I have made changes to my work with The New Mothers’ Writing Circle to reflect feedback from some of the mothers in my life and where I am now, too —

• I am adjusting some of the content of my Thursday cohort of The New Mothers’ Writing Circle, running 10th September - 29th October 2026.

• This is to make space for the many neurodivergent and disabled mothers and / or mothers of neurodivergent and disabled children (diagnosed or not) who want to explore the intensity of their matrescence through writing.

• I will lead more nervous system regulating practices, and teach additional writing exercises (which are useful for any mother, but I would suggest are essential for N/D mums).

• I am also dropping the cost to £375, to reflect that this is a bit of a pilot (although TBH many of the 200+ mums I’ve worked with are N/D, and have found the work reassuring, galvanising, transformational).

• More info / book through the website here.

• I invite you to join my Thursday group, even if this is for you but your child is older than 5.

• The sessions will all be slightly longer (2 hours 10am - 12pm BST/GMT) to allow for more time for sharing writing and thinking.

• I should also say, if you have a kid who’s over 2 but you don’t identify as being N/D, and you still want to do this programme of work with me in Sept/Oct, please come along. We are all going to discover a huge amount. Link here.

• Tuesday’s cohort (8th Sept - 27th Oct) will remain as it was. It is for mums of little ones aged 12 weeks - 2 years old. I still have 4 places. More info at the same link here.

There are several reasons for the shift in direction. I will dive into that in a future post.

As with all of my work, The New Mothers’ Writing Circle isn’t a space for offloading all of the stories we’re holding. I create the container. I hold space for us to gently, safely, begin exploring in writing some of the thoughts and feelings held in our body, mind and heart. I will signpost to specific organisations for ongoing and specialised care. My work is therapeutic but it isn’t therapy. I don’t do birth story work either but signpost to specialists who do.

CREATIVITY VS CAPITALISM.

A core part of my work has been to teach/show/embody what happens when we create rather than consume. It's been proven that we stop producing cortisol within 45 minutes of creating (for me it’s writing, but this is any sort of creative practice).

Creating help us process overwhelm. While we’re creating, our brains release dopamine, move from anxious looping thoughts to calmness. Creativity also builds connection and mental clarity – I’m amazed at what I can produce in short bursts of time and the insights which arrive. Witnessing this happen in other people is really a gift.

A core outcome of The New Mothers’ Writing Circle is the sense of wellbeing and connection which comes from real, human interaction. It’s incredible how close I can feel to mothers I’ve only met on Zoom, and how sharing words and thoughts and shittyfirstdrafts, bonds us, despite working online.

ETHOS

The New Mothers’ Writing Circle is non-judgemental, non-advice giving, experimental and anti-perfectionist. We show up as we are on any given day and we don’t apologise. We open the creative portal for the writing which wants to happen and we don’t judge it as “good” or “bad”.

We are kind and encouraging to ourselves and to the wider group without acting nice or happy or whatever face we might usually put on. As the weeks go on and the mask begins to slip, we practise what it feels like to allow ourselves to show up as our full selves, all of the identities and hats we wear as mothers.

We take some time to be with who we are today, to wave a hello/goodbye to who we were and make space, gradually, for the mothers we’re becoming. We don’t try to fix ourselves or each other.

SUMMER SERIES 2026

I’ve been setting aside time throughout the summer to run six 1-hour writing sprints across a range of themes. These have been wonderful. I love being with mothers, writing. I love writing with others.

If you want to join the 6th and last in this series — WRITING MATERNAL MONSTROSITY — the link is here.

I will share some texts on maternal ugliness, hideousness and rage, and we’ll write to this as a way to counteract and balance the narratives of maternal bliss.

My sense is that the more room we make to explore the less beautiful aspects of our matrescence, the more tender we can be to others and ourselves.

I’ll send out a post at the start of September about how to access the recordings.

OK that’s it for today. Any questions on any or all of the above!? Hit reply!

Strength & solidarity & happy weekending!

Catrin.

P.P.S If you want to take part in the Thursday cohort but it all sounds a bit, err intense, you can knit, colour in, draw or craft during the sessions, and just listen, taking part in the writing exercises as and when you can and joining in with discussions when you want to — or not.

P.P.P.S You don’t need to be N/D to benefit from having a journaling practice or a writing practice or some sort of other art practice… but I honestly think we would all be healthier, happier and less obsessed with the dystopian times we seem to be living through if we took up making something :-)

First a note about Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder*. I am soooo late to this party. Having seen the film I thought I didn’t need to read the book — but duhhh — the book is, frankly, a masterpiece. For anyone with a toddler, especially those artist-mothers or creative-mothers amongst you, I suggest you get a copy and quick.

This Thursday 6th Aug ‘26 10am - 11am BST on Zoom (or catch up after — I’m recording this Summer Series), I’ll lead us all through WRITING MATERNAL IDENTITY & ICK, thinking about some of the grossest parts of motherhood and drawing inspiration from Yoder’s text alongside short story ‘Arabella’ by Agnes Owens. (I am VERY new to body horror but ohmydays, I am beginning to think this genre is perhaps the future of how we write the maternal experience. TBD.) More info / book a spot here.

Thursday’s writing sprint will focus on the mess, the ick, the downright revolting. You’ll be guided to explore some psychologically safe memories of your maternal experience where you’ve dealt with bodily fluids, turning your experience of piss, shit, milk, sweat (etc!) into comedic writing. I want us to push the boundaries of what is “appropriate” to create a rich and disgusting piece of writing. Hopefully some lols too.

I am absolutely loving these sprints and encourage anyone who identifies as a mother — whatever age or stage, and of course, no writing experience is necessary — to sign up. Book your spot here. £10 / £20 / £40 +bf or reply for a free place.

Hope to see you on Thursday :-)

Catrin.

*I couldn’t read Nightbitch when my children were little because I couldn’t face my envy that the book existed? Or something. I hope I have evolved to be more… abundant. I don’t know.

BTW if you missed
1. WRITING MATERNAL SILENCE or
2. WRITING MATERNAL BURNOUT and want to catch up, drop me a line and I can arrange for the recording to be sent to you. Each one is an hour.

The other events in this Summer Series are
4. WRITING MATERNAL JOY & LIBERATION (13th Aug),
5. WRITING MATERNAL LONELINESS (20th Aug) and
6. WRITING MATERNAL MONSTROSITY (27th Aug) - all the info is here.

For what its worth (what IS it worth?) I never use AI in my writing, both here and on my website. This is 100% human-made.

If I started with, How are you? what would you reply?

Say we’re sitting across from each other — or, in fact, side by side on a bench, so that we can still attend to the kids we’ve had to bring to this catch up.

Say they play nearby, helping each other on and off a swing. They happily make up a game involving the slide and toys they’ve brought along.

Say I ask, How are you doing?

Do you go to your mind for the answer? Or your heart? Or your body? Do you automatically say “Good! We’re fine!” — because we are, aren’t we?

We are good and we are fine.

Most of us with school-aged kids are now into the summer break — for me, a juggle of holiday clubs and trips. My husband sprained his ankle playing football (the tit) and so I am — in a general sense — TIRED*. If I close my eyes and check in with myself, I find I am over-caffeinated and dehydrated. My hips hurt. I need to pee. My right shoulder is tingling where a knot is developing. My mind is full of the ticker tape of who-needs-what-next.

What about you?
How are you?

Tired is such a catch-all, like fine. In the months after my first baby was born, I wanted new words for tired. I began to imagine a dictionary just for me and the other mothers I saw around me. We were not just exhausted or depleted, we were whole new landscapes of tired, new shades of tired. I scrawled a colour-coded scale numbered 1 — 10 which I stuck on the kitchen pinboard. I wanted my husband to understand the gradations. 9-tired, 7-tired. I had chronic post-natal insomnia so mostly it was 10.

Being with and IN my body is uncomfortable. It is laden, I suspect, with grief. Recently I wrote a short story about a woman avoiding her grief. The portal, the channel, the wherever-creativity-comes-from is alive with something seeded in my own experience.

What about you?
How are you?

In the late days of my second pregnancy I wrote about the pressure on my pelvis — surely my baby and my innards were all about the fall out? Weeks later, about the sharp, not-unpleasant pain as my breasts letdown. When the kids were babies — both in nappies with COVID bringing another dimension to my already-altered reality — I wrote the first episode of a dystopian TV series in the notes app of my phone. They all started in my body.

(None of these writings have seen the light of day — YET! as my kids would say).

