“Does anyone have a good husband?” asks a stay-at-home mom in our Facebook group.

She has two kids, a toddler and an infant.

Occasionally, if she really needs to, her husband will watch the toddler when she runs out. And he helps brush the toddler’s teeth at night.

But the baby?

“No. No,” he doesn’t help, she explains. Not without causing a fight.

He sleeps in a separate room. At night he plays video games.

“I have to ask for gas money. If I get gas without asking, he will get mad at me.” Sometimes, when he’s in a mood, he won’t reply — leaving her to ask again, and again, multiple times.

This isn’t what she signed up for when she got married, she explains.

But, still, he’s all she’s ever known. He’s the only man she’s ever lived with.

Maybe this is simply how men are.
Maybe this is how all men are.

“My question is, what are men like? Do they want to spend time with their family? Are they actually nice?”

“Or do they just go to work, and that’s it?”

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“I work, and I also take care of everything around the house: cleaning, laundry, cooking, shopping,” writes another woman in our Facebook group. She married her husband at 18. She’s now 35.

She tried to tell him that she can’t do it all, the housework and the paid work and please, please help.

“Ok,” he said. “Just tell me what to do — but I won’t do some things, because they’re women’s tasks.”

When she was 18, she thought she wanted kids. He definitely wanted, and still wants, kids. Only now, now she knows she doesn’t.

“I feel guilty,” she admits. Her husband blames her for their lack of children. He’s 37, he tells her — too old now to have kids with anyone else anymore. How dare she change her mind.

“I feel I don’t have a future,” she continues. “I feel lost…”

And then, maybe because he’s ridiculed her so much, maybe because he’s beaten her down, she adds a small request even in her writing: “Please, be kind.”

It’s easy to see messages like these, and want to shout, to scream, the most obvious solution: get out. Exit. Flee. Take the kids, if you have them. Take the pets and plants and that bit of pottery that touches your heart, and leave.

But life,
And toxic relationships,
Don’t really work that way.

I’ve spoken a bit about my own experience with unhealthy love, how dating the wrong person can make you feel like you’re being boiled alive. The insults start so slowly, so subtly, that you laugh them off and brush them aside and next thing you know, it’s a year later and your self worth is gone and you believe them yourself. You are stupid. You are too much. You are shaped all wrong. Because the person you love, and the person who says they love you, is stating these things like facts. Surely they must be right.

In this space, in this haze, we lose ourselves.

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To the two anonymous women above,

And to anyone reading this, who connects with their questions, I want to stress something:

I am so sorry you’re navigating this.
I believe you. I see you.
And my goodness, darling soul, you are not alone.

You also deserve to make a change — in a pace and way that feels safe to you. You owe it to yourself, and to that small voice shouting inside.

So here, today, I want to share two simple activities that have helped me in the past.

I use these exercises in my confidence workshops. They feel really simple, I know. And they won’t fix your entire world overnight. But hopefully, they’ll help you reconnect with that voice inside; and remind you that you deserve so much more, than a man who acts like they hate you.

The in-one-year exercise:

When I’ve been in unhealthy relationships, I feel like my brain becomes so muddled. It’s hard to separate what’s real from what isn’t, what I want versus what they want, and so on.

This helps.

Take out a piece of paper. Now write down, as honestly as you can, how it would feel if you were in this same situation one year from now. Not how you think it should feel. Not what guilt tells you you must feel. But what you actually feel. Be detailed, and be honest.

I did this, back when I’d just turned 30 and found myself dating a guy who made fun of my body and my brain. I loved him. And yet, the love was destroying everything I liked about myself.

“How will I feel, if I’m here a year from now?” I wrote. I knew the answer immediately: “Horrified. I’d feel horrified. I can’t stay here. I refuse.”

This small exercise made it clear, irrefutably clear, that things had to change.

I left him a week later.

The ‘if this were my friend’ exercise.

Another guy I was seeing took me on a trip. He said he loved me, I was his forever.

On the flight over, suddenly and out of nowhere, he turned sharply to me.

“I can’t believe you’re flirting with him,” he hissed, his eyes flicking to one of the cabin crew. “And in front of me.”

I felt whiplashed with confusion. Flirting? How? When? For the next six hours, I sat crying and explaining and trying to prove my innocence. I couldn’t figure out where things had gone wrong. But somehow, in tiny ways with him, things often went wrong.

