What comes next

Notes on motherhood, ambition, community, and building a life.

Well, quite a lot is changing in my life. 2025: the year of change. 2026 will, I hope, be something else entirely. Something calmer and more centering. But for now I am waking up every morning, drinking my coffee while my warm, sleepy baby sits on my legs and smiles at me, and furiously writing notes and making plans. I won’t (/can’t) go into too much detail but I am refocusing on what I set out to acheive exactly eight years ago this month: freedom to choose, and a life where my time is truly my own. Somewhere along the way I lost that a bit. But I won’t allow it to slide away from me anymore. A few years ago both of my parents nearly died within about eight months of each other, so ever since, I’ve never forgotten that time is our most precious commodity. But these past few months with M have totally solidified that truth.

I’m watching the (really fantastic) All Her Fault on Sky at the moment. M normally turns into a little ball of tired fury at dinnertime but last night she slept in her bouncy chair while T and I ate bowls of pasta and drank red wine and pressed play on the next episode. The show follows the disappearance of a five-year-old child, and it’s completely gripping. But almost more compelling is the story running beneath the mystery — one about gender roles, motherhood, and the relentless guilt a woman can feel when pulled between two things she holds dear: her child and her work. The ‘all her fault’ in the title speaks to the idea that no matter how hard she tries, a mother will never be able to do it right. In one scene, Sarah Snook collapses on the kitchen floor when she realises she’d snuck off to speak to a potential client at the very moment her son’s kidnapper might have made first contact. Snook is phenomenal (hi Shiv), and her despair hits you in the gut. And isn’t it just one of the cruelties of time — passing without our consent — that we might one day look back and think: why did I believe that was the important bit?

My time off with my baby is over, and I’m okay with that. But in this new time as I refocus my need for flexibility and work life balance I’m thinking and learning so much about how to actually live that grand idea out. I have lots of plans. For work, writing and my creative life. I want to hire a coach in 2026. I am going to write a lot more (on here, with my writing group, fiction, essays, in my journal). I want to make sure that I am not just one thing — because of course I’m not. None of us are. We contain multitudes. And as the years pass and we get that bit older, wiser and more sure of ourselves, we must embrace all those facets and find ways to honour them with our time and attention. For me that means pulling my laptop out while M naps beside me to reply to some emails, write a proposal or an essay. It means a Wednesday not feeling bad for not replying to emails and instead fully engaging with what M wants — namely, me staring at her and us smiling at each other for hours. It means going outside and smelling the air and feeling the light rain on my face before coming home and lighting a fire and opening a bottle of wine.

I’ve been leaning heavily on my community these past few months and though that doesn’t actually come that naturally to me it’s been revolutionary. The people around us can actually hold us up when we don’t feel we can hold ourselves — who knew!? T, obviously, and my parents. But also my writing group who will always respond to my Whatsapps in exactly the tone I need them to. My new mum friends who I see every week now and provide endless solidarity, care and hilarity. The friends who have known me for so many years, seen so many iterations of me and know why something might have upset me without me having to explain, and also know just how to reframe it so I can refocus and look forward with optimism. The women I don’t know too — who have podcasts and a whole back catalogue of writing about being a mother who knows herself and what she needs and how to build a life that works for her.

I’m excited. Feeling apprehensively positive. I can imagine myself a year from now thinking: okay yes, I can see why that happened, and I’m so much better off for it.

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Because I love lists, here are a few I’ve been making:

Helpful stuff while going through change:

• Books — always.

• People to talk to who have been through something similar — examples of people thriving after something hard are hugely powerful.

• Batch cooked dinners in the freezer.

• Opening a bottle of wine on a Tuesday night and not feeling guilty (in fact feeling pretty great).

• Putting your phone in another room and engaging fully with what you’re doing — cuddling your baby, making a coffee just the way you like it, tidying the living room so you can properly relax, watching yet another episode of Married at First Sight.

• Perspective.

• Laughing — my friend came to stay last weekend and we laughed so much my tummy hurt and it was really great.

• Focusing on what comes next.

Podcasts I’m currently obsessed with / are keeping my eyes open and my mind engaged:

• Motherkind — so much good stuff about the reality of being a mother in a not-annoying/cliched way.

• Strong Message Here — Armando Iannucci on political language. The episodes with Stewart Lee are especially good.

• Guardian Today in Focus — they cover such a variety of news and, I think, do so in a truly balanced way. Also the production value is second to none.

• The Rest is Entertainment — though Richard and Marina annoy me a lot of the time (see, for instance: Richard Osman’s advice to authors). I do love them and this is the only podcast (since The High Low) I have listened to every single episode of.

• Question Everything — Brian Reed reexamining the role of journalism.

• Ill Advised with Bill Nighy

• Not Too Busy To Write — Penny Wincer does warm, in depth interviews with interesting writers. They talk about their books and their writing life (and the challenges therein).

• BBC Shadowlands - Anatomy of a Cancellation — a recent listen, about what happened to Kate Clanchy when critics starting calling her book racist and ableist. It’s a nuanced and balanced look at an incredibly polarised argument. It displays everything that was/is wrong with social media, especially Twitter. I don’t think Clanchy comes across very well in the podcast — she doesn’t seem to have learned much from the ordeal. But it is genuinely awful to hear the impact such a public and unpleasant debate has had on the lives of her and her critics.

Plans for my Substack:

• A motherhood and work series — to be launched in a few weeks, covering: flexible working and what people/businesses are still not getting; an interview with my mother; the cult of productivity/what real productivity looks like; how much we need grandparents; much more.

• Lots of links and recs! We love a good rec. I watch a lot of TV and films, I read lots of books, listen to lots of podcasts, and I have plenty of opinions to go with them.

• Essays every other week. I’ve been filling my notes app with ideas for years.

Please do subscribe if you haven’t already! And comment. I’d love to chat.