Parenting is so much easier outdoors

Small joys from spring

I’ve been absent for a while.

Chewing things over. Considering. Thinking and growing and noodling in my journal.

Some may say I’ve been overthinking.

I have about a dozen half-formed essays in the drafts tab (maybe more?), but I wanted to share some recent springtime joys before the season melts into summer like my toddler’s discarded ice-lolly is currently melting into my garden table.

Small joys from spring

Just a few of the things I’ve loved in this season.

Collaging with my daughter

I’m a writer. That’s where I pour my creativity, and it's where I fill my creative cup. But lately I’ve been drawn to using my hands.

Sometimes, in the long afternoons now that my toddler doesn't nap, I’ve taken to getting out the ‘crafting box.’ Stickers and glitter, tissue paper, pipe cleaners, old magazines, glue sticks, plastic scissors, pastel felt-pens (and even the paints, if she hasn’t already had a bath).

We listen to a children’s audiobook and cut up magazines, the leaflets we picked up at the museum, old paper menus, leaves from the park, receipts, bits of packaging. We tear whole pages in half, then delicately snip around the edges of a picture. We swipe glue, peel washi tape, spread glitter liberally around the kitchen.

Then she gets bored. She goes back to her Sylvanian families while I clean up and make a start on dinner. We move through the evening routine: food, bath, books, bed. But sometimes, after she’s asleep, I get the craft box back out. I listen to a podcast with murder and swear words, and I cut and rip and glue and stick and fill up whole pages of a notebook all by myself, without writing a single word.

Building something new

I don’t often talk about my paid work here, but I also run a business writing for other people—mostly for other mothers building their own creative careers—and I’ve spent much of the springtime building something exciting and new (and also… exactly where I’m supposed to be, using all the tools I already have).

I always hesitate before saying that I’m “launching a course.” It sounds as though it could be a bit of a grift. A pursuit of the mythical passive income model, which so often puts the emphasis on selling something, rather than building something. I hope that this course is the antithesis of that.

I designed it as a way to support my people (small business owners, creative freelancers, and companies-of-one, building a squiggly career alongside all the other plates they’re spinning). I’ve packaged up all my knowledge, experience and training so that the kind of people I actually want to work with can access it. I want them to be able to build the tools and frameworks to write their own lovely copy (without using AI).

In all honesty, though, I’ve also designed it as a way to make work work around my life. I’m the primary parent to a chronically ill toddler (and the de facto household manager, too). I love the work I do, and the people I work with, and I need to make a reliable income from that work. I also want and need, in a very visceral way, to write about my experiences of motherhood, to create something new here and to share and connect with other mothers.

I’ve revelled in the creative challenge of figuring out the shape of this course, of seeking out the people I can help, of finding new ways to talk about writing. I’ve enjoyed the conversations I’ve had so far with students, and I’m excited to teach other people how to use writing as part of growing a heart-led business that works for them.

Being outdoors

Autumn is my favourite season but my gosh, spring is a close second. Parenting is so much easier outdoors: less clean-up, less expectation to spend money, and more movement (which makes for better sleep, for both of us).

The way spring gently unfurls itself is delicious: an afternoon in the garden, a load of laundry on the line, a small hand giving you a daffodil she picked herself. If you stand barefoot on the grass and shut your eyes, you can almost feel the world coming back to life after the deep slumber of winter.

My daughter and I have taken to moving on foot when we can. We take a picnic down to our local woods to play, or uphill from the valley we live in to check out the libraries and charity shops (“toy shops,” as my toddler knows them) in nearby neighbourhoods. The getting there is part of the event. Sometimes she goes in the buggy, plays with a couple of toys, and I take that as a cue for a break, marching along with a podcast in my ears. Or else, she insists on walking herself and we go at her pace, stopping to smell the flowers, inspect the bugs and collect a treasure-trove of sticks and stones before the inevitable “uppy, mummy.” She’s still just about small enough to tie into a sling, so we can chat nose-to-nose, and I still have my hands free to hold my coffee.

Recent reads

In news that will shock absolutely no one, reading was my first great love. My home is filled with books, and I made some of my best friends through book clubs. Most of my parenting decisions are made with the sole aim of having more time to read a book (that isn’t The Gruffalo or Oi Frog). Here are some of my recent favourites:

• Matrescence by Lucy Jones*. An obvious one? Maybe. But I think this book actually altered my brain chemistry in a fundamental way. I finished it about a year ago, but it still sits on my desk, full of post-its, and I dip in and out of it every now and again when I need a reminder that I exist.

• The Baby on the Fire Escape by Julie Phillips*. I’ve read this slowly, over the course of a few months, and I think I’ve cried somewhere in every chapter. It’s a narrative history of creative motherhood in the twentieth century, and it’s made me, in turn, long for another life, and thank my lucky stars to exist in this one.

• Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder*. Another raw book about motherhood, but make it fiction. I’m halfway through and keep finding myself wanting to yelp and highlight passages that resonate as I’m reading, if only it wouldn’t disturb the toddler from her independent play and remind her that I should really be reading something to her.

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*IF you click these links and then buy the book I recommend from Bookshop.org, I may get a few pennies back, at no additional cost to you. Buying through Bookshop.org also supports your local bookshop, instead of supporting a billionaire. You could also try eBay, Vinted or WorldOfBooks for second-hand copies.