When we landed, he told me he had a secret: a daughter, 23-years-old. We were on our way to meet her.

Later, still reeling from it all, I shared the story with my best friend.

“Danae… Are you sure this is healthy?” She asked. And then, after a moment: “If I told you all of this, like if I said some bloke I was dating treated me this way… what would you say?”

It helped.

It still helps.

And so, here’s the best friend exercise.

1. Take out a piece of paper. Give yourself 10 minutes to write down, honestly and without judgement, what’s happening to you right now. Keep it as factual as possible.

2. Now imagine the words you’re seeing in front of you came from your best friend. What would you say to her? What would you want her to know? What would you tell her she deserves? Write these down as well.

3. Read your advice back to yourself, this time for yourself.

Sometimes it helps to see the situation through the lens of someone who loves us — if only to remember that we, ourselves, are so very worthy of love.

My mom was in a series of awful relationships. For a while, I was too.

It’s something I’m writing about in my book, and I’ll share more of that in time.

But as someone who’s been through it, and come out the other side, I can answer that first question, that opening question, honestly: yes, yes, there are good husbands. Husbands that scoop up their children and say “Mama mia, I love you, lets go on an adventure together, a daddy-baby trip.” Husbands that want to be involved. Husbands that help.

Yes, there are good men.

So don’t settle for less.

And hopefully, these little exercises, these small words, will reach someone who needs them today.

Hopefully they’ll reach some of you.

With warmth, as always,
Danae

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These are just a few of the questions explored this month. I’m currently in Thailand with an awful tummy bug — which has meant a lot of in-bed, in-room time. So it’s been a joy pulling some of my favorite discoveries together for you.

When female muscle meets fashion (and the big screen)

I never really fancied huge muscles on guys — but turns out, I love them on girls. Mugler just shared this incredible campaign with female body builder Tatiana Hrle, and it’s magnificent. She’s a greek statue brought to life, carved from stone but also somehow real and raw and woman. I can’t share them all here, because she’s nekkid and the bag is used strategically. But just look at this pure art:

Also wonderful: the muscles behind Matt Damon in the Odyssey belonged to a 4’6’’ female stunt double, Devyn Dalton. She had “the greatest arms I’ve ever seen,” said Damon. In a time when ‘thintok’ is trending, it’s just so refreshing celebrating powerful women.

How much time have you wasted, thinking about being thin?

London-based writer and content creator Mil Rousseau asks this question in her poignant Substack piece.

Anyway, back to me.

Maybe I don’t want to be thin. Maybe I just don’t want to want to be thin.

During a recent late night substack scroll I came across a note that stopped me in my tracks. It was from a writer Liz Plank and I’ll insert it below…

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a month ago · 240 likes · 38 comments · Mil Rousseau

Like many of us, Mil kept journals full of goals and calories and weight-related dreams. When she didn’t achieve them, she deemed herself a ‘failure’. Then things changed… Read the piece to know how.

Are you struggling to let go of previous versions of yourself?

Author Willow Isabel Martin grapples with the ‘skinny girl that existed before’ in this candid Substack piece.

Willow’s Substack

I Want to Let Go of the Skinny Girl That Existed Before Me

I’m trying so hard to stop treating this body like it’s temporary. For a long time, I told myself I was in a transition period. That one day I’d get back to the girl I used to be. The smaller girl. The skinnier girl. But the truth is, she almost killed me…

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24 days ago · 20 likes · 2 comments · Willow

I’ve recently embraced the idea that every seven years, we become someone new. It impacts everything — relationships, friendships, our life goals. We must let go of the versions that existed before, in order to celebrate what comes next. And perhaps, as Willow notes in her piece, perhaps it impacts how we view our body too.

“Maybe,” she writes towards the end, “I don’t need to become that skinny girl again. Maybe I need to finally become me.”

That storytime TikTok is probably an ad.

I spend so much of my time talking about what’s real and what isn’t online, and this one blew even me away. So much of what we see on social now is fake. Read more here.

Have we gone backwards, when it comes to all the weight talk?

I saw a picture of a celebrity the other day, her chest bones countable. ‘She looks sick, so sick,’ was my first thought. And then, and then: ‘Should I say something?’