I want mothers everywhere to stop and to write from a place of attention, rest and deep personal listening.

I want us to write the body.

Tomorrow 10am - 11am BST I will run an hour-long writing sprint on Zoom — WRITING MATERNAL BURNOUT — which will contain some deep, restful practices of visualisation, with prompts to write to. I would love you to be there (or set aside an hour to catch up — I’m recording this Summer Series): To place a boundary around you precious time and honour your beautiful, tired body. (As always, we won’t talk or think about birth or birth injuries).

Book your spot here. £10 - £40 +bf.

“Writing is a form of freedom more accessible than many and there are forces at work that would like to withhold it from those whose stories most threaten the regimes that govern this society. Fuck them. Write your life.”
Melissa Febos, Body Work: The Radical Power of Personal Narrative.

If you have any questions, thoughts, niggles, feel free to reply :-)

More soon!

Catrin.

If you’ve newly subscribed, WELCOME! I have a few spots left on my 8-week course, The New Mothers’ Writing Circle, starting Tues 8th and Thurs 10th Sept.

I work with mothers with babies and children from 12 weeks - 5 years old, using writing to navigate the mind-bending experience of matrescence and build community. More info here.

*If I admit it, I am a bit pissed off about his sprain. I had specifically said to my husband, “Don’t play football!” But yes, middle-aged men will be middle-aged men.

How are you?!

I am just back from 11 glorious days on the road to Devon and back, seeing family and cuddling new additions. As always, too many pasties to mention.

I’m now knee-deep in planning for some brand new workshops: Writing Motherhood & Matrescence — a series of writing sprints on various topics linked to maternal experiences.

The series runs on the next six Thursdays 10am - 11am BST on Zoom. For each workshop, there’s a sliding scale of fees £10 - £40 (+bf) or email me for a free place. All people who identify as ‘mother’ are welcome to participate in my work.

I’m going to record these workshops so you’ll get a chance to catch up if, say, hand foot and mouth strikes, or you end up going to the beach that day.

The workshops are listed on Eventbrite here.

The first one, WRITING MATERNAL SILENCE (Thurs 23rd July) will take a diversion through some excerpts by others who have covered perfectionism, procrastination, fear and vulnerability — namely heavyweights Liz Gilbert and Julia Cameron — but there will also be lots of time to get words down.

I will provide the container and the prompts. Just show up with a pen and some paper.

I’ve shared the amazing Anne Lamott’s words before —

Share

As with all art-making, all creativity, all invention in fact; we have to begin with what we have. And what we have — if only we would look carefully — is plenty.

Sign up for WRITING MATERNAL SILENCE here.

More about me and my work here.

Sweaty hugs all round,
Catrin.

I write because I want to — or feel compelled to. I basically cannot stop. If I were washed up on a desert island, no paper, no pens, I would soon become not-me.

I have been keeping a note of my very ordinary life (but then, is it not extraordinary to even have a life?!) since I was 13. That Christmas my brother, the ass, bought me a Mr.Bean diary, full of Mr. Bean’s inane scribbles about his teddy. Boy! Was I gonna show him! I had MUCH more to say, about friends, teachers, my mum, Jesus (yes Jesus).

And pretty much ever since, I have written every day.

Writing privately gives me a space to slag off even the people I love, churn over my anxieties, rage at the inequalities I feel. Finally, most of the time at least, I get to all the nice stuff I have loved that day, including things my husband and kids have said, the dreams I still have of making stuff happen, my yearning for solitude and to hear or feel a creative life voice within me, of me, speaking on the page.

I want us all to write, but I especially want mothers to write. Writing is a way of knowing ourselves, of listening to ourselves. It is a way of being alive to what our lives are, and the miracles of our children, no matter how much they lob food at us or say NO! That’s their job, clever so-and-sos.

It is only through writing that I have begun to unearth my voice. This one, this voice which speaks to you from my unmade bed on a cloudy June morning. The seagulls have gone quiet. My children are still asleep. My husband is clattering in the kitchen, preparing for a trip to London today for a memorial service. His godmother Claire died recently, and today is a celebration of her life.

Nothing is static, but writing gives us a way to press pause.

Whether you want to write for yourself, to be with yourself, to note your amazing, unique, probably-completely-ordinary existence on the page, or you have ideas for pieces you want to share with the world — whatever corner of the world — it begins with words on a page.

It might seem overwhelming or scary:

Who am I to write? Where do I even start? I’d better wait until I’m less tired / better read / a better feminist / less busy (etc.)

Let me take a second to remind you: Wikipedia is still 80% male biographies. The world is led by men. Here are the COP29 leaders. Let’s recall who’s driving this shitshow:

Of course our inner critic will tell us that what we have to say isn’t worth saying. 1 in 7 countries is led by women. What women think and experience hardly registers in historical or cultural discourse; female lawmakers still make up just 27.5% of parliamentary seats globally.

Culturally, we still know so little of what it is to be a woman. We know even less of what it is to be a mother.

Maternal silence is everywhere. Look at the number of culturally significant moments which involve mothers’ voices…

……

Please join me on Thursday 23rd July 10am - 11am BST to begin looking at the theme of Maternal Silence. If you can’t make it live I will send you the recording. Booking is £0 - £40 (+ BF) via Eventbrite here. We’ll think about perfectionism, procrastination and fear. All the good stuff.

The whole summer series — Writing Motherhood & Matrescence — is here. I’ll be running these Thursday mornings 23rd July - 27th Aug 2026.

The point of bringing together groups of mothers, of getting mothers writing about their internal lives and experiences of matrescence, is to begin pushing stories out, out, out. Far enough out until they merge with the mainstream.

I’d better get up. Leave a comment with any questions or thoughts!

Catrin.

SUMMER SERIES 2026.
On Zoom, Thursdays 10am - 11am BST.
In brief (or head straight to the collection of events here).

1. Writing Maternal Silence 23rd July: Perfectionism & Procrastination / Who am I to say that? More info here.

2. Writing Maternal Burnout 30th July: Fatigue, Boredom, Illness, Exhaustion. Body as Land: Decimated, Depleted, Scorched, Devoured. More info here.

3. Writing Maternal Identity & Ick, 6th Aug: Gross-out! Bodily fluids, touched out body horror. Where do I stop and you begin? More info here.

4. Writing Maternal Joy & Liberation 13th Aug: Connection, Bliss, Freedom. Energy, Activism, Change. More info here.

5. Writing Maternal Loneliness 20th Aug: Isolation, Rumination, Awkward chats. Community & Connection, soldiers in the trenches. More info here.

6. Writing Maternal Monstrosity! 27th Aug: Maternal Rage, Mother as Monster. Reclaiming Hideousness, Relishing Ugliness. More info here.
   
   — Writing sprints to get shitty first drafts down.
   — On Zoom; recorded for those who can’t make it live.
   — Short pieces of text as jumping off points.
   — You’ll come away with the bare bones (but very decent, strong bones) of new prose poems or pieces of creative non-fiction or fiction. New work will be developed each session.
   — These workshops won’t have a sharing element and you’re welcome to keep your camera on or off.
   — All the workshops are listed on Eventbrite and ready to book here.

   — £10 - £40 per workshop + booking fee.

More details…

1. Writing Maternal Silence > Perfectionism & Procrastination / Who am I to say that?
   We’ll look at some short texts on perfectionism, the inner critic, procrastination and fear. We’ll then dive into some of the messages we’ve received by the wider culture on motherhood & the maternal experience, and how we can replace some of these with an authentic voice.
   Book here.

2. Writing Maternal Burnout > Fatigue, Boredom, Illness, Exhaustion. Body as Land: Decimated, Depleted, Scorched, Devoured.
   We’ll write - as best we can amidst our caring duties and the pull of motherhood - from the perspective of our bodies. We will look at some short texts which deal with maternal fatigue, exhaustion and rest, and write about the depths of sensations held within our mothering bodies. We’ll think about the metaphor of our bodies as lands which have been depleted, and how we can visualise them as places of change, growth and abundance.
   Book here.

3. Writing Maternal Identity & Ick > Gross-out! Bodily fluids, touched out body horror. Where do I stop and you begin?
   Using short excerpts which deal with the maternal body and its link to offspring, we'll think about Body Horror as a way into writing the mess, the ick, the downright revolting. You'll be guided to explore some psychologically safe memories of your maternal experience where you've dealt with bodily fluids, pushing the boundaries of what is "appropriate" to create a rich and disgusting piece of writing.
   Book here.

