You can’t yet see the light. The outline of a door somewhere in the distance. A glimmer of hope that there is, in fact, an end to this passage. But you have no choice but to keep walking, with only the dull ache and quiet pull of blindly trusting that there is something waiting for you at the other side. Something good. Something better.

And as you walk, alone, down this passage, you are greeted by paintings hanging from the walls. Portraits that showcase your past lives in magnificent, bold hues. A nostalgic spread of tiny masterpieces that haunt you, pulling you backwards into your own mind.

You romanticise the old ways, forgetting, momentarily, the cruelty of remembering that they no longer exist in your present.

You must keep walking.

You must not get too drawn into artwork that is only a subjective rendering of a life that no longer exists.

Because nostalgia is a strange thing. It has a way of cropping out the ugly parts. It softens the edges of heartbreak, dulls the sharpness of disappointment, and bathes ordinary moments in a golden light they perhaps never possessed while you were living them.

You may stand before these paintings and remember yourself differently. You pedestal the artist and the muses that inspired your creations, forgetting that you were both.

And every now and then, you see the faint outline of the girl you were before you knew what loss felt like.

There is the version of you who loved someone so completely, so all-consumingly, that you thought the feeling itself might last forever.

There is the life you once thought you would have. The friendships you thought were permanent. The places you thought you would always return to. The person you thought you would become.

And perhaps the most painful part of transformation is understanding that some of these lives were not bad lives. They were beautiful ones. They were simply lives that had reached their endings.

The artist had to put her brushes down at some point and move on.

You cannot spend forever standing in the corridor, pressing your palms against the frames, wishing yourself back into the paintings, into colours and hues that no longer work within your palette.

So you walk.

Even when you don’t know where you are going.

Even when every instinct tells you to turn around and linger, glassy-eyed, before the paintings that once made up your entire world.

Even when the future feels less tangible than the past.

You walk.

And perhaps that is what transformation really is: not becoming someone entirely new, but having the courage to keep moving when the person you once were is still calling your name from behind you.

One day, you will reach the door.

And when you turn the handle, you may realise that the light you were waiting for was never something waiting to find you.

It was something you were walking towards all along.

Hey — I’m Lila I’m new to Substack, so if you find yourself crabwalking through life too, I’d love for you to stick around. 🦀

Subscribe now

Today I found myself again,
If only for a little while.

She was dancing,
childlike playing in the sea.
Swept away in soft currents
and sand clouds, knee-deep.

Thoughts i’d buried under-tide,
were washed away and reconciled.
And for a moment,
everything that mattered or had mattered,
seemed rather insignificant
when dissolving into sand and salt.

And for a few blissful moments,
There was happiness.
There was peace.

When staring out at endless horizons,
can we imagine what infinity feels like?

Reckless words thrown
into orbit,
hushed by the universe;
her slow and steady summit.

My inner child is a wildflower,
salt-tolerant and tactile,

bending into forms unknown.
We’re treading water.
I’m lived in, I’m outgrown.

Learning to find solace
in the wild of changing things.

Like crabs tracing steady lines,
they keep their quiet course
and I find mine.

Subscribe now

Just kidding. I know you’re a soft bunch.

I thought I’d take this exciting opportunity to offer a little explanation. Some context. Some clarity, if you will. And maybe introduce you to a phrase you haven’t come across before…

Or maybe you have. I just prefer to believe I coined it. I most definitely didn’t! But let’s keep that vague for the sake of my ego.

Maybe that’s why I overthought it so much.

Maybe that’s why I’m overthinking it now.

But I digress.

When I first decided to start writing, I played around with names for a while. After all, isn’t that one of the most important things to get right? The name of the space you’ll be pouring yourself into.

Deep down, I knew what it should be all along. Still, I entertained a few others, just to be sure. To be absolutely certain of what I was signing myself up for. Quite literally, with my name, my email address, my profile picture…

and my mind.

I think a part of me worried it wasn’t… chic enough for Substack. After all, the gorgeous girlies were writing about art, literature, fashion - wrapped in names that felt just as grand as the worlds they were building.

And mine?

Well. It doesn’t exactly scream chic.

It gives… crabs.

A decapod crustacean. An invertebrate with a hard external shell that, apparently, moves sideways. Or so Wikipedia says.

I’m a Cancer sun and I embody her fully. That soft, mellow water sign where emotions run deep; endless-flowing rivers with no clear beginning or end. Where words come to rest in brittle bones and make a home there. We fumble, we ponder, we replay conversations over and over, searching for the nuances no one else seems to notice. Those small shifts in tone, the almost-invisible changes.

We love fiercely. We rage quietly. But it’s all there. Always there. Simmering beneath the surface, waiting for that one exhale to undo everything.

And then we cry about it later. Obviously.

There’s something about us that feels like we’re always carrying the weight of the world on our shoulders, or our soft shells, I should say. We make our homes sacred, and even more sacred for those we let inside. And once you’re in, well, you’re there to stay.

Not in a menacing way.

In a deeply, unwavering, unconditional kind of love kind-of-way.

Promise.

Aside from the astrological meaning, “Crabwalking” wasn’t a new term for me. It’s something I’ve been quietly carrying for years. It’s a word etched into me, one I’ve been subtly circling, returning to, trying on, dressing up and dressing down.

In many ways, it feels like part of my identity now.

This bumbling creature that crawls. Slightly awkward, perhaps, but endlessly curious about life and its many winding avenues. One that moves with caution, but after a few (or should I say a thousand) conversations with itself (and with the people it loves) can become deeply steadfast in its decisions.

We just take a little longer to get there than most.

The first time I ever heard the phrase was actually in a song.

Crabwalking Home in the Rain by Jason Collett. It was produced by Andy Shauf, which I didn’t realise at the time, but in hindsight, it makes perfect sense why I fell in love with it so deeply.

I remember listening to it a few years ago, walking back (quite literally in the pouring rain) from my “on-the-side” barista job at uni. There was something about that time in my life… everything felt so open, and yet so hidden all at once. Like there were so many doors to be unlocked and yet, I was terrified of being the one to hold the keys.