I decided not to — but honestly, I’m not sure that’s right. Or wrong. I don’t know where the line falls, between genuine concern mingled with trying to protect and educate the younger generations, and just unhelpfully commenting on a woman’s body.

After the paywall…

The most beautiful Marilyn Monroe images I’ve ever seen (that I bet you haven’t!), what cervical mucus looks like under a microscope (it’s stunning), and what p*rn does to a male brain (not beautiful, but fascinating).

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“I’ll never let the baby sleep with me,” I told my husband confidently, easily, one afternoon in Forte dei Marmi.

We had just ordered two glasses of wine to celebrate a work milestone, and now we were brainstorming what our future family would look like.

“Because if I do, you know, let the baby in the bed,” I continued with all the certainty of someone who had never, not even once at this stage, been pregnant. “They’ll never get out. So it’s a no-go.”

“Esatto,” he nodded. “We just need to give them structure.”

“Yes!” I tapped my glass to my lips. “And maybe a nightlight.”

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My daughter started sleeping in my bed at eight-months-old.

Before then, I spent hours hovering over her crib. She wanted my hair to sleep, and so I’d contort my body downwards, weight leaning on wooden bars, and give it to her.

It hurt.
But it worked.

At eight months, things changed.

We traveled a lot, bouncing between Italy to New York to Dubai to Thailand and back again. One night, early in the trip, I spent over an hour rocking Rory to Taylor Swift’s 10-minute All Too Well. She’d fall asleep in my arms. Then, when I tried to lay her down, she’d shoot up, palms fisted, arms out, mouth screaming.

Again, and again, and again.

Until eventually, exhausted, I settled her on my bed — and sunk my body down next to her’s.

She calmed instantly. And there, smelling the soft warm scent of her head, feeling the brush of baby hairs against my check, I calmed down too.

Just one night, I thought to myself. Her little puffs of warm breaths slipped across my cheek. I’ll get her in the crib tomorrow.

She never slept in a crib again.

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When it came to Leo, my second baby, I knew I’d cosleep from the start. There was no question.

A lot of people do — I realize this now. A 2023 survey by The Lullaby Trust revealed that 9 out of 10 parents cosleep — but less than half were taught how to do it safely. To help fix this, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence updated its official guidelines around safe sleep a couple years ago. Gone was the recommendation to ‘never, ever cosleep’. Instead, NICE advised healthcare professionals to talk with parents about how to cosleep safely.

I also know now that it’s a cultural thing, the push for no cosleeping. In many parts of the world, like the Caribbean and Vietnam, cosleeping is more widely practiced than not.

And yet it’s one of those things that’s whispered about, rather than shared — like so many mothering decisions.

Moms can’t win.

• If we sleep train, we’re monsters piling on cortisol and damaging our baby’s brain.

• If we don’t, we’re setting them up for failure later in life.

• If we breastfeed, we’re shaming women that formula feed — and goodness knows, we need to stop by 12 months.

• If we formula feed, we’re pushing chemicals into our kids.

• If we dress our kids in beige, we’re boring neutral moms.

• If we lean into rainbows and Spiderman, we’re reinforcing outdated cultural norms.

• If we put our kids in a crib, we’re emotionally distant.

• If we cosleep, we’re dangerous hippies.

And on. And on. And on.

Modern online discourse — where things are judged harshly as good or bad, right or wrong — encourages extreme black-or-white thinking.

This, combined with an often genuine desire to do whats best for kids, even if they’re not our kids, has created an aggressive culture of mom-shaming.

In such a setting,
Every decision is put on an imaginary trial,
With strangers as both judge and jury.

Moms are left to struggle.
Silenced, and often, so very often,
Feeling alone.

Rory’s been having bad dreams lately.

They wake her an hour after she goes down. She’ll jerk upright in bed, fighting unseen demons, crying and trembling and I’ll

I’ll grab at her with one arm,
Leo wrapped in the other.

“Mommy,” she shouts, pointing in the air. See? Her gesture demands. Right there, see it?! “Mommy, mommy.”

I hold her and tell her I’m here, Mommy’s here, don’t worry don’t worry don’t worry.

Leo, wide awake by now, rustles against my side.
He’s looking for milk. He’s looking for attention. Most of all, he’s looking for his sister.

