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Content warnings: This piece contains talk about the genocide in Gaza,

I’m back after a week off. Unfortunately, not even the iron gates of Center Parcs could protect me from the ✨state of things✨.

I thought a lot about what I wanted to write about this year and how this newsletter could continue to serve as a personal journal while also proving useful to the growing subscriber base.

One thing I keep coming back to is how hopeless I feel. If you live in the UK, then you’ll know that this week’s news cycle was dominated by Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Enoch Powell impression, which damned immigrants in a poor attempt to pander to the Labour Party's voters lost to Reform.

A couple of weeks ago, we had a local council election. It was the first time in my voting life that I struggled to choose a candidate.

For context, I live in the North East. We vote Labour. Our grandparents lost their jobs thanks to Thatcher’s neoliberalist tirade in the late 1970s and early 1980s. We are descendants of shipbuilders, miners, and steelworkers. We will always vote for the party that prioritises workers’ rights, including trade unions, affordable housing, and pensions.

But Starmer’s time in office has proven that this is no longer what the party stands for.

Add that to his vocal support of the Supreme Court bill to deny the rights of trans women as women… and you’ve got yourself a tricky time to be on the left wing of politics.

Since many people obviously had the same dilemma as I, likely resulting in a split vote for Greens and Lib Dems on the left, we saw Nigel Farage’s far-right party, Reform, win a significant number of council seats.

This might be a battle of local issues, but the ideological war is far, far bigger

I wrote a few weeks ago about the return of politics to music and how Irish rap group Kneecap has been facing attempts to silence and censor their vocal support of the Free Palestine movement. Just this week, a screening of Kneecap’s film was axed from a Cheshire cinema following local councillors' pressure.

So, it wouldn’t be unfair to say that we, the left, are failing. Even our right to vote as citizens is difficult to exercise when the choices on the ballot don't align with our views.

The Overton Window is a political theory that refers to the range of views that are considered politically acceptable within a mainstream society. We are living in a huge window shift. Protesting is becoming dangerous, meaning standing up for what you believe could risk your career or family.

So, what can we actually do? As individuals? This thought has been circling in my head all week while I jogged the steep hills of Whinfell Forest and cycled to the swimming pool for a daily dip with my husband and toddler.

I decided to dedicate this newsletter to listing some things we (and you specifically) can do right now to feel like you are impacting people’s lives and your own.

Here are some of the big problems floating around in my mind, and the easiest way you could make a real difference today:

1. People are hungry, and the cost of living is through the roof.

The UK government estimates around 11 million people are living in food poverty.

In 2024, The Trussell Trust distributed 3.1 million emergency food parcels from its community food banks – the most parcels ever distributed in a year and nearly double the number compared to five years ago.

In the same period, more than 655,000 people used a Trussell Trust food bank for the first time.

How can you help?

Pick up extra food and toiletries on your next supermarket shop and drop them in the food bank collection box at the end. This is a very easy and affordable way to make a tangible difference.

If you can afford it, set up a monthly direct debit to The Trussell Trust. You can do this from your business as long as you don’t claim gift aid, and it will help reduce your tax liability.

1. Hygiene poverty is worse than ever

The Hygiene Bank found that 4.2 million people are living in hygiene poverty in the UK. While tragic, this stat is unsurprising given that 600,000 more people fell into absolute poverty in the year between 2022-23.

Hygiene poverty disproportionately affects disabled people, unemployed people, people in lower-income households and those from ethnic minority backgrounds.

How can you help?

Find your local Hygiene Bank on their website. Here in the North East, we have The Hygiene Bank Newcastle, which welcomes donations of both financial and product items. Many food banks also take donations of toiletries.

1. Trans people are fighting for their rights (and losing)

Following the Supreme Court’s ruling against the recognition of trans women as women (even with Gender Recognition Certificates), many of us allies have felt truly powerless in our mission to fight back.

How can you help?

Firstly, listen to trans people. Arlen Pettitt hosted an anonymous transman on his newsletter a few weeks ago, where the writer explains the specific struggles he faces, and how this ruling and other political ideology impacts his daily life.

I highly recommend reading that piece here:

You can also support trans people by joining a protest, if you are able to. What The Trans has a list of protests on this weekend, as well as dates of trans pride events in June.

If you work in a position of power, or have the ability to speak in front of a board or council, you can use your influence to testify for trans rights. Take a look at this guide from Advocates For Trans Equality to learn how to do this in a practical and safe way.

1. People are dying in Gaza

This final point is one that I have been struggling with the most. The feeling of powerlessness knowing that people, including babies and children, are dying without food and aid, due a genocidal war—that is not only not condemned by our government but enabled due to the UK’s sale of arms to Israel, is as much, much bigger issue than any of us can control.

Knowing that very little food or aid is being allowed into the territory right now, we are unable to make an easy donation to any single organisation, knowing that it will definitely put food in a baby’s mouth.

That being said, there are some ways you can try to make a difference…

How can you help?

It has been more than 70 days since aid reached the people of Gaza. This means that while I strongly encourage you to donate to human rights organisations, it doesn’t necessarily mean that money will get to the right people.

A few organisations are working on the ground in Palestine, including the Palestine Red Crescent Society, which is part of the International Red Cross and also recognised as an independent Palestinian National Society. You can donate to the Red Cross Gaza appeal, or directly to the Red Crescent Society.

Even by supporting these organisations, we, as individuals, cannot end the war. However, we can take civil action, like writing to our local MPs about the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Instructions on how to do this are here.

Other than that, we can continue to be voices for the voiceless and keep the topic of Gaza at the forefront of the zeitgeist every single day.

Like Kneecap’s manager Daniel Lambert said in a recent interview with RTÉ: “Children are starving to death, and we're spending six or seven days talking about Kneecap.”

Do not let the media dictate what matters to us.

Be critical of what you read.

Question their motives.

Don’t sacrifice your morals.

As individuals, we might feel powerless. But together we could be strong.

As I mentioned earlier, we’re back from a short week at Center Parcs, one of my favourite places to go (and not that pricey during term time!).

Here’s a photo of Potter enjoying the off-lead area:

Here are some things I've enjoyed over the last week:

📚Ordinary Saints by Niamh Ni Mhaoileoin - My favourite book of the year so far! It tells of a millennial woman who is largely estranged from her Irish catholic family when she finds out her late brother is being considered for sainthood.

📺 Taskmaster (Channel 4) - One of my top shows is back on our screens, and it’s a good series so far!

That’s all from me,

See you next week,

Ellen x

💌 About this email

I’m Ellen, and I write about mental health for the chronically online. I am a freelance copywriter, strategist and web designer, and I work from home with my husband, Craig, at Content By The Sea. We have two rescue greyhounds, Potter and Harmony, and a toddler.

I started this newsletter in March 2020 and have sent over 200(!) emails; currently, I have over 1,300 subscribers. I write about a wide variety of topics, including diet culture, my love of running, jealousy, my life falling apart, mam guilt, and this dystopian world we all live in.

💛 How you can support me

If you like reading my weekly emails, you can give me a kickback in one or more of the following ways:

📨 Share this post

📬 Subscribe for free (if you haven’t already!)

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Get full access to Conversations By The Sea at ellenforster.substack.com/subscribe

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Content warnings: This piece contains talk of adult content and revenge porn.

I keep watching videos about Bonnie Blue.

About her. Not her actual content, obviously.

For those who are less chronically online than I (and therefore probably happier in general), Bonnie Blue is an adult content creator who makes a significant living from OnlyFans subscriptions. If that were all there was to it, then I wouldn’t care.

What’s problematic about Bonnie is that she specifically targets young men (aged 18/19) for her content. She travels the world on the hunt for ‘schoolies’ (short for school leavers) who are happy to sleep with her, for free, in exchange for starring in her content, which she then profits from.

Bonnie, who claims to be around 25, has made headlines recently for a whole host of reasons, not just her ‘love’ of barely legal men, but that’s the part I am focusing on today.

Let’s do an exercise…

I wonder if you can recall what you were like when you were 18 or 19.

Where did you live? Were you dating anyone? What do you feel when you think about those couple of years when you were, technically, an adult, but still, in some respects, a child?

I suspect, there are things you did that you regret. And some of those things you’ll never want to think about again…

But what about if what you did at 18 or 19 was immortalised on the internet… forever?

Former adult star Mia Khalifa has spoken extensively about her regret in entering the adult film industry in her early 20s. Khalifa gained fame after an adult video of her wearing a hijab went viral. She was 21 years old at the time.

While Mia did go on to make a small sum creating adult content, she missed out on significantly more— an estimated $500,000 from her videos on free streaming sites, which can still be accessed today.

After only three months working in the adult industry, Mia became one of the most famous stars in the world. She has expressed significant regret about the decisions she made in her early 20s, she tweeted:

“Please, please, please think about this if you are considering the sex industry,”

“They make it impossible to rectify your regrets should you have them in the future.”

It’s amazing to be young

You’ve probably heard that the prefrontal cortex of the brain is not fully developed until 25. This is actually a lot more complicated than people think, and some scientists even consider it a myth. All of our brains develop differently, and there is also a difference between development and maturation.

The ease with which we make decisions and assess risks is impacted by more than just our age. A person with ADHD, for example, is more likely to make impulsive decisions at any age, but it’s fair to assume they might be less likely to have developed coping mechanisms in their teens and early 20s.

I don’t think many people reading this will defend the actions of Bonnie Blue, for example. I expect the legal system will catch up with her eventually. There are already several petitions in parliament regarding the raising of the minimum age to create adult content to 25.

However, it does spark a broader discussion about how we, as a society, are caring for young people during their most vulnerable times. Writer and content creator Jess Davies was interviewed in the Guardian this week about being the victim of revenge porn at 15, then reclaiming her sexuality by becoming a glamour model at 18.

On the leak of a naked photo of her at just 15, Jess said:

“I was the one shamed.”

“I was the first person I knew of that this had happened to, so there was no blueprint to follow. I was mortified. My response was: ‘OK, this is it. I have to try to own this as it’s not going away.’”

Jess spent several years working as a glamour model before turning her back on the entire industry and becoming a campaigner for opening up conversations about consent, revenge porn and bodily autonomy.

She believes that what happened at 15 truly changed the trajectory of her life forever, hinting that she would not have entered the adult industry had her image not been stolen from her as a child:

“Every time I was taken advantage of, I kind of accepted it,”

“I thought: ‘Oh well, you’ve opened yourself up to this. What did you expect?’ Part of me believed that this is just how the world is, and this was all I was worth.”

As Jess suggests, consent is a tricky beast— especially when you are young and, potentially, already a victim. I wonder how this aligns with Bonnie Blue’s targets, especially among school leavers and university freshers who may make decisions influenced by peer pressure or other factors.

This might seem like an odd topic for me to write about, but it’s really not. I position this newsletter as being about mental health for the chronically online, and you don’t have to be as chronically online as I am to know the discussion about consent is murkier than ever.

In interviews, Bonnie regularly quotes the age of consent and basically infers that if it’s legal, then it’s okay. But legal is not synonymous with ethical.

People do change, and we should be allowed to change. The decisions we make as teenagers will likely not reflect the adults we become, but in a digital world where nothing is ever entirely deleted, escaping our past seems increasingly impossible.

RECAP: April’s newsletters

If you’re a new subscriber or just want to catch up, here are all the newsletters I sent last month:

• What do you want to be when you grow up?

• Small things like these

• ChatGPTrash

• Saving faces

• Is music finally political again?

What I’ve been reading

Here are some excellent reads from the last week or so:

I’m just back from a few nights in Barcelona— a place of mixed emotions for me. I will write about it one day, but this visit was canny despite the power cut. We even made it to the beach:

Here are some things I've enjoyed over the last week:

📚Bodies by Christine Anne Foley - Loved this fast-paced novel about a young girl’s turbulent love life with a dark twist.

🎧 A Complicated Woman by Self Esteem - Rebecca’s new album is fantastic, so glad I got tickets to see her later in the year!

That’s all from me,

See you next week,

Ellen x

💌 About this email

I’m Ellen, and I write about mental health for the chronically online. I am a freelance copywriter, strategist and web designer, and I work from home with my husband, Craig, at Content By The Sea. We have two rescue greyhounds, Potter and Harmony, and a toddler.

I started this newsletter in March 2020 and have sent over 200(!) emails; currently, I have over 1,300 subscribers. I write about a wide variety of topics, including diet culture, my love of running, jealousy, my life falling apart, mam guilt, and this dystopian world we all live in.

💛 How you can support me

If you like reading my weekly emails, you can give me a kickback in one or more of the following ways:

📨 Share this post

📬 Subscribe for free (if you haven’t already!)

💬 Leave a comment on this newsletter

Get full access to Conversations By The Sea at ellenforster.substack.com/subscribe

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Coachella is finally over.

It now takes place over two weekends, where acts play the same sets to the largest number of people possible.

Groundhog Day in the desert is well-known for attracting one of the shittest crowds of any festival - throwback to Blur’s Damon Albarn shouting: “You’re never seeing us again, so you might as well f***g sing it,” to a particularly lethargic crowd back in 2024.

It’s essentially a fashion show for influencers and celebrities against the backdrop of a music fest.

But this year, things were a little different.

Aged rockers Green Day, who have always been very vocal, made their political stance clear when Billie Joe Armstrong sang an updated version of their 2004 anti-Bush banger, American Idiot, which featured the lyrics:

“I’m not a part of a MAGA agenda.”

Meanwhile, on the smaller stage, Irish rappers Kneecap continued their usual antics with a “Free Palestine” chant, bringing to attention the US government’s support of the state of Israel.

The West Belfast lads also led the audience in their favourite anti-Thatcher chant, which went down very well indeed when I saw them live here in Newcastle back in December.

“Stick to the music”

When bands and even celebrities share political messages on their social media feeds, you'll often see this comment time and time again.

But have musicians ever really just ‘stuck to the music’?

Music has always been political. Woody Guthrie sang about the dangers of capitalism, and then Joan Baez stood side by side with Martin Luther King in the Civil Rights movement.

But what about even earlier? In researching this piece, I found dozens of examples of musicians taking political stances in the 20th century, but it seems the marriage of politics and music goes way, way back.

Opera, for example, has always been highly political. Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro, a comedy about class struggle and the rise of the proletariat,soundtracked the French Revolution.

Even further back, the following quote is often attributed to ancient Greek philosopher Plato, around 400 BC:

Music is a moral law. It gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, a charm to sadness, and life to everything.

It is the essence of order, and leads to all that is good, just and beautiful, of which it is the invisible, but nevertheless dazzling, passionate, and eternal form.

Political or anti-establishment?

But I would say this is the first time in many years, arguably since Green Day’s American Idiot era, that the anti-establishment sentiment has been so strong.

In fact, this Roar News piece from 2024 posits that recent years have seen a significant decline in overtly political messaging in music. Angela Alberti writes:

Nevertheless, the majority of pop hits seem overwhelmingly apolitical. To find more political music, one must mostly look outside of top-charting songs and artists.

This perhaps goes to show that political music is no longer popular or well-received. However, I believe we are in desperate need of revolutionary music today.

Perhaps Alberti is right in the sense that the mainstream, more often than not, fails to take a stance. However, that doesn’t mean those fighting for political change aren’t being heard or making headlines.

Sharon Osbourne made her weekly attempts at relevancy in response to Kneecap’s pro-Palestine tirade, calling for the US government to revoke their work visas ahead of their US tour.

Sharon, who is obviously married to Black Sabbath’s Ozzy Osbourne, is also the daughter of an Irish mother and Jewish father, so perhaps her opinion is less unexpected than it may initially seem.

On the topic of Black Sabbath, Ozzy himself is no stranger to taking a political stance, having forbidden Trump from using any of his music in his presidential campaign back in 2019.

I don’t think it’s any coincidence that in times of growing conservative values, people look to musicians for solidarity in their struggles.

Back in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Thatcher and US President Ronald Reagan collaborated on a shared mission to promote neoliberalism, a political ideology that prioritises privatisation and minimises trade barriers—essentially, making the rich richer and the poor poorer.

The UK and US governments sought to send industry abroad to reap the benefits of cheaper labour, thus resulting in the closure of steel mills, mines, shipbuilders, and more.

At this time, musicians were angry, too.

New Jersey’s Bruce Springsteen sang about the impact of Reagan’s policies on his home state and the wider US in his 1982 album, Nebraska. Springsteen’s Johnny 99 tells the story of a lad who was laid off from his job at a car manufacturing plant under Reagan:

Well they closed down the auto plant in Mahwah late that monthRalph went out lookin' for a job but he couldn't find noneHe came home too drunk from mixin' Tanqueray and wineHe got a gun, shot a night clerk, now they call him Johnny 99

Over the pond, ska band The Specials dominated the radio with their haunting hit Ghost Town (which weirdly really sets off my brother’s greyhound, it must be the woo-woos, or perhaps he is just howling in solidarity.)

This town, is coming like a ghost townWhy must the youth fight against themselves?Government leaving the youth on the shelfThis place, is coming like a ghost townNo job to be found in this countryCan't go on no moreThe people getting angry

Don’t get me wrong, not all musicians are anti-establishment.

Nicola Muthurangu-Hall wrote about Gwen Stefani’s 21st-century political key change in this piece:

What’s also notable is how much more public Stefani‘s apparent politics are following her marriage to Shelton. We know that typically people get more conservative as they get older.

We also have access, and feel more entitled, to know more about our favourite celebrities’ personal politics. Perhaps this is what has made Gwen feel more emboldened about putting her religious beliefs out there or maybe it’s because society demands it?

Stefani, who is problematic at the best of times, has supposedly gone full-send MAGA supporter in recent years, having spoken out in support of conservative commentator Tucker Carlson on her X feed.

