Laying it All Down

A personal update

Hello to you all! I hope this finds you feeling safe, loved and all the rest…it’s a bit of a more personal reflective one from me today and maybe a bit longer, too long for your inbox anyway, but I've broken it up with pretty pictures so I hope that’s ok (with a flurry of exciting news bits down the bottom!)

Dream Chaser

Twenty years ago, I was a young teenager full to the brim with dreams, looking for the door that led to the big wide world and, as a young person of a certain type of background, I understood that it would only be my own hard work that would take me there. (Of course, wiser adult me knows it was not just MY hard work that made it happen at all). Encouraged and protected by some of the best mentors I’ve ever known, I took every opportunity going, which led to adventures in music first and many other things beyond; social enterprises, formal studies and a freelance creative arts career now in its fifteenth year . For many reasons, some painful, I had resolved to go out into the world and not turn back, and I benefitted from music scholarships, Scotland’s free university tuition and the generosity of countless people willing to teach me things, let me live with them or introduce me to the next step of the journey. They know who they are.

I’ve taken to trying to meditate and be still more this year and on one of those days of summer stillness I was met, to my profound surprise, with a vivid mental picture of a glittering seaside parade made up of all the wonderful people who have loved me so well throughout this life. No words will really sufficiently describe the level of deep gratitude that suddenly settled into my heart on that particular day and it feels vulnerable to go any further into it, so I won’t try. But if you’re someone waiting for that level of peace to arrive, just know that it can come.

Though not without challenges, what an absolutely wonderful two decades it has been! I sit here fully aware of the absolutely off-the-charts privilege of all of this, even down to the random good fortune of my country of birth, that I can be a free woman in this time and place. Not to mention honouring people like my beloved grandparents, who trudged into factories and weaving mills every day for their family so that I could live a life like this. I never ever forget it.

The Paradox of Dream Chasing

It’s a funny old thing being a dreamer and seeker though. Things can feel so vivid, so close. You can look at a scrappy piece of land and see a meadow, look at a derelict building and imagine it revived, look at a blank canvas and try to paint what you see, even look at the current state of your physical or spiritual self and imagine them better… these things can feel so near that you want to chase them, but they can also be like a shy little wren, who won’t be caught but may just come and sit on your head if you create the right conditions. I can dream of a tree but I cannot force one to grow, I can only plant an acorn and be attentive to creating the conditions for growth, collaborating with forces and mysteries that are way beyond my mere creatureliness. I can dream of a painting but when I try to make it, I soon learn how hard it is and how many attempts and patience it’s going to take, and it may never quite be as I imagined…. but perhaps I can surrender to and enjoy the act of painting, the many variables of my materials and mood, and let something wonderful emerge.

I can imagine the life I am trying to get to, the physical and spiritual condition I’d prefer to live in, but there are so many things trying to prevent that, not least the internal barriers I make for myself… if I chase or force, it doesn’t work. All I can do is cultivate a landscape inside of myself that is fertile for growth, learn to be a gardener, which does involve some toil but also a level of willingness to be open to elemental forces. Through it all, I must also accept that what I think are my dream ‘results’ may not actually be what is best for me, depending on which part of myself is desiring those things.

Laying Dreams Down

All of these things have been the lessons I’ve carried with me over the last three years in particular, which have been a whirlwind to say the least. While recovering from profound heartbreak, I’ve also finally ‘broken in’ to children’s publishing, landing a top agent and lots of book offers, with one book out this year, two out in early 2025, two more in the pipeline and lots of nice feedback. What a life!

Simultaneously, I’ve worked with a wonderful group of community peers to grow a social venture called ‘Hidden Story’, focusing on things like literacy development, live storytelling, play interventions, micro forms of theatre and other interesting methodologies for making life better in the small area I currently live in, powered by the sharing of stories and, more importantly, the listening. Over the last 18 months, we have run community festivals, carried out an in-depth residency in a school making a book with a lot of kids called Bobble Hat Books, set up masterclasses for adults who want to write for kids, started creating a heritage tapestry with local textile workers, delivered 2000 free books into local households, helped start-up social entrepreneurs access £60k in funding by writing applications forms together over bowls of soup and last week, we opened a pop-up storytelling theatre in an empty shop to create some light in the dark months and carry out a community consultation. When I saw the sheer number of people who showed up at short notice to help that happen (27 of them in 3 days), I knew that we’d finally somehow turned Hidden Story, the concept, into Hidden Story, the community. We have a team of people, a solid co-created plan and a vision for our future. What a beautiful feeling. Let’s just enjoy that for a moment.