4. Writing Maternal Joy & Liberation > Connection, Bliss, Freedom. Energy, Activism, Change.
   We'll write about the maternal experience as a place not of confinement and rules, but of joy and liberation. Taking direction from radical writing from 1960's onwards, we'll write into our utopias, and think about what they teach us. What do we need? How do we ask for it? What doesn't exist for mothers, which should? What can we each do to create a more just and joyful future for mothers everywhere?
   Book here.

5. Writing Maternal Loneliness > Isolation, Rumination, Awkward chats. Community & Connection, soldiers in the trenches.
   We’ll use texts relating to awkward humour and teenage angst to reposition our maternal loneliness as a shared, collective experience. Using writing constraints and short excerpts, we'll safely explore memories of maternal awkwardness and maternal 'cringe' to imagine and write about connection and community. The session will also invite us to look at maternal difference as a place for curiosity, experimentation and perhaps acceptance.
   Book here.

6. Writing Maternal Monstrosity! > Maternal Rage, Mother as Monster. Reclaiming Hideousness, Relishing Ugliness.
   We will focus on writing about our maternal selves as monsters, making a safe space on the page to explore maternal rage and how it feels in the body. Using short texts and writing constraints, we'll explore our ugliness, our hideousness and how this sits alongside our maternal beauty and kindness.
   Book here.

These are open to anyone who identifies as a mother, and no writing experience is necessary.

If you cannot afford the fee, drop me a line and I will send you the Zoom link for that session, no questions asked.

I’m so looking forward to being with you all, and seeing new faces too!

*In Glasgow (maybe Scotland more generally?) the word “you” can be made plural, which makes absolute sense to me.

Stay cool,

Catrin.

P.S If you’re on the fence about signing up to one of the September / October New Mothers’ Writing Circle 8-week courses, these summer events will be a great way to see how I work and what can happen when you are given a boundary and a ton of permission.

More info on the Sept / Oct groups is here.

What an amazing place. If you’ve been, you’ll know. Yes, there’s broken glass everywhere, and pointless graffiti on beautiful buildings. Yes, the beer is too strong, it’s very mono-racial and the people are superior and cold, at least initially.

But Berlin is a city — to my mind at least — of possibility. Around each corner, I sensed something new happening. Delicious food cooking in a cafe; masses of colourful roses growing near the U-Bahn; bike-bells ringing, music from a speaker. My senses drank it all in.

The streets are all so varied. I saw virtually no brands, few logos, no chains of shops. People seem to do exactly as they please. Small stores sell specific goods. People smoke inside. Young women wear bikini tops and 90’s cargo pants (WITHOUT BEING SLEAZED ON!), blokes wear weird trainers and weird t-shirts. I saw zero botox / filler / pouty Insta-fashionistas. Everyone looked different, was different. What a relief and a joy.

In Berlin, parents take their children to bars, sit outside having a drink while the kids draw on bits of paper or scrub around in the weeds getting grimey. They chat in groups whilst their kids play at one of the two thousand or so Kiezparks (small neighbourhood parks). They bus their kids about on cargo bikes — on cycle lanes which aren’t on the road but on the pavement.

It seemed, in the parents I saw, that there was a bridging of (to?) old selves, whilst the next generation squirmed on laps or played nearby. I cannot imagine there is a huge amount of gentle parenting in Berlin; instead I saw adults talking and children playing.

Of course, I was free to observe. My hands were free. My time was my own.

I stayed with a very old and dear friend. M is a pal with whom I have danced for nearly three decades. As young women working in lycées in southern France, we once danced on a podium at a day-rave, only for me to spot one of my students in the crowd below.

‘Fuck it, Cat!’ M resolutely shouted at me above the Euro-trash techno, and she has been saying more or less the same thing — in Ibiza, at Glastonbury, in Brighton, in dingy clubs above shops, at parties and festivals across the UK, in London and Glasgow — ever since.

M’s small body was increasingly hard for me to get comfortable next to. Both peri-menopause and writing about the body — women’s birthing and ageing bodies — has made me very aware of the internalised misogyny I still carry. (It is now exacerbated by the ever-shrinking mums on the school run, who, let’s face it, look fucking amazing having lost 7 kg, and all down to The Pen).

M still has the figure of her 19 year old self (without help from Mounjaro et al). Her hips haven’t widened. Her tits haven’t sagged. There are a few grey hairs and crow’s feet, but her energy! Her bounce! I mumbled something about welcoming crone-dom, which left M aghast. I feel the pull of the earth every time I walk past the bedroom mirror.

Reader, I am not in a bigger body. I weigh less than the average British woman my age. I feel fairly healthy and strong-ish. But I still equate thinness with beauty, and beauty with success. There are so many stories my Mum told me about her “disgusting” body (which, I might add, grew and birthed five healthy babies); the main one I long to rewrite is this: It is morally better to be smaller. To be bigger is somehow a failure. From beyond the grave, I still feel I am somehow policed by my Mum, and even writing this, admitting this, makes me ashamed. Shame piled onto internalised misogyny. Quite the cocktail (and one I am taking to therapy).

Whilst travelling, I read The Baby on the Fire Escape: Creativity, Motherhood, and the Mind-Baby Problem, by Julie Phillips. I am late to the party, I know I am, but I think this book landed in my hands at exactly the point I needed it.

About Doris Lessing she writes,

“Doris struggled to cope with the unadmitted needs of a parent who had lost her way. This was true for many twentieth century mother-writers. But in particular Maude Tayler and Olive Stalker, Angela Carter’s mother, each projected onto their only daughter their own frustrated aspirations, encouraging her to succeed but cautioning her to be ladylike, judging her looks, policing her body, over-identifying with her success. Maude was proud of her clever child but possessive of her too, wanting her to repay the debt of her own self-sacrifice. It’s the eternal story, in Rebecca Solnit’s phrase of “ the mother who gave herself away to everyone or someone and tried to get herself back from her daughter.”

I want to write about going to a techno club last Sunday — in full sunlight — but I am still lost for words. I had to cover my phone with stickers, front and back, as does everyone entering a Berlin club, which is perhaps why I can still recall every single detail of the people and spaces. It was so refreshing, and maybe more-so because it can only exist in my memory.

I still struggle with how my mother-part and my clubber-part need to live side by side within me. It is a place of deep tension and I have no doubt that every single mother has to face, sooner or later, a space of similar ambivalence. The freedom of the dance-floor and music and strangers, of having an amazing communal experience, next to the grind and consistency of my life as a mother. I want both. I probably need both.

(I wrote last year about how I feel about dance music and learning to DJ last year — I’ve linked it at the end).

MANIFESTOS OF MOTHERHOOD

I was in Berlin to run a workshop — MANIFESTOS OF MOTHERHOOD — with the artist and muralist Emma Rytoft . Despite fewer sign ups than we’d have liked, the event was a wonderful experience. A small but diverse group (from Lithuania, Germany, Australia and UK) wrote and shared their words as we moved in our minds to memories or tales of freedom in our mothering. We also thought about what we hold, thanks to the words of Maira Kalman. (Again, I am consciously looking at this now, as I return back to the domestic work of my role here. I cannot help but wish I had not gone part-time when I’d had my son in 2017…)

And thanks to Carmen Gimenez and Jessi Klein we time travelled into the future, to our future selves looking back at our lives. This I found strangely moving: My 80 year old self is so much softer than I am, in all senses. Will I have let go of the male gaze by then, and become more tender? I hope so.

Emma’s part of the day allowed us all to draw and paint without self consciousness; to explore in metaphor and colour those elements of our mothering we can picture.

As a shitty first draft of an image, I am quite pleased —

Women Holding Things.
Maira Kalman.

‘What do women hold? The home and the family. And the children and the food. The friendships. The work. The work of the world. And the work of being human. The memories. And the troubles. And the sorrows and the triumphs. And the love. Men do as well but not quite in the same way.

Sometimes, when I am feeling particularly happy or content, I think I can provide sustenance to legions of human beings. I can hold the entire world in my arms. Other times I can barely cross the room and I drop my arms, frozen.

There is never an end to holding. And certainly there is often the feeling of never doing enough. And then there is the next day and the next day. And one holds on.’

What are you holding?
Who are you holding?
What is your body holding?
What stories are you holding?
How would it be to put them down, at least for a time?

NEW COHORTS

I have updated The New Mothers’ Writing Circle website with autumn 2026 dates. I’ll be running two groups again, across 8 consecutive weeks —

• Tuesdays 8th Sept - 27th Oct 2026 10am - 11:45am (GMT) - for mothers of little ones (under 2). More info here.

