Parents Who Think

PWT Advanced plus grappling with how in heavens name to make a quiz work here, for those of you wondering where I’ve been tinkering.

If you’re looking for support, Marie knows back-end Substack like her own hand, is a podcast editor and a whizz at online strategy blah blah. Drop me a line here and I’ll happily put you in touch with her.

He is currently £40 in debt on his allowance.

Claire Tomkins on Why Every Story Matters

Danusia Malina-Derben — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 16:17:19 GMT

Made me Think

△ Want Anonymity?

△ I’m in the market to reduce scroll time...I mean, who isn’t?!

△ Last! I’ve been using this actually really wonderful-feeling skincare stick on my under-eyes and neck and can report that it is smoothing things just a bit? The price point is decent, and I’m currently really into these types of serum sticks!

Today I'm bringing you my conversation with writer and story coach . It's a gentle reminder that creative lives are built far more often through ordinary persistence than dramatic breakthroughs:

Give us a snapshot of your life as it actually is.

I live in Nottingham with my lovely hubby and three kids (18, 15 & 11). I'm a former lawyer turned writer and story coach which I've been doing since 2020. As I'm often working at home, I take charge of most of the family/home logistics. My husband is also a lawyer and has a demanding role so he is usually working in the office or away.

Exercise is a hugely important part of my life - I love to run and go to the gym - both support my physical and mental health.

Where can we find you?

Website | LinkedIn | Instagram | Substack

Why do you create?

I create because it's life-giving. When I started my Substack, I called it 'At Heart' because at heart, I'm a writer and I needed a place for this form of self-expression. When I write I seek to better understand myself and the world around me and when I share my writing I want others to feel seen and understood as well. And maybe even inspired to share their own stories.
The main message I want to share with others is: everyone's voice and story matters and deserves to be heard, so a lot of my content is about that.
I'm also a huge advocate of the importance of coming back to ourselves and embracing who we are - all our lived experience, skills, passions, stories - writing helps to explore this. I also write fantasy fiction for teenagers which is great fun and I get to weave in the themes of magic, hope and adventure which I love!

What does the inside of your creative mind actually feel like?

It's very busy! I often have lots of ideas whizzing around and the challenge is to capture them all and put them somewhere safe so I can come back to them later. I find journaling and walking by the river can help to process and order my thoughts and ideas. I try to use a diary and notebooks but then I sometimes lose track of which notebook I wrote the idea down in....

I remind myself that if it's a good idea that I need to act on it will come back. And it usually does.

What has parenthood changed about your work — and what has it refused to change?

I became a parent 18 1/2 years ago and at the time I was working as a solicitor. My work changed over the years in terms of hours, patterns and I think my motivation changed as well. When I started writing I was motivated by the desire to create for myself but also for my kids. I wanted them to see me following my dreams and prioritising them. As the kids have got older, my priorities and work have shifted again. I feel like I'm re-finding parts of myself as I get older.

Describe the conditions under which your work gets made.

I've learned since I've worked for myself that I need a balance of time alone and with others! Sometimes I like to co-work with others in person or online which can be super productive. I try to work in a coffee shop once a week which gets me out the house and feels like a treat. I try to have a mix of both longer chunks of time for creative projects (like my novel) and smaller pockets where I can focus for a shorter length of time - both are valuable and no time is wasted, however short!

What kind of work becomes possible when your children are nearby, and what becomes impossible?

I can tap away on my laptop doing more admin type jobs while the kids are around - usually they wander in and out with requests related to food or something they've misplaced! If I'm running a workshop or a meeting I politely request that they don't disturb me, which they usually remember! My office is outside which helps, as if I sit at the dining table that seems to indicate I'm available for random chats and trouble-shooting.

What have you had to become in order to keep creating?

I've had to become self-motivated and determined. Most of my deadlines are self-imposed which has been a big shift from when I worked in a corporate environment. I've also had to become more self-aware and recognise what I need at different times to stay healthy so I can create.

What is the part of your creative life that no one sees?

The thinking! In the shower, while out walking or on long car journeys. I'm often mulling over an idea or plotting another book...

Who or what has most shaped the way you create now — not at the beginning, but in the reality of your current life?

My amazing husband has always been a cheerleader for me, whatever I'm doing. I have a group of wonderful women in my local community who are all small business owners and inspire and motivate me to keep going. And my youngest daughter in particular who asks at regular intervals when she can read my book!

What keeps you creating on the days it feels pointless, indulgent, or impossible?

I come back to my why: the belief that everyone has a powerful story to share. I also remind myself of the positive comments and feedback I get sometimes from people who read my work. Knowing I've had a positive impact on one person makes it worthwhile.

How much of your creative life is pleasure, and how much is endurance?

I love this question because it's such a mix! When I get 'in flow', writing is completely joyful and I feel like this is what I was made to do. But the rest of the time it's often just hard work! Then it's a case of showing up, getting my bum in the seat and getting on with it. More often than not it's the starting that's the hardest part - once I get going, I often don't want to stop.

What piece of work are you avoiding finishing, and why?

My novel! I'm on draft 5 and knee-deep in the editing and rewriting process. It's been very stop and start (for lots of reasons including babies, work, health) and so it's then taken a lot of effort to get into it again. But I think the reason it's slow going is my fear of not knowing when it will be done and good enough. I'm working on that and forging ahead with this draft.

What are you in the middle of creating — and what shape is it in?

See above - I'm in the very messy middle of a novel! It's getting there but there are random characters, magic, goodies and baddies all over the place and more than a few plot holes.

If someone walked in on you mid-creation, what would they see, hear, and find slightly odd?

I'd either be completely lost in a story, tapping away on my laptop or staring out of the window. Both count!!

What have you had to let go of (willingly or not) in order to keep creating?

I am learning to let go of perfection and comparison. Perfection doesn't exist and comparison is, of course, the thief of joy. All of our stories are unique and imperfect and that's what makes them valuable and powerful.

PARENTS WHO THINK TO THE COMMENTS 👇🏻 over to you

Next week: I’ll bring you my juicy conversation with !

Happy Friday, friends. Hang in there.

P.S. This interview was written up while re-listening to Jenn Romolini’s Ambition Monster - Read or listen if you: have ever fallen victim to “hustle culture”, feel like work is sucking the life out of you, hate capitalism.

✨ BOOK YOUR READING HERE ✨

Note: If you buy a little something through a link, PWT may earn an affiliate commission, at no cost to you. I only share products I genuinely love. Thank you so much for supporting Parents Who Think.

The Substack Psychic Was Wrong

Danusia Malina-Derben — Sun, 26 Jul 2026 19:20:22 GMT

Steve Kraitt

I wasn’t sure what to wear.

On the one hand, this was a spiritual consultation. On the other, she’d asked me to bring my Substack subscriber graph.

The waiting room was exactly what you’d expect. Emerald green velvet cushions. Incense burning in an ancient monstera pot. A stack of unread literary journals beside dog-eared astrology magazines. Someone unravelling into a hankie after plateauing at 2,437 subscribers.

“Danusia?” The psychic smiled warmly.

“I’ve been expecting you.”

“I know,” I said. “It’s literally your job.” She ignored me.

“Sit.” She reached for my analytics before she reached for my hand. Not exactly a great start.

Then her Russian Volume eyelashes fluttered shut.

“I’m sensing...”

A long pause. “...you’ve been inconsistent.”

“I have children.”

She frowned. “No. Spiritually inconsistent.”

“Oh.”

She shuffled the tarot cards.

The first was The About Page.

The second was The Posting Cadence.

The third was The Paid Tier.

Naturally.

She inhaled sharply. “Oh dear.”

“What?”

“Your About page lacks a transformational promise.”

I steadied myself.

“And?”

“You’ve been publishing interviews.”

“I like publishing interviews.”

She looked at me as if I’d said I liked eating chalk. “That’s not what the algorithm wants.”

I made a non-committal throat sound.

She scribbled something in capitals onto a yellow Post-it.

RESISTANCE.

“I don’t think this is resistance,” I said. “I think this is disagreement.”

She didn’t write that down. Instead she leaned forward.

“Tell me...when did you last Go Live dear?””

“Never, that sounds hideous”

A slow, sympathetic nod normally reserved for bereavement.

“I’ve got another question,” she said. “Have you identified your ideal reader?”

“Someone with a sense of humour.”

She sighed. “Too broad.” Of course it is.

We continue: pathways, premium ecosystem and paid subscriber perks. Whether my writing leads anywhere intentional. I explain that my current ecosystem consists of a half-eaten Babybel in the glovebox and a recurring sense I’ve forgotten something important.

She adds RESISTANCE TO SCALE.

Then she stills.

“I’m receiving a message.”

“Oh God.”

“There’s someone following your work.”

“Good to know.”

“They believe you’re wildly under-recognised.”

“Mmm.”

“They’d like to help amplify your voice.”

“Go on.”

“They’re an editor.”

“Progress.”

“At a major publishing house”

I sit up a little.

“Penguin Random House?”

She zoned in.

“No”

“Macmillan?”

“No”

“Hachette?”

“No”

She stopped.

“That’s odd”

“What?”

“The message has disappeared”

“Oh”

“It needs to be verified before I can continue.”

I look at her.

“Verified?”

A small nod.

“It’s standard now for a psychic reading.”

She gestured vaguely upwards.

“For the industry.”

Then disappeared behind tapestry drapes carrying a giant glass orb. A few moments later she returned looking clammy.

“I’m afraid the editor wasn’t human”

“I’m sorry?”

“The publisher wasn’t human either.”

Of course.

“They’d still like to help shape your voice”.

“Sure they would”.

She watches me.

“You’re not excited.”

“No,” I say. “I just know the difference between being discovered and being harvested by AI.”

For the first time since I’d arrived, she put her pen down.

“I was wrong.”

“Oh?”

“You don’t actually want advice.”

“No.”

“You don’t want a template.”

“No.”

“You don’t even want success explained.”

“God no.”

A pause.

“So what do you want?”

I think about it.

“I just want to be able to write something good,” I say, “without having to prove how it was made.”

Appointments available. Paid subscribers receive priority access to the astral plane.

Please Verify You’re Human

The thing I love most about writers is that we’re gloriously unreliable.

We disappear for weeks or months because we fall down strange corridors of interest: Otters. Tudor kitchens. Ceramic glazes. Somatic grief. A woman on a train wearing an extraordinary yellow coat we just can’t quite forget.

Then we come back having written the only essay we could have written because we left.

And now imagine uploading that essay

and waiting while Pangram scans it and decides how likely it is that you wrote it. Likely human, or not.

Then there’s this:
➡️ Virginia Woolf, writing one of her famous ‘waves in the mind’, then pausing over whether it reads too composed.

➡️ James Baldwin, catching that push-and-pull, sermon-like momentum mid-flow and breaking it before it looks rehearsed.

➡️ Toni Morrison, second-guessing her instinct to bend syntax into music, because that same musicality now reads as… questionable.

Indeed: write something beautiful and it’s flagged as suspicious or called artificial.

So we hesitate, second-guess and start thinking “does this read as human enough?” even when we wrote it without any machine.

And that is a very strange place to end up.

The same writers who were told to find a voice are now being asked to prove it’s really ours.

It’s not just writing something of value, it’s proving you wrote it.

Daftly, we’ve gone from being told to hone our work to ironically being asked to rough it all up again just enough to pass as human.

Best advice right now: be a little messier than you naturally are (throw in a typo or two) or people will think you’re using AI. As though humanness were something you could simply perform on cue or scatter on top like seasoning.

And the giant risk is that we start writing like whatever can most easily be recognised as not-AI rather than AI writes like us.

The machines learned from our sentences, our cadences, and the very things we spent years refining.

And now humans are adjusting ourselves in order to not resemble the machines that learned from us.

We’ve reached the point where the burden of proof sits with the writer, not the machine. I don’t know about you, but I find that back to front.

God, it’s exhausting.

The psychic was wrong.

She thought I was looking for Substack success tactics.

I’m not.

I’m looking for writing that doesn’t need to prove how it was made.

I’m curious what this is doing to your writing.

Thanks for being here,

Elizabeth Jannuzzi on Writing the Hard Stuff Instead of the Easy Stuff

Danusia Malina-Derben — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 18:19:36 GMT

Little hits this week

△ Go make a ruckus with these riffs

△ A touch-free orgasm technique (yes, really)

△ Creatives have a mid-life crisis every five years

And now, here’s — in her own words.

Credit: Kartheek Photo

Give us a snapshot of your life as it actually is.

Hi! I'm a 54-year-old mother of three young adult children — 18, 20, and 23. The younger two head off to college in August, and the oldest has returned to the nest post-graduation while he finds his footing professionally. After years of driving, PTA meetings, and weekend sporting events, my children are mostly self-sufficient now, and I find myself with more room to create.

I don't fear the empty nest — I see it as a chance to recommit to my dreams. I still handle the grocery shopping, cooking, and cleaning, plus a full-time job. But as my kids inch their way into adulthood, I'm inching my way toward fully committing to my writing life.

Where can we find you?

Website | Substack | Instagram | Facebook

Why do you create?

I write about my recovery from alcoholism. The easy answer is that I share my experience, strength, and hope so that others know there is a solution — and I do so openly and honestly, hoping to create empathy for those of us who live with this disease and to help remove the stigma around it.
But the deeper truth is that I just love personal stories. I love reading them, listening to them, telling them. I want to know you. I want you to know me. We have so much we can learn from each other.

What does the inside of your creative mind actually feel like?

Hmmm, I think it depends on what I'm writing. When I'm working on my Substack or an essay, my mind is almost hunting — searching for the specific detail that opens into something universal. It can be a little obsessive. I'll be unloading the dishwasher and suddenly something clicks.
When I'm deep in memoir, it feels more like excavation. I'm sifting through old memories, trying to recover not just what happened but what I understood about it then — and what I understand now. Both feel a little like solving a puzzle.

What has parenthood changed about your work — and what has it refused to change?

Parenthood gives you endless material — the twists, the surprises, the humbling moments when you realize how little control you actually have. And maybe that's part of why I write. On the page, I'm the one who decides what gets included, what gets cut, how the story lands. It might be the one place in my life where I'm fully in charge.

But here's the honest answer to what parenthood changed about my work: I'm not sure it changed anything, because I didn't get serious about writing until my kids were already in school. Parenthood didn't interrupt my writing life — it came first. In some ways, my children grew up alongside my writing self. We were all figuring it out at the same time.

Describe the conditions under which your work gets made.

For years I berated myself for not writing every day. When you're getting three kids out the door and then heading to work yourself, time is hard to find. So I carved out weekends and created DIY writing retreats. I binge-wrote. I once booked a nearby hotel just for a night of writing, and took an 8-hour train ride to do the same. I recommend both.

Now I host a morning writing accountability group. We meet on Zoom every weekday at 8 a.m., state our goals, shut off our cameras, and get to work. I've been doing this for over a year and it has genuinely transformed my writing life. I'm actually in the group right now, writing this answer.

