Hello lovely, 

How's your week been?

Oh, and how did you find the full moon at the beginning of the week? Kirsty Gallagher writes about how the energies behind this were a powerful calling home to ourselves. Are you feeling that sense of homecoming?

One of the ways of nurturing ourselves, Kirsty suggests, is to give ourselves regular hugs! This can be a great way of soothing our nervous system. 

I’m so happy that we’ve just sent issue 123 off to the printers and it’ll be landing on doorsteps and in stores in the next couple of weeks. 

It’s our adventure special – there’s so much exciting stuff inside, from a roadschooling, single mum, to how to go on microadventures with your kids, from kitchen witch medicine, to helping little ones develop their EQ. Get your copy early when you order here.

Iris and I have had another full week. We’ve been on some wonderful family walks (the photo above is of our family walk to an icy-sloped Iron Age hillfort last weekend). Iris tried out a new Spanish club, and we’ve been to visit The Museum of London.

Here's what we've been up to this week

Reading Some Great Debut Novels

I got a great haul from the library recently. My partner had come into town with me so I filled his rucksack with books and he carried them all home for me – yay! I read They Dream in Gold by Mia Sennaar - a fun, colourful epic about a musician and his manager, spanning decades and continents. It’s an accomplished debut from an award-winning Senegalese writer.

Delphi by Clare Pollard was another debut, from a poet and playwright. This is a clever and funny take on the effect of lockdown, a marriage in crisis and motherhood, overlaid with tales and prophecy from the classics.

The Blue Maiden by Anna Noyes was fascinating and beautifully written – a tale of sisterhood on an isolated Northern European island in the 1800s. There’s accusations of witchcraft, powerful female characters and plenty of myth and lore. Another debut novel!

I also read On the Rooftop by Margaret Wilkerson-Sexton, a quick inhale of a read about Black culture, motherhood, sisterhood. And, Nonfiction: A Novel by Julie Myerson – a painful novel about motherhood and addiction. This book had me crying and staying up late to finish it. I had so many questions about protecting our kids, and what to do in the face of addiction, after reading it.