Coast to Coast | Breaking free to the sea
Breaking free to the sea
With 12 hours to go until we could legally travel a little more than five miles, we rebelled.
The weather forecast last Friday was for high winds and heavy rain, but this was an early morning mission in the name of art, but mostly in the name of wellbeing. As since beginning this coast-to-coast project in December, there has only been one realtime visit to the sea. So experiencing all the elements the weather can offer in such a short space of time, I made those first few moments one of stillness and deep breathing. Inhaling the rain and blustering winds, life outside this did not matter.
I looked over at him with his eyes scrutinising the rocks, my seasoned amateur-palaeontologist, forever searching for more dinosaur bones and fossils to fill our home with.
This was a little part of the coastline we walked around, during our first date which was nearly 20 years ago.
Thinking now how funny, the only thought was that this would be the closest beach to get to. Not realising the significance until we arrived.
Much has changed, with more of that 400-million-year cliff falling away, us becoming parents and surviving a global pandemic so far. Yet little has changed in how we fell automatically into the rhythm of this place, each lost in what we needed from it at that moment.
Then the sun came out.
“The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy, or too impatient. To dig for treasures shows not only impatience and greed, but lack of faith. Patience, patience, patience, is what the sea teaches. Patience and faith. One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach—waiting for a gift from the sea.” Anne Morrow Lindbergh, from A Gift from the Sea.
Seasons of Motherhood | Unquarantine Yourself
It is hard to believe that an entire year has passed since this photograph was made
and when I came into your room that morning, it was the first clue that I had of you having an idea, of how huge this time would be in your life.
The massive changes in your transition from tween to teen were inevitable in normal times. Transitioning when you’re locked down in a pandemic, having limited physical miles to explore and run to, is immense. Yet you’ve done this throughout with gusto, grace and the right amount of smart-mouthed attitude.
In a year of missed school days, when your right of passage has been to learn from all but rebel from most. You’ve closed your bedroom door a little more tightly, with a passing comment of “I don’t need your help, I can do it.” I dreaded to think about what those days might look like before they arrived, but since they have, you’ve continued to make me proud, even through my most frustrated days.
Lately we’ve began having conversations that start with “when we’re allowed to…” which feels exciting. But all the way through this time, with tempers fraying in moments and doors slamming with defiant tears the other side, there’s those sweet, sweet moments that start with “I’m happy / sad / angry and I don’t know why, I just needed to tell you.“
There’s no rule book handed to mothers when they become mothers. There’s no rule book handed to teenagers when they become a teenager.
I could not be more proud of this force of nature, the one I call my greatest wonder, my greatest gift.
This is Artifact Motherhood; a collaboration of artists from around the world who have come together to share our stories of the joys and struggles of our journey. Through our writings and visual records, we want to create memories that are more than photographs with dates written on the back. These are the artifacts we are leaving behind for our children and for generations to come.
This entry is the third in a series called “Seasons of Motherhood” and is meant to be one picture and one caption that represents our current journey/season of motherhood.
Please visit the next artist in our blog circle, the talented Devin Pixton and continue through all the artists until you get back to me.
Coast-to-Coast project | The Feeling of a Surfer
There’s a saying that goes like this…
‘Only a surfer knows the feeling’
I’ve got a trusty old surfboard, shaped by a New Zealand friend called Greg, who used to live in Cornwall. My first ‘made to measure’ possession, back in the day when our local Friday night pub was a three-hour drive deep into the wild southwest of Kernow. Just in time for last orders at the bar and in perfect time for a ‘dawnie surf session the next day. Before family, before children and responsibilities and before pandemic restrictions. This beloved surfboard has seen some dings and bashes over the decades and even though it has unlikely been ridden at Olympian standards, it is mine and now shared with my daughter.
You see, she’s gone and got the surf bug.
Just a few years ago and between lockdowns last year, I’ve got to relive a part of those halcyon surfing days. As we checked the conditions and headed to our local break, to relive that catch-your-breath ocean scent as you paddled out over the waves and to the line-up. Inhaling sea spray and wave foam mixed with pure adrenaline. The only time I’ve ever really thought in the moment I’m in, respecting and surviving the power of the sea. But now these days, wondering whether I’ll actually be able to get to my feet and feel that same exhilaration all over again.