What kind of work becomes possible when your children are nearby, and what becomes impossible?

We have a full house right now, so there's constant ambient noise — doors opening, showers starting, the sounds of people going about their day. That doesn't bother me at all. I can write through that. But the moment someone steps into my space with a question or a need, I'm gone. The thread breaks.
I need solitude to write — real solitude. I don't like anyone reading over my shoulder, so I've positioned my desk with my back against the wall.

What have you had to become in order to keep creating?

Confident in my reasons to write. Confident in my story. Confident in myself.

What is the part of your creative life that no one sees?

I'm not sure this technically answers the question, but as a literary citizen, you have to be far more social and outgoing than people realize. I work hard to engage with other people's work — reading and commenting on Substack, writing Goodreads reviews, attending author readings, sticking out my hand, introducing myself. It's labor that doesn't look like labor, but it is.

Who or what has most shaped the way you create now — not at the beginning, but in the reality of your current life?

Recovery has shaped how I write more than anything else. The same principle that keeps me sober keeps me at the page: one day at a time. I don't have to write the whole book today. I don't have to figure out the whole essay. I just have to show up today. That's it.
It sounds simple, but for someone who used to berate herself for not writing every day, it's been revolutionary.

Be honest: how do you procrastinate?

I choose the easier thing to write. A social media post, a Substack, a response to someone else's Substack. It's much easier to churn out small pieces than to dig into the harder stuff. Technically I'm always writing. But I know the difference.

What piece of work are you avoiding finishing?

Memoir #2. It's about grief — I lost my brother and my sister when I was a young adult, and I've been working on this book for three years. I worry I may never finish it.
Right now I'm deep in promoting my debut memoir,"Sober Mom" and promotion has a way of taking precedence over drafting. But the harder truth is that drafting is just hard. There's no tidy narrative arc here. It's not like I'm going to solve grief. I'm struggling with it.
Even answering this questionnaire is procrastinating writing Memoir #2.

What does “a room of your own” actually look like in your life now? (Literal or not.)

I used to write at my dining room table looking out at the backyard. I loved it. Then the pandemic hit, the kids switched to remote learning, my husband became a remote worker, and suddenly the house had too many people in it for that to work. He took over the only office. I tried the den. That didn't work either.

We have a larger bedroom than we need, so I carved out a corner of it. My husband had built four sound baffles during my son's brief drumming phase, so I claimed them and made myself a room. It's a temporary solution, but I love it. I recently got a bookshelf and filled it with recovery books, craft books, and beloved memoirs, plus some knickknacks. I've started taping things to the baffles too — show posters, old kids' artwork, photographs, comics. It's mine.

If someone walked in on you mid-creation, what would they see, hear, and find slightly odd?

I read my work out loud. It's the best way I know to hear whether the writing is actually working — whether the rhythm and cadence are right, whether a word fits or clunks. So if you caught me mid-creation, you'd probably hear me muttering or performing to no one. It's a little embarrassing to admit. But it works.

PARENTS WHO THINK TO THE COMMENTS 👇🏻 over to you

Next week: A real treat as I bring you my conversation with the gorgeous .

Thank you so much for being here 💖

P.S. Save me — I wrote this interview while sipping a genuinely retch-worthy non-alc spritz. Hopes: high. Reality: not so much.
If you know a good one, please intervene.

Louise Morris: I Was a Surgeon. Now What?

Danusia Malina-Derben — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 16:17:14 GMT

A quick aside before we begin.

A couple of months ago, I heard that the community bookshop in my local harbour town — 17 years in — was going to close.

That didn’t sit well with me.

So I got to work. Plans, conversations, a fair bit of graft… and later this year, I’ll be part of the team running it.

It’s exactly as romantic as it sounds. And also entirely not.

If you want to hear what it’s actually like running a bookshop from the inside, say the word.

And now, this week’s interview. I’m thrilled to bring you who threw herself generously into our conversation:

Give us a snapshot of your life as it actually is.

Right now, in truth, life is a bit of a shitshow. I used to be a consultant surgeon, but became unemployed two years ago in a convergence of NHS recruitment freezes, having specialised into a too-tiny niche, and (irresponsibly, if the powers that be are to be believed) wanting to live in the same country as the children I'd birthed - now eight and six (going-on-seventeen).
These days, I prefer the term 'retirement' but perhaps this time is in fact a creative pause. I've discovered a love for writing - mostly poetry and non-fiction, and can often be found sharing my sofa with several craft works-in-progress, having replaced sutures with alternative forms of thread, from embroidery floss to yarn, ribbon to wire.
My day to day life is much slower than the years I raced through in my career in surgery, and is instead filled with school runs, sky-gazing and more books than I could read in a lifetime. Perhaps it's not such a shitshow, after all.

Where can we find you?

I write Anatomy of a Decision on Substack

Why do you create?

I think I do two types of creating. The first - the writing, or when I'm intricately crafting a cake decoration or getting lost in a particularly detailed embroidery; the creating serves to slow down my thinking and focus in on the senses.
The second is the more mindless type, the crafting to keep my hands busy so that my mind can give its attention to the outside world with a reduced inclination to wander. For example, I was often found crocheting at conferences or in long meetings, which I'm aware can be misinterpreted at times as boredom or rudeness, but generally when I explain, people have been generous in their acceptance.

What does the inside of your creative mind actually feel like?

Messy! Often overwhelmed with all the things I want to do to the point that I might find it difficult to do very much at all. Or it can become so deeply focussed that I neglect the basics of living, like eating or going to sleep at a sensible time... I try to find a happy medium, with varying success!

What has parenthood changed about your work — and what has it refused to change?

In terms of career, parenthood altered my whole perspective. Working as a paediatric surgeon, becoming a parent gave me a much greater understanding of the sorts of emotions that the parents of my patients might be experiencing, and though I like to think I was empathetic before motherhood, in reality I had little experience to relate fully.
There were also little but important benefits, like being able to support with breastfeeding - something that was barely mentioned in medical school or professional training. Ultimately though, parenthood was the reason I left my career, because I could not find a way to do the job I loved as well as live in the same region as my children.

From a creative perspective, parenthood gave me an added sense of purpose. In the before, I'd craft for friends or family at times, but time was short and other priorities usually took precedence. Once I was pregnant with my son, I taught myself to crochet because I wanted him to have a blanket that I'd made, and I've gone on to learn how to make children's clothing and decorate birthday cakes and so on, because it felt meaningful to hand make such things for my little ones. Now they enjoy baking and crafting with me!

Describe the conditions under which your work gets made.

For the thinking work, I need solitude and quiet. Writing is usually by hand, in a notebook, on a sofa in the conservatory when it's sunny or the living room if it's tidy. I have a desk set up in the guest bedroom with a huge screen and candles nearby and lots of books, but I tend to use that for typing up my words, editing as I go.
My fabric crafting is often done at the dining table with my family around. For 'busy hands' work, like a crochet blanket that involves minimal counting, I can (and do!) do that anywhere.

What kind of work becomes possible when your children are nearby, and what becomes impossible?

Writing and deep thinking happens when the children are out at school or activities. Other types of creating, I can usually do when they're around, sometimes with their 'help'. Unless it's their birthday cake, then it gets done in the early hours of the morning before the party, followed by the gift wrapping. As much as I try to get ahead of myself because I hate the last minute panic, my best work is usually inspired by a deadline!

What have you had to become in order to keep creating?

Unemployed...

What is the part of your creative life that no one sees?

The many, many, many works in progress stashed all over the house/garage, because if life distracts me with life-ing before a thing is finished, the time it takes for me to pick it up again is too often long enough for me to drop the threads, either literally or figuratively or both.
I have a bad habit then, of getting excited by something new. I'll usually go back to things eventually (especially if I can find a purpose for it to serve as a deadline...!)

Who or what has most shaped the way you create now — not at the beginning, but in the reality of your current life?

My children, absolutely. They've inspired me to learn creative skills I'd barely considered previously. And they're a big part of the reason I'm writing what I hope will be a memoir of the career I once loved - to show them that you can do anything you put your mind to, but also that its ok to walk away when it's no longer good for you. They've taught me to treasure the moments, the seasons, the details of life. How lucky am I?!

What have you had to let go of (willingly or not) in order to keep creating?

Career, income, the idea of living in a tidy house, fear, ego, worrying (too much) what people might think...

What are you in the middle of creating — and what shape is it in?

A memoir - about going into medicine from a non traditional background, growing up to be a paediatric and major trauma surgeon, and then deciding to walk away from it all. It's in the fragments stage.
The wonderful recently wrote about the process of creating her new memoir, and quotes Anaïs Nin in describing it as a 'laborious mosaic'. Well my mosaic is currently a jar full of tiles, all different colours and shapes and some a bit dusty and chipped. They are a long way from forming a coherent image, but (I hope) as a whole they hold potential in the way that each one creates shadow and reflects light.
Whether I can build a pretty picture from them remains to be seen, but for now I am collecting and polishing the tiles.

Where do you feel like a fraud in your creative life, and what do you do with that?

Oh goodness, everywhere. I was once told that saying I had impostor syndrome was actually a 'humble brag': claiming expertise and disguising overconfidence with fake humility.
Unsurprisingly, this was from a man whose (projected, at least) confidence far outweighed capability. I still have a persistent niggle of not belonging fully anywhere. But I try to accept that I am here, and there is space for me to be who I am.
Learning to use my voice and let go of the fear that accompanies expressing myself in the world is an ongoing conversation. I try to centre myself around my core values. I remind myself that what others think of me or my work is theirs to control. What IS in my power is what I think of me, and if, and how, I choose to listen, or to respond.

PARENTS WHO THINK TO THE COMMENTS 👇🏻 over to you

Next week: I’ll bring you my gorgeous conversation with !

Thank you so much for being here 💖

P.S. This interview was written up while listening to a rendition of Misty by Jeff Goldblum & The Mildred Snitzer Orchestra & Melody Gardot.

Caro Giles on Writing When There’s No Time (And No Clear Way Through)

Danusia Malina-Derben — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 14:16:13 GMT

Little hits this week

△ Great things are achieved through small steps

△ Imagine traveling to spend time with an artist, where they teach you their precious craft

△ “Next time I’m about to cast a harsh judgement on a stranger who offends me, can I allow myself instead to see them as the flawed and complex human that they are? Full of heartbreak, loss, ambition and disappointment, walking a volatile path of all the things they’ve ever failed at?” ― Kae Tempest

And here’s — award-winning, published, and writing from a life on the edge.

Give us a snapshot of your life as it actually is.

I am a single parent-carer. I have four daughters, including two who are autistic and are unable to access formal education. I care for them full time and try to steal fragments of time to write. I am currently unable to go out to work due to my caring/educating responsibilities.

Where can we find you?

Substack | Twelve Moons Book | Unschooled Book | Instagram | Psychologies mag column

Why do you create?

I create in order to use my voice. I write so that I can try to understand my emotions and how to navigate this wild life. As someone who is forced to inhabit the margins and hide away, I like to create in order to ensure I have an identity beyond caring, but also to raise awareness of the challenges families like mine face.

What does the inside of your creative mind actually feel like?

My mind is busy and full of feeling. It is energetic and can be prolific. I am a hungry person, keen to absorb life and express how that feels.

What has parenthood changed about your work — and what has it refused to change?

Parenthood directly informs my creative practice. I have learned to harness the constraints single parenting puts upon me and honestly they feed the way I work. Single mothering, and full time caring, have forced me to make the most of every moment. Both roles have highlighted to me the unfairness of our society and galvanised me into the role of advocate and accidental activist. I am endlessly interested in the human condition, and particularly the female identity, whether the mother can ever be separated from the woman.

Describe the conditions under which your work gets made.

I almost always have at least one child with me. I write either early in the morning, in notes on my phone on the school run, in the kitchen while pasta is bubbling, in libraries while my daughter works alongside me. And I am always weaving thoughts in my mind, amongst the domestic.

What kind of work becomes possible when your children are nearby, and what becomes impossible?

I find deep thinking and sustained writing periods almost impossible to come by. My creative life is fragmented and I am frequently disturbed. This is why I have been drawn to urgent memoir, writing in real time. I write what i feel, as I feel it. The crafting is hard to do because my attention is so often needed elsewhere.

What have you had to become in order to keep creating?

Disciplined. Focused. Determined. Ambitious. Brave.

What is the part of your creative life that no one sees?

I am fairly open about my life in my writing, but no one sees the juggle, and no one really sees the many moments of despair and disillusion. I try to work through them and use them to my creative advantage. It's part of a creative life after all.

Who or what has most shaped the way you create now — not at the beginning, but in the reality of your current life?

Probably the women in my writing group, who all have different challenges in their life that could prevent them from being creative. They are energetic, intelligent, generous and inspiring.

What have you had to let go of (willingly or not) in order to keep creating?

I have had to let go of time, particularly the idea that there will ever be much time just to write. I have to reframe what writing looks like, ignore the advice that has clearly not been designed for a single mother of four and try to be kind to myself when I am frequently frustrated at the lack of space available to me to create. It has forced me to look for creative opportunity in every moment, which has sharpened my observational ability.

What are you in the middle of creating — and what shape is it in?

I am trying to write a novel. It is about half finished.

What do you want to create that your current life doesn’t easily allow?

I would love to write another memoir, but one that requires a lot more research and deep thinking. I think I will have to wait until my caring commitments are less intense, and this is frustrating.

PARENTS WHO THINK TO THE COMMENTS 👇🏻 over to you

Next week: I’ll bring you a tender interview with ❤️‍🔥 Lots of love,

Note: If you buy a little something through my links, I may earn an affiliate commission, at no cost to you. I only share products I genuinely love. Thank you so much for supporting Parents Who Think.

Charlotte Stephens on Writing Like Gollum and Closing the Laptop Fast

Danusia Malina-Derben — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 14:15:08 GMT

Little hits this week

△ Tsujio Ippei’s paper concept turns all gifts into bread

△ Imagine playing fridge poetry with the world. Drumrolls for this

△ Cottagecore surrenders to burrowcore

Here’s answering some of my nosy questions:

Give us a snapshot of your life as it actually is.

I am a mum to three small humans aged 6, 5 and 2. The older two are boys, while the youngest is a little girl – the house princess, if you will. I am raising them with my husband, alongside the "babies" we had before them – a dog and a cat who are both now deaf geriatrics, one with signs of dementia and the other on medication for arthritis. Someone said to me recently that it's like we're running a creche and a nursing home in the same building, and they weren't wrong. So many different needs to manage! So many appointments in the calendar! (Help!)

Week on week, my life doesn't really differ. My boys are in school five days a week, and my daughter is in preschool 2.5 days – she hangs with me the other 2.5. On my "free" days, I work in a freelance capacity for a heritage charity, alongside other ad hoc freelance gigs.

I try to squeeze this work into the hours I have childcare, but often work evenings or early mornings as well, when the children are in bed. Around work I write my Substack, Baby Brain, which is beginning to make enough money to be bumped up from "hobby" to "client on the freelance roster," making it less guilt inducing when I play around on it instead of doing "paid work."