The melody carries this quiet melancholy to it. Soft, unassuming, but heavy in all the right places. The kind that makes you feel like you’re in on something only you can hear.

It’s truly a beautiful song, and I implore you all to give it a listen.

I remember thinking, what a peculiar name for a song.

But as I walked, on that cold November evening, back to my shabby little uni house (shared with six wonderful women), it began to make sense.

It was the kind of house where mould crept into the infrastructure and landlords remained obvlious. Which looking back, probably made us all slightly delirious by final year.

But I loved that house. Those mould-infested walls where we circled the same conversations, the same worries, the same fears, the same broken relationships - again and again, taking turns holding each other through it all.

Watching each other leap, watching each other fall. Misstep, and sometimes miss a turn. But it was all just part of the process. A wonderful, beautiful, terrifying process. And somewhere in that time, I remember thinking: yes… crabwalking makes total sense.

Because that’s what we’re all doing, really.

None of us are moving through life in one straight, parallel line. We’re crawling, meandering, taking shortcuts, detours, winding routes… each path slightly different from the next.

We’re all just sidestepping our way forward. Crabwalking toward whatever comes next, a little unsure of how we’ll get there. Misguided, maybe. But still trusting, deeply, in our instincts to keep us safe. To keep us steady.

I guess at the time, it felt like we were stuck. Like we were going over the same ground, scuffing the soles of our feet and blistering our heels without really getting anywhere.

But looking back now, I can see we were all building something, slowly. Imperfectly. Learning how to hold each other. Learning how to hold ourselves. That even in the repetition of months, days and calendar years, there was always movement and progression.

That’s exactly why I chose the name Crabwalking for my publication.

Because beneath the airs and graces of a society that worships “productivity” and gleam-glosses over the very real, often difficult challenges of life, there’s something else entirely. A forbidden truth. One that doesn’t make the algorithms and aspiration pieces, but is real nonetheless:

We are all so unsure.

We can read all the self-help guides, follow every tutorial, 10-step our way into the next sparkling version of ourselves… and still feel completely in the dark.

And In a pre-programmed map where everyone is being set up to walk headstrong into each level, I might as well be malfunctioning over here in the corner. A lagging console, walking sideways through the game. Or so I’m made to feel.

But that’s not true either. We’re all searching. Endlessly looking to be guided, without ever taking a minute pause and realise that we’re already getting there. It just doesn’t feel like we are. And that’s actually perfectly normal.

Let me say it again for those in the back: it’s fucking normal.

We’re not designed to run headfirst into some imagined finish line. We’re not meant to have it all figured out. We’re meant to get things wrong. To meander. To lose our way. To sidestep.

To Crabwalk.

When I started Substack, I wanted this space to be something real. So, against all my better judgement, I chose not to be chic. Instead,

I went crabby.

So, I hope I’ve offered a little clarity on my publication name. But even if I haven’t, and you’re all still completely bewildered, that’s fine too.

I like to think it means I’m doing something right.

See you soon, slowly.

Lila X

Subscribe now

I’m not much for sign-offs, but thanks for crabwalking with me. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this topic - feel free to share it in the comments below :)

Leave a comment

So here it goes:

Every fortnight, I’ll share a poem, a reflection, a tender observation…

They’re about being seen, and being used to being seen,
and everything that grows quietly underneath.

This is the first.

Subscribe now

If I were a forest,
I’m sure you would take
the path most walked down.

Well-trodden, worn smooth
by all the others before you.

I spend years carving it out,
this pathway.
For people like you
to visit, to wander for a while,
and admire the view.

And though I try,
in the name of preservation,
deforestation—
to keep everything looking pretty,
pruned
and stood up.

Every now and then,
someone will stop.
Point to a fallen branch

and think themselves lucky
they weren’t around
to watch it fall.

Hey, i’m Lila and i’m new to Substack. If you find yourself crabwalking through life too, I’d love for you to stick around. 🦀

Subscribe now

A: St Pancras Station at King’s Cross, London.

B: the place I call home. A tiny town somewhere in the Midlands, with no defining traits, characteristics, or honourable mentions to paint you a broader picture of where I grew up.

As I sit uncomfortably, my mellowed thoughts drifting in and out of focus along this stretch of limbotic space - the 1 hour and 7 minutes between A and B - I find myself, yet again, thinking:

Why am I always waiting?

Waiting to arrive. Waiting to depart. Waiting for the perfect opportunity to quit the job that drains the life out of me. Waiting for my boyfriend (of two years) to text me back from Sydney - the place he so desperately wanted to travel to for four whole months because he couldn’t “wait” another moment to leave.

Waiting for the phone to ring. For my best friend to initiate the plans that will fill my summer. For some cool girl online to set the scene of this year’s character arc. Waiting for my mother to gently nudge me out of the family home, because 25 feels like an age where one should probably start thinking about these things. Waiting on my boss to give me a pay rise (I’ve waited a year already) and there’s still no sign of change. Waiting for my friend to break up with her toxic boyfriend so we can finally take that trip to Italy, to South America, to anywhere…

Maybe in a year. Maybe in a few.

It doesn’t matter, for I’ll be waiting patiently for you. I’m certain of it.

Devoted. On tenterhooks. Dancing on the edge of almost choosing, but shrouded in the quiet confidence of a girl who needs a steadier hand. A more authoritative voice to guide the path

Is that cowardly? Perhaps. Maybe I’m just not brave enough. Maybe I’m scared of what would happen if I ever just went fuck it, I’m going to do this.

For once, I’ll stop waiting. Start moving.

But I won’t. Because, oh, how I’ve grown comfortable in my soft, pink shell. The self-made cave I’ve spent years meticulously carving out to avoid such painstaking realisations. The cave I’ve buried myself in, where the water rises gently to meet me at the edges. Always dipping my toes in. Always waiting for that one tidal wave that might finally be big enough to sweep me out to sea.

And in another life, If I were braver, maybe I’d build a boat. Maybe instead of spending all that time keeping myself “safe”, I’d have built something useful. Something practical. Something engineered for moments like these.

But I didn’t.

So I wait.

And the tide keeps rising. My shell always thickening - stubborn, stiff, claws etched into the sand - all so I can linger on this wretched beach a little while longer.

