👋🏼👋🏼👋🏼 Hiya! I’m Laura, bestselling author of 17 books and writer of one of Substack’s bestselling newsletters too. I believe you don’t change your life by becoming someone else - you change it by telling the truth about who you already are. How to Build a Life is where I do that, in real time, twice a week, to thousands of readers all over the world. Thank you for being here!!

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I’ve mentioned before that I have a newly-developed system with my pal who works in beauty, wherein because now I’m buying physical books instead of reading on my Kindle (I lost the charger!! D’oh!) every time I see her I pass along what I’ve loved reading and she gives me primer and perfume and sometimes lip balm. It’s a great deal! This past meet-up I delivered her an exquisite selection of recently-released reads - it was banger after banger - and she said, I don’t even know which to save for my holiday, and I was like, Holiday book choices are so vital, a lot hangs on it, and then we went through what I’d given her and I said: this, this, and this, with a level of authority that I felt through my whole body and down to my toes. Telling her what to read on vacation was my calling, my divine right, my talent, my purpose, so much so that I thought: yeah, I have to put this in a newsletter. I feel a responsibility here. So these are some books I think deserve the suitcase space, written about as briefly as possibly and with vibes in mind. That’s the thing, isn’t it: the book is about the vibe, and the vibe is what a trip is all about. Here’s what I’m suggesting based on what I’ve loved, and also what I’m packing for my own trip (that I can’t recommend, per se, because I haven’t read them yet. But I am v. hopeful!!)

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👋🏼👋🏼👋🏼 Hiya! I’m Laura, bestselling author of 17 books and writer of one of Substack’s bestselling newsletters too. I believe you don’t change your life by becoming someone else - you change it by telling the truth about who you already are. How to Build a Life is where I do that, in real time, twice a week, to thousands of readers all over the world. Thank you for being here!!

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It’s hard to tell the truth about being a parent because using words to explain the stars and the moon and the sun and the universe existing within your heart, your body, and your mind, consuming you, defining you, frustrating you, comforting you, pushing you, triggering you, making you feel like you could die from so much good and implode from so much mess… well, it’s like trying to hold an ocean in your hands before it slips through your fingers.

There is, quite simply, no language for parenthood. To tell the truth about it is impossible.

The only thing we can do is continue to tell the truth about ourselves.

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👋🏼👋🏼👋🏼 Hiya! I’m Laura, bestselling author of 17 books and writer of one of Substack’s bestselling newsletters too. I believe you don’t change your life by becoming someone else - you change it by telling the truth about who you already are. How to Build a Life is where I do that, in real time, twice a week, to thousands of readers all over the world. Thank you for being here!!

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Jeez Louise, July!! Amirite!! I can’t believe how long it lasted, how much overly-hot weather we endured, how much happened??? Do you feel the same? How are we feeling about it officially being summer break? I know US readers started a month ago, and most of the UK have been on break for a couple of weeks already, but spare a thought for those of us in Derbyshire who finished less than a week ago. Who designed the calendar that saw an almost-8-week half term to finish off the academic year? They need the sack! It makes no sense! I hear rumours of parts of the UK that have moved to four weeks off in the summer, and two weeks in October and February instead of just one, because otherwise the stretch from summer to Christmas and then Christmas to Easter is just too long. I’m all for it! All for re-thinking of the school calendar!!

I know I’ve said it before, but working in a school has totally re-evaluated how I think about what we put our kids through. It’s too much, is the bottom line, and just because we did it and survived it doesn’t mean that’s how it should be forever and forever. Is there somebody out there cleverer than me who can defend what we expect from students and staff alike? Or tell me how to help shape what it becomes next? It’s a loaded subject, and there’s always someone who says, schools are never bloody on, it’s a break every six weeks, shut yer pie hole and stop complaining. But what schools do to the nervous system of everyone involved, the relentlessness of them… you just can’t compare it. Obviously hospitals and public sector work must feel the same, but those of us in education who have previously been in traditional industry all note that normally work has ebbs and flows, peaks and troughs, has small moments of respite at least, and education just… doesn’t. Not to mention that in industry you can take a holiday whenever you want, or aren’t directly affecting the education or wellbeing of scores of children if you’re sick. It’s different, ok!! Schools are wild beasts!