Weekends are for friends and family. (And for the occasional daytime disco, too.)

Where can we find you?

I write Baby Brain on Substack

Why do you create?

I create because when I don't, I don't feel like myself. I have gone years at a time without an intentional writing practice, for one reason or another, and have felt like a part of me was missing each time.

What does the inside of your creative mind actually feel like?

There is a painting I keep by my bed. I picked it up at an artsy market, and it shows a grey, moody storm overlaid with swirling pink flowers – flowers that look like they're being tossed around by the force of what's behind them. It's such a pretty contrast, and often when I look at it I think "ah, there she is, my brain."

What has parenthood changed about your work — and what has it refused to change?

Parenthood has forced me to prioritise what actually matters to me, and the work I was in prior to motherhood simply didn't make the cut.

Previously, I worked long hours for marketing agencies, and while I didn't love it, I was happy to be doing something I was good at. I still work in marketing but I'm now freelance, and only take on projects that can be done flexibly around my children.

I am still ambitious AF, but my ambition now is to be a great mum, and to find a way to work that helps new parents feel comfortable in their new role, rather than to get the promotion I never really wanted to begin with.

Describe the conditions under which your work gets made.

If I'm doing something that requires deep concentration, and that I'm not overly interested in, I sit at my desk. Otherwise, I'm either in bed, on the sofa, or at a coffee shop co-working/gossiping with a friend.

I like to have a cup of tea as I'm working, and I like to be dressed and "ready" even if I'm working an early morning. It puts me in a bad mood if I delay getting dressed in the morning, it's not worth the drama to wait.

What kind of work becomes possible when your children are nearby, and what becomes impossible?

I find it very hard to get any work done when my children are nearby, I won't lie to you. I lose my train of thought a lot, they want to see what's happening on my laptop, it devolves into carnage. If I absolutely have to work when I'm looking after them, I usually have to put on the TV. Otherwise, I work out of their reach.

What have you had to become in order to keep creating?

Someone who doesn't watch much TV (too distracting!)

What is the part of your creative life that no one sees?

I actually think I'm pretty open about most things, including how I make time for creativity. However, reserving time for my creative life does mean sometimes having no time for a domestic one, so I guess you could say no-one sees how messy my house gets while I pursue my creative life... Still working on perfecting that balance.

What keeps you creating on the days it feels pointless, indulgent, or impossible?

So I have this way of tricking my brain that is incredibly simple. I tell myself I only need to try for 15 minutes, and after 15 minutes if I'm still not feeling it, I can do something else. I literally set a timer, and by the time my alarm goes off, I'm quite often back in the zone.

Be honest: how do you procrastinate?

Oh, my dear, let me count the ways! Ha. I binge TV shows (hence restricting my TV time), I read one book after another without pause, I scroll Substack Notes, I read Substack articles, I stare into space...

How much of your creative life is pleasure, and how much is endurance?

It's all pleasure, I wouldn't bother if it wasn't. When the fun stops, stop, as they say.

If you could ask any creator one question, what would you ask?

I would ask every single Substack creator "what is your end goal? Why are you here?" I find the creative journeys of other writers fascinating.

I have friends on here who want to be business coaches, others that want to be traditionally published. I'm over here just enjoying writing my newsletter, with no other goals other than to just keep going with it.

I have absolutely no desire to write a book, for example. Can't think of anything worse. I love writing short form and I love moving on to the next thing and the next thing and the next thing. But I know some people want to write nothing but "the book" and their newsletter is just a way to get an agent. It's so interesting to me how different we all are on here.

If someone walked in on you mid-creation, what would they see, hear, and find slightly odd?

They would see me hunched over a laptop like Gollum, drinking tea and furrowing my brow. Not because what I'm doing isn't enjoyable, but because my resting writing face is very similar to resting bitch face. They might find it odd how quickly I close my laptop if they approach. Nothing horrifies me more than someone reading a messy first draft. *Shudders.*

Where do you feel like a fraud in your creative life, and what do you do with that?

My creativity is currently mostly funnelled into my Substack. I often feel like a fraud because there are so many beautiful, lyrical writers on the platform, and I mostly lean a bit silly and like to make people laugh. I worry people think I can't actually write, even though I can! I have a degree in newspaper journalism! I worked as a copywriter for years! Etc.

In terms of what I do with it, I Bear Hunt that shit. Can't go over it, can't go under it, got to go through it!

PARENTS WHO THINK TO THE COMMENTS 👇🏻 over to you

Next week: I’ll bring you . I’ve had this one waiting in the wings. Thank you so much for being here!

P.S. This interview was written up while listening to this Ragtime delight.

Note: If you buy a little something through our links, we may earn an affiliate commission, at no cost to you. We only share products we genuinely love. Thank you so much for supporting Parents Who Think.

Kendall Marie Platt Says Get Off Your Phone and Into the Garden

Danusia Malina-Derben — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 14:15:58 GMT

Hits this week

△ I love the internet, because it has sites like Musclewiki

△ I begged for cardamom bun recipes. A reader sent me this Chamomile Lemon bun delight.

△ Yep, I’d totally use this. You?

Here’s answering some of my nosy questions:

Give us a snapshot of your life as it actually is.

I have two young girls (4 and 8) and a husband who largely works from home intermingled with long travel days away and sometimes overnights, often at short notice. I do the majority of the school runs and am required to flex when last minute work commitments mean my husband is away.

Where can we find you?

Instagram | Website | Substack | Linkedin | YouTube

Why do you create?

I create because I have thoughts and opinions that I need to get out into the world. To quiet my mind but also because I know other women will be feeling and thinking the same and I want to help them feel less alone.
I have a huge mission to get women off their phones and into their gardens as the antidote to burnout. And so I create as a way to activate the women that need to hear my message and to fundamentally change the way society operates when it comes to looking after our wellbeing and mental health. More nature, less digital devices.

What does the inside of your creative mind actually feel like?

Very busy! Some days, it's honestly a bin fire in there. I have ADHD and there are definitely days when the thoughts and ideas are fighting so much with each other to get out that I go into complete paralysis mode.
And then there are days when my thoughts are more ordered and I can manage to focus on just the one I want to create on or with. Usually when i've had enough sleep, managed my 20 minutes of pilates while the kids eat their breakfast, journalled my thoughts out before I sit down to create.
I also use my garden throughout the day to calm my mind and centre my thoughts when the noise comes back and threatens to send me into paralysis again.

What has parenthood changed about your work — and what has it refused to change?

EVERYTHING! Before I had kids I was a forensic scientist, constantly working to try and prove my worth and regularly hitting cycles of burnout.
I had what I call my lioness moment as I laid on the floor of my house with my just born baby in my arms and thought 'Fuck, i've got to change the world for you my girl'.
I knew that I didn't want her to feel that she had to have zero boundaries and do everyone else's bidding in order to feel like she was achieving and getting ahead. I wanted for her to know that she is inherently worthy irrespective of how many accolades or 'well dones' she gets in her life. And I knew that the only way I could do that was by modelling that to her.
So I started my business because I knew I couldn't show her that in isolation. This needed to be real systemic and societal change and I needed other women to start to prioritise themselves and their needs as I began to do in my garden and in the supportive and healing arms of Mother Nature.

Describe the conditions under which your work gets made.

Honestly, It gets made in snippets of time. The way my brain works mean I need regular breaks between intense sessions of hyper focus.
I find often when I write I censor myself and what I want to say (thanks societal conditioning) so I tend to come up with a topic and scribble a few bullet points down and then just speak on it live on Substack on Tuesday's at midday UK time. I feel that it allows the warmth, energy and quirkiness of my personality to come through better that way.
Then I edit the transcript of the video and add it into the article below the live video. Substack creates handy snippets from my live video for me to share on social media.
If I am creating a horticultural therapy plan or writing a new exercise for a client I always need a deadline and so in a weekly meeting with my assistant I tell her the day I'm planning to do the work and then knowing that she is going to check in with me at the end of the day means I actually do it.
I also use co-working sessions to get work done. As you can tell I need external accountability!

What kind of work becomes possible when your children are nearby, and what becomes impossible?

My youngest is still at a childminder which is good because I get no work done when she is around. In the school holidays I will often invite a friend around for my eldest to play with and that allows me to do things like admin, some content creation.
But I wouldn't go live with them around or have a client session because my brain would struggle to give my full focus to my client if I knew the kids were in the house. When I run my garden along sessions for my membership which are often on the weekend, my husband is under strict instruction to keep the kids indoors.
It's important to me that my clients get my full attention and actually if I try and split my attention then I end up exhausted and take longer to recover which doesn't work for family life or work life!

What have you had to become in order to keep creating?

Someone who prioritises their health and wellbeing. If I want to create I need to be able to focus my mind.
Once I got my ADHD diagnosis I knew I had to do everything in my power to give my brain the best chance of functioning effectively. I have given up alcohol, I make sure I eat nutritious brain strengthening food, I drink enough water, get 8 hours of sleep.
I use gardening to give my brain 20 minute breaks throughout the day so that my energy levels stay functional, so my mind can stay calm and not muddled, so that my body gets rid of stress every day so my brain doesn't have to carry it. It's got enough to deal with!

What is the part of your creative life that no one sees?

The weekly planning so I have a structure in which to create. The frustration when creativity hits at a time when you have the kids having spent the entire time they were at school/ childcare unable to get your brain to create.
The unkind way that I still speak to myself when I can't get my brain to do what I want it to. The beauty and change I help facilitate in my client's gardens and their lives, because I'm not very good at either asking for or sharing testimonials (RSD- rejection sensitivity dysphoria and stuff still to unpick here around not being a show off). The second guessing and anxiety when something doesn't go to plan.

Who or what has most shaped the way you create now, not at the beginning, but in the reality of your current life?

I'm gonna be greedy and have 3.
1. My wonderful friend Maeve who not only pretty much saved my life by truly seeing me when I was in a bad way. But who continues to support me weekly, who challenges me when i'm down on myself and reminds me how bloody brilliant I am.
2. has shown me that we get to be our soft, loving wonderful selves and it is safe to share yourself with your online community (with boundaries of course). We don't have to be hustle, girl boss types in order to change the world. We can lead with love and get where we want to go and take our right fit people on the journey with us.
3. for showing me that I can create for 30 minutes a day to sell my services and get paid well for my work. Sales content is not my favourite thing to create, but it needs to be done if I'm going to support more women to get in their gardens as the antidote to burnout.

Be honest: how do you procrastinate?

I scroll on my phone. My brain is constantly seeking for dopamine and my phone provides that. It also allows me to numb any uncomfortable feelings I'm feeling around not being able to get my brain to do what I want it to or something that might have happened with the kids that morning, or when I'm writing an article or social media post that brings stuff up for me.
My phone is right there distracting me and I know its bad for me.
I know it makes me feel more anxious, and start comparing myself with others. So right now every time I'm reaching for my phone to procrastinate, I am heading to the garden, because I know 20 minutes out there will put me in a far better frame of mind than 20 minutes doom scrolling will. And when I return to my desk I've got a clear head and I'm re-energised to create. Instead of being stuck in overwhelm.

What piece of work are you avoiding finishing, and why?

My horticultural therapy book. I got approached by a publisher last year to write a book. Writing a book had always been on my list of things to do 'one day', but self belief and the thought of trying to work out how the hell to even go about it really put me off.
But when the publisher got in touch, in true Kendall style went at it all guns blazing, joined a brilliant writing challenge by my friend Steph Caswell, worked on my structure and started writing the book. The publisher decided not to go ahead with the book and even though I have another publisher interested I am not sure the traditional route is for me.
Steph runs a hybrid publishing company called Areta exclusively for female authors and the thought of being able to maintain control, actually be properly supported through the process of writing AND selling the book and getting to keep all the royalties myself is appealing.
So the writing has stalled because I want to make my decision about which route to go down before I write any more and because I only have so much brain space to devote to book stuff amongst all the other things I'm juggling.
Plus if i'm really honest, I'm scared. Scared to lay all my expertise out there on the page for others to critique and judge. Because despite the fact that I know my work changes lives, there's still a little girl inside me scared to put her head above the parapet for fear of being ridiculed for not being enough.

What does “a room of your own” actually look like in your life now? (Literal or not.)

Unsurprisingly its very green, filled with sensory plants and buzzing with nature and life- it's my garden.
My garden is my therapy space, it holds me when i'm sad, happy, angry, lonely, grieving, joyful and proud. It's where i can truly be myself with no judgement from others. It's where I can hear myself think and process the things that happen to me in life so I can release them and not have their energy stuck in my mind and body blocking my creative flow.
Right now in late Spring/ Early Summer it's filled with sweet scented roses, towering foxgloves buzzing with fuzzy bumblebees, bright red poppies, ox-eye daises and of course many weeds. Gardening for me has never been about creating the perfect garden but about reclaiming the parts of myself that I was too busy to notice and too tired to tend.

PARENTS WHO THINK TO THE COMMENTS 👇🏻

Kendall notices the moment she reaches for her phone to numb out — and heads to the garden instead.

I realise when I’m watching a man in a perfectly creased white t-shirt explain his morning routine while opening twelve identical jars.

What do you reach for when your brain wants out?

Next week: I’m bringing you one of my fave people, . Thank you for being here.

This interview was written up while listening to EGO ATROPHY drinking a cup of tea I’d reheated twice and still forgotten about.

Rebecca Gazzard on Weaving with One Hand & Holding Everything Else with the Other

Danusia Malina-Derben — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 14:15:18 GMT

△ Point out the good when you see it

△ What makes people influential: people whose ideas are hard for AI to copy.

△ Work won’t love you back

Here’s my conversation with Rebecca — on Weaving with One Hand and Holding Everything Else with the Other

Give us a snapshot of your life as it actually is.

I am a stay at home mum to a 5 year old, 3 year old and 7 month old who fits in her creative pursuits in nap times and odd moments throughout the day.

Where can we find you?

Instagram | Substack

Why do you create?

I create because I'm unbearable when I don't! I have realized that having a creative project to let my brain work out is incredibly healthy for me. Otherwise, I have a tendency to ruminate on negative thoughts or, during pregnancy and postpartum, let the intrusive thoughts become too loud.
Weaving is perfect because it's slow and meditative but it requires a lot of thought and concentration. Before starting a tapestry or a bookmark, I have to have a very clear idea of what I'll be weaving.
Since tapestries are woven from the bottom up, any pattern, border or decorative element I want to add to the main ''drawing'' has to begin at the same time as the work of the main ''drawing”. Choosing the colours, the texture of the yarn and all the fun stuff is secondary to the work of getting the structure just right so everything I want to weave will fit.

What does the inside of your creative mind actually feel like?

It feels exciting because the creative process is where I'm most comfortable. I love having an idea and thinking about it almost obsessively, gathering the materials, making sketches and then finding the way to sort out the inevitable challenges that come with every project.
Yarn, paper, pencils, paint and books- these are the objects that make me happy.

What has parenthood changed about your work, and what has it refused to change?