I can’t really write a piece about musicians and their politics without touching on Kanye West, who is also friendly with Trump, and has controversial opinions on just about everything in the political spectrum.

Whether Kanye truly believes what he preaches remains to be seen, given his tendency to shift his stance to whatever garners him the most headlines. He lacks integrity, and I don’t think that’s a hot take.

However, there are a few musicians who actively use their platforms to protect the most vulnerable in society from the consequences of politicians' decisions made behind closed doors.

And, in 2025, those voices are louder than they’ve been for years.

Why now?

You’ll never see a separation of music and politics, but the bond between the two is definitely stronger than I have seen since my teenage years.

The likes of Michael Stipe, Rage Against the Machine, and System of a Down have all been very, very angry for decades… but the last few years, I think we’ve really seen a significant return of musical artists standing up for what they believe, even if that means negative press.

This week in the UK, we saw the Supreme Court rule against the recognition of trans women as women in the Equality Act. The ruling was devastating for the trans community and its allies, and thousands of people have taken to the streets across the UK, particularly in Edinburgh, to let it be known that this is not how all of us feel.

Prime Minister and Labour Party Leader Keir Starmer has stated that he agrees with the ruling, taking a clear political stance on the issue that is fuelled by emotions for so many of us.

Thankfully, plenty of musicians took to their social media feeds to show solidarity with trans people, including Self Esteem, Scissor Sisters, Billy Bragg and Garbage.

Non-binary poet and artist Kae Tempest’s recent track Statue In The Square arrived at the perfect time, encapsulating the absurdity of this chaotic political era, and how their legacy will succeed them:

They never wanted people like me round hereBut when I'm dead, they'll put my statue in the squareThey used to tell their children not to stareBut when I'm dead, they'll put my statue in the squareYeah, they're ten a penny, we're rareAnd when we're dead, they'll put our statues in the squareThey can shake their heads in despairBut we been here from the start and we ain't going nowhere

In times of political unrest, when the most vulnerable people in society risk losing everything, it is music that often provides the community that keeps us going.

Well, last week’s newsletter went a little viral. So, if you’re new here, then this is the section where I share what else I’ve been up to since I last darkened your inbox.

Here are some things I've enjoyed over the last week:

📺 Hacks (Season 4 - NowTV) - So glad this excellent show is back on my screen already! Highly recommend if you are looking for something light and hilarious.

📺 Just Act Normal (BBC) - I am only a few episodes into this show, but I am definitely intrigued.

📚The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden - I am not surprised that the novel has been so widely regarded, as it was absolutely breathtaking. A must-read for my fellow fans of literary fiction.

📚Everyone I Know is Dying by Emily Slapper - One for the Moshfegh fans.

I also wrote a guest post for Arlen Pettitt about how improving digital accessibility across the board will help to reduce digital poverty rates in the North East and beyond, you can read it here:

That’s all from me,

See you next week,

Ellen x

💛 How you can support me

If you like reading my weekly emails, you can give me a kickback in one or more of the following ways:

📨 Share this post

📬 Subscribe for free (if you haven’t already!)

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Get full access to Conversations By The Sea at ellenforster.substack.com/subscribe

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Your favourite celebrity reporter is back.

Joking, obviously, but two things are happening this week in the world of pop culture… and they have a lot in common.

Firstly, White Lotus star Aimee Lou Wood was parodied in an SNL skit over the weekend. Personally, I don’t think SNL has been funny for decades, but I digress.

The skit takes a low blow at Aimee’s teeth, the most iconic part of her appearance. Throughout the airing of the most recent season of Mike White’s epic show, Aimee’s teeth have repeatedly made headlines… because they are, well, different. Or at least that’s what the media wants us to think.

They are not different from the teeth you see in daily life, really. This might seem groundbreaking to the media, but in real life, people’s faces (and teeth) come in all different shapes and sizes.

Aimee’s teeth are part of her charm, but you can tell she is still self-conscious of them following her rise to fame across the pond. In an interview, Aimee recalls how Mike White had to fight for her to be cast:

“It was honestly from the nicest place, but my little head goes: ‘HBO didn’t want me. And I know why HBO didn’t want me, it’s because I’m ugly,'” she said.

“Mike had to say, ‘Please let me have the ugly girl!'”

Aimee has spoken out herself about the skit, calling it “mean and unfunny” on her Instagram stories.

This, as a standalone story, isn’t groundbreaking. People on the internet (and apparently also on TV) are mean. So what?

Well, this other story caught my eye.

This week also marked the return of HBO’s adaptation of The Last Of Us, starring Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey. The latter of whom seems to attract more online scorn than anyone I have ever seen in recent years

Bella, who recently came out as autistic, is a non-binary actor who plays Ellie, the female co-lead in the show. They do not look much like the game version of their character, but neither does Pedro.

And yet, the comments sections about the new series are filled with hate towards Bella. Why? I guess because they aren’t conventionally attractive. It's a bit troubling that people are concerned with the physical appearance of a 19-year-old character, but that’s besides the point.

Commenters justify their dislike of Bella claiming it’s just “terrible casting”, but what does that even mean? Bella is cast in the role of a character from a video game. They embody that character's core personality traits exceptionally well, and have proven to be a fantastic actor from a very young age, having made their GoT debut at just 13.

I won’t go too far into the Bella stuff because, quite honestly, I don’t want to be attacked. The LoU fandom seems vicious. I’ve said my piece. I’ll move on.

I wrote this newsletter and then couldn’t help but think I needed to mention the elephant in the room: men. It goes without saying that this issue is a very female-coded one. Men in the limelight are allowed to have unusual facial features; in fact, it’s often what makes them attractive in the first place.

Aimee’s White Lotus co-star Walton Goggins has had his ‘moment’ recently. I can’t open Instagram without seeing a Walton thirst trap, most of which fail to mention his receding hairline, which is actually a core characteristic of his appearance. I take no issue with Walton’s hairline; I actually think it’s really cool to see a male actor owning it, but it’s interesting that SNL didn’t parody it like they did Aimee’s teeth.

The rise of Instagram face

Both Aimee and Bella are British, white, and slim. And even then, they can’t win in the court of public opinion. Are we not used to seeing a variety of faces on TV anymore? Why is that?

Instagram face is a term used to describe the ‘sameness’ of faces seen on the social media app. These faces are typically female and use the same filters, perhaps even similar cosmetic procedures. Think white but tanned, feature symmetry, poreless skin, slick back hair.

In an article in the New Yorker, celebrity makeup artist Colby Smith said:

“People are absolutely getting prettier,” he said. “The world is so visual right now, and it’s only getting more visual, and people want to upgrade the way they relate to it.”

But is pretty synonymous with sameness?

It isn’t to me.

There are two issues at play here:

What people actually look like (sans filters, angles and make-up)

and what people expect other people to look like (in TV, films and on social media.)

The former is on our doorstep; it’s happening to us. If we let it.

Editing photos is nothing new, but it’s more accessible than ever. I hesitate to ask: What lessons are we teaching young people if we are so concerned about how we actually look that we have to manipulate even the most mundane of selfies?

That leads us to the second point…

It’s not really our fault.

Monkey see, monkey do

Comment sections are divided, but it doesn’t take an internet sleuth to see that there is really no winning for people like Aimee and Bella. What’s the alternative? They get work done… what happens then?

It isn’t a stretch to imagine being someone with imperfect teeth and seeing the SNL skit or clicking in the social media comments section and starting a journey of ‘fixing’ said gnashers.

If you use social media, you might have seen posts by cosmetic surgeons describing what they’d do to certain celebrity faces to ‘improve’ their natural features. I’ve sacrificed my algorithm to dig out this video from cosmetic surgeon Dr Daniel Barrett, guessing the ages of Love Island stars.

I specifically remember when last year’s Love Island hit our screens. People were shocked at the real ages of some of the female contestants. In the video above, Dr Barrett is happy to highlight that this premature ageing is a result of ‘incorrectly done’ fillers and botox… therefore inferring that his work couldn’t possibly have this effect.

So these women are to blame for the way their faces look? Because they went to the wrong people for the work?

Funny that reminds me of the diet industry, which is very quick to blame the individual when their miracle weight loss programmes don’t work, or how the Law of Attraction dummies love to point the finger when what you manifested didn’t come true because you simply ‘wanted it too much’.

As always, I encourage you to ask the question: who wins?

It’s certainly not women and non-binary people.

It’s the social media platforms that benefit from our extra dwell time spent scrolling and replying to contentious comments. And it’s people like Dr. Barrett who administer the procedures.

It’s never us.

Personally, I think it would be really boring if everyone looked the same.

And I think most people would agree, but the echo chamber of online comment sections might make you think differently. Variety is the spice of life. It’s a cliché for a reason.

My training for the Edinburgh Half Marathon is in full swing now, so all I have been doing is running, parenting, and working.

Here’s a picture of some cute lambs at Gibside. Don’t eat them.

Here are some things I've enjoyed over the last week:

📺 The Last Of Us (Season 2) - Obviously.

📚Deep Cuts by Holly Brickley - Love me a troubled musician and songwriter relationship.

Ellen x

💌 About this email

I’m Ellen, and I write about mental health for the chronically online. I am a freelance copywriter, strategist and web designer, and I work from home with my husband, Craig, at Content By The Sea. We have two rescue greyhounds, Potter and Harmony, and a toddler.

I started this newsletter in March 2020 and have sent over 200(!) emails; currently, I have over 1,300 subscribers. I write about a wide variety of topics, including diet culture, my love of running, jealousy, my life falling apart, mam guilt, and this dystopian world we all live in.

💛 How you can support me

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I think there’s a common misconception that goals are achieved through greatness.

But, to me, it’s the opposite.

The greatest progress is made in the mundane moments.

Initially, I was thinking about this in the context of parenting. What does it mean to be a good parent? It’s about reliability, care, and love. You can only do this by being consistent.

One big day out will not make you a good parent. It might make a great day, which is always nice… but being a good parent is more than just great days. It’s about being there for your child. All the time. Feeding them. Holding them. Listening to them.

And often we are led to believe that these moments are all just happening in the mundanity of our daily lives, where the big summer holidays and days out are the ones to look forward to.

But I recently had a revelation that while I enjoy every day out, holiday, and surprise gift I give my daughter, it’s actually the culmination of all of the tiny things that make her happy and keep her safe and secure. And that is good parenting.

Making her favourite tea, even though she had it last night. Washing her clothes and bedding. Keeping the house running. And while these are the boring parts of parenting, I’d go as far as to say they are the most important. There’s a reason why absent parents will appear once in a blue moon with a lovebomb day out… but never show up when the kid is sick or in need of a random cuddle. That’s because the small things are the hardest.

You can apply this to so many aspects of our lives. I’ve written before about the life lessons I’ve learned from running, and how the act of training for a half marathon is far, far more difficult than the race. That is exactly like how showing up for your child, every single day, is always going to be hard… but it is also that which gets you to where you want to go:

I will say that the journey to my half marathon PB was far, far more brutal than the race. If anything, the race was kind of… easy? I only noticed aches and pains in the last mile or two, and for the majority of the race, I was in Zone 3, which is a relatively relaxed heart rate zone. I didn’t push myself to go faster until the very last mile, because I had 100% faith in my training.

• Absolutely not born to run (May 2024)

Part of why I find this philosophy so comforting is that it also allows you to give yourself some grace when things go wrong. A bad run won’t ruin a race. Just like one bad day won’t make you a bad parent. We all get frustrated or forget something and because those things are just small, they can be fixed. Forgetting my daughter’s water bottle won’t ruin her day, I’ll just buy her a drink. Giving her the same tea for two nights in a row won’t make her sick. It’s no big deal.

Being mindful about the small things allows you to appreciate what works, and let what doesn’t just slide by.

Holding that thought in your mind will allow you to ease the pressure on yourself and, ultimately, make you a kinder person to yourself and others. It’s easy to become stressed by domestic tasks, especially when there’s also pressure at work, from family and friends… but really it’s about working out which spinning plates will smash, and which will bounce. The answer to that might not be what you think.

The concept of this post shouldn’t be a controversial one, but it does feel like a capitalist society doesn’t want us to think like this. We are led to believe that we can only achieve our goals if we buy something, or that a big, expensive holiday will make the best memories.

That’s simply not true. My daughter is just as happy at Center Parcs as she is playing in her own local park. Food tastes the same if you don’t take a photo of it for the ‘gram. Our entire wedding cost the same price as a typical wedding dress, and the memories will last a lifetime. So much of what we do is performative. And this is where you lose the spark.

I am not here to shame anyone who does splash out on any of the above (I am a Center Parcs stan for life, obviously) but this isn’t where the happiness comes from.

It’s not about the grand gestures. It’s the little things that get you to where you want to be. And as soon as you realise that, you can start enjoying the journey.

We took a half-day off and went to Lilidorei at Alnwick Garden because they had a full-day ticket for £2! Our daughter is finally getting braver at the park, and she really loved exploring the structure. This place is a must-see if you live in the North East.

Here are some things I've enjoyed over the last week:

📺 This City Is Ours (BBC) - This scouse crime family drama has us hooked

📚Saving Five: A Memoir of Hope by Amanda Nguyen - Amazing memoir by the astronaut and activist who fights for survivors’ rights at the highest level.

📽️ Memories of Murder (Prime Rental) - We watched this Bong Joon-Ho classic at the weekend and it was a wild ride.

Ellen x

💌 About this email

I’m Ellen, and I write about mental health for the chronically online. I am a freelance copywriter, strategist and web designer, and I work from home with my husband, Craig, at Content By The Sea. We have two rescue greyhounds, Potter and Harmony, and a toddler.

I started this newsletter in March 2020 and have sent over 200(!) emails; currently, I have over 1,300 subscribers. I write about a wide variety of topics, including diet culture, my love of running, jealousy, my life falling apart, mam guilt, and this dystopian world we all live in.

💛 How you can support me

If you like reading my weekly emails, you can give me a kickback in one or more of the following ways:

📨 Share this post

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I was never really that sure about what I wanted to be when I grew up.

Although I do remember mentioning that I really enjoyed writing during the interview for a part-time role at McDonald’s in my teens. The store manager chuckled and asked: “What do you write?” but I decided mentioning my burgeoning collection of obscure French film reviews would be unlikely to help me in my mission to get a job serving Extra Value Meals.

I ended up working at McDonald’s for 10 months, but that’s a newsletter for another time.

I envied those people who had a fixed future in their minds: vet, doctor, teacher, etc. Some people just know what they want to do. I, however, followed what I enjoyed, and hoped everything would fall into place.

I was very fortunate to have parents who never pushed me in any direction, they were happy if I was happy… and studying French, watching Futurama with the directors’ commentary, and writing my inane thoughts on LiveJournal was what made me happy.

When it came to choosing subjects for GCSE and A Levels, I was pretty good at everything, but absolutely hated Maths and Science. So, I opted for arts subjects, and even then, I would struggle if there was no creative freedom in essay structure or exam answers.

I have been reminiscing this week about my love of writing, as I vividly remember finding flow in a GCSE English Language exam where creative writing was encouraged, allowing for a broad answer. I wrote about The Beatles’ early career, in particular the films A Hard Day’s Night and Help!, and what this meant to me.

Another time, we were tasked with writing a review of a French film (in English), and I was accused of stealing mine from the internet by the teacher. I take that as a compliment to this very day.

Even though I went on to study French and Spanish at university, writing was always my favourite part of any task. I never considered writing could be my future until a uni careers advisor told me that many languages graduates went on to work in marketing due to transferable skills.

The youth to YouTuber pipeline

The reason I am writing about childhood ambition is that I recently came across a subset of influencer content online where children are imitating popular video formats, from unboxing to morning routines and even skincare hauls.

A commonly quoted 2019 study found that nearly a third of children cited YouTuber as their dream career. In the six years since that survey, we’ve seen the rise of TikTok, a platform with significant earning potential… but only for those who are willing to give it their everything.

I don’t want to share any examples, for privacy reasons, but I am sure you have all seen videos of teenage boys claiming to be millionaires and similarly aged girls describing their 10-stage Drunk Elephant skincare routine.

I often cringe at what could have happened if I had access to an HD video camera and YouTube back in my teenage years. Fortunately, my embarrassing internet footprint remains hidden in the depths of Tumblr and LiveJournal.

Is it really a bad thing if young people are inspired by what they see online? In some ways, you could argue that video content creation is a career like any other, and one that any entrepreneurial youngster would be stupid not to try their hand at…

But what is the end goal? Fame, fortune… and a complete lack of privacy?

To be clear, I am not talking about those who use the medium of video to explore their creativity. It’s more specific than that. It’s the children in the bedrooms who get up at 4 am and record an unrealistic morning routine, or unpack a haul of hundreds of pounds worth of items they will never use.

And I guess that brings me to the crux of the matter.

It’s insincere.

It’s all about the why.

For children and teenagers dabbling in content creation, what is driving them? Is it creativity or the act of seeking validation from others?

I would also be concerned about who is really benefiting should these children start earning a significant amount of money online? We’re already seeing the aftermath of the family vlogging generation as children like Shari Franke speak up about their lives growing up in front of the camera.

If an adult is pulling the strings, then this is undoubtedly unethical to me.

I guess what is most likely is that these youngsters will move on eventually, and get ‘real’ jobs… but their digital footprint will last forever.

Overall, I’m in two minds about Gen Alpha’s digital ambitions. On one hand, I feel like a grumpy old person who doesn’t understand the new world… but on the other, I am concerned about what it means for an entire generation of young people who are growing up with the sole ambition of becoming famous.

