the opposite of abandonment

a year of showing up

Grace in her study

I have not always been good at showing up for myself. For example, yesterday I spring cleaned my desktop, filing away a dozen short stories that I have started but not finished. I also have a cupboard of doom in my office, where numerous knitting and quilting projects go to die lie in craft-purgatory. I used to tell myself that there were valid reasons I hadn’t managed to do my writing, or finish piecing that quilt top together. Most of the time my reason was my job, which I would prioritise relentlessly at the cost of so many other things.

I write to tell you that this is no longer the case. As of tomorrow, this newsletter will be one year old. Over the past year I have written around 30 editions of The Murmuration, and 31 editions of its sister publication, Golden Hour. About 600 of you read my witterings (bless you!). It is the only creative project which I have shown up for consistently in my adult life, and although it feels cringey to say so, it has transformed my sense of confidence and commitment to myself.

When I hit send on my very first newsletter twelve months ago I was unaware about my reasons for doing so. I wanted somewhere to write essays, but as a new mum I didn’t have the time to pitch things into newspapers or magazines. I knew I wanted to write things that weren’t just dashed off in a moment, but that I’d actually spent some time thinking about. After my friend

Kerri ní Dochartaigh

started to post her writing on Substack, I realised I didn’t have anything to lose by joining her. Since then, I’ve hit send roughly four times a month, sharing my frustrations, documenting my hopes and figuring out publicly what it means to live in a world in transition. ‘I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means’ wrote Joan Didion. I feel the same way.

Twelve months later it’s easier to understand why I needed to do this. In her essay Things I Don’t Want to Know, the writer Deborah Levy reckoned that:

To become a WRITER I had to learn to INTERRUPT, to speak up, to speak a little louder, and then LOUDER, and then to just speak in my own voice which is NOT LOUD AT ALL.

She is right, of course. And I find it interesting that I have been most able to do this at the very time in my life when I was told the opposite should true. There is a poisonous idea that women ‘abandon’ themselves once they become mothers. That we must get quieter, shedding our identities in order to dedicate ourselves to our children. But motherhood has only helped me understand more honestly who I actually am, what I actually care about, and what things I actually want to spend my time on. It has acted like nail polish remover, quickly stripping me of inhibitions and fears and bullshit, and thrusting me into a real life, one which I was once too afraid to inhabit.

When we continually abandon ourselves, by not showing up for our creative endeavours or the things that give us life, we are side-stepping the shame of a potential, imagined failure—and trading it for a sense of stasis. We remain unchanged, learning little about what that project was about, who it might have helped, and why you needed to make it in the first place. Over time, we start to forget the reasons why we wanted, needed to create. Shame of ‘failure’ is gradually replaced by the shame of never starting.

the abandoned quilt

I have found that showing up for myself in this small way has had a cascade effect into other areas of my life. I am more reliable, less fearful about the future, and am gradually working through projects which I had long put on ice. Last night I even went to a Quilt Club and sat with fifteen total strangers as we embarked on a community quilt. One stern-looking woman told me I was cutting my pattern out wrong and I didn’t even care! How about that.

So consider this an invitation to show up for yourself. To start that newsletter, to finish that short story and to finally learn how to make a bundt cake that keeps its shape (send me tips!). There will never be enough time, and you will never have enough money, but you really have nothing else to lose.

When we stop abandoning ourselves, we finally abandon the people we never were and become the people we were always supposed to be.

To celebrate one year of The Murmuration I’m offering a limited time discount for new subscribers! My paid subscribers are amazing and make this work possible. In exchange they receive Golden Hour on Sundays, have access to the entire archive (60+posts) and my undying gratitude. Get 20% off below.

Recommendation corner:

1. I’ve just started reading

   Sinéad Gleeson
   ‘s first novel HAGSTONE, which touches on many of the themes that I write about in this newsletter: art, nature, womanhood. So far so good! It publishes in April, and I’ll write a full review closer to then. Pre-order here.

2. Grace Rother
   is an artist who chronicles their quilt practice through their Substack ‘Studio Memoir’. Their quilts are full of life and energy and truth. Go and take a look.

3. I’m feeling inspired by Annie Wang’s seminal photography series Mother as Creator, which you can read about here.

   

4. Read the first edition of The Murmuration which I was feverishly drafting this time a year ago.