I waited for a year to start this Substack. Not because I didn’t have the words to say, but because I was afraid of what would tumble out when I did. Words don’t wait. They spill out incessantly, urgently and without haste.

Which makes me think a small part of my consciousness is done with all this waiting. I feel it kicking at my ribs. Spurring me on. Begging me to just fucking move.

And it’s not like I’m brain-dead. My imagination isn’t so fickle that I can’t see the possibilities, the lives, the journeys laid out in front of me. I have dreams. I have ideas. Places, things, and people I ache to see.

I’ve always wanted to spend a month at a writers’ retreat in the South of France. To wander through the Uffizi Gallery in Florence and stand in front of The Birth of Venus until my vision blurs and the room falls away.

I’d love to spend a week hiking the Dolomites - maybe even the Pyrenees too.

I want a job in sustainability. One that lets me spend my days outdoors, knee-deep in a bog, counting pregnant newts. I dream of living by the coast someday, in a small cottage with a washing line framing the garden just so, white linens floating softly in the summer breeze. A stack of antique books resting on the outdoor table, whole hours waiting to be poured quietly into their pages.

What I’m saying is: I don’t lack vision.

I don’t even lack drive. I’ve always done what needed to be done to reach the next thing.

My one fatal flaw?

I contort. I concede. I position myself around the convenience of other people.

And the worst part? None of them have even asked me to this.

It’s in my nature, this almost “biochemical instinct” to follow the lead of the people In my inner circle. I do it with friends. With my boyfriend. With family. With colleagues. I shave the corners off myself just to slot neatly into their version of events. I mould myself to their visions and dreams so completely that I’m always postponing my own.

Or worse, they blur. Rescheduled in the calendar of my life like GP appointments. Deferred. Quietly deprioritised until a more convenient moment that may never arrive.

This isn’t a pity party. I’m not asking you to indulge my nonsense, or tell me how unfortunate I am when so much of this sits squarely within my own control. But I am quietly recognising it. Recognising that I don’t want to wait anymore.

Sometimes it pays off, sometimes it doesn’t. Once, I waited a month for a man to live out his dream of backpacking through Italy, clinging to the promises he made about who we’d be when he came home.

He broke up with me the day he got back.

I spent a month suspended in anxiety and dread, calling it patience. Calling it love. Who was to blame for that?

Myself.

I’m not saying we should never wait. It would be naïve, even selfish, to think humans can glide through life without ever pausing for others. Perhaps there will be a time your partners needs to work overseas. Or a friend is moving through a painful transition, unable to show up as their usual committed selves. There are seasons when waiting is necessary. When patience becomes part of growth and, in turn, part of building meaningful relationships.

I guess what i’m really saying is this: not all waiting is noble.

For me, fear is the common thread. Those irrational, spiralling thoughts about who I’d be and what I’d lose if I chose differently. About setting my own goalposts so far into the future they became unreachable, all because I didn’t fully trust my own instincts.

And honestly? That resentment swells and burns.

So, for the girl who waits too long, fears too much, and forgets she’s allowed to move first:

Who are you if you’re not waiting? And perhaps more importantly, who are you “becoming” while you still do?

Perhaps it’s time to shed some weight. To loosen the shell. To test the water alone, for a little while, and dive in…

Maybe then, I’ll stop waiting.

I’m not much for sign-offs, but thanks for crabwalking with me. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this topic - feel free to share it in the comments below :) See you soon… slowly.

Leave a comment

Hey, i’m Lila and i’m new to Substack. If you find yourself crabwalking through life too, I’d love for you to stick around. 🦀

Subscribe now

As the title might suggest, I know everything and nothing about love. Which doesn’t exactly lend itself to a well-structured article.

But alas, we keep sending our thoughts into the Substack universe. Hoping one wayward soul drifts close enough to wander with me through the “ignorance section” of the library.

Anyway, I’ve managed your expectations so do with that what you will.

As I get closer to 25 this year (and please don’t remind me about it), I’ve been reflecting on a few life lessons learned, and in turn, a few i’ve had to unlearn. And this chapter? it’s all about love.

Honestly, I’m completely fascinated by it all. It’s the classic cliché: I’m in love with the idea of love. Ever since I was a kid, I can remember the first time I watched Pride & Prejudice with my mum on the living room television. The Keira Knightley and Matthew Macfadyen version, if anyone was wondering. (Gen Z credentials secured).

No, I’m not taking questions about “the superior adaptation.”

Yes, I’m aware there’s a book.

No, I still haven’t read it.

Anyway, let’s just say those 2 hours and 8 minutes of longing stares and yearning men with sideburns were more than enough to get me hooked. And don’t even get me started on that scene where he brushes her hand. Gets me every goddamn time.

I loveee love. I’m completely infatuated with it. A loveaholic, if you will.

So much so, I’ve dedicated a whole Substack article just talking about it. You lucky things.

I’ve only ever “truly” loved a few people in my lifetime. Along the way, I may have experienced versions of love. Fleeting feelings, tidal waves, brushed encounters that each felt magical in their own ways. Spicy enough to have made the diary entries, yet timid enough to leave me mostly unscathed.

And if, like myself, you’ve been lucky enough to experience love in its many forms (the beautiful, the exhilarating, the terrifying, the devastating) then you probably know how it feels to live in the aftermath, too.

I don’t think anything could have prepared me for the devastation of losing my first love. And nothing really prepares you for that fear that lingers afterward, quietly haunting any kind of love you try to experience again.

Heartbreak has a way of unraveling you. It’s a calamitous process of learning and unlearning everything you once believed to be true. So much so that you can spend years dissecting, pulling apart, and carefully reassembling the pieces of yourself that were tethered to that “time”. The time when you thought, I understand everything.

And now, uncomfortably, you don’t.

And as you move forward into new avenues of love - you’ll probably find that you still, to put it frankly, don’t know what the fuck is going on.

So, if “to know everything” really means “to know absolutely nothing at all” then I suppose I have a few credentials. I’ve got a mountain to move here, but for now, here are a few things I’ve pocketed along the way.

1) Their absence will be incredibly loud

Heartbreak is a monster that roars.