Especially when this fame and fortune are so manufactured. One of the most famous morning routine videos is that of influencer Ashton Hall, who claims to get up at 3 am to journal, listen to prayer videos, dunk his face in ice water, and workout. It’s so insane you’d think it was parody, but it’s not?

This would not be his routine if he weren’t recording this for content. It shows nothing of the camera setup or lighting… the behind-the-scenes of what creates the morning routine is invisible, the woman who makes his food is just a pair of disembodied hands. At one point, he even drops a bottle of water on the floor and it smashes… but a camera is positioned to capture it!

Is anything real online anymore? I suspect not.

Children and young people see influencers like Ashton and believe they could make a living exactly how he does. Not to mention that this kind of content leads young men and boys down an alt-right pipeline quite easily, when entrepreneurship turns to toxic masculinity and Jordan Peterson worship.

There’s nothing wrong with having aspirations, but knowing what you enjoy vs what you want people to see you doing is the real lesson we should be teaching kids. More hobbies without an end goal, and fewer ‘likes' for validation would go a long way.

I’d love to know what you wanted to be when you grew up, and what you ended up becoming, in the comments below.

Mother’s Day is a tough one for me, so we didn't do a lot on Sunday, but I did take our daughter to my mam's favourite National Trust site on Monday and we enjoyed a quiet day out (without having to look at all the other people with their mams!)

Here are some things I've enjoyed over the last week:

🎥Bring Them Down (MUBI) - This gritty Irish revenge thriller had us gripped.

📺 The Change (Season 2 - Channel 4) - Loved the first season of this, and the second is continuing in the same vein.

📺 What We Do In The Shadows (Season 6 - Disney+) - It’s over!

Ellen x

💌 About this email

I’m Ellen, and I write about mental health for the chronically online. I am a freelance copywriter, strategist and web designer, and I work from home with my husband, Craig, at Content By The Sea. We have two rescue greyhounds, Potter and Harmony, and a toddler.

I started this newsletter in March 2020 and have sent over 200(!) emails; currently, I have over 1,300 subscribers. I write about a wide variety of topics, including diet culture, my love of running, jealousy, my life falling apart, mam guilt, and this dystopian world we all live in.

💛 How you can support me

If you like reading my weekly emails, you can give me a kickback in one or more of the following ways:

📨 Share this post

📬 Subscribe for free (if you haven’t already!)

💬 Leave a comment on this newsletter

Get full access to Conversations By The Sea at ellenforster.substack.com/subscribe

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The topic of toxic masculinity in young boys has been sitting in my drafts for months. I have felt intimidated by even starting to explore the subject matter… but then a new show forced this into the limelight. So, here it goes…

Everyone is watching Adolescence on Netflix. The four-part one-shot drama was written by Stephen Graham and Jack Thorne, and tells the story of a 13-year-old boy who is accused of murdering a female classmate. The show is far more than a murder mystery (that’s answered in the first episode). Instead, it’s a deep exploration of masculinity, parenting, internet culture, and the manosphere.

My experience

When I was the same age as our protagonist Jamie, I had a few experiences with male peers that have stuck with me. I struggled to fit in, especially with the girls, so I often gravitated towards the lads who shared my love of nerd culture, like Doctor Who and early internet memes.

If you are Gen Z reading this, then the following section might not make any sense. We did not have smartphones. So, all communication would occur in person, and then later in the evening via the ✨family computer✨.

This sprouted a very rudimentary version of cyberbullying, which included things like adding everyone you know to a MSN Messenger chat and then blaming someone else, or asking out a crush to then counter rejection with “sorry that was my friend.”

I faced some very low-level cyberbullying that must have bothered me at the time, but it’s laughable looking back. One lad, whom I considered a friend, would edit Wikipedia articles to include my personal information, my parents’ names, my address, etc. Obviously, the edits wouldn’t last long, as even then the Wikipedia editors were pretty efficient, but I didn’t like it.

I also didn’t really understand why he was doing this, because I was one of the only people who was nice to him, and definitely the only girl.

Eventually, my mam must have contacted the school to say it was upsetting me (see this earlier issue about her being my advocate), as I was pulled into the Head of Year’s office to discuss the behaviour.

He told me, "Sometimes when girls talk to boys like him, they might miscontrue it as attention. He is probably acting this way because he has a crush on you. It would be best to just back off from being his friend.”

Right, so somehow it was my fault?

There was another situation which I won’t detail too much, but it involved a very young lad threatening suicide when I rejected his advances on MSN.

I know most women reading this will have examples of these situations. Ones in which they have rejected a man, or boy, and faced the consequences. Fortunately for me, this never got violent or even remotely dangerous, but that’s the exact scenario that played out in Netflix’s Adolescence.

Spoilers for the show coming now…

In the third episode, we learn that Jamie, our 13-year-old lead, was rejected by his victim. We understand that Jamie was not popular with girls, but he saw an opportunity to ask Katie out after she was the victim of revenge porn. He figured her self-esteem would be low, and she might feel flattered by his attention.

This part is integral to the teachings of manosphere leader Andrew Tate. In the War Room, Tate’s boys club, they teach desperate men how to create a power imbalance that makes their female targets more vulnerable to advances. This isn’t just about dating; it goes as far as manipulating women into subservience and even sex work.

Older viewers might be shocked that Jamie has access to this media at such a young age, but I was not. Nor was I shocked that his parents had absolutely no idea what he was doing online. They didn’t even know his phone passcode.

Back in the early 00s, there were still acts of abusive behaviour, albeit less frequently, via the internet. Early web cams made revenge porn possible, and chatrooms like Omegle and Chat Roulette allowed us children to speak to adults all over the world.

The chicken or the egg?

At uni, the childish behaviour stopped, but the misogyny did not. I was groped in clubs, stalked by a ‘friend’ and generally made to feel like I was always responsible for how men were behaving.

Determining the origin of this behaviour isn’t easy. It would be easy to blame Andrew Tate, who is obviously scum. But I have seen aggression and violence towards women and girls from rejected men for years, and I am sure this dates back generations.

While watching Adolescence, I couldn’t help but notice the nuance of male relationships. Jamie’s Dad, Eddie, is a hard-working business owner. He was on-call the night of the murder, and was shocked to hear his son had any part in such a violent act.

However, we do learn from Jamie himself that Eddie, likely through no fault of his own, perhaps failed his son in a few subtle ways. I am in no way saying that Eddie could have prevented the murder. It’s less straightforward than that.

One line in episode three really struck a chord with me. Jamie’s psychologist asks him, “Is your dad loving?” Without missing a beat, he responds with, “That would be weird.”

So, while all viewers can probably agree that Eddie is a good dad who tries his best, he still lacks something which I think many young lads are missing in their formative years: the ability to show vulnerability and, therefore, genuine affection to his son.

I am sure, like many men in their early 50s and beyond, Eddie shows Jamie he loves him in myriad different ways. But if young boys do not see their male elders being vulnerable, how will they ever know to ask for help?

Like that male teacher who told me my friend’s behaviour was probably a little crush… he was essentially saying:

“Boys will be boys.”

When I first became a parent, I thought that phrase had died out. In reality, I still hear it all the time. The boisterous boys in the soft play who neglect to notice my daughter playing, or the little lad who snatches from her in the library. It is not their fault.

But by stating: “boys will be boys,” we allow boys and men to excuse their behaviour, while also giving very little room for those boys who do not fit this mould. But that’s a topic for another time.

Nostalgia for better times

One of the chief motivators for men and boys to ‘take the Red Pill’ is the idea of ‘resetting the balance’.

In a 2023 study entitled Swallowing and spitting out the red pill: young men, vulnerability, and radicalization pathways in the manosphere, researchers looked at the experiences of men who entered the manosphere and have since been deradicalised.

One participant states he still has an “inner struggle where he is repelled by [the red pill’s] misogynist ideology, yet he ‘cannot but help’ to believe in it anyway.” Thus leading the researchers to pose the idea that: “redpillers share a nostalgia over an idealized time before feminism and the sexual revolution and a fear of change in gender relations. “

There is a famous unattributed quote that goes something like… “when you're accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression.”

The idea that the men of my generation were likely raised by men who lived entirely different lives is integral to the understanding of this concept. Only two generations ago, men were able to earn a salary that would take care of a whole family. Their efforts directly impacted the family, and they likely spent much longer outside of the family home. Therefore, they were not there for the illnesses, the accidents, the emotional outbursts after school… women were responsible for all emotional support, which meant these men grew up never seeing a vulnerable man.

Why does vulnerability matter so much?

It goes without saying, vulnerability is not the same as weakness; if anything, it’s the opposite.

By showing vulnerability, you are able to demonstrate that you understand you are fallible. All men (all people!) are fallible, and knowing this allows us to be responsible for our actions. It helps men see women as real human beings and, perhaps most importantly here, not blame others for their behaviour.

Jamie does not commit a murder because he is rejected. He kills Katie because of the way the rejection makes him feel. He is vulnerable. He has lost the power over her that he gained in seeing her topless photo.

Perhaps if we show boys and young men that it’s okay to be vulnerable and that rejection is part of life, then we can create more well-rounded individuals who help raise their peers up, not knock them down.

Spring is trying its very best to make an appearance here in the North East, so I’ve been enjoying getting outside with my daughter whenever possible.

Here are some things I've enjoyed over the last week:

🎥 Sing Sing (Prime) - Incredible film about a theatre arts programme at Sing Sing prison. I wish this had picked up more awards.

🎧The Giver by Chappell Roan - She’s back and it’s incred.

🎧People Watching by Sam Fender - Excellent album that’s been accompanying me on my Edinburgh Half training.

That’s all from me, see you next week,

Ellen x

💌 About this email

I’m Ellen, and I write about mental health for the chronically online. I am a freelance copywriter, strategist and web designer, and I work from home with my husband, Craig, at Content By The Sea. We have two rescue greyhounds, Potter and Harmony, and a toddler.

I started this newsletter in March 2020 and have sent over 200(!) emails; currently, I have over 1,300 subscribers. I write about a wide variety of topics, including diet culture, my love of running, jealousy, my life falling apart, mam guilt, and this dystopian world we all live in.

💛 How you can support me

If you like reading my weekly emails, you can give me a kickback in one or more of the following ways:

📨 Share this post

📬 Subscribe for free (if you haven’t already!)

💬 Leave a comment on this newsletter

Get full access to Conversations By The Sea at ellenforster.substack.com/subscribe

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This newsletter is five years old!

I started writing this weekly email as a creative outlet but also a cathartic one, as it was the start of the first lockdown, and I had so many things I wanted to write about… but nowhere to put them.

I sent my first email on 18th March 2020 to 10 subscribers. It was about the ethical dilemma of continuing to market your business during a global pandemic and how to do so without feeling icky.

Conversations By The Sea started out as more of an industry commentary piece, but it became so much more. Looking back, I cringe a bit at my emails since no one was even reading them. But I soon learned that it didn’t matter if anyone read them… and then, slowly, people did start to read them. And subscribe. And comment. And even recommend the newsletter on their own platforms.

A lot has changed in the last five years. I now write less about work, and more about mental health for the chronically online… as well as some personal essays about my own experiences with motherhood, grief, anxiety and more. I also found out I am autistic, which is probably unsurprising to many of you who know me personally, and that plays a huge role in my insistence on keeping up this weekly writing habit.

I know not all of my subscribers are writers, but many of you are. So, I figured I would share some cool stats from the last five years, and maybe this will inspire you to start your own regular writing practice.

Here is my subscriber growth chart over time:

In 2022, Substack launched its recommendations feature, which meant writers could recommend other newsletters to their audience. As you can see, this made a massive difference for me, as I picked up subscribers from other fantastic writers (and I hope I have managed to do the same for others).

These are my all-time top sources of traffic - My emails have been read 87,000 times!

And my most opened email ever was, ironically, the guest post written by my husband Craig about his ADHD:

Here are some more interesting numbers…

• 28 Substacks are currently recommending this newsletter

• I’ve published 215 emails in 260 weeks - I did have a baby in 2022, so I will let those breaks slide.

• Thursday is my most popular day for new subscribers - not surprising since that’s the day I send the email.

Here are some less interesting thoughts about writing (nearly) every week for five years…

I don’t plan anything

I have tried scheduling, planning topics in advance and other organisation tactics, but they don’t work for me here. This newsletter is driven purely by my gut feeling, so I typically write it on a Wednesday or, more often than not, on a Thursday morning and then immediately press send.

There is a lot of discourse in the marketing community about the importance of planning and scheduling content. And, while I agree this can be helpful, I don’t think it’s always the best approach. In my opinion, it’s better to post when you have an idea and not give yourself time to doubt. If I left any more time between writing and publishing, I am certain some of my most popular emails would have never gone out.

I don’t think about it that much

As an extension of the last point, it’s really not that deep. I am a firm believer that perfectionism is the enemy of creativity. If you obsess for too long, you risk never actually putting anything out. I would rather send something imperfect, than nothing at all.

I don’t promote it very much

I probably should shout about this email more, but I am not that bothered about acquiring thousands of subscribers. I would rather have the ones I do have read and engage every week, than loads of strangers come and judge me for my chaotic rants.

It has grown with me

When I first started this newsletter, I wrote about work culture… and then I soon realised that was just one spoke of the wheel that interested me. I don’t restrict myself to one specific genre or subject matter. I just write about whatever is on my mind that week.

One of the things that I was most nervous about was how my newsletter would change when I found out I was autistic. I was worried about alienating my audience. But then I realised I had always been autistic; I just knew about it now. So the writing never really changed.

I don’t know what’s next

I have no big plans for this newsletter. I don’t really care about hitting any massive goals, although 2,000 subs would be nice in the next year or so. If you want to keep reading what I write, then please subscribe or drop a comment below to let me know you’re out there.

I’ll be back next week with something less self-congratulatory!

I have started my training for the Edinburgh Half Marathon in May, which means lots of running and even managed to get out for a jog with the buggy earlier in the week. This definitely used to be easier when she was smaller…

Here are some things I've enjoyed over the last two weeks:

📺 A Thousand Blows (Disney+) - Historical drama from Peaky Blinders’ Steven Knight starring Stephen Graham based on a true story about boxing rivalries in Victorian London. We loved this, watched the whole season in a week.

🎥 Mickey 17 - We went to see Bong Joon-Ho’s new sci-fi flick at the cinema and absolutely loved it, so chaotic and hilarious. Highly recommend if you enjoyed his other films,

That’s all from me, see you next week,

Ellen x

💌 About this email

I’m Ellen, and I write about mental health for the chronically online. I am a freelance copywriter, strategist and web designer, and I work from home with my husband, Craig, at Content By The Sea. We have two rescue greyhounds, Potter and Harmony, and a toddler.

I started this newsletter in March 2020 and have sent over 200(!) emails; currently, I have over 1,300 subscribers. I write about a wide variety of topics, including diet culture, my love of running, jealousy, my life falling apart, mam guilt, and this dystopian world we all live in.

💛 How you can support me

If you like reading my weekly emails, you can give me a kickback in one or more of the following ways:

📨 Share this post

📬 Subscribe for free (if you haven’t already!)

💬 Leave a comment on this newsletter

Get full access to Conversations By The Sea at ellenforster.substack.com/subscribe

View Details

I took an impromptu week off last week as I was in Bucharest on a long weekend— more on that in Touching Grass. This week’s newsletter talks of my mam’s passing, so this is a trigger warning for parental death and cancer.

“I wanted to say sorry about the other day; I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”

My year 9 art teacher said to me after pulling me out of my maths class to talk in the corridor.

A few days earlier, she had torn apart my collage because she thought I could “do better than this” and didn’t like how I had arranged all of the components on the cardboard backdrop.

Seething with justice sensitivity, I refrained from storming down the corridor to the D-block loos and instead held it in until I got home, and it spilt over at the dining table to my mam.

The thing about my mam is that she was a ride or die.She would fight our corners until the very end, and she did so on multiple occasions for my brother and me. In the above instance, she rang the school and explained how upset I was at how I was treated, leading the teacher to apologise to me. I was, obviously, mortified, as was my eternal state at the age of 13, but looking back (and now I am a mother myself), I can now see why she did this.

The weekend before I went to Bucharest, I was solo parenting as Craig was away. I woke up in the night with a really bad pain in my side.

Believe me, when I say a pain is bad, it is bad. One of the few benefits of my autism is that I have a pretty high pain threshold. For context, I had an assisted birth on just gas and air, which went on for well over 24 hours. So, yeah… I don’t feel pain that often, but I felt this.

I obviously had no means of getting help, as I was parenting my daughter and two dogs by myself. I probably could have asked for help from extended family, but instead, I did what I usually do, and I got on with it.

I popped a couple of paracetamol and hobbled around the soft play with Arlen Pettitt (and our children, not just Arlen), then crashed into bed after the tea, bath and bed routine.

The next morning, I went to the GP (with much encouragement) and explained that I had a bad pain in my side and that I have a high pain threshold, so this is probably quite bad.

A few squeezes of my tummy and the GP confirmed what I had suspected… I probably had gallstones. She was both amused and confused by how I had run around after a 2.5-year-old for two days in agony. But those of you who know me well probably aren’t surprised.

I didn’t want to ask for help. Even going to the doctor required a rehearsal in my head of what I would say.

What do these two stories have in common?

Well, in the first, my mam is advocating for me. She is fighting my corner. In the latter, I am not advocating for myself at all. I didn’t take any steps towards asking for help, and I only went to the doctor when I was forced.

Although there were only a few months between my mam’s first hospitalisation and her passing from pancreatic cancer in 2019, I am pretty convinced she had been ill for months. Possibly a year.