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👋🏼👋🏼👋🏼 Hiya! I’m Laura, bestselling author of 17 books and writer of one of Substack’s bestselling newsletters too. I believe you don’t change your life by becoming someone else - you change it by telling the truth about who you already are. How to Build a Life is where I do that, in real time, twice a week, to thousands of readers all over the world. Thank you for being here!!

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7C,

When you walked through the school gates last September, you had no idea, really, what Year 7 was going to be like.

You didn’t know where your classrooms were. You didn’t know which teachers you’d love, which subjects would surprise you, how hard some days would feel, or how much you were really capable of.

And neither did I.

I’d never been a Year 7 form tutor before I was yours. I had a dragon of a form tutor myself, when I was 11. She was fierce and demanded the best from us, and she protected us too. I decided, when I found out I’d be looking after 7C, that I’d model myself on her. I hope you have felt that protectiveness, that you understand I always had your back, would help you – and yes, ask you to give me, school, and yourselves your best.

The best part of being 7C’s form tutor has been that I have had front-row seat to so much learning. It’s not that you are simply older now than you were in September. You have become more yourselves. And that’s all anybody wants for you: me, your teachers, the school – even home. We all want you to discover the ways you feel most at ease with yourself. The biggest success you can have in life is to like yourself. The second biggest success is being a person who makes it easy for those around them to like themselves too.

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👋🏼👋🏼👋🏼 Hiya! I’m Laura, bestselling author of 17 books and writer of one of Substack’s bestselling newsletters too. I believe you don’t change your life by becoming someone else - you change it by telling the truth about who you already are. How to Build a Life is where I do that, in real time, twice a week, to thousands of readers all over the world. Thank you for being here!!

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I mean, God - basically I suppose I went into school thinking I was taking a temporary part-time job, and I’ve ended up discovering a part of myself I hadn’t fully understood before. It’s kinda the part of myself I’m most proud of, too. So. That’s nice.

I’ve not written about school for ages. I think to begin with I was so self-conscious about being an author taking this weird step into something else, and not even with her full chest (temporarily? Like working in a school is a sabbatical, or “holiday”?) (school as a holiday, lol), that I wrote about it because I was a bit embarrassed and wanted everyone to understand. Maybe I was trying to understand, too, because it wasn’t like I was suddenly training to become an English teacher so that I’d have a steady paycheck and a pension plan. That could have made more sense. But being somebody who seemed to have “made it” also… being a substitute teacher? Possibly for just seven months? But then signing a permanent contract? Is she like, having a breakdown? Or not as successful as she seems?

But since the ADHD diagnosis and medication, and all the deliberate work I’ve done around turning 40 and letting being a mid-lifer sink in, there’s a level of peace I’ve come to have around accepting that yeah, I like to write and I like to be around kids and both of those things make sense when you’re good at the things I am good at.

Which is… noticing things. Noticing people. Noticing kids, especially.

And I’ve simply been getting on with it, with school.

But as the year ends, of course I want to write about it again, revisit it. I can’t help myself.

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👋🏼👋🏼👋🏼 Hiya! I’m Laura, bestselling author of 17 books and writer of one of Substack’s bestselling newsletters too. I believe you don’t change your life by becoming someone else - you change it by telling the truth about who you already are. How to Build a Life is where I do that, in real time, twice a week, to thousands of readers all over the world. Thank you for being here!!

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You were a Knights Templar, he told me. In the early 1100s. You were a very good Knight Templar, a very brave Knights Templar - but you came to have great regret around the violence you had inflicted. You decided, in the end, to return home - a journey you made alone. You’d been gone so long everyone assumed you were dead. Your wife had taken a new husband. You weren’t mad. You had money. You gave her a small amount to continue her life elsewhere, and you resumed life in your old home. You never married again - in fact, you became monk-like. You went from being a physical warrior to fighting for spiritual truth, and you died with your hand on the bible.

