Finding the Urban Wild

In June we moved house, from our grey council estate further into town. In many ways it was a relief - the new mortgage was cheaper than the rent, and finally we could put our own stamp on our dwelling without worrying about the landlord. Living closer to town was convenient for visiting friends, family, and helpfully our house is on the same road as the nursery the Spud will eventually be going to. The house is smaller, but it's a 1940s build with a fireplace and a beautiful archway between the kitchen and living room. It desperately needs redecorating, and we're trying to sell a lot of our furniture on Facebook marketplace in order to actually fit, but it's a brilliant house and I love it.

The garden is quite big, but it hasn't been tended in some years and is made largely of weeds and mud. This means I'm out there from dawn til dusk digging madly and putting down lawn seed, as about every two minutes the Spud traipses dirty footprints all through the house. I've given up on keeping anything clean in the meanwhile, so the downstairs is slowly becoming a swamp. I have also started a small herb garden and a vegetable patch, and my first crop of beetroot is coming along nicely. (I did, however, discover that we have an infestation of chafer grubs, which kill lawns - d'oh - so I'm going to sow clover seeds as a cover crop, which will also be good for the butterflies and bees.)

However, there have been some downsides to moving into a more urban area. Firstly, I no longer have easy access to woodlands and meadows for my walks with the Spud. We are within half an hour's walk of two brilliant nature reserves (the one we have made our territory for the last couple of years, and another, which is Green Flag rated and rather splendid), but it's not quite the same as having the river right on the back doorstep. I was surprised by how adrift and disconnected I have felt, not having quite such easy access to green space. We have been exploring the scrubby patches of trees and greenery around the edges of urban life, and I am learning that this kind of hardy, defiant growth has a very different spirit. It's harder to feel that strong sense of connection that I had been experiencing, but I'm hopeful that I can adjust and learn from this. I have Claire Dunn's Rewilding the Urban Soul and Tara Sanchez's Urban Faery Magick on my reading list to help me get acclimated!

Pentagram graffiti under a bridge. 
This is the same river that runs through the nature reserve where the Spud and I used to walk, but the vibe here is very different!

A more worrisome discovery is that living two minutes from the high street has kicked my consumerism into high gear. I've gradually been getting this back under control, but it wasn't an outcome I'd considered and it caught me rather by surprise! Sometimes it was obvious - hey, I'll just go browse this artisan market and the local independent shops for some home decor bits... yes, I definitely need another candle holder... - and sometimes less so - hey, a Nepalese takeaway, I'll just stop for some momos... hey, a Waitrose, I really fancy some sushi - but I quickly noticed that my finances were feeling the pinch and started avoiding the shops (and takeaways) unless I actually needed something.

The Spud wasn't immune to this either! He's well aware that shops are large repositories of toys, sweets and other things he doesn't have yet (on our last foray into the local independent shops he wanted a lucky waving cat and some crystal tumblestones... that's my boy) and has taken to hurling himself on the floor screaming if he is not bought Things! Immediately! I don't mind withstanding the hurricane of a toddler tantrum and will sit on the street and wait him out rather than cave in and buy a new toy from every shop we happen to pass, but avoiding the high street for now is probably the best strategy for both of us...

Another manifestation of the consumer trap I've noticed since we moved is that now I live on one of the main thoroughfares into town and am seeing lots more people every day, my anxiety about how I present myself also kicked up a notch for a while, and I had a few weeks where I wanted to waft around in flowy skirts and lots of jewellery to present a suitably alternative and Pagan appearance (although if questioned I'm quite sniffy about adopting a Pagan uniform, go figure). Looking a bit mysterious and witchy is far from being a problem in itself of course, but in my case it meant wanting to buy lots of new clothes, and also a tendency to stop doing the actual work in favour of spending a bit more time on my eyeliner. Style over substance is something I can easily slip into, and it's really not worth it.

