The first time I ever went for a run I was in my early 20s, at university, and probably hungover. A friend I was living with had persuaded me and we ran from our house in The Lanes, in Brighton, down to the sea, along the seafront and back home.

It was maybe a two-mile circuit and I hated it. I remember him cheering me on, at first, and then getting a b…

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When I was in my early 20s, I had this boyfriend who thought I was someone I wasn’t. They all did. They saw the version of me that made sense with them rather than the full spectrum of me. When I told him I was going for a sunbed, his eyes widened.

A sunbed? he said, shocked. That’s not you.

It very much was me, back then. Thankfully, only for a few years and not that often, but I liked the feeling of the warmth on my skin during the winter months. I’d used sunbeds as a teen for my spotty skin and later, for psoriasis. Also, for a tan.

He thought I was a hippie who would never do something so artificial. Sunbeds didn’t make sense with my double nose-rings and loose floral dresses. He didn’t, either. So I went for the sunbed and ended it with the boyfriend not long after.

But while he’d got it wrong on the sunbed front, and while I wore hair extensions and fake eyelashes, which also didn’t make sense for a hippie like me, there was something artificial I wasn’t into and that was the contraceptive pill. I didn’t like the idea of it.

So, I only ever took it for a few months. Got a bit fat, decided against it, moved on. I didn’t intellectualise it but perhaps there was an underlying sense that taking those pills every day, as a woman, for a man, wasn’t right. Why couldn’t the men take charge?

Now, I’m 40 and in perimenopause and hormone pills - or patches, in my case - are back on the cards. This time, though, the hormones are just for me. To support my cognitive function, heart and bone health and to fix my horrific PMT/periods.

Why, then, am I reluctant to take them?

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I’m writing this on the morning of New Year’s Eve, at 8am, sat at my kitchen table, after a much-needed evening off the booze and a deep, restorative sleep, back in my own bed. My family are still snoozing.

The Christmas period has been joyful, peaceful and full of love and connection. There has been very little tension - in fact, I can’t place any moments of tension - which is very different to the term-time, for us. The term-time is often extremely tense.

My children are much happier in the holidays. They like making art, screen-time, seeing family, going for walks (this is new, walks used to require a lot of coaxing), going to bed later, lie-ins. They like it when expectations are lifted. They feel free.

And I have felt free, because I gave myself a week off work. I haven’t opened my laptop once. I hadn’t realised quite how much I needed to do this. And of course, all that time walking, talking and connecting have allowed the ideas to flow on in.

But also, importantly, I no longer have the inner tension of feeling I’m living somewhere that isn’t home. We went to my parents’ house on Christmas Day, five minutes away, and I knew I wouldn’t have to then travel 100+ miles to get ‘home’.

We did go to Somerset, though, to see my husband’s family. We had a fire on the beach, a walk in the woods, time gathered around wood-burners, sharing tales - and I loved being there. It was the contrast between that and London; city and countryside.

Now, it’s New Year’s Eve and I’ve seen many posts on Instagram saying you don’t need to set goals - you are everything you want and need already - and I feel differently. I love a metaphorical turn in the road; a chance to dream about the future.

But as I opened the ‘reminders’ app on my phone, I noticed that everything I want - and want to not forget - is about life, rather than work. I do have one big work goal (it arrived while I was away) but other than that, I’m focusing on the living side of life.

Now, I’m going to share my life (and one work) goals, and also set prompts for anyone who’d like to set some big or small goals and dreams for themselves.

It’s going behind the paywall, because in 2026, this Substack will be almost entirely paywalled. I’m a writer, cobbling together a living, and this is an important part of it.

(I wrote, not so long ago, that I wanted to share more writing for free. I’m not sure why I thought that was a good idea. It’s not. This is my job, not a hobby.)

So… If you’re a free subscriber, you can sign up today and the monthly/yearly price will remain the same, as long as you’re subscribed. I’d love to have you on-board.

But next week, the monthly/yearly price will be going up for new subscribers.

How I’m going to be living life in 2026

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I have a friend who was a talented gymnast as a child, but after doing it for a few years, she gave up. Now, raising her own children, she wonders what would have helped her to keep going with it.

Meanwhile, I was not a talented ballerina, and yet I did ballet every week from the age of two up until I was 18. At one point, I was doing three ballet classe…

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For many years, research revealed a U-shaped curve, in terms of people’s happiness across a lifetime. Happiness levels were high in the 20s, lowest in middle age (particularly towards the late 40s) and rose again in the 50s, peaking in your 70s.