Becoming a mum changed the way I expressed my creativity. Before I had my son, I mostly wrote, drew and painted. I had never even seen a loom but there was something about the tactility and the repetitive motion of textiles that seemed to call to me.
I bought my first loom online and started learning slowly by watching YouTube videos and reading blog posts.
I guess what hasn't changed is the need to be creative, parenting makes it even more intense. It's important to have a project that is unrelated to my children, a space for me to breathe without them.

Describe the conditions under which your work gets made.

I've been weaving for almost 6 years and for most of that time I have had a baby in a carrier strapped to my chest. I don't have an allotted time in the week in which I get to be creative so I take any chance I can get, even if my neck and shoulders get sore!
I weave in the kitchen or dining room with a child on my lap or having a snack watching me work. When I'm inspired by a piece, I weave a few rows every time I have a minute- while the pasta is boiling or while the washing machine finishes. It's slow but just weaving a few rows does wonders to my mood.

What kind of work becomes possible when your children are nearby, and what becomes impossible?

I am teaching my son (5) how to weave so sometimes we have craft sessions where we're both weaving and my 3 year old is drawing or playing with yarn. These moments don't last long but I love them.
Most of the time, it's me with the baby in the carrier and the children playing or doing something else close by.
The most challenging parts of weaving with them around are warping the loom and trying to work out a difficult problem while they're talking or asking me questions. I didn't fully understand the phrase ''I can't hear myself think'' until they started talking.

What have you had to become in order to keep creating?

I've had to become more laid back and comfortable with discomfort. If I had to wait for a perfect moment to present itself, I'd never make anything.
Even as I answer these questions, my baby is asleep on my left arm while breastfeeding so I'm typing with my right hand. I do everything like this, I think most mums do, one handed and with astounding perseverance.

What is the part of your creative life that no one sees?

I think people don't realize how important being creative is for my mental health and how much quiet joy it brings me, except for my husband.
If my husband notices I haven't warped the loom or a piece isn't progressing over a few weeks, he'll ask me what's going on and offer to do whatever he can to help me get back into it. He knows it's beneficial for all of us if I'm happy and I'm happiest when I'm making stuff.

Who or what has most shaped the way you create now, not at the beginning, but in the reality of your current life?

The way I create now is shaped mostly by my family and the books I read. I feel like in both cases, they give me the freedom to experiment and take my writing and weaving seriously.
I find my children inspiring because they follow what interests them without questioning it. By reading a lot of books about artists and their process, I have noticed it's a trait they share: not questioning, just following what lights you up and letting it develop until it reaches its natural conclusion. It's part of a healthy creative process and a great tool to develop in order to live a fulfilling life.

What have you had to let go of (willingly or not) in order to keep creating?

I have had to let go of thinking I can get everything done, so I've learnt to prioritize.
At the beginning of the day, I choose one thing I really want to get done: sometimes it's a house related task, others it's substack or weaving, and focus on doing it.
Everything else on my to-do list is left aside until that one thing is completed.

What does “a room of your own” actually look like in your life now?

My room of my own is a corner on the kitchen counter. It's where my loom, yarn and tools live, together with some botany books I find inspiring. It's next to the sink so I'm always a bit worried that something will splash onto the piece I'm working on but it hasn't happened so far (fingers crossed!).

What do you want to create that your current life doesn’t easily allow?

I'd like to create an infrastructure for my life in which I could continue to be available for my children and dedicate time to creative pursuits while also earning an income.
I wouldn't say my current life doesn't allow for it but it doesn't allow much time to work on it, which feels contradictory - I need more time away from my current life to create a way of spending more time living my current life.
I am currently starting a business in which I'll sell digital templates and other book related printables on Etsy. I also dream of starting a YouTube channel but I wouldn't want my children to be in it so it'll have to wait until they go to school and I have some time alone.

PARENTS WHO THINK TO THE COMMENTS 👇🏻

Rebecca weaves one-handed, with a baby strapped to her and a child nearby, fitting it in wherever she can.

What’s the most makeshift way you’ve managed to keep something creative going?

Next week: I’m bringing you of The Seed. Thank you so much for being here.

This interview was written up while listening to A Toast, watching the rain, with a cardboard sun-cover for my laptop on standby.

Anna Neima on Making a Home, Writing at 5am, & Painting in the Corridor

Danusia Malina-Derben — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 14:15:50 GMT

Hits this week

△ Designer Jenny Volvovski’s unsolicited book covers — commissioned entirely by herself.

△ The Guardian asked authors, critics, & academics to compile a list of the best 100 novels of all time.

△ Our children owe us nothing. We owe them nothing. Love is not based on debt.

Here’s my conversation with — on Making a Home, Writing at 5am, & Painting in the Corridor

Anna painting at her corridor table, with one of her children

Give us a snapshot of your life as it actually is.

I’m a mother, writer and artist. I have two children, 6 and 3, and a third on the way. I am currently hurrying to finish my third book, on the art and history of making a home, before that third child arrives…
Alongside this, I paint in gouache and oils, mostly in the afternoons and evenings when my brain is to tired to write. As with my writing, I love to focus on the details of everyday life.

Where can we find you?

Instagram | Website | Substack

Why do you create?

Ever since I can remember I have written and painted. Creativity functions as a diary – a snapshot of my experiences and perspective at a particular moment. And as therapy, helping me to understand the world and my place in it, including imagining myself into the lives of others.

I think it’s a kind of worship too. I have no specific faith, but I see close observation of the world around me as something spiritual. The Scottish poet Kathleen Jamie writes about noticing what is around us as a ‘kind of prayer’, and I am very much with her on that.

What does the inside of your creative mind actually feel like?

It depends whether I am painting or writing. Here is an example of the different mental spaces.

The mug at my elbow has a human/verbal story: I have filled it with coffee, drunk it, and will, I hope, fill it again before the morning is over. There is a story of home that I connect intellectually, rigorously to my research on that subject and might write about.

But the mug is also an abstract/visual thing: a smudge of burnt sienna mixed with Vandyke brown and a little cadmium yellow, its rough, speckled curve catching the light just so... I want to sit down dreamily and capture that with my brush, no thoughts as such, just colours. There’s sometimes a blurring, disorientating effect to this double vision. But mostly I like it.

What has parenthood changed about your work — and what has it refused to change?

Before I had my first child, I had the capacity to work infinitely, and kind of thought that I *ought* to as well – that this was the right way to live my life. Being a self-employed creative, you can really lean into that obsessiveness. Fun, productive, but also a little unbalanced…

I came back to earth with a bump when my son arrived during the Covid pandemic. Life became all about the selfless act of looking after him, which I both loved and hated. I couldn’t immediately see how to fit in the person that I’d been before, which was confusing. Very gradually, with the help of reading and talking about other women’s experiences of combining motherhood and art, I got to a comfortable place.

I realised the mothering and creativity can feed off each other in productive ways. I draw inspiration from my domestic life and it also gives me the creative/intellectual downtime I was very bad at letting myself have before I became a mother. I make art endlessly with my children. I feel that my life is more balanced now – although, like most parents, I am also endlessly hungry for more time to myself!

Describe the conditions under which your work gets made.

I sit at the kitchen table from 5am to 7am. That is my best time for writing, when it feels like the whole world is asleep. Then, after the chaos of getting everyone ready for nursery/school/work, I either head out to the British Library for a day of research, or I continue to write at home until my mind’s given it’s best for the day.

In the afternoon I move to a plant-cluttered table in the corridor by the kitchen and paint for a couple of hours before picking my children up. If I’m not too tired, I might return to my painting after bedtime, or get on with some admin – I sell paintings, prints and cards in an online shop so there’s lots of packing involved with that.

That’s a smooth kind of day. The unpredictability of life with small children/life generally means days only happens this way maybe three days out of five.

What kind of work becomes possible when your children are nearby, and what becomes impossible?

Marguerite Duras writes: ‘Motherhood means that a woman gives her body over to her child, her children; they’re on her as they might be on a hill, in a garden; they devour her, hit her, sleep on her; and she lets herself be devoured’.

That’s pretty much how I experience it – though I feel less like a garden and more like a climbing frame. . . When my children are around, I cannot really work, though my mind is often storing away scenes to paint or ideas for my book, laying the groundwork for the future. The only exception to this is when they were babies, when I'd paint or write while they napped happily in the sling.

What have you had to become in order to keep creating?

I come from a big family that values worldly, practical achievement. Things like being a farmer, a doctor, a teacher, or making a lot of money. It was difficult for me to find my place in that when I was young since what I cared about was more abstract, less tangible.

I often felt I was failing at living in the right way. I tried to conform, becoming a lawyer, but I did not fit into that world and was lost and unhappy for several years.
To keep creating, I had to become confident in the legitimacy of what I was doing, which was a long journey. Part of that was letting go of the values of my birth family (I still remain close to them but I do not mind what they think about what I do). I found a tribe that shared my own values and made me feel what I was doing mattered, that that has sustained me.

What is the part of your creative life that no one sees?

The deep crises of self-confidence ... The sense of being a charlatan ... The feeling that I am not taking my work in the right direction … I comfort myself that everyone who creates feels this way sometimes. It is the downside of trying to express yourself truly and freely and passes with time, as long as I keep moving.

Who or what has most shaped the way you create now, not at the beginning, but in the reality of your current life?

When I met my husband fifteen-odd years ago I was an unhappy trainee lawyer and he was interning in publishing. He believed in art – that pursuing it was a legitimate way of life. It was a belief that gave me the courage to free myself from a job that I disliked, and that continues to shape the way I create and live.

He has a closer understanding of my creative ambitions than anyone else, and supports them – and vice versa. He is a writer and an editor at a literary magazine, and we share everything we write, offering each other suggestions.

The support is also domestic: we split chores and childcare fairly and try to give each other pockets of freedom to create – which is challenging in our busy family life. I think, looking around, that this kind of equal partnership-in-art is not easily come by, and that my efforts to combine creativity and motherhood would be far harder and far less joyous without it.

What have you had to let go of (willingly or not) in order to keep creating?

I used to think that I needed to dedicate myself full-time, full-bloodedly, whole-heartedly to one thing to be a great success at it.

I still think that perhaps that might be the case. But now I am not aiming for great success; I am simply enjoying the process. That lowering of standards and accepting of my own personal reality has allowed me to keep writing and painting and parenting in relative contentment.

And contentment, for me, is the wellspring of creativity.

What are you in the middle of creating and what shape is it in?

I am writing a book on the experience of making a home, told through the eyes of twentieth-century writers. It's been the project I've most valued in my writing life because it speaks to something I believe deeply: that all our lives revolve around a home of one kind of another, and we might as well make the best of this place.

It's also proved one of the hardest of my projects, because I so want to get it right and I am writing in a new style which involves personal memoir. I am a historian with a PhD.

Leaving the academic approach behind for something more intimate feels very exposing – although also exciting. I am hoping to finish the book by the end of this year, before my third child arrives, but I am also trying not to hurry it, to make it as good as I can get it ... it's a difficult balance.

Anna Neima

What does “a room of your own” actually look like in your life now?

I love the idea of a study so much that I have painted myself a dream one – green velvet curtains, book-lined, utterly peaceful.

The truth is that my study is a mishmash of places where I have temporarily found space and solitude. The kitchen table at dawn before it is used for breakfast. Lying in bed, tucked under the covers while my husband plays with the children downstairs. A table where I paint, but which I have constantly to clear of a tide of children's toys and accumulated clutter.

None of these places are private for more than a few hours, and I have a secret feeling that I might like working in them all the more for that. They are full of life in a way that a room of my own might not be.

PARENTS WHO THINK TO THE COMMENTS 👇🏻

Anna writes at the kitchen table at 5am, paints in a corridor, and sometimes works in bed while the rest of the house carries on around her. She loves that she doesn’t create in a fixed space.

What’s your version of the kitchen table/corridor/bed?

Next week: I’m bringing you Rebecca of Common Threads. Thank you for being here.

This interview was written up while listening to 400 Cities, eating lemon curd straight from the jar with my favourite silicone baby teaspoon.

Andy Carter on High-Risk Criminals, Fatherhood, and the Need to Write

Danusia Malina-Derben — Wed, 27 May 2026 14:15:34 GMT

△ The book I’m reading and deeply loving right now.

△ Building a living encyclopedia — for a parent, a child, a friend — using photos, stories, all of it — has me completely hooked. whoami.wiki is the one I’ve been looking at. Runs on your machine, and all data is yours.

△ I have a ~~thing~~ craving for cardamom buns. If you’ve got a recipe you swear by, please send it my way.

Here’s my conversation with — on High-Risk Criminals, Fatherhood, and the Need to Write

Give us a snapshot of your life as it actually is.

I live with my beautiful wife Louise and our two wonderful boys, Joshua (8) and Jacob (6). We are currently in one of life’s real sweet spots, out the other side of the sleepless nights and meltdowns in Morrisons, but still some time to go until the turmoil of the teenage years. Crucially, my kids are not embarrassed to be seen with me. Yet.

I work as a probation officer in West Yorkshire, spending my days sitting in small rooms with high-risk criminals.

Where can we find you?

I share everything I write on my Substack publication, The Flagging Dad.

Why do you create?

It keeps me sane and, honestly, I think I become a bit of a pain in the arse if I don’t.

What does the inside of your creative mind actually feel like?

Good question. A shed?

What has parenthood changed about your work — and what has it refused to change?

I write predominantly about parenthood so, rather than crushing my creative dreams, having kids has done the opposite and given me the inspiration (and plenty of material) to keep writing.

Describe the conditions under which your work gets made.

If I am working on something, I tend to get up at 5.30-6am, listen to folky indie music from the early noughties through my headphones, and write in the living room before the rest of the house wakes up. My 20s self would be disgusted, but I now love this time of day.

What kind of work becomes possible when your children are nearby, and what becomes impossible?

I say this with love, but I am incapable of doing any writing whatsoever once the kids are up and about.

What have you had to become in order to keep creating?

A man who wakes up at 5.30am, even though my wife has banned me from drinking coffee at this time because our new coffee machine is “too loud”.

What is the part of your creative life that no one sees?

My dickhead of an inner monologue saying, “Who do you think you are? Why would anyone care about this?”

What happens when you’re interrupted, and how do you get back into your work?

Once I am interrupted, I find it nigh-on impossible to snap back into it. I was fully immersed in writing yesterday morning when, at 6.45am, my eight-year-old son charged into the living room, munching an ambitious handful of Cheerios, leaving a trail behind him on the carpet, and I fully accepted that that was that for the next 23 hours.

When does your work actually happen? (Not when you’d like it to—when it does.)

I mostly write in the early mornings. Occasionally on the train to and from work, or during a lunch break in a trendy café near my office that charges FIVE QUID for a flat white.

I’d love to be able to do creative things in the evenings but, after a day at work, domestic duties, and taking the kids to and from whatever classes they are doing that evening, all I am capable of doing between 8 and 10pm is sitting on the sofa, eating Kettle Chips, and watching multiple episodes of Below Deck with my wife.