Craig and I left to travel to Southeast Asia and Australia in the summer of 2019 after living with my parents for three months beforehand to save up for the trip. In those three months, my mam was agitated. She was self-medicating with co-codamol and alcohol, she didn’t eat much, and she fell asleep on the sofa every night before 8 pm.

My mam was also a highly qualified nurse who spent her days fighting for her patients, who had Multiple Sclerosis (MS). She was only one of two nurses covering the whole region supporting people with MS. Part of what made her so great at her job was her ability to advocate for people who couldn’t do so for themselves… so why is it that, when the time came to fight her own corner, she couldn’t?

Why is it so easy to advocate for others?

And how can we channel that into advocating for ourselves?

As usual, I don’t have the answers. But as I sat staring at the ceiling getting my gall bladder scan this week, I couldn't help but think about what my mam would have been doing if she’d been there. Of course, she’d have been furious about paying for hospital parking. But beyond that, she would have asked the questions I was too nervous to ask (like when do I get the results???) and made sure I was comfortable.

As my daughter grows up, I will, of course, channel my inner mam to ensure I always fight her corner. But, more importantly, I want to raise her to see that, sometimes, you have to advocate for yourself— especially when no one else is there to do it.

I suppose I can do this through leading by example, as difficult as that may be. If she doesn’t see me asking for help, how can she know it’s okay to do so? I never saw my own mam ask for help, and I can see the effects of that in my own behaviours.

I can do things myself. But that doesn’t mean I always have to.

I just got back from a trip to Romania with Michelle | Specky Scribbler, we went to Therme, Europe’s largest spa and wellness centre. It was really fun, although not quite as relaxing as we expected (classic us). The people-watching was top-tier, though.

Here are some things I've enjoyed over the last two weeks:

🎥Dahomey (MUBI) - This understated documentary depicts the return of 26 artefacts from a museum in Paris to their rightful home in Benin, Africa. The items were taken by French colonisers and have been on display in Musée du Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac for many, many years. But now they are home.

🎥 Conclave (Prime Rental) - OMG, this is absolutely wild. What a journey. Highly rec.

📚Gliff by Ali Smith - Everything Smith writes is great, but this is a new favourite for me. She tells of two children who, for a mysterious reason, are essentially living on the run as they are deemed ‘unverifiable’ by the powers-that-be. It’s one of those five-minutes-in-the-future, subtle dystopian novels similar to I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman.

📚Love in Exile by Shon Faye - This was as excellent as is to be expected from her. I’d read Shon’s shopping list, tbh.

📚Disappoint Me by Nicola Dinan - Dinan’s second book after her debut Bellies did not ‘disppoint’. I listened to this while travelling and really enjoyed it.

See you next week,

Ellen x

💌 About this email

I’m Ellen, and I write about mental health for the chronically online. I am a freelance copywriter, strategist and web designer, and I work from home with my husband, Craig, at Content By The Sea. We have two rescue greyhounds, Potter and Harmony, and a toddler.

I started this newsletter in March 2020 and have sent over 200(!) emails; currently, I have over 1,300 subscribers. I write about a wide variety of topics, including diet culture, my love of running, jealousy, my life falling apart, mam guilt, and this dystopian world we all live in.

💛 How you can support me

If you like reading my weekly emails, you can give me a kickback in one or more of the following ways:

📨 Share this post

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CONTROL FREAK noun [ C ] - informal disapproving - someone who is determined to make things happen in exactly the way they want and who tries to make other people do what they want (Cambridge Dictionary)

Many times in my life, I’ve been called a ‘control freak.’ Understandably, I’ve always found this quite upsetting, as it’s an inherently negative label. But is it really my fault?

The more I think about it, the more I realise this ‘control freakery’ probably started in childhood. My own mother was queen of the control freaks and really struggled with anything outside of her normal routine. She wanted to control everything in our home… but why?

Chaos creates control freaks

The clear answer is that she had a traumatic childhood, one filled with chaos. As the eldest sibling of three, she was the most aware of hopping about to different homes, a sudden shift in status upon her mother leaving her abusive father to return to the North East, where they had nothing… but they did have love.

So, when she started her own family, she became obsessed with creating security for our family. To the point where she could incessantly save every penny, very rarely treating herself to anything nice, and eventually passing away having never fulfilled her dream of owning a campervan and travelling the UK.

For me, these memories are conflicted. Back then, I felt upset by being controlled. I wasn’t allowed to cook in the kitchen lest I make a mess, I had to be home hours before my friends, I would be scolded for leaving a single cup by my bedside. But equally, by keeping a tight hold of the reins, my mam was able to offer me a childhood she could only dream of — a fixed family home, cars, whatever clothes and food we needed… so, by being a control freak, she ensured everything stayed on track, even if it meant also creating a restrictive place to grow up.

My own ‘control freakery’ is different entirely, as I am trying very hard to break the intergenerational trauma (a topic for another time), but I do seek to control my own environment, likely out of fear, so I don’t experience overstimulation or even meltdowns.

For example, I don’t like being a passenger in a car. I always want to be the driver. Not because I don’t trust other people to drive, but more due to the fact I know I get car sickness, and I am embarrassed by what this might entail, so it’s better if I just drive.

Are all control freaks women?

As I write this, I have realised that I think being called a control freak is an inherently female thing. You’ll have to let me know in the comments, but I can’t imagine a male control freak. Other than an abusive antagonist from a Colleen Hoover novel.

Is this because society doesn’t want women to take control? So, it belittles us with terms like ‘control freak’ to make us feel like we are doing something wrong by simply asserting our boundaries. The other reason why women probably seek to control situations is that we simply have so much on our plates, without some semblance of control, everything will fall apart.

Even though millennial women are working hard to rise above society’s gender roles, it’s still very much impossible to fight against the system. The Gender Pay Gap still exists, and it widens at the typical age when women start a family. Add that to the poor maternity provisions, especially for the self-employed and those on zero-hours contracts, and you’ve got yourself a very stressed woman. The physical brutality of carrying and birthing a baby, combined with the stress of financial pressures, the mental load of being the go-to person for household tasks, and the general impact of being a woman in the Western world, is enough to create the worst control freaks.

There is so much we can’t control, so, of course, we seek to control other things as a coping mechanism for the uncertainty of our daily lives.

It’s the control freaks who get the washing done, make sure there’s bread for toast in the morning, craft World Book Day costumes, and keep track of bills and savings…

The control freaks often have to control things, because without them, everything will fall apart— that was certainly the case for my own mam.

I say: long live the control freak.

I can’t stop thinking about Potter turning 12 in May and have decided I will be hosting a birthday party for him. Here he is on a walk around the local pond, still full of life despite slowing down in recent years:

Here are some things I've enjoyed this week:

📺Big Boys - Season 3 (Channel 4) - Final season of this amazing sitcom, I am not ready for it to be over.

📺 Silo (Apple TV) - We are hooked.

📚Nesting by Roisin O'Donnell - Incredible novel about a woman escaping an abusive marriage with her children.

See you next week,

Ellen x

I co-founded a conference

Michelle | Specky Scribbler and I have been working away on our event, so here’s another shout-out for it. Access:Given is a one-day digital accessibility conference in Newcastle Upon Tyne on Wednesday 10th September 2025.

Sign up on our website to be the first to hear about tickets, speakers, and more.

💌 About this email

I’m Ellen, and I write about mental health for the chronically online. I am a freelance copywriter, strategist and web designer, and I work from home with my husband, Craig, at Content By The Sea. We have two rescue greyhounds, Potter and Harmony, and a toddler.

I started this newsletter in March 2020 and have sent over 200(!) emails; currently, I have over 1,300 subscribers. I write about a wide variety of topics, including diet culture, my love of running, jealousy, my life falling apart, mam guilt, and this dystopian world we all live in.

💛 How you can support me

If you like reading my weekly emails, you can give me a kickback in one or more of the following ways:

📨 Share this post

📬 Subscribe for free (if you haven’t already!)

💬 Leave a comment on this newsletter

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TW: sexual assault allegations, #MeToo, coercive control

Earlier in the week, I listened to disgraced actor Armie Hammer on the Louis Theroux podcast. I was expecting some funny snippets, but not the gotcha moment it turned into. Theroux is an expert at getting people to unintentionally reveal their true selves, and this episode is a throwback to his ‘90s Weird Weekends.

Hammer was outed by an ex-girlfriend (who he cheated on his wife with) in 2021 for a whole host of abuse allegations, many of which included very dark themes, such as cannibalism and sexual assault. Other alleged victims came forward, and the Call Me By Your Name star disappeared out of the limelight; he was even spotted selling timeshares in the Cayman Islands (which he refers to on the podcast as “fun”.)

There was a Discovery+ documentary about the Hammer dynasty, which I didn’t watch as I stay away from true crime, but this was likely the last the mainstream had heard about Armie until he appeared on Theroux’s podcast this week.

Within the first few minutes, alarm bells were ringing for me, as Armie says:

“But the whole point of this has never been, I'm going to rehabilitate my image, or I'm doing this so people can see me or anything like that. The whole point of this was like... There is a very uncomfortable aspect about leaning into the vulnerable. And I have just found over the last couple of years that those things that make you uncomfortable are actually the things that you should lean into.”

Leaning into the vulnerable? Pull the other one.

The weaponisation of ‘therapy speak’

This is textbook therapy speak. And we’ve seen this type of language employed as a self-defensive mechanism before.

Remember when fellow Hollywood actor Jonah Hill was the subject of leaked text messages in which he said he was: “setting his boundaries” in a way that looked suspiciously like he was trying to control his partner’s actions/clothing, etc?

While these are, of course, both situations of very different levels of severity, there is an unignorable common theme here. In a post-#MeToo world, we are seeing arguably abusive men co-opt the language used by therapists to promote positive mental health as a means of getting their victims on side.

Progressive to perv pipeline

To take this a step further, I think it’s worth exploring how therapy speak is just one aspect of progressive thinking that these men are appropriating to get their own way.

In the podcast, Theroux references Hammer’s participation in the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements following the imprisonment of Harvey Weinstein. There’s another well-known public figure who spoke up against abuse before then being accused of the very same thing… that’s Neil Gaiman.

In the Tortoise Media podcast about Gaiman and later The Vulture article, investigations found that there are several women who are accusing the author of coercive, abusive and violent behaviour. This is a huge key change from Gaiman’s public persona as an activist; he is a long-time collaborator of Tori Amos, who founded the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN) in 1994.

How did we get it so wrong with Gaiman?

The easy answer would be that he was hidden in plain sight. By speaking so openly about women’s rights, trans rights and other progressive causes, he was able to actively pursue his own interests, knowing that any accusations would seem entirely unfounded to the public eye.

The more complicated and darker reason why men like Gaiman are able to get away with such actions is that they use language to centre themselves as, at best, not responsible and, at worst, victims of such situations.

The women are led to enact the fawn response, knowing that sympathy is what is keeping them safe. And thisis why victims go back to their abusers, time and time again. They feel sorry for them, they worry about what might happen if they leave them, and they might even be able to fix them… the abuser makes them feel special by exposing their vulnerable sides.

But we all know not to stroke a cat’s tummy unless you want to get clawed.

I suspect this is an evolutionary survival instinct for abusive men preying on the vulnerable in a post-#MeToo world. Weinstein was powerful; he was domineering, and he forced himself on women in an aggressive and unforgiving way. The new generation of abusers are sensitive, they just need a little help… they are uncertain, tentative even. They employ the exact language our therapists use. They appeal to the very strongest instinct we have as women— empathy.

The neurodivergence excuse

I’m sure I’ve written about this before, but it’s impossible to skirt over the venn diagram of these men who are accused of abhorrent behaviour, and them pulling the ‘neurodivergent’ excuse.

One of Gaiman’s female friends said the author “has autism, suggesting that perhaps “some of his mistakes” may be explained by its contribution to what she called his “naivety”.

I have to say, as an autistic person myself, that we are typically more concerned with seeking and confirming clear instructions due to our lifelong experiences of being potentially misunderstood. To say that his autism has anything to do with his actions is downright b**t.

Remember a few weeks ago when Elon Musk whacked out a Nazi salute at Trump’s inauguration and people were very quick to blame his autism… again, I fall over st all the time, I fumble my words, but I’ve never accidentally flipped the sieg heils.

In a much less serious example, Barry Keoghan tells Louis Theroux about his ADHD diagnosis and, in the same interview, skirts some of the claims about him being an ‘absent father’. This was before he allegedly cheated on Sabrina Carpenter.

And while we are shaped by our life experiences, our neurodivergences and so many other factors, I think it’s hard to ignore how often these men, in particular, are pulling their diagnoses into discussions as an excuse for their behaviours— this is the next level above “leaning into vulnerability” as we can be led to believe that ND people are not responsible for their actions. This is simply untrue.

This attitude also feeds into the narrative that ND people cannot simply exist in normal society. We are bad people, who do bad things. Autistic people do not abuse because they ‘don’t understand the signals’, if they do abuse, it’s because they are abusers— it has nothing to do with autism.

I vote we take a more critical look at the language being used by alleged abusers in the public eye, and how they are distancing themselves from accountability, either through passive voice — Hammer says: “And then this happened to me and it woke me the fk up” in reference to the abuse allegations - it happened to him, he didn’t do anything.)

Or, through the ‘armour’ of neurodivergent diagnoseses.

Whichever it is, or even a combination of the two… we have to stop letting this cloud our judgment. We, as a society, are allowing ourselves to become coerced, and that’s exactly what these men want.

Here are some things I've enjoyed this week:

📺Amandaland (BBC iPlayer) - Absolutely hilarious spin-off from the classic BBC sitcom, Motherland.

📚Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar - It seems like everyone has been talking about this novel and it definitely lived up to the hype.

See you next week,

Ellen x

I co-founded a conference

Michelle | Specky Scribbler and I have been working away on our event, so here’s another shout-out for it. Access:Given is a one-day digital accessibility conference in Newcastle Upon Tyne on Wednesday 10th September 2025.

Sign up on our website to be the first to hear about tickets, speakers and more.

💌 About this email

I’m Ellen, and I write about mental health for the chronically online. I am a freelance copywriter, strategist and web designer, and I work from home with my husband, Craig, at Content By The Sea. We have two rescue greyhounds, Potter and Harmony, and a toddler.

I started this newsletter in March 2020 and have sent over 200(!) emails; currently, I have over 1,200 subscribers. I write about a wide variety of topics, including diet culture, my love of running, jealousy, my life falling apart, mam guilt, and this dystopian world we all live in.

💛 How you can support me

If you like reading my weekly emails, you can give me a kickback in one or more of the following ways:

📨 Share this post

📬 Subscribe for free (if you haven’t already!)

💬 Leave a comment on this newsletter

Get full access to Conversations By The Sea at ellenforster.substack.com/subscribe

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As you likely all know by now, I am a big fan of the Blindboy Podcast. I often find his hot takes inspiring these newsletters, especially as I listen while running or walking the dogs, typically when I get my best ideas.

Recently, Blindboy has been talking a lot about cringe.

The specific type of cringe that comes when you launch a creative project and share it with the world. This is so relatable to me because even though this newsletter is about to reach its 5th birthday, I still squirm at the idea that people I know in real life read it.

Recently, I’ve been approached at networking events by people who have said something along the lines of: “Oh, I read your newsletter.” And while this should be the biggest compliment,also makes me cringe.

If knowing people read this makes me so uncomfortable, why do I even write it in the first place?

This is the ultimate paradox. I have always written; whether people read it or not, never really mattered to me. I had a Livejournal, Tumblr, WordPress food blog… I have a huge pile of journals dating back to age 12.

When I discovered Substack, I liked the idea of its simplicity. I often get bogged down in the design of a project, I need to control how it ‘looks and feels’, and this can distract from the act of writing.

Also, the accountability of having to write something every week (although only I am enforcing this), is just enough to help me force my way through the cringe.

More often than not, I write this newsletter on the same day I send it. This isn’t a conscious choice, but simply because I am too busy to write it in advance. This strategy has worked for me for nearly five years, as I have written some of my most well-received posts in the hours before pressing send.

I think this ties directly into the cringe factor. I have an idea in my head. I write about it. I send it. I don’t spend any time worrying about how this will change people’s perceptions of me, or what they will do with the (often very personal) information I am sending them.

I don’t even share it particularly far and wide. I chuck it on my Instagram story to about 100 followers and repost it as a Note on Substack. Then I move on.

I wonder: if I took a more strategic approach to the newsletter; planned it in advance and had a social media plan in place to share it… would it lose its magic?

I think it might.

Anyway, back to cringe.

The concept of cringe is weird because everyone knows how it feels, but it’s not that easy to explain.

Cambridge Dictionary defines cringe as “feeling very embarrassed, and often show this by a physical movement or expression.”

Interestingly, when looking up this definition, I was reminded that cringe has another meaning: “to suddenly move away from someone or something because you are frightened”

In some ways, I think the second definition is actually closer to what we are doing when we let cringe overtake our actions. It is quite literally causing us to move away from the activity we want to do out of fear: what if people think I’m weird? what if I’m not actually a very good writer? what if people laugh at me?

I am sure people have disliked my newsletter or even laughed at me behind closed doors over the last five years. But I don’t care. I also know this newsletter often has typos, which will ruffle some feathers.

There are even probably some people who are sick of me going on about autism (although I have no evidence of this, and it might just be my own internalised ableism mimicking the voices of anonymous critics.)

The reason I am writing about cringe is because I want you to know that I feel it, but I do this anyway. And you can do your thing, too.

I think, more often than not, the cringe comes as a result of a false narrative in our heads. Firstly, we believe that we are the main characters in other people’s lives. We are, in fact, not. This newsletter is important to me, I have regular readers, I have casual readers… but it matters to no one as much as it matters to me. There certainly isn’t a single big critic who hate-reads it every week…

Or is there?