I guide him to my chest as I pull Rory closer, making little hushing sounds as I go.

I don’t know, I still don’t know, if this is the right way to handle things. But eventually she’ll still, sinking into me. Her breath softens, and she falls back asleep.

It will take me another 30 minutes to settle Leo down again.

This would be easier, I find myself thinking, if we didn’t cosleep. Easier if it wasn’t like this.

I know it’s true.

And yet, given the choice to start again,
I’d do it all the same.

I’m not trying to convince you to cosleep.

I hope that was clear already, but if not, let me stress it again:

I’m not trying to convince you to cosleep.

I am trying to highlight that parenting, it’s so full of the unknown. Of uncertainties. Of so many things we said we wouldn’t do, and then somehow we wake up and we’re doing them all the same.

And that in such a complex, unpredictable space, us moms need to connect. To share.

Even if, even when, we don’t agree with each other. If only so we can hold open our souls, and say softly ‘I am trying, I am doing this for my kids and I think this is right, but I also once thought I wouldn’t ever allow them into my bed and here they are three years later. So mama, mamas, what did you do?’

And know,
In our hopeful fragility,
In our powerful love,

That we are not alone.

So here we are:

Mama, mamas, what did you do? Or what did your parents do? How did you navigate it all, bedtime, sleep, the wake ups full of dreams?

I am still so new to this parenting thing. I worry, of course I worry, that I’ve gone about this incorrectly. Rory is almost four now. Is she too old for cosleeping? How do we get her into her own bed? How do we transition? And what of Leo? What of me, because I love it, oh my gosh my friend I absolutely love it, so how do I go back to sleeping without them?

Tell me your stories. Share your wisdom.

Let’s create a village.
One that doesn’t shame,
But instead makes room for hopeful fragility,
For powerful love,

For the constant, required reminder,
That we are not alone.

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“Your marriage paperwork will be ready mid-September,” my lawyer said. It was early July.

“But that’s months away!”

“Si, certo. But August,” and she shrugged, palms to the sky. The matter, her gesture explained, is done. Things cannot be changed. August is sacred, and August is quiet, and in August everything stops.

Even marriages.

Even all the documents I needed for my marriage.

“It will be ok,” she added, seeing my face. “Non ti preoccupare (don’t worry).”

Five years later, I can attest to the fact that she was right. She was more than right — she was teaching me something critical that Italians have long understood:

Life is so much more than an office. Work will always be there when the leaves turn brown.

And summer, summer is a time sea, for sun, for long afternoons with the people we love the most.

Summer is a time for living.

So today I want to share a bit of that magic with you.

Here are some of my favorite Italian summer rituals I’ve grown to love — and the ones I think worth taking home with you, wherever you may be.

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1. Use those vacation days.

I was in a bad car crash when I was 17, one that involved an ambulance and a hospital and left me with a head full of stitches.

I returned to school on crtuches a day later.

Looking back, that says almost everything about how I grew up.

In my mind, taking time off, any time off, wasn’t acceptable. Whether at work or school or anywhere else, ‘vacation days’ were not allowed.

Italy does things differently. Here holiday time is required — and Italians take it effortlessly.

It’s one of the things that shocked my little American self, this idea that vacation days weren’t just something you save up and up and never use, as a way of proving your dedication to the job.

And it’s fantastic.

The Italians have figured out how powerful a bit of rest can be — how it nourishes the mind, how it calms the soul, how it gives you moments and minutes to be with loved ones in a world that’s speeding by.

So tip one? Take your vacation. Use those days.

2. Don’t maximize your trip.

As the cities swelter with heat and swell with tourists, Italians head to the beach.

Once there, they slow down — and this, again, surprised me.

In places like Forte dei Marmi (where we just spent a chunk of our summer), Italians quite happily pass weeks doing things on repeat.

And they don’t ever say ‘scusa’ for it.

Again and again, there’s the same sleepy morning,

The same Bagno (a small property with beach umbrellas in front, like a beach club but not always as ‘fancy’), the same tenda (a beach umbrella and chairs that you rent, often for weeks at a time),

The same long lunch with fish pasta and cold white wine,

The same sunsets spent with people you love.

