I first discovered Luminary Mothers when Marley was only a couple of months old. I remember exactly where I was sitting in our living room. The fire was on, I was curled up in the corner of the sofa, and the sleepiness of a post-feed baby had lulled me into that lovely, fleeting state of calm. An article caught my eye, and in particular, a quote Alice had written about motherhood not diminishing our ambition, but refining it. About how becoming a mother had made her more discerning about where she directed that ambition.
I've always been an ambitious person, and motherhood hasn't changed that. But something about those words spoke to me deeply. I read on, and before I knew it, an hour had passed as I worked my way through the articles on the website and scrolled the Instagram page. I felt an overwhelming desire to reach out to Alice, because for the first time in a while, I felt seen.
I emailed her there and then, and from that point on, we began building a relationship. We talked endlessly about the challenges we face in this season of our lives, but also about the enormous opportunity to change the narrative around motherhood. To create a platform and community that could speak honestly about these experiences, while championing the ambition, creativity and individuality of the women living them.
A few weeks before discovering Luminary Mothers, my good friend Susete and I had taken our babies to a local sensory class. On the walk home, having just dressed the boys in 30-year-old costumes and pulled rubber gloves over their socks to transform them into homemade 'ducks', I turned to her and said, "This cannot be how we spend our maternity leave..."
Of course, there's absolutely a place for these classes in our weekly routine, and we laughed about the absurdity of it and how the photos we’d taken would be something we’d bring out on their 18th birthdays, but something about that morning stayed with me.
We had this incredibly precious time, and I couldn't help thinking that it didn't need to be a year devoted entirely to nurturing only our babies. It could (and should) also be a time to nurture ourselves.
Where were the experiences designed for us? The conversations that stimulated our minds, the spaces that allowed us to connect over something beyond feeding schedules and sleep routines, the opportunities to feel inspired, curious and creatively fulfilled?
I couldn't let the idea go. I started obsessing over the types of events and conversations I wanted to be part of, and it felt as though Luminary Mothers was echoing that same calling back to me. It became part of my evolving conversations with Alice, and eventually we began exploring what it might look like to partner and bring these ideas to life together.
Only a couple of weeks later, in a turbulent and entirely unexpected turn of events, I lost my job.
Marley wasn't yet four months old when I found out I was being made redundant. For the following two months, I was consumed by conversations with lawyers, educating myself on maternity law and navigating a fairly unusual exit from my previous employer.
The strangest part about leaving a job during maternity leave is that you get no closure. No one to say goodbye to, no messages wishing you good luck. Just deafening silence. And I won't lie. It knocked me for six.
Going through something like this during such a tender chapter of life is an experience I think will stay with me for a very long time, but it also forced me to turn my thoughts inward and ask myself some really big questions.
What do I actually want? (That was the big one.)
What do I want this season of my life to look like?
Do I still love what I've spent the last 15 years building my career around?
How have my own wants and desires evolved now that I'm a mother?
And then came the bigger questions.
What do I want my children to see in me?
What do I want my legacy to be?
When you begin to make decisions not only around professional achievement, but also around the kind of life you want to lead, the time you want to spend with the people you love and the example you hope to set for your children, things start to look very different.
I had an urge to feel expanded.
I needed role models who could show me that there were different ways to live out this chapter of my life. Women with big ambition and purpose, who were redefining what it meant to be both a mother and have a successful career, on their own terms.
I hadn't lost my ambition. If anything, I was beginning to feel more ambitious about my life as a whole.
I've spent over 15 years working in fashion, luxury and events, and my fascination with style, design, culture and the art of bringing people together hasn't diminished. I'm still endlessly curious about how the people, places and experiences we encounter shape the way we live, connect and interpret the world around us.
But I began to wonder what it might look like to channel all of that into something that felt more closely connected to the chapter I was living myself.
It was exciting and terrifying in equal measure. The complete unknown, accompanied by a deep, instinctive feeling that I was exactly where I was supposed to be.
That juxtaposition is probably where you find me today.
I'm so excited to bring everything I've learned throughout my career to Luminary Mothers, helping to shape a platform that champions the voices, stories and experiences of inspiring women around the world. To explore how we can create meaningful connections, conversations and experiences that reflect the realities of modern motherhood, while continuing to question and redefine what a fulfilling life might look like.
And, perhaps most importantly, to begin rewriting my own way of living and working, finding a sense of harmony between the different parts of my life rather than feeling as though they must exist in competition with one another.
Because for me, this goes beyond motherhood. It's about womanhood, and who we are as women beyond being mothers.
The things that inspire us, the ambitions we hold, the identities we continue to shape and the parts of ourselves that deserve space to grow, regardless of the season of life we're in.
Within the first week of announcing my new role as Creative Director of Luminary Mothers, I was kindly invited to several press days and events by brands I'd admired from the sidelines for years.
Every single invitation included an offer to bring Marley along.
Every single one.
In all my years working in the industry, I'd never experienced that kind of invitation before. The idea that my baby could simply be part of my working day, rather than something I needed to make arrangements around, felt quietly revolutionary.
And it felt really, really good.
Perhaps it's a small thing, but to me it represented something much bigger. A glimpse of a world in which motherhood isn't treated as something that exists separately from our professional identities, but as a part of our lives that can be acknowledged, accommodated and even celebrated.
Wherever you find yourself on your own journey, whether you're deep in your motherhood era, finding your feet as a new mum, navigating the complexities of fertility and family planning, or still exploring what motherhood might mean for you, I hope you'll find something here that resonates.
A community that sees you, supports you and reminds you that there is no single way to be a woman, a mother or to build a meaningful life.
I don't believe there's a perfect formula for finding harmony between our work, our passions, our relationships and our families. But I do believe there's enormous value in exploring what that might look like, in sharing our experiences and learning from one another along the way.
Because perhaps the greatest lesson I can pass on to my children isn't simply what I've achieved, but the freedom to imagine what a life well lived could look like.
And the confidence to shape one of their own.
Luminary Mothers