Well, if there is, then why does that matter anyway? The reality is that it doesn’t. I often think the things we criticise in other people tell us more about ourselves than they do about the creators.

If people don’t like you, or the art you create…

It’s a them problem, not a you problem.

So, this piece is specifically dedicated to anyone who is nervous about starting a creative project because of what people might think; that could be a Substack newsletter, a hobby Instagram page, or even writing a book. It doesn’t matter what it is, but doing the thing will bring you way more joy than sitting around worrying about the perceptions.

Cringe is unavoidable, but you can learn to sit in it. Or just completely ignore it and share your innermost thoughts with thousands of people anyway, like I do.

Things are a little bit better now after a rocky one last week. I’ve got a cold, so I haven’t been running, which is directly impacting my mental state. Here are some things that have kept me going:

📺 Silo (Apple TV) - We started watching this adaptation of Hugh Howey’s novel Wool, which we read many years ago. Really enjoying it so far, this story has stuck with me for years, so it’s cool to see it realised on screen.

📽️ Companion (2025) - Fun horror film about an AI robot who turns on her partner.

See you next week,

Ellen x

💌 About this email

I’m Ellen, and I write about mental health for the chronically online. I am a freelance copywriter, strategist and web designer, and I work from home with my husband, Craig, at Content By The Sea. We have two rescue greyhounds, Potter and Harmony, and a toddler.

I started this newsletter in March 2020 and have sent over 200(!) emails; currently, I have over 1,200 subscribers. I write about a wide variety of topics, including diet culture, my love of running, jealousy, my life falling apart, mam guilt, and this dystopian world we all live in.

💛 How you can support me

If you like reading my weekly emails, you can give me a kickback in one or more of the following ways:

📨 Share this post

📬 Subscribe for free (if you haven’t already!)

💬 Leave a comment on this newsletter

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Over the years, I’ve had so many ideas that have come to nothing.

I wanted to help people write their CVs.

I wanted to start a seasonal supper club (despite having no formal chef experience).

I wanted to write a book (I still might!).

I wanted to sell illustrations.

There are so many other ventures I probably pondered before they turned into exactly… nothing. But I don’t really see that as a bad thing now? Previously, I would look at these lapsed domain names and empty social pages andthink,“I should have done that; what a failure!” but now I realise it’s just part of being a creative person.

You have loads of ideas. Throw them all at the wall. Only a few of them will stick.

This newsletter, for example, is about to mark its 5th birthday. When I wrote my first issue back in 2020, it never occurred to me that I would still be writing this in 2025 with a decent audience (for me!) and regular readers.

The same goes for starting my business Content By The Sea, a freelance venture I embarked on in 2019 to support myself while taking my mam to and from hospital appointments and eventually sitting by her bedside in palliative care.

What’s the difference between these ideas and the ones that didn’t stick?

I wonder if knowing the answer to that would help both myself and other people execute their ideas, while also removing the guilt of leaving a graveyard of creative pursuits in their wake.

I guess my gut instinct says that the ‘successful’ endeavours (I use that term here, but what I mean is that they actually stood the test of time, not necessarily yielded ‘success’ in the capitalist sense of the word’) are ones that are truly aligned with my passions— as opposed to being things I want to be “seen” as doing.

For example, I would still write this newsletter even if no one read it. But there’s no way I would have run a supper club with zero patrons.

In the same breath, I think it’s also about knowing that nothing you put out into the world will ever be perfect. And, on speaking to fellow creatives, insisting on perfectionism is one of the biggest blockers for those who want so desperately to turn their ideas into reality.

With that in mind, this week I turned one of my biggest pipe dreams into a reality. Last year, alongside running two half marathons together in the space of month, Michelle | Specky Scribbler and I decided we’d like to run our very own conference.

We’re both content professionals, and passionate about making digital spaces accessible for everyone. So why not run a digital accessibility event in my very own Newcastle Upon Tyne?

We got to work. Reaching out to our dream speakers (who said YES!) and finding an amazing city centre venue. We hired an incredible designer who created something both visually appealing and accessible to all.

This week, we told the wider world about our event— Access:Given.

The response has been… insane?

Multiple times a day, Michelle and I exchanged bewildered messages like: “we’re really doing this!” and “I can’t believe it!” as we see the numbers of incredible people registering their interest on our website ticking up.

The outside world sees this and probably thinks: “Wow, Ellen is such a do-er!” but, in reality, no one else sees those other ideas that didn’t stick.

You just have to find what sticks for you.

About the event

Access:Given is a one-day digital accessibility conference in Newcastle Upon Tyne on Wednesday 10th September 2025.

Sign up on our website to be the first to hear about tickets, speakers and more.

Listen on Spotify

The audio version of this newsletter, plus all past issues, is available on Spotify. Here’s last week’s:

Other places you’ll find me…

This week, I was featured in Double Shift, one of my favourite newsletters about working parents. You can read my interview below.

On Saturday, I ran a 10k lifetime personal best at the Newcastle 10K event. I am still in shock, to be honest. It’s taken me over two years to return to my pre-pregnancy level of fitness, and I am only now starting to smash PBs from before I had my daughter.

I also enjoyed:

📚Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World by Naomi Klein - Eerily relevant after this week’s “roman salute” lol

📚Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead by Emily Austin - Fun book with an autistic protagonist.

📽️ A Complete Unknown - Enjoyed the Dylan biopic. Chalamet rarely disappoints.

See you next week,

Ellen x

💌 About this email

I’m Ellen, and I write about mental health for the chronically online. I am a freelance copywriter, strategist and web designer, and I work from home with my husband, Craig, at Content By The Sea. We have two rescue greyhounds, Potter and Harmony, and a toddler.

I started this newsletter in March 2020 and have sent over 200(!) emails; currently, I have over 1,200 subscribers. I write about a wide variety of topics, including diet culture, my love of running, jealousy, my life falling apart, mam guilt, and this dystopian world we all live in.

💛 How you can support me

If you like reading my weekly emails, you can give me a kickback in one or more of the following ways:

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💬 Leave a comment on this newsletter

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TW: Parental death

I’ve lived in the North East of England for most of my life. Even when studying in Hull, then travelling South East Asia and living in Australia, Tyneside remained my home.

It was only when I started running that I really noticed the places around me, and the memories they hold.

So, let’s go on a run.

I leave my house, run over a big roundabout, and towards the local Metro Station. This is next to our local Sainsbury’s and a few other shops where we get our ‘bits’.

I continue along a big ‘new’ bypass— I say new, because I think it’s probably been there ten years (in fact, I know it has because I drove there a lot in my driving lessons in 2013). But any road like that seems new, even for decades after the tarmac has dried. There’s little of note on this part of the route, except maybe the Costa Coffee, where I sought refuge in the newborn days, desperately wanting to be around other grown-ups but nervous about breastfeeding in public and typically feeling absolutely exhausted after about three hours of sleep the night before.

About 2km from home, I pass my doctor’s surgery. This is where I went for my prenatal appointments, where I first heard my daughter’s heartbeat via a Doppler monitor.

Another kilometre in this direction, I embark on a gruelling hill. At the top of the hill, you leave my part of North Tyneside and enter my ‘hometown’ — where I was raised — Whitley Bay.

A seaside town that I spent my youth desperate to get out of, and now couldn’t afford to get back into even if I sold a kidney.

It’s not long before I jog past my old school. Both middle and high schools sit next to each other. It was here that I discovered my love of writing, and my hatred of being told what to do. I can still feel my hands freezing, clinging to a hockey stick at PE time, doubled over from period cramps, praying to God no one passes me the ball.

There’s also a grassy hill that seems small now, but was impossibly big back then. We’d ride our bikes, scooters and even the odd shopping trolley down the well-trodden dirt path formed in the middle. I liked to imagine that under this hill was a sleeping Iron Giant.

I tootle along and come to the cut at the back of the high school. This was my gateway from school to home. It takes less than ten minutes from this gate to my childhood home, which is now someone else’s childhood home.

I walked this way for many, many years. Carrying my MP3 3D player, blasting Led Zeppelin II into my ears, trying to drown out the stress of the day. Once, I was spat on by an older kid on this path. Another time, I had my first panic attack, which I now suspect to be an autistic meltdown.

Turning right, we come to a posh street where, even in the 90s, I could not afford to live. One time, I decided to wear a skirt for school (a rare occasion for me as a tomboy); I was walking this way home for lunch when a car drove past, and a man catcalled me out of the window. I was 13. Safe to say, I wore trousers for the rest of the year.

Okay, down the back lane, and we’re at my childhood home.

Forgive me if I gloss over this part, as it’s still raw for me. I am also writing this on what would have been my mam’s 65th birthday. We moved into this house when I was three, and it was my mam’s pride and joy.

As a grumpy teenager, I begrudged my box room and the fact I would be told off for so much as leaving a cup on the table. But now I long for the panelled hallway. The row of ceramic cups she collected. The family computer where I downloaded albums and played The Sims. The kitchen table where I sat and painted, drew and ate. The living room carpet where I let the gas fire mottle my skin on taco night in front of Casualty.

I am about 7km from home now. But also, this is home. Well, it was. But now it's someone else's.

Off I trot.

The church at the end of my street is where I cast my first vote. It's also where I attended Brownies, from the ages of seven to ten. I learned to sew. I cleaned the church pews (looking back, they shouldn’t ask children to clean churches, but then again, that does seem pretty on-brand.)

Now, I zip down my street until the sea air fills my lungs. Here is the local leisure centre, where I took swimming lessons as a child. Upon completing my first block of lessons, my mam said I should keep doing it. I responded with:

“Why would I need more lessons? I can swim now.”

I am at the beach now. Standing at the cliff edge, overlooking the promenade, the sand and the unruly North Sea. It’s in this exact spot where Craig proposed to me in 2018. He suggested a walk to the beach, and in a bizarre turn of events that immediately made me suspicious, my parents and nephew came along. He handed my nephew the camera, who secured some shaky footage of the moment I looked out to see and read “Will you marry me?” etched into the sand.

Craig’s mam, aunty and best friend popped out from behind the bandstand, popping a bottle of prosecco to celebrate my positive response to their handiwork (sandy-work?)

This ended up being the only video footage I have of my camera-shy mam. I watch it back sometimes, when I feel strong enough.

Before I head back inland, I take in the beautiful Spanish City dome. The stunning venue began life as a dancehall and amusement park; it has recently been restored to its original glory. During my childhood, the Spanish City still had a rollercoaster, a ghost train, and even a helter-skelter. It was, honestly, pretty rough. But it was our Whitley Bay; a classic brand of seaside kitsch that has been well and truly swept away by the waves of gentrification.

Right, let’s try and get somewhere near home. I pass the amusements, the chip shops, and the Playhouse — where I stood on stage at some point in school and played bass guitar terribly. I go up the avenue until the Metro Station, which was my local one as a kid.

This platform was the gateway to the rest of the world from my boring suburban life. At the weekend, I’d head into town for ice cream at the Green Market, browse t-shirts at Pet Sounds and studded belts at Kathmandu, buy band patches to sew onto my bag at Windows and eat pizza at the Monument Mall. Maybe one day I’ll write a whole post about Newcastle in the early 00s.

Anyway, the rest of this run is uphill as we’re leaving the coastline behind.

Eventually, I pass my gran’s house. My safe haven. Where my mam sought refuge from her stressful life and where my two-year-old daughter now barges in multiple times a week. She knows where the treats are in the drawer, she has a special stool, a cup of her own. Four generations of women in the house, with one there only in spirit.

My legs are hurting imagining this run, which is probably a half marathon. I shuffle past the homes of childhood friends, new restaurants and my old doctor’s surgery. Eventually, I am at the palliative care facility where my Mam died.

I run past this a lot, and drive this way even more often. I never fail to remember the final weeks of her life, during which she spent her last birthday — 59 — confused and in a drug-addled stupor, rapidly losing her life to one of the most deadly cancers. Shortly after she died, I went back with Potter, our eldest greyhound, to visit the residents and give back to the people who cared for my Mam and Grandpa (who died five days apart and had a joint funeral) in the final few weeks of their lives.

Ironically, right next door to this building of death is the hospital where I first saw my daughter on an ultrasound scan. The first signs of life inside my body. This was also the last place I saw my mam, in the Chapel of Rest, the morning after she passed away.

Okay, the last 5km to home is pretty uneventful. Most of it is just a boring path by a busy road. I hate this bit because it’s mostly uphill, and I am knackered. But, not before long, I arrive back in my village. To my home. The tiny former miner’s cottage that I share with my husband Craig, my greyhounds Potter and Harmony, and my daughter. The first place I have ever felt entirely free to be myself.

I guzzle an electrolyte drink and take a shower.

Time for a rest.

Maybe it’s just me, but everywhere I go, I remember things that happened in those places. Like I see the ghost of myself leaving the palliative care facility for the last time, or rushing back to school after having a toastie for lunch at home.

I can remember what I ate, what music I listened to, who I last spoke to… it’s like these pavements are more than just a means of getting from A to B, but landmarks in themselves. Landmarks of memories in my mind.

Another busy week here at CBTS HQ. It was absolutely freezing at the weekend, and Craig let the intrusive thoughts win and stood on the local pond.

I also enjoyed:

📚Wind and Truth by Brandon Sanderson - The fifth book in the Stormlight Archive took me just over a month to read— a lifetime for me! It was 1,300+ pages.

📚Notes to Self by Emilie Pine - Beautiful collection of essays.

📽️ A Real Pain - I went to the cinema twice this week (it’s awards season, baby!) This film was a HUGE highlight for me. I never really relate to depictions of grief in film and TV, but this hit the nail on the head. I highly recommend.

📽️ Babygirl - Less good, but a nice way to spend an evening as a card-carrying Harris Dickinson superfan.

🎮 Cine2Nerdle - I am also addicted to this wild game where you compete with other players online to link films together based on cast and crew members. Pattern-identifying within my special interest? Sign me up.

See you next week,

Ellen x

💌 About this email

I’m Ellen, and I write about mental health for the chronically online. I am a freelance copywriter, strategist and web designer, and I work from home with my husband, Craig, at Content By The Sea. We have two rescue greyhounds, Potter and Harmony, and a toddler.

I started this newsletter in March 2020 and have sent over 200(!) emails; currently, I have over 1,200 subscribers. I write about a wide variety of topics, including diet culture, my love of running, jealousy, my life falling apart, mam guilt, and this dystopian world we all live in.

💛 How you can support me

If you like reading my weekly emails, you can give me a kickback in one or more of the following ways:

📨 Share this post

📬 Subscribe for free (if you haven’t already!)

💬 Leave a comment on this newsletter

💰Sign up to be a paid supporter of the newsletter for just £4 a month or £40 a year.

The current perks of being a paid subscriber are receiving one extra Touching Grass email each month with all of my top films, shows, podcasts and books. Most importantly, you are supporting me in continuing to write this newsletter.

Get full access to Conversations By The Sea at ellenforster.substack.com/subscribe

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Not a day goes by without a new post, email, or news article about how AI is stealing our jobs.

This is a fear for many people in all sorts of industries, but I can only write from my own perspective as the co-owner of a copywriting, content strategy, and web design company.

We work with clients to determine how online content can help them achieve their goals (lead generation, improve Google rankings, launch a new product, etc.) and then deliver the content; this could be anything from web copy to case studies and long-form guides to FAQs and downloadable whitepapers.

Why am I telling you about what I do for work?

Well, there is a distinct sense of trepidation in the air in our industry at the moment— and rightly so. Businesses are increasingly relying on AI writing tools to create their content and, as a result, we (the content writers) are actively competing with these tools for work.

I better start by saying that I know AI writing isn’t as good as what a human can produce. But that doesn’t seem to be stopping people from using it, and we can only assume it will get better— and this is happening very, very quickly.

Also, I feel like I need to mention that tools like ChatGPT are absolutely terrible for the environment, alongside the moral issue of how they source and process what they spit out. AI tools do not create original content— they process and refine other content to produce something that appears new, but is, in fact, an amalgamation of what already exists online.

With all that being said, we cannot disregard the reality of being a content professional during the rise of AI. At the risk of sounding harsh, there are some unignorable facts:

• Clients are, in some instances, choosing AI over human copywriters

• AI is getting better and will continue to do so

As a result, it’s safe to say that certain parts of our roles will, inevitably, become redundant. And human beings will suffer. Jobs will be lost.

A tangent

I’ve recently gotten really into these videos by former Rubber Bandit Bobby Fingers, who makes incredibly intricate and insanely bizarre dioramas of obscure celebrity moments. As a qualified special FX artist, Bobby creates his figures using all sorts of media— everything from the most visceral analog of clay sculpting through to CAD design and 3D printing.

On my journey through the wild world of Bobby Fingers, I was starting to think about how 3D printing, as a technology, has impacted the world of model makers, special FX artists and other hands-on creators. Technically, Bobby could probably create his dioramas in a CAD system and 3D print them in their entirety with zero sculpting. He could even programme a computer to airbrush and colour the models.

But how would this differ from his current process?

What’s particularly interesting to me— and most relevant to the discussion of AI for writers— is that Bobby does use 3D printing as part of his process. He, like probably most other people in his field, has not turned their back on the technology out of fear. He’s embraced it.

I suspect the advent of 3D printing did bring with it a wave of fear to his industry, and it meant that many processes that required human intervention could now be automated, cutting the need for manual labour. But even with this huge shift in technology and processes, people are still making models, props and tools— they are just embracing the likes of 3D printing to streamline some of the processes.

How is this relevant to us as writers?

