Grappling

and not rushing to a solution

Hello (again, if you’re returning!) 👋🏾 I’m Ingrid and I publish Permission. I'm a mid-life woman writing about grief, joy, mothering, expat life and the messy middle years. I’m giving myself permission to write, and exploring what it means to claim that permission alongside other mid-lifers. To know more you are welcome to check out my About page, and to read more you are welcome to check out Permission.

Grappling with the new year

I haven’t been one for the “new year new you” stuff for a long time. I like to think I’ve known better. The old me isn’t so broken that I need to recreate myself. And also, the old me got me here, so I can’t be doing too badly.

But there is a pressure to have goals and intentions, to have a word for the year, to envision what we want to feel like on 31 December 2026 having achieved all these things. As a writer, are we aiming to write the thing, or get an agent, or get published. As a business owner, do we have revenue goals, systems to streamline, markets to crack. They’re all great tools and metrics, I’m not disparaging any of them. I love a good goal, revenue target to strive for, or word to anchor me.

But this year, I’m feeling a much slower start is called for. I usually go back to work when my children go back to school, but 2025-Ingrid gifted 2026-Ingrid an extra week off, and it was well worth it. A week to actually rest, which I didn’t do much of over the Christmas break. To really consider what 2025 was like for me; the good and the hard bits. To acknowledge how far I’ve come in one little year, how many scary things I did, how much I stretched out of my comfort zone. To reflect on the challenges I overcame, and those I supported my loved ones through. To really think about how I want to feel in 2026, rather than what I want to do.

I don’t have all the answers yet, though there are a few goals and perhaps some guiding words sprinkled into my musings. But I’m not giving myself any hard deadlines or timeframes to work it all out. I’m easing in gently.

Photo by Andres Siimon on Unsplash

Grappling with motherhood

I’ve written a little before about my two young sons, but I don’t write too much about them online. I’m conscious of their privacy, and I don’t want to write anything about them or their childhoods that they wouldn’t feel comfortable having out in the world (another thing to grapple with – a child’s right to privacy in an ever-increasingly digital and visible world). I attended a virtual Substack meet-up this week, hosted by the wonderful Dominque van Werkhoven in my favourite online space, the Doing It For The Kids Community. One of the attendees, Zoe Pickburn, shared a line on this issue that clarified it for me: “I want to write my experience of motherhood, as opposed to their experience of childhood”.

I can’t separate myself from my motherhood as it consumes much of my mental space and my time. I imagine this is a season we’re in and it will change as they grow up, the ways they need me will necessarily alter in form and depth, as has happened with each stage since their birth. Perhaps there will come a time in the not-too-distant future where motherhood will not hold reign over so much of my time and attention, but that time is not now, and I can’t wait to write until that time arrives, if it ever does.

Motherhood is also part of the lens through which I see the world, so I couldn’t remove its influence from my life and my writing if I wanted to, which I don’t think I do. I know for myself, I deeply appreciate the writing of other mothers, whether or not they are writing about motherhood. I am hungry for perspectives on motherhood and mothering from other women, whether or not they call themselves or see themselves as mothers. More women writing, more women reading the writing of other women, more women’s writing being uplifted and celebrated, and more women getting paid for their writing (though that is a whole different grapple, one for another day) – these are things I believe in strongly and will work towards in whatever ways I can from my small patch of the world. Continuing to write, amongst the demands and rewards of motherhood, and with motherhood included in my viewpoint of the world, is another way I can do this.

Also, motherhood can be hard and I need to write out the hard bits.

Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash

Grappling with writing

Saving the biggest grapple for last. I have been grappling with my writing for a number of months now.

I had a very strong start to the year last year: I was writing and posting on Substack regularly, which allowed me to develop my essay-writing muscles, largely snoozing since law school 20 years ago. I participated in valuable courses and mentoring by generous experts including Beth Kempton, Dr Lily Dunn, Anna Wharton, Lindsay Johnstone, Layla O’Mara and I got to be part of the supportive and nourishing writing communities facilitated by these great teachers. I launched Permission Slips, my own guest writer series on Substack. The Permission Slips submissions have been moving, inspiring, funny, and heartfelt. They are another way for me and the other women reading and writing them to feel less alone as we give ourselves permission to do the thing. I attended welcoming and lively meet-ups in London run by the one and only Amy I Beeson and made actual writing friends, which is simply dreamy. I wrote more than 25,000 words of my WIP memoir project, before promptly hitting a wall.

Looking at all the things I did, it’s perhaps unsurprising that I hit a wall. But I don’t think it was overwhelm or exhaustion, because for me part of the process of doing a thing is learning how to do the thing. I don’t know any other way, and being a slightly anxious type-A over-achiever, there really wasn’t any other way than for me to try learn everything I needed in order to write well whilst simultaneously trying to write well.

The problem was that I had lost sight of why I was writing. I was doing all these courses and learning all the things and getting all the encouragement and feedback, then trying to apply those learnings to writing the memoir project because I wanted it to be excellent. Why? Firstly, see above about being a slightly anxious type-A over-achiever and add in people-pleaser as well. Secondly, a lot of the memoir project I’m working on involves my beloved Mum, who passed away in 2018. I wanted to write something worthy of her story, something beautiful that she would be proud of if she was still here to read it. I wanted to honour her. Those aren’t bad reasons, but they are heavy reasons, and they put a lot of pressure on me to write extremely well the very first time when I’ve never written a memoir before.

Another result of doing so many things was that it left little time for actually writing words for the memoir project. I was writing words for Substack essays, writing words for the courses I was doing, writing words in my journal, and trying to hit word count targets for the memoir project, all of this alongside running my business and supporting my family. It was wonderful to be writing so much, thousands and thousands of words on pages. What a joy! But at the same time, I felt like I was running in place, because nothing seemed to be moving forward. I was stretched too thin to make any real progress.

I’m being more discerning (my word for 2025) going forward. I’ll still be writing on Substack, but my writing here will reflect and share more of my writing world – progress on my memoir project, courses I’m working through, classes I’m learning from, events I’m attending, books I’m reading, incredible other Substackers whose work I’m inspired by. This will make it easier for me to keep to consistently, and will also help me stay accountable and focused on writing the memoir project. I’ll also still be sharing Permission Slips every month (if you haven’t submitted one and you’re interested, you are so welcome! More info available here). Other than that, all the writing is memoir project writing… well, not all because everyone needs a brain-dump or a feminist rant now and then, right?

Photo by Toa Heftiba on Unsplash

What are you grappling with going into 2026? Or what did you grapple with in 2025 that you’re not bringing into 2026?