Any Other Woman

20 May 2013 by Aisling

Confessions of an Imperfect Bride

So many of you know and love Katie. She of Simplified Science and World’s Most Beautiful Smile fame. I loved Katie anyway, she’s pretty awesome. And then I read this. A wedding report with a whole paragraph on bum-clenching.

A wedding report that says, ‘hey, it’s ok’. Everything is ok.’ A wedding report written with such candour and joy that you’ll believe, you’ll know, that everything really IS ok.

I wanted to write this for two reasons. First, who doesn’t want to relive one of the happiest days of their lives? Second, I think there’s a lot of expectation out there not just about how you will feel about the run-up to your wedding but also about how you will feel on your wedding day, and I know I felt, still feel in fact, like I was a singularly rubbish bride by the standard expectations. Even in the run-up to our wedding, I knew I wasn’t always worrying about the ‘right things’. Someone asked me if I was worried that my Mum’s dress clashed horribly with the bridesmaid’s dresses, and I laughed. Our venue florist asked me if I had considered napkins in an accent colour and I looked so blank I think she was vaguely concerned for my mental health. I didn’t think about what to wear on my wedding morning until I packed my bag two days before, and even then I just picked the cleanest pyjamas with no holes in. And I don’t say this because I think my way is better, or worse. I just think it’s different to what is quite often portrayed by wedding blogs and magazines, a lot of what I read when I was engaged made me feel like I could never be a Proper Bride. A normal bride. And maybe, by those standards, I wasn’t, but I still loved my day. I had the time of my life, even though it was messy and silly and hilarious at times. So, here is my story. If nothing else, it will be honest, and if just one person reads this and feels a little bit more normal by the end, I’ll count that as a win. Actually if anyone even bothers reading to the end, I’ll count THAT as a win.

It started two days before the wedding. We‘d had our rehearsal the night before, and I’d rushed there from the lab where I was doing my masters, possibly smelling vaguely of E.coli, to stand in the church and feel… weird. Weird, and unreal. That night I went to bed worrying that my wedding day would feel disjointed and disconnected and weird. Then I woke up and plunged into chaos. I spent the morning in my pyjamas trying to edit together a vaguely coherent and logical playlist from the mishmash of genres and styles of music our guests wanted to dance to. I’d set aside approximately 1 hour for this job, because I’d forgotten that even after I’d decided on an order, I would need to trim the beginning and ends of each song to make sure they faded into the next song in a vaguely intentional sounding manner. It took me 4 hours. Intermittently I was phoning my future husband, who was out shopping for the children’s activity table which we had forgotten that we planned to have until that morning, to ask questions like “It totally make sense to segue from Ghostbusters into Don’t Stop Me Now, right? Because you DON’T want to stop the Ghostbusters now, or ever really, because they’re awesome, and anyway everyone will be drunk by this point, right?” or to issue inane reminders like “buy colouring books with FUN pictures, PLEASE!”

Later the same day, I went to have a massage to relax me out of the masters stress and into a relaxed and Zen-like wedding state of mind. Retrospectively, it would have taken a STRONG sedative to chill me out at that point. It’s not even that I was anxious, I was just manic with nerves and excitement and the need to jump up and down, and this is what happened…

Massage therapist: [in soothing tones] You’re really not relaxing, come on now, just breathe, your bum muscles are so tense, don’t stress, there’s nothing to worry about, nothing will go wrong, it’s all going to be okay

Me: I’m not worried about it going wrong, I’m just excited about it going right

MT: That’s lovely, let’s just relax it out now, we’ll get you nice and relaxed and all ready for the big day

Me: Yes. It just is very exciting though.

MT: It is yes… but you need to stop clenching your buttocks now

Me: Sorry, I didn’t realise I was, maybe excitement just takes me that way

The day before our wedding, having evidently managed to stop bum clenching long enough to sleep, I woke up to the sound of two of my bridesmaids singing ”you’re getting married in the morning, except technically it’ll be in the afternoon” (time-accurate AND they managed to get it to scan correctly). We then packed up our overnight bags for the night before the wedding AND our the wedding night bags, AND our honeymoon suitcase. One of the things I would REALLY recommend brides-to-be do is not pack when you’re this hyped up and excited and stressed and anxious and you can’t stop singing about getting married. Take some time to write a packing list at a calmer moment, because the list of things I forgot to take on honeymoon include: my GHDs (like leaving my baby behind), any warm jumpers whatsoever (we went on honeymoon to Cornwall, where it rained 75% of the time, I was chilly), and my shampoo and conditioner (which resulted in Gareth having to request 10 bottles of conditioner from reception on the first night of our honeymoon so that I could brush the hair-sprayed backcombing out of my stupidly long hair).