There are a few lessons to be learned here:

1. Working out how new technology can improve our work and save us time

Special FX artists aren’t the only ones who are embracing new technology to boost efficiency and streamline tedious tasks. I’ve spoken to web developers and software engineers who swear by the likes of ChatGPT and other AI tools to help identify problems in code, or even to write code.

Due to their very nature, these people are typically more pragmatic and open to new tech than us writers, and they have faced many technological advancements in their careers, AI is just another factor to consider.

What they have done is used tools to improve their working lives and embrace the aspects of their job that a piece of software can never replace— the strategy, the problem-solving, and the creativity.

This has been a long way around of getting to the final point…

1. Finding the special spark that only humanity can bring to a project

Instead of fighting against the inevitable, we, as writers (or those in another field threatened by AI) need to do some serious soul-searching to determine what exactly it is that makes us human.

Look at other art forms.

What makes a novel written by a human being so special?

It’s the author's unique voice, the rich textures of the words, and, perhaps most importantly, the impetus to write it in the first place.

The same goes for music. I’ve been listening to a lot of Fontaines, D.C., recently. AI could never create a voice like Grian Chatten’s. It could only copy it.

Nor could it ever come up with the weird and wonderful ideas that make Bobby Finger’s videos so great.

AI is nothing without a prompt.

So, instead of panicking about stealing your job, it’s time to roll up your sleeves and carve out a place in your industry where only you can succeed. Bring the humanity back to what you do.

No one else is you. Not even AI.

It’s unbelievably cold here in the North East. I’ve managed to brave the icy temps for a co-working day at a new space I’ve joined in town. It’s nice to get out and about; I’m even writing this from there! That’s why there’s no audio version this week. I will add it at a later date. No one wants to hear me read this out loud in a shared working space.

I also enjoyed:

🎥 Nosferatu (2024) - We went to see the new Eggers epic at the cinema and it was great. Amazing performances, beautifully shot, and Skarsgård never disappoints in his weird character roles.

See you next week,

Ellen x

If you like the audio version of this newsletter, you can listen to them all over on Spotify. Here’s the last issue:

💌 About this email

I’m Ellen, and I write about mental health for the chronically online. I am a freelance copywriter, strategist and web designer, and I work from home with my husband, Craig, at Content By The Sea. We have two rescue greyhounds, Potter and Harmony, and a toddler.

I started this newsletter in March 2020 and have sent over 200(!) emails; currently, I have over 1,200 subscribers. I write about a wide variety of topics, including diet culture, my love of running, jealousy, my life falling apart, mam guilt, and this dystopian world we all live in.

💛 How you can support me

If you like reading my weekly emails, you can give me a kickback in one or more of the following ways:

📨 Share this post

📬 Subscribe for free (if you haven’t already!)

💬 Leave a comment on this newsletter

💰Sign up to be a paid supporter of the newsletter for just £4 a month or £40 a year.

The current perks of being a paid subscriber are receiving one extra Touching Grass email each month with all of my top films, shows, podcasts and books. Most importantly, you are supporting me in continuing to write this newsletter.

Get full access to Conversations By The Sea at ellenforster.substack.com/subscribe

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Last year, I dedicated the whole month of January to my "New Year, Same Me” series, in which I encouraged people to share things they loved about themselves during this time of often-forced change.

If you want to know more about the whole concept of New Year’s resolutions and why I think they are mostly b**t, you can read my post from this time last year.

I still stand by that concept, and I don’t intend to change anything drastic about myself this year. I actually think the secret to a positive new year is to differentiate between the things you can change and those you can’t.

For example, night owls promising to get up early are probably going to fail when their body clock wins the war against a 5 am start. But, you could look to practice good sleep hygiene, reduce screentime before bed, and read a few pages of a book before attempting to turn in before midnight.

Ins and outs

I quite like the recent trend of “ins and outs” where you share what you will be taking into the new year, and what’s getting left behind.

Here are my ins and outs for 2025:

Ins

• Running

• Solo cinema trips

• Rewatching films

• CBD

• Geriatric dogs

• Fresh nails

Outs

• Force-finishing bad books

• Second screening

• Masking

• Flattering clothes

If you know me well, then there’s nothing particularly new in those lists, but it’s nice to set my intentions as we embark on another loop around the sun.

I asked over on Instagram for ins and outs, and here are some that I received:

Ins

• Creativity

• Doing things that make me feel good

• New plants from cuttings

• Pyjama sets

• Swimming

Outs

• People pleasing

• Rushing as default

• Threadbare socks

• Toxic friendships

• One-sided friendships

• Mediocre takeaway food

What I really like about ins/outs is how it doesn’t have to be huge, it can just be a small thing that you like or don’t like. You don’t have to suddenly start waking up at sunrise for a half marathon and a green sludge drink. You can just buy a new pair of PJs or put your phone down for the evening.

Any small thing that makes you feel better is a positive step as we tiptoe into this new year.

Tell me your ins and outs in the comments below.

I actually really like January for two reasons: Veganuary means the shops are full of good food, and it’s Oscar season, so there are tons of awesome films hitting the silver screen. This month, I’ve already booked up to see Nosferatu, Babygirl, and A Real Pain, and hopefully, I’ll also squeeze in The Brutalist and A Complete Unknown.

I’ve kicked off the New Year with two incredible films:

🎥 Dinner in America - Punk rocker takes refuge with obsessive fan, cute love story ensues. I watched this twice in two nights. That means it’s very, very good.

🎥 Anora - Unbelievably good and unexpectedly hilarious tale of a sex worker who meets a Russian oligarch’s son. Mikey Madison is a star.

See you next week,

Ellen x

If you like the audio version of this newsletter, you can listen to them all over on Spotify. Here’s the last issue:

💌 About this email

I’m Ellen, and I write about mental health for the chronically online. I am a freelance copywriter, strategist and web designer, and I work from home with my husband, Craig, at Content By The Sea. We have two rescue greyhounds, Potter and Harmony, and a toddler.

I started this newsletter in March 2020 and have sent over 200(!) emails; currently, I have over 1,200 subscribers. I write about a wide variety of topics, including diet culture, my love of running, jealousy, my life falling apart, mam guilt, and this dystopian world we all live in.

💛 How you can support me

If you like reading my weekly emails, you can give me a kickback in one or more of the following ways:

📨 Share this post

📬 Subscribe for free (if you haven’t already!)

💬 Leave a comment on this newsletter

💰Sign up to be a paid supporter of the newsletter for just £4 a month or £40 a year.

The current perks of being a paid subscriber are receiving one extra Touching Grass email each month with all of my top films, shows, podcasts and books. Most importantly, you are supporting me in continuing to write this newsletter.

Get full access to Conversations By The Sea at ellenforster.substack.com/subscribe

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Another wild year of sending this newsletter. Last year, I published It’s a bottle episode, a summary of everything I’ve written and enjoyed in 2023. I’m back again with more of the same.

In this email, you’ll find some newsletter stats, top posts, and, most importantly, an absolutely huge Touching Grass edition that includes all of my favourite books, TV shows, films, and other media from throughout the year.

This email is very long, so if you’re reading in your inbox, you might need to visit it in the browser to get the full list.

So, without further ado, let’s go.

This year, I hit 1,200 subscribers and had over 36,000 views on the newsletter.

I sent 48 emails, meaning I only missed three weeks!

My most popular posts were:

• We came back from holiday early (June) - Where I wrote about my breakdown caused by a terrible caravan holiday.

• The court of public opinion is in session - (October) - Analysis of discourse after Liam Payne’s death.

• Money, money, money (April) - Sharing some insights into our business growth and the competitive nature of freelancing

• It’s time to stop calling yourself “high functioning” (March) - My rebellion against that stupid term

• Where do we go from here? (February) - Discussing the loss of third places

• Five years ago (February) - Looking back on half a decade without my mam

It’s personal

From a personal perspective, it’s been a tricky year. In some ways, it was great— I ran three half marathons, including beating my personal best in Edinburgh in May. I also continued navigating the Wild West of toddler parenting while also running a six-figure business and looking after two rescue dogs.

But also learned this year that I’m autistic not long after that post about having a menty b at Haven Holiday Park. This commenced a period of intense soul-searching as I re-learn how to exist in a neurotypical world and attempt to give myself grace when I struggle (still working on this one.)

So, with that in mind, I wanted to thank everyone who has ever opened, read, shared or commented on this newsletter. I will continue to write it long after anyone gives a s**t, because I don’t do it for the clout, but I must admit it’s nice to know people are actually reading it.

Hold onto your hats, folks; this is going to be a huge round-up of all of my favourites. I can’t include all the books, TV shows and films I’ve enjoyed because Substack has a text limit, so these are just the best of the best.

If you want to see more books I’ve read, you can follow me on Goodreads.

📚Books

Fiction

📚Intermezzo by Sally Rooney - Faultless.

📚 Margo’s Got Money Troubles by Rufi Thorpe - A hilarious emotional rollercoaster.

📚 Foster by Claire Keegan - Heart-wrenching, you can read it in one sitting.

📚 Evenings And Weekends by Oisín McKenna - Multi-generational tale of trauma, secrets and love.

📚 Private Rites by Julia Armfield

📚 What You Need From the Night by Laurent Petitmangan

📚 Blue Sisters by Coco Mellors

📚 The Sunlit Man by Brandon Sanderson

📚 Topographia Hibernica by Blindboy Boatclub

📚 I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman

Non-fiction

📚 Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Raddon Keefe

📚 The Lasting Harm: Witnessing the Trial of Ghislaine Maxwell by Lucia Osborne-Crowley

📚 Avoidance Drugs Heartbreak & Dogs by Jordan Stephens

📚 Poor by Katriona O’Sullivan

📚 Educated by Tara Westover

🎥FILMS

🎥 Kneecap - It goes without saying this was my favourite film of the year. The lads have just been shortlisted for two Oscar nominations, too, so if you’ve not seen it yet, what are you waiting for?

🎥 Challengers - Again, no surprises here. Obsessed.

🎥 La Chimera - So, so good and clever magic realism piece.

🎥 Strange Darling - Best thriller/horror of the year.

🎥 Small Things Like These - Remarkable adaptation of Claire Keegan’s short novel.

🎥A Different Man - Such a weird and interesting experience.

🎥 Happy As Lazzaro

🎥 Triangle of Sadness

🎥 Barkley Marathons: The Race That Eats Its Young

🎥 Dune 2

🎥 Longlegs

🎥 All Of Us Strangers

📺TV

📺 Inside No.9 (BBC) - It’s over, but it was perfect.

📺 Slow Horses (Apple TV) - Addictive crime show with an excellent found family of characters.

📺 Dark (Netflix) - Mindblowing.

📺 Industry (BBC iPlayer) - This is up there with Succession and The Bear when it comes to chaotic telly.

📺 Heartstopper S3 (Netflix)

📺 The Penguin (NowTV)

📺 Rings of Power S2 (Prime)

📺 Colin From Accounts S2 (BBC iPlayer)

📺 Brassic (Netflix)

📺 Devs (Disney+)

📺 We Might Regret This (BBC)

📺 We Are Lady Parts (Channel 4)

📺 Lost Boys and Fairies (BBC)

📺 Shōgun (Disney+)

📺 Heartbreak High S2 (Netflix)

📺 The Curse (Paramount+)

📺 Big Boys (Channel 4)

🎤LIVE MUSIC

🎤 Interpol (Newcastle City Hall)

🎤 Kneecap (Digital Newcastle)

🎤 Bruce Springsteen (Sunderland Stadium of Light)

🎤 English Teacher (Boilershop Newcastle)

🎤 Ben Howard (Newcastle City Hall)

🎭THEATRE & COMEDY

🎭 Sam Campbell (Tyne Theatre and Opera House) - Funniest stand-up I’ve ever seen.

🎭 Fern Brady (Tyne Theatre and Opera House)

🎭 Prima Facie (National Theatre Live)

🎭 The Underdog: The Other Other Brontë (Northern Stage)

🎭 Macbeth (Harold Pinter Theatre)

Let me know below some of your favourites from 2024! I will probably take a week or two off now, so I’ll see you in the New Year (or before if I get inspiration).

Thanks, as ever,

Ellen.

If you like the audio version of this newsletter, you can listen to them all over on Spotify. Here’s last week’s:

💌 About this email

I’m Ellen, and I write about mental health for the chronically online. I am a freelance copywriter, strategist and web designer, and I work from home with my husband, Craig, at Content By The Sea. We have two rescue greyhounds, Potter and Harmony, and a toddler.

I started this newsletter in March 2020 and have sent over 200(!) emails; currently, I have over 1,200 subscribers. I write about a wide variety of topics, including diet culture, my love of running, jealousy, my life falling apart, mam guilt, and this dystopian world we all live in.

💛 How you can support me

If you like reading my weekly emails, you can give me a kickback in one or more of the following ways:

📨 Share this post

📬 Subscribe for free (if you haven’t already!)

💬 Leave a comment on this newsletter

💰Sign up to be a paid supporter of the newsletter for just £4 a month or £40 a year.

The current perks of being a paid subscriber are receiving one extra Touching Grass email each month with all of my top films, shows, podcasts and books. Most importantly, you are supporting me in continuing to write this newsletter.

Get full access to Conversations By The Sea at ellenforster.substack.com/subscribe

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Last year, I listened to this great podcast episode from No Worries If Not about ‘problematic family.’ The episode is framed in the context of the festive period, and how many of us are faced with family members with different, often problematic, opinions.

Sprouts with a side of bigotry

I don’t know about you, but it takes a lot out of me to sit and listen to people talk about subjects I am passionate about, especially when misinformation is being spread. However, I also recognise that Christmas should be a time of togetherness, and calling out a racist uncle is anything but unifying.

More often than not, the person who does the calling out is seen as the troublemaker and not the one who is sharing their ill-informed opinions over the roast potatoes. So, sometimes, it’s better just to say nothing at all.

It’s not just the politics that I fear about Christmas get-togethers; there are other obstacles to navigate. As a parent of a two-year-old, the question of having another baby will inevitably come up. I laugh it off because I have this response in my arsenal, but it does irk me every single time.

There’s nothing wrong with small talk (although I don’t like it), and a little chinwag with a distance cousin about their job and family is fine, especially when you don’t see them often. But families are complicated, and the pressure of the Christmas period (which I wrote about last week) means that it can be quite stressful.

Perhaps thoughts are spinning around your head…

Will he speak to her?

Can I invite them both at the same time?

Don’t mention her when you’re at his.

Should we buy presents for them?

Have you sent them a card or just a text?

Every family has its own problems. I’m sure there are plenty where the biggest argument will be what to watch on Christmas evening or who does the dishes after dinner… but for many of us, it’s more than that.

This is a careful game of chess. Move the wrong piece, say the wrong thing, and it’s all over.

Christmas is a wonderful time of the year, and I am sure some of you reading this can’t relate at all— but those of who you can, I just wanted to say: I see you.

It’s okay to not look forward to Christmas, or only to feel dread about some aspects of the holiday season. Ironically, this is supposed to be a time of joy, but only if you follow the rules society puts in place.

In a 2015 Guardian article, writer Nell Frizzel quotes a Relate study that found 68% of people expected to row over the Christmas holidays, with 39% citing Christmas Day as “the epicentre of their family disharmony.” I wonder how much this has changed since the pandemic. I’d hope people are less likely to fall out now, as they took the lockdown as an opportunity to readdress imbalances and set new traditions. I’d love to know if this is the case, or if perhaps the alternative is true and Christmas is a more contentious period than ever?

Either way, I wanted to take this opportunity to share some tips and resources to not just surviving the festive season, but thriving in it.

Mental health charity Mind has a great resource on their website for people struggling with depression at Christmas, covering everything from money worries to loneliness and difficult family situations. This is a great foundation of reassurance, especially if you are concerned about the long-term impact of spending, or feel like you can’t keep up with demands.

Expanding on that, I think it’s worth highlighting that, while people can make demands of you, only you can choose whether you want to live up to them. This is an extension of the people-pleasing conversation I wrote about in October.

Perhaps you are being pulled from pillar to post, spending many of the days around Christmas driving to visit family and delivering presents, all while keeping the kids in check.

Before you do anything, ask yourself (and your partner): do we have to do this? If you do, then what can you do to ensure your needs are also met? Maybe agree to a secret signal to let the other person know it’s time to leave or order a takeaway instead of cooking a big dinner.

And finally, I’ll set you a challenge:

Say no to one thing you don’t really want to do this December.

Do something you want to do instead.

Have a bath. Read a book. Watch a TV show (I recommend Industry, it’s wild.)

Let me know one thing you’re going to do for yourself this festive period.

We are so busy with work at the moment, I have little to share here. But here’s a lovely photo of Potter and Tiger having a cuddle.

Other things I’ve enjoyed:

📚 What You Need From the Night by Laurent Petitmangan - Fantastic French novel about a man whose son joins the Front National. If you, like me, enjoy books that emotionally destroy you, then give this a go.

📚Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland: An outstanding non-fiction narrative covering The Troubles starting in the 1970s all the way to the 21st century.

🎥Strange Darling (Prime Rental) - I absolutely adored this serial killer thriller with a difference. I highly recommend you go into this blind.

See you next week,

Ellen x

If you like the audio version of this newsletter, you can listen to them all over on Spotify. Here’s last week’s:

💌 About this email

I’m Ellen, and I write about mental health for the chronically online. I am a freelance copywriter, strategist and web designer, and I work from home with my husband, Craig, at Content By The Sea. We have two rescue greyhounds, Potter and Harmony, and a toddler.

I started this newsletter in March 2020 and have sent over 200(!) emails; currently, I have over 1,200 subscribers. I write about a wide variety of topics, including diet culture, my love of running, jealousy, my life falling apart, mam guilt, and this dystopian world we all live in.

