It’s… purple Friday!
Let's be honest... I don't think I'll keep this lilac colour. But I'm using its arrival to update you and share a few of my favourite pieces...
POP! THE! CHAMPAGNE!
I made a tiny change to Crocuses In The Snow! I (drumroll, please) made use of the features that almost all Substackers have utilised since the beginning. THERE’S A GENIUS IN YOUR MIDST.
First, I grouped my content together in categories, so old posts are easier to find. Then I (to a mixed reception, I like it, my husband doesn’t) changed the background to purple. As crocuses are purple!
Also, in the spirit of Black Friday (is your inbox overflowing with irritation, or joy?) I learned how to offer a discount for anyone considering upgrading to a paid subscription. Now, I know, you’ve probably spent all your money on a reduced Air Fryer by now (send me your recipes!) but if, by any chance, you haven’t, there’s a link for 20% off below and here’s some benefits paid subscribers can get…
(skip this if you can’t afford to pay right now, at the bottom there’s some beautiful writing available totally for free…)
Crocuses in conversation
I’ll be inviting some brilliant people to discuss talking points raised from the newsletter, and recording our conversations with the full audio recording available to paid subscribers. The first should be coming next week! I’ll be talking to Amy Grier, who wrote this thought-provoking guest post for me, about how friendships change when one of you is a parent, and the other isn’t.
Crocuses in the classroom
Early next year, I’m going to launch a range of classes sharing some writing tips, with feedback from paid subscribers as to what they’d most want to learn (e.g: are you interested in my work as a magazine journalist, or would you want to know how to process your memories through writing?) Let me know, even if you’re just considering becoming a paid subscriber I’d welcome the feedback!
Crocuses in chaos
These will be exclusive paid subscriber posts, where I’m discussing various topics other than grief.
Crocuses in chapters
I processed so much of my own grief by creating fiction out of it. I’ll be sharing that novel, about a young woman who, in the midst of her grief, forms a toxic, but life defining friendship, with my paid subscribers. You can learn about that book here.
Saying all of that, the majority of content will remain free. I want this to be a space where we all explore our grief together, and that’s something I (personally) feel uncomfortable paywalling.
But, because of how heavy some of the topics we explore on here are, I want to make sure I can commission other voices, interview experts and give the writing the space and time it needs to explore my subjects responsibly. Every single person who signs up to pay helps support that.
Anyway, you’ve been sold enough today!
Here’s the link for the discount if you’re interested…
And here’s an introduction to all my new sections, with a chosen post from each section and my favourite line from that post…
Interviews
I’ve spoken to so many interesting people, from a hospice nurse on the strange and comforting things she’s experienced sitting with people in their final moments, to a neuroscientist on what happens to our brains when we grieve… But the conversation that impacted me the most was speaking to Rev Marion Chatterley who works with people during their lowest moments, to help them find slivers of joy again. Whether you’re religious or not, I believe we have a lot we can learn from her.
A sample…
We all make decisions that others might disagree with. We all do things knowing that they will hurt us but that we feel compelled to do anyway… We make brilliant calls and we make stupid calls over and over again. Yet we also all want to help others, guide our loved ones away from pain. Is that possible? Or are people set the way they’re set?
Rebellion
This section, admittedly, needs some more love. Maybe my neglect of it is a small rebellion all by itself. But it’s where I’ll house my exploration of what it means to be rebellious today, including my piece on how we’re told loving our body is a rebellious act, but what does that even mean?
A sample…
I swing constantly between completely agreeing with the anti-diet rhetoric while secretly, shamefully, wishing I was thinner. I once ordered a book rallying against diet culture and it showed up in the same package as a set of diet pills I’d purchased a few days before…
Guest posts
This is where I invite others to share their stories. They don’t have to be just about traditional grief, but life altering moments or reflections on their past selves, like the most recent piece by Amy Grier exploring what happens when a friendship group slowly breaks down…
A sample…
Friendships are and always will be our most important social narrators. The things that validate and make sense of the paintball clusterfuck of adult life. But no, just because we’re not friends now doesn’t mean it wasn’t real then.
Grief of change
I believe grief can come in several different guises, we can grieve our pasts and who we once were, and we can grieve futures lost by circumstance or even choice. It was the latter I explore, when I discussed my decision to be child-free and the impact it has had on me. I house similar articles in this section.
A sample…
A life with children is not one that I can simply try on for a week. It’s also the life, out of all the ones I could have lived, I find hardest to let go of. The one that hits me in the gut, tearing at me, on grey mornings. Not necessarily because it’s the one I want the most, but because it’s the one I’m told I should want the most.
Exploring our grief
I set up this newsletter to untangle our grief together, to dig deep into the cobwebbed parts of my own mind and share what I found. Not necessarily because I hold any solutions, but because sharing has often been my salvation. All the articles unpicking my own grief are housed here, including discussing the shame of my faulty memories.
Why do I need something to replay, to relive, when there’s no way of going back? Is it not enough that I was there, that she was there and that we were happy most of the time? Do I need something to override the melancholy memories, the ones that kick me in the stomach every now and then? Or is it a desire to grab onto anything - even if it’s dusty air within my own head - so as if to feel as if she exists somewhere present? If I had strong memories would they help me? Or would they trap me?
Mental health
There are moments in my life that aren’t so much to do with grief, or my past, but just simply because having ‘good’ mental health is less about a destination, and more of a journey. It’s important to me to share the different facets of my mind, as I’ve found, when I do share (particularly the parts I’m most ashamed of) I find so many others who feel the same. Such as when I opened up about how challenging I was still finding the aftermath of lockdown…
A sample…
Most people I know are feeling a little lost right now. If it’s not easy to pinpoint then we’re scrambling around looking for the cause of why we have lost our footing. Is it our marriages, our jobs, our homes? Have we made the right life choices? Why does everything feel a little flat? Why, after all we’ve been through, do we not feel happy? And while it won’t be the only cause (there’s rarely just one cause for how we’re feeling) I do believe that it’s down to those locked-in years. I know it’s not strictly true to say we lost years of our lives, but we did lose a huge chunk of time, living life as we knew it. It left us at best discombobulated, at worst fucking terrified.
Ambition
How has hustle culture impacted you? How has it impacted me? How can I untangle my desire for praise, with my genuine love of work? I explore the complicated clash of the ambitious in this section, as I go through a shift in my own priorities, probably best summed up in this piece exploring grief, and girl bossing…
Why had I thrown all of myself into this career? Why had I crafted my entire identity around goal check-boxes, Instagram likes, the click-clack of my heels in a lobbied building? Was I, had I always been, all about popularity?
Poems
These are readings of my poems, which I usually share on Instagram, covering all of the above and more. My favourite of late is this one, which ends like this… (it reminds me to be kind to myself, I hope it will do the same for you)
That whole time
Each mistake had a soundtrack
“You’ll never learn”
But you did
You always do.