Only I now get to look over and see this same younger-me expression on her face.
I also know that soon, we will go home after a surf day, telling tall ocean tales and fall asleep that night with aching arms, salty and happy.
“The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy, or too impatient. To dig for treasures shows not only impatience and greed, but lack of faith. Patience, patience, patience, is what the sea teaches. Patience and faith. One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach—waiting for a gift from the sea.” Anne Morrow Lindbergh, from A Gift from the Sea.
Artifact of Motherhood | An Unexpected Snow Day
A snow day’s tale
It’s a hard fact in our household that there is nothing in this world more exciting than pulling back the curtains and seeing the world around you in a carpet of white.
It’s also fair to say that we started this year in a bit of a funk. Without routine, then struggling to find routine and if I’m honest, a little tired of being grateful, trying not to look beyond each single day. So I’m right in saying that it’s my duty and pleasure to up the embarrassing mother stakes these days, right? That she only has to look to me for that little piece of reassurance! So that no matter how old you are, no matter what global crisis is surrounding you now,
you will forever have permission from this camp, to act the big kid and do the happy ‘white stuff dance.
We shot some unique basket ball hoops, grabbed the old fin-less windsurf board and headed to a snow field, all in a morning’s hard play.
Grateful for nature’s own (snow) curve ball intervention right here.
Artifact Motherhood is a collaboration of artists/mothers from around the world. Sharing stories of the joys and struggles of our journey. Our hopes and dreams for our children. With little nuggets of wisdom here and there. These are more than photographs with dates written on the back. These are the artifact we are leaving behind for children and the generations to come.
Please visit the next artist in our blog circle, the talented Gwendolyn Athman and continue through all the artists until you get back to me.
Coast to Coast Project | The Severn Estuary
ESTUARY (noun) / es.tʃu.ə.ri
The wide part of a river at the place where it joins the sea
Leaning over the railings of the Severn Bridge, just five miles from our house and looking longingly southwestwards, to where I know the ocean waits.
It’s been an emotionally strange and longer than usual month, with January 2021 teaching me to dig deeper than ever I’ve known. To find the ‘new’ in the well-trodden paths around where I live.
I won’t deny, I’ve planned all sorts of covert dawn-breaking ocean jaunts inside my head – it would take around 40 minutes to drive to the rolling waves I need to be with right now – but Covid-19 shows no humanity and has left us all feeling terrified and risk-assessing literally every move we make.
The rules are made and there are fines in place, hospital scenes are no longer behind-the-scenes. It’s everything and anything to stop this. So I’m digging deep, finding the patterns, the dancing light and new ways of seeing on my walks from our home.
The Severn Bridge is the furthest point, and if I walk along this stretch of the coastal path, across the mudflats and long grasses, following the estuary back home, I’m those few steps closer once more to the sea.
“The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy, or too impatient. To dig for treasures shows not only impatience and greed, but lack of faith. Patience, patience, patience, is what the sea teaches. Patience and faith. One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach—waiting for a gift from the sea.” Anne Morrow Lindbergh, from A Gift from the Sea.
Coast to Coast | A birthday calling to the sea
With the sun setting down on Southerndown
I am reminded that we are a family who have been lucky enough to rock up and wake up to many beaches in the world over the years. This year has been very different for an obvious reason, so waking up on my birthday with landlocked feelings, I knew we had to go.
We met my parents there, the first outing with them in nearly a year, and they themselves had not seen the sea since 2019. It never ceases to amaze me how we all gravitate to the shoreline when arriving there. It’s like an affirmation that your ‘lost at sea’ thoughts and ideas will become more of a reality the closer you get to that edge. Or is this an ocean’s metaphor… our thoughts are as unique and real as each of the waves that roll in?
