Titbits to tide you over

Thoughtful recommendations for you to muse on while I get Book Number 2 finished (god help me!)

OK so I have to come clean. It’s been busy. I have to hand in my second book in in May; frankly I am so far behind I have more chance of getting one my teenagers to change the loo roll now and again than I have of getting that done so bear with me Candy Club members. Time is tight. We’ve also got A levels coming up in our house, a 10 year old’s SATs exams and my teen son’s post Easter tests, all of which I seem to be involved in! Plus our podcast Postcards from Midlife is gearing up for Season 6.

So your content here is nowhere near as prolific as I would like it to be (and if any of you follow me on social media you know how prolific that is likely to become, I’m rampant when it comes to sharing, brace yourselves!). And I have a series of little audio notes to bring you too which I’m really looking forward to sharing here.

But in the meantime, thank you for signing up, do spread the word of The Candy Club and subscribe and share if you feel that way inclined. Here are some thoughtful things that have popped into my world as I have been researching Book 2 and via the lovely community I am grateful to have found in midlife.

American writer Kathryn Smyth’s extraordinary piece in The Atlantic newspaper on finding new friends in a new city in midlife really resonated with me and led me down a rabbit hole to her other work and it’s link to Cornwall, where I am from, via Virginia Woolf. She writes powerfully about grief having lost her dad in her book ‘All The Lives We Have Ever Lived”, and in other pieces about love, her traumatic divorce and a car accident in New York which almost derailed her life. She’s got a unique voice which I enjoyed reading this week.Read here: Kathryn Smyth

I don’t often see pieces by dads on the empty nest syndrome but this one by Michael Grey was lovely. I remember being shocked when Gordon Ramsay recently talked about how he mourned his son Jack when he left home (putting on the teens underpants and sitting in the boy’s room on the verge of tears!!) and wishing more dads spoke of it. You cannot underestimate the impact of your child leaving home and I wrote about it in my own parenting book. It knocked me sideways and I am still not over it two years later. Read Michael Grey’s piece here: READ HERE

‘Families and how to survive them’ seems to have been the theme of much of my journalism over the last two decades and there is a brilliant new book from therapist Julia Samuel MBE out now “Every Family has A Story: How We Inherit Love and Loss” which tells the story of several families in therapy and is full of nuggets of wisdom whatever you may be experiencing as a family. I will be interviewing Julia about her book in London if you fancy coming along on May 19th, 10.30am at Daunt books. Tickets here: BUY HERE

I am a sucker for romantic stories with happy endings and this amazing piece by Ashley Ford on one of my favourite websites Cup of Jo about how she found peace with her weight after falling in love is so joyous and uplifting as well as being beautifully written. A lovely optimistic read: READ

“None of the above: Reflections on life beyond the binary’ is an extraordinary new book from performance artist, writer, thinker and Bristol born playwright Travis Alabanza. It’s a thought provoking read on non-binary identity. I first encountered Travis when I was editing The Sunday Times Style magazine and asked Bernardine Evaristo to pull together an issue for us featuring a roll call of diverse new talent and Travis was part of that. I followed Travis on Instagram and watched in awe as they went on tour and took their story out into society. But I was also compelled to learn more because of Travis’ extraordinary relationship with their mum. I have known many people who have encountered awful situations at home as they explored their identity and watching the way Travis’ mum has handled their evolution has been a learning curve, what a better world we would live in if all parents had such empathy and love inside their hearts. If your young people are finding this journey difficult I think this honest, raw and witty book would be useful. Buy here: BUY HERE