This phase luckily came to an end when I was out on the new (to us) nature reserve and realised that I felt a bit conspicuous in my outfit. It was easier to switch off from the everyday and get connected when I was in my usual t-shirt and jeans or leggings. As I'd realised before, what feels great on Glastonbury high street or at the local rock bar doesn't always work well in other situations, particularly when my focus needs to turn outwards instead of inwards. I've not given up on my flowy skirts and jewellery for occasions when I know I'll be comfortable wearing them, but it was a reminder that, boring though it might seem to blend in, it does help me stop worrying about the surface stuff and writing shopping lists in my head and actually, y'know, do some Druiding.

Other than regularly visiting the nature reserves and spending lots of time in my garden, I have some other activities planned to help a) with being an effective student of Druidry and b) my transition to less consumerist living. Firstly, on my street there is a town museum, with a strong focus on the Iron Age, and I must pay a visit. I really want to get to know the history of this area, its folklore and - yes - its ghost stories (because I'm nerdy about spooky tales!). Secondly, I'm going to explore local shops of a different kind - I'm talking local produce and our excellent plant nursery. Thirdly, if time allows (which admittedly it may not) I'm considering getting involved with the group that runs conservation activities on the nature reserves as well as at other sites up and down the river. And lastly I've signed up to write infrequently on environmental issues for a local paper. I've also been asked to run a yin yoga class and guided meditation session for a dear friend's mental health support group - this is a bit out of my comfort zone (speaking? In front of humans?!) but when I thought about it, it seemed like a good way of supporting and being of service to my community. None of which require me to buy new clothes!

But I think the most important thing I can do is the same as it's always been - keep going outside!

Burnout

In April, I mostly felt like shit - not to put too fine a point on it. I'd had a moderate-to-severe headache on a daily basis for about a month, which wouldn't shift despite new glasses, a new pillow, herbal teas, earlier bedtimes, yoga, and drinking enough water to float a small battleship. I was popping more painkillers than I felt comfortable with just to stay functional.

I guess I shouldn't have been surprised - I had a lot on my mind. We were applying for a mortgage, and it had taken close to five months to get to a stage where we could actually submit the application to the underwriters. I'd kind of accepted that the whole thing wasn't going to come off, and we were going to keep living in our crumbling, single-glazed beige shoebox for astronomical rent (you get used to taps and towel rails coming off in your hand and the arctic wind through the lounge, but the window that could be pushed outwards like a cat flap was a bit of a problem, and the electrician doing a safety inspection was rather startled by the plug socket that lit up orange and spat sparks). Except suddenly it was starting to look like we might actually be buying a house, and I started looking at our library of books, mountains of baby toys and antique farmhouse table in a sort of dazed panic, wondering how on earth we were ever going to move it all.

Then there was the wedding. We had postponed it twice and then eventually cancelled when our venue called us to say they were no longer sure whether they would be able to honour our booking and wouldn't find out until a few weeks before the wedding date. We decided not to take the gamble. Now that the COVID madness looked to be drawing to a close in this country, the gears were grinding into motion again as we looked at starting from scratch. Our current plan is a quick legal ceremony with immediate family (possibly with me wearing my tie-dye dungarees if we are able to get a date before I can finish having my dress tailored) and then a handfasting next May, followed by as many very casual receptions as it takes to celebrate with all our friends and family depending on how many people we are allowed to gather together at any given time. 

This time I'm trying to do things in a stress-free way - no seating plans, no chasing people who don't respond to invitations, no printed invitations in fact. No make-up artist, no fancy caterer, no favours - just a nice pub with a Pagan bent and an interesting supply of local ales, and a meaningful ceremony followed by laughter and song and merrymaking into the night.

Except I was stressing about my no-stress wedding, because a good chunk of the extended family didn't know I'm Pagan, or at least Pagan-adjacent, and at least one of those people really, really doesn't do religion or spirituality of any kind and could almost certainly be counted on to say something that will make me feel three inches tall and stupid to boot. And I couldn't just not invite this person, for a variety of reasons, so I was trying to forge ahead without worrying about it and let their issues be their own, but that was easier said than done. (It came out all right in the end!)