What keeps you creating on the days it feels pointless, indulgent, or impossible?

The thought that, what else would I be doing with my free time?

Scrolling the career stats of 90s footballers on Wikipedia, most likely.

Be honest: how do you procrastinate?

By taking deep dives into the career stats of 90s footballers on Wikipedia.

How much of your creative life is pleasure, and how much is endurance?

Let us go for 85% pleasure, 15% endurance. That is quite specific, isn’t it?

What do you protect fiercely in order to keep creating?

Obviously, my wife and kids are the most important things in my life, so I want them to be happy above anything else.

I try to make sure that my writing hobby does not make me a self-indulgent pain in the arse who doesn’t pull his weight with the laundry. Whether or not I succeed in doing this might depend on who you ask…

What have you had to let go of (willingly or not) in order to keep creating?

The notion that, at some point in my life, I will become a man who goes to the gym.

Which parent-creators make you feel seen, and why?

There are so many fantastic parenting writers on Substack, far too many to mention, but off the top of my head, here are some warm, funny and entertaining parent-writers that I wholeheartedly recommend: Charlotte, Sara, Daniel Puzzo, Alix O’Neill, & Lee Bacon.

What piece of work are you avoiding finishing, and why?

I started writing an uncharacteristically serious piece a while ago, but it has been sitting unfinished in my drafts for ages. I think I worry sharing it might feel a bit like when Charlie Simpson left Busted and started Fightstar.

If you could ask any creator one question, what would you ask?

Why did you leave Busted at the height of their success to start a post-hardcore band, Charlie?

What are you in the middle of creating and what shape is it in?

I have recently started writing a new memoir and I'm currently enjoying (I think?) that exhilarating and slightly manic phase. I'm 10,000 words into it and, so far, it is going really, really well and I am confident it will be the best thing I have ever written. You could ask me this same question tomorrow and get a very different answer, though…

What does “a room of your own” actually look like in your life now? (Literal or not.)

Sitting on the living room sofa in semi-darkness, hunched over the glow of my too-small laptop with, honestly, very poor posture that will probably lead to an occupational health appointment at some point in the near future.

What do you want to create that your current life doesn’t easily allow?

Aside from writing, I love playing the guitar.

My wife does not love me playing the guitar.

When I attempted to serenade her with some Eagle Eye Cherry recently, I could see, quite visibly, her finding me less and less attractive with each chord change.

If someone walked in on you mid-creation, what would they see, hear, and find slightly odd?

A nearly middle-aged man hunched over a laptop in a dimly lit room, humming wildly out of tune to “Fake Plastic Trees” by Radiohead and making strange facial expressions.

Where do you feel like a fraud in your creative life and what do you do with that?

I had a piece published in a national newspaper a while back and immediately felt a sharp pang of imposter syndrome, finding myself neurotically refreshing the comments section. The feedback was largely positive until someone pointed out I’d spelled “drawer” as “draw”, at which point I thought: who was I kidding? Thinking I’m some kind of writer has all been a terrible, terrible mistake.

PARENTS WHO THINK TO THE COMMENTS 👇🏻

If I don’t get to create, I start swearing at things that don’t deserve it and working my way through bowls of crunchy toffee popcorn like something’s gone badly off track. Be honest — what do you become when you don’t get to create?

Next week: I’m bringing you . Thank you for being here.

This interview was written up while listening to JT’s Numb, which I put on for my menopausal cat, Myrtle.

Amy Gabrielle on Creativity as a Means of Survival

Danusia Malina-Derben — Wed, 20 May 2026 14:15:41 GMT

△ This show made me briefly consider becoming a different person — two men renovating a crumbling mansion on a Scottish island and I’m completely in1.

△ This poster gives me such a good feeling.

△ Slightly obsessed with Kate Baer’s poems. I’m excited to share this Q&A I made with her.

I bring you — Creativity as a Means of Survival

Give us a snapshot of your life as it actually is.

I've been raising my 2e son (twice exceptional, gifted and on the autism spectrum) by myself for the last four and a half years. When my husband died in August 2021, Henry was 9 years old and I was 54.

As a solo parent, I structure my time around my son, who is now 14 and a little more independent. I hadn't planned to quit my full-time job as an administrator at Columbia Journalism School a year after Steven died, but I just couldn't focus on the work anymore. It was a strange time where I let go of work and structure to pursue my own passions at the time (photography, modeling lingerie, and then writing).

My memoir will be published in May 2026 and in the fall my son starts high school. I don't know what's next for me in terms of work or passion projects, and I feel untethered in a way that isn't always comfortable.

Where can we find you?

Book | Substack | Instagram |

Why do you create?

I felt driven to create after my husband died; it was instinctual rather a conscious choice. I had been at my administrative job for four years, and I loved it. I worked for an institute that made grants to journalists telling of the moment stories using innovative new media.

I was responsible for grantee budgets and other financial processes and it was very fulfilling. It was a shock to realize my feelings about it (and my ability to concentrate) could change so quickly.

I started taking photos of myself in lingerie (and naked) as a means of survival, although it didn't feel like that at the time. Looking back I see that creating art is necessary to survive after a death that rearranged my whole life.

What does the inside of your creative mind actually feel like?

This is an interesting question. My first thought was that I used to be so organized and task oriented. It was like living on a grid, streets had numbers rather than names and were intersected by long avenue blocks, like my neighborhood in Manhattan.
Things feel jumbled up now in my mind. Time doesn't feel linear, there's no beginning, middle and end to the projects I work on. My writing feels like it happens when I feel like doing it and stops when I lose interest. I'm still getting used to the difference.

What has parenthood changed about your work — and what has it refused to change?

As a solo parent, my son is my priority. I don't have a large family or friend group to take over my responsibilities.

I've had a lot of loss beginning in 2018 when Steven was diagnosed with incurable cancer, and six months later my mother died. Between 2020-2021 Steven's father, my aunt, my husband and then my father died. I haven't really mourned any of them because Steven's death left such a big hole in my life.

Describe the conditions under which your work gets made.

After I get my son off to school in the morning I write for a couple of hours at my dining room table. I never really got back to "normal" after the Covid lockdowns in 2020.

I spend a lot of time alone in my apartment, sometimes hyper focused on a story. My goal is to get out more, (maybe work in a coffee shop?) but the city feels more chaotic than it used to.

For now, my plan is to stay in New York until my son goes off to college in four years. Other than that, I haven't thought about it very much.

What kind of work becomes possible when your children are nearby, and what becomes impossible?

This has changed a lot since Henry was little and needed my supervision. He always had separation anxiety, even before his dad died, and never wanted to play alone in his room.

The past few years we work on our own computers, my son on the couch and me at the dining room table in the same room, together but separate. It's only within the last few months that he spends more time with his friends (mostly online).

At this point I think it's harder for me to let go as Henry becomes more mature. I don't push him to do more on his own, but I support him when he's ready to be more independent.

Amy and son

What have you had to become in order to keep creating?

I've had to become a few different versions of myself while still making sure all of life's admin gets done. From taking out the garbage to making doctor's appointments to hiring an education lawyer to get reimbursement for my son's private special needs school tuition because there is no appropriate free public option, I do it all.

When I think about it all I feel overwhelmed so I try to focus on what needs to get done in the present. I guess that's the biggest change: I find it hard to make plans for anything more than a week in the future.

What is the part of your creative life that no one sees?

No one sees how hard I can be on myself, especially when I compare my capacity to get stuff done before Steven died with the way I am now.

I feel fragile in a way I never did before and I have a fear of having the rug pulled out from under me again. Most people think of me as "together" and I think they are right - they just don't know how easily I can fall apart.

Who or what has most shaped the way you create now, not at the beginning, but in the reality of your current life?

Honestly, I think Steven's death shaped everything about my "new life". He left me financially independent so my quality of life is more secure than when he was alive (I am still working on feeling guilty about that although I know that's what he wanted).

His death rearranged my friend group (mostly families with moms and dads), my job, where I live (still in the city, but a couple of miles South of where we lived during our 13 year marriage). It's a strange thing to be shaped almost entirely by an absence rather than an addition to my life, but that's the reality of it.

How much of your creative life is pleasure, and how much is endurance?

Ninety-nine percent of my creative life is pleasure and one percent is endurance when I'm finishing up a project. I endured for many years, most of my life really, when pleasure felt tied to financial independence.

I've written about how my husband's death was the best worst thing to happen in my life and that's the truth. Every memory holds joy and grief, love and loss, happiness and sadness. I think my work for the rest of my life will be learning to hold the duality of feelings with as much grace and messiness as possible.

Amy & Steven

What have you had to let go of (willingly or not) in order to keep creating?

I had to let go of the dream that I would get back on my life's trajectory with a new man. I really thought I would have re-partnered by now and there's a part of me that feels like a failure for not finding a new "father" for my son.
When Steven died my capacity to get everything done was halved, but my responsibilities doubled. I've had to readjust my expectations for my life, especially in terms of traveling alone with my son.
We both have anxiety that's gotten worse since Steven died. When he was alive he was a great buffer for our anxious feelings, but now they rub up against each other. I feel more vulnerable and afraid to be out after dark alone, which is limiting in a way I don't like. Learning to accept my new normal is still a work in progress.

Where do you feel like a fraud in your creative life and what do you do with that?

I feel like I present myself as very confident and put together, and in some instances that's true, but mostly I feel like a harsh word about my memoir might crush me.
Rationally I know that my writing and my photos are not for everyone but the fear of rejection is ever present. The trauma of losing my life partner has brought back old childhood feelings of unworthiness. This past year I began to link some of the old wounds with my new life and feeling life a fraud.
It's hard work revisiting a time when I had to bury my feelings because I was reliant on my parents (as all children are). Learning that I will always be there to take care of myself, that I've got my own back, is something that comes up daily. I do recover more quickly from perceived or real slights, and that's good news.

Where has your life been rearranged — and what has emerged from that?

Next week: . Thank you for being here.

If you buy something through PWT links, we may earn an affiliate commission, at no cost to you. We only share products we genuinely love. Thank you so much for supporting Parents Who Think.

The No-Nonsense Guide to Self-Promotion: Lessons from Lucy Werner

Danusia Malina-Derben — Sun, 17 May 2026 07:31:56 GMT

Why “Hype” is a Tool, Not a Dirty Word

For many of us, self-promotion feels faintly mortifying.

We’ve been trained — culturally, professionally, generationally — to believe that good work should simply speak for itself.

Especially those of us raised within the “stiff upper lip” school of parenting: keep your head down, don’t make a fuss, and certainly don’t appear too eager for attention.

But in a crowded attention economy, silence is rarely interpreted as depth. More often, it is simply overlooked.

In this conversation from Parents Who Think Podcast archives, I sat down with Lucy Werner.

Lucy is a PR strategist and the author of Hype Yourself and Brand Yourself. Her approach is practical, unsentimental, and notably resistant to the performance-heavy culture that now surrounds personal branding.

This conversation remains one of the most useful discussions I’ve encountered on how to become more visible without sliding into caricature.

Public Presence Without Self-Erasure

How Much of Ourselves Must We Share?

One of the biggest hurdles to putting ourselves out there is the fear that we have to “overshare.” We see the “human interest” stories dominating our feeds and think, I don’t want to tell the world about my deepest traumas just to sell a service.

Lucy’s take? Show a bit of ankle.

You do not need to make your private life fully public in order to build trust. And you do not need to invite the world into your living room at 7:00 AM while you’re scraping porridge off the floor. Think of your personal brand like a magazine:

The News Section: Your current projects and expertise.
The Features: Your deep-dive thoughts and industry insights.
The Lifestyle Pages: The “horoscopes and recipes”—the soft bits.

It’s about connection, not confession.
...
While I’ve become increasingly vocal on what I think of as compulsory intimacy online — particularly the pressure placed on women to continuously humanise themselves through disclosure — Lucy’s approach feels partially bounded. It invites questions about being visible without becoming entirely consumable.

Creative PR Strategies: Standing Out in a Crowded Market

The “Where You Don’t Belong” Strategy

My absolute favourite takeaway from our chat was Lucy’s challenge: “Where can I put you where you don’t belong?”

We often get stuck in the “industry standard” loop. If you’re a tech founder, you try to get into tech journals. If you’re a designer, you aim for design blogs. But real magic happens when you pivot and find unexpected audiences.

“It’s about finding those little bits in the business that you might disregard as being fun or quirky and pulling those out.” — Lucy Werner

3 Actionable PR Tips You Can Use Today

If you’re ready to stop “shit-talking” yourself and start stepping up, here are three non-negotiables Lucy says you need in your back pocket:

The Landscape Headshot: Get a landscape version of your professional photo. Most media environments are visually designed that way, and it simply works better editorially.
The 150-Word Bio: Stop winging it. Have a tight, 60-second introduction ready to copy and paste for podcast invites or speaking gigs.
The Spirit of Reinvention: Don’t be afraid to “shed your skin.” Your brand should evolve as you do.

Listen to the Full 15-Minute Conversation

Perhaps the real challenge is not learning how to become louder, but learning how to speak about our work without surrendering ourselves in the process.

My conversation with Lucy is such a practical discussion on navigating that balance: how to become more visible without slipping into performance, caricature, or compulsory intimacy.

Whether you’re a long-time listener or new to the show, this short conversation offers a thoughtful and refreshingly grounded approach to self-promotion in an age that increasingly mistakes exposure for authenticity. What do you think:

How much of ourselves should public work require us to share?

meet me in the comments

Till later,

ASK YOURSELF:
Where would people never expect to find me? That’s usually where you’ll stand out the most.

Allegra Chapman on Neurodivergent Creativity as Cultural Resistance

Danusia Malina-Derben — Wed, 13 May 2026 14:15:48 GMT

△ I’m a soft touch for car boots — I love them. Completely. But the idea of standing behind my own table while people pick things up and decide, in real time, that they don’t want them… I can’t quite get past that. I don’t know if it’s rejection sensitivity or just knowing too much about how people behave.

△ I am spending way too much time on this website. Which weird tool will you build?

△ And I keep coming back to this brilliant corner of the internet — a free, volunteer-run library with 75,000+ public-domain books you can read, download, and keep.

I bring you — on Neurodivergent Creativity as Cultural Resistance.

Give us a snapshot of your life as it actually is.

I am a neurodivergent woman raising two (I am almost certain) neurodivergent kids, together with my supposedly neurotypical husband (I'm no longer so sure he's not one of us!).
Last year, my husband and I made a decision to go all in on living the lives we have always dreamed of. I got ousted from corporate life a while ago when I dared to get pregnant with my first child (how dare I?!), but I had still been doing consultancy work for large organisations.
My husband had been an accountant since before I met him, and had hated it for the entire 13 years I had known him. We were tired of having the blood sucked out of us by businesses that didn't care about us, or about anything else.
We were tired of being cogs in the machine. He left his job and retrained as a plumber. I left my consultancy business and committed full-time to my writing.
Now we're trying to live a heart-led life that lights us both up, and gives us space to spend quality time with our children as well as our own souls. So far the results have been mixed! :) But overall, I think it's well worth it.