Having failed to pack, we spent that morning getting our nails done, and Very Carefully transporting the cake my Mum, sister and cousin had created to the venue. Then, we decorated. The sight of the marquee when we were done was just amazing. During the 6 months leading up to our wedding, Gareth was doing a job that kept him away from home for the majority of the time, and even when it did allow him to sleep at home, still required 12+ hour days, so that he arrived home exhausted and stressed. At the same time, I was stuck into the busiest part of my research masters, spending upwards of 10 hours a day in the lab, wrangling with proteins. Between us, we did not have much time to organise a wedding. Largely because I was the person actually at home, I did most of the organising. By the time we actually got married, I had completely lost track of what was going on, I couldn’t really remember what I’d told the florist, I’d booked a jazz pianist with no idea of what I’d asked her to play. My amazing bridesmaids had helped me make way too many pompoms, and my wonderful Mum and cousin had cut and sewed me way too many yards of bunting. I’d knocked together a table plan and table name cards in between running experiments in the lab. I had honestly no idea how it would all come together, I’d totally lost track of what I was doing, and I’d stopped even caring, but actually it looked incredible. Just like I’d pictured in my head. I honestly nearly cried, some part of my brain, throughout all the chaos and business and stress must have hung on tight to the mental image of what I thought our day would look like, and somehow held it together. Personally, I was astounded, a bit impressed by my own ability to make things happen, but mostly overwhelmingly grateful for the help of friends and family who had interpreted my vague floaty mutterings about garden parties and pompoms into a beautiful reality.

Leaving the marquee behind, we joined our friends and family for dinner, before I headed off home to wash my hair and get an early night…

Categories: Becoming A Wife, Wedding Reports
22 interesting thoughts on this

18 May 2013 by Anna

Weekend Wonderings

I first saw this when India Knight tweeted it.

At first glance, it’s not typical AOW fare. Please bear with me.

There are two videos, here. It’s imperative that you watch them in order.

Are you sitting comfortably?

The first video is an explanation of how astronauts go to bed when there’s no gravity. It’s a video by Commander Chris Hadfield of the International Space Station (the I.S.S).

The second is…well, when you finish it, you’ll be in bits, and in awe that there are humans. In space. Looking at Earth. Who can sing together.

In the words of CBC Music: “The Barenaked Ladies, a children’s choir, and the commander of the International Space Station. Put them together and what do you get? The first space-to-earth musical collaboration. The song, “I.S.S. (Is Somebody Singing) was commissioned by CBCMusic.ca and The Coalition for Music Education with the Canadian Space Agency to celebrate music education in schools across Canada.”

You’re welcome, readers. Nothing like a bit of perspective on a Saturday morning.

If you’re anything like me, you’ll now be desperate to find out more about the I.S.S, and how astronauts do everyday things in space. Chris Hadfield has done lots more how-tos, here. He’s come home this week, handing over command of the I.S.S to Russia’s Pavel Vinogradov. He’s captured the hearts and minds of over 750,000 followers on Twitter with his photographs of the Earth from space.

Happy viewing, and happy weekend.

Categories: Weekend Wonderings
3 interesting thoughts on this

17 May 2013 by Aisling

Any Other Photo {Lucy and Phil}

My thought process when putting together Lucy and Phil’s AOP was along the lines of the following – ‘oooh, scrumptious dress…NICE pink tie, mmm I love those orange wedges…HOW excited does Turquoise Lady look?!’ and then BAM.

Have you ever seen as content a bride as Lucy? That relaxed hand holding her (awesome) bouquet, the toothpaste-advert grin and the happiness that radiates from her as she and Phil have their own little moment amidst the outpouring of love and confetti from their guests.