Now, this has changed.

Depressingly, young people are less happy. We know the reasons: too much time online, social media influence, exposure to world events - all of which contribute to making the 20s, for many, a time of high anxiety, rather than exploration and freedom.

But, all is not lost. Because while the research makes clear that the U-shaped curve is less reliable now, in terms of happiness levels throughout our lives, there remains one thing that can elevate happiness levels, whatever your age.

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Back in April, I tried to write a list of 40 things I was going to do before I turned 40 (two months later). But at #20, I ran out of ideas. I then turned 40 and got busy just being in the new decade, what with my ever-growing spare tyre and new wrinkles.

And now, three months later, I’ve realised I only did one thing from that list. I set myself 20 simp…

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For many years, I’ve shared that my dream is to have a writing studio at the end of my garden and to sit there, alone, writing poetry and novels.

Right now, the studio is a few weeks off being completed. My own space to write, after a year and a half of writing wherever there is nobody.

Often, this past year, there has always been somebody, as my son was…

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We were sat around the dining table at my parents’ house, about 11 years ago, with family and some friends, and I was cradling my newborn baby, while she suckled and snoozed, and I drifted in and out of the conversation.

If this is the hardest part of motherhood, I thought, I think we’re going to be ok.

I’m not sure where I’d got that idea from. Perhaps because for some, the early days are the hardest. Perhaps we simply hear more about the sleepless nights and nappy-changing at the start than we do about what happens as the child gets older.

Either way, I said something along these lines - investigating whether this was, in fact, the hardest part; fingers crossed, hoping - and someone snorted with laughter in the way one might when they want you to feel stupid.

I blushed. Oh. Clearly I got that wrong. It was all going to go downhill from here.

Only, it didn’t. It went uphill. And then downhill. Back up, back down. Some stages were challenging, while others were peaceful and calm. Adding in two extra babies added both more joy and more stress. Therefore, I’m not sure if it was harder, or not.

On days when my daughter had a younger brother playing with her in the garden, digging up mud and dancing naked in the paddling pool: better. On nights when both or all three kids were sick or one needed to go to hospital: worse.

And so my motherhood journey has gone. Much like my career. Ups and downs; peaks and troughs; periods of uncertainty followed by periods of total certainty. Times when I’ve felt I’m doing everything right and times when I’ve felt I’m getting it all wrong.

But the past year and a half, as many longer-term readers will know, has been a particularly challenging motherhood period, with one child unable to attend school, which at points has had a domino-effect on at least one of my other children.

Also, on my career.

The physical and mental energy required to work out how to educate a child at home, a child who is in extreme burnout, doesn’t leave much for the career part of life. And so, I’ve muddled through but work - writing - has been crushed into ever-shrinking pockets of time.

In recent months, I’ve been pulled even more deeply into motherhood and further away from my work, and my earnings have been affected. I’m cutting back on spending, where I can, to accommodate this. But I’ve really had to hold onto hope.

Hope that the extra energy and time I’m putting in will help my child to feel better again. Hope that my work will wait for me, and that I can dive back in more fully, when there is more time available. Hope that soon, we’ll be on the up.

I’ve been so grateful to my Substack readers for their support during this time. I’m living almost entirely off Substack, with just a few course sales and coaching clients alongside. Thank you to my paid subscribers.

Using my SQ

I have been using SQ (spiritual intelligence) to guide me during this time. Including: creating an affirmation (second person, present tense) about what I’d like for my child and using a form of prayer to give thanks for all that is good, and to ask for support.

I have created a very clear vision of what I’d like, for our family - and for me - and I’ve travelled to that vision regularly, to ensure that the moves I make and the conversations I have are all aligned with, and moving us towards, that vision.

I have reached for gemstones and rolled them around in my palm whilst feeling crazed as I’ve said help me help me help me into the air, on the hardest days. I’ve pulled tarot cards to help me access my subconscious thoughts when I’ve not known what to do.

I’ve leant on these SQ tools and rituals, and they have brought solace and comfort during a sustained period of worry. As I wrote here, intuition has been crucial: listening to my child, listening to my inner knowing, following both our voices.

And, the magic has started to flow through our home. My child has recovered. School is back on the agenda (and not just back on: welcomed, warmly). This dominoes, too: happiness, hope, relief, a sense of lots of good luck coming our way.

We’re all quite lucky at the moment, aren’t we? one of my sons said after finding a £10 note on the floor, a day after I found a £5 note, the day after his brother won a box of Ferrero Rochers and a bottle of wine (!) at a summer fair.

