gift of Yule
Read moreAnd so it turns. Apparently the days will get brighter and longer from now on. There are many cold, hard days ahead before the strength returns to the sun and the Oak King, but the cyclic turning of the wheel of the year has to be comforting, especially this year. There has been so much goodness, appreciation, growth, light, and love this year. We are a very lucky family. We love and care for many other people, and know we…
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Passing Time
Read morePicking pumpkins during the wettest rain of the week – that was the last minute plan. I pulled on my big girl boots, rounded up the hibernating troops and a plethora of waterproof gear and headed over the river in search of seasonal rituals. But the clouds burst in such quick succession, we were treated to a sunny double rainbow over the fields. Our usual trick of timing our pumpkin ‘harvesting’ to the favoured day between there being full fields…
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Deer
Read moreThere’s magic in the air. Can’t you just smell it, feel it, see it at this time of year? Yesterday Sam insisted on bringing our DSLR camera on a walk in the woods with his grandparents, as he wanted to “take photos of the deer”. Apparently the deer have been illusive out there all week, but five minutes into our walk, a small herd of Fallow deer appeared from the tree line on the next ridge. Slowly, one at a…
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That September Feeling
Read moreOur kids don’t think in ‘terms’. They don’t think of curriculum or standards or ‘catching up’. They don’t think about pressure to perform, how they look to peers or which grades things they produce will achieve. But every summer, as we naturally ease up table time, and increase time outdoors or lounging with stories, I increase my time reflecting on who our kids currently are. What makes them tick? How do they like to pick up skills and knowledge? Where…