It’s more than enough to chase the rainclouds away on a Friday morning and Lucy’s lovely words and obvious appreciation of her Mum’s motto should set you up for a Very Good Day…

GORGEOUS image from We Shoot Weddings Photography

If you hadn’t already guessed, this photo was taken just after Phil and I left the church. Our friends and family, stocked with a gazillion petals bought in a wedding planning panic, began to get rowdy! I think this was the moment that we knew our wedding was going to be as much fun for everyone else as it was for us. Phil’s friends, my friends, little cousins, old family friends- everyone seemed to go bananas. From that moment on, the wedding became a rollicking party. I’m sure the seeds for many drunken mishaps later were sown here, as everyone conspired to drown us in petals. I’m not joking- when I got undressed that night I was still covered in confetti- it had got in my bra, my pants, stuck to me everywhere! So that’s one reason why I love this photo- the sense that everyone, absolutely everyone, is having fun. Read More »

Categories: Any Other Photo
11 interesting thoughts on this

16 May 2013 by Clare

The friend that made me me – Emma

The first piece that Emma wrote for us was for International Women’s Day. It was brilliant. And when she sent it in, she mentioned that she had a ‘friend that made me me’ piece that she was working on, if we were still interested in them. Of course I replied and said that we would LOVE a friend that made me piece – it’s been a while since we’ve had one, and they are always so beautiful .

So a month or so later, Emma sent this piece in. And it blew me away. I’m not going to say much more, because Emma tells this story so beautifully, so eloquently, that I don’t want to detract from it, but I urge you to read this when you have time to really sit and appreciate it. So Emma….it’s over to you.

When I first saw the ‘friend that made me me’ series here on Any Other Woman, there was someone that immediately sprung to mind. I count myself lucky enough to have many great friends that have helped me through the highs and the lows that life throws at us; great friends (and family) that have all played an instrumental part in making me the woman I am today. This obviously makes it very hard to select just one, but the particular person that I wanted to write about today is particularly apt as the ‘friend that made me me’ because she has known me all of my life, been there for me all of my life through good times and bad.

Lou and I have always been proud of the fact that we have been friends for so long. We have had many a debate about whether we are each other’s ‘oldest ever friend’ or ‘longest ever friend’. Either way it is all semantics because we have been in it for the long haul, through thick and thin, best friends from the start.

On occasion we have doubted that we retained that closeness at certain stages in our lives but I have letters, Facebook messages and texts from throughout the years to prove we did – the ‘love you always’ signoffs and the regular declarations: ‘you’re one of the best friends I’ve ever had’ no matter what age.

Categories: Family, Friends and Relationships, Friend That Made Me Me
28 interesting thoughts on this

15 May 2013 by Anna

Jobs For The Girls – Head of Sudan Team at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office

I first came across Caroline when she sent us this post for International Women’s Day. I got slightly over-enthusiastic about it, and received a lot of mockery from my nearest and dearest as a result. You see, they know it’s a job I’d love to have. And whilst I am also a civil servant, working in international matters, I can assure you that a high-octane typical day for me involves typing particularly fast and perhaps getting two coffees instead of one. It does not involve a bullet-proof vest or nipping off to Ethiopia.

Caroline works at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), which is the Government Department responsible for ensuring Britain’s national security (by countering terrorism and weapons proliferation, and working to reduce conflict); building Britain’s prosperity (by increasing exports and investment, opening markets, ensuring access to resources, and promoting sustainable global growth); and supporting British nationals around the world (through consular services).

So, I kicked off with asking what a typical day involves. Even I know not every day is a bullet-proof vest day. As Caroline explains: “A typical day really depends on whether you’re based in London, or in an Embassy or post overseas. For example, at the moment I head up the team in London working on Sudan. This means, in a typical day or week, I’ll spend a chunk of time at my desk emailing and talking to the team in Khartoum, agreeing how to handle discussions with the Government there, what we want to achieve through Security Council debates, what we should be saying to other countries and so on – all aimed at supporting efforts to end the ongoing conflicts in Sudan, and the development of a more open and democratic society, and deliver development assistance throughout the country. “

And then there’s the fare of every civil servant, of course – The Submission. “I also work with the team here to respond to questions from MPs and enquiries from the public – we write a lot of letters and answer a lot of questions! Finally, again working with the team across the whole of Whitehall, I will on a fairly regular basis develop written “submissions”, that basically are papers on suggested policies, for our Ministers to read and decide what they want us to do.”