• Thursdays 10th Sept - 29th Oct 2026 10am - 11:45am (GMT) - for mothers of children aged 2 - 5 years old (but as ever, you’re welcome to join if your kid is older and you want to do this work). More info here.

You are very welcome to drop me a line with any questions — I love hearing from you.

More soon,

Catrin.

That piece I wrote about learning to DJ is here —————→

If you’ve worked with me you’ll know I do not subscribe to the notion that motherhood is happy, certainly not for most of us, all of the time. I am very interested in what brings mothers pleasure outside / alongside the role of mother.

If you’d like to explore your matrescence through creative writing, register your interest on my waitlist for the next New Mothers’ Writing Circle here.

I’m off to Berlin in just over a week! Tickets for MANIFESTOS OF MOTHERHOOD — now 2-for-1 — on Sat 30th May are here.

If you have any community or friends in Berlin, do forward my previous post (below). We have plenty of spaces left.

Thank you Cathryn Goss-Goddard for taking the reins today.

I have one habit. It’s the only one I actually have, and as the only one, it feels more like a ritual. Everything else in my life is just, reactive.

My habit is to swim.

Water has always followed me. I grew up by the sea in Kent and Africa. I lived by the ebb and flow of the Thames in those first chaotic years in London when I was lost in hedonism and depression. Nothing has ever calmed me like water. Baths. Oceans. Lakes. Rivers. A good puddle. I need to be underwater to feel free, truly free. Weightless, unguarded, liberated.

I went back to work when the baby was seven months old. I needed it, to work, to feel like more than my beautiful baby’s Mum, and it works for me. I am a better parent by letting my ambition rule my working hours. But everywhere I look, I am needed. Emails, slacks, tasks, calls, cries, squeaks from the monitor, feeds, endless parades of questions…

I catch the first train out, dragging myself from my bed after a night up with the baby; no buses run at the ungodly hour pre-dawn, so I walk in the darkness the 30 minutes to the station, a podcast blaring that I half listen to, still stuck between the memories of the night and the fear of the day ahead. The train is half full; me and the larks.

The pool is a short walk from Victoria, the sun still hiding amongst the ancient brick and shining glass of the City. The women’s changing room, one of the few places of acceptance of the female body, where judgement doesn’t live at 6 a.m. No one pays any attention to the scar where he was cut from me, the way my stomach hangs, the soft, empty hang of my tits. No one gives a shit.

I’m a slow swimmer, my body still adapting from the carnage of growing and birthing a human and the months of subservience that followed. It’s me and the OAPs in the slow lane.

The water is warm, I dunk my head to begin, pushing my still strange body through the clear, chemical-fresh water. I am uninterrupted for as long as my stamina holds. 30 minutes, maybe 40. One day I’ll do an hour.

Back and forth, up and down, my mind clearing with every stroke. Not the baby, or the emails. Ideas form. Creativity sparked, invigorated by my connection to the water. I am myself again.

For those minutes, I am only myself.

The scent of chlorine stays on my skin, until I return home before bath time. A reminder of where I am free.

Thank you Cathryn for this beautifully immersive piece.

You can follow Cathryn here on Substack.

If you’ve been part of The New Mothers’ Writing Circle since 2020 and would like to write your 10 Habits of Happy Mothers, please hit reply.

More soon, Selkies,

Catrin.

I am going to be in Berlin (BERLIN!) later on this month to co-lead an expansive day of creative writing — and painting!

Saturday 30th May 2026, 10am - 4pm:
MANIFESTOS OF MOTHERHOOD.

Alongside artist and muralist Emma Rytoft, we’ll spend the day delving into some personal ideologies and wider narratives of motherhood, writing to unearth a call from our future selves before creating an artwork based on the language we find.

Emma’s incredible murals can be seen across Berlin, bringing matrescence to public life through arresting, bold and abstract imagery.

Tickets and more info via Eventbrite here.

Emma and I are pumped to be plotting and planning (whilst also being fuuucking knackered by life (+ peri-menopause) / caring / institutional motherhood / carving out time for our creative practice etc etc.)

I will start the day, getting pens onto paper as we think, read and write our way into chosen — rather than received — narratives of motherhood. Pulling on Adrienne Rich, Alice Walker, Carmen Giménez and Lucy Jones, we’ll use stream of consciousness and time travel to write about future feminisms and the multi-layered mess of mothering.

Emma will lead the second half of the day, taking us through the art of Judy Chicago, Kara Walker and Reneesha Mccoy. These artists have not conformed to the pretty nor the logical. Motherhood is portrayed as expansive, messy and full of meaning. We will take this ethos into the afternoon, creating personal artworks to galvanise, soothe, cajole and inspire. Everyone will take their artwork home.

Emma has been experimenting in her studio - watch a series of shorts here.

MANIFESTOS OF MOTHERHOOD is the first time I will be experimenting with mark-making, pens and paint within an event I am co-producing. Despite (or perhaps thanks to?) the imposter-syndrome-monkey on my shoulder, I am gently reminding myself that no one is going to give me permission to do what I want to do.

I want to bring this experimental energy to this event.

Do you know a mother in or near Berlin?
Might they be interested in this experiential day? Please share this with your networks and reply with any questions.

There’s an early-bird offer of 10% off tickets until 17th May. €75 after that.

MANIFESTOS OF MOTHERHOOD
10am - 4pm CEST
Zwischenraum,
Prenzlauer Berg, Berlin
Tickets via Eventbrite here.

BTW this is the LAST DAY to sign up for next week’s cohorts of The New Mothers’ Writing Circle. A few spots left here. (+ have a nosey at the BBC’s film you’re new around here / WELCOME! :-) )

Here’s the email.

“Over the past 12 months, I have been making and submitting quilts to exhibitions and shows. It’s not writing obviously, but you gave me the understanding and confidence that my voice and experience matters. That it’s not boring or uninteresting to be a mother and that it’s okay to love it and hate it too. And that, if you want, it can be at the centre of your existence — and your art.

I made a small textile quilt about queer motherhood in response to an open call from the Queer as Muck Collective for an exhibition in Sett Studios in Edinburgh, last April. And it got accepted.

My next project foraged plants from the nearby woods and I made dyes from them. I dyed panels of cotton muslin and made them into an oversized curtain. That was chosen to be in another exhibition.

I made a quilt for the Scottish Quilt Show at the start of March a couple of weeks ago. It was an abstract wood landscape, made from natural dyed fabric and hand quilted. I was completely shocked when I found the gold ribbon for the contemporary category next to my quilt in the show.

I also joined Visual Arts Scotland so I could submit to one of their annual exhibitions and my queer motherhood small quilt was accepted for that.

All of this to say — thank you. I think about you often and the effect you’ve had on my life, whenever I make time for myself to explore how I feel about my life and motherhood, and as a reminder that it’s okay to share my work. And because of you, I even call it work to Alfie. I tell him I’m going to work to make pennies and other times I’m going to work on my quilts, and he accepts both as my time away. As if he knows how important it is.

I guess the immediate benefits of the Writing Circle are a bit easier to explain, but it has had such a long lasting, traceable effect on me that needs to be shared too.”

Obviously I had a little cry when this came in. Being a solo-freelancer banging your own wee drum in a corner of the internet can feel pretty… errm —niche? This gave me the rocket fuel I needed that day.

More of my own writing and less drum-banging in the coming weeks I PROMISE!

Catrin.

Thanks to everyone who came along to What Good Mother Myths Cost Us - And Ways We Can Resist Them. and I loved having this space with you all, and hearing your reflections and questions.

It’s not the most articulate I have ever been and why do I mention opera?! I don’t even like opera!? But the sentiment is true. We need popular culture to make space for more and more diverse narratives of what it is to mother.

“That's part of my reason that I started my work... I felt so gaslit when I had my baby, because there are no pop songs about early motherhood, there are no operas, there are no plays, there are no TV shows, apart from The Letdown. Maybe there are more TV shows, and there are certainly more films now. There's Night Bitch, and there was the other one that I saw with Jennifer Lawrence recently.

But dominant culture doesn't make space for the stories of mothers. That's partly why, when we have our babies and we wake up and we go, "Oh my god, it's this hard? It's this brutal? It's this lonely?" That sense, that we shouldn't be feeling like that. "Why can't I do this? Because everyone else is doing it!"