If I’m being honest, I wouldn’t wish it upon my greatest enemy. That feeling of waking up the morning after the biggest romantic breakup of your life - those few blurry seconds before reality crashes in and reminds you that it’s actually real, that your relationship is truly over. It is absolutely soul-destroying.

And then you have to relive that feeling in different ways, over and over again.

The kind of heartbreak that feels loud. The kind of loud that fills every empty silence with a deafening emptiness that screams in parts of your body you never knew existed.

Heartbreak is loud in the silence:

Loud in the empty space beside you on the train.

Loud in the absence of their name lighting up your phone after work on your commute home.

Loud in the routines that suddenly have nowhere to land because you can’t remember all the things you used to do before they existed in your life.

It’s a strange paradox. The world keeps moving exactly as it did before, and yet yours feels as though it has stopped. Suspended. Intensified. Almost confrontational in its stillness.

It follows you around like a black dog, trailing at your heels as you find yourself doing all manner of strange and unusual things to escape it.

You feel like you’re going crazy. You act out. You’ll suddenly become the world’s “greatest detective”. And in between it all, your mind finds no respite, replaying every single moment of the relationship like a flickering movie amphitheatre inside your head. You watch it over and over, hoping that one day the plot will finally make sense. That the characters will reveal themselves. That the closing credits will roll with that uplifting music -everything neatly tied up, resolved, and satisfying.

But that moment of relief never comes. The film just keeps playing on and the closure you are so desperately waiting to receive simply, doesn’t arrive.

And that leads onto my second point.

2) “Closure” leaves many doors open.

Oh, the dreaded C word.

It’s something we’re all taught that every relationship ending needs in order for the two lovers to part ways and move on. Well, Let me save you the trouble.

Psst. It doesn’t exist.

Closure is a lie. It’s the equivalent of a badly written ending to a romantic smut novel: everything tied together in a way that feels acceptable and necessary, but never truly satisfying. It wraps things up neatly, but it doesn’t soothe. It doesn’t fill the hollow space.

If anything, it does the opposite.

In my experience, closure rarely closes anything. It leads to more questions. More confusion. It leaves you wanting more, not less. Because unless the person you dated was a psychopath, deeply unwell, or brutally self-aware to a fault, you will probably never know the real reason for the breakup. Probably.

And perhaps you’re on the other side of it, the one who had to end things. You might say, well, I was completely honest. I told them exactly why.

I’m sorry, but that’s rarely the full truth.

No one is ever entirely honest about why they end a relationship. There may be threads of truth woven into the explanation, yes. But there are a million micro-reasons - quiet doubts, subtle shifts, unspoken comparisons - that never make it into the final speech. And the harsher truth that none of us truly want to admit, is that some of those “reasons” are not things we would survive hearing.

I don’t want to know the real reason someone ended things with me. I don’t want a detailed breakdown of my flaws?!

I don’t want someone to tell me that I’m perpetually insecure in social situations, that I only know how to cook three proper meals, or that their mother found me socially awkward and faintly off-putting when I casually quoted The Godfather at their family BBQ.

Sometimes, we need to stop being our own worst enemy. And personally? I choose peace.

Closure doesn’t arrive from the mouth of the one who is leaving you. It arrives when you let time do, what time so beautifully does. Pass on.

3) Your first love will take years to dismantle

This one might be controversial, but I’ve seen it play out time and time again, both in my own life and in my friends’ lives as “unintentional” case studies. (Thank you ladies.)

It goes a little like this: your first love lays down the emotional blueprint for every relationship that follows. And consciously or subconsciously, their muddy fingerprints surface everywhere, and my lord, are they hard to wash out.

They might not show up physically, at least not in obvious ways.

They show up in how you attach. In what you tolerate. In what you chase. In what you run from. They’re remarkably persistent (stubborn by nature and relentless in force) resurfacing when you least expect it and lingering in the footnotes like the drama queens they are.

For me, this showed up most notably in my romantic relationships that followed, but it can linger in other ways too. In your insecurities, your dreams, your emotional reflexes, and in all that creeps and crawls in the night. These monsters are vicious, and dismantling them takes a lot deliberate, active effort.

Unfortunately for most of us, Prince Charming isn’t going to swoop in and rescue us from the tower. In the real world, that tower is a self-built, architectural eyesore. And unfortunately, we’re the only ones who can tear it down.

Even then, it rarely falls in one single strike.

4) Drop Your Ego, there’s no place for it here.

One of the more recent realisations I’ve had while navigating romantic relationships is this: real, true love has no room for ego.

And I can’t help but wonder:

is it even possible to do anything without the shadow of self-interest? Actually forget that. I’m not opening that can of worms tonight.

Anyway. Big, juicy egos.

I’m not talking about the loud, boisterous ego. The kind that barges in with patchwork tattoos, perfectly chiseled abs, a supermarket day job, and intermittent DJ sets in Ibiza.

No shade towards DJs, or supermarket workers, or Ibiza.

This is the softer, more nestled-in version. The one that subtly guides our motives, our thought patterns, our reactions. For me, it often showed up as insecurity. Your partner does something that gets under your skin, and suddenly you’re plotting all the ways you can get one back of your own. That might just be the Scorpio in me, but I feel like we’ve all been there once or twice…

I’ve learned that this way of thinking can pull you into some pretty toxic cycles. It starts small, almost harmless. They stay out later than planned, or their communication slips a little. An anxious mind jumps to: well, two can play at that game. And just like that, you feel the urge to play along and “match the vibe”.

But when you love someone (truly love them) there just isn’t room for that kind of thinking. For one, it’s mentally exhausting, constantly checking the imaginary scoreboard to see who’s ahead, who owes what, who “wins.”

And second, it’s just kind of boring.

Maybe it’s because I’m turning 25 this year, and anything that requires strategic thinking feels exhausting. Or maybe it’s because I simply don’t want to make strategic moves in my relationship. If I wanted strategy, I’d take up chess.

I would never take up chess.

5) The poets weren’t being dramatic

Byron, Shelley, Wordsworth, and Keats - I owe you all an apology, my dear friends. You were, in fact, right.

