2025 - my fallow year?

we got a new rug at The Women’s Health Hub and the photograph can never explain to you how soft it feels under your socks 🥰

I am writing this in my local cafe, hot chocolate, cream + marshmallows in hand, trying to find the energy to reflect on the past year. Trying to find the energy to write to you - you who has so generously invited me into your email inbox.

Many of you reading this are known friends and a wonderful support. Many of you are strangers, whom I have not found the time or energy to connect fully with this year - I do hope to change that.

2024 has been a busy and chaotic year for Postpartum Matters CIC + yet I am entering 2025 feeling proud + optimistic. This time last year, following a quite traumatic resignation of a co-director, I was venturing out completely on my own - hoping to build this newsletter whilst also growing, running + developing my in-person community space - The Women's Health Hub. Now I'm starting the New Year with a team of five freelancers, all supporting me in paid positions, plus a team of 20 volunteers, collectively running the free to access support groups we offer almost every day of the week.

Still 2025 has to be different. It needs to be the year that I reach December not having hit burn out.

I need to do less. Push forward less. I need a fallow year of rest and rejuvenation.

And this has me questioning all of the work I currently do, including this newsletter.

So, what do I want this newsletter to be? The real answer is, I’m still not sure and I’m feeling very much at sea but -

Firstly/ mostly, I want it to be a space to share all of the work we are doing at Postpartum Matters CIC - so you can get involved, if you' re local, yes, but more than that - so that the rest of you - who span the entire globe from the U.S. to Australia to Morocco to India and beyond - so you can all see what is possible. So you can feel inspired + supported to go out + change your own local community for the better, in whatever way makes sense for you to do that.

I want it to be a space where we share real stories - our open + honest lived experience.

I want it to be a space where we connect the dots between our struggles in early motherhood with our struggles through menopause with our struggles with cancer recovery, with endometriosis support, with any element of "health" or life transitions.

I am tired of it being confusing for people.

I am tired of hearing "If you're here to support women postnatally then why does your center support all women & those assigned female at birth?"

I want this newsletter to break down barriers so more of us can know what I know - that community care is central to almost all of our struggles + so if you want to ease, fix or support any cause, you'd be well placed to start with building whole community connection. Not just online1 but out there, in real life.

That is the work we are doing here. And it is central to improving local women's postpartum experiences. Because if your mam wasn’t struggling with her menopausal hormones or her chronic ill health would she be more able to offer emotional support? If your autistic friend had their needs met at work would they have a bigger capacity to support you in those early weeks after birth? If you just had more connections outside of your own front door would you have more headspace yourself to figure out what you needed and to know who to ask for it?

In the last year, at The Women’s Health Hub, we have offered over 1000 free support hours, endless cups of tea and we have spent hundreds of pounds on colouring pens and stickers and other joyful things. We have listened to + held hundreds of women - many of whom would not otherwise be able to access the kind of support we offer. The manpower (womanpower?) I have discovered that this takes is unreal. If I’d had any clue from the beginning, I can’t be certain I’d have started this whole thing, I would have been terrified of the responsibility. I am terrified of the responsibility. The behind the scenes admin, the cleaning, the advertising, the community engagement, the individual support people so often need right when they’re stuck deep in the hard. We have women coming to our space regularly who had previously been housebound with social anxiety for years. The work it takes to build those relationships, to foster safety + security + to consistently show up - it's a huge undertaking.

And it costs a lot of money.

I’m really proud of the financial lessons I have learnt over the last two years and the way I have shown up to push this and to generate income. This is largely what has allowed us to grow so well and so fast. But it is hard and grant funding is an uncertain and scary game.

I'd really love this newsletter to be a solid income stream for the nonprofit. For our community space to thrive, we need more money - especially money that is not project based or grant dependent.

I am so incredibly grateful to each of my current paid subscribers ❤️ I hope you look at the photos of the space and you read the stories of the support we’re offering and feel like you can own that - you made that happen with me. You helped those women.

Where I feel like I went wrong with the paid membership model last year is that I tried to make this newsletter it's own offering and I priced it as such. But then I didn't have the time, energy or capacity to drive it forward + we haven't had a new paid subscriber since June.

And I get it. So many people are offering the subscription model and we're in a cost of living crisis ⇒ things are hard for all of us.

So, I've decided to drastically lower the price2 - with the hopes that this will be more accessible to more of you.

So that those of you who are passionate about the work we do here - whether you support us from afar or you come along to the space in-person - who would like to contribute are able to without it being a huge expense.

I'm making no special promises about what else you will receive other than my immense gratitude and the knowledge that your money has gone directly into a project ran for and by women who struggle or are marginalised in all kinds of ways - from disability, to mental or physical ill-health to immigration status and more.

I’m massively struggling to show up online or on any kind of screen right now which makes writing a newsletter difficult but if you do become a paid subscriber, you will get instant access to my Mindful Bookbinding course (February is the best time to start this ❤️) . And I also hope to share monthly-ish solo- circles for you to follow along at home (like this one here 🥰).3

Subscribe now

I’m also really loving receiving and sending real-life mail - inspired by my wonderful friend - and so, if you are a current or new paid subscriber and you pop your address in this form here, I promise to send you a lovely hand-written thank you card in the actual mail 🐌.

Thank you for listening.

Sending love and solidarity,

P.S. I’d really love to hear from you 🙏🏻✨

How are you feeling about the year ahead? Are you pushing forward or, like me, trying to learn how to pull back? What can I do to support you in building your community connection locally to you? What kind of community support do you dream of?

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