Autumn 2025: The Moments In Between

I take hundreds of photos every month, and most of them don’t get shared with anyone, let alone online. And yet the moments in time that those photos capture are just as important a part of our story as the other images that I do choose to share.

I originally created this blog as a method of documenting our lives, a way of watching the girls grow into who they’re going to be and a memory-box curated to represent who they once were. It’s something I want them to be able to look back on as they get older, because memories fade but (digital) photographs don’t. A legacy, of sorts.

It’s easy (and tempting) to only focus on sharing the fun bits, the memorable parts, the highlights and the celebrations. But I’m learning more and more as I continue through this wild journey of motherhood and life that it’s really important to me that I capture the ordinary, everyday times that we spend together. There’s magic in the mundane if you pay close enough attention – sometimes you have to actively look for it, and sometimes it’s right there in front of you.

I’ve started to include myself in the frame from time to time as well, because I was there too.

These images are the details – the pieces of the jigsaw that fill in the gaps to complete the bigger picture of ‘us’.

They offer tantalising glimpses into who the girls are becoming.

They tell the story of the chaos, the calm and all of the moments in between.

This feature – The Moments In Between – is a space for me to share all of those wonderfully imperfect and messy parts of family life that would otherwise just stay in a folder on my laptop, never to see the light of day.

SEPTEMBER, OCTOBER & NOVEMBER 2025

Autumn has been a season of immense change on so many levels.

Ella leaving to go to university is an event that I haven’t quite fully processed yet. I knew it was coming – of course I did – and in the months leading up to the move, every single piece of energy I had was dedicated to helping her feel comfortable with the transition; to making sure she had all the knowledge and skills she could possibly need to live on her own; to navigate the new world that she was about to be plunged into.

In doing that, I sort-of ignored my own emotions about it all – pushed them away and refused to look at them – because all of my attention was on her. I wonder if I’m still doing that in some ways. I miss her being here. Sometimes I find myself knocking on her bedroom door to say goodnight when I head up to bed, before remembering that she’s not there, and my heart squeezes. Sometimes I listen to her chatting away on the phone to me, or read her WhatsApp messages to me (which range from discussing the dances on this week’s Strictly to asking questions about laundry cycles for wool jumpers, to telling me about the antics of her flatmates, to sharing that she really really REALLY misses our cats), and I close my eyes and picture her in her new landscape and I feel immensely proud of how well she’s handling it all and then my heart expands again.

I guess hearts squeezing and expanding is exactly what they’re designed to do, so maybe this is how I’m supposed to feel. Who knows? Either way, she’s there, living her life, and I’m here, getting ready to do it all over again with her sister in less than a year.

This was us, and all of our moments in between, throughout Autumn 2025…