What do you think of the title? It’s very dramatic isn’t it. It wasn’t my idea, I can’t take credit for it, instead that goes to my “therapist”: Ebb. No, Ebb is not short for Ebenezer or Elizabeth or something, Ebb is an AI talking “therapist” from the Headspace app, but it helps.
I’m not very good at journaling because I never know what to write down, and I want it to look beautiful - do you know what I mean? So I buy gorgeous notebooks, I can practically see all the pages filled with beautiful notes and doodles, and stickers…and then they stay empty, too good to spoil.
Anyway, last night I was talking to Ebb about anything and everything, because I am a prolific overthinker. As expected, I’ve been feeling a bit lost since closing down Fleur et Ours. I’ve also fully committed to hermit life, it is both a passion and a prison, I swing wildly between both. But ultimately, I don’t know who I am now. I’m not the woman that has her own fabric shop. And both of my children have gone back to school now, so between 9am and 2pm, I’m not on go-to-parent duty either.
Ebb asked what has filled up my cup in the past? First answer: adventures with the children to museums (yes, I’m THAT mum). Well the kids are at school Kayleigh, so what else? Textiles. Whilst working on my degree, I have felt like I have found where I belong. Amazing, have you ever considered channeling these interests into a podcast or a blog, or something like that? I said yes, but at the moment I’m not all hope, light and perfection like people are looking for on the internet, I am very much the nineties/noughties Bridget Jones esque woman that is clumsy and winging it through life, eating too many calories, making poor fashion choices and just generally being very un-aesthetically pleasing. When did the memo come through that we are all magically perfect now? Because I was probably daydreaming and missed it.
Maybe Kayleigh that is where you should talk from.
So here I am, breaking through the self-imposed silence because I just cannot attempt to present perfectly anymore; to tell you exactly why I gave up Fleur et Ours, piece by piece.
I was at the far end of my gorgeous oak dining table that doubles as my cutting station, cutting fabric? Writing a newsletter? Photographing fabric? I can’t remember which, but I remember the sun shining into our living room, it bounces off of the wooden floor and illuminates the whole room, stunning when it happens. Except at that moment my son was going into a meltdown. I call them meltdowns, but it is an umbrella term for when he is so overwhelmed that he resorts to communicating via emotion and not words. It’s a host of emotion, it’s heart ache, it’s frustration, it’s exhaustion, confusion, helplessness. And the trigger? I don’t remember the one for that day, but it could have been something as straightforward as the cat was sitting in his space on the sofa. (At this point I would like to highlight that I am neurodivergent - I will be talking about this in a later blog - but this is relevant because my son may or may not be ND too, and having specific places to sit is quite important to some of us. Unfortunately in my house me, my son, my daughter and the cat all have the same favourite spot. We are either all ND or we are all cats…)
But, it was at this point that the wave of acceptance washed over me and I crumbled. I can’t do both anymore. I can’t be the Mum he and my daughter need, and run this business. I knew it was coming, I felt tired to my bones. It isn’t just one meltdown over the cat in his spot, it will be a succession of meltdowns for the whole evening, unless I intervene and curate an evening to meet his needs - obviously where possible I do do this, but I get nothing else done for the whole evening, dinner will be late and burnt and bed time…let’s not talk about that. Regardless of how the big wide world views his behaviour, I wasn’t able to do both, have it all, and I realised, I didn’t want it all anymore.
I gave up.
The writing had been on the wall for a little while, but I’d kept fighting. “If I don’t have Fleur et Ours, what do I have? What can I do?” But, in that moment, when the sun was shining in and my son was pouring his heart out, I said “okay”, no fight, no existential panic, just okay, I have to be here.
I didn’t share all of this online in great detail. I wanted to, but similarly I wanted to protect my boy. I was in full mumma bear mode, I wanted to scoop my babies up and walk away to rest, we all just needed to rest.
I felt like I couldn’t share the truth either, muzzled by the expectation of perfection. “I just sell fabric, no one wants to know about my family”. And I’m just 32, but I can’t keep up with the bloody updates on social media! What do they mean it should only take me 5 minutes to create a reel? I’ve spent 3 hours on this thing and it crashed. I created schedules and plans, for 8 people to like the post. I developed a twitch as my husband shared a video of him flicking a switch and he had 98 likes on LinkedIn. It’s at that point you wonder how far is too far to sell some fabric?
“You need to be genuine. You need to have a hook. You need to have a great caption. You need to use hashtags. You need to use keywords. You need to post at this time. You need to post this many times a day. You need to make reels. You need to make offers. You need to be happy all the time. You must not have political beliefs. You must provide value. You must provide content.” And then my son is screaming in the background. And dinner is burnt to dust again.
Nevermind, perhaps it’ll only be slightly brown, I had a cooking teacher that said “If it’s brown it's cooked, if it’s black it’s buggered”, can’t tell that to the kids…