Posts

International Women's Day

I find it hard. 👩🏽 I am a white, able-bodied, heterosexual, university-educated, mother of three healthy children with an employed supportive partner, also supported by the state in the country I migrated to. 🍀 I have so many layers of privilege, and even I find it hard. 👨🏽 I find it hard to be a woman in a world where patriarchal societies are the norm. 🦋 I find it hard to maintain motivation for the values-driven work I am involved in with  Madame Papillon , supporting women after burnout (caused in part by the hustle culture of those patriarchal societies) when it is still voluntary work (although that third subsidy request hasn't been rejected yet...) and the household bills seem to multiply. 🚸 I find it hard to bring up my children to know their own minds, think critically when presented with information and recognise their needs while acting with kindness and integrity when they are exposed to an unregulated and unsafe online world, and a real world where inspiring sto

Movement + Air + Home = Life

There's something about cycling down a bike lane with a 5 year old that makes you glad to be alive. Until she starts whining about her legs hurting, or says 'I know!' with such disdain when you warn her of an upcoming crossing, or nearly gets crushed by a car at a tricky junction. Then it's more jarring. I was happy about it today though - we went to school together on our bikes; her little legs whizzing round, the sun on our backs and the wind in our hair. After a couple of hours' work with a second child in the background, home because of a teacher training day, I decided to make the most of the good weather and we got on our bikes to go to the market. Not the Wednesday around the corner one, because it was Tuesday. The Tuesday one is a bit of a longer ride, but not far enough to get too much moaning out of the ten year old. We wheeled our bikes through the market, picking up some lobelia for the front door flower box; soap that had been forgotten during Marek'

Weekends as parents

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Marek and I got up really early today. It was silly, before 7am, but it was the usual Saturday buzz - a day to get the things done we need to so we can relax on Sunday. Ha. Elsie had arranged to meet a school friend to sell cookies and cupcakes in the entrance of an exclusive supermarket to make money for their scout camps. She couldn't sleep and decided to make more cake, just in case. She expertly produced half a dozen plain, half a dozen chocolate and half a dozen choc chip cupcakes before leaving us the kitchen to tidy and the pans to clean, but she's only 12 so we let her off... Louise had Polish school in the morning so we left Molly home with the rabbits while we drove Elsie to meet her schoolfriend. Louise and I dropped her off, spoke to the friend's mum and stayed long enough for Louise to be their first client. She took a chocolate chip cookie for Polish school and a coconut thing I knew she wouldn't eat but paid them each a fiver to get them off to a good sta

2022 the year of the butterfly

We called our burnout project Madame Papillon because of the transformational potential of burnout. The idea that when you are stuck in your crysalis in your burned out state, you cannot imagine the beauty of being a butterfly because you have always been a caterpillar but that actually having that time away from everything else, and turning inwards allows wonderful things to happen and only when you're ready can you reach your full potential. That thing of butterflies needing to break out of the cocoon to have the strength in their wings that they need to fly can be echoed in the personal development process that is necessary. I used to love singing. All my life I've been in bands and choirs and it was only in recent years that I stopped. Thanks to a contact made through Madame Papillon, I discovered a local community of musicians and other performers and started singing in a choir again. The choir led to a cabaret, which as well as featuring my choir and allowing me to rememb

The Day I lost my Earring

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  Marek walks through the door and asks if I was ready. "Are we running?" I ask, taking a breathe, thinking about whether I wanted to run or not. "What about the bikes?" he suggests "We can test out that puncture I repaired." A much better idea! The sun was shining, the lunch break had only just started, we could head to the fields just beyond the cemetery and get a good hour's exercise in. *** As we cycled out of the trees into the fields, I took it all in and felt my body relax and smile. It's just so astounding, ten minutes from home in what feels like the middle of a capital city, and we're surrounded by corn.  "It's no good" I said. "I have to take a photo." I tend to take a picture at every available opportunity and in my never-ending attempts to be more present and appreciate the moment I've been trying to limit the number of photos I take. Not at all successfully. Just after I put my phone back, a wasp buzzed

Attack in broad daylight

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We were standing in the kitchen chatting, when a screech like I'd never heard before came in through the open window.  'What's that?' I wondered out loud, a sinking feeling reaching me before the realisation hit me just as Olha named it 'the rabbits?' The shrieking continued as I ran down the stairs and out into the garden, my feet moving beneath me without me telling them what to do.  As I arrived at the rabbit enclosure I looked over to see a red fox, inside the rabbit house. A voice I didn't recognise left my throat and shouted 'Oh My God!' The fox, which had had its jaws around Mocha's neck, let him go, and Mocha shot up the stairs into the upstairs, joining his brother Benek in the relative safety of the first floor. I reached in and shut the door at the top of ladder, keeping them inside before turning my attention to their attacker. The fox, disoriented, wasn't finding the door to get out so I stepped backwards and closed my mouth, whi
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'What's that in the birdhouse hole?' I looked up from the dishwasher. 'Er, looks like a bird to me.' 'Yes,' Marek said, 'But the parents have both come out. Is that one of the babies?' We looked out of the kitchen window at the birdhouse on the treehouse opposite.  The head looked out further from the hole, then suddenly in a flutter of wings, it emerged and landed on one of the branches of the treehouse tree. Louise gasped. 'It came out!' The parent birds both appeared suddenly, landing close to their fledgling and tweeting their hearts out. Even before my gaze had shifted back to the birdhouse, another baby bird appeared, zigzagging across the garden and coming to rest in the sour cherry tree. The parent birds were still perched on branches of the treehouse tree. Watching. One flew closer to the second baby. Right away a third appeared. No wonder those parent birds have been flying backwards and forwards non stop for weeks now. Three mouths