We wouldn't have those feelings, I don't think, as much, if we had grown up with more stories and more narratives of motherhood. About what it is to mother.”

If you’d like to watch the workshop and write to the prompts we gave, reply to this or add a comment, and I will email you the link.

Spaces for next week’s cohorts for mothers of young children under 8 close tomorrow Fri 24th April. We begin on Tuesday and Thursday next week. You don’t need to be a writer to take part and benefit hugely from the time and space to reflect on what the hell is happening.

ALL THE INFO HERE.

The world might be a bin-fire — but I bet your world isn’t. I bet there are small moments of wonder, of bliss, of rage and boredom. Zoning in on your life, what it is to be you, and sharing your writing and experience with others is hugely healing and of enormous value.*

I want to encourage us mothers to show up to and for the stories within us. Motherhood might be banal, yes. But matrescence isn’t.

Drop me a line with any questions at all.

Catrin.

P.S Tonight I am off to read some of my writing — my January 1994 diary, to be precise! “Have you no shame?!” I hear you ask. Well, yes, I do. But thankfully enough time and oestrogen has passed for me to find my teenage self hilarious.

*Not value like $ or € or £. But you know: Mental health. Confidence. Contentment. Connection. The magic of boundaried time. Space to embrace the new person you’ve become through mothering.

But first —

Join me next week if you are a mother with a child under 8 and want to learn ways of creating with interruption; how noticing and being alive to your life allows you to rewrite your own messy narratives of mothering.

The New Mothers’ Writing Circle.
8 weeks on Zoom. Tuesdays & Thursdays. 10am - 11:45am.
Max. 12 people per cohort. Info HERE.

This is the last time I’ll be running the programmes until September ‘26 (at the earliest!)

1. IVF is hell and it’s OK to say that.

2. Birth is a meeting of a new self and it deserves to be honoured as such.

3. Most of what will make motherhood hard is down to Capitalism, not you.

4. A best mate or close ally in early motherhood is worth a whole night of uninterrupted sleep.

5. Your babies won’t sleep in any way which is controllable, train-able.

6. You’re not less of a mother because you had IVF.

7. The books about motherhood which will come out during your matrescence are the beginning of a new wave of awakening to the importance of the maternal experience.

8. Creating stops us consuming and is deeply healing.

9. The books about babies’ sleep don’t know shit about your babies’ sleep.

10. Moving your body always helps, especially outside.

11. Tragedy + Time = Comedy (see Cry When The Baby Cries by Becky Barnicoat and the image below. Has crying ever looked so funny?!).

12. A goddess, a god, a creative life force is very close in those early weeks and months of your matrescence. Listen. The universe is speaking.

13. You are doing so fucking well.

14. When you have insomnia, try turning towards yourself and bringing yourself comfort rather than berating yourself for not sleeping.

15. Your babies can and will teach you to pay attention.

16. Noticing your life, being alive to your life — and the lives you’ve made and are raising — is one of the best, most radical ways of stopping being a blind rat in the Capitalist machine.

17. Scrolling and binge-buying on Vinted will have very mixed results.

18. You will sleep again. One day you will regularly sleep for a full 9 hours.

19. Sharing what you create helps others.

20. Sex is a mystical land which it’s safe to return to.

21. Having your babies later on in life means that a spicy new cocktail (PERI-MENO-TRESCENCE) will be on tap and sloshing through your system whilst you’re dealing with screaming toddlers and defiant young children.

22. It’s OK to go back to bed and shut the door.

23. Grief is a central part of matrescence.

24. Art is always the healer. The Sopranos. House music. Writing haiku. Making birthday cards and cakes. Wearing whacky outfits made up of those dubious Vinted purchases. Leaning towards making and art is an antidote to patriarchy and social media and endless productivity.

25. When in doubt, remember what Toni Morrison said: “If you listen to [your children], somehow you are able to free yourself from baggage and vanity and all sorts of things, and deliver a better self, one that you like. The person that was in me that I liked best was the one my children seemed to want.”

How are you?
I urge you to go make something with your hands, without your phone if you can. Write a love letter to yourself?

More soon!
Catrin.

P.S Tomorrow 12pm - 2pm is my event on Zoom with Alex Bollen, WHAT GOOD MOTHER MYTHS COST US - AND WAYS WE CAN RESIST THEM.
Final spots here. Excited to see lots of new faces there as well as newmumswriting alumna :-)

Mostly it was an exercise in not being a haughty white woman who tutted. Yes, the checks were excessive. Yes, no one cared. Yes, I was treated just like everyone else. My kids were watching to see if I’d lose my shit. I didn’t. They didn’t.

I cried the tiniest bit when my littlest kid finally broke. We were out the other side and re-united with our suitcase, but the car hire place was closed and we’d been travelling for 14 hours.

We chucked savings at the issue and I slept in a hotel bed with my oldest kid, waking to a small, soft arm rolling across my body. “Good morning Mummy.”

Hashtagblessed doesn’t touch the sides.

It turns out there’s nothing like an airport followed by an all-you-can-eat-breakfast-buffet to make you want to stand on a table and scream CLIMATE CHANGE! But we were in Lisbon and everyone — the French couple plus toddler, the Japanese mid-lifers, the solo-business man with permanent headphones — everyone looked tired and in need of piles of carbs so massive that it was probably right and good that some were discarded.

We drove to rural Spain and my kids played in a medieval town square. Every time they jumped off a high wall and landed on the bright pale stone my fanny ached. Will I ever NOT be tied to my kids in this physiological way?

We only got back last night and I want some time to process and recalibrate, but right now I’d say it was probably the best Family Field Trip so far, in nearly nine years of motherhood.

There’s just 1 week left to sign up to the next cohorts of my 8-week programme, The New Mothers’ Writing Circle. I’ve revamped the website so that it is (I hope!) punchier and clearer. Take a look here.

I work on Zoom with mothers of kiddos under 8. Being online means everyone can show up from their bed / desk / kitchen table.

I make the container. Mothers show up and allow the words which want to spill, to spill. My work is non-judgemental, non-hierarchical, experimental and free from advice.

Over 200 mothers have taken part so far, with less than 1% attrition (!bonkers!) - by which I mean: Every person who has joined this programme has attended all 8 of the sessions.*

So —

• Mums of young babies 12 weeks - 2 years:
  TUESDAYS 28th April - 16th June 10am - 11:45am BST. Learn more here.

• Mums of young children 3 - 8 years:
  THURSDAYS 30th April - 18th June 10am - 11:45am BST. Learn more here.

• My inbox is open for questions.

• You can pay in instalments - probably a third of all participants do this.

• You can (and should!) ask your boss to pay for the programme. You will be a better communicator as a result, and frankly who doesn’t want a happier, more boundaried, clearer employee?!

• Doors close next Fri 24th April.

I love working with mothers. I am astounded by the grit we demonstrate in showing up not only for our children but also for ourselves. It’s such a quiet act of rebellion to create out of the gunk of matrescence, despite the LOAD.

Also! Don’t forget I am running a pay-what-you-can LIVE writing workshop with on Tuesday 21st April, 12pm - 2pm BST —

What Good Mother Myths Cost Us - And Ways We Can Resist Them.

Book your place here.

We’ll also be live on Instagram tomorrow morning at 11am so head here to join or catch up afterwards.

OK! More soon. Sorry / not sorry for all the emails this coming week!

Catrin.

P.S. My husband and I are still working with the Family Field Trips re-brand of what we used to call Holidays. I think Holidays may come around again c.2038. Until then it’s just parenting in different locations using Google maps to find play parks.

*Everyone bar that one mother.

Soon I’ll be leading 24 mothers through my mind-expanding 8-week course. Want to be one of them? More info and shiny new copy on my website here.
We start on Tues 28th April & Thurs 30th April. Live on Zoom.
We show up as we are and we don’t say sorry.

Be The Village.

Have a community. Be humble. Drink plenty of water. Have a great relationship with your partner. Do your pelvic floor exercise. Have another child. But don’t do screen time. Understand attachment parenting. Kill it at work. But also have a great home. Maybe even some pets! Be kind and loving and nurturing and happy and confident and clever and ambitious and not angry or resentful or enraged.

Be grateful.

But don’t forget: Drink water, do your pelvic floor, make home cooked, organic meals. Don’t be just a mum. Be strong. Don’t go on about your kids. Don’t ask for help — you can do this alone. Have a great social media presence. Have hobbies and me-time. Recycle, don’t fly. Buy second hand.