Lastly there's parenting. This is generally not too bad, except we've rarely had an unbroken night's sleep in two and a half years and counting (this seems to be improving lately - hooray!) and apart from the occasional weekend when Topaz babysits for an afternoon, that's also roughly the amount of time since Dai and I were alone together. My personal time, now that Dai was on call again and couldn't do regular childcare stints, consisted of an hour a week when a family friend took the Spud to the park and I desperately tried to make the house less gross. Lately I'd managed to use that time to do yoga and meditation instead, which helps somewhat - the house can take its chances - but overall I think I was just... burning out.

My mind was full of questions and worries - about the environment, my family, our finances, some downright stupid but extraordinarily persistent ones about what to buy or to not buy. It was also close to the birthday of a dear friend who had taken her own life, and I found myself sitting awake at 2am thinking about how she always wore blue or turquoise or teal, or wondering whether it would have changed anything if I'd phoned on the Sunday instead of putting it off till Monday... So yeah, I hadn't been sleeping well.

In May we had a ten-day holiday booked. It would have been our honeymoon, but since we hadn't managed to get married yet I was calling it the Unhoneymoon. I decided to use that time as a kind of retreat - I'd figure out how to set up an autoreply on my personal emails, put my phone on aeroplane mode and ACTUALLY DISCONNECT and have a rest. No mortgage brokers. No solicitors. No estate agents. 

I was going to be present. I was going to play with my kid instead of trying to clean house around him. I was going to eat well and keep drinking lots of water. I'd even pack my yoga mat. I was going to go to sleep on time and not stay up late reading blogs and Kindle samples and browsing eBay for those beautiful rainbow skirts I never should have got rid of (I'd noticed my technology use shooting up again the last couple of months). I was going to retreat, reset, and get rid of this damned headache.

(The other solution I found was writing down all the weird niggles and worries that tumble round my head at night. It was like sweeping my brain clean! And that's how this post was born.)

Parenting in a Nature-Depleted Age

'What is the extinction of the condor to a child who's never known a wren?' - Robert Pyle

I was an outdoorsy, free range child, but as a teen things changed. As I grew older and spent more and more time on my appearance, I also spent more and more time online. I was the girl who wore six inch heels to walk the dog. I wore a full face of make-up to stay indoors on the computer. It just became my new normal. I lost touch with the previous version of me who played amongst the bluebells and always had grass stains on her knees. Eventually I started to avoid doing anything that might smudge my eyeliner, interfere with my hair extensions or damage my lace petticoats. I stopped going swimming or to the beach. It actually got to the point when the breeze on my skin felt irritating - annoying and alien. I preferred to stay indoors, where the temperature was regulated and nothing might muss me. Chatrooms, blogs and forums were my 'real world'.

I realise that in a lot of ways I was an extreme case! Luckily this bizarre phase only lasted a short while. But I'll never forget feeling disturbed by the slightest of breezes! Now I'm more like my mum who, come rain, shine, storms or snow, always went to the back doorstep first thing upon waking, and sat on the step wrapped in her dressing gown, looking into the garden with her cup of tea. That peaceful time and connection with the outdoors is a great way to start the day refreshed and grounded, even if your toddler wants you to join in his persecution of the local woodlouse population rather than drink your coffee in peace. But I digress.

With the benefit of hindsight, I can see now how lucky I was to be able to have such an outdoorsy childhood. We were able to rent a house in the village, which we might not otherwise have had access to, as my parents worked for the landowners. This provided a brilliant place to grow up - surrounded by woodlands and meadows, I could play unsupervised but safe from traffic, and I was able to range further as I got older. Of course not every child has access to this much unspoilt nature, particularly not nowadays as we try desperately to house our growing population and provide the infrastructure that they need. 