We are lucky, I said, thinking beyond the material luck* we’ve had and into spiritual luck. The way a most difficult situation that, at points, I thought we might be stuck in for many, many years has become unstuck. There is movement, flow, JOY.

(*I also played the Lottery last night.)

Letting go ceremony

Now, I’m ready to skip off into the light, in much the same way as I assumed, that day with family and friends, a newborn in my arms, that the hardest work had been done and now, I could revel in a lifetime of light and laughter; happiness and ease.

Only, I know it’s not like this, really. I know there will be sadness and challenge again. Darkness, pain, grief. I know there will be chapters of ease and chapters of frustration. And to honour this, I decided to create a ‘letting go’ ceremony.

I wanted to let go of the properly hard year and a half - the sadness, worry, uncertainty, fear, anxiety, guilt - and to appreciate where we are, today. To bring forwards the learnings and lessons, and wave off the parts I won’t be taking with me.

So, I made myself a cup of chai (oat milk, boiled up twice on the hob, with black tea, cardamom pods, turmeric, cinnamon, nutmeg, black pepper and a spoonful of brown sugar) and I lit a candle.

Then, I lay back on my yoga mat, a fluffy blanket beneath me, another fluffy blanket on top of my body, and I used a ‘letting go’ meditation that I’d written and recorded to drift off on a journey of processing, gratitude and - ultimately - letting go.

I returned to the room, drank my chai and did a body cleanse with a dried herb stick, asking for protection and continued luck.

This is the first day I have had home alone in many, many months. Maybe since October? I am truly revelling in the time and space to meditate, create, write, bang a drum, play the hand-pan and appreciate all that has passed, and all that is yet to come.

If you’d like to use my ‘letting go’ meditation to create your own ceremony after a difficult period or situation in your life, you are very welcome. It’s for paid subscribers only, though, because sometimes the magic needs to be unlocked…

Letting go meditation

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My daughter asked me a lovely question, recently. She said: what are your favourite things for each of the senses?

I enjoyed answering her question, and hearing her answers, and I thought I’d share an idea for engaging each of the senses, and invite you to think about this question, too.

Something to see

Wherever I am, I search for the sky. I watch the sun…

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We all know about fast ambition.

Rise early, meditate, clear your mind, go for a long run, stretch, eat a wholesome breakfast and then hammer away at your entrepreneurial ambitions all day.

Expect everyone else to pick up everything around you, so that you can stay entirely focused on your fast ambition and grow, excel, rise, dominate, succeed, win.

Fast ambition is competitive (even if you’re just competing with yourself).

Fast ambition makes you feel like you’re on fire. The flames are tall. The heat is powerful. You are the fire; you will destroy anything on your path.

Until you burn out.

Because actually, there is no one there to pick up everything else around you while you remain entirely focused on your goals especially if you’re a woman.

So, instead, you will notice that you don’t really have the nourishing morning routine, because you’re making other people’s breakfast and hanging out the laundry.

And you don’t really have loads of day-time hours to work, because there are appointments and admin and house clearing/cleaning.

So, there are a few hours to cram in your work and not so many hours around that for creative thinking and deep thinking and big thinking and world domination.

This is why we crash: we are dreaming the dreams, setting the goals and working towards them - but we don’t have the infrastructure to support us.

Or: why we back away from our careers altogether. We decide there isn’t enough time for it. We’ll just piece a life together ensuring everyone else is looked after.

But it doesn’t have to be like that.

Here’s where slow ambition comes in.

Slow ambition is for those who have various responsibilities but are not willing to shelve their career dreams entirely.

It is for the creatives and writers and entrepreneurs who want and need to keep going but know there has to be another way; a better way.

There is.

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You know that classic story about getting out on the wrong side of bed? And how everything seems to go wrong that day?

So, maybe you wake up, spill a glass of water on the bedside table, stub your toe on the way to the toilet, check your emails and there’s one telling you you didn’t get the job/part/role/place etc?

Well, there’s no such thing as getting o…

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Desperation makes us do silly things.

Perhaps we agree to work for much less than we deserve, launch a product or service that doesn’t feel quite aligned with where we’re at (but we’re hoping will bring in a big chunk of cash) or we abruptly end a project, or relationship.

I like starting things. And I like ending things. But I’m working on both (starting less; ending less abruptly.) When 0 people signed up for my course, I wanted to remove it from my online shop immediately, like it had never existed. But I didn’t.

I left it there. I wanted to practise ending something slowly. Having run courses for quite a few years, I know that if at least one person doesn’t sign up right away, it ain’t gonna fly. Call it spiritual, call it business sense: but there is a clear pattern.

