Hello and a (very) belated happy new year,
It’s been a while and it feels good to be back. It feels very typical and telling of the ebb/flow of early motherhood that I opened up this portal and then haven’t had the logistical or emotional space to revisit it till now. But the summer is ending, my child is a few months off from her 2nd birthday and there is a renewed sense of spaciousness growing within. It feels as though I’m regaining my peripheral vision after staring through life in a haze of tunnel vision since I got pregnant in 2021. I couldn’t imagine an existence in which I didn’t feel completely consumed and overridden by the physical demands of mothering as well as the mental/emotional bond to my child but as her process of individuation develops, so does my own. I wish I had been a little more patient and a little less panicked about the tunnel vision stage as I now understand it to be a very necessary and obvious stage of matrescence but I think the resistance and confusion are necessary in their own ways too. Although my day-to-day life looks as similar to how it’s always been - I’m still breastfeeding, spending the majority of my time with my kid and am evidently a while away from a good night’s sleep lol - this feeling of expansion and capacity to extend my focus (even a little), is settling in my system and it feels really good. As my daughter grows more relational and interested in the world, I’ve grown more energised and inspired to reenter it too, both to explore it alongside her and also as this new and different version of myself. Subsequently, I am releasing some of my more deeply rooted neuroses around how and what I want to write about. I had zeroed in on a creative ‘vision’ for this Substack that ruled out so many topics, tones and approaches that I left myself with nothing to say and no way to say it. For the sake of expediency, I’ll spare you the guided tour of my angst and avoidance which have been with me loooooong before I had a kid and are fucking boring anyway.
All this to say, I’m letting go of any prescribed approach or expectation from what ends up here, widening the scope and opting in, rather than eternally out. Bless this mess, etc.
Here are some good things:
This easy and delicious recipe for tomato poached fish from Alison Roman - I’ve made it several times, omitting the chilli for toddler-friendliness and serving it with buttery herbed rice and crunchy, green salads with great success.
Eliza Mclamb’s latest album, Going Through It - she is such an articulate and precise songwriter, the storytelling on this album is cohesive and devastatingly evocative, set against a backdrop of gorgeous production. I cry every time the chorus swells on Crybaby.
Hacks, available on Stan if you’re in Australia. I was expecting this to be a silly little show but it’s wound up being a little absurdist, way darker and more compelling than I initially expected.
Wrapping it up here with a promise (mainly to myself) to return sooner than I have been.
Lots of love,
Gopi