So for my 40th birthday my friend Lucy got me a past life reading. A man called David asked me for my date and place of birth, and on my behalf meditated into the Akasha - guided by his connection to the Tree of Life, astrology, and higher realms.

Oh, sorry - you don’t know what the Akasha is? Gosh! How provincial!

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👋🏼👋🏼👋🏼 Hiya! I’m Laura, bestselling author of 17 books and writer of one of Substack’s bestselling newsletters too. I believe you don’t change your life by becoming someone else - you change it by telling the truth about who you already are. How to Build a Life is where I do that, in real time, twice a week, to thousands of readers all over the world. Thank you for being here!!

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This is an excerpt from How to Feel Less Alone in Ordinary Life. I have a letter coming up about how I totally screwed up the marketing of that guide - it’s juicy! - but before I tell that story, I wanted to share some writing that I am especially proud of. I’m proud of it because I’m proud of being a person who doesn’t sit in her own discontent, and asks herself the difficult questions. I’m proud of being a thinker. I’m proud of being the mother I am, and proud for starting to remember who else I am within that and besides that ☀️

I remember the version of Laura who existed before. She wasn’t better. Just… different. She wasn’t a freer or more enlightened or a responsibility-free version of myself I now need to get back to - I wouldn’t trade my kid or my career successes for anything. But, the Laura from before - twentysomething Laura - she had preferences that hadn’t been road-tested and passions that hadn’t been edited down to fit a practical life. The Laura from before didn’t have to organise herself around what other people need from her.

And now, because in this version of my life practicalities and responsibilities do exist, that earlier version of myself has been shelved. It wasn’t one big dramatic decision to focus on life as I know it now: motherhood, a mortgage, Being A Grown Up. It happened so slowly I didn’t register it. I shelved parts of myself because being them isn’t convenient in this chapter of my life.

But now it is time to remember.

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👋🏼👋🏼👋🏼 Hiya! I’m Laura, bestselling author of 17 books and writer of one of Substack’s bestselling newsletters too. I believe you don’t change your life by becoming someone else - you change it by telling the truth about who you already are. How to Build a Life is where I do that, in real time, twice a week, to thousands of readers all over the world. Thank you for being here!!

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Want to submit a question for my advice? You can fill the form out here. It’s anonymous!

The Question:

Dear Laura,

My daughter has a strong friendship group, but I am torn about which secondary school to send her to. The feeder school where the majority of her friends are going is not my preferred choice. There is another option that is incredibly nurturing, inclusive, and holistic, but it means separating her from her primary school friends. I had a hard time at high school myself and just want to get it right for her. Should I prioritise the better school, or her existing friendships?

My Answer:

Hi! So. I adore this question. I adore it because if you’d have asked me a few years ago, I would have said: friends. Send her with her friends. That’s what I would have wanted for my own son. I would have said, kids that are going to “do well” are going to “do well” anywhere, and friendships are key to surviving.

And then…

I went to work in a school, and I got a Year 7 form, and I leaned in to all things pastoral, and now I think: friendships are not the only thing that matters.

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👋🏼👋🏼👋🏼 Hiya! I’m Laura, bestselling author of 17 books and writer of one of Substack’s bestselling newsletters too. I believe you don’t change your life by becoming someone else - you change it by telling the truth about who you already are. How to Build a Life is where I do that, in real time, twice a week, to thousands of readers all over the world. Thank you for being here!!

Subscribe now

I’ve booked a holiday. I can’t believe it! We’ve not gone away, like “properly” away, in years. Years!