💛 How you can support me

If you like reading my weekly emails, you can give me a kickback in one or more of the following ways:

📨 Share this post

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💬 Leave a comment on this newsletter

💰Sign up to be a paid supporter of the newsletter for just £4 a month or £40 a year.

The current perks of being a paid subscriber are receiving one extra Touching Grass email each month with all of my top films, shows, podcasts and books. Most importantly, you are supporting me in continuing to write this newsletter.

Get full access to Conversations By The Sea at ellenforster.substack.com/subscribe

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There's one question that people ask at this time of year, and it drives me nuts.

“Are you all sorted for Christmas?”

Am I all sorted with Christmas presents for my loved ones? No.

Am I all sorted for the additional mental load of remembering Christmas photoshoots, PJ day, Christmas dinner day and other childcare-related festivities? No.

Am I all sorted for the inevitable burnout when my autistic brain can’t deal with the change in routine? No.

Am I all sorted for the small talk? No.

Am I all sorted to field questions about when I’m having another baby? No.

Am I all sorted for the panicked shopping in the busy shops? No.

Am I all sorted for the family conflicts? No.

It’s safe to say I am not ‘all sorted’ for any of it, but I am going to try and give myself some grace. I always try to live up to the impossible expectations of Christmas, and often, I end up being the one who struggles when I forget to buy a present or don’t feel like hugging a dozen people in a row at a gathering.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a Scrooge…

I do like Christmas.

I just find it hard to meet the societal expectations of the festive season - many of which do, let’s face it, fall on the women to achieve.

Growing up, my mam would put a huge effort into Christmas. She bought and wrapped most of the presents, and I would help her peel and chop the veg for our dinner at my aunty’s. She always attended the nativity, even for my nephew, who lived with us long after I aged out of such activities, and always strived to meet the expectations of this time of the year.

But looking back, I can see how this added pressure would result in problems in other areas. Like me, my mam required routine — and Christmas is a threat to that, bringing about uncertainty and taking away the fixed structures that we rely on.

Add that to an unhealthy relationship with alcohol (one that was likely a coping mechanism — I wrote about this last year; see below); this made up for some pretty terrible Christmases.

Not terrible in the sense that I was hungry or lacking gifts. As a child, I was very privileged; I unwrapped lovely presents, visited grandparents and tucked into a big family dinner.

But in order for all of those boxes to be ticked, we had to pay a price. The price was likely my mam’s sanity, and shortly after the liqueurs were brought out, Dr Jekyll would make his transition to Mr Hyde. The evening of Christmas Day would be the big crescendo following a month or so of stress brewing under the surface as my mam tried to meet the expectations of the day.

Many Christmases, New Year’s and even birthdays would end in huge arguments, with tears shed. Looking back, I would have rather had fewer gifts, less tasty food, a quieter day, but a more relaxed mother. So, that’s what I am going to try and do for my daughter.

I am not going to wait until I am losing my s**t to change.

So, I might not go to every Christmas drinks. Or give every single person a hug. Or serve all the right vegetables. Or remember to buy every single distant family member a gift. Instead, I am going to focus on filling my cup and doing the festive activities I do enjoy (watching Christmas films (not Elf, it’s s**t), having a mulled wine, catching up with close friends), and when Christmas Day does come, I won’t have any expectations at all. As long as we are all fed and watered, and my daughter opens a gift or two, I’ll be happy.

We went to Edinburgh over the weekend and explored the Christmas market while it was quiet. I also caught up with Michelle of Specky's Scribbles as we start to plan our big surprise for next year — you’ll have to stay tuned for that one 👀

Other things I’ve enjoyed:

📚 Ruth & Pen by Emilie Pine - I loved this novel about two characters who only cross paths once. I was particularly enamoured with the depiction of Pen, an autistic teenager just trying to fit in (relatable).

🎧Fontaines DC - Romance - I just managed to bag a ticket to see the Dublin rockers supported by English Teacher in Newcastle next year.

See you next week,

Ellen x

If you like the audio version of this newsletter, you can listen to them all over on Spotify. Here’s last week’s:

💌 About this email

I’m Ellen, and I write about mental health for the chronically online. I am a freelance copywriter, strategist and web designer, and I work from home with my husband, Craig, at Content By The Sea. We have two rescue greyhounds, Potter and Harmony, and a toddler.

I started this newsletter in March 2020 and have sent over 200(!) emails; currently, I have over 1,200 subscribers. I write about a wide variety of topics, including diet culture, my love of running, jealousy, my life falling apart, mam guilt, and this dystopian world we all live in.

💛 How you can support me

If you like reading my weekly emails, you can give me a kickback in one or more of the following ways:

📨 Share this post

📬 Subscribe for free (if you haven’t already!)

💬 Leave a comment on this newsletter

💰Sign up to be a paid supporter of the newsletter for just £4 a month or £40 a year.

The current perks of being a paid subscriber are receiving one extra Touching Grass email each month with all of my top films, shows, podcasts and books. Most importantly, you are supporting me in continuing to write this newsletter.

Get full access to Conversations By The Sea at ellenforster.substack.com/subscribe

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I’ve always been so curious about how historians will look back on this generation. If the internet is still around in thousands of years, then they will be able to paint a pretty insane picture of what we were doing in the 2020s.

Maybe they’ll reframe YouTube boxing as jousting for honour or Elon Musk as the modern-day Oliver Cromwell, a puppet master of the masses. Or maybe there will be a Great Reset and all digital information will be lost, and historians will be left scrabbling to translate ‘Skibidi Toilet Rizz’ graffiti and catalogue all the Funko Pops that will never decompose.

Whatever happens, it’s safe to say that we are in an age where celebrities and influencers are the mouthpieces of our generation. The medium of the podcast has seen impressive growth considering our attention spans are shorter than ever. Joe Rogan’s Spotify-exclusive gammon-fest often exceeds three hours in runtime, and he boasts 2,200 episodes with over 200 million monthly downloads. Lord knows how the man still has things to say, never mind that people are listening… but more on that later.

Podcasting is a huge field, and one I personally enjoy — but in this week’s newsletter, I wanted to focus on a very specific area of the medium that is starting to bleed into other social media platforms, and it’s worrying me.

It’s all about the influence of podcasters, and their true intentions and, ultimately, the lack of accountability for the information they spread and the damage it does.

Last week, the below clip from Paul C Brunson’s We Need To Talk podcast was circulating on Instagram. Brunson, who markets himself as a relationship coach, is one of three on the panel of the controversial Channel 4 dating show Married at First Sight, which, it’s worth mentioning, has cast multiple known abusers as spouses in recent years.

The clip is an out-of-context snippet of an interview with Ashley Cain, a reality TV star and former footballer (thanks, Wikipedia).

Cain blathers on about an attack on masculinity and masculine energy - but brings no evidence to support his claims of the suppressed man. (I point you toward the old adage: “When you're accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression.")

As always in this newsletter, I ask you to approach this critically. Brunson’s team purposefully cut this line of dialogue to post as an Instagram Reel knowing fine well it would cause a stir.

I haven’t listened to the full episode (obviously), but in this clip, it doesn’t appear that Brunson questions Cain’s statements. The cynic in me thinks he’s probably rubbing his hands with glee off-camera, knowing that Cain is saying something inflammatory that will, undoubtedly, make for a great promo reel for the show.

Paul C Brunson is just one example of a swathe of podcast hosts who are positioning themselves as mental health advocates, or even specialists, and then platforming (and failing to challenge) people with troubling views.

I hate to dunk on Steven Bartlett again (just kidding, I can’t stand the bloke), but Diary of a CEO is a perfect example of this method of pretending to care, while also counting the ad revenue whenever guests say something that he just knows will go viral. We saw it with Molly Mae, when she said: “We all have the same 24 hours in a day as Beyoncé” and we’ve seen it again since with Boris Johnson, who told Barlett that, despite campaigning for Brexit, they had “no plans for government, no plans for negotiations, because it was not our job.”

Even in the research for this newsletter, I’ve found dozens of examples of Bartlett platforming people who are simply not qualified to talk about the topics at hand. His podcast is a breeding ground for conspiracy theories, extremists, and con artists.

Here’s an example from an episode where Barlett interviews Dr Aseem Malhotra, a British cardiologist and vaccine skeptic:

At one point Mr Bartlett asked Dr Malhotra: “Do you believe that if we hadn’t introduced the vaccine, more or less people would have survived Covid?... Was it a net positive that we had a vaccine?”

Dr Malhotra replied to this: “I have come to the conclusion that the Covid vaccine introduction has had a catastrophic net negative effect on the population and society.”

Later, Mr Bartlett asks: “Do you think there would have been less deaths overall if we hadn’t had a vaccine?”

In response to this, Dr Malhotra says: “Yes.”

Read the full quote and how it can be debunked in this article from Fullfact.org.

Steven Bartlett might defend himself by saying he is “hearing both sides,” but a quick glance at his Spotify listings for the podcast shows what his true intentions are — to shock, engage, and enrage as many people as possible, mostly using misinformation (or, at the very least, a lack of citations to peer-reviewed studies):

Money, money, money

Podcasters like Bartlett, Brunson, and, of course, Rogan are making money from turning long-form content into short-form, viral hits. But are the millions of listeners able to take a critical view on what they are hearing? Or do they just take it as fact? And what influence does this have on the wider world?

Well, the influence of these podcasters is far, far beyond what you might expect. In fact, they can take someone all the way to the White House. In the run-up to the 2024 US Election, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump opted for podcast appearances over network TV in an unprecedented attempt to be heard by the masses.

Harris appeared on Alex Cooper’s Call Her Daddy Podcast, while Trump sat beside Logan Paul on Impaulsive. I don’t know about you, but seeing Paul in the same room as Trump is giving me Black Mirror vibes… but what doesn’t these days?

Joe Rogan endorsed Trump in this election, despite advocating for Bernie Sanders back in 2020. He wields power and influence that politicians could only dream of… but who is he, really? An MMA commentator and washed-up comedian who found himself at the right place at the right time.

We live in a society where a man like Rogan can influence who moves into the White House, while also platforming the likes of Alex Jones, a man who denied Sandyhook ever happened, spreads anti-semitic theories about lizard people ruling the world and, yes, thinks chemicals in the water are turning the frogs gay. How on earth did this happen? And why do people still listen?

Where do we draw the line?

So, all of this makes it clear to me that these content creators are more than just entertainers, they are no able to influence societal changes at the very highest level. But what are their intentions? And how are they regulated?

The answer is their intentions are financial, and there is no regulation.

While traditional media is not perfect, there are still standards (and legal obligations ) to be upheld. Newspapers have printed lies, don’t get me wrong, but they are also viewed critically by the general public. For example, people (at least in the North) do not trust The Sun, a newspaper that published vitriolic lies about the victims of the Hillsborough Disaster in 1989. Although, the fact that the paper is still in print, and the website sells ads, makes me think I might be wrong about assuming The Sun is not a trusted institution.

What it comes down to is that there’s a difference between a newspaper and a podcast because the latter typically relies on one single personality and their views. Research shows that podcasters are the most trusted media personalities, and another study found that registered voters trusted podcasters over any other medium in the 2024 US election. Let’s face it, The Joe Rogan Experience wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for its host, and trust is integral to this relationship.

So, when a podcast platforms a problematic person, or endorses a presidential candidate, we are allowing these individuals to dictate our beliefs of society. We trust that what they are telling us is true, but so often it is not.

The intentions of a podcast host like Rogan are rarely good because they are not independent journalists or simply doing it out of the goodness of their own heart. They are business people. They know what makes money. Lies, conspiracies and inflammatory statements make for great entertainment. And great entertainment fills their pockets, while we, the public, are left with the proverbial egg on our faces.

Should one person wield this much power? And have we passed the point of no return? Will we see Elon in the White House next? I’ll come back to you on that one.

We’ve been super busy with work this week, so not a lot of grass touched. Here are some things I’ve been enjoying:

📚Pure Gold by John Patrick McHugh - A short story collection by this young Irish writer. I was drawn in by the quotes on the cover saying this was “savagely funny,” and it clearly meant funny in the gut-punch devastating way Irish fiction tends to be because I wasn’t laughing much!

🎙️ Master: The allegations against Neil Gaiman (Tortoise Media on Spotify): I am not enjoying this persay as it’s really awful in parts, but as big fan of Gaiman’s work I am horrified by this podcast, and I’m only onto episode 3.

See you next week,

Ellen x

If you like the audio version of this newsletter, you can listen to them all over on Spotify. Here’s last week’s:

💌 About this email

I’m Ellen, and I write about mental health for the chronically online. I am a freelance copywriter, strategist and web designer, and I work from home with my husband, Craig, at Content By The Sea. We have two rescue greyhounds, Potter and Harmony, and a toddler.

I started this newsletter in March 2020 and have sent over 200(!) emails; currently, I have over 1,200 subscribers. I write about a wide variety of topics, including diet culture, my love of running, jealousy, my life falling apart, mam guilt, and this dystopian world we all live in.

💛 How you can support me

If you like reading my weekly emails, you can give me a kickback in one or more of the following ways:

📨 Share this post

📬 Subscribe for free (if you haven’t already!)

💬 Leave a comment on this newsletter

💰Sign up to be a paid supporter of the newsletter for just £4 a month or £40 a year.

The current perks of being a paid subscriber are receiving one extra Touching Grass email each month with all of my top films, shows, podcasts and books. Most importantly, you are supporting me in continuing to write this ne

Get full access to Conversations By The Sea at ellenforster.substack.com/subscribe

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Riddle me this…

What's harder to cancel: an Amazon Prime subscription or a male celebrity?

The rise of Bluesky has got me thinking about the early days of cancel culture, when Twitter was the court of public opinion and one poorly timed joke could ruin your entire life.

It's probably fair to say that this was, at times, far too extreme - with Twitter eventually becoming a place where you'd be scared to say anything in case you became the Main Character for the day.

Following its rebrand to X, Twitter has gone from being the stocks in the market square to a place where anything goes. I don't think either of these was the right approach, but now it feels like nobody is held accountable for anything…

Are we in the Wild West era of the internet?

How did we go from ruining the life of someone who tweeted a single racist joke (not condoning this, by the way) to electing a convicted felon into the White House?

The answer is that we have become desensitised after seeing dozens of awful people face the mouldy tomatoes, only to be given a World Tour the following year.

A few examples that come to mind are Seann Walsh, a bang-average comedian who you've probably seen filling the last chair on a comedy panel show. The most interesting thing about him is that he was the subject of Why Did You Stay - a memoir byRebecca Humphries.

For a relatively unknown writer to lay out her experience of an abusive relationship at the hands of a famous comedian, I’d argue this was very brave. But braveness means nothing when there are no consequences. I was at the Edinburgh Fringe just a few months ago and saw Walsh’s smarmy face plastered all over as he promoted his gig. He might have lost out for a year, but he’s back bigger than ever.

We’ve gone too far the other way.

One Black Mirror-worthy example of this is Ellen Degeneres’ Netflix special, wherein she was not only paid $17 million for the show, she also made ‘jokes’ about her own cancellation.

You can’t be mean and be in show business. No, they’ll kick you out. No mean people in show business. I’m out. Yeah, y’all heard I was mean. Everybody heard that I was mean. Everywhere I go, I know everyone’s heard that I’m mean. I know when I walk into a restaurant, people are watching, waiting to see if I’ll be mean.

Now, this is a level of self-awareness that only someone completely untouchable would have. Honestly, it reminds me of this classic Trump quote:

And when you're a star they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything

While I hate to agree with Trump, the evidence is there - if you’re a star, you can do anything. A few other scumbags who have bounced back from what should have been life-destroying allegations include:

• Louis C.K. (Accused of sexual misconduct in 2017, sold outMadison Square Garden in 2023)

• Philip Schofield (Grooming allegations, back on TV within 15 months with a Channel 5 show)

• Shia LaBeouf (Ongoing legal battle with ex-FKA Twigs who accuses him of emotional and physical abuse, starred in Ford Coppola’s 2024 $120m magnum opus, Megalopolis.)

• Armie Hammer (accused of sexual misconduct and weird cannibal st, returning to the big screen in 2025 for Frontier Crucible.)

These are just the first few that come to mind. Can’t quite put my finger on what they all have in common…

Is cancel culture really over?

It’s no coincidence to me that we are seeing op-eds discussing the end of cancel culture alongside the comebacks of some of the era’s most notorious men. What’s the point in holding anyone accountable for their actions when there are no real consequences anyway? If Donald Trump can be found liable of rape in a court of law, and still re-elected to the White House, how can we expect anything more from the world of celebrity?

Hollywood has always had a selective memory, this is nothing new. Everybody’s favourite babygirl, Andrew Garfield recently said Mel Gibson “deserves to make films.” Gibson is a known antisemite who blamed his abusive, homophobic, and racist behavior on an alcohol abuse problem in the 90s. He was out of the loop longer than most, but don’t fear, when you’ve got the likes of Garfield on your PR team, it’s only a matter of time before you’re back on the big screen.

Not to hate on Garfield, but I was watching his episode of the A24 podcast with my own personal babygirl Harris Dickinson and they both spoke highly of Tom Cruise, how working with him was so amazing and what a professional he is. I expected more from you, Harris.

Need I remind you that Tom Cruise is the second in command at the Church of Scientology, an organisation that sees women (including the wife of the leader of the church) ‘disappear’ for years. I, for one, can’t wait for the day we see a documentary uncovering whatever Cruise has been doing behind the scenes; there is a very obvious reason why his ex-wives (and even his daughter) want absolutely nothing to do with him. But that won’t stop him churning out Mission Impossible films until the cows come home.