Romantic poets viewed love as:

A powerful, transformative, and often divine force that transcends the physical, blending intense emotion with nature and spiritual idealism.

Now, that’s a loaded ideology to unpack, so I’ll leave it on this note.

Love, for all its complexities and contradictions, is possibly one of the most beautiful passages a human being can experience. And I’m not just speaking in the romantic sense, but the platonic one too.

It’s easy to shy away from love when you’ve felt the pain of heartbreak, the damage of mistrust, and the sting of rejection. It’s easy to run from it. To burn the pages of your favourite love poets and scatter them to the wind, hoping the ashes drift quietly through the night sky, the embers catching in the eyes of your enemies.

Okay, but seriously.

Adopting a mindset of complete nonchalance and emotional indifference has, unfortunately, become such a trend in this generation. And honestly? I think that’s really sad.

Love is messy and unkind and broken and scattered. In fact, it’s all of the above, in colours and shades and hues we’ve yet to discover. And there’s something so beautiful and raw in that.

And as I approach the dreaded age of 25, I’m realising I still know absolutely nothing about love. Maybe that’s fine. Maybe knowing that is the closest I’ll ever get to knowing everything.

Anyway, I’m not much for sign-offs, but thanks for crabwalking with me. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this topic - feel free to share it in the comments below :) See you soon… slowly.

Leave a comment

Hey — I’m Lila I’m new to Substack, so if you find yourself crabwalking through life too, I’d love for you to stick around. 🦀

Subscribe now

This Month’s Energy: Slow gathering. Salt-stung clarity. Small wonders. Slow burners. No sudden changes.

March:
Tide report for the month:

It’s March and the waters are shifting.

I’m practicing small rituals again. Letting something in me go feral in the best possible way. Paying attention to all that quietly glows in the mundane. It’s subtle, but things are moving. Slowly. And somewhere, a soundtrack is warming up, and if this were a film, this is where the music would swell and fill the auditorium with a melancholic symphony. The world is waking up. And I’m ready to shrug off my winter coat and feel the sunlight on my face again.

And god, don’t we all need that right now? A little warmth and lightness. A few pastel shades to gently colour the edges of all this “doom and gloom.” Lately it’s felt like a shared feeling amongst friends - a heaviness that’s settled over us like a stubborn fog that forgot it was supposed to lift.

But the thaw is happening, anyway.

You can feel it in the longer evenings, in the way the light lingers a little past five, as if it’s remembering it can still do that. In the bravery of sweet violets and daffodils pushing up through cold soil. In the first day you realise you left the house without your gloves and didn’t miss them.

With every passing day, I feel like I’m edging closer toward the shoreline. Toes testing the water. Feeling the pull of the current. Waiting.

This is Crabwalking, at low-tide energy.

No Sudden Changes

As we move into warmer, more prosperous days, I can’t help but reflect on February. As bleak as it was, in all it’s lightless lethargy, it was a good month for curious noticing. The light is low. Everything feels inward, almost tidal.

There’s a playful awkwardness to almost-spring. We’re still a bit rusty from the stagnant months of winter, but our bodies are leaning, ever so gently, toward what’s next to come.

Ideas that have been quietly cultivating inside us suddenly find space to take shape and breathe. This is a time for half-formed ideas, for gentle pokes and letting curiosity get the better of us. For stirring hot honey tea, clockwise, between moments sweet and raw. For kicking shoes off at the stairway, for leaving half-eaten strawberries on the counter-top to clean up later.

We’re moving, even if it doesn’t feel like much yet.

And the Year of the Horse has now arrived (as every article, post, and corner of the internet keeps reminding me!) blundering in, lean and strong. I’m not sure I feel called to match its pace. There’s an almost wired kind of urgency to it that I’m not sure is needed right now.

Not in March. We’re still defrosting.

This isn’t a gallop - hell - it’s not even a slight trot. We’re only just beginning to feel the reins, lean into the saddle and feel the weight of it all.

Do I feel entirely blindsided by the year so far? Sure. Do I feel like some weeks have felt as subtle as a punch in the face, multiple times over. Absolutely. There’s a lot of big emotions bubbling up right now. Things I’ve not quite yet decided what to do with. Thats fine as well. Bookmarked, noted. We’ll come back to those later.

Not in March.

Not when we’re all so desperately trying to gain a steady sense of rhythm again.

With change comes reaction, and every action asks something back of us. There’s a movement in the air, a gearing-up for success, for alignment, for everything to “slot neatly into place”. As if some zodiac, lunar calendar is meant to come and rescue us from stagnancy. Personally, I don’t quite buy it.

Sure, it’s a nice concept and all. But there is an immense amount of pressure to “hit the ground running” and sprint toward whatever finish line we’ve decided is waiting.

And after all, I am a slow creature. Crab-like in nature. I will get there in my own time.

So, with this in mind, here are a few tiny things I’ll be doing this month - a few small acts of return. Things I like to think of as “reacclimating” rather than reinventing.

Creating small, repeatable rituals.

If it’s too productive, lose it. These aren’t habits aimed at improvement, just small anchors in the day. Gestures of good intent. Stirring a morning drink slowly and intentionally, opening a window for a few minutes when the light changes, lighting a candle at dusk, burning some sage, burning anything, actually.

I love rituals because they don’t measure success. They simply mark time, and they bode especially well for times like this. Where there’s uncertainty in the air and everything feels a little adrift.

Following curiosity, not goals

March will be my month of “poking at things” without committing to them. Like reading the first chapter of several books instead of finishing one (god forbid a girl likes to hop around!) Starting a sketch, poem, or writing a new article without completing it. In other words, i’m taking the pressure off.

My draft section is a revolving graveyard where thoughts go to linger like ghosts. There’s something beautiful about letting ideas stay half-formed and exploratory, like seeds cultivating underground.

It’s sexier that way.

Getting “loose”

Some days can exist without structure. Wandering walks without a destination, slow mornings without rushing into tasks, afternoons where nothing particularly notable happens. Some might say it’s boring. But honestly? Boredom is exactly what i’m craving. I love the “looseness” of it all.