I’ve never been so drawn as I was this day, to the dynamics of people and their lifestyles across the generations, using and playing on this great expanse of space. I was particularly drawn to the wild swimmers. This tribe, so full of exhilaration, freezing limbs and wild-eyed as they came out of the water.
Then the irony of standing at the foot of glorious jurassic cliff faces that meet sandy beach, and experiencing nature’s own million+ year earth-ology joining up with modern-day smartphone technology, as we FaceTime the other set of grandparents and walk them down to the sea. The gasps of joy and wonder coming through a six-inch screen surely has to be the next best thing to being there for them.
Southerndown Beach in South Wales is a well-trodden sanctuary for us, from over the years and we’re lucky to live as equally close to here as we do the Brecon Beacons. But it was this trip that it opened my eyes further to the hold this coastline has, with its ever-changing energy, so many people. My birthday calling to the sea.
Seasons of Motherhood | A December Tale
My birthday was at the weekend and it was a special one. Not in terms of years (though I won’t linger too much here!) but in terms of simplicity, location and bucket loads of gratitude.
It’s been months of further lock-downs, school year groups out having to self isolate, and us as parents feeling like she only ever came out of her bedroom for survival purposes. To eat, drink and use the bathroom. The teen’s domain, the safe space, the social hub with every household screen and device holding a friend of hers, all sat within those four walls. I’m certain these friends’ bedrooms must have all looked and felt the same.
This day she became mine again for a few hours. We ran around that shoreline like crazed unleashed fiends until the sun went down. Then we sat drinking hot chocolate on the headland as it finally disappeared into the ocean.
This is Artifact Motherhood; a collaboration of artists from around the world who have come together to share our stories of the joys and struggles of our journey. Through our writings and visual records, we want to create memories that are more than photographs with dates written on the back. These are the artifacts we are leaving behind for our children and for generations to come.
This entry is the third in a series called “Seasons of Motherhood” and is meant to be one picture and one caption that represents our current journey/season of motherhood.
Please visit the next artist in our blog circle, the talented Jess Cheetham and continue through all the artists until you get back to me.
Through My Childhood Window | A Personal Photo Project
When the world stood still back in March this year because of Covid-19, many of us went into survival mode. Keeping our families safe and managing multi-wellbeing became the analogy of stirring many pots on the stove all at once. The added dimension for me these past several months, is that it’s the first time I’ve seen the shift from me knowing my parents have always been here to care for me, to me now knowing I want to give some of that care back to them.
My father had been diagnosed with a chronic condition in Autumn 2019. We’d already been through a tough winter of endless hospital stays for him and thankfully seeing him return some more to that unstoppable human I know. So there was no doubt that my parents would have to shield during the pandemic and that we’d be dropping off a weekly food shop at their front door.
On one of the visits my daughter came with me. She was blowing goodbye kisses to each grandparent on the driveway and became emotional during the journey home… “I just need to hug them, when am I allowed to hug them?” she asked through her tears.
Through My Childhood Window is a personal photographic project, a visual journal which explores my feelings and memories of each room, through a window, in my parents’ house. It’s the home that my sister and I grew up in.
I clearly remember the family bathroom in my childhood home being used as my father’s sacred darkroom. We’d all be banging on the door at different times, legs crossed and desperate to pee. To the the calm and concentrated reply from him, “just a minute, the paper’s out of the bag.”
My photography love has come from my dad and I still have the camera he gave to me many years later. The camera he made most of our family photographs with while we were growing up.
The stories from these rooms over the years I lived there, were never so strong as they were during these brief doorstep visits. I realised I needed a more focussed and creative outlet to journal these feelings and memories. A more tangible way of expressing some of the emotions we were all feeling at this time.
I was 10 years old when we took road trip across the US. One of the ‘build-your-own adventures on a shoestring’ my father spent months organising. I’ll never forget my mother, leaning out of the hire car window. I could see the look on her face in the side mirror, complete freedom. As we drove along Route 66 with The Eagles blaring on the radio. 10 minutes earlier, she was blaring at us, over the music, telling us to stop fighting in the backseat.
