exciting news

I am thrilled to share some exciting news with you. I have had the great honour of being asked to join my dear friend in launching a new online community space for families interested in living more naturally.

Rebecca and me at the Staverton Fayre last summer.

Rebecca Watkins, who I have had the pleasure of knowing for the best part of 20 years, is the person who first introduced me to the ideas of living more simply, of taking greater care over the food I eat, and of parenting by instinct. We met when our eldest children were newborn babies (those 'babies' are now approaching adulthood!) and we now have seven children between us. Through our families' emigrations - us to America and them to France - and subsequent returns to England, our friendship has remained strong, and we have continued throughout the years to share a yearning for a simple, natural lifestyle.

A few months ago, Rebecca and her husband John realised that whilst there are plenty of parenting websites and communities on the net, there was a definite lack of social networking geared towards families choosing to live gently and parent gently. A seed was germinating.

John, me and Rebecca at their wedding in 2001.

Natural Mothers Network aims to provide a place where families can come together and share the parenting journey. You can start a blog (perhaps you already blog but would like a space where you can concentrate on another aspect of your family life - gardening, health or education for instance), there's a chat cafe, a webzine and the facility to network with like-minded families. For a lot of us, it's easy to feel a little isolated sometimes; I have friends who are the only person they know of in their local area using cloth nappies, for instance. The internet has provided the opportunity to connect with like-minded friends wherever we are in the world. We are hoping to create a space where you'll find lively debate and discussion about the topics that are important to families, whilst still being a supportive, friendly environment.

Becoming a member of Natural Mothers Network is free, quick and easy. We also have a Facebook page and a Twitter account (naturalmothers) - we'd love it if you joined us over there (and bear with me while I get used to tweeting!).


We have some big plans in the coming months...sponsored giveaways, guest writers, book reviews and more. Come check us out!

on a serious note: child marriage

Perhaps not a subject I would normally discuss in this space. But, having learned a little about it, I cannot not talk about it.

I know a woman who has spent many years of her life documenting child marriage, a practice which takes place in at least 50 countries around the world. Photojournalist Stephanie Sinclair, whose work is regularly published in National Geographic, Newsweek and Marie Claire, has now distilled eight years of her work into a film that - beautifully, hauntingly, frighteningly, shockingly - reveals the human face of this tradition.

I encourage you to watch the film (scroll down to find it at the end of this post). The images and words of young girls who have been given, traded and sold into marriage do not make for easy viewing. As a mother of three little girls myself, I was deeply moved.

As a result of her work on this issue (which she writes about here and discusses on the PBS Newshour here), Stephanie and her friend Susanne Kreig set up The Elsa, Sifirash & Friends Soap Cooperative.  This small-scale vocational training program is empowering young women to build safer, more stable lives for themselves and their children. If you feel moved to help, there is a donation facility via Paypal or Amazon Payments. You may also wish to share a link to Stephanie's film about child brides.

Theirs is a story that deserves to be heard.

tea for the fairies

You know when you suddenly look up from whatever it is you're doing and realise that all is quiet? And you get that niggle of dread.... Why has it all gone quiet? What are they doing? How much mess will I have to clean up?

Today contained one of those oh no! moments. I suddenly realised I hadn't heard a peep from the three little darlings for a long time. I went to investigate.

I did indeed find some mess and a little mischief. But to be fair, the 'mess' consisted of bits of foliage littered across our front path (which is in dire need of a good weeding anyway), and the 'mischief' consisted of a few squashed tomatoes, a well-pruned herb bed and some flower stalks stripped of their blossoms.

Imogen looked up from her various cauldrons just long enough to explain that she was creating a 'midnight feast tea party' for the fairies. Her 'ingredients' were mint, sage, wildflower petals, tomato seeds and dishsoap bubbles. She spent the best part of two hours collecting, brewing, stirring, pouring and 'tasting'. And though I suffered a pang of frustration at the loss of some of our last ripening tomatoes, the deforestation of my wildflower border and the slain herbs, I delighted in Imogen's dedication, innovation and concentration.

then and now

How things change. And how they stay the same. I was looking at some old photos the other day, and it struck me how rhythmical life is. And how surprising it is sometimes.

I came across this picture of my mother holding me, as an infant, in her lap. I had to look twice before it registered that it was not a picture of me holding one of my babies. Because I remembered an image of myself with one of the girls that had a comforting, if unexpected, similarity. I am amazed that my mother and I stare into the camera's lens with the same serene intensity, and that both dark-eyed babies mouth their hands with the same well-fed contentment.

1974

2008

My husband and I celebrated our wedding anniversary this month. After the ceremony eight years ago, our guests enjoyed strawberries and cream whilst toasting us with raspberry bellinis. How fitting that our children scoffed all the strawberries this year before we even had a chance to pop the champagne!

August 2, 2002

August 2, 2010

And our beloved birthpool - which soothed me during Imogen's labour and welcomed Esme into the world, which has spent time in the homes of at least eight other women as they welcomed their own babies into the world - was the scene of much splishing and sploshing during our celebration of my birth this month. How much joy this piece of plastic has brought into our lives!