Your kids should be clean and look nice. Brush their teeth, wash their hands. They should be happy and cute and charming, the right side of scruffy, with clean fingernails and nit-free hair. They should not swear or shout or fight, or be spoiled, or ungrateful, or demand screen time.

Your child should act as a walking aphrodisiac to young, childless couples.

Your children should play together like Bluey and Bingo. You should get on with your partner like Chile and Bandit. And don’t think about white supremacy or Gaza or Epstein or single-use plastic or Sudan or the lack of seasons. Don’t drive when you can walk. Don’t eat fast food or go on your phone whilst the kids are around. Don’t doom scroll. Be happy, be engaged. Make sure you don’t helicopter parent or lawnmower parent or whatever parent. Let your children climb trees if there are any trees nearby. Let them have rough and tumble.

You need to look fashionable, smell nice, be nice, say nice, interesting things. Don’t talk about your kids or sleep or milk or rage or patriarchy, because that might not be what the other person wants to hear.

You should be able to drop everything if the kid gets sick. Be so good at your job and so confident you can step away for a few days. Don’t get stressed. Your kid will pick up on that.

Don’t get ill, for God’s sake. You need to be all things to all people.

Be vulnerable but don’t too much. Be strategic but always available. Teach your boys about equality and consent and respect, and your girls about equality and consent and respect. And always be kind. Never be sad. Don’t yet let your kids see you sad. Don’t let your partner or parents or other mothers see you sad. You’ll make them sad when there’s so much to be grateful for.

Make the village.
Build the village.
But also: Be the village.

Tiring isn’t it?

My event with author — What Good Mother Myths Cost Us And Ways We Can Resist Them — is taking place on Tues 21st April 12pm - 2pm on Zoom. More info & grab your ticket here.

If you’re a mother with a young baby or kiddo under 8 and you’d like to explore your matrescence in a small, boundaried group, I am leading my live, 8-week programme at the tail end of April - June 2026. Max 12 participants. More info here.

Also! If you’re new around here, WELCOME! BBC mini-doc and Creative Scotland films about me + The New Mothers’ Writing Circle are here.

And! I’ve been LIVE! over on Insta this week, and will do the final of 4 lives tomorrow at 11:30am BST. Come say hi (+ sorry about the waffle on Monday folks. What can I say? PERI-PERI-CHICKEN-MENOPAUSE).

Thanks to this anonymous writer, an alumna of The New Mothers’ Writing Circle, for her 10 Habits (including embracing GUILT).

1. I skive —
   If I never have a minute to myself, I regularly block out time in my diary for a “meeting”, where I actually go and wash my hair at the gym, sit somewhere quiet and have a coffee, go shopping. Whatever it is I need to feel like me (or just clean). And I even find I’m more efficient when I am in the office and more engaged with my children if I’ve taken time out for myself.

2. I prioritise my sleep —
   But I’m ok with being tired. Believe me, I tried putting sleep above everything else and it didn’t work. Once a week I try to find time for a short recharge nap and it helps enormously.

3. I don’t measure division of labour —
   But I do try to be OK with the feeling that my husband is taking on a bigger share of the load.
   Sometimes I feel guilty when that happens, but I also try to remember that if I’m having that feeling, then in reality it probably means things are just about equal.

4. I try to take up all offers of free childcare —
   Whether that’s with grandparents, friends, or an older kid at a gymnastics class who’s delighted to watch my baby while my toddler jumps on the trampoline. There was also the time I struck up a friendship with a stranger on a train ride to Cornwall, who agreed to keep an eye on my baby while I popped to the loo and got a coffee. In general I feel it’s good to have a chance to miss my children.
   I’d rather feel a touch of guilt for not having been with them for every waking moment than suffocated.

5. Acknowledging how I feel —
   This is probably helped by the meditation I took up in the pandemic. I rarely find time for more than 5 minutes these days but it certainly helps to sit with uncomfortable feelings. For example, when I regretted having my second baby, who was colickly and wouldn’t sleep (she’s great now).

6. I’ve always been very direct —
   And am of the belief that it’s OK to say it out loud when I feel bad. I try to tell my children when I feel angry, sad, tired or that I need a lie down.
   It doesn’t help anyone if I pretend I am enlightened.
   Equally I’ve found that it’s OK to ask my 3 year old if he is cross with me, or sad. He’s very honest and it helps diffuse tension. I recently discovered this approach works with difficult adults too.

7. I take the meds —

   Paracetamol for a headache, sertraline for depression and anxiety, promethazine for insomnia. I judged myself way too much for this but I wouldn’t judge another mum who just needs to be able to get through each day.

8. I don’t try too hard —

   I’ve learned the hard way with a fussy eater that children can be like a stubborn knot - one that only tightens when you try to unpick it. When I let go and allow my children to guide their own play, choose what they want to eat, I find I expend a lot less energy with much the same results.

9. For me, more children is somehow easier —

   I never would have said this a year ago with a newborn and a 2 year old, but now they are a delight together. I’ve also recently discovered the joy of having another kid over to play. They look after each other, eat better, go to bed happier.
   Plus their parents owe me a playdate.

10. I exercise —

    Whether a parent or not, exercise has always given me an endorphin buzz, helped me eat and sleep better. It also gives me time to think about a gnarly problem.

THANK YOU! I am loving putting this series together.
Comments open for your thoughts. Do you have one or more of the same habits?
More soon,
Catrin.

I’m running an event 12pm - 2pm BST on Tuesday 21st April, on Zoom, and I would love to see you there.

What Good Mother Myths Cost Us - And Ways We Can Resist Them will be two hours looking at some of the shonky science and harmful tropes of the ‘good mother’ and how we might use writing to redraft our own ‘super mum’ narratives.

I’m delighted to be leading this alongside author of Motherdom, .

Alex is the author of Motherdom: Breaking Free From Bad Science & Good Mother Myths, described as “irascible, informative” by The New Yorker and “a thorough investigation into the intense pressures mothers face” by the Washington Post.

We’re charging a sliding scale of £0 - £10 and our hope is that many of you will pay it forward to allow someone on a low income to sign up.

You do not need to be a writer to take part.

There are endless, myriad ways to mother and to be a mother. Alex and I hope this event will bring a sense of breathing space within the noise of what we feel we should be doing.

Booking is via Eventbrite, and you’ll be sent the Zoom link via email ahead of time.

The event is welcoming of anyone who identifies as a mother - anywhere, at any stage. This is inclusive of those who foster or have adopted, are step-mothers, are the non-birthing partner in a Queer relationship or mothers who have used a surrogate. Our aim is to be inclusive of anyone from other marginalised identities (additional to the marginalised identity of mother).

Please hit reply if you have any questions, or pop these in the comments.

The event will be recorded so you can catch up if you’re in a meeting or the baby won’t nap, or if Tuesday lunchtime is your designated spin class time.

If you’ve worked with me you’ll know this is precisely my… Wheel house? Jam? (What do the kids say these days?!) My work with The New Mothers’ Writing Circle is tied into this uncomfortable and knotty topic:

• How we might free ourselves from the mother-martyr model many of us grew up with.

• How writing can help us jettison that sense of failure we might have at not “killing it” across all aspects of our lives.

We will come away with insights into our conditioning and alternatives to the dominant narratives of what it takes to be a ‘Good Mother’. (Psst. You get to decide!)

There will also be time for a Q&A at the end. Book your place here.

Unlike The New Mothers’ Writing Circle, we won’t have space to share our writing within the session but I encourage you (always) to put your writing about your matrescence into the world to help disrupt and redraw the narrow picture of motherhood those coming after us will inherit.

Drop a comment below if you have any questions and I am very much looking forward to seeing you there!

Catrin.

Places on my next 8-week cohorts of The New Mothers’ Writing Circle, are here.

We begin on Tues 28th April (for mothers of young children under 2) and on Thurs 30th April (for mothers of kiddos aged 2 - 8).
On Zoom, 10am - 11:45am ish, BST.
Max 12 per cohort.

I’m going to upload a ton of recent testimonials ‘coz they are unreal and so beautiful - follow along on Insta here.

1. On Tues 21st April I will be running an event with Alex Bollen, author of ‘Motherdom: Breaking Free From Bad Science & Good Mother Myths’.
   It will be on Zoom, 12pm - 2pm GMT. Nominal fee.
   The event will be called What Good Mother Myths Cost Us - And Ways We Can Resist Them.
   More details to follow.