Wide, open blanks in the calendar with nothing to fill them with is my idea of heaven. This is where the real shit happens. This is where your mind comes out to play and says, hey, you and me, we can still have a fun time. You’re quite literally inviting yourself to a one-to-one with your own thoughts.

Keeping a “list for later”

Those big feelings I mentioned, the ones you don’t have to time to unpack right now but know they’ll resurface? Treat them with the care and attention they deserve. You’re not going to calm a racing mind and anxious thoughts in a three-minute break between morning meetings. They need space to exist. Their own special spot on the list. Write them all down, take a deep breath and put the journal away. Flip back to them at the right moment and tend to them well. Your mind is a garden, not a GP waiting room. You can’t rush your thoughts in and out, prescribe something quick, and send them on their way.

Now that I think about it, low tide suits me well. Some things just can’t be hurried, but they can be tended to - gracefully, graciously, and with a lot of love and god-damn patience.

And with that, I hope all you beautiful creatures have a wonderful month. Thanks for crabwalking with me. See you soon… slowly.

Lila x

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this topic - feel free to share it in the comments below :)

Leave a comment

Hey — I’m Lila I’m new to Substack, so if you find yourself crabwalking through life too, I’d love for you to stick around. 🦀

Subscribe now

But anyway, where were we? Utter hopelessness. A dark void. An empty soul, etc…

We’re feeling it all. For a long time, I’ve believed in the “suck it up” mentality: keep moving, don’t linger, don’t wallow in the big, watery feelings. After all, it will pass, like it always does.

And it does pass. But the energy never fully disappears. It lingers, quietly, somewhere beneath the surface. Bubbling away, waiting for that overflow…

This is something I’ve been wrestling with for most of my twenties. For context: I’m a 24-year-old woman who’s often been told she’s overly sensitive, emotionally vigilant and hyper-aware of even the smallest shifts in people’s moods or tone. Add a couple of chronic health conditions into the mix and a generous helping of PMDD - and you get a juicy cocktail of big, bubbling emotions that are very easy to brush aside because,

drum roll, please

I’m a chronic people pleaser.

Yes, the classic PPP: people-pleasing person. We’re exhausting. Highly strung, hyper-attentive, and strangely skilled at meeting everyone else’s needs before we even pause to consider our own.

But this isn’t really about labels. As much as I understand my tendencies and the patterns I fall into, I’m cautious about boxing myself into neat categories or diagnoses. I know labels can be helpful for many people. For me, though, they can sometimes feel like a shortcut. A tidy explanation that risks replacing the harder work of actually understanding what’s going on underneath.

What I’m really getting at isn’t the origin of the emotions, or even why some of us seem more porous to them than others. It’s what we do with them, and where they end up living inside us. All those big, bubbling, beautiful feelings.

We grow up in a world that rewards strength and quietly punishes softness. We learn early that showing emotion makes us vulnerable, because time and time again we’re shown that it isn’t always safe to let those tender parts be seen.

When I was a kid, I didn’t know how to contain any of it. I stomped, yelled, screamed, and shouted. I was feral and wild in the way only children can be. And there was something beautiful in that. The emotions arrived, burned bright, and then passed, leaving no residue behind.

Now, as a bigger, more socially acceptable version of that child, I’ve learned that tantrums and pounding fists against walls aren’t exactly welcomed in polite society. So myself, like many others, adapted. We learnt new ways to process those emotions and communicate our needs.

And some of us take it one step further. We learn to camouflage our emotions entirely. We become polished, composed. Totally, and brilliantly undetectable. Like clockwork, we feel the swell of something rising - anger, grief, overwhelm - and we press it back down. Again and again. Each time a little more forcefully, hoping that one day it will simply burn itself out inside us, turn to ash, and scatter quietly in the wind. Done. Dusted.

Sometimes, it can look a little like this:

You get spoken down to at work.

Speaking up is such an overreaction. You’re just too sensitive. Brush it off.

Then It happens again.

Well this is becoming a pattern. You must be doing something wrong for this to continue happening?

Someone talks over you in a meeting.

Just let them finish. Don’t overstep because you might appear rude.

So you adjust. Quieter. More agreeable. More accommodating. If you can just anticipate everyone else’s needs, read the room perfectly, and stay one step ahead at all times, maybe you won’t land in these moments at all? Right?!

It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy that we fall into again and again. Because those emotions - the hurt, the neglect, the quiet sting of rejection - never actually disappear. They gather. At first they’re subtle, almost invisible. Then one day the match strikes when you least expect it, and everything goes up all at once.

It’s something I like to call: Bonfire Night. Big flames tearing through all that carefully managed “progress.” Surging through you, setting off all the alarm bells, ravaging through villages and leaving no prisoners.

In simpler terms: you crash the fuck out.

And this time, these feeling are not going anywhere. It’s moments like these, I know i’ve neglected myself for too long. Everything i’ve so desperately tried to avoid feeling comes rising up in one, unregulated mass.

The truth is, i’m angry as hell and i’m done pretending i’m not.

I’m tired of sanding myself down. It doesn’t work. It’s draining, and honestly, it’s so bloody boring. I don’t want to walk through my life wrapped in PPE (People Pleasing Equipment). I want to feel again. I want to let myself be angry. I want to cry on public transport, in the park, in my bosses office after a bad review. Not just quietly into the pages of my diary on a cold, bleak February night. I want to tell people when I’m hurting, and I want the honesty of knowing if I’ve hurt them too.

I don’t understand all this burying our heads in the mud, circling around one another like sheep waiting for the first one to take a shit in the field. (Excuse the deranged pun but it felt right).

Because we all know it doesn’t work. It just leads to mental exhaustion, overload, and those heavy, tired bodies we drag around wondering why we’re so bloody worn out all the time. And I am so very tired.

I think part of the problem sits in our nature. We’re wired to fear what feels out of control, especially in ourselves. Anything messy or unpredictable risks being labelled weak, maladjusted, even unhinged. Nobody celebrates the “mad woman”; in the stories we’re told. The composed, agreeable figure is the one who prevails. Until she too eventually crashes out from carrying the weight of womanhood on her shoulders.

And of course, we can’t just go around yelling blue murder at everyone who gets under our skin. But I do believe we seriously need to relearn that it’s okay to feel, and, more importantly, how to actually let ourselves feel again.

