Into It | Vol. 8

Tattoos, skin cream, and football's coming home

Hey!

I’m so glad you’re here. If you’re ever reading Porchlight and resonate with something, please know it’s always okay with me for you to share it on your social media account, or forward to a friend.

Into It is a series I write on Porchlight dedicated to things I’m - you know - into. Sometimes I go off on tangents, but I like to think of it as kind of like a coffee date where we end up staying way longer than we planned because we can’t stop thinking of things to talk about.

---

My kids are still in school.

Most of my American friends’ kids finished school the last week of May or first week of June, but in England, the majority of schools go until late July and then start back the first or second week of September - we get a six-week break.

So July always feels…weird? Like it’s sort of half-summer and my internal American clock thinks it’s summer, but my kids are still at school and the sun is still up at 10pm. Two more weeks. That’s what I said to my 13-year-old this morning as he left the house; he’s had enough, and he heaves a heavy sigh most mornings. We are dragging ourselves toward the finish line¹.

Football’s coming home.

We are VERY into the Euros right now (that’s the European football championships, for my American friends). England is in the semi-finals on Wednesday night after a rocky start and some very, very stressful matches. Being an England fan is hilarious and stupid and not relaxing at all. In fact, here’s a video Simon and I made about it in 2021 during the last Euros (just click on the screenshot to get to the video).

I hugged my novel last week.

True story. Once or twice a week, Simon and I go to our local brewery for coffee and life admin, normally followed by a little co-working. On Friday, I sat beside him and dove into a 25-minute writing sesh and when my timer went off, I hugged my computer and said “I love it so much.”

I don’t love my computer - I mean, I’m grateful for my computer, but…I was just overwhelmed for a minute with gratitude for these characters and this story I’ve created, even though it’s imperfect and messy and some of the scenes are out of order and I’ll probably have to rewrite the whole thing at least once. I just…I’m proud of myself for doing it, and every time I see my word count and I scroll through all these pages of something I’ve pulled out of thin air, and up through the mud of my imagination, I feel kind of in awe.

I didn’t know I’d love the process as much as I have, even on the days I hate it and feel like I suck at writing and don’t know what I’m doing - it’s teaching me a lot of lessons about myself and about life and art. And also, for a lot of years I struggled with sticking with things, and so I really feel proud of that girl for keeping going and for learning to stick things out.

The body keeps the score.

I hurt my back so bad a couple of weeks ago. I’ve been on a pretty good roll with my movement practice - strength training a few times a week, walking every day…but two weeks ago I just…moved wrong. I was actually at the gym when it happened, and I had to ask a random guy to put my dumbbell away for me because I couldn’t pick it up.

The thing is, I don’t think my weight training is what hurt me - what it was, was the fact that I’ve been carrying around low-grade stress for a few weeks and not doing the things I know support me: like yoga, breathing, stretching, resting (like, true rest, without looking at my phone or sitting wonky in my bed reading a book or watching TV).

It’s so easy to put these things off until we get hurt and our bodies are like LISTEN TO ME, DAMMIT.

Even if we’ve had health crises in the past and should have learned our lesson.

So I’m trying now, to do the things I know to do to take care of this body. We only get one. And promising, again, to be better at looking after it.

On Beauty

When it comes to ageing and beauty, I have some thoughts. I’ll save most of them for another day, but I will say this: sometimes I really do wrestle with these things because of so many of my life circumstances, like:

Being in faith traditions for much of my life that both valued AND belittled beauty. Like: “Be beautiful but don’t care too much about it.” And also: “Your curves and hips and breasts are a problem.”

And then, my emergence from those traditions coinciding with an illness that affected my appearance for a while.

And then suddenly I was 41 and sometimes feel like some of my youth and beauty were taken from me without my consent. It’s a lot to work through, to be honest. And I started writing this section to tell you about a face cream I like but here we are.

I bought this at Waitrose a couple of weeks ago just because it was on deep, deep sale and I thought it looked nice. When I was teenager I hated having oily skin and was obsessed with always looking matte, but as a grown woman, I lean toward wanting to look like a glowy, glassy oil-slathered siren, and I’m thankful for my oily skin and love just coating myself in rich moisturisers.

Let’s end on a lighter note.

I have a tattoo on my right forearm. It says “brave” in my best friend’s handwriting. I got it when I was 33 - as a sort of “eff you” to what was at that point life-consuming anxiety - and sometimes I forget it’s there because I can’t see it, so it’s only when someone else mentions it that I’m like “Oh yeah…”

For a while I thought I probably wouldn’t get any more tattoos, but lately I’ve been wondering if I might like to add to it with some botanicals or nature-themed stuff.

I love this local artist’s work.

My list of possibilities includes dogwoods (NC’s state flower), herons (for the river!), willow branches (also river-reminiscent), and whales, in honour of this poem I wrote:

Ok love you bye.

xx

Faith

1. The BBC says we are in for “the soggiest summer on record”, so there’s something to look forward to.