Spring is here Here in London, spring is finally in the air. The daffodils are in full bloom. In some ways it feels like I am coming out of hibernation. The youngest member of our brood is now three months old, and during the dark and dreary winter months we’ve been cocooned inside with the… Read More Countdown to Big News
Happy new year, readers. I hope the coming year finds you healthy and hopeful, that you uncover pockets of laughter, reach into your potential and fill the spaces of emptiness that sometimes haunt us all. I’m late with my well wishes, I know. I have an excuse though. Littlest Stelter was born a month ago,… Read More On Beauty, Cynicism and Action
My stomach swells from beneath the swirl of bathwater I sink until every inch of me is pressed to the white enamel internalising hearing the drum of my heartbeat eyelids closed, imagining multiplying cells and spirit the newly forming life inside the walls of my red womb I already love you more than myself, this… Read More Tiny You
Yesterday was Mother’s Day for many people. While in the UK it is celebrated in March, such is the reach of Facebook, that I twitched at the thought my mum might think I had forgotten to make a fuss of her. I’m ambivalent about commercial days like Mother’s Day, Father’s Day and Valentine’s Day. Even… Read More Rejecting Perfection: On the Ideal of Motherhood
I don’t often link to blog posts on this website. Usually, Twitter, Facebook and Google + are the places for me to recommend other writers and artists. This morning though the children were woken early by my husband leaving for a meeting. I sent them back to bed for a while, but instead of burrowing under… Read More An Uninterrupted Conversation
I dreamt of you when I was a girl a hazy promise, alien and enchanting The vision bore fruit decades later, a happy union of God, luck and human biology When the time came you slithered out covered in vernix, beautiful from the moment I saw you, a part of myself I did not recognise:… Read More The Gift
My love for you is burned onto the pages of my journal It pools in the grooves where my pen has pressed The past in a capsule Let me savour the man I knew – the one hidden by cares I’ll hold the memory of us on my tongue and let it mellow there In… Read More Loving You
Christmas is over five weeks away and I just bought myself a present. I grew up in the UK and my Indian parents would bring a plastic Christmas tree down from the loft. It was small. Fast forward thirty-three years and I am married to a German. Christmas is celebrated on 24 December with a… Read More Dear Santa: the Best Kind of Present
Do you remember how it was when you were a teenager and you were unsure of who you were? Social situations were a clumsy affair whether at home or further afield. You wanted to be understood, but communication was not always your forte. You preferred to hide away in your room with your nose buried… Read More On Belonging and Individuality
Taylor Eaton of Little Write Lies has just nominated me for the WordPress Family Award, which is given to those who make other WordPress bloggers feel like part of the family. What a lovely way to start the new year! For those of you who haven’t checked out Taylor’s blog yet, please do. I’m in complete awe of… Read More WordPress Family Award
This post was inspired by @JEdwardPaul, who wrote a brilliant piece recently that touched me about writing frustrations. I’m not feeling my usual self at the moment. That’s probably why I’ve been a little quieter on social media than usual. My sense of equilibrium is off kilter, and the standard quick fixes to make myself… Read More The Ebb and Flow of Words: Interruptions, Muses and Emotional Well-Being
This post was inspired by @JEdwardPaul, who posted a link to a spoken word piece by Mark Grist called ‘Girls Who Read’. My man and his reading habits The last time my husband read a book we were on honeymoon. That was five years ago. In the intervening years the most I’ve seen him read… Read More A Man Who Reads Fiction
I won my first ever blogging award, the Sunshine Award :-). It’s given to bloggers who ‘positively and creatively inspire others in the blogosphere.’ Did I just hear you say ‘speech!’? Well, ok then. Thanks first to @West1Jess for nominating and inspiring me. Thanks also to my husband, my mum, my wonderfully efficient and strokeable… Read More Sunshine Award
Memory is, by its very nature, flawed. We filter our past through the prism of our own feelings and experiences, making our memories unreliable. For years I thought that my memory was more unreliable than other people’s. As a creative type, I’m more prone to reimaginings than the average person, but I’ve realised there is… Read More Memory and Chickens
Have you ever been tempted to publish your work anonymously or take a pseudonym? If yes, you’d be following in the footsteps of some of the literary greats, such as the Brontë sisters (Ellis, Acton, and Currer Bell), Cecil Day-Lewis (Nicholas Blake), Jane Austen (A Lady) and Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll), who all decided for… Read More The Benefits of Publishing Anonymously or Taking a Pen Name
It’s happened time and again over the years, others intruding on my boundaries. It happens repeatedly, determinedly, in a steady drip-drip that eventually causes me to let down my defences. A slow, stealthy creeping into my personal space, a disruption of carefully planned routines. It is the neighbour who comes by for a friendly cuppa… Read More Protecting our Space as Writers
Do you ever feel that your life is not your own? Sometimes life throws a curve ball, which disrupts our plans and we have no choice but to deal with the fallout. However, just as outside forces can limit our freedom, our own attitudes and behaviours can keep us imprisoned. There is one trait that… Read More The Danger of Pleasing Others
Tonight Hana, I am lying here in bed at a childishly early hour writing directly to you because I can find no other way to process what happened. Soothing words are little comfort, television is hollow and sleep is not possible, although I have tried. As ever, the solution is to write, to pour all… Read More For My Daughter
Like many other families, mine has been touched by depression and eating disorders. Here are two of the most powerful non-medical descriptions of depression and anorexia I have ever read: ‘Depression is about anger, it is about anxiety, it is about character and heredity. […] It is the illness of identity, it is the illness… Read More The Power of Words
It is birthday season in the Stelter household. The past few weeks have been a whirlwind of familial activity, so much so that I have had barely a chance to put pen to paper. With a four year old and a ten month old, even at relatively quiet times it is difficult to create the… Read More Parenthood, Creativity and Time