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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Nurturing Noticing
Read moreI notice which cereal my daughter ate for breakfast, by her sweet breath in my face an hour later. I notice if my husband drank a coffee between his teas at work when he kisses me good night. I notice who walked through my house, as I sniff entering the front door. I notice objects moved centimetres, blankets refolded, cushions depressed. I notice new fingerprints on windows, splashes behind sinks, and whether the heating has been on that day. My…
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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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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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Dreaming of Darkness
Read moreSometimes I anger, hot red with frustration, that I can’t live a life full of manifestation. I close my eyes stinging with tears and see clearly a different reality, creation. Streets peppered with trees, calming and cleaning. Wild green spaces for children tribing in freedom. Black, brown, white, with disabilities or enabled, all genders and histories intermingled. We lighten our tread on the land and its creatures. Helping not hindering healthy existence. After children and responsibilities are safely tucked up,…
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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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Returning Light
Read moreThis morning, as I sit in my bed, cup of tea in hand, the sun is flooding my covers and, for the first time since autumn, hitting me in the face. It should feel a very welcome return, a sign of spring and returning light to be appreciated. And yet… The sunny early spring days are no doubt energising and uplifting, after the long days of dark. Their warmth feels strengthening on my skin and on our garden. But I…
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Throwing it
Read moreThrowing pebbles at the roaring waves, Of crashing noise, of cold, salty sprays. Shouting nothings across the vast sea, From the deepest, darkest, parts of me. Sometimes you need to stand toe-to-toe, With wilderness out there, wilderness on show. Your storm settles, your tension expressed. The roaring and crashing can now, rest.
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Fairy Tale Endings
Read moreA year of oscillating between fearing which medical infliction might take my parents. Doing our utmost to defend them from the invisible monster, whilst they battle bravely their discovered invaders. It feels strangely familiar, their journey to the cure, through the lair of the beast. Happy endings look like hope.
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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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A Walk Through the Trees
Read moreExploring the forest with my kids is probably one of my favourite things to do. But there is something magical and life-giving about using my child-free Thursdays to get out in the forest alone. To listen to the wind in the trees, the birds hiding in the bushes, and my own breathing as I get to carry a brisk pace. Without little legs and imaginative meanderings, I get to raise my heart-rate and pound out some stress. Today’s walk was…
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Letting Go to Welcome
Read moreThe letting go of autumn feels just so fitting this year, The peak of our year’s outward energies curtailed, now released, Each feeling, hope, regret, sorrow, wish. Released, and let go, and in doing so, Leaves the true shape of who we were all along. Welcoming the inward winter.
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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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Grounded
Read moreThis new moon and personal circumstances have found me feeling frustrated, trapped, panicked by the passing of their childhoods, and altogether ungrounded. Today the forest and all things green and smelling of early autumn called to me. But my family had other plans. Seizing the last of the warm summer weather, we headed to the beach, fish and chips in hand (my first takeaway). We got battered by the rolling break, gritty and salty. But we got grounded. Seems the…
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Shift your focus
Read moreShift your focus. If you’re feeling the tightening of overwhelm, I find shifting focus up or down really helps. Life can always feel like a never denting to-do list, chaotic with kids and the multitude of decisions that come with them. But life now is extra pressurised. Try shifting down to a detailed manual task such as cleaning, handicrafts, writing, painting your nails, seed sowing, anything that takes concentration, focus and care with your hands. Or shift up; gaze at…
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Birthdays
Read moreThirty-seven trips around the sun, Thirty-seven birthdays, another year begun. Quietening silver reaching into gold, Entrenched smiles and laughter enter the fold. Thankful for warm candles and loved ones, Songs of joy shouted from their young tongues. Knowing and growing into all that is me, Thirty-seven years to practice being free.