And what about when you are on postings overseas? What happens then? “There is a lot more getting out and about – your job is to understand the country you’re in and the ideas and attitudes of the people there, and to promote and pursue the UK’s objectives there – be they on trade, security, ended conflict, or influencing the UN. The two overseas postings I’ve had so far have been in Sierra Leone and Afghanistan (by choice, they didn’t force me to go!). In Sierra Leone, I was on secondment to the UN, and I spent a lot of time with the bits of Government that were preparing for their first elections (in 2006) since civil war. I’d then feed information back to London, to the UN and the High Commission in Freetown, so that they knew how things were going and what we needed to do to support the elections. Again, I also spent time meeting with international colleagues, so we could make sure we were all working along the same lines and pressing for the same things.

In Afghanistan, I spent a lot of time with the military, understanding their planning and helping to ensure that the military and civilian planning was well joined up. Of my two years there, I spendt my last six months in Helmand, as political advisor to the US Marine Corps General. My day to day routine was a lot more frontline- literally and figuratively! I’d attend a lot of planning briefings and meetings (seeing a LOT of powerpoint presentations!) so I could help make sure the civilian-led Provincial Reconstruction Team were well plugged in to the military planning. I’d also go out for a couple of days at a time to stay in the “forward operating bases” across Helmand, as it was important to understand how things really worked on the ground, what was possible, what wasn’t and so on. Those trips were brilliant fun, involving lots of moving around by helicopter – although they were also completely exhausting, hot and dusty (temperature were often in the 40s…).”

Me on a helicopter in Afghanistan!

Categories: Jobs For The Girls, Money and Career
5 interesting thoughts on this

14 May 2013 by Clare

Two hearts.

If the cliche is true, if home really is where the heart is, then I currently have two homes. Or two hearts. Or something. That sounded more eloquent in my head than it looks typed here.

My home is here in KL. It’s where I live my life, it’s where I am settled. It makes me happy being here. The weather is beautiful. Not some of the time, not once or twice a year, but Every. Single. Day. Life is easy. We have amazing friends here who I know we’ll be friends with forever. We (and I know this), are insanely lucky to have the opportunity to live in a place like this.

I thought that life here was *so* good, that we are *so* happy here, that I couldn’t possible miss England.

I was wrong.

Because I’ve realised that home is also in England. In Cheltenham. Home is where I grew up. It’s where the scenery, and sounds, and smells are so familiar that I barely even notice them, but sometimes am jolted by the sound of pigeon cooing in the morning, or the smell of rain on cut grass, and forcibly reminded that this, *this* is home. Did you know, that when you haven’t seen it for so long, the brake lights of a traffic jam glowing in the grey, dull early morning light that is unmistakeably English, can actually be really beautiful?

Categories: Family, Friends and Relationships, Written By Clare
37 interesting thoughts on this

13 May 2013 by Anna

The Meaning of Marriage

Four years in, I still find it hard to pin down the point of marriage. At the time, it felt like the right thing to do, like something that I wanted, and so I said yes. But, being honest, it’s hard to make clear, in day-to-day terms, what the difference is between being married and being in a long-term relationship. People ask me and I’m always frank about that.

This is why I love this submission from Liz (of Liz Wan Photography). It makes me realise that there IS a point. There IS a strong argument for marriage, that applies to me. It’s about choice, about choosing to let someone in, about there being a difference between the person you’re married to and those that share your DNA.

Over to you, Liz:

I became a wife last summer. I am new to this whole game and whilst I am still enjoying it very much, I expect lots of challenging times to come. But rather than write about how it’s all going, I wanted to share my personal view on the meaning of marriage as I used to be pretty cynical about it myself. But if you are thinking, “oh don’t even bother to try and convert me” – I’m not. I really, really don’t judge people who don’t want to get married, I don’t ‘pity’ them and I don’t wish all my single or unmarried friends would get married – REALLY! (am I being persuasive enough?!) More to the point, this is about how I would explain the meaning of marriage to two very young female members in my family.

I have two beautiful nieces. One is currently 7 and the other is soon to be 15. In recent years, they have endured their parents breaking up, getting back together and breaking up, getting back together and breaking up again. Even when both parents have continued committing to being the best parents they can be, I can’t help but think that the process has been anything short of painful for the girls. Thankfully things have settled down and their parents (my brother and his now ex-partner) are friends again.

I love my nieces to bits but because I don’t get to see them too often I’m not really their first port of call when it comes to family and relationship advice. My teenage niece is quite shy and known for keeping her feelings to herself. I often thought about her and how the parent situation would impact her views on relationships and marriage. Her parents never married and my other sister who they are much closer to is in a more-than-decade-long term relationship and is not married. Not anymore anyway. Even both sets of their grandparents come from broken relationships.