We now live in a digital age. Many well-meaning friends and family have said things to me like, "Not to worry, soon you can get your little one a tablet, and then you won't have to do so much with him." I absolutely could plonk him in front of a screen for several hours a day, but as we've learned when we've fallen back on that easy option before, we all suffer. His mood suffers, his behaviour suffers, and bedtime becomes an all-out battle. So we keep screen time to a minimum - just an episode of one of his favoured shows now and again, usually if Dai's working and I need to cook dinner without small hands trying to investigate all the hots and sharps. 

If it hadn't been for the Spud, I'm not sure whether I would ever have rediscovered my love of the outdoors. He's an extremely active child - I once took him to a class for lively toddlers and he ran rings around all the others before effecting an escape through a door one of the other mums had left open whilst looking at her phone. I had to hurdle chairs, bags, and other people's children to catch him before he could find his way out into the street.

To keep his energy levels under control so we can have relatively calm days, he has a minimum of an hour's walk around the neighbourhood. Every day, rain or shine. In the warmer months, he spends more time in the garden than in the house. Had I not been a parent, I might have spent a good chunk of 2020 under the duvet, or vegetating in front of Netflix. As it was, every day we spent our allotted hour down on the nature reserve, avoiding other people and enjoying the birdsong, and we've kept up the habit. If the weather's bad, we often don't see anyone else around. On rainy days, we put on our wellies and waders and go splashing down the river, just us and the ducks. 

I recently read about 1000 Hours Outside, which encourages kids and parents to match screen time with time in nature, and I've kept this in the back of my mind ever since - on those days when I struggle to feel enthusiastic about rebuilding the leaf pile for him to jump into for the 97th time, or when he's leading me further away from home just as I'm starting to think about checking my email. Every hour we spend wandering woodland paths and back alleys is another hour closer to that epic 1000 hours. 

The Spud with his bag of wildflowers

The fact is that although I no longer live in an idyllic village, I want my son to have the same interest in the outdoors that I have. The sad truth is that we now live in one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world. One in seven of the UK's native species face extinction. Just 13% of the UK's land area has tree cover - compared to a 35% average over the rest of Europe. And if my generation raise our children indoors, staring at screens, things can only get worse.

Nature deficiency is bad for children. Author Richard Louv describes some of the symptoms: 'Diminished use of the senses, attention difficulties, and higher rates of physical and emotional illnesses.' In her book Losing Eden: Why Our Minds Need the Wild, Lucy Jones writes, 'My grandmothers had an inherent lexicon of the natural world and how it operates. My parents knew their birds, flowers and plants; names, timing and behaviours. I knew a bit, maybe five to ten per cent of what they knew, and I was keener on wildlife than most of my friends. It would follow that my daughter's connection with the natural world would be even more remote than mine. Would she be able to name - by which I mean know - anything at all? Or would she be so desensitized to the point where a connection with nature would have little - or no - value?' 

Not only are we depriving our children of a vast array of joys and wonders if we fail to encourage this connection, but it's bad for the rest of the ecosystem too. Children won't care about what they don't know. In our increasingly industrialized society, facing a deeply uncertain future of extreme weather events, pandemics and climate chaos, further alienation from the world that sustains us will only further contribute to the modern view of nature as hostile and 'other' at best, and at worst a collection of meaningless resources to be plundered.

I Broke My Low-Buy To Buy Lingerie and I Refuse To Feel Guilty

One thing you may not know about me - and why would you? - is that I love lingerie. I reluctantly bought one supermarket multipack of knickers to contain my last-month-of-pregnancy bottom and I hated doing it. I designed my own bridal lingerie, and Buttress & Snatch, who made it, liked my design so much they now sell it as part of their special range.

Maternity bras are not a joy. I've been wearing some of mine since pregnancy, and they are discoloured and saggy with little bits of elastic poking out all over. They're not exactly a beautiful garment to begin with, and certainly don't provide the scaffolding I need after two and a bit years of breastfeeding.