And it made me realize that maybe

Maybe holidays aren’t only about seeing everything, or doing all the ‘stuff’.

Maybe they’re also about slowing down enough to observe the magic that’s already there, right in front of us.

3. Let the kids be bored. Let yourself be bored too.

Two other moms and I sat in the sand, digging out giant bucketfuls as the waves rushed in, trying to create the biggest possible hole.

“Look, it’s a lago! (lake),” said my daughter, switching between Italian and English even as she scoop scoop scooped right beside us.

The sun was setting and the sea felt sweet, smashing against our shins as we worked.

We did it for over an hour.

I read an article recently about how we’re dumbing ourselves down with our constant need for entertainment. Brain development, the article noted, happens when we’re bored — when we’re forced to imagine, to create.

And yet somewhere along the way, us adults, we gave up on boredom.

Our children gave up on it too.

I think this is one of the most beautiful things about Italian summer: things slow down.

Things simplify.

And in that space, ideas and connections and whimsy bloom.

4. Get to know your neighbors.

My kids wake up at 6am on a late day.

Every morning in Forte, we’d hop on my two-baby-seat bike, and cycle eight minutes to a small cafe. Across the street was a pasticceria, its windows stacked with fresh bread and schiacciata.

We’d order cornetti flaky with butter, a coffee for me, and a babycino for Rory.

And then, as the world woke up around us, we’d talk. Not just to each other, but to the ladies bustling behind the counter, or the nonni sat at one of the round tables, or the Bagno owner who popped in for a tiny espresso.

It’s so easy these days to isolate ourselves. To get everything delivered at home, everything picked-up on the go.

As technology developed, convenience became our biggest luxury.

But I wonder if familiarity isn’t the richer one…

There is a beauty in being known, in sipping a cafe and seeing your daughter waving at the same signore, smiling down at the same dog,

and feeling, feeling like you belong.

Even if it’s only for a summer.

The Forte dei Marmi guide I’d send to my best friend

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“Okay, you gotta lose fifteen pounds,” Jessica Simpson’s new agent told her the minute she signed her first contract.

“What?” She responded, not really understanding. She was, by all accounts, tiny: five-foot-three and weighing 118 pounds.

She was also just 17.

“I think you’re going to have to lose fifteen pounds,” the agent said. “Maybe ten. Because that’s the image you want to have. That’s what it will take to be Jessica Simpson.”

That’s when Jessica looked at her parents. There, there in that Sony board room on the 32 floor of a big music office, a young and slightly delicate and wanting-only-to-sing Jessica turned to her mom and dad.

And her parents, the people that were meant to guide her?

They said nothing.

It changed everything, Jessica would later write in her candid memoir, Open Book.

“It was as if he tied my value as an artist to my weight right there, like a rock,” she explains.

“I immediately went on an extremely strict diet, and started taking diet pills, which I would do for the next 20 years.”

At the time, it’s what “we thought we had to do,” Jessica continues.

“I say ‘we’, because I was about to become the family business, and there was a lot of pressure on being what the label needed me to be…”

“My dad,” Jessica writes with forgiveness, with softness, “didn’t know when to say no.”

I finished reading Jessica Simpson’s Open Book last week.

One thing stayed with me:

Not the fame.
Not the mess with John Mayer.
Not even the alcohol addiction sipped from glitter cups.

It was how often Jessica’s parents appeared in the story when her body did.

They were there when a furious man pulled Jessica aside at a church convention, hissing that her body with her bre*sts was ‘too sinful’ for her to sing.

They were there when she began taking diet pills and eating only slices of microwaved turkey with cheese.

They were there when she stripped off her clothes to show the soft sag of her postpartum stomach, right before she headed into a mini tummy tuck.

And while Jessica doesn’t say this — she is so gentle in her writing, so forgiving — I can’t help but to think that maybe,

Just maybe,
They weren’t there in the ways that a young girl
Desperately needed them to be.

They weren’t really there at all.

My mom never commented on my weight.

Except, for once, when she did.

She was sat on her bed. In those days, she was always sitting or laying, her oxygen machine nearby. Her face was swollen from pills. But her eyes, they were as sharp and mischievous as ever, bright and blue and following me as I walked around the room.

“Danae,” She said in one of my pauses. “I gotta say somethin’. You’re gettin’ heavier. You know?” Her eyebrow arched and mouth twitched into a half-smile.