2. On Thurs 23rd April I’ll be performing excerpts from my teenage diaries (no, I did not burn them) here in Glasgow at The Old Hairdressers.
   Tickets for Teenage Me OMG are already half sold out — get yours here.
   Expect teenage letters, poetry and diary entries from a group of adults with no shame.

3. On Tues 28th & Thurs 30th April I’ll start the next 8-week cohorts of The New Mothers’ Writing Circle.

“I have no time,” I hear you say. “I have no ideas!”
“All I do is wipe the baby’s / my kid’s bum and load/empty/load the dishwasher on repeat. What the hell is there to write about!?”

The maternal experience is still massively underwritten. In recent years, yes, there’s been a resurgence of literature and increasing studies on the maternal brain, but (surely?) the reason we were so shocked by the true nature and scale of the work of mother-ing-matrescence-hood and the mind-bending shift in, well, everything, is because motherhood is still considered niche. Something which happens over there, preferably behind closed doors and away from the clean, ordered, important work of running the capitalist machine of western society.

Mothers create life. We are literally making humans. And the surrounding work of that creativity is keeping the greasy wheels of the world oiled.

Yesterday I found a note in an old diary which said “I can’t play at the normal career game anymore so I’m just gonna make up my own game. And invite people to come play with me.”

And that’s what The New Mothers’ Writing Circle is, in a way.

You do not need to be a writer to take part in any of my work. You already have a voice and a bazillion stories and art within you which want to come out. Your art, the stories and poems and essays only you can create — beautiful, magical human being that you are — will make you feel better if they come out. They will simultaneously make other mothers feel better, once shared.

I’m trying not to use the word healing but, fuck it, this isn’t LinkedIn:
This work heals people.

Key info:

• TUES 28th APRIL - TUES 16th JUNE 2026 - For mothers of babies 12 weeks - 2 years old.

• THURS 30th APRIL - THURS 18th JUNE 2026 - For mothers of children aged 2 - 8 (ish).

• 12 max per cohort.

• 10am - 11:45am GMT on Zoom.

• Show up wherever you are, however you are.

• You don’t need to have birthed your kid. I’ve welcomed non-birthing Queer mums, adopting and fostering mums, and a woman who used a surrogate. There is so much more that connects us in our matrescence, than divides us.

• More info on both cohorts here.

  
  BTW if you’re new around here (HIYA!) and want to see more before signing up —

  -BBC film about my work is here and
  -Creative Scotland’s film is here.

  (And yes, I have managed to recreate digitally what I initially created as an in-person experience).

4. On Sat 30th May I am going to be in Berlin, baby!
   More info to follow but in short, this will be a day-long writing and art-making retreat called MANIFESTOS OF MOTHERHOOD, aimed at mothers at all stages of their matrescence.
   If you’re anywhere near Berlin (or want to have a couple of days there, to yourself, and to take part in the day-retreat), put the date in your diary and go look for flights. It’s going to be around €75.
   More info soon. OMG I am so excited.
   
   OK. Not sure how I’ve managed to make all of the formatting go wonky. Never mind :-)
   
   Let’s get off our phones and go make something. Creativity will be our way through the current insanity unfolding around us.
   
   Catrin.
   

4 Habits of a Healthy, Happy Mother.

1. MIRROR MOTHERS.
My morning spills out of me… He wouldn’t get dressed, then he knocked a whole cup of milk onto the sofa. I barked out my anger and watched him dissolve, his tear streaked face staring up in confusion. I drop him off at school in a puddle of guilt and regret, another day ruined.

The only thing that can save me then is another mother. A mirror mother. Because she’s been there (or somewhere similar enough to feel that familiar stab of shame). Like me, this mirror mother has also been up all night, and hasn’t washed her hair. She nods knowingly and says yes, we’ve had days like that too, it’s so hard isn’t it. She alone can keep me sane, and stop me feeling like a complete failure.

She might be a school mum I chat to at pickup. Or someone working on checkout at Sainsbury’s. My best friend. My mother-in-law. She is everyone and no-one. But she’s always there, if you know where to look.

Reflecting and reminding me: You are not alone.

2. SEX
Sex is rare now — of course it is — but in a strange way it’s made those stolen moments all the more precious. In recent years the nightly expectation — unenforceable since the first waves of nauseating pregnancy — has given way to something deeper. It’s allowed the real pleasure-hunger to surface.

Since I stopped breastfeeding our youngest and our eldest finally started sleeping through the night, my body has allowed itself to retrace the steps to sex more readily. My head doesn’t hold me back as often with the constant calculations concerning when my body is needed next, and by whom.

I’ve realised it’s OK for the person needing my body to be me.

Birthing my babies forced me to get to know my body in ways I never had before. And now when he starts touching me, I relax, and when I’m relaxed, I feel sexy.

These days my inhibitions fall away more readily. As do my clothes.

3. WORK.
I remember when my eldest son started nursery. Everyone asked if I’d struggled to leave the baby, or considered delaying my return to work. Of course in the moment I played along. “Oh yes it’s been really hard to leave him!” But underneath I needed the space. I needed nursery to be fully responsible for my child so that I could breathe again.

The beautiful burden I’d carried inside for 9 months and outside for 12, was finally off my shoulders, for 8 hours a day, 3 days a week. They’d have to feed him, change him, soothe him and entertain him. And I could be me again. Back in the rat race like everyone else. A contributor whose value is measured in wages and spreadsheets and feedback. Reductive measurements of course, but it felt good for things to be black and white again.

4. SWIMMING
Swimming has been a constant in my life since I was a kid. In my youth it was an escape from school yard squabbles, a path to strength and fitness, a social link I clung to when the rest of my world felt lonely.

But now I’m a mother, it’s purpose has changed. Now it soothes my soul, balms the edges made raw by birthing babies and raising toddlers. Under water I can’t hear the baby monitor squawk, the ping of unanswered WhatsApps, the pasta boiling over.

I’m thankful for the hundreds of hours I spent plodding up and down swim lanes as a teen, because as an adult I can repeat the same strokes, turns and breaths without thinking. I’ve found that the physical disconnection from my phone and other people allows my thoughts to percolate into a more ordered version of the usual scramble. A frankly wondrous notion in 2026.

Sometimes, I’m lucky enough to steal enough hours for a swim outdoors. As I wade through the shallows, the bite of the cold water forces me to stop talking (a rarity in any other setting!) and b.r.e.a.t.h.e. in slow cycles until my body adjusts. My skin sets alight in a sharp focus not possible on land.

However veiled the watery sun may be, I close my eyes and tilt my chin skywards, basking like a fat sea lion on Pier 39. For a few precious minutes, I actually feel IN my own body. At least until it goes numb and then alas, despite yearning for 5 more minutes, my logical (hypothermia-preventing) brain tells me it’s time to get out.

I always feel a bit gutted when the thrill is over, but once clothes are wrestled on under the cliche dryrobe, gooey cake and hot tea are there to take the edge off.

Thank you Annie.
More Habits of Happy Mothers coming very soon.

If you have a kiddo under 8 and you’d like to do my live, taught-online 8-week course, exploring the language of matrescence and how we find fluency in the messy muddle of this huge transition, read more here.

I’ll begin my next cohorts at the end of April 2026. Reply with your questions and let’s chat.

You don’t need to be a writer to take part — you already have a voice.

Talking of voices… I am looking for more opportunities to speak — on stages, panels, podcasts and shows. If you would like to bring my perspective into your work, please reach out!

More soon,
Catrin.

Before I had my children I knew so little of what it was to mother. I thought it looked boring. It seemed both pretty niche and yet very standard. Mainly I just didn’t think about it. In the back of my mind it was like: Become a woman, have a baby, carry on as before.

There seemed so few alternatives to womanhood other than to have a child. What else were you supposed to do? Work all the time? I think there are more narratives available now, for those who don’t want kids: We can imagine childfree couples and adults, and now I can spot them. They have dogs and tans, from all that travel and time and spare cash.

(These unicorns are now what mothers — and parents more generally — so desperately need. Rested people with time and bandwidth, who tell stories of sweaty gigs and adventures in European cities. They can take us away, at least in our imaginations and sometimes if we’re very lucky, take our kids away for a couple of hours to eat new foods and go to different parks).

Mostly I just see mothers, everywhere I go. Young, shocked mothers with sleepy newborns, their fists curled in scratch-mitts. Mothers with double buggies and that unspeakable, familiar exhaustion knotted into their foreheads. Older mothers with one at primary school, another at high school, spinning plates I cannot yet fathom.