2008

2010

little hands knead to keep busy...

I was reminded how much fun it is to make homemade playdough by this lovely lady's post (which included the recipe) the other day, so the girls and I got to it! Luckily, it's one of those recipes for which you are bound to have all the ingredients on hand.

clean thoughts

The girls go back to kindergarten and nursery tomorrow, and I go back to work, so it feels like the holidays are well and truly over. And there's nothing to bring you down with a  mid-winter bump like a spot of cleaning. Yesterday was the turn of my own home - I took down the Christmas tree, tidied shelves and cleaned out the fridge. Today I turned my attentions to Imogen's nursery classroom.


As part of our non-financial commitment to the girls' education, we (along with each family in the class) take a turn cleaning our children's classrooms. Imogen's class is very small - only eight children - so this was the second time this term I had responsibility for cleaning it. And being the holiday clean, I had to go in twice - once at the beginning of the Christmas break and again at the end to freshen up. Not really how I would choose to begin and end my holidays, but that's just the way this cookie crumbled.

Once upon a time, I had a little love affair going on with my vacuum and duster. My mother was the daughter of a naval officer and the product of convent school, so you can be sure cleanliness was next to godliness when I was growing up. In spite of my youthful abhorrence of doing chores, I eventually became enamoured of a spotless home, and when I became the mistress of my own home I took my cleaning duties very seriously. I am a little embarrassed when I recall a time, when our first daughter was a newborn, that I shouted at my husband and forbade him from ever hanging the nappies on the airer again. He had hung them all wrong, you see, and not only would it take them longer to dry like that, but they also looked awful! Eva had been born by emergency c-section, and for the first time during our marriage, I was in no state to run the house. I mark that experience as the beginning of the end for my standards.

With each new baby, I have had to learn to let go a little more. Once, laundry came straight off the line or out of the dryer to be ironed and folded immediately and put away. Once, the kitchen floor got swept twice a day - whether it needed it or not. Once, the kettle and toaster were rubbed  to a shine every week. Now, three babies in three and a half years later, I consider it an accomplishment if we don't wear all the clothes in the washing basket before I get around to folding them! Nowadays I'm just happy if the food the baby is eating off the floor is from today rather than yesterday. (Okay, that's a slight exaggeration, but you get what I'm saying.)


But oddly, when I step into my daughters' classrooms to begin the weekly clean, something comes over me. I am filled with a calmness and begin to approach each task with love and care. The Steiner classroom is well known for invoking a sense of reverence in every person who steps over the threshold. It's a gentle space. One instinctively lowers the volume of his or her voice, and slows his or her movements to a gentler pace. I know that when my girls are in these rooms with their teachers and the other little children, they are embraced in a loving, homelike environment. And I feel inspired to contribute to the love held within the walls of these rooms by caring for the room and its objects.


Today, as I moved round that room polishing, brushing, wiping and sweeping, I thought of this article about cleaning I read recently. Linda Thomas writes, "...if you are not able to do what you love, you should try to love what you do." In my daily life, I often choose to forgo some of the more menial tasks in my home in order to spend more time doing things that I love - playing with the children, catching up with old friends on Facebook or knitting, for instance - but housework remains an inescapable necessity in any home. So tonight, as I tidied downstairs after the kids were asleep, I vowed to bestow the same love and care on these chores in my own home that I had in the classroom earlier today. Because surely if I approach my daily chores with a happy heart, the walls and the objects within will reflect love and warmth back onto my family.

little hands at work

Today was a proud day for a mama. My eldest daughter, after watching me applique letters onto fabric for Daddy's surprise birthday bunting, asked me when she would be able to sew. I have been looking forward to sitting her down in front of the machine for some time now, but, mindful of the Waldorf philosophy of waiting until a child is developmentally ready (rather than until the adult in charge is ready), I haven't mentioned it even once. I hesitated for a moment - was my just-barely-five-year-old really ready to put the pedal to the metal? Wouldn't her tiny fingers be lambs to the needle's slaughter? I bit my lip and finished zig-zagging round the letter 'b'. Then I turned to my baby girl and asked, 'Well, how would you like to sew today?'


Her sweet face puffed up with excitement. She actually seemed to grow a little before my eyes. I finished up with the applique, then moved so she could take my place in front of the machine. We both laughed - her leg was too short to reach the pedal! So I moved it up to the footrest of her chair, then showed her how to lift and lower the presser foot, guide the fabric and which button to press to sew backwards. I surreptitiously moved the speed control to the slowest setting. She watched, listened carefully, and silently nodded her head.

My very grown up five-year-old then bit her own lip, lowered the presser foot and very gently eased her foot down on the pedal. As the needle started eating its way through our little bunting flags, I realised my eldest daughter had just sailed over a threshhold from infancy towards girlhood. I thought back to my earliest memory of sewing with my mother, some 28 years ago. I remembered the swell of pride I had felt whilst sewing two pieces of red felt together in the shape of a Christmas stocking for her. And I looked forward to cultivating a lifelong love of making for my own daughter.