I froze. I’d noticed it too, of course I’d noticed, but it wasn’t all that important. I was finding my way and my feet at school. And somewhere among the late-night pizzas and Tuesday Taco runs, I’d carved a bit of freedom between myself and my mom’s illness.

“All that dorm food probably,” she continued with a shrug.

“Yeah,” I nodded. “Probably.”

In my memory of this moment, time stutters and skips, like a film reel gone wrong.

The next scene has me in a bathroom, staring down at a toilet. Oil floated on top. Good, I thought. Disgusting, but good. I’d started taking new diet pills that flushed fat from my system, sliding it out in big slippery bursts.

I bought them after my mom’s casual, unthinking comment.

Just a few months later, my little diet would become a full-blown eating disorder.

We learn how to feel about our bodies not from influencers, magazines, or strangers online — at least not at first.

We learn from the people we love the most.

We learn from our parents.

And maybe, maybe that awareness
Can become our key to changing
What comes next.

Rory is still little.

She’s started putting on frilly dresses and layering jewelry and spinning in front of me.

“Mama,” she asks. “Mama am I so fancy? Mama am I pretty?”

I feel the weight of the world in those moments.

I think about the offhanded comments made by different adults towards my body throughout my life (like that teacher when I was only seven, painting costume makeup on my face. “My, you really do have little lips, don’t you?”). I think about my mom, that one time in the bedroom, and how it led to a spiral. I think about Jessica, writing years later about an industry desperate to eat her alive and parents who didn’t know what to do.

I think about all the little girls
Wanting only to be loved,
And somehow already believing it’s tied
To being pretty.

“You are so sparkly,” I answer.

“You’re also smart and silly and strong. Can we imagine some other words —” but by then my daughter’s spinning away, off to change outfits and shove stickers on her nails.

And I worry I’m overthinking it all.

Maybe I am.
Maybe children don’t remember these little conversations.

Or maybe they remember them forever.

I’m still new to parenthood.

I know I’ll get things wrong — my gosh, I already have.

But if there’s one thing Jessica’s story taught me this week,
It’s that our children are listening long before we realize they’re learning.

They hear all the things we say.

They hear all the things we don’t.

Once, Jessica notes, her daughter worried that bread would make her six-year-old self fat.

“It was a wake up call,” Jessica continues.

“I want her to feel safe enough to love herself and the body God gave her. Not waste the time I did being cruel to myself.”

So she wrote Open Book.

As for me, I’m still working on the book,
And the healing,
But for now, I know this:

I want my daughter to remember something that took me decades to learn — that no matter how she shows up today, or tomorrow or the day after that, she is worthy. Simply by existing, by being here, she is enough.

If anyone ever makes her question it, I want her to know that mama will be there to scoop her up and hold her close and whisper into her ears over and over that she is a force to behold.

She is magnificent, in exactly the body and shape she has right now.

She is deserving of love.

And my god, my god,
She will always have it,
Unconditionally, endlessly,
Right here,
Right here with me.

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I was scared of toilets when I was 13.

My mom didn’t finish high school - but she was an avid fiction reader. And so I grew up with the same authors she loved: romance novelists, Dean Koontz, and Stephen King.

I read It at 13. In King’s masterful horror novel, a monster crawls out of the sewers and into bathrooms. And while I knew that it wasn’t real, I still spent that whole summer sprinting away from any flushing loo.

That was a while (let’s just say a few years) ago.

These days, I’ve really leaned into non-fiction. I’m working on my own book at the moment — which would stun that same 13-year-old girl. It was always her dream.

When it comes to book writing, everyone shares one key bit of advice:

So that’s what I’ve been doing.

Here are three books I’d share with you immediately. And one, unfortunately, I would not.

Recommend: Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution, by Cat Bohanan (long listed for the Women’s Prize for Nonfiction, NYTimes Bestseller, Guardian’s Best Ideas Books of 2023, and more prizes).

The reason: A scientific beach read that mixes humor with striking facts, and leaves you hopeful for what comes next.