We haven’t gone away for a couple of reasons. The top line is money. Moving house was way more expensive than I anticipated. That first summer we were busy making a house a home, spending more than I had making this new build shell feel something a lot more like “me”. A thing that is still ongoing!! I saw a video on Instagram of a couple who took four years to get their place “them”, which has made me feel better. The curse of not being satisfied with white walls and a laminate floor!! Life would be so much cheaper if I’d never discovered Beata Heuman but alas I did, and so the house project rumbles on. (The garden is being done right now lads, and I am preeeeeetty confident it is going to change my life. A patio actually big enough to sit on without getting knocked out by one of the French doors? Heaven. And also, this happened:)

Beyond money, though, last summer I just couldn’t be arsed to sort a holiday. I’m a single mother, work 50 hours a week, was slap-bang in the middle of undiagnosed ADHD burnout and calling it life ennui… the notion of a big summer holiday - planning one, and then taking one - was horrifying. I think that’s because the very first holiday my son and I went on as a family was to Greece for a week, and it was rubbish. I paid £4,000 for a Mark Warner “exclusive” hotel, with all-day free childcare and half-board, and honestly? It was the same shit, different location. We were in the sun, yes, but still up early, still having to pack a bag for Kid’s Club, get to breakfast, go back to the room for a poo, cross the site to drop him off etc. etc. etc. How is that rush and schedule different from home? And then he’d be released at lunch and we’d eat together, which was lovely, but then whether he swam with me all afternoon or went back to club, it was just WORK to shower off of an evening, get ready to go back out, and then sit amongst other sunburnt families with a merely okay white wine and some sort of “fun” evening show or activity. £4,000 to be bored and still tired when we got home!! And no amount of money can stop your kid from getting a heat rash and crying in frustration at the scratch of it. Never again.

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👋🏼👋🏼👋🏼 Hiya! I’m Laura, bestselling author of 17 books and writer of one of Substack’s bestselling newsletters too. I believe you don’t change your life by becoming someone else - you change it by telling the truth about who you already are. How to B…

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👋🏼👋🏼👋🏼 Hiya! I’m Laura, bestselling author of 17 books and writer of one of Substack’s bestselling newsletters too. I believe you don’t change your life by becoming someone else - you change it by telling the truth about who you already are. How to Build a Life is where I do that, in real time, twice a week, to thousands of readers all over the world. Thank you for being here!!

Subscribe now

When I was launching How to Feel Less Alone in Ordinary Life, I sent an email I ummmed and ahhhhed over sending.

The long and short of it is that I use a platform called Payhip to host the sales page, “buy button”, and link to download for the guide. When I knew I wanted to share how I’d found my way back to myself, when I’d designed, without meaning to, a system for reconnecting with myself whenever I feel a bit at sea in my own life, I had a snoop around Google to see how best to get that to people.

Payhip seemed to be the top answer.

I knew of Payhip because ten years ago I used it to host a little self-published ebook called The Book of Brave. I was doing my Googling this time around as a viability activity, checking what I wanted to do was actually possible to execute, so more or less went huh, Payhip, cool! I remember that! and then went off to write the thing, knowing when it was done I’d have a way to get it to people.

Months later I had my words done, all polished up into a pdf that means I now know more about dragging-and-dropping page borders and aligning page numbers in Canva than I ever thought to wonder about, and I was ready to start making the sales stuff. Off I went to Payhip.

Payhip wouldn’t let me join.

It said I already had an account.

The one from ten years ago? I thought. I wasn’t even sure I had the same email address ten years ago, but after a few attempts with various passwords, I was IN.

It’s such a clanky, old site. It looks exactly the same as it did ten years ago, and even then it was what I’d euphemistically call… basic. I had a little potter around, clicking on this and on that. I love that part of the process, of having the bones of an idea and finding the tech to match it, of figuring out how everything works.

Doing this project has made a million memories flood back to me. Did you know, I once did a newsletter series called Ask the Question? It was £6, I think, to sign up for weekly emails where I’d reflect on my life and the questions it raised for me and then I’d ask the reader that same question about their lives. It wasn’t supposed to be a correspondence course, but sometimes readers would email back and we’d get into the nitty gritty of living a life on purpose.