This period has been absolutely driven by passion and compassion but, for transparency, it was also driven by the necessity of unexpectedly finding myself a solo parent freelance worker and having to figure out how on earth to handle that, and the old adage of ‘start where you are’ was never more relevant. Or, as my lifelong mentor and friend Chika would ask… Who are you? Where are you? What are your hopes and dreams? There is plenty need and plenty of resource in this little place.

None of these activities deliver a consistent income, which isn’t a complaint- I chose this path- but just a fact. It involves endless juggling, negotiating, pitching and plotting. So, I’m very proud of it all but also tired. What’s that Taylor Swift song I hear my tween playing on occasion? ‘I can do it with a broken heart?’ Yeah.

Letting it All Go

So over the last couple of months, it has become abundantly clear to me that it’s time to hit pause button soon and take a sabbatical or something like that once current projects are wrapped. As tempting as it is to immediately follow so many exciting threads, I can’t do it all and it’s important to listen to the bodily signs and not blindly travel towards burnout, which serves nobody. Time to refine.

One thing long-term communal living has truly healed in me is the feeling that I’m on my own and must take care of things myself. It’s no longer true and whatever little embers of teenage me are still in there believing that could use a chance to finally surrender and feel on a nervous system level that it’s safe to do so (funny to look back over my newsletters from this year now and see how they’re all about surrender!). We live in the shelter of one another and there is freedom in it.

For this reason, I find it exciting to pass the baton for a while and let others make new things blossom. It’s simply the end of my shift for now and the beginning of theirs and I’d rather see something evolve that is able to function that way, that isn’t really about me at all. Similarly, this instinct runs directly parallel to how I view my art. I’m way more interested in the ‘dance’ of collaborations and experiments with disciplines, people and ideas totally outside of myself. It’s not that I can’t create things on my own, but that I truly love being one part of a bigger equation and am seeking more space to explore that. I keep saying that I’d just like to be a happy little earthworm in the mud for a while, doing my wormy thing as the littlest creature :)

Saying all of this, I haven’t truly stopped in my life, so that’s my reason for laying it all down in the very long-winded and public way today- accountability! I suspect I’ll find it difficult to begin with, I don’t exactly know yet how we’re surviving economically through it all but that feels like it’ll be ok, and it is almost certain to bring up rather a lot of things that I need to work through, attachments I’ve been unaware of. I’m already pondering questions about what to do in future and how to do it in the wider world context of conflict, disintegration and injustice, and feeling a bit flimsy that my main tools are just words and drawings, so having a bit of space again to consider those questions will be important. But for now, let me be the gardener, who sits patiently with a handful of seeds under the willow tree and waits to see what little birds will come along, and won’t it feel amazing to be surprised by the ones that do appear?

So anyway, this was my VERY VERY LONG way of saying, I’m going to take some time out. Maybe that’s just me talking myself into it, but I hope maybe it means something to a few of you. One of the prompts for me considering this was hearing another brave artist talk publicly about her relationship to work and rest this summer and it impacted me so much, so maybe even one person who has gotten this far down the newsletter will feel the same.

Take care of yourselves everyone!

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Some newsy bits:

In what feels like someone else’s life, I was over the moon to contribute the album art for a new record by three of my favourite music legends, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Julie Fowlis and Karine Polwart. This is all down to Karine being one of those truly astounding humans who is at the top of her game and also opening doors for others, giving her time to meaningful causes and making generous friendship into an art form. Very, very thankful for her input into my life.

In children’s books, The Night Whale recently came out in the USA edition, published by Candlewick. Also, ‘The Crane and the Keeper’ was announced for January 2025 and ‘Girls Belong in Space’ was announced for March 2025 with Harper Kids. I’m just going to link these to the Kirkus reviews page because it feels amazing to have three brilliant Kirkus reviews in a year (side note, a bad review from them in the past gave me the clarity to change career direction, ha!)

Making books is cool but even more special to me are the kindred spirits this world has brought into my life.

Thanks to my marvellous friends Naomi and Andy, who saw a floundering busy woman and decided to get stuck in, my print shop will soon be making a come-back. I’ll send out a separate missive about it but picking up some prints or becoming a paid backer of this substack are both marvellous ways to support all the work that is going on (Although I have no plans to paywall this newsletter, so fear not).

That’s probably MORE than enough for now- if you got this far, I applaud you! xx