February Newsletter

Snowdrops, marmalade and my new avatar

It has been stormy here in Looe. Rain and more rain, wind off the sea, the kind of February that keeps you inside with the lights on in the afternoon. I’ve barely walked outside this month. The snowdrops have been emerging regardless.

So I have been making marmalade again. I’ve hatched a plan: a different preserve each month. February was supposed to be lemon curd but there were more Seville oranges just waiting for their jars. There’s something about the alchemy of the preserving pan, the lining up of the jars, that satisfies something deep.

As well as sterilising my jars, chopping the peel and stirring my pan, I’ve been attending to the images in my Substack in an attempt to bring a co-ordinated style to them. The aim is that you will be able recognise my posts more easily. I would love some feedback on how well I might have achieved that.

Healing Shame Through Self-Compassion

February’s theme has been healing shame through self-compassion. It’s a heavy one, I know that. Shame has a way of making itself at home in us — quietly, over years — until we forget it was ever a visitor rather than a resident.

But it’s also a theme about putting down long-held burdens. About discovering that the weight you’ve been carrying wasn’t yours to carry in the first place.

I shared a story this month that was very hard to share.

If you read it, you’ll know. If you haven’t yet, be gentle with yourself when you do — and know that I was gentle with myself in the writing of it. That was the whole point, really. It is part of my own story of the aftermath of not-belonging at school.

What I’m Sitting With

Sam’s book is nearly done. I’ve been saying that for a while now, and I’m a little tired of the word ‘nearly’.

What stands between nearly and ready isn’t the writing — it’s me. Stopping. Sitting down. Making marmalade and faffing about with images. I need to let good-enough be enough. It only needs to be good-enough. Not perfect.

I thought I was writing one book. It turns out I may have been writing two halves of the same thing. While Sam’s story is finding its final form, another book is beginning to stir — mine. The teenage years. The same theme: the shame of not belonging.

He was the child who didn’t belong. I was that child first. The two books are the same story told from different ends of the same wound.

I don’t yet know exactly what the second book is. But I know its heart. And I’m thinking of writing the rest of it here, with you, chapter by chapter. We’ll see.

From My Writing

I’ve been writing about the years of seeking assessments and diagnoses — trying to find someone who could tell me what was wrong with Sam so I could fix it. I can feel my past self’s desperation on the page: the belief that if I just found the right expert, the right label, the right intervention, then everything would be OK.

It wasn’t true, of course. The systems were broken and no amount of my trying harder could fix that.

But I didn’t know that yet.

I wrote about what happened when Sam read his own assessment reports:

Something Simple

The March daffodils have started to appear in the pots on my windowsill. They do this every year, reliably, without being asked — and every year they mean the same thing: my birthday is coming.

I was apparently born just half an hour too late to be a leap day baby. So I settle for the 1st of March, announced by daffodils. St David’s Day. I’m taking next week off.

Meanwhile, my illustrated avatar — loosely, and perhaps generously, based on me — continues to spend her days reading and writing in her cluttered seaside house. She has no smartphone. No television. I find her reassuring.

Coming Soon — Small Oak

In a few weeks I’m launching something I’ve been quietly building for a while: a free email course for parents whose children are struggling in school systems that can’t hold them. It’s nearly ready.

Over two weeks, you’ll walk into an ancient Dartmoor forest with Small Oak — a young tree learning what the forest knows through his grandmother. Through his story, you’ll discover five practices that I believe are at the heart of navigating this journey: being sanctuary, healing shame, trusting your intuition, understanding behaviour as communication, and activating compassion — both gentle and fierce.

Behind the Scenes — A New Look, and Someone to Meet

This month I’ve been working on the visual identity of this newsletter. It started with AI prompt resources from AI Meets Girlboss — which took me enthusiastically down one path, then came to a screech of a halt, and eventually onto quite another. Anyone who knows me knows I love a steep learning curve, and learning to work with an AI image generator has been exactly that. I love a techie challenge.

It’s gone quite well apart from the character, my avatar perhaps, as seen above is obsessed with writing and it’s hard to prise her pen from her hand. Here she is doing a bit of cooking. (I once had an Aga like this but sadly no more.)

She’s created from aspects of me, but without the pile of washing-up that sometimes makes me want to stay in bed. She has the sea right outside her door, whereas for me there are many granite steps to negotiate before I get anywhere near it. She spends her whole time reading and writing, and when I tried to get her to do some cooking she simply carried on writing whilst wearing oven gloves.

She is, I suppose, an idealised me. And I find her reassuring — this quietly focused woman who lives exactly the life I’m working toward. She’s keeping the faith on my behalf.

I want to give a shout out here to Aimee at AI Meets Girlboss for her wonderful resources that helped me to achieve this.

A Voice from the Village

Rachael Smart of Rachael’s Substack

Rachael writes with mesmerising talent — poems that hold beauty and danger. February feels exactly right for this one.

Sisters of Snow

by Rachael Smart

In cold spells

they collapse to the ground

only to resurrect themselves

once the temperature rises.

During conflict they were

used to de-ice tanks

but eat them and die.

It is the snow which owes

its colour to the snowdrop,

he says, when we tiptoe

past a thousand or more

dingle-dangling whitely

like 16th century earrings.

Pilfered indoors to look

pretty, he says, a fistful

of these will sour the milk

and eggs; at worst, they are

an omen of departure.

He kneels, then, to sever

the droopiest one

at her ankles, gifts her to me,

and when I breathe in

all that almond and honey

I hear a bevy

of witches choking.

She is so crystalline,

blue to the touch.

Please seek Rachael’s permission before sharing the poem further.

Other Substack Writers I am Loving This Month

Emmaly Perks — Beyond Gifted

Emmaly writes with a blend of clarity, compassion, and a rare ability to connect. If you’re a gifted adult wondering why no single path ever quite fit — or considering what career reinvention might look like — she’s worth your time. I could have turned in many directions: maths, computing, pastoral work in schools, counselling and therapy. The idea of creating my own job came slowly. Now I am definitely doing that. Emmaly’s writing speaks to exactly this.

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Gem Cowley — The Natural Learning Path

Gem is a speech and language therapist, a deeply thoughtful home educator, and a lifelong learner herself. We discovered that she was born at the opposite end of the same school year as Sam — he was one of the youngest, an August birthday; she one of the oldest. I’ve been thinking about that ever since. What the same school year can hold. What it can do so differently to different children.

Gem also did something extraordinarily generous: she offered to do a human design chart for Sam. What came back confirmed things I already held in my heart about who he was — his energetic presence, his particular sense of direction. I’ll be sharing more of that with you soon.

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A Closing Gift

To all of you who have been navigating February’s particular challenges: I see you. The weariness is real. The wondering if you can keep doing this is real. And you’re not alone in it.

I am still loving being here at Substack amongst you, my new friends.

I am still seeking my founder members. If you’d like to please make a time to connect with me here.

Warmest wishes, Davina 🌿

P.S. I’m taking next week off for my birthday. Back in March, announced by daffodils.