In fact, so many people started writing back to me that I had to cap numbers. I was the like the lady from The Correspondant, spending her days typing missives back to folks. I remember sitting in my favourite cafe in Stoke Newington for hours, figuring out how to communicate the project to the people who followed me, how email sequencing worked in terms of receiving payment and then sending emails en masse, that giddiness and fear, indistinguishable from one another, when thinking okay, I think this is good to go. I think I’m gonna Tweet about this!

(Spoiler r.e. how I got payment from people: I think I accepted Paypal, and then manually added people from Paypal to a mailing list. That’s how I used to sell writing courses too! Just a Paypal link from my blog, and then I’d send emails from my personal account to welcome them. No automation, nothing fancy - just all spit and sawdust. It was fun! And a lot of work! It was cool to just like… try stuff!)

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👋🏼👋🏼👋🏼 Hiya! I’m Laura, bestselling author of 17 books and writer of one of Substack’s bestselling newsletters too. I believe you don’t change your life by becoming someone else - you change it by telling the truth about who you already are. How to Build a Life is where I do that, in real time, twice a week, to thousands of readers all over the world. Thank you for being here!!

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First up… some housekeeping!

One: I want you to know that I love reader emails, so if there’s anything you ever want to tell me, you can simply hit reply to these letters and I’ll get it. I had the most reader emails I’ve ever had before when I wrote about not chasing your dream, but chasing your talent. I was honestly so touched! And I thought: I love that folks know they can do this.

Two: I LOVE writing my monthly ‘Agony Aunt’-style column. Want to submit a question for my advice? You can fill the form out here. It’s anonymous!

Three: I’m still collecting your stories about turning 40. An Instagram commenter called Kit suggested this to me, and I thought it was a cool idea. I posted about the shifts for me as I hit my milestone birthday, so why not spotlight the ways other people have felt at that time too? Let’s see how we’re all doing life differently (I assume). You can be turning 40 this year, it can already have happened, or you can have it just up ahead on the horizon. Tell me how you’re feeling, if anything changed or is changing, what you’ve learned, what you need to learn, where you’re at in your life versus where you want to be - anything you’d like to share with the world. The microphone is yours.

Finally: Ask Me Anything! And Tell Me Anything! Click here to tell me what you want more of here, and to submit a question for the next ASK ME ANYTHING. You really can ask me anything - here’s last year’s AMA.

Phew! That’s a lotta Google Forms!

Onto the actual newsletter…

Gardens and Grass

I’m looking at my diary to remind myself of the month gone by, and… how has a month gone by? How was my birthday a month ago?

You know, sometimes I can sit in my house or be driving to work, and think: am I wasting my life? Am I doing enough? Am I seizing the day? It all goes by so fast.

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👋🏼👋🏼👋🏼 Hiya! I’m Laura, bestselling author of 17 books and writer of one of Substack’s bestselling newsletters too. I believe you don’t change your life by becoming someone else - you change it by telling the truth about who you already are. How to Build a Life is where I do that, in real time, twice a week, to thousands of readers all over the world. Thank you for being here!!

Subscribe now

The day I launched my mini-guide, somebody messaged me on Instagram.

‘Was this AI-generated? Meta is flagging it as so.’

My heart plummeted to my stomach, and I immediately felt the hot burning of indignation in my cheeks - but not because I hadn’t used AI. I just suddenly realised how it might look, and I thought, ‘Oh. Shit.’

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👋🏼👋🏼👋🏼 Hiya! I’m Laura, bestselling author of 17 books and writer of one of Substack’s bestselling newsletters too. I believe you don’t change your life by becoming someone else - you change it by telling the truth about who you already are.…

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How to Feel Less Alone in Ordinary Life

☀️a mini guide☀️

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👋🏼👋🏼👋🏼 Hiya! I’m Laura, bestselling author of 17 books and writer of one of Substack’s bestselling newsletters too. I believe you don’t change your life by becoming someone else - you change it by telling the truth about who you already are. How to Build a Life is where I do that, in real time, twice a week, to thousands of readers all over the world. Thank you for being here!!

