I'm relearning how to play, out loud
so you don't have to do it alone.
Before this, I spent years in communications consulting — helping other people find the right words for what they do. Somewhere in there I wrote a book called Everyday Play, had a kid, and noticed I'd spent a long time trying to look like a creative person to build my way to creativity from the outside rather than the inside. I talked about play but was I really playing? Or did it just look like play?
And so I started with a genuine commitment to myself to find my own questions and live them out rather than trying to answer them for others. I started asking "what is this trying to become" instead of "what will the finished thing look like" — before I made anything. That's the whole philosophy now, if I have one: play as a practical tool, not a mood board.
These days I call this practice I Wonder Studios — which is really just a name for taking my own curiosity seriously enough to build something out of it.
a podcast (Almost Grown…Up)
eight years, 100+ episodes, and I'm still figuring out what growing up is even supposed to mean)
a zine
an online exhibition
Creative Mums Club, which started as three informal sessions with friends as a way to reconnect to creativity together and is turning into something that connects mothers to each other and their creativity on a regular basis.
My Substack is where I actually do the thinking out loud. Every week, unpolished, in progress. 90% questions, 10% cookies the yummy kind not the digital advertising kind.