Daydream Believer

Hello Raw Momsicles!

Yar, it’s been a few weeks since I last posted. Let’s just say that life got in the way. You know what I’m talking about, don’t you? We are only human, non? Despite our best efforts to be Supermommies?

This week, I want to introduce you to someone special. For about the last three years I’ve been following the blog of a lovely English girl called Alison, an exquisitely blessed writer who is skilled at creating utter gorgeousness in her life. She’s a mum, a daughter, a sister, a friend, and a thoroughly authentic person who isn’t afraid to show that she’s human.

Alison writes a blog called Brocante Home, a blog that follows her life and celebrates, among other things, ‘Vintage Housekeeping’. I wouldn’t say that vintage is really my style (although, do I have a style? Hmmm…), but I love the premise behind Alison’s work – that life should be beautiful (whatever style that means for you) and real, and that home is the sacred place where our dreams, and those of our families, should be nurtured.

She has a unique way of looking at the world, and often her words leave me breathless, swept away by their sheer beauty. She really could be a poet, and her many blogging fans insist that she needs to get on with that book she keeps putting off.

Recently, Alison began a group called the Vintage Housekeeper’s Circle. Once subscribed (for a very small monthly amount – less than the cost of a magazine), you have access to the forum, and Alison sends out week-daily emails to all subscribers. Sometimes these contain handy house-cleaning tips (usually eco-friendly), and tips on living a beautiful life.

Alison has given me permission to share one of her recent Vintage Housekeeper emails with you (see below), called “Daydream Believer” – I just love its message. I hope you do, too, and that it reminds you that you need to ‘fill your own well’ before you can give your best ‘you’ to others.

See you next week (promise!)…

Love Jo

Happy Monday Darling…

…because yes indeed a bright new week is upon us and no amount of PMT or financial worry is going to get us down today…

A long long time ago, when nobody had heard of the internet and my frizzy mop wasn’t spiked with grey, I ran a programme in the inner city of Liverpool based on the premise that “Home” should be central to the lives of all that live in them and that more than that home should act as a springboard for the women and children who lived in them: a springboard to creativity, to certainty, to confidence, ideas and cultural freedom…

Most of us are lucky enough to be in a much more privileged position than those women the course was designed for. But while we may be both educationally and financially more comfortable, we rarely facilitate all that we need (and instinctively offer our children) to spark our own creativity at home: to make home the place where our ideas are born, nurtured and more than that offered house room, for both play and development.

Instead we fill the house with distracting noise, allow our time to be squandered upon thankless tasks, fill bookshelves with books that do not speak to our soul, do what’s right, arrange houses that keep up with the Jones, maintain guest rooms that are rarely used, polish tables in dining rooms we use on Christmas Day, develop tidy-ness obsessions that compromise our sanity, spend needless hours ferrying children to and from (unnecessary) organised activities, sit staring into space because our partners like company when they watch TV, don’t keep journals in case they are discovered and worse, mocked, clean when we should be resting, sleep when we could be writing, let children’s possessions rule our homes, chatter on the phone when we have better things to do and let our internet fixation dictate the way we live our life.

It won’t do, you know? None or even one of the above cast of bad behavior will do. For every box we tick, a little bit of our creative soul floats away, because it cannot assert itself in the constant noise – because it knows, but somehow cannot get you to listen, that the dusting will still be there after you have done that tiny little bit of sewing, or writing, or cooking, or whatever it is that is calling your name – because you are not the resident taxi-driver – because you can use your time however you wish and that more than that, even in the hullabalub of family life, you have the right to privacy. To draw, to dream or to chronicle the inner workings of your mind. You have that right, just as you have the right to create a space on the household bookshelves to hold those books drawing you a map to who you want to be.

We don’t have to have houses that look like every other on the street. Even if we maintain a modicum of outer respectfulness by not painting the house sky blue pink, we are absolutely allowed to do whatever we want inside and that means never fearing that the dining room police are on the way after you have shocked your Mother In Law into an early grave by converting it into a studio so full of all those things that make your heart sing that you truly wouldn’t care now if Christmas Dinner had to be eaten on trays in front of the Queen’s speech.

And you know what else? We don’t have to make a career out of cleaning our own home. Though it pains me to say it, because I do love a good scrub, it is she who sits amongst other women listing her “jobs” either done or (horrors!) left undone who bores us all senseless…

Today carve out a space for your dreams. Type “sewing room”, “desk” or “library” into Flickr and be inspired by other peoples spaces. Start a brand new journal. Switch off the phone, the tv and the internet. No, really. Switch off the internet. While it may provide you with endless inspiration, it compromises who you authentically are. Take down a picture and hang up another pinboard abundant with inspiration instead. Say no to driving anyone anywhere just for the day. Write a poem instead of cleaning the bath. Allocate a reading chair and fill a basket with reading related loveliness alongside it. Claim the kitchen table as the new home of your gorgeous little business. Dance!

Do it! Stop reading about it and create a house that sparks your imagination. Live, laugh and dream great big enormous dreams.

You are safe, Sweetheart. You are home.

Time to log off, Sweetie… I dare you!