Our Times and Seasons
Hi I'm Tansie, I'm so glad you've stopped by. This is a guide to the Who, What and Why.
In my first year of motherhood I completely overwhelmed myself by trying to do and be everything all at once. My mother stood by with laughter in her eyes and on her lips. She would shake her head and say “Times and seasons Tansie, times and seasons.” This has become my mantra as I stop, reflect, and try and cut through the noise of parenthood by getting back to basics and living within the times and seasons of our lives.
Why Times and Seasons exists
During the early years of my motherhood journey, all I seemed to find on social media were picture-perfect mothers. Mothers with the mythical “whimsical children” I write about here. People giving impractical (for most) advice or parading their lives in a way that caused more shame than support to the majority of mothers.
I saw how this made me and the mothers around me also feel the pressure to rise to so many unrealistic standards and I didn’t want to be someone who contributed to that.
I noticed when I shared pictures of my actually messy house, a mountain of unfolded laundry, exhausted face and the day-to-day reality of parenting very cute ratbags, that so many mothers reached out. They shared their own struggles and photos of laundry mountains they had been embarrassed about. I found joy in sharing in a way that helped mothers feel seen in all the unromantic chaos that is real life.
What Times and Seasons is all about
Times and Seasons is an extension of this sharing. A place where people can come and read and feel seen. In a world where there are countless things that make us feel less than, feel like failures and feel like being a good and real mother is out of reach because we don’t sour the children’s oats, my hope is for this publication to be a voice of reason.
In a wonderful post by
and they prompted their readers to create a world for their substack. When I sat with this, this was the world I imagined.The essence of my Substack is a big front veranda surrounded by green with big comfy daybeds and velvet cushions in the early morning light. Mothers, still exhausted from not enough sleep but up nonetheless, gather here in their pyjamas, this is a place to be completely vulnerable and let down all pretence of what it is to be “a good mother” I pour more tea. There is always an endless supply of tea. I mix different herbs for what each mother needs. Comfort, strength, creativity, laughter. We gather together as dawn turns into day and the lingering stars disappear. We offer each other encouragement and solace. We stay until we feel we have the strength to start the day. And then we gather again the next morning and the one after that with our candles and our ceramic mugs. To do it all over again. Because motherhood can be lonely and no one will truly understand us but each other.
Who is Times and Seasons for?
Times and Seasons is for the mothers most of all. The ones who are overwhelmed with the millions of things they should be doing or making or buying for their children. The mothers to whom the idea of taking time out for “self-care” is just not a realistic option. The mothers who are in the thick of it. The mothers who actually must dust! And the mothers who want to give their children a magic life, just not in the way it’s currently being sold to them.
But really Times and Seasons is for anyone who wants to feel seen in the stage of motherhood they are in and to know they are not alone in the sleepless nights, crayons on the walls things that are hardly spoken about when it comes to raising children.
A little about me and what to expect
I am currently in the chaos season of my life. I have two boys, 2 and 3.5, to whom the phrase “strong-willed” does not even begin to scratch the surface. I do not have a gentle flow to my days, they are instead taken up with tantrums and death-defying stunts. Each morning is a fight where the simple act of making breakfast more often than not, incites violence. And getting 5 minutes alone to drink a pot of tea has become a luxury.
So it goes without saying that time to write does not get to be the first or even fourth priority. My current capacity is to write at least 2-3 posts a month which I hope to extend when the wake-up time of my children extends and I can steal some undisturbed predawn hours to get out of my head and onto a page all of the stories I have brewing inside me around parenthood and raising wildones.
I currently am not pay-walling any posts as I want these words to find whoever needs to hear them and often they are people not in a position to pay. I would love to create a community where those who do have the means could help to financially support independent writing so that those who can’t can still access it. If you would like to upgrade to a paid subscription you can do so here.
This space will evolve with my times and seasons and I would love to have you along for the ride.
To get you started here are some of my most popular posts
The myth of the whimsical Child
Maybe it was listening to too much Vashti Bunyan while pregnant that did it. Her ethereal voice sang of bands of wayward children as if they were the sweetest, most delightful thing in the world. Or maybe it was the ads that started to appear on every app for beige and olive linen children's clothing…
Stop playing with your children
I would be the vibrant mum, full of playfulness and mirth. I would be the mum who delightedly dropped everything to play silly games with my whimsical children. Little did I know just how much there would be to drop and how chasing my children around the park would not be a game of tag but me trying to wrangle a screaming child back into the pram when it was hometime...
Merging motherhood and self
When I became a mother there was a lot of talk of the 4th trimester and the transition into motherhood. That beautiful time when your baby comes into the world but is so tiny they need still be cocooned and sheltered, as does the mother. It’s that beautiful time where the days and nights are long but the smell of their tiny head and sweet little face somehow pulls you through the stage of sleep deprivation...
There is so much in this post that I can relate to!
Ahhh so beautiful Tansie, I loved reading this introduction to your wonderful writing and I am in love with your Substack world, see you on the terrace with a cuppa! With you and the wildness of the early years (mine are 4 and 2) and also the anchoring of the seasons. I love your mother’s wisdom and often find that I am repeating to myself, “there is a time for everything”. I suppose learning how to sit with things and realise that the time will come is one of my continuing learnings of motherhood. That and softening to the mayhem! Much love to you xx