Breastfeeding. That's another thing. I totally believe in natural term breastfeeding, but it is bloody arduous at times. The Spud still feeds multiple times per night, and there are moments when my body hardly even feels like it's mine.

I realised late one night that I don't feel beautiful. Or attractive. I did used to rate myself a lot more highly in that department. I'd assumed that the changes in my body wrought by pregnancy and birth wouldn't be a big deal to me, and by and large they're not, but none of my former lingerie collection fits any more, I'm living in grotty breastfeeding bras, and I don't necessarily know how to dress this new body to help it look its best.

Also, to be brutally honest, in a relatively short space of time, I exited a very long-term relationship (thirteen years), moved house three times, experienced a disastrous fling or two, had a short but intense situation that nearly resulted in a move to Australia, met Dai and spent ages not realising this was A Serious Thing, got pregnant, had a miscarriage, got pregnant, birthed the Spud with some difficulty, gave up my own income, breastfed for two years, and here I am three dress sizes bigger, exhausted and a little dazed, wondering why I don't feel as sexy as I did at twenty-one.

This is the first time I've looked this feeling in the face instead of hiding it with baggy clothes and a metaphorical sign that says "I can't look nice now because I'm too worried about the environment and stuff. And I'm a parent now, which is hard. In fact I think I am actually more tired from parenting than that time with insomnia when I hallucinated a person hiding under my desk." 

When I realised what was going on, I felt kinda heartbroken and outraged on my own behalf. I mean, if I'd known before that my self-esteem was this low, I'd have helped me. It was never my intention to drag myself through life feeling unattractive and lacklustre. I knew I felt a bit frumpy at times, but I hadn't really acknowledged just how much I'd written myself off as undesirable.

So I bought myself the first lingerie set I have owned in three years. It does not have little hooks for baby access. I did not choose it according to anyone else's preferences. It is luxurious. It is decadent. It is chartreuse satin trimmed in cream French lace. And I'm not going to apologise for it. Or feel guilty about it. We can call it a replacement for those manky maternity bras, if an excuse must be provided.

This is a symbolic first step on the road to taking better care of myself. I deserve to feel confident and desirable. 

Life is sometimes a dark and dreary place. But that doesn't mean my underwear drawer has to be. 

So yes, I broke my low-buy. But I don't think I actually regret it. I'm currently re-thinking whether I'm going to continue trying with the challenge. If I make it to the end of the year with only this single slip-up, I won't have done badly. This is just another thing I've learned about myself on the journey - I don't need as much to be happy as I once thought I did, but just as I do need books, music, art, nature, good food and good company, I need to feel good in my own skin too. However, I've been learning to control my spending for almost two years now, and I am kind of getting sick of thinking about it. I would like to be able to pick up a magazine or a bath oil every now and again without it being a huge deal, a failure, something to feel guilty about.

I don't ever want to go back to being a huge spendthrift. But I kind of do want to be able to buy that interesting book or pretty eyeshadow without feeling like I'm letting myself - or you - down. I just, maybe, want to learn how to be a NORMAL shopper, not excessive and not austere.

Frugality and Motherhood

Back in those innocent days of 2019, the shopping ban was ticking on in the background. Some days I questioned whether it was even really a good idea - wasn't life going to be dismal and ascetic without a little treat from time to time?

But my definition of 'treat' needed some tweaking. During the ban I'd bought a £1 honey lip balm - that was a treat. Not the expensive shoes and perfumes I was looking for excuses to buy. Treats could be free, too, I was remembering, or at the very least take up no space - the library, a mocha dusted with nutmeg, a bowl of fresh strawberries and cream, a box of macarons, a walk by the river, a cuppa accompanied by a good sunrise. I hadn't exactly been living a life of deprivation without the occasional shopping spree.

