I am wading through fog at the moment, my brain feels like mashed potato, and with too much butter in it, to boot. I have all these theories as to why I feel like I am lost in the mists right now, all terrifying and unhelpful like ‘early onset Alzheimer’s’ or ‘mercury poisoning’. Can such […]
Category: Motherhood
Respite
I came across some words this morning and fell in love – a poem by Billy Collins called The Present, introduced by William Sieghart in The Poetry Pharmacy. It pokes fun at the current obsession with mindfulness and living in the moment, which conversely can cause a lot of needless guilt. (Like, often I’m with […]
Lines
I’ve written here before that I try to modulate my turn of phrase with my children, as per parenting advice of the day – or really, just common sense if I want to keep my kids out of therapy when they are older. So, if the situation calls for it, I say ‘that’s naughty behaviour’ […]
The X-files
Today I came across the term ‘emotional bandwidth’. Jessica Grose wrote a piece in the New York Times parenting magazine about why she is resisting having a third child. She has reached her limits with two. Everyone, she posits, has a different emotional bandwidth when it comes to raising children. How she puts it: In […]
Growing pains
Yesterday my son came back from the park, mortified. Something which he found really embarrassing happened to him (I won’t say what), and it was in front of the older kids, who all laughed at him. He felt hurt and ashamed. It was the first time I had seen him like this. It was like […]
Party tricks
Yesterday my five-year-old picked me out an enormous black ‘crystal’ necklace from the local discount shop. It is hideous, and one of the most beautiful presents I have ever received because he is beside himself with the joy of giving. The three of them were taken out to buy me a birthday present last night, […]
Present to yourself, gift to the world
In this podcast, I love what Jillian Lavender says about taking time for yourself, in her case specifically to meditate. She says something like, let’s turn on its head this whole idea of carving out some time for some self-care (yes, self-care, irritating term, but it is self-care nonetheless so let’s go with it) being […]
Mud song
I was in the countryside yesterday, visiting a relative. There was a cherry tree. Pots and pots of muddy things, seedlings of vegetables like radishes, kale and carrots. Scallions stood in a row like soldiers, their tart green tops fading into pristine white bottoms, nestled smartly in the warm brown earth. There were large, unidentifiable […]
No time for dragons
‘Absolutely no time for dragons,’ I yelled this morning as I wrestled my middle child into his car seat. Absolutely no time for dragons, I snapped again, running back from the car and into the house to grab coats, bags, books and lots of other random stuff I needed for the order of the day. […]
What time is it, Mr Wolf?
I’ve just finished Dolly Alderton’s book Everything I Know About Love, a beautifully honest, funny love song to her 20s and to her coterie of female friends. It wasn’t one of those happy, jaunty love songs though – rather a gritty raw one; she suffered, she shagged, she loved, she got dumped, she drank, she […]