One day I thought to myself, if the girls asked me, how would I explain why I got married myself? (erm apart from the obvious which is I love my husband to bits) What is the point of it? Isn’t it just a piece of paper or a bit of pretty metal around your ring finger?

Categories: Becoming A Wife, Marriage
10 interesting thoughts on this

11 May 2013 by Aisling

Weekend Wonderings

I found this blog post via the inimitable Emma Case’s Twitter account. It is a kind of wonderful that I don’t really have the words to describe. And though on the surface it is about wedding photography, really, it isn’t.

Enjoy, readers. Happy Weekend.

Hello there, friend.

Although we don’t know each other, we have a few minutes in this borrowed space to share with you a bit of our story, and hope that you walk away with the gift of perspective. We so frequently lose it ourselves, we can’t help but thinking that we aren’t the only ones. So… if you will oblige us, take a deep breath (no, really… do it), clear your mind, and follow us on this little adventure.

We recently got an email from a woman inquiring about one of our next workshops. We love how open some people are in these emails- they will pour out their story simply because they were asked the question, “why?” This dear soul said something to the effect that she had “wasted” many years of her life being a wife to her husband and a mother to her children, and that she was ready to stop focusing on them and start focusing on her one passion: wedding photography.

We sat there stunned, not quite knowing how to respond. Our first comment to each other was, “Well, if she thinks marriage and children make a wasted life, she’s going to hate our workshop!” We couldn’t help but chuckle remembering that our kids were at our last workshop. Micah, our 9-year-old son, taught a section on the first night, and much of our workshop is devoted to the importance of telling a good story with your personal life.

She had wasted her life on her husband and children? We are a husband and wife, raising three children. We are parents. We have spent days and months and years laughing, dreaming, making babies, watching those babies grow and learn what the sky is and what ice cream is and what love is. Each day for the past 12 years we have been fighting the good fight of marriage, screaming at each other in the moments where the other one has destroyed us- saying the words you don’t include in your vows, like “f**k you!” or “this is over,” or “I can’t forgive you for that,” apologizing, doing the costly work of forgiving, weeping, burying those we loved most, giving our infant CPR as his heart stops in the back of our car and we race to the hospital.

We have lived gloriously on mountaintops and the darkest of valleys, and we still go to sleep at night side-by-side, one being the big spoon and the other one being the little. We are giving our lives to our marriage and our children, and those efforts are anything but a waste in our minds. To love without expecting anything in return. To forgive even when you feel like you have the right to hold a grudge forever. To stay. To build something real and big and powerful with roots growing deep down into the soil of the heart. That is an expression of God himself, of heaven breaking through to earth.

So we want to pose a question to you.

Friend, what are you wasting your life on? What are you giving your time, energy, thought, affection, money, body, soul, and strength to that doesn’t deserve it? Have you embraced this wedding photography industry and its popularity contest as the “end-all”, and lost sight of the importance of family, in-person relationships, and living a good story?

A few years ago we came face to face with death. And in losing one of our dearest loved ones, we had the realization of something… the staggering statistic you may also find shocking. Did you know 10 out of 10 people die?!? Well. We didn’t. Or at least we weren’t living like it. Without any perspective of the meaning of our lives or our own expiration dates, we went about wasting our life on the hamster wheel of the wedding photography industry. No, the images weren’t a waste. The couples were not a waste, they were the redeeming part. But we had taken this gift of being self-employed wedding photographers, added to it a dash of pride, a pinch of self-loathing, a quarter cup of blog-stalking, and a half teaspoon of fame, and we had the recipe for a life without perspective and purpose. Just as junk food makes you fat while not satisfied, so it was with our search- we wanted more. More blog comments, more people thinking we were awesome, more facebook likes on our business page, more weddings being published on wedding blogs or in wedding magazines, more workshop attendees, more gear, more money, more attention, more weddings, more, more, more. So that suddenly, the kids and the marriage were a bit of a pain because sometimes they interfered with the “more” agenda. We were too busy submitting to wedding blogs to help the kids with homework, too busy Instagram-ing them to push them on the swings, and too busy trying to book everyone who came to us we forgot to ask each other, “Hey, how are you?”