Maybe it starts with simple honesty: acknowledging when someone’s being an arsehole.

Too many people coast through life never being called out on being an arsehole. Consider this my tongue-in-cheek declaration of war on the arsehole epidemic.

Or maybe it starts with simply letting things be. We don’t have to meet every uncomfortable emotion with a perfectly therapised, rational response. Sometimes sadness is just sadness. Sometimes anger is just anger - it doesn’t need to be breath-worked away like a demonic hostile takeover.

That voice in your head telling you you’re having a bad day? Maybe you are just… having a bad day. Not everything needs diagnosing, optimising, or fixing to make it valid. Some feelings just want to be felt, and then allowed to pass.

We’re all just little kids wanting to bang our fists against the wall and fling spaghetti hoops across the kitchen floor. And honestly, you owe yourself that. Every once in a while.

Anyway, I’m not much for sign-offs, but thanks for crabwalking with me. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this topic - feel free to share it in the comments below :) See you soon… slowly.

Leave a comment

Hey — I’m Lila I’m new to Substack, so if you find yourself crabwalking through life too, I’d love for you to stick around. 🦀

Subscribe now

Nature is remarkably loud. We just often choose not to listen.

Our ears are not quite tuned in to the wonderful frequencies of the natural world. And why would they be? We live in an environment designed to shout, scream, and demand our attention at every moment.

So we mistake subtly for silence. We confuse gentleness for absence.

But if we paused - truly paused - we might realise that nature has, in fact, been speaking to us all along.

We call nature quiet because it isn’t mechanical. It doesn’t roar like traffic or buzz like notifications. There are a million sounds we’ve grown accustomed to in our daily routines. Sounds that provide structure, routine, familiarity…

Nature isn’t predictable like my alarm clock ringing at 6am on a Monday morning. Nor is it reliable like the mechanical heave of the Tube pulling into the Circle Line at Oxford Circus.

It doesn’t announce itself with precision or punctuality. But it is constant. Steady. Present in a way that doesn’t demand our attention, yet never withdraws it.

There’s a reason we feel most at ease when we step outside.

432 Hz resonance is often described as nature’s frequency, a tone associated with grounding, calm, and relaxation. Forest environments layer birdsong, insects, and wind into rich soundscapes that gently engage our senses and guide us back to ourselves.

Even plants emit subtle vibrations and frequencies, each contributing to an immersive sensory experience that encourages our brains to settle into more relaxed alpha and theta states. (Excuse the science-y tangent. I just find it extraordinary.)

I recently saw a reel on Instagram of mushrooms (yes, mushrooms) playing a keyboard in the wild. Scientists had attached sensors to measure their bio-electrical fluctuations - and the result? A funky fungi synth that I’d absolutely add to my Spotify playlist.

Spending time in nature (even as little as two hours a week) can be a simple yet powerful therapy. It’s linked to lower heart rate and stress hormones, stronger immune response, increased natural killer cell activity, and an uplifted mood, among soo many other benefits.

In other words, it’s a healing cocktail.

Far more accessible than therapy, and FAR more nourishing than any expensive juice cleanse could ever promise.

Now, of course, I’m not saying that standing in your local forest for two hours and listening to mushrooms play the keyboard is going to solve all your problems. But I do believe that we’re meant to spend more time in the natural world than most of us currently do — and that even small moments outside can gently recalibrate us. Even if it’s still only subconscious.

Perhaps the most beautiful thing about the way nature speaks is that we each interpret it in deeply personal ways.

The sound of a pigeon cooing at dawn is a reassuring letter from my childhood home. Tides breaking and folding onto rugged shorelines is a soundscape from the Jurassic coast, carrying me back to the Summer of 2022 when I stayed in Lyme Regis. Even leaves rustling gently in the breeze is a reminder to me that warmer days always return, even after months of barren branches standing empty and bare.

Nature softens the external noise, slows our thoughts, and reminds us what it feels like to simply be. And when you think about it, nature is remarkably loud, we just don’t always choose to listen.

Sometimes, we could all do with truly listening.

Anyway, I’m not much for sign-offs, but thanks for crabwalking with me. I’d love to hear your favourite way to become ‘one with the trees’ - feel free to share it in the comments below :) See you soon… slowly.

Leave a comment

Hey — I’m Lila I’m new to Substack, so if you find yourself crabwalking through life too, I’d love for you to stick around. 🦀

Subscribe now

I’m a bit late to the trend, but I’ve been meaning to hop on for a while. If you’re like me, and have been spiralling a little (or a lot) into the endless algorithm of what makes someone “chic” or “that girl”, then I hope this offers some solace and comfort.

I think all of these things are beautifully chic, not because they fit into a mould or an archetype curated by some girl on TikTok with a wardrobe to die for and curtain bangs that weren’t the aftermath of a quarter-life crisis, but because they capture the art of being human in a world that doesn’t always allow us to be.

The chicest things are timeless. These will never go out of style (even if your bangs do!).

1. Collecting your most-favourite albums on vinyl

I love the idea of records the way I love the idea of handwritten letters: objects that slow you down.

I like the way vinyl looks on a shelf, neatly stacked like little portals to different emotional eras of your life. I like the faint crackle before the music begins. I like the ritual of choosing one, lifting it carefully, placing the needle, waiting.

Whether you’re into it or not, you can’t deny there’s something deeply chic about vinyl. Not in a loud, status-symbol way, but in a soft, intentional one.

Unfortunately, I’m not quite cool enough (nor do I have enough disposable income) to justify spending £25–30 on an album I could stream for free on Spotify. In this economy? Pfft. But more recently, I’ve decided to set myself a rule:

only the die-hard favourites.

You know the ones. Albums you could play on repeat and never tire of. The ones that have carried you through every chapter of your life — the good and the bad.

Humming alone in the kitchen on a Friday evening. Pensive, maladaptive daydreaming on long train journeys. Songs you might even want played at your wedding…

Music holds too much weight in our lives to be treated so casually.

It deserves reverence. It deserves permanence. I want to honour that sound. I want to hold it in my hands the way it’s held me for all these years. I don’t want these songs to live only in digital playlists on my iPhone, I want them to live with me, physically. Visibly.