Where can we find you?

Website | Latest Book | Substack | Instagram | Books on Amazon

Why do you create?

I have to. I tried not to for a really long time - in my 20s, surrounded by a load of unfinished projects and feeling out of step with the standard ideal of "the writer", I told myself I just wasn't cut out for this.
I'd wanted to be a writer since I learned to write the alphabet, but somehow it just wasn't working. I tried all the creativity courses and the productivity books, but none of them worked for me. So I gave up.
I spent years telling myself that I'd outgrown writing, that I had more "important" or "serious" things to do. Then my first child was born. I'm not sure what happened, really - the words just suddenly started pouring out of me. I remembered how incredibly integral writing is to who I am, and how much it nourishes me.
So I started, tentatively, to pick it back up. Since then, I've felt a drive to share stories that have historically been hidden or silenced. Not just in my own work, but also through coaching and empowering neurodivergent and disabled creatives.
We need a wider variety of stories shaping our culture - because the cultural narrative that dominates our society right now is failing a lot of people. I want to reshape that narrative.
As a neurodivergent person, it comes naturally to me to challenge the status quo and look at things from a different perspective - I hope that my writing, and the work of the creatives I coach and support, can help the rest of the world to reconsider what kind of world we want to, collectively, create for ourselves.

What does the inside of your creative mind actually feel like?

Chaos.
I'm AuDHD, so there are always a whole bunch of ideas swirling around at any one time. I'm extremely prone to being distracted by a new shiny idea - every new concept that pops up feels like the most important and most urgent thing in the world, so it takes some effort to keep myself on track with projects. But I've also learned to lean into that and appreciate that part of who I am involves coming up with lots of ideas and having lots of things on the go at once.
It works for me to be able to move between different projects so that I can choose what I work on based on my energy and capacity on any given day.
I'm passionate about making positive change in the world, and a lot of my work is influenced by a drive to change the cultural narrative and give voice to people and issues that have been silenced. That can mean I get easily overwhelmed by the state of the world right now, and I have to consciously disconnect from it all sometimes, otherwise the sadness and anger and fear is all too much.
I have to get the balance right between being driven by my sense of justice and wanting change, and not getting paralysed by the magnitude of it all.
Although I'm a writer, I'm a very visual person. I like playing around with painting and mixed media art to explore some of the themes in my work, and often I have images swirling around in my head before I can put ideas into words. I have synaesthesia - words and sounds have colours in my mind, so my experience of writing is actually quite visual.
I'm influenced heavily by mythology, and by nature, and the interconnection of the two. So I spend a lot of time outside, daydreaming about sea god/desses or nature spirits. I live half my life in a story world, and I have to remind myself to be present in the real world too.

What has parenthood changed about your work — and what has it refused to change?

Parenthood was the catalyst for me rediscovering my writing, and, at the same time, put a huge limitation on how much I *could* write.
In some ways, though, I think that's been helpful. When I had "all the time in the world" (not really, but sort of), in retrospect I now realise that was too big, too overwhelming.
Now, if I can only snatch 15 minutes to write while the kids are going to sleep, then that is a manageable container that my brain can handle. It forces me to actively seek out pockets of time to write, rather than thinking I can do it whenever, and then never actually getting round to it.
I sometimes worry about what my children will think of my writing. I'm working on a novel at the moment that was largely inspired by my experience as a neurodivergent woman parenting my neurodivergent daughter, and I worry about what my daughter will think of it when she's old enough to read it.
But I also want to write it for her because I want to offer some support and validation to her, and women like us, who are different. I hope she will see that, although I've found this experience challenging (figuring out my own neurodivergence alongside hers and having no guidance on either was always going to be tough!), there's incredible beauty and power in it too.
My children inspire me - I want to make the world just a little better for them to inherit, and I want to show them that they *can* follow their personal calling and live life on their own terms.

Describe the conditions under which your work gets made.

It's messy. Even though I'm a full-time writer now, there is so much of the "business" side of things that needs to be done, that seems to take up all the time I have while the children are at school!
So I'm still writing in little snatched pockets. Sometimes on the floor of my kids' bedroom while they're falling asleep, sometimes on the kitchen counter while I'm cooking, sometimes while I'm sitting on the side at their swimming classes... Sometimes I work alongside the kids, too.

We'll all write or paint together. I work in short bursts, in fragmented shards of time, but it seems to work for me!

What kind of work becomes possible when your children are nearby, and what becomes impossible?

My children don't second-guess themselves or judge their ideas, they just sit down and create. That helps me to get out of my head and just play around with ideas. Especially with visual art - I'll sit down with them and just splash some paint around and see what happens. Or I'll scribble a few ideas down.
It's freeing, being around people who are so liberated and haven't yet learned to censor themselves.

On the other hand, I cannot get into any deep writing when they're around. Every minute or two, someone will want a snack or need to ask me a question or want to tell me about something that happened last week. I can't maintain a train of thought.

So sketching out ideas is fine, but crafting them into a coherent narrative will have to wait until the small people are out or unconscious!

Allegra is running a free 5-day experience to show how a nervous system-friendly creative habit works in practice

What have you had to become in order to keep creating?

Myself. I've realised that my issues with creativity came from trying to be the type of person that society told me to be. I thought there was something wrong with me because I couldn't show up like a neurotypical person, and I spent ages beating myself about that, which just sent my nervous system into shutdown.

Once I accepted who I am and allowed myself to be different, I was able to build a creative practice that worked for me.

What is the part of your creative life that no one sees?

The angst and the worry and the imposter syndrome! I think I do a good job of pretending I'm completely confident and know exactly what I'm doing, but it's a very different story on the inside!

I was bullied a lot when I was younger, and I've been in a few toxic relationships with partners in the past, so my self-esteem has never been particularly high.

I struggle to believe that anything I create is actually any good, so I spend a lot of time worrying that it's all a massive waste of time! It means a lot to me when people tell me they enjoy my work or that it's meant something to them - it helps convince me that it is worthwhile after all!

Who or what has most shaped the way you create now, not at the beginning, but in the reality of your current life?

My husband has played a big role - he has worked really hard to carve out space for me to write, and to enable me to focus on the work that matters to me. Both in terms of financially giving me the security I need to be able to write, and giving me space from the children and the life admin. He really believes in me and wants to support me, and that means so much to me.

I also have some wonderful friends who believe in me and support my work, and that gives me the confidence and courage to keep going. People think of writing as quite solitary work, but having a community around me (online and offline) has been invaluable in making me feel that this is truly worth doing!

What happens when you’re interrupted, and how do you get back into your work?

I get interrupted a lot. Sometimes by other people, but probably more often by myself!

I leave myself a lot of notes and make a lot of lists about what I want to do and what needs doing so that I can keep track of where I am.

My energy and capacity fluctuate wildly, and I move between different projects, so sometimes a project might go untouched for a chunk of time. Having notes and plans (even if I don't stick to them that closely!) allows me to reorientate myself when I pick a project back up again - I can see where I've got to and what I need to do next.

What keeps you creating on the days it feels pointless, indulgent, or impossible?

I've wrestled with this a lot - how can you mess around with art when the world is on fire?! But I've come to understand that creativity is an essential act of resistance.

In a world that promotes mindless consumption and destruction, that uses both people and planet as resources to be used up, it's a subversive act to be creative. Our culture wants us to be anxious and uncertain and to feel that we're lacking, so that it can sell us stuff and keep us submissive.

When we lean into joy and beauty, we are subverting that paradigm. So I remind myself that the act of sitting down at the page, of expressing my voice - a voice that, as a queer, neurodivergent mother, the dominant culture would rather keep silent - and creating with joy is an act of resistance.

The more of us that create and share our voices and make beauty in the world, the more we can begin to shift the cultural narrative, and that is how we change the world.

Be honest: how do you procrastinate?

Social media is a big one, because I can easily convince myself that I need to check it for work - I have to promote myself, after all. But then, of course, I get sucked down a rabbit hole and lose huge chunks of time, and then hate myself afterwards. I'm trying to wean myself away from my phone as much as possible!
I've deleted most apps from my phone to try to remove the temptation. I put them back when I absolutely need them, then delete them again! I try to do as much as I can on my laptop as it's harder to get sucked in there.

I work at home a lot, so it's easy to get distracted by cleaning, or tidying, especially with two young children taking the house apart at every available opportunity. There is always laundry to do, or dishes to load or unload.

Then there's different bits of work I have to do, or life admin, or side projects... I currently have 30 tabs open while I'm writing this, which is fairly normal for me, and it's so easy to flick from one to the other without settling on anything for long enough to focus.
A lot of the time I convince myself that I'm not allowed to do the fun creative stuff until I've done "work" stuff, and dealt with the business side of things.

I try to work in sprints - if I set myself 30 minutes to write, then I can justify that to myself because it's *only* 30 minutes and I will do all the other stuff afterwards.
Sometimes I alternate - I'll do 30 minutes of writing, then go clean the bathroom for 15 minutes, then do another 30 minutes of writing, then set a timer where I'm allowed to dick around on social media or whatever for 15 minutes, and so on. That way I've created a container in which my brain feels able to settle.

How much of your creative life is pleasure, and how much is endurance?

I would say most of it is endurance! I get the most pleasure from coming up with new ideas and playing and experimenting, but there is so much hard work in shaping those ideas into a finished product, and then so much more work in building a career around those products that financially sustains me, and that is the stuff my nervous system objects to!

That's where I need to understand how my brain works so I can support myself to be able to show up.

What piece of work are you avoiding finishing, and why?

My novel. I started it when my daughter was a baby, and she's about to turn 8!
Part of it is time and space, but I have been doing a lot of work with a coach (shout out to Sarah Wilson!) and realised how much I avoid it out of fear. If I don't finish it, then it can't fail.
If I don't sit down to write it, I don't have to deal with how hard that process is, or my self-doubt over whether I'm actually just shit at writing, and I don't have to confront how much work there is still to do. I can keep this big, exciting idea in my head, pristine, without getting into the messy, ugly work of making it real. I'm doing my best to overcome that!

What are you in the middle of creating and what shape is it in?

I've just finished one book - Divergent Creatives, which is my manifesto for neurodivergent and disabled creatives to let go of the limiting beliefs our culture instils in us and to make art on their own terms.
I'm now in the process of launching and promoting that. This is the bit I hate most - I love writing, that's my happy place, and then once the project is finished I just want to rest. But then I have to market it and try to get people to buy it and that feels deeply uncomfortable for me because I have so many fears about being visible and being rejected.

At the other end of the scale, I'm working on the novel. I've finished the first draft, but now I have to weave in a whole subplot and flesh out the bits where I put [something happens here] and that all feels very stressful.
I keep thinking of the feeling of satisfaction that I have holding a copy of Divergent Creatives in my hand, and how I'll feel when I get to do that with the novel to keep me motivated... but that feels a long way off right now!

If someone walked in on you mid-creation, what would they see, hear, and find slightly odd?

They'd probably hear me talking to myself, which would involve a lot of muttered "shit"s and "fuck"s while I argue with my computer. And with myself.

Also probably me waving my hands around (I'm half Italian!) and drumming on the table while I try to think of the word I want that perimenopause has pulled clean out of my brain.

They might wonder why I have an essential oil burner going, a candle burning and smudge sticks of dried rosemary, sage and lavender giving off smoke.

Part of my process is to turn creativity into a ritual - opening space to mark my creative time and easing the transition into that work helps my brain to move into the right frame, and also tells my nervous system that its safe to create now.

It's a way of giving myself permission to use this time for creativity, and also making it feel a little magical! I can then close that space when I'm done, giving myself permission to rest and switch off.

I dread to think what they'd think of the state of my desk! I have stacks of notebooks everywhere, and post-it notes all around to remind me of different things I have to do, and various bits of paper strewn around...

My neurodivergent relationship with object permanence means that if I put things away, those things will disappear from my brain completely. So I need them to be out and visible if I'm going to remember to deal with them.

I do most of my writing by hand to begin with - I feel much more inspired when I'm writing in a notebook rather than a computer, and I love the sensory feel of pen on paper. So I do my first draft on paper and then type it up, which is then my first round of edits! That means I end up with a lot of notes and books to coordinate!

Where do you feel like a fraud in your creative life and what do you do with that?

I still carry a lot of baggage about not being a "proper" writer.

Like a lot of neurodivergent people, from a young age I was often told that I was doing things wrong, or that my way of thinking was wrong. Then, when I tried initially to build a creative life, and I couldn't follow the standard guidance, that was another thing that I seemed to be doing "wrong".

I was bullied a lot at school and even at university, so I always felt that I wasn't good enough, that I was inherently lacking in some way that I didn't properly understand. I've internalised those beliefs pretty deeply, so there's still a voice inside me that says I'm not doing things right, I'm not good enough, I don't deserve success.

The more I get to know other writers and artists, the more I realise that everyone feels that way. Even established creatives and ones that I look up to tell me that they feel like imposters or that they're not good enough or that they think other people are doing "better" than they are.

It helps to recognise that I'm not alone in these feelings and, actually, they're a normal part of the process. I've stopped waiting to feel like I'm a "proper" writer now.

I used to think a point would come when I'd done enough and proved myself enough that I would feel that I was now "good enough". I've realised that that point will never come, that I'll always be growing and developing and always experiencing self-doubt. Weirdly, that helps.

It's not that I haven't done enough to get there yet, it's that that point doesn't exist. So now I can just focus on doing the best I can do and accepting those feelings as part of the process.

What does your work look like when you stop trying to do it the “right” way?

Next week: . Thank you for being here.

“So why,” he asks, genuinely prodding, “did you carry on?”

Note: If you buy something through our links, we may earn an affiliate commission, at no cost to you. We only share products we genuinely love. Thank you so much for supporting Parents Who Think.

Female Ambition: Why Success Still Costs Women More and What Happens When You Refuse to Pay

Danusia Malina-Derben — Sun, 29 Mar 2026 15:16:46 GMT

Wayne Thiebaud

Why Female Authority is Always Defined as a ‘Problem’

The producer leans back in his chair and smiles the way men do when ~~they think~~ they’re being generous.

He tells me he loves the treatment. The pacing. The writing. The ambition. The scope. He says it’s sharp. He says it’s compelling. He New York slow-drawls that I have rare talent.

He says all the shiny things first.

Then he pauses, taps the page with one finger, right over her name, and says:

“She’s a problem.”

The protagonist.

Without a beat, he delivers the verdict.

“She’s not likeable.”

There it is.

He’s on a roll now, warming to his theme. He cracks his knuckles once, the sound sharp in the quiet room, and eases himself further back into the chair. His legs open as he settles, unselfconsciously wide, the table edge pressing into his stomach.

He explains that audiences need to like her. Really like her. So much that they feel like they are her. He says this patiently, as if offering guidance, as if this is not taste but physics.

But right now she’s too opinionated. Too uncompromising. Too big for her size 36 boots.