Don’t get us wrong. None of these things are inherently “bad” in their own right, and neither is wedding photography. We write this to you as wedding photographers who are on social media, and have received attention in the industry. But we watched a loved one gasping for breath on his death bed, and in that moment he didn’t stop to say, “Hey, do I have any new facebook messages??” And when our baby’s heart stopped and he wasn’t breathing and was limp in our arms, we didn’t ask each other, “How many comments did we get on that last blog post?”American Photo magazine recently named us one of the top 10 wedding photographers in the world for 2013. But you can sure as hell bet that the next time our baby has to take an ambulance ride, we aren’t going to bring the copy of that issue to the hospital to keep us safe. The next time we have a rip-roaring fight in our marriage and roll away from each other that night as we sleep, we won’t go grab the issue to hold us tight and keep us warm. If we are living for that, we are wasting our life on something that just won’t be worth it in the end.

For now, we will gladly “waste” our lives loving well, spending our lives on the pursuit of perspective, of meaning, of the supernatural and the messy, of the beauty in the broken, of the stories that are honest and right and true where love wins in the end. We invite you to join us on the journey of not wasting your life on the small, empty things… in order to waste it on the big, forever things.

- Jeremy and Ashley

Categories: Weekend Wonderings, Written By Aisling
3 interesting thoughts on this

10 May 2013 by Clare

Any Other Photo {Laura and Chris}

This Any Other Photo has been scheduled in for a few months now. We booked it in, with much excitement from both sides, and then waited. We knew it would be a good one. We knew that Laura would write something sane, and wonderful, and that the image would be a beaut. Then all of the non pro pics started appearing of The Dress, and I think we all thought (and hoped) that Laura’s AOP would include The Dress. Or maybe it would be some of the amazing DIY that Laura spent months on in the lead up to the wedding. Or even better, be a photo of crafting AND The Dress. But it’s none of those. And now I’ve seen it, I know that Of Course it wasn’t. It had to be this picture. Congratulations Laura, over to you:

You all know from my previous posts, tweets and general freak-outs that I was pretty scared of walking down that aisle. Nervous what people would think of my dress, the day itself and how the pictures would turn out. What if the groom didn’t like the dress? What if my mum didn’t like her dinner? So. Much. Pressure.

I initially felt the same sort of pressure when thinking about my AOP. I went from ‘oh I must send in all the pretty, everyone likes to see the pretty’, to ‘sod it, I don’t have to share it, I’m not sending one’ when I was being stubborn and scared what you’d all think.

But this photo is one my photographer sent us whilst we arrived back from our honeymoon as a little preview and it was decided. I don’t need to see any more pictures. It shows my most favourite part of the entire wedding and is one I will be framing on my bedside table, putting a little print of in my wallet and probably taping to my PC monitor at work too because I just love it so much.

Categories: Any Other Photo
27 interesting thoughts on this

9 May 2013 by Anna

London in Spring, My Mother and Life Lessons

This was a long winter. Admittedly, I went on holiday right in the midst of it, so I’m not complaining per se, more observing. It’s difficult to complain without being lynched when part of said winter was spent lounging in a bath on a balcony. But it was long. Cold, dark, and long.

And now it’s over. Spring is here.

I don’t think there’s anything like spring in the UK.

Barnes, on the banks of the Thames

This weekend, my mum, dad, cousin, sister, and sister’s boyfriend descended on us for my mum’s 60th birthday celebrations. We wanted to plan her a weekend of all her favourite things in London, surrounded by her family.

We went to Broadway Market first, where we drank coffee, perused the stalls, and ate a lot, including Banh Mi, the Vietnamese pork sandwiches that have to be eaten to be believed. The thinnest-sliced pork. The crustiest. toastiest baguette. Coriander. Salad. Chilli.

I didn’t mean for this post to be an ode to sandwiches, but rather one about my mother (inspired by Aisling’s post). She had the best of weekends, this weekend. She’s spent her life teaching, bringing up her kids, caring for other people, and it’s rare she gets time spent on her, and her alone.

Categories: Family, Friends and Relationships, Life Experience, Written By Anna
16 interesting thoughts on this

About

Hello! We're Clare, Aisling and Anna and welcome to a corner of the world where smart, flawed, real women talk about the bigger picture; about their experiences, stories and opinions on all aspects of being a woman today, from marriage to feminism to pretty, too.

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image by Lucy Stendall Photography