Seeing a part of me in the reflections of the window glass has been deliberate throughout. I wanted to connect myself from the outside into that room, as well as to them …this house is my second home in normal times.
The creative focus that this personal project brought to us, became a crucial part of our daily lockdown lives. I’d phone them to get their shopping list and during the call, we would decide which room was next, along with the memory I wanted to portray. Planning how I’d photograph them from the outside into the rooms upstairs was an entertaining process. Bringing about colourful reminders of my teenager antics. Like back in the day, escaping through my bedroom window when grounded for something awful that I’d said or done.
Decades later and the logistics of me getting up a ladder onto a hot flat roof in 30 degree heat reminded me that I’ve never liked heights! Overcoming this dilemma was a task my retired-civil engineer father quite enjoyed, while my mother decided that the designated rooms needed to be show-home ready before I was allowed to raise the camera.
Looking back on this surreal time I feel incredibly lucky, to not only have played a part in keeping my parents safe and well, but that they supported me and played the leading roles in bring this project to life. It’s become more than a gift of reliving some childhood stories. It has become an emotively visual journal in an unprecedented and historical time. A collection of photographs for our own family album and its future generations to come.
Featured in The Royal Photographic Society and JUNO Magazine
Nominated and accepted for exhibition in the Many Voices, One Nation – a collaboration between Ffotogallery Wales and The Senedd / Welsh Parliament.
Artifact of Motherhood | A Cornish Escape
A flock of birds bursting out of the rock has come to symbolise just how much that trip to Cornwall now means to me. We nearly didn’t make it. The forecast that week was stormy, working commitments crazy and a decade-long house renovation was making this trip unimportant.
We were all feeling a bit disconnected in early February. The heart of winter didn’t feel like it was shifting, and a yearning for Cornwall, a place I’d spent so many years calling my second home, was calling. We checked in to a clifftop static caravan, which wasn’t so static in 70 mph high winds, rocking us off to sleep and swaying our morning cuppas. BUT, we did call this place home for just a few days, breathed in deep on those wild southwest walks and found some curiosities around every corner. A month later a global pandemic hit hard. I will always be grateful we made it back there, back then.
Artifact Motherhood is a collaboration of artists/mothers from around the world. Sharing stories of the joys and struggles of our journey. Our hopes and dreams for our children. With little nuggets of wisdom here and there. These are more than photographs with dates written on the back. These are the artifact we are leaving behind for children and the generations to come.
Please visit the next artist in our blog circle, the talented April Christopher and continue through all the artists until you get back to me.
Seasons of Motherhood | Seasons of Change
Seasons of Motherhood
Season of Change
As a new school term begins and she turns 14, I’m transported back to a time when I had her thigh-high at my side, a proper mini partner-in-crime. I can remember most of our conversations from back then. With a few I’ve just left right there, in those happy carefree moments when she couldn’t tell the time and I didn’t look at a watch. We had micro adventures daily, we could write books about some of them, maybe we will. This day was about a walk up to the woods. This was about finding the right sticks to bash away the tree pirates and obviously to measure how much the wheat field was growing. Somewhere into the walk would be the question “Did you bring snacks mama? I want blueberries, have you got some?”
This year has undoubtedly been a year of immeasurable adventures for many of us. Mostly and safely closer to home than usual. She may well be nine years older, but this daughter of mine has skipped into a new school year after six months out, with fresh attitude and a little more sass. Not so much my thigh-high baby buddy, nor holding my hand or brandishing sticks quite so much these days, but here before me is a young warrior who’s carving her way in this world with innovation, curiosity and sackfuls of kindness.
This is Artifact Motherhood; a collaboration of artists from around the world who have come together to share our stories of the joys and struggles of our journey. Through our writings and visual records, we want to create memories that are more than photographs with dates written on the back. These are the artifacts we are leaving behind for our children and for generations to come.
This entry is the third in a series called “Seasons of Motherhood” and is meant to be one picture and one caption that represents our current journey/season of motherhood.
Please visit the next artist in our blog circle, the talented Jess Cheetham, and continue through all the artists until you get back to me.