I watch him swirl an olive through the pale wash of gin, slow, deliberate. He sucks it clean and drops the stone back into the glass. His face has colour now, alight with the pleasure of certainty, the look of a man comfortably inside his own appetite, pleased to be explaining how things work.

“She’s got to suffer a bit,” he says.

“Deadass, if she’s going to step out of line, the story needs to show consequences. Otherwise people won’t go with her.”

What he means is simple:

She has too much agency and not enough punishment. She hasn’t paid enough for her choices.

He is a kingpin in his sixties. White. Successful. An industry powerbase investor. He’s seen everything, funded everything, greenlit everything — except, apparently, a midlife woman who does not get smaller.

He tries to say it politely, professionally, without quite saying the obnoxious part out loud.

She’s dangerous if she’s not brought to heel.

What he doesn’t know — or perhaps knows perfectly well — is that the entire point of the story is that she is not punished for her refusal to be brought to heel. She doesn’t lose her mind, her body, her kids. She doesn’t lose the man. Or die.

She doesn’t learn her place.

In fact, in my TV drama it’s the exact opposite; she learns how to exact power.

And in doing so she grows in strength as a woman. This is, it turns out, unacceptable.

Because there is a rule — and it applies far beyond television.

A woman’s scale is socially permitted only when it carries the weight of a palpable penalty.

Ambition is allowed if it costs her warmth.

Fertility is allowed if it damages her body.

Authority is allowed if it ensures her loneliness.

Desire is allowed if it delivers her shame.

But excess without psychological or physical cost? That’s when the story turns hostile.

A woman who exceeds the rules and does not appear broken is not aspirational. She is suspicious. She makes people ever so uneasy. She triggers a hunger for payback.

We say we want strong female characters. What we mean is: strong, but humbled. Strong, but softened. Strong, but still eager to be approved of.

Otherwise she’s “a problem.”

The Societal Penalty: Why Women Pay for Ambition in Sanity and Likability

A few days later, I’m at the breakfast table. Granola. Coffee. Morning light.

Montgomery [child number 8 of 10] asks me calmly, mid-chew, why I kept having children. His tone is curious, not cruel; he’s simply noticed a pattern, rather than mouthing a cultural script. Most families he sees have one, two, maybe three or four children. He tells me: “But you kept going.”

He knows the cost because he lives inside it: the laundry, the logistics, the exhaustion, and the sheer stretch of it. He’s old enough to know I wasn’t naïve.

It’s the same question.

Just without the polish.

Why didn’t you stop once you knew the terms? Why didn’t you reduce us triplets to one baby?1 Why didn’t you choose less? What he’s really asking, without judgement, is why I exceeded the norm with my eyes open.

And this is where people want the story to bend.

They want me to say I didn’t know.
They want me to say it broke me.
They want regret.
They want a cautionary tale.

Because a woman who says I knew exactly how hard it would be and I chose it anyway destabilises the entire economy of sensible decisions.

The Power of Refusal: Choosing Agency Over Approval

Agency isn't given; it is the refusal to accept a boundary you were never forced to accept.

We rely on the belief that excess is punished to make our own compliance bearable.

So when a woman refuses to repent, the culture starts looking for the missing wound. We search for evidence that her attempt has taken something essential in return: the extra weight on her body, the apology and guilt for her ambition, the loneliness for her power, and the humility for her survival.

And if the evidence doesn’t add up, we invent a flaw, fabricating moral injuries like coldness, selfishness, and pathology.

Because someone has to pay. And it must be her.

We idolise women who go too far, and we loathe them for it. We cheer them on until they don’t collapse. Then we wait.

We watch. We want some sort of reckoning. The divorce. Maybe a breakdown. The visible toll that restores order.

A woman who exceeds without visible damage feels like cheating - a
violation of the social contract that dictates her sacrifice.

And cheating demands punishment.

That’s why the producer’s discomfort and my son’s curiosity live on the same axis.

One is enforcing the rule. The other is noticing it.

The Refusal to Bleed: Writing Women Beyond the Cautionary Tale

The rule is not about motherhood. It’s not about television. It’s not even about like-ability.

It’s about containment.

A woman may have excess only if she carries the proof of it on her body, her face, or her life - only if she becomes small enough again to reassure us all that the limits were real.

I have no intention of telling that story in the TV series I am writing. Not for my children. Not for my work. Not for an audience that requires women to bleed narratively in order to feel comfortable.

I am invested in what happens when a woman claims her brutal history as her own, keeps her agency instead of trading it for approval, and does not make herself palatable to make others feel safe

If that makes my characters unlikeable, my choices questionable, my life hard to categorise — well, so be it.

That’s not a flaw in the story. That’s the point.

If this analysis of the cost of female ambition resonates with the choices you have made, let’s look at the structural shifts that matter most. How about we start here:

🥨 Where in your life are you performing palatability when you could be choosing agency instead?

🍾 What part of your own “excess” or ambition are you refusing to apologise for, right now?

✂️ Where have you accommodated a boundary you were never actually forced to accept?

PARENTS WHO THINK TO THE COMMENTS 👇🏻

This essay is an invitation to end the narrative of sacrifice. I’d love to talk this over with you and hear which part of “unpaid audacity” hits you hardest.

Come on over to the comments to share your perspective.

Fuel the Fire. Go Paid 🔥

it is routine for women having higher order multiple pregnancies to be asked if they’d like to reduce the number of babies to one or two.

Sharing the Unspeakable: A Raw Motherhood Memoir

Danusia Malina-Derben — Sun, 08 Mar 2026 17:49:39 GMT

wayne thiebaud

Today, sitting on the couch in slightly stinky pyjamas, it became abundantly clear that there is never going to be a right time to write.

Hideous things are happening every day. Online personas are built by tearing others down, calling them out, retreating into echo chambers. I want none of that.

If I want to be real here, I have to let that shit go. I can’t live my life in apology.

So here we are.

It’s been a strange Q1 — a mix of highs and lows. My usual client work with brilliant-but-difficult senior leaders has been especially powerful lately. At the same time there’s been a wild recovery from a post-Christmas concussion involving a heavy tree, terracotta flagstones and my skull, also being ‘flooded in’ by a literal moat, and some very precious connected time with my family.

I especially love my early teen triplets and I say that with all sincerity and totally swoon when my seven older ones call to catch up.

But alongside that I’ve been battling some pretty nasty inner monologues and old stuff resurfacing1. Village support scarcity issues. Good-enough-mothering bullshit. Mood swings between questioning everything, anxiety and rage.

I heard someone say recently, “Is it fascism or is it menopause?” and I laughed out loud because honestly… who the fuck knows.

If you’re not a client or someone I see in real life, it may have felt a little quiet around PWT lately. Some of that has been by choice. Some of it because my capacity has been stretched more than usual. And some of it because… the state of the world.

I kept waiting for the right time to write here.

The right moment. The right topic. A time when it wouldn’t look tone deaf, when it wouldn’t be too much, when my big joy and tiny struggles and country life wouldn’t offend anyone.

But that perfect moment never arrives.

Candidly, my current plan includes working with my doctor on adjusting my HRT, seeing my shaman about the inner saboteurs, transplanting hundreds more snowdrops, and keeping going on daily red-light therapy2.

Spring, basically.

Which brings me to the piece I’m sharing today.

What I write about here happened a decade ago — I’m deep in memoir work, and this is part of what’s coming up.

This essay, originally published in , is a slice; one of the most vulnerable things I’ve had published elsewhere, on a subject that frankly scares the pants off most parents.

It also gave me a heavy dose of my own lessons.

My work has always been about poking at the taken-for-granteds of who we’re supposed to become once children arrive — and asking how we craft lives on our own terms, not other people’s formulas. Even through the messy bits, the 3am inner turmoil, and the moments that knock us sideways.

So here it is.

Some of you may already have read this piece. For others, it will be new.

The situation I write about happened some time ago, not recently.

Why share it now?

Because wherever you’re at, I want you to know it’s okay. High, low, or that strange middle ground of simply getting through the day — it’s all okay. You are okay. This isn’t about being good or brave.

When I feel lost, terrified, or morally and spiritually exhausted rather than brave or good, I look for inspiration in small things: planting seeds, children, community, hopeful stories. I look for them because I have to.

We need that inspiration to go on.

And we do go on. Because that’s what we do.

Sending love.

Motherhood Is a Surprise Performance. This Was My Audition.

Open Secrets Magazine

It began with a phone call. A Friday afternoon, mid-January. The sky outside: the color of wet wool. The man’s voice on the line asked if I was the mother of X, and something in the way he said it told me this wasn’t a question. It was an initiation. I knew the cadence. The flattened warm…

a year ago · 44 likes · 45 comments · Danusia Malina-Derben

is fab to read on all this, and more.

https://www.uclahealth.org/news/article/5-health-benefits-red-light-therapy

As I Was Saying with Poorna Bell

Domination or Disgrace: On the Men and Boys We are Making

Danusia Malina-Derben — Sun, 22 Feb 2026 17:17:21 GMT

QUICK SUMMARY: I focus away from individual perpetrators to the systemic conditions that produce and protect male entitlement. I explore the formation of masculinity and how we teach boys that power is a responsibility rather than a resource; a truth I live as a mother of ten children, including six sons.

The continuing disclosures around Epstein are not simply the resurfacing of an old crime. They feel closer to an excavation — an incremental revealing of proximity, protection and collusive accommodation that extends far beyond one man.

As names are reintroduced into circulation and associations are examined in slow motion, what comes into view is less an aberration than a structure that endured because it was buffered.

Janet Hill

We are not dealing with isolated scandal so much as a pattern whose insulation has begun to fail.

When men long cushioned by wealth, status or institutional proximity become publicly exposed as abusers — or as participants in a culture that enabled abuse — the reaction moves swiftly between moral outrage and something more ambiguous: fascination, speculation, a kind of collective gawking at the mechanics of power finally exposed.

The harm is undeniable. So is the appetite.

What interests me is not only the catalogue of individual wrongdoing, but the larger question of formation — what kind of masculinity is produced, rewarded and protected, and what happens when the system is no longer able or willing to shield it.

The details are nauseating; the structures, less surprising.

Outrage ignites quickly, as it should. Commentary multiplies even faster. The speed with which harm is metabolised into stance is striking, even as the underlying structures remain largely untouched.

Threaded through it all is a familiar unease about men - not newly born, but differently consolidated, no longer so easily dismissed as episodic outrage.

The question is shifting from individual perpetrators to the conditions that produce and protect them: how masculinity is shaped, what forms of entitlement are normalised, how power is inherited, rehearsed and defended.

What we are confronting may not be deviation at all, but design.

Beyond the Headlines: Masculinity as Design, Not Deviation

In a moment when opinion arrives almost simultaneously with revelation when denunciation, contextualisation and alignment blur into a single reflex.

I resist the demand for immediacy when the real work is diagnostic, not reactive.

There is pressure, particularly on women who think publicly, to register ourselves immediately — to demonstrate moral clarity, to articulate outrage, to reassure, to contextualise, and to be visibly present. Silence, even brief, is treated as evasion.

I am not persuaded by that tempo.

I have ten children, six of them sons.

This moment does not unfold for me at the level of abstraction; it lands in the ordinary architecture of our house. It is not a tidy morality play in which “men” and “women” function as opposing categories.

It is lived daily, in the formation of boys who will become men within a culture that oscillates between indulgence and exposure — that shields male fragility in youth and then expresses astonishment when it hardens into harm.

What does it mean to raise sons while the public image of masculinity is tethered, again and again, to abuse of power?

What does accountability look like if it is not annihilation — if it aims at transformation rather than spectacle?

How do we teach boys that power is a responsibility rather than a resource, when so much of what they see suggests the opposite?

Where is the line between empathy and excuse, and who draws it?

What kind of men are we attempting to cultivate when our cultural script offers them two options — domination or disgrace?

The cycle we are watching is not only about exposure; it is about appetite for revelation, for punishment, and for the clean satisfaction of narrative closure.

It would be easy to let this become another chapter in an ongoing theatre of male fallibility and female endurance.

I am less interested in theatre than in formation.

If the stories breaking are a reckoning, and in many cases they are, then the question is not merely who falls. It is who is being built in the aftermath.

Boys are absorbing this. They are reading the headlines. They are watching the tonal shifts. They are learning, consciously or not, what power affords and what it costs.

Harm is harm. Accountability is non-negotiable.

But neither is it useful to pretend that humiliation alone produces better men. Nor that fury, however justified, substitutes for structural change.

Accountability Beyond Spectacle: Seeking Structural Change

Before I add a fully formed essay1, I am reading and refining the questions rather than amplifying the noise.

What follows are pieces that approach this with depth.

Women aren't angry enough, apparently

As slogans go, ‘women aren’t angry enough’ can frankly go f**k itself. I saw it pop up a couple of weeks ago in response to the steady stream of revelations in the Epstein files, as we and the world discovered how many powerful men had been allegedly complicit in a wide range of crimes ranging from sexual traffi…

6 months ago · 132 likes · 22 comments · Poorna Bell

White Ink with Anna Wharton

"This Is Not Courage, It's a Deep Urge to Change Society"

• If you would prefer to listen to me read this article in full, you can skip down to the end of this article. This is available for paid subscribers only…

7 months ago · 88 likes · 55 comments · Anna Wharton

A Low Desire To Please with Jameela Jamil

Ah shit! We let pedophiles decide our beauty standards.

Post the release of the harrowing Epstein files, and the powerful men in media and fashion, considered possible accomplices, it feels fair to say this with more gusto…

7 months ago · 7257 likes · 549 comments · Jameela Jamil

Airplane Mode with Liz Plank

Epstein Created The Male Loneliness Crisis

This work is not easy. A lot of it is very risky. If you want media that tells the truth, subscribe. That support is not symbolic. It keeps my work alive…

7 months ago · 517 likes · 6 comments · Liz Plank

Unmanned

22. Epstein: Why are We Talking about “Elite Complicity” and not Male Supremacy?

Unmanned is a reader-supported publication. If you’ve found this essay useful and thought-provoking, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Your support means a great deal and makes it possible for me to dedicate more time to in-depth feminist writing, research, and advocacy. Thanks for reading and sharing…

7 months ago · 97 likes · 23 comments · Soraya Chemaly

If you’re thinking beyond the headlines, about what this means for boys, for men, and for the culture that shapes them, let’s continue the conversation.

I’m not interested in that performance.

This post contains affiliate links; I may earn a small commission if you buy through them at no cost to you.

Cold as Etiquette: Why Professionalism Demands the Neglect of the Female Body

Danusia Malina-Derben — Sun, 08 Feb 2026 15:15:23 GMT

Eggs and Dominoes. Gertrude Abercrombie

It’s freezing. I’m not talking of cinematic snow-globe freezing or romantically freezing. But a version of cold that gets marrow deep into your joints and starts annoyingly interfering with any kind of thinking.

It’s also torrential rain, sub-zero air, and a long haul from countryside into London by train, followed by a steely boardroom where I’m expected to be sharp, decisive, and capable of walking with purpose.