The scale of these comebacks and lack of consequences for the men in question is more significant than ever before. What we, as a society, are saying is that you can do anything you want, and it might at most take a year or two off your career trajectory. But don’t worry; you’ll be back on top with a seven-figure Netflix special in no time.

On Tuesday, I went to see Mercury Prize winners English Teacher, live at the Boilershop in Newcastle. There’s been a bit of an indie revival of late, and I think some of the bands are lacking the originality that we need - English Teacher is not one of them. Highly recommend giving their latest album a listen.

Other things I’ve also enjoyed this week:

📺 Slow Horses (Apple TV) - We’re late to the party, but we love this show.

📺 Industry (BBC iPlayer) - I have no idea what’s going on in the banking world but I like all the juicy drama.

See you next week,

Ellen x

If you like the audio version of this newsletter, you can listen to them all over on Spotify. Here’s last week’s:

💌 About this email

I’m Ellen, and I write about mental health for the chronically online. I am a freelance copywriter, strategist and web designer, and I work from home with my husband, Craig, at Content By The Sea. We have two rescue greyhounds, Potter and Harmony, and a toddler.

I started this newsletter in March 2020 and have sent over 200(!) emails; currently, I have over 1,200 subscribers. I write about a wide variety of topics, including diet culture, my love of running, jealousy, my life falling apart, mam guilt, and this dystopian world we all live in.

💛 How you can support me

If you like reading my weekly emails, you can give me a kickback in one or more of the following ways:

📨 Share this post

📬 Subscribe for free (if you haven’t already!)

💬 Leave a comment on this newsletter

💰Sign up to be a paid supporter of the newsletter for just £4 a month or £40 a year.

The current perks of being a paid subscriber are receiving one extra Touching Grass email each month with all of my top films, shows, podcasts and books. Most importantly, you are supporting me in continuing to write this newsletter week after week.

Get full access to Conversations By The Sea at ellenforster.substack.com/subscribe

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I have to start by recognising the irony of this email.

The whole newsletter is going to be about how we need to stop giving attention to certain topics or people, and by writing this I am thereby giving them attention. I’ll do my best to be as specific as possible without actually giving anyone airtime.

Last week, we saw Donald Trump win his second US Presidential Election. The fallout of the victory has brought with it a torrent of horrible social media posts from right-wing male ‘influencers’ - I’m sure you’ve all seen screenshots of “your body, my choice,” etc.

And while I don’t believe anyone should be ‘getting away’ with this rhetoric, I wanted to pose the question of… what do we gain from sharing it?

Rage bait is a self-explanatory term describing content that is posted for the specific aim of inciting anger from its audience.

Men like Andrew Tate and Nick Fuentes are experts at this. They purposefully post inflammatory content, knowing fine well that this will blow up and go viral. I expect many of those quote-tweetings these incendiary posts are not in agreement with the subjects, simply sharing to make a point like: “Look at this s*t!”*

In the last week, I’ve seen female influencers stitch together responses to the posts made by these men. I get it. It’s upsetting to know there is a man with complete disregard for female bodily autonomy in the most powerful seat in the world. And even more upsetting to see people overjoyed by that turn of events.

But I can’t help but think when we share, react or stitch these posts/videos… are we not giving them what they want?

Who would Andrew Tate be if we didn’t talk about him? Nobody.

It’s kind of like how Colin Robinson, the energy vampire in What We Do In The Shadows, gains power from his human peers’ distress, sadness and anger. He is literally a vampire of negative emotion.

Like Tate, Fuentes is a nobody. A pathetic worm of a man who sits in front of his screen rambling on about whatever ill-informed nonsense dominates his mind that week.

I’d argue many of you didn’t even know who Fuentes was before his tweeting tirade last week.

So, has he gained popularity because right-wing politics are in the White House? Or is he simply sucking the proverbial blood from the necks of angry white women reposting his trolling comments?

Don’t misunderstand me. Women are not to blame here. But there’s no denying that we are giving them power - you’ve heard the phrase “don’t feed the trolls.”

This sparks a wider discussion: how we can protect ourselves without living in an echo chamber? Many of the world’s biggest podcasts are happy to platform anyone who gets them listeners. You could argue that having someone as a guest on a podcast does not condone their views, but you can't deny that it draws more attention to them.

It's a conundrum I don't have an answer for, but my gut feeling is that we shouldn't put our morals aside for more views, clicks or listens.

I don't really care what Boris Johnson has to say to Steven Bartlett on Diary of a CEO. This is a man who partied while people died without their loved ones by their sides. Platforming this dickhead benefits no one but Bartlett and his advertisers - and Johnson trying to shill his book I wouldn't even wipe my arse with (I have a bum gun, anyway).

When I see a tweet (or a retweet) or a podcast episode featuring a waste of space like those I mentioned above, I always ask: who's winning here?

It's as simple as this. The longer you stay on social media platforms, the more money they make. It's in their best interests that you dwell and engage in the comments section, hence the meteoric rise of rage bait.

It's safe to assume you'll never convert someone to your views on Twitter. But you will put more money in Elon Musk’s pocket. Something that's absolutely not worth your time or energy, in my opinion.

So, what can we do?

If you’re outraged, like me, you can start by ignoring insignificant and powerless idiots online. Don’t share. Block and move on. Leave Twitter altogether like I did last year.

Next, turn your attention to positive and lasting change.

Donate to charities that support areas in which the new US government will fail: female healthcare, Palestine aid, and environmental causes, to name but a few.

Support content creators who align with your values. Educate yourself with topics outside of your world. Admit when you're wrong. It's okay to change your mind.

Let me get this straight. Don’t stop being angry. I am absolutely furious. But think about who you are directing your anger towards and what that anger will actually do. If you’re angry at some incel in his mam’s basement, there’s no point. He has no power, only the power that you are giving him.

Be angry at the people in charge. Be angry at those who voted. Be angry at those whispering in the President’s ear. Be angry at everything that truly matters, and that can make real-lasting change.

Don’t waste energy on feeding the trolls. Please.

Last Thursday, I went to the book launch of Eliza Clark’s new short story collection, She’s Always Hungry. It was so fun to hear how a North East author has achieved such success, and I’ve already started devouring the new work. Look at how pretty this hardcover edition is!

Other things I’ve also enjoyed this week:

📽️ Small Things Like These - I saw this adaption of the beautiful Claire Keegan novel at the cinema and truly adored it. Cillian Murphy embodied Bill Furlong, a quiet and hardworking man, who discovers the horrors of the Magdalene Laundries.

📽️Heretic - I also went to see A24’s latest horror, starring Hugh Grant and Sophie Thatcher, about two Mormon missionaries who are actually invited into a strange man’s house. I found it a little underwhelming, but interesting to hear what others thought.

📚Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck - A dark, allegorical tale of an abusive relationship spanning the final decade of the Berlin Wall. Fellow bookworm Ed Callow kindly explained to me how this is a clever metaphor for the old and new in East Germany as the West took hold. Well worth reading if you want to learn more about this timeperiod.

See you next week,

Ellen x

If you like the audio version of this newsletter, you can listen to them all over on Spotify. Here’s last week’s:

💌 About this email

I’m Ellen, and I write about mental health for the chronically online. I am a freelance copywriter, strategist and web designer, and I work from home with my husband, Craig, at Content By The Sea. We have two rescue greyhounds, Potter and Harmony, and a toddler.

I started this newsletter in March 2020 and have sent over 200(!) emails; currently, I have over 1,200 subscribers. I write about a wide variety of topics, including diet culture, my love of running, jealousy, my life falling apart, mam guilt, and this dystopian world we all live in.

💛 How you can support me

If you like reading my weekly emails, you can give me a kickback in one or more of the following ways:

📨 Share this post

📬 Subscribe for free (if you haven’t already!)

💬 Leave a comment on this newsletter

💰Sign up to be a paid supporter of the newsletter for just £4 a month or £40 a year.

The current perks of being a paid subscriber are receiving one extra Touching Grass email each month with all of my top films, shows, podcasts and books. Most importantly, you are supporting me in continuing to write this newsletter week after week.

Get full access to Conversations By The Sea at ellenforster.substack.com/subscribe

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Let me set the scene.

It’s 2005. I’m in high school, but I don’t really care about my studies because all that matters is music and film.

I spend my time outside of school at the family computer, downloading my favourite songs from Limewire onto my Creative Zen MP3 player, writing melancholic monologues on Live Journal, trapping the social worker in a room with no doors on The Sims, coding my own website using only HTML and pining over River Phoenix.

I listened to a lot of bands back then, and Interpol was a defining sound of my teenage years. In fact, they came to Newcastle back in 2007 - but their gig was rescheduled to the same day as Kings of Leon, so I went with my friends and chose the latter.

Not getting to see Interpol live was one of my big regrets, so you can imagine my excitement when I saw they were returning to Newcastle to celebrate 20 years of their album Antics. I bought a ticket, not knowing anyone to go with, and decided I’d face the nerves of going alone when the time came.

Well, that time was Tuesday night.

I don’t know why I was so nervous about this, as I do a lot of things alone. I even wrote a whole newsletter about enjoying being by myself, and why it’s so jarring to see people doing things alone. I guess, deep down, I am not impervious to worrying about what people think about me.

Upon entering the gig, I was already chuckling to myself when a student walked past and asked the bouncer: “who’s on tonight?” and he responded with: “I dunno, mate… some 20-year-old band.” It’s safe to say, I’ve never felt older.

Since I went to the venue pretty late (so as to avoid standing around), I wasn’t expecting to get particularly close. So, I was pleasantly surprised when I managed to squeeze into the second row after the support band left the stage. It was then that I realised I didn’t care if anybody noticed I was there alone - in fact, I saw quite a few other loners awaiting the NY lads.

When Interpol started, I was blown away by the nostalgia. I had an overwhelming sense of love for my teenage self. I listened to these albums in some of the darkest years of my life, living in a home of conflict, seeking refuge in my special interests, studying the CD booklets, and memorising the subtle tone changes in Paul Banks’ baritone drawl.

I had such a great time, and being alone didn’t hinder my experience in any way - in fact, it probably improved it, as I didn’t have to worry about anyone else, was able to stand where I wanted, and enjoyed the show with zero distractions. I’ll definitely be doing this again.

I’d love to know if you’ve been to a gig alone, or what other solo adventures you’ve been on and enjoyed. Let me know in the comments.

It’s absolutely necessary to touch as much grass as possible right now. The world is on fire. Go outside. Seek comfort in little treats. Listen to your favorite song. Do anything you can to find a small joy today.

Also, this is the 200th edition of this newsletter! So that’s worth celebrating… right?

Other things I’ve also enjoyed this week:

📽️The Innocents (Prime) - What an objectively great, but tonally horrible film. The most talented child actors I’ve ever seen?

📽️Oddity (Shudder) - Super scary Irish horror, perfect for spoopy season.

📚True Love by Paddy Crewe - North East author’s second novel about growing up in the region under Thatcher.

📚Unmasked by Ellie Middleton - Back to basics guide to neurodivergence.

See you next week,

Ellen x

💌 About this email

I’m Ellen, and I write about mental health for the chronically online. I am a freelance copywriter, strategist and web designer, and I work from home with my husband, Craig, at Content By The Sea. We have two rescue greyhounds, Potter and Harmony, and a toddler.

I started this newsletter in March 2020 and have sent over 200(!) emails; currently, I have over 1,200 subscribers. I write about a wide variety of topics, including diet culture, my love of running, jealousy, my life falling apart, mam guilt, and this dystopian world we all live in.

💛 How you can support me

If you like reading my weekly emails, you can give me a kickback in one or more of the following ways:

📨 Share this post

📬 Subscribe for free (if you haven’t already!)

💬 Leave a comment on this newsletter

💰Sign up to be a paid supporter of the newsletter for just £4 a month or £40 a year.

The current perks of being a paid subscriber are receiving one extra Touching Grass email each month with all of my top films, shows, podcasts and books. Most importantly, you are supporting me in continuing to write this newsletter week after week.

Get full access to Conversations By The Sea at ellenforster.substack.com/subscribe

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I am writing this on the train to London. This is my first time going to the Big Smoke since 2016 (I think?). I'm off to see Macbeth with David Tennant and Cush Jumbo at the Harold Pinter Theatre. But that's not what I wanted to write about today.

When I first got on this train, I realised I had accidentally booked a window seat. I hate sitting anywhere other than in an aisle seat for so many reasons, but it mostly boils down to a feeling of being trapped in my seat.

I initially sat in my allocated seat and then I noticed this was making me feel quite anxious. But the idea of moving was bringing up other worries. If I move now, the people sitting near me will think I hate them - or that I don't want to sit near them for some other reason. They will also have to move to let me out, which is inconvenient for them.

I have been listening to the audiobook to Unmasked by Ellie Middleton, and I had her voice in my head about making accommodations for myself, and being kinder. So, I moved - it was awkward, but now I'm in an aisle seat, and I feel more relaxed.

This reminds me of the time when I was in my most anxious period; I was struggling to go to the cinema through the fear of needing to leave (for the loo or any other reason) and disrupting other people's experience. Looking back, this was such a shame, because I am a massive film nerd and going to the cinema is one of my all-time favourite activities.

This whole scenario might sound ridiculous to you. If so, congratulations, you're not an anxious people pleaser. But if it does sound familiar, then hopefully reading this email will encourage you to do one thing this week that makes you feel more comfortable, even if you inconvenience others.

A few years ago, I was in CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) for my generalised anxiety and panic attacks. I remember bringing up the cinema scenario to my therapist. What if I need to leave the cinema? What if I need to leave more than once? It will disrupt them, and they will be annoyed at me. This would begin a spiral that would, ultimately, end in a panic attack - and then I’d have to leave anyway.

The therapist said a couple of things:

Question: How do you feel when people squeeze past you in the cinema?

Answer: I'm not bothered at all.

Question: Why is your comfort less of a priority than that of a stranger?

Answer: I have no idea.

Nicola Muthurangu-Hall wrote an extensive series on people-pleasing, she specifically covers the fear of ‘taking up space’ - which I think goes hand-in-hand with the concept of worrying about inconveniencing others. In her piece "How to (finally) stop people pleasing”, Nicola wrote:

Something that definitely sits in the realm of people pleasing is the constant subconscious refusal to take up space in the world. One of the most extreme anxieties linked to people-pleasing is the chronic fear of undeservingly demanding care and attention when we feel others need it more.

This piece also has some great tips for quitting people-pleasing - I probably need to bookmark that to re-read later.

In the past, I’ve often thought I couldn’t possibly be a people pleaser because I am not the type of person to come across as overly polite or kind. I obviously have manners, but my tone or demeanor is often misinterpreted as rude - probably a topic for another time. But in my ongoing internal exploration of who I actually am, I’m noticing more and more times in my life where I have done things simply to not upset or even mildly inconvenience others.

While anyone can be a people pleaser, it’s well known that women are more prone to these activities. I always remember this study that explored how, in a busy street, women will weave around other people, while men will walk straight and assume others will move for them.

I am starting to wonder how many things I do with the motivation of not inconveniencing others, and not because that’s what I actually want to do. Even just asking this question is the start of something, I think. So many of us are living in auto-pilot, and not really questioning anything we do but then when the sadness squeezes out of the sandwich (read my sandwich theory to understand wtf that’s about), we struggle to connect the feelings with their source.

Let me know what you think, and if you have noticed you do things out of the fear of inconveniencing others in the comments below.

There’s no Touching Grass this week because this train is making me feel nauseous - I’ll do a bumper edition next week.

See you next week,

Ellen x

🎧I’m on Spotify!

If you like the audio version of this newsletter, you can listen to them all over on Spotify. Here’s last week’s:

💌 About this email

I’m Ellen, and I write about mental health for the chronically online. I am a freelance copywriter, strategist and web designer, and I work from home with my husband, Craig, at Content By The Sea. We have two rescue greyhounds, Potter and Harmony, and a toddler.

I started this newsletter in March 2020 and have sent over 180 emails; currently, I have over 1,200 subscribers. I write about a wide variety of topics, including diet culture, my love of running, jealousy, my life falling apart, mam guilt, and this dystopian world we all live in.

💛 How you can support me

If you like reading my weekly emails, you can give me a kickback in one or more of the following ways:

📨 Share this post

📬 Subscribe for free (if you haven’t already!)

💬 Leave a comment on this newsletter

💰Sign up to be a paid supporter of the newsletter for just £4 a month or £40 a year.

The current perks of being a paid subscriber are receiving one extra Touching Grass email each month with all of my top films, shows, podcasts and books. Most importantly, you are supporting me in continuing to write this newsletter week after week.

Get full access to Conversations By The Sea at ellenforster.substack.com/subscribe

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We've all heard the phrase.

There's kids dying in Africa.

Obviously, it goes without saying that this is such an offensive and uneducated statement. But that's not why I wanted to mention it this week.

This one sentence is the perfect encapsulation of a problem we have as a nation.

Don't complain because there's someone else worse off than you.

Social media has made this so much worse. People find great solace in shouting into the void. I'm not against that at all. What I am against, or at least not in favour of, is this toxic circle jerk of misery.

We all have struggles. Some struggles are small, while others are big. But who defines the size of the struggle? There's no universal scale of struggle. Like a Richter scale of pain.

That's obviously because struggling is subjective. There are things I find easy that others will find difficult, and vice versa. Of course, there are things that everyone struggles with. Deep and painful experiences that are universal. But even then, the way we experience these struggles is intrinsically unique to us.

So, why does it feel like we have created this strange culture of competitive suffering, particularly online? Tired? You can't be; you don't have kids! Struggling with money? At least you've got a job!

The main issue with this perspective is that it shows a complete lack of empathy for other people. I wrote last week about the role social media