You probably have seen my opening picture, the one of a ‘real’ uterus vs ‘the uterus women are shown’, before. It went viral. Cat Bohanan is the woman behind it. Her incredible book Eve talks about the female body throughout time, answering questions like ‘what’s going on with women and s*x’ (only 25% of women of any age reliably experience an org*sm during it, that’s what, Bohanan explains); what really happens inside us when we’re pregnant (a war); what occurs in the body when we tell girls they’re bad at math; how is sexism literally, scientifically dumbing down populations; and so much more.

If it sounds like it could be boring, you’re right. This kind of scientific book doesn’t really lend itself to page-turning suspense. And yet somehow, Bohanan manages to create a non-fiction tome I didn’t want to put down. Every few pages, I found myself stopping to admire her writing. I’d underline a sentence (yes, I’m that person), read it again, and often text a friend with facts I’d just learned.

I also found the book to be a great balance of rage, feminist manifesto, and humor. It’s empowering and furious and intelligent. Bohanan weaves together so much research in such an engaging way that even me, a dedicated fiction reader, read it in days.

Recommend: Educated - A Memoir, by Tara Westover (this one’s won so many awards, like being named the One of the Best Ten Books of the Year by the NYTimes Book Review, but seriously there are dozens more it’s won)

The reason: A powerful memoir that will help you answer the question: ‘what do I do, when the people I love the most are gaslighting me?’

Educated sat on my shelf for over a year before I finally picked it up (because, again, I’m quite a fiction-is-best girl). Once I did, I couldn’t put it down. Genuinely. This powerful memoir tells the story of Tara Westover’s incredible life — one that took her from a complete lack of schooling as a child, to graduating with a PhD from Cambridge.

She navigates some pretty tricky topics, like severe abuse and family estrangement, vulnerably. Throughout it all, she struggles with something I certainly can relate to: how do you hold onto your own truth, when voices around you are shouting otherwise? How do you not lose yourself to the noise? I’ve had relationships, both professional and romantic, that have made me question the same thing. And her writing is beautiful. I found myself crying at certain points, rereading in horror at others.

I won’t spoil it for you with the ending, but message me once you read it. I’d love to chat.

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Recommend: Open Book by Jessica Simpson

The reason: This warmly written memoir talks about Jessica’s struggles with alcohol, body image, and being herself.

What is it like, growing up in the world of pop music where your body is constantly judged? What’s it like when your first agent tells you that you must drop 10lbs, and your family doesn’t know any better? What’s it like when you wear high-waisted pants and the whole world calls you fat?

Jessica Simpson answers these questions and more in her warmly written memoir Open Book. I actually listened to this one — it’s narrated by Jessica too, which, when combined with her friendly writing style, makes it feel like she’s telling you her secrets while you’re hanging together at a slumber party.

I enjoyed this book so much that I’m going to do a dedicated post talking through some of the things she said. But for now, I just think all of us should go read it.

And one book that didn’t work for me: House of My Mother: A Daughter’s Quest for Freedom, by Shari Franke.

Shari Franke is the daughter of influencer-turned-abusive mom, Ruby Franke. Ruby created an entire YouTube channel focused around her six children. Then she became radicalized, turned into a monster, was caught hurting her two youngest, and was sent to jail. There’s a whole Netflix documentary as well as many news articles if you want more of an explanation.

House of My Mother addresses all of that through Shari’s lens. And yet, in a way, it doesn’t… So many of the ideas discussed in the book (whether it’s religious fundamentalism, social media as both a help and a hindrance, family vlogging, the price of fame, grooming) are hinted at, then rushed away from. There’s no real deeper analysis or exploration. It’s understandable why - Shari’s had a traumatic few years and this is all quite recent - but the result means House of My Mother stays very surface.

What book should I read next? Let me know in the comments below. I read every single one of them.

And now, something I’m terrified about with my own book…

Read more

I’ve been lying to you all.

And before I explain how, before I dive into all of that, I want us to go on a journey:

Imagine you’re newly postpartum, so new that you’re still bleeding, so new that your baby still feels fragile in your arms. Your breasts are engorged — the left one works, the right is swollen and red and throbbing.

It’s 3am and you’re lying on a bed next to your newborn, shivering because the room is cold but also because you’re sick, although you don’t quite know it yet. You’ve got mastitis — the first of many, many rounds you’ll have in the next few weeks.