However, I wanted to allow myself to sit in the failure a minute. Not just that: to also announce my failure, on Substack. I could easily have buried it and no one ever would have asked where it went. But for personal development reasons, I didn’t.

What I did do, though, is surrender.

I didn’t make it cheaper. I didn’t do more promotions. I didn’t run expensive ads. I didn’t write more emails. I didn’t beg. (Never beg.) Instead, I mentally let go of the course. I felt some relief, because now, I wouldn’t have to put it all together.

I turned my attention away and I discovered a potential opportunity for a rhyming kids’ book I wrote with my daughter. We got excited, thinking about how it would feel to have our book published and in bookshops. I loved this shift in energy.

From failure to potential.

It was the weekend, and we walked on hot London pavements imagining what it would be like to do signings together, in a children’s bookshop. And readings. We thought about press opportunities for our book. We got hyped.

We don’t have a book deal. We might never get one. But we dared to dream. We dared to feel hopeful. We dared to really imagine ourselves in a different reality, where we are joint published authors of a kids’ book - and it felt pretty sunny.

Something else happened.

I opened my emails and saw that someone had signed up to my journalism course. I’m so enjoying running this course, the pitches are coming in from my students and they are brilliant. I will have a belly-flip moment when they tell me they’ve been commissioned.

Someone else signed up to my Substack course.

I had a beautiful email about a course I ran last summer - The Creative Way (to build your confidence) - explaining how the course had built her confidence to the point that she’d done something she never thought she’d be able to do.

It was emotional to read.

By turning away from my failure, and the course that led to it, and by leaning into creative projects and opportunities, I’d let go of any negative attachment to it and the Universe swiftly delivered different versions of ‘success’ to me, instead.

Sometimes, instead of drilling into something that has begun to feel too heavy or hard, we need to stop. Let go. Any creative pursuit takes work and perseverance - so do that - but then, if it’s not happening, walk away.

And you might just find it comes chasing after you, calling your name. Or, perhaps, something else will slip seamlessly into its place. Something bigger, something better, something that’s meant for you - and this moment in time.

Now, for paid subscribers: another video coaching workshop (it’s just seven minutes long) from my course Revive. This workshop will get you thinking about what matters most to you right now, in work and in life…

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August 2007

I’m 22 and sat on the sandy banks of the Danube River in Serbia, drinking pints of beer from plastic cups and eating burgers that taste like cat food.

For the past month, I’ve been travelling with my sister and two friends through Italy, Croatia, Slovenia and Bosnia in the roaring heat.

We’ve been sleeping in tents, swimming in the turquoise seas, cooking bean stews on a camping stove and doing some eccentric photoshoots in locals’ houses.

Now, we’ve met with about 50 people we know from London and Brighton to go to Exit Festival, which is set in a 17th century fortress. We’re camping nearby.

While curled up on this fashioned beach with a friend who has become a romance, I see my recently ex-boyfriend’s new girlfriend approaching us.

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I said it as a joke:

I’m thinking of taking a sabbatical.

My husband side-eyed me while dipping poppadoms in spiced mango chutney at our local Indian restaurant and looked both worried and intrigued.

For how long?

I’m joking, I said.

Before realising I wasn’t.

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This morning at 6.30am, as I sat alone in the kitchen, a big mug of steaming coffee between my palms and my family still asleep upstairs, I thought about this chapter of my life. I’m being pulled into motherhood with such voracity, but also into creativity.

I want to give everything to my children, and that sometimes mean pushing aside all my work while …

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I have this new approach to starting the week. Instead of waving goodbye to my children and rushing to my desk to action all the ideas that have landed over the weekend, I pack a rucksack and head to the gym.

I don’t do a workout. I don’t do a class. I don’t even swim. I just sit in the sauna getting really hot and thinking. And then I have a freezing co…

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While my social media feeds are filling up with people’s heartfelt messages about what worked for them in 2024, and what didn’t, I’ve been feeling strangely blank.

This is for two reasons.

Firstly, I have a boring cold that is turning any potentially meaningful thoughts into a fairly impenetrable clump of clay, in my mind, before they become coherent.

Sec…

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A few days before Christmas, we had a big family gathering at my parents’ house. The eight kids went between watching TV and playing ‘monsters’, while the adults were sat at the kitchen table, chatting.

When everyone gathered, briefly, for bagels, I asked people what their happiest moment had been, in 2024. Everyone said it was hard thinking of just one …

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