In fact, I'd discovered the Frugalwoods blog, and I was starting to feel really grateful for all the things I now had, which before had been taken for granted, or which I'd planned to replace with 'something better'. Mrs Frugalwoods has documented her journey from budding frugalista to homesteader and mum of two, sharing all her money-saving tips and tricks along the way. A few years ago I would probably have scoffed at the idea of extreme frugality - why on earth would you deliberately spend less than you could?! - but now I was looking for ways to stretch our family budget. Early retirement was not going to be in the cards for me without a regular income, but I wasn't going to endure the shame of having to schlep down to the food bank because of my own irresponsible spending, either. 

Suddenly I was implementing all sorts of new (to me) strategies to try to keep money in the bank - going a few more days between shampoos; going through the Spud's next-size-up clothing stockpile so I could fill the gaps cheaply rather than panic-buying when he needed something.

The Spud's wardrobe was largely second-hand anyway, which I sometimes felt a bit guilty about, but now I was grateful that the generosity of friends and neighbours had saved me the need to find, choose and buy hundreds of baby items. I would have spent considerably more, and because of the cost I would probably have felt the need to have everything coordinated, which really isn't necessary for such a young baby. In fact, with a sinking feeling I came to realise that in the first few months of the Spud's life I had wildly overspent on him. 

It was easy to justify - I only want the best for my baby! - but I could see that as a new mum, I had really been floundering, and I had used numerous gifts and baby purchases to try to cover the fact that I didn't feel I was bonding with my son, I had no idea what I was doing, and frankly, I felt lost and terrified. Not to mention exhausted! The Spud breastfed round the clock, and there were nights I cried with sheer tiredness and thought about packing my bags.

New parenthood is rarely easy, despite the image perpetuated by social media yummy mummies. My birth experience had been - not to put too fine a point on it - a massacre, and the aftercare deeply lacking, so when I then found myself at home after a long, unexpected hospital stay with a newborn who wouldn't sleep unless he was held, and an impressive set of stitches, I felt nothing short of traumatised. For a while I became reclusive, and I was resentful - almost frightened - of this squeaking, squalling beetroot-faced tyrant in my arms. 

Christmas approached when the Spud was two months old, and I still didn't feel as adoring as I thought I should. Terrified someone might notice I was a weird, ungrateful, abnormal mother, I ordered a great raft of luxury gifts for him from Harrods, Hamleys and Selfridges (paying extra for the branded gift boxes in case anyone missed the point). I think this was when the overshopping really kicked up a notch, as after Christmas I decided to revamp my wardrobe... You know the rest. 

Suffice to say, my two month old bundle was not impressed by Selfridges, Steiff or anything else, although he quite liked the wrapping paper and the Christmas tree lights. I'd just used conspicuous consumption to hide my insecurity - it hadn't really been about the Spud at all.

Bonding was a long and arduous process - aided by Dai in the early days, who made a show of the Spud "giving me a kiss" and "bringing me a coffee" every morning. My son's baffled blue eyes as he was lowered to my face for this "kiss" never failed to make me giggle. (Nowadays he DOES give me a slobbery, slightly violent kiss when the mood takes him, but he's more likely to put a Duplo brick in my coffee than make it for me.) But we got there, and there was nothing I could have bought, no amount I could have spent, that would have made those early days any easier. Giving another being round-the-clock care was more taxing than I had been braced for, and I felt the lack of autonomy very keenly. 

As an introvert with many hobbies, I found it difficult to put a huge chunk of my inner life on hold. Only seeing how quickly the Spud grew made that any easier - soon I was able to see how fleeting all-consuming babyhood is, and realise that whilst he won't want me to cuddle him for hours forever, my books and crafts will still be there. I have to lean into this now, and make the most of this now, because we won't get this time again.

P.S. I came across a post on the Frugalwoods blog that has echoes of this post and my previous post. It's a long read but it covers body image and body positivity, motherhood, and trying to balance a love of clothes with frugality, and new-mum-appearance-neglect. It really resonated with how I feel at the moment and I was so glad to have stumbled across it.