And nothing captures the beauty of a beloved sound quite like the soft vintage crackle of a vinyl. Plus, they make you feel like the ultimate cool girl, which is always a plus.

2. Handwritten recipe books

Since I entered my twenties, it’s as if a small switch flipped in my still-developing frontal cortex and left me suddenly obsessed with cooking.

I’m not particularly skilled, and I’d be lying if I said there isn’t at least an 80% chance that most weeknights end in beans on toast, purely out of convenience. But every now and then, when the urge strikes and there’s a nice bottle of Malbec chilling in the fridge to ease things along, I find a real sense of fulfilment in it.

Cooking something genuinely good and hearty from scratch is one of life’s great pleasures, plus it makes me feel like I’m properly maximising this newfound little adult life of mine. (this doesn’t happen often.)

I have a handful of go-to dishes and recipes I’ve made so many times they’re practically second nature to me. Always tweaking, adding little extras, quietly perfecting my art. My current favourite is my Chickpea Peanut Butter Curry, it’s bloody delicious. (Comment on this post if you would like the recipe, I’m biased, but for good reason!)

Anyways, it got me thinking:

I really should write this shit down.

I think in this generation, there is something almost quite radical about writing recipes by hand.

Not typing. Not screenshotting. Not saving something “for later” on TikTok - as if any of us ever return to that dreaded digital archive?!

Tiny ink smudges. Uneven measurements. Little notes in the margins:

Add more garlic next time.

Nana’s version is better.

Too salty, halve it.

I don’t think a handwritten recipe book is about necessity. But there is definitely something warm and sentimental about practising cooking as inheritance. Plus, there’s something deeply chic about saying: this is mine, I made this.

In a world of algorithmic meals and 30-second tutorials, this kind of slowness feels intimate, and just RAW. I imagine my future children recreating these dishes one day, adding their own tweaks, their own notes in the margins. Super sweet right?

Yes, we all borrow and take inspiration from time to time, but I like knowing I’ve left my own mark. It feels nice.

Even if Nigella Lawson did most of the work for me.

3. Personal shrines

When you think of a shrine, you might imagine a small altar in a Roman-style chapel, surrounded by flickering tea lights, scattered poppies, and strange little statues of forgotten gods.

Or maybe you think of the bedroom wall you dedicated to One Direction when you were fourteen… those life-sized cutouts of Harry Styles still haunt my mind as a twenty-four-year-old.

I’m fascinated by the idea of shrines. Not religious ones, necessarily, (or teenage boyband obsessions!) just small, intentional corners dedicated to expressing yourself. Spaces that really capture the essence of who you are.

A candle, a postcard, a shell, a photo you took that you absolutely adore, a dried flower, a stone you picked up for no reason at all. The best part about them? Is it doesn’t have to make sense to anybody but yourself.

And unlike other areas of your home, these don’t need to be decorative or loud. They are witnesses, and they speak quietly. They say: I was here. This mattered. I felt something.

I think in a world where design, trends, and aesthetics so often drive the decisions we make when building a home or decorating a room, there is something uniquely powerful about carving out a small corner that exists purely for being yourself.

No noise. No rules. No one telling you these things don’t match your “clean girl”, “Scandi-style” pinterest board.

Homes will always change and lives will keep moving, but personal shrines become quiet anchors, reminding us that meaning doesn’t always need to be productive, purposeful, or curated with intention. It can simply exist for your own enjoyment.

And, egotistically, I find they make the best conversation starters. They invite people to ask questions about parts of your life that wouldn’t normally be on display. Perhaps it may be a postcard from a city you once lived in, or a chipped mug that once belonged to your grandmother and now holds pens.

None of it matches perfectly, and that’s the point.

The colours clash a little. The objects come from different decades of your life.

Some are sentimental. Some are random. Some you couldn’t explain unless someone asked. And in a world obsessed with minimalism and the dreaded millennial grey epidemic (no shade), there’s something deeply chic about letting objects simply exist.

4. Researching wildly into something pointless

I think there’s something deeply chic about learning purely for the sake of learning. Not for work. Not for optimisation or productive output. But because you’re curious and because it feeds your soul.

At the start of the year, I gave myself a small New Year’s resolution after the painstaking realisation that I had been starving myself of real knowledge for years. And why?

Because I believed that “wasting” my time on anything that wasn’t in the name of productivity was counter-progressive.

But here’s the thing: it’s actually the complete opposite.

I think, as humans, we often forget that we are innately curious beings, still children at heart, searching for answers across an endless fountain of subjects and things to wonder about. When we starve that outlet, we become a little too close to robots: streamlined, programmed, able to speak fluently only about the three topics nearest to our job titles.

Spoiler alert: digital media marketing and quarterly KPIs don’t make great dinner-table chatter.

So I challenge you to this:

Go down a three-hour rabbit hole about an obscure artist. Delve into a forgotten historical event. Lose yourself in the origins of a word, a conspiracy theory, the migration of moths.

We’ve grown accustomed to a life where learning without a return on investment feels pointless, unproductive and, to put it simply,

a waste of our valuable time.

But, there’s one common denominator I’ve found that all the people I most admire have in common practice: they are mesmerisingly informed.

Not because of the schools they attended or the academic abilities they were (or weren’t) blessed with. But because of their devotion to the strange, niche corners of the world they’ve chosen to pour themselves into.

The most interesting people are the ones who can sit around a dinner table and always have something original to add.

I want to be one of them.

So here’s a few things on my list to research ‘pointlessly’ into this year:

Jungian symbols.

mythic archetypes.

Tarot as narrative language (not prediction)

or alchemy as metaphor.

The historical importance of migration (with all the crazy going on in the world, this has been on my mind a lot!)

Anyway, I’m not much for sign-offs, but thanks for crabwalking with me. I’d love to know your favourite unmaterial ways to be chic so feel free to leave a comment down below :) See you soon. Slowly.

Leave a comment

Hey — I’m Lila I’m new to Substack, so if you find yourself crabwalking through life too, I’d love for you to stick around. 🦀

Subscribe now