Subscribe now

Whenever people ask about ADHD medication, I don’t think they’re expecting the full-on gushing that I give it. Folks don’t understand it, because we don’t understand ADHD. It’s still wild to me I have it, but I must do because the medication made me feel better within an hour of taking it. My friend tried her boyfriend’s ADHD medication to see if it helped her, and she said she felt horrific. I don’t think I do have ADHD after all, she said.

It’s weird I feel called to ‘prove’ I have it - to you, to myself - but that is how deeply ingrained my bias against it is. Or, rather, that is how deep my bias is against: everyone has ADHD now, as if that many people can be neurodiverse, it’s a bandwagon.

Sometimes I think I still just need to pull myself together and get on with it. And then I forget to take a pill and my kid asks why I’m being so mean and shouty and then I take it and I’m able to be a nice human again.

If my kid can notice a difference… there’s a difference.

For me, ADHD medication really is that dramatic.

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👋🏼👋🏼👋🏼 Hiya! I’m Laura, bestselling author of 17 books and writer of one of Substack’s bestselling newsletters too. I believe you don’t change your life by becoming someone else - you change it by telling the truth about who you already are. How to Build a Life is where I do that, in real time, twice a week, to thousands of readers all over the world. Thank you for being here!!

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Last year I wrote about how a single mum working 50 hours a week manages her time. It was me. I’m the mum. I wrote it.

You might assume that a person so aware of their own time would be very organised. I thought the same thing too. I’ve never missed a book deadline, happily send these missives twice a week, get to school on time and switch classrooms on the hour, every hour, with no issues…

Like dude. Look at me go!

And yet.

My accountant was always chasing me for something. I was never sure quite how much money there was exactly. It felt Herculean in effort to get the floors mopped and the bedsheets changed. I said I was organised, but if anyone asked me to add something to my plate, if details of plans and structures changed, it upended me - caused a physical pain, if you can believe it. Once a quarter everything would become so overwhelming I’d sit on my parents’ living floor and hysterically cry.

Can we collectively agree that it is not normal to once a quarter get so overwhelmed that I’d sit on my parents’ living room floor and hysterically cry? Because it is not.

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👋🏼👋🏼👋🏼 Hiya! I’m Laura, bestselling author of 17 books and writer of one of Substack’s bestselling newsletters too. I believe you don’t change your life by becoming someone else - you change it by telling the truth about who you already are. How to Build a Life is where I do that, in real time, twice a week, to thousands of readers all over the world. Thank you for being here!!

Want to submit a question for my advice? You can fill the form out here. It’s anonymous!

The Question:

Hey Laura,

My sister is in her late forties and lost her husband three and a half years ago. It was tragic and unexpected. We’re a small family and it affected us all, and we’ve tried to support her and her son. Since then, though, she has gotten really bitter, and behaves appallingly to my elderly parents who really try their best. She just can’t seem to move forward, and is struggling financially as well as emotionally. I’ve suggested counselling for her and her son but she prefers not to take action. As a family, relations are tense and uncomfortable. She’s particularly angry with my mum, who is in poor health, because my sister believes mum is judging her behaviour. It is actually hard not to judge someone who is so rude and angry. How can I improve family relationships without further upsetting her? I understand her life has been destroyed as she knew it, but it’s no one’s fault and she needs to treat my parents better. What can I do?

My Answer:

Oh, pal. I am so very sorry for your family’s loss. It is a truly tragic and incomprehensible turn of events, and I cannot even imagine what it has taken for you to be here, now, writing to me with so much love in your heart for your sister and nephew and mother and father and self. What a thing to traverse, what resilience it must have taken to get through these past four years. It is unfair, and it happened. Fuck.