Your little baby, your heart that you love more than anything ever, has finally fallen asleep beside you. You know that’s not safe — she should be in her cot, right? No blanket, in her cot, only when you put her there she wakes up — and so you keep your hand on her chest and keep your eyes open.

You’re aching and awake and missing your mom and feeling so tired, so alone.

You swipe open your phone.
You swipe and swipe and then, suddenly, glaring on the screen, is a note that sends a shock through your body:

‘Why aren’t we talking about Danae Mercer? She has become more and more irritating since pregnancy / birthing…’

You look at your baby. Then, knowing you shouldn’t, you swipe on.

‘Yes! I quite liked her content, but the latest videos of her are too much. I get that her thing is sharing the ‘truth’ about stuff, but honestly, she… should not share to the world.’

‘I use to like her but… she is pissing me off.’

Your face feels wet and you realize you’re crying, but still you keep going.

You read how you’re too much. Too smily. Too work focused. Too dramatic.
How your husband must hate you.
How it’s clear your baby,
Your newborn baby that you prayed for,
Oh my god how that you prayed for,
How it’s clear your baby hates you too.

You read all these things in the dark of the night with fever burning through your body, and you start to think that maybe

Maybe
Maybe they are true.

And while you can’t fix them, all these flaws about yourself that are clearly so hideous, so shameful,
You can curate what you share,
You can make your life seem a little bit more perfect,
And hide your voice more and more and more.

You can.
You will.

And so
Without ever really consciously deciding to

That’s exactly what you do.

***

That night wasn’t the moment I stopped sharing the truth.
It was simply the moment when I started asking
Which truths were safe to tell.

That’s a more subtle thing.
It’s almost impossible to notice while it’s happening.

You don’t wake up one morning and decide to become less yourself.

You just...

Leave one thought in your Notes app instead of posting it.
Delete a paragraph because someone might misunderstand.
Choose the easier story.
The prettier photo.
The joke instead of the vulnerability.
The lesson instead of the uncertainty.

Little by little, you sand down your own edges until even you can’t quite remember where they used to be.

And that’s the lie:
Not that what I shared wasn’t true.
It was.
But it wasn’t all of me.

I’ve been leaving pieces, so many pieces, out.

***

Lately I’ve realized how much I miss the version of myself who wrote.
The version of myself who felt fragile, but powerful and real and whole.

The journalist.
The woman who believed complicated stories deserved complicated endings.
The one who wasn’t worried about going viral or pleasing a ‘quick scroll’ instagram algorithm.

I’ve missed her.

And maybe,
Maybe you’ve missed parts of her too.

So I wanted to build a place where she could come back.

Not because I think I’ve figured life out.
I don’t. Oh my goodness, I don’t.

I’m still learning how to raise two children.
How to be a good wife.
How to build a career without losing myself inside it.
How to age.
How to feel confident in a changing body.
How to grieve people we never stop missing.
How to live a balanced life.

I want somewhere that can hold all of that.

So welcome. Welcome here, to this tiny corner of the internet.
It’s not a newsletter, not really.
It’s a conversation —
One I’ve been missing for a long time.

Some weeks I’ll share a story about my childhood and life and bits from my book.
Some weeks I’ll investigate something that’s caught the journalist in me.
Some weeks I’ll write about Italy, or body confidence, or ambition, or motherhood, or the many many things I’m reading.

Mostly, though,
I hope this becomes
A space and place where we can share our voices,

Without editing or shrinking ourselves.
Where we can navigate the messy, hopeful, beautifully complex life we live,
In our human bodies,
With our honest thoughts.

Where we can shake off lies, and tell our truths, together.

I’m so glad you’re here.

I’d love to hear from you.

Have you ever found yourself becoming smaller because of other people’s opinions?

Tell me in the comments. I promise I’ll read every one.

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A little housekeeping before you go.

If you’ve been receiving my newsletter over the years: welcome. Everything has simply moved here to Substack. You don’t need to do a thing. I’m just so happy you’re here.

I’ve also switched on paid memberships for anyone who’d like to support my writing. Many essays that matter to me will always be available to everyone. Paid members simply help make this work possible, and I’ll share extra behind-the-scenes writing, notes from the book, voice notes, chats and other bits of life there too.

Either way, thank you for reading. Truly.

I'm so happy you're here.