Out of the corner of my eye I also spot mothers whose kids have left home, their frizzy grey hair sticking out under their hats.

They, at long last, look rested.

So this is your invitation, not to wait until then but to rest, now, today.

If you’re off to see your own mum, to hug her and thank her for all she gave you, I hope there is a sense of reciprocity. That she sees you for all you give, too.

Shock and awe.

I maintain that motherhood comes as a shock because we know so little of the interior lives of mothers. Where are the plays about the heart-stretching, grief-stricken early days of motherhood? The pop songs about leaving your child for their first day at nursery? The operas about birth and blood and postpartum?

“It’s revealing to compare how differently women get ready for romance. We don’t go to falling-in-love preparation classes. Rather, the enormity of falling in love is described in songs and poetry, as tragedy and comedy, so it is communicated on so many different levels by one generation to the next. ‘Oh, she’s in love,’ we say, and those two crucial words convey a wealth of meaning. We expect the person who is in love to be dreamy, moody, forgetful, unavailable for ordinary commitments and wholly focused on the beloved person. We pick up warning signals from childhood that falling in love can be a dramatic event, and that it has the power to overturn our lives, for better or for worse.

By contrast, the experience of turning into a mother is rarely the subject of songs or literature. There may be stories about unusual crises, but there isn’t much popular culture to ease a mother into her new role.”

Naomi Stadlen, What Mothers Do (Especially When It Looks Like Nothing).

Give me a festival and I would programme them all.

Don’t be alone in your matrescence.

On Wednesday, I bumped into a woman I worked with, in-person, way back in 2023. We hugged and chatted, caught up on the mind-bending juggle of being creative mothers to two children. She wanted to know how The New Mothers’ Writing Circle’s 8-week course could possibly be translated online when she had gained so much from being together in a warm and chaotic room.

“I don’t know”, I said. “I never knew I could do what I do, virtually, but I can.”

This past week I’ve finished up with two cohorts. The mothers who come into my life through this work gift me (and their fellow participants) windows into their interior lives. I gift them back an experience difficult to sum up. Mostly it’s an experience of being seen, held and supported.

I am very proud of the programme I have created: My ability to teach it, the draw to the programme of intelligent, awakening mothers, who increasingly have the ability to hold nuance, difference and paradox. Who are finding and sharing their voices.

You are not failing if you’re finding motherhood hard (by which I mean impossible). We were never supposed to mother in these siloed, individualistic ways.

We need others to lighten the load, if only for 2 hours a week for a couple of months. But the true impact runs way beyond that, into the months and years of participants’ matrescence and beyond.

I’ll run the programme again April - June 2026 on Zoom.
More info here. A bazillion testimonials here.

What would it feel like to give yourself permission?

I thought I’d share some WhatsApp messages pinged to the Tuesday group after our final session, too —

Thanks for reading.
I want to know, tomorrow: How was it to rest? Did you feel guilty? Was it delicious? Comments open.

More soon,
Catrin.

*It’s Mother’s Day in the UK. Why not jump on the bandwagon even if you’re elsewhere!?

My aim is to make space for different, maternal voices, bringing hope and positivity in what can feel like a bin-fire of a world. Here we’ll zone-in on joy, creativity and sensuousness as small acts of resistance.

#1 is by Rachel Loughran, who took part in The New Mothers’ Writing Circle in 2023, at Glasgow Women’s Library.

10 Habits of Happy Mothers

I accepted this prompt whilst in the first trimester of second pregnancy and on the eve of a massive amount of building work being done on my house. I do consider myself a happy mother but I am also stressed and exhausted and anxious and trying not to focus on the news. This has been a welcome distraction in a weird time.

An unofficial eleventh habit should, of course, be writing.

1. Baths. I moved to a real fixer upper last year and while we’ve renovated most of it, a bathroom with a shower will not appear in my life until the eventual extension is done. I have always been a bath person, but now as I literally cannot shower, my proper long luxurious baths have been very important to me. Not the ten-minute utility baths that get me clean; the long, bubbly baths with candles and bath salts and the chance to sink into my enormous tub and stare at my purple ceiling in utter peace for an hour.

2. The Library (or simply reading with my child). Every Monday I pick up my kid from nursery and take him to the library and we pick out new books for him. He does not discriminate based on cover, and I wonder if he ever will. He’s been specifically seeking out ‘the long ones’ lately, and in fact has recently demanded I read him a chapter at a time of the Magic Faraway Tree, which is honestly the dream. I tell him learning to read is going to change his entire life. I think he believes me!

3. Buying tickets for a concert I might not be able to go to. So here’s the thing. I’m pregnant again (hurrah!) and also, icon of my youth, Hilary Duff, is going on a world tour. Before I was pregnant I was going to go to New York to see her with my Brooklyn-based friend Gabby, but the New York dates are too late for me to fly. Guess when her Glasgow dates are? Ten days after my due date! But you know what? A seated ticket was £60, and maybe I’ll give birth a month early. Gabby is flying to me instead. If I can’t go, which I probably can’t, she’ll take my sister, and I have no doubt I will get a shitload of cringe merch I’ll use as pyjamas until the end of time. It somehow doesn’t really matter that I almost definitely can’t go. Buying the ticket still feels like something, you know?

4. Reading for ME. In 2025 I moved to the coast and found myself with a forty-minute train journey six times a week. Last year I read 72 books (yes I counted, yes I’m obsessed), and a decent chunk of them were absolute crap, but they were also great. I pored over my shelves – many rereads, and finally the first reads of books I’ve owned for years. I careened from classics to contemporary to university set texts to Sweet Valley High, based on nothing but vibes and what I was going to be facing that week. Sometimes, when everything is hard and terrible, reading a problematic late 80’s Sweet Valley High book is all you need – especially if you are combining two habits at once and reading it in the bath.

5. ‘Wild Swimming.’ It’s been a while, but there’s something magic about walking into the sea on a warm but windy day and letting the waves batter me to bits. Troon beach is at the end of my street and last summer I’d walk down with my husband and son every decent morning for a dip, taking it in turns to walk out into the surf while the other played in the shallows with the boy. I’m looking forward to resuming this when the weather stops being so fucking miserable. An Australian friend has pointed out that where she comes from ‘wild swimming’ is simply called ‘swimming.’ But this is the west coast of Scotland, lady! If the day is warm, though, the sea is bliss. You can’t think about anything bad when you’re holding your own against the Irish Sea. Smash me to pieces please.

6. Joining a (terrible?) choir. To be honest, it’s probably better to join a good choir, however… I go with my sister; we are the youngest members by possibly thirty years, I can only hear myself singing soprano and I can only hear my sister singing alto, but it’s undeniable that it’s just good for you to sing. Good for the brain; makes it feel all tingly. Rehearsals are an ego boost. Concerts are, to be fair, the opposite.

7. If my kid has a poop accident (rare), I’m afraid I just throw out the pants. Life has indeed dealt me some privilege. Sometimes this is how it manifests.

8. Indulging my vanity. I am generally a put together person. It was important for me when my kid was little that neither of us would spend all day in pyjamas. It still feels like a crucial part of my daily ritual to put on a little ten minute face in the morning and wear a pretty dress to remind me of who I have always been. I am fully prepared for baby number two to humble me.

9. Date night. Husband and I have been together for like thirteen years? It’s hard to say exactly because we’ve known each other for over thirty and things get a little blurry. Every Tuesday night for the whole of our relationship we’ve had date night. That might mean a film or video games or the very occasional dinner out. Since our kid was a year old this has been further facilitated by grandparents taking turns to have the boy for a sleepover on a Tuesday night, but even when he was tiny, it was a specific night of the week that we chose to hang out in the same space together, eat the same food, consume the same entertainment. Life often finds us very much doing our own thing in the post-child-bedtime hours. This is a lovely anchor in the middle of the week. Or a kite string, maybe, keeping us grounded.

10. Letting go. I guess if my kid wants to wear his Thor / Iron Man / monkey costume literally all the time, it’s not hurting anyone. Honestly it keeps the clothes underneath a lot cleaner. This doesn’t just apply to costumes, obviously. But I have been trying to let my kid live his little life a bit more. Some things may be non-negotiable, but joy rarely is.

You can follow Rachel on Insta here.

You can follow me on Insta here and here. (I know, 2 accounts. Dreadful).

If you’d like to work with me, sign up for the next cohorts of The New Mothers’ Writing Circle here.

If you’d like to take part in this series, hit reply. Comments are open too :-)