I think your question grabbed me as the one to answer this month because I find family dynamics endlessly fascinating. They’re so hard to talk about publicly because obviously we don’t want to parent-bash or sibling-bash or child-bash in a way that could jeopardise the relationship. There are rules, even in war. We do a lot of talking about family dynamics behind closed doors, so none of us really understand the complexities of one another’s bonds. That can feel lonely, like ours is the only family who ever ‘goes through stuff’. Let me say categorically that whilst your example is, of course, an extreme one, you aren’t the only person out there watching your family behave poorly to one another and thinking, what the actual hell? I’d say it happens to 99% of us, at some point. I can’t think of a single person who would say, yeah, we all get on great, no problems here!!

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👋🏼👋🏼👋🏼 Hiya! I’m Laura, and this is one of Substack’s bestselling newsletters. I believe you don’t change your life by becoming someone else - you change it by telling the truth about who you already are. How to Build a Life is where I do that, in real time, twice a week, to thousands of readers all over the world. It makes me happy, and keeps me aligned with myself. So. Thank you for being here!!

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A few Saturdays ago, the day after my 40th birthday, actually, I was sat in my garden at 9pm, with a book and a big glass of water, and I got a text.

Can he ring you?

It was my mother. She meant my kid. He was on a sleepover, and had been since that afternoon, where my dad took him swimming and my brother and I went out for a 4.30pm late lunch at a restaurant I’ve been longing to try.

Sure, I text back, and then my kid was on the line telling me he missed me.

Can you come? he asked, eventually.

It’s been a very long time since he’s been unable to settle. He used to love a sleepover, and then hate a sleepover, and then he went back to loving them because instead of being in the single bed in the spare room, he gets to sleep in with mum and they make dad take the spare. Plus, my brother’s dog was there. Ted jumping up and licking him awake is one of my kid’s top two ways to wake up. The other one is naturally, but at Disneyland.

Of course I can come, I told him.

My father was furious.

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👋🏼👋🏼👋🏼 Hiya! I’m Laura, bestselling author of 17 books and writer of one of Substack’s bestselling newsletters too. I believe you don’t change your life by becoming someone else - you change it by telling the truth about who you already are. How to Build a Life is where I do that, in real time, twice a week, to thousands of readers all over the world. Thank you for being here!!

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I love doing these monthly reflections because they’re a chance to think and write about all the stuff that doesn’t make it into a “big” post. Every time I think ‘Oh! That would be good to write about for the newsletter!’ I jot it down in my notes app, and magically that sets in motion some sort of background brain function that means I start to write it in my head without really thinking about it, and these are mostly on a theme. At the end of every month I put the most fully-formed ideas onto a list so I know roughly what I’ll write about for the next month, making sure there is a mix of stuff to keep us all interested.

I used to keep these “big” posts under a paywall and this monthly round-up was free to read, but I realised recently the monthly reflections can often be even more intimate than everything else because they’re so unguarded. The truth of our lives can live in the margins, you know? I don’t know how to talk about the bits and bobs of my life any other way. So these monthly dispatches now live under a paywall alongside everything else, and instead my Joy Dump! series will be free to read, as a thank you to everyone who is here.

To be honest everything I send is a part of me, a part of my heart, and there’s no way to fully protect a heart, is there, not even with a paywall. A paywall helps keep my community small enough to be safe, to be kind, but ultimately it’s all vulnerable. Anyway. I’ve gone off-point. My point is, sitting down to write HOW TO BUILD A LIFE is always fun for me (genuinely!), and the look back on my month is particularly special because I always learn something about myself I didn’t know before I sat down.

Before we hit the paywall today: I want your turning 40 story! I posted about my own turning 40 revelation and an Instagram follower called Kit suggested profiling 40 women turning 40 this year, a way to share all the things we’ve all learned, changed into, and want other people to think about or know. A collective peek into how everyone else is doing it so that we can know we’re not alone, and also… likely everyone does it differently anyway. The relief! If you’ve recently turned, or are about to turn, 40, I’d love to feature you. Submit your 800 words here, (can be less!), and if you’re selected I will reach out for photos. I’m thinking I’ll splice up your story into a 20-photo carousel like I do for my own stuff. I reckon this will be fun! All are welcome!

And so, to the parties, funerals, gardens, walks, sleepovers and festival days that made up my May…

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