Tag Archives: Writing

Parenting

What This Blog Isn’t

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Sweet Baby is napping in the carrier rather than in her crib, but she slept through the night, so that seems like a reasonable trade. She’s only had two outfits on today, though there will be at least one more for her photo of the month. Her laundry basket is full but needs to wait until tomorrow because her parents need clean clothes, too. I ate lunch standing and rocking (but hey, I ate lunch!) in order to lull Baby to sleep in the carrier. I’m writing this blog post standing and rocking (but look, I’m writing a blog post!) in order to keep Baby asleep in the carrier.

I actually don’t want to write a blog about babies and parenting. Unlike education, which I was delighted to spend my days around and my evenings writing about, I don’t have any tips and tricks, any wisdom, any knowledge worth sharing. At exactly four months into this journey, I can sum it up as, “Phew, what a ride!” while knowing that we have hardly begun.

In the past, this blog has concerned itself with some politics, but only when I couldn’t help myself, which happened regularly enough. I wrote about relatable things like relationships and heartbreak, but such openness is best reserved for past relationships. Education was a favourite topic, particularly at times when I felt myself at odds with the system I was working in, but my work life feels lightyears away from my private life. I began this blog as a way of documenting my travels and sharing photographs, but I haven’t been very far from home lately. My world has become very small indeed.

Perhaps I am suffering from classic writer’s block. I want to write, but have no ideas. I think about writing, but push it aside in favour of something else. I intend to write, but the time to do so slips away because of other things that need doing. I would write, but there’s nothing to say.

One could argue that there is, in fact, a great deal to say. There’s certainly no end to conversation when I’m with other mamas and babies, but little of what we talk about would have been of interest to me before having my own baby, so it’s hard for me to imagine that it’s of interest to anyone else. That being said, I’ve had plenty of colleagues for whom education is a job and work stays at work, and I used this blog to spend more time thinking about education and to turn those thoughts into a book.

So maybe there’s an audience somewhere for a blog that is not about, or shouldn’t be about, or is merely reluctantly/sometimes/at the moment about life with a baby. After all, this blog has been a chronicle of selected parts of my life for about thirteen years, and this is a rather significant development. Maybe there are things that are important to say, like “The baby blues are very real” or “There was a period of a few weeks where I realized I wasn’t looking forward to anything” or “I felt rage like I’ve never felt before.” And then there are things like, “We kept looking at each other and crying because the depth of emotion was overwhelming” or “No matter how often she wakes up at night, my breath catches every time I see her” or “They said you can’t possibly understand that love and they were right.”

I don’t want to write a blog about parenting because I don’t have anything to say.

But maybe I could write a blog about being a parent because that is now something that I am.

Machico, Madeira – October 2025
On My Mind

I Wonder

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I wonder how much of what’s on paper is real. I wonder how much of poetry comes from life lived.

A few months ago, I started reading a book of poetry* aloud. I’ve carried it around town and read under the tree, in the park, by the fountain. I carry a blue pen with me, slight weight, fine black ink, the kind of pen that was made to tell stories rather than sign papers, I like to think. The kind of pen that’s meant to be enjoyed rather than kept in a box on a desk for special occasions, but also the kind of pen I’d be sad to lose, so I left it at home once, and those pages are easy to find in my journal because they don’t look like the other pages. I haven’t left it at home since.

I carry a blue pen with me and I annotate, underline, fold down page corners, record dates. I read aloud and sometimes I reread, sometimes I stop because the words have become the sound of my voice and I need to go back to the words. I read aloud and sometimes there are people around and sometimes I stop just to take it all in.

There’s something about the words that makes me braver than I am, that reminds me that I am all I have, that assures me that when everything falls apart again, there’s a way to rebuild.

I can still see the look in your eyes I can’t read, hear the chorus that told me what I already knew and didn’t want to know.

Sometimes I wonder if you’re as scared as I am.

And I laugh at myself for wondering because you’re not. You never were. I wonder if that’s how I seem, too, and I wonder if that’s why I can’t read that look in your eyes.

How much of poetry comes from life lived?

Weimar, Germany – March 2022

*River Flow by David Whyte


On My Mind

On Yoga and Writing

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Today I thought that maybe I write for the same reasons that I practice yoga. It’s a way of accessing another part of the brain, another part of the body. Perhaps, if you’ll allow me the liberty, another part of the soul.

I was introduced to yoga over ten years ago and have maintained a regular practice since the beginning. It has evolved over time, naturally, and I have written at length on this blog about my experiences with yoga. It tends to come as no surprise to anyone who knows me that I practice both yoga and meditation, light incense, look for the spiritual. By this I mean, yoga is a way of accessing, through the body and breath, a different outlook on the world. It is a way of reaching, physically, to parts of my body that I might not fully notice otherwise; it is a way of reaching, spiritually, towards both energy and stillness, towards forces in the universe I cannot explain.

Towards forces in the universe I don’t need to explain.

Maybe I write because writing is a way of expressing what lives in the body, the sensations of being alive on this planet and looking up at the sky. Writing is a way to capture the pulse of energy that sweeps you away when you let it it. Writing brings sensation back to a foundation, back to a centre where it can be grasped, felt, explored.

I write because I am feeling and I practice yoga in order to feel.

Sometimes, and certainly the case in much of my journal writing, I don’t understand what I feel until I write it down. Moving from sensation to articulation requires a conscious slowing down, letting go, a certain objectivity that reduces an emotional component, or at least requires me to detach from it just enough to inquire into it, unpack it. This is what I mean when I say, as I have known to be true for a long time, I think better on paper.

Yoga moves the sensation through the body and begins an exploration of how the body is connected, constructed, understood. I was first fascinated, all those years ago, with the shapes I could create with a breath. Perhaps years of dance training facilitated the ease with which I found my body in a new form, or perhaps innately understanding the possibility of movement in the body meant that I have always approached yoga with curiosity. Let’s see where I am in this body today. And then let go of the body and move with the breath.

Or maybe I’m trying too hard in linking these two aspects of myself together. I have had profound experiences in both contexts, that of doing yoga and that of writing. I do not aim here to explain what those experiences were or where they came from, but rather to make the bold claim that they existed. There are things in the universe we cannot explain, and the statement of such is what makes the claim true.

What is true, however, is malleable. There are days when the body and mind flow as a unit more smoothly than on other days. There are days where we walk easily, calmly, gently though the world. There are days when we are literally and figuratively bent out of shape, and we may or may not know why, or days when someone else knows something is wrong even before we know it.

I cannot write without being vulnerable enough to look inside myself and there is always the threat, sometimes realized, of finding something I don’t like. I cannot practice yoga without the willingness to sometimes feel a little foolish, or to be humbled by what my body is and is not capable of. There’s an element of letting go of control in both contexts and a requirement for honesty, authenticity, sincerity that strips away whatever masks I happen to be wearing. It’s a question of how much I am willing to give in that moment, and the question is answered moment after moment.

Maybe yoga is the physical manifestation of what I look for in writing, or maybe writing is the intellectual element of synchronizing the breath and the body. That they come together in this way is what drives the continued exploration. The satisfaction, the sensation of which lives somewhere beneath the sternum and is captured by clauses and phrases, is in the journey itself.

As for the universe, the magnificence of which is unexplained as far as I am concerned, there is no answer within reach because there is no answer to find.