Hello there, it’s been a while! I’ve been pretty quiet here on my blog for recent months and the reason for that is explained by the title of this blog post. Early last year my life changed in the most extreme, soul-shifting way possible. I became a mother.

The past year has been wonderful, exhausting, surprising, extraordinary, challenging – and everything in between. I’ve watched our son grow from an immobile little blob to a small human being who laughs and eats and crawls and tries to speak. Every day I am amazed by him: by something new he does, some new sound or expression; by his very existence that has become the centre point of our lives; by the reminder that I created and grew him.

Before I became a mother I often wondered why mothers seemed to only want to write about motherhood. I was like a stranger standing outside of a window, peering in. I read so much and vaguely emphasised with mothers in the fiction I read, but I didn’t really understand. Now I read about mothers and sons and I cry. Now I wonder how you can want to write about anything else.

So, on that note, I have started my own writing Instagram account in order to have a space to share my thoughts and writing. As I work in content and marketing for my day job and have always enjoyed the social media side of things, I don’t know why I didn’t consider creating a dedicated writing Instagram account before! I had seen other writers on Instagram but never thought that it was something I could do.

Inevitably my Instagram has become something of a motherhood-themed writing account at the moment, and I have so enjoyed publishing some new poems on there – many of which were written during and inspired by a weekly motherhood writing group I’ve been attending (more on that in a future separate blog post!). Please do take a peek at my poetry on my Instagram account, but I’m also going to be publishing the poems individually here on my blog. It’s been very cathartic to process the past year and the myriad of emotions motherhood brings. I’ve really loved writing poetry again, and have also loved connecting with other women/mother writers on Instagram.

So, watch this space for more blog posts and more poems. As my son heads to nursery and I start to reclaim some small sliver of myself back again (something I thought would be impossible for a long time!), I’m hoping to share more on here.

I’ll leave you with the opening line from the wonderful Liz Berry’s poem The Republic of Motherhood.

“I crossed the border into the Republic of Motherhood / and found it a queendom, a wild queendom.”