Walking with purpose matters to me. If I can’t move like a big boy1 through a space, my attention fractures.

In warmer months, I don’t have to think about it. In winter, it becomes a logistical puzzle no one talks about: how to stay warm enough to think without dressing in a way that invites questions about my judgement.

The bastards of January and February: A logistical puzzle

If I were employed, this would be easier. I’d keep work clothes at work. A drawer. Some hooks. A radiator that might belong to me.

I’d commute wrapped like a Victorian orphan and change into something crisp on arrival.

But I’m a consultant.

My travel kit has to be the outfit. It has to survive wind-scoured platforms, cold carriages with damp seats, and people eating stinking hot baps, and still read as ~~credible~~ power on a VIP client floor.

This week, I nearly cried when I saw a woman in corporate gear wearing cropped trousers, flat loafers, and no socks or tights. Bare flesh. Ankles out. In actual winter2.

I wasn’t judging her. I was alarmed.

How is she not full body rocking while blubbing? How is she even thinking? What internal furnace is she running that the rest of us weren’t issued?

I do not run hot. I feel the cold. My body responds to it with paralysis, distraction, and a low-level misery that makes everything harder than it needs to be.

Warmth, for me, is not comfort. It’s cognitive infrastructure.

Work dress codes assume a woman’s body is warm by default.

Engineering the Outfit

Three layers on top. Two below.

A grey lace body with an underwire bra — unbelievably satisfying popper noises, everything held where it belongs. A lightweight black base-layer turtleneck. Then a deep red heat-gen thermal, thick, snug, round-necked, doing its job. Over that, a fitted grey wool/cashmere jumper to be thrown off before meetings.

On the bottom: 60-denier opaque black tights and ME+EM cigarette-cut trousers. Deep red lace-up leather brogues with a 1” heel — a man’s work shoe, essentially3.

Over it all, a black wool Gucci4 coat with ruffled edges and pearl buttons, doing the heavy lifting so the rest didn’t have to. Grey wool gloves with fur cuffs, and cream Arran bobble hat pulled down. Black umbrella.

Diamond earrings. Red nails. Bare makeup except a red lip. Unfussy.

Regulated enough not to be angry.

The cost was visibility. My shape was more on show than feels neutral in professional settings. Around me were people in sheer blouses, moving easily through the day like temperature was a suggestion. Sweet Jesus. How.

But I was warm. Not cosy. Enough.

Warm enough to think, to listen properly, to move through corridors without bracing myself. Warm enough to stay outward-facing.

Cold as Etiquette

This is the part no one says out loud:
professionalism relentlessly demands indifference to discomfort.

It trains the body to be ignored. Cold becomes etiquette.

The body becomes something you override so you don’t disturb the order of things.

The lighter the clothes in winter, the clearer the message: I follow rules.

I dress to stay cognitively intact. To remain in command of my attention. To work with my nervous system regulated and my thinking fully available.

If that means thermals under tailoring and a coat that establishes terms, so be it.

Freezing is not a professional virtue.

I’m not playing that game.

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tongue. cheek

Winter in the UK = December, January, February. What February does have is: more light, and the idea of spring (Imbolc, snowdrops, longer mornings).This is psychological thaw without physical relief.

clothes and shoes via Vinted or charity shops. new M&S tights

how i was gifted a 3.5k gucci coat, that’s a different conversation

The coat. This is what “establishing terms” looked like.

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5 Moira Rose Life Lessons: Confidence & Splendour

Danusia Malina-Derben — Sun, 01 Feb 2026 15:15:53 GMT

I read the news and felt an unexpected grip in my chest that happens when grief shows up wearing colour instead of black.

Catherine O’Hara is gone, and instead of reaching for reverence or restraint, my mind leapt straight to wigs.

I’m not talking metaphorical wigs. Actual wigs. Stacked. Labelled. Waiting. To vowels stretched until they gleam. To a peculiar, stabilising relief of remembering that seriousness truly does not require sobriety.1

I have zero interest in writing a eulogy. I want velocity. And the pull of style. I crave something that snaps the spine a little straighter and reminds me how to occupy myself properly when the world feels oh so thin, brittle, and aggressively under threat.

Pink Bow: Angela Burson

So I seek out Moira Rose.

Moira is where Catherine O’Hara’s work keeps living.

Because with Moira, grief arrives in sequins, dignity wears synthetics, and language doesn’t need to behave to matter.

She is not just a character I remember. She is a posture I return to.

Moira Rose (the iconic character from Schitt's Creek) is what happens when a woman decides she will not be translated into something easy to first digest, and then spit out.

She is a reminder that survival does not require aesthetic surrender. That joy can be constructed, and selfhood can be curated.

Because life can still be worn loudly, even now.

Catherine O’Hara gave us a lifetime of women. Moira Rose is the one she leaves us to return to.

The 5 Moira Rose Habits for Survival and Splendour (Schitt's Creek Life Lessons)

1. Take Yourself Seriously Enough to Be Ridiculous: A Confidence Boost

Moira Rose understands something many women are trained out of early: taking yourself seriously can arrive wearing feathers.

Moira’s grandeur comes from a deliberate decision that her inner life deserves scale. She allows herself to be large in public, ornate in speech, excessive in presentation, because she trusts that her interior world can carry the weight of it.

Ridiculousness becomes a form of credibility. It signals a woman occupying space she already knows belongs to her.

Moira takes herself seriously enough to risk being laughed at, and that risk generates authority. The humour lands because she believes in herself so thoroughly that hesitation becomes the oddity.

In the rubble, she does not say, be sensible. She says, be splendid. She understands that splendour is not the opposite of seriousness; it is one of its most effective expressions.

The spectacle isn’t her confidence; it’s how long everyone else waited to claim their own.

Why this matters now:
Women are being nudged, yet again, toward restraint as a mark of credibility. Grandeur is treated as suspect, with ambition as unbecoming, and joy as unserious.

Moira offers a model where scale operates as assurance, and where confidence arrives dressed as comedy while remaining fully herself.

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2. Make Your Life Visible on Purpose: Identity, Wigs, and Pre-emptive Clarity

Moira Rose does not wait to be interpreted correctly. She signals.

Through her hair, clothing, accent2, and vocabulary, she brings her life into view on her own terms, setting the frame before anyone else can shrink it through assumption.

She understands that ambiguity is rarely neutral for women. If you do not announce yourself deliberately, the world will happily misfile you.

So she chooses to be unmistakable.

Her wigs operate as statements3. They say: this is a woman with appetites, opinions, and a sense of theatre sturdy enough to withstand public scrutiny.

Her voice performs the same function. It carries her history, her tastes, and refusal to beige herself into something easier to place.

Why this matters now:
Regression in our culture thrives on women being misread; rendered simpler, smaller, easier to sort. Moira shows that visibility, chosen deliberately, is not vanity. It can be pre-emptive clarity.

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3. Stop Translating Yourself: Unfiltered Power, Language, and Intelligence

Moira Rose speaks as if the people listening can keep up.

She finishes her sentences, chooses the word she actually means, and lets silence do its thing. Her thinking arrives whole, without being thinned out to make meaning land gently.

This is a practical decision.

Translation for acceptability takes energy, and Moira knows where hers is better spent. There is pleasure in that economy. Relief, even.

The relief of no longer scanning faces for reassurance, no longer pre-editing a thought in anticipation of misunderstanding, no longer padding meaning so it feels safer to receive.

Why this matters now:
Women are again being nudged firmly toward explanation: asked to soften, contextualise, and smooth language so it passes comfortably through male-dominated spaces and brittle systems.

Moira offers permission to stop. To speak from the centre of your intelligence and allow others to do their own listening, thinking, and catching up.

In a time that asks women to be smaller so others can feel bigger, Moira raises the standard rather than lowering herself.

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4. Use Pleasure as a Stabilising Force: Why Delight is Essential Self-Care

Moira Rose treats pleasure as life force.

Hair, language, drama, aesthetic indulgence—these function as daily maintenance and supports rather than prizes handed out after achievement. They keep her upright when conditions deteriorate.

Pleasure, in her world, works practically. It generates stamina. It restores orientation. It keeps her from internalising scarcity as virtue.

Moira understands that when the culture grows coarse, delight becomes a way of preserving herself without the threat of collapse.

Pleasure steadies her. It keeps her from hardening. It allows her to remain amused, engaged, and operational even when the ground shifts beneath her feet.

Why this matters now:
Deprivation is being repackaged as moral strength. Joy is often framed as frivolous, indulgent, and somehow suspect.

Moira shows how pleasure can operate structurally because it is something that holds you together, something that keeps you resourced, rather than something deferred until after endurance.

5. Leave a Way, Not a Rulebook: Posture, Scale, and Refusing to Shrink

Moira Rose leaves behind a posture rather than a prescription.

What Catherine O’Hara gives us through Moira is not guidance in how to behave, but evidence of what becomes possible when a woman commits fully to her own scale.

This is why Moira matters beyond the show, beyond the jokes, and beyond her wigs. She makes room for history, desire, disappointment, and joy all at once.

Why this matters now:
In regressive times, women are flooded by rules. Be less. Be careful. Be grateful. Be quiet.

Moira leaves something vital: a way of being that expands rather than contracts, and that trusts women to adapt it to their own lives.

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What This Leaves Us (Right Now)

What stays with me is how usable Moira is.

You can take her into an ordinary day without turning it into a performance. You can speak one sentence without softening it. You can choose clothes that save you time later. You can let silence sit where you would normally rush in to smooth things over.

None of this requires exhausting attention or serious agreement. It works whether anyone notices or not.

That’s why this character endures: as a set of habits that work under ordinary daily pressures.

Moira Rose doesn’t ask women to become more visible or more confident or more anything at all. She offers a method that can be adapted selectively, in real life.

And that feels like a truly rare thing to be left with.

Some questions Moira leaves us with - love to hear your thoughts on any of them in the comments:

➡️ What ridiculous thing would you do if you already took yourself seriously?

➡️ Where could you make yourself more unmistakable instead of easier to misread?

➡️ Who are you still translating yourself for and why are you letting them set the pace?

➡️ What pleasure would you protect if things got worse, not better?

➡️ What rule are you still following out of habit, not conviction?

Thank you for being here,

She’d knit me scratchy vests and socks. Trust me, I was the only girl at convent school wearing homemade cable-knit socks with a matching 3ply vest under my uniform.2

“If I had a list of worst attributes to have, number one would be having no sense of humor about yourself,” O’Hara said. “It does not serve you. Just think about this: We are all going to die, and yet we carry on. We have no power at all, and we’re in denial. Taking ourselves seriously seems so ridiculous in the face of that fact.” The Globe and Mail (2019)

Moira is a consummate O’Hara creation, and a big part of that is her breathy, over-enunciated voice. She arrived at it by combining Marilyn Monroe and Audrey Hepburn.

For Moira’s look Catherine O’Hara studied images of Daphne Guinness and “other extreme-rich ladies,” and borrowed Moira’s love of wigs from two women she met who change wigs mid-dinner party. If you’re considering wigs see Amanda

The Art of Not Being Sensible: Dispatches from Under the Duvet

Danusia Malina-Derben — Sun, 25 Jan 2026 10:10:25 GMT

I’m writing this from my bed. It’s 04:22 and I’ve made a choice I am now living with.

Two duvets cohabiting inside the same cover, which turns out to weigh roughly the same as sleeping under a pair of sumo wrestlers who have fully committed to staying put.

There is also a heated under-blanket involved, because apparently I believed warmth could not go too far. This felt sensible at 9pm. By eleven it had become a situation.

The Sumo Wrestler Duvet and Moral Thermals

I am still toasting in a way that briefly raises the question of piles, which I will not be googling, under any circumstances.

I’m wearing vintage thermals that might be Damart1, a light blue the colour of very cold lips, designed for women who expect to be chilly and plan accordingly. The elastic is doing its best. The seams have their own opinions.

My mum loved Damart. She used to flick through the inserts tucked into the Weekend Guardian or The Times, pausing over heated footrests and massage pads with narrowed, suspicious eyes, as if they were promising more than warmth. I think she believed the massage pads were secretly something else. Not for her.

Thermals, though, were safe. Entirely decent. Moral.

“Character building,” she’d say.

Anyway.

Back to now. Back to the things currently orbiting my attention, whether or not they’re sensible or finished.

I’ve been thinking a lot about metre-long candles.

Actual ones. Ridiculously long. They exist at a scale that makes every normal candle look embarrassed. At no point did anyone say, “that’s enough candle.”

size really does matter

Horticultural Operations: Winter Sowing and Metre-Long Candles

I’m winter sowing seeds. Lupins first. They’re in ziplock bags with drainage holes snipped into the bottom, filled with compost, sealed shut, and lined up outside like a perimenopausal woman named Lisa watched a worrying amount of YouTube and now believes she’s running a small but serious horticultural operation.

I’ve also been thinking about my brother’s ashes.

He lives in a glass cabinet in the drawing room with Sammy the taxidermy kittiwake. He once mentioned being scattered across the sea. I’ve kept him here, which feels sensible given he was a bank robber.

Then there’s Rosie in northern Sweden, renovating a cabin in the snow like time has been cancelled.

Timber everywhere. Silence doing much of the talking. She’ll pause mid-task, stare at a wall, make a cup of tea, and somehow this counts as progress.

I watch those videos the way other people mainline crime shows — for the relief of watching someone move slowly on purpose.

wild & cosy at Rosie’s place

And Rewilding Jude. Scotland. A man learning how to do things he was never taught, in real time, on the internet, with tools he’s still getting acquainted with. He holds them a bit wrong. He swears, nearly. He keeps going. Watching him figure it out feels like sitting near a fire built by someone who had to work out how fire works first. He’s un-slick. And adorable.

Cabin Porn and Research: The Pull of Slow Progress

I’ve fallen into pallet cabin porn. There are surprise benefits. Men alone in forests, sleeves pulled up, shorts in weather that doesn’t agree.

Pallets slapped down, lifted again, lined up, corrected. Drills whining. Wood giving way. No talking. Just making something stand upright.

There’s one called Erik. He has a chopper. He brings it out like a promise. Trees come down clean. Logs split. Time disappears.

I watch him frame walls the way other people watch hands on a wheel — calm and slightly indecent. And somewhere between the second coffee and the fifth replay, it becomes obvious I’m not just watching. I’m studying3. Because I’m building one. Here. On my land. A pallet cabin.

This counts as research.

Which brings me to the yurt.

Photo by Marc Pell on Unsplash

The Yurt Question and Loft Bees

Should I buy one? This feels like a reasonable question when you already have a Flow Hive stored under your daughter’s vintage black iron bed, waiting for its moment. The yurt would arrive in several large, circular packages and then live somewhere inconvenient for a year while I adjusted to the idea of owning it.

The bees already live in the loft. The question is whether they’ll relocate.

It’s 04:47 now.

The house is asleep. The under-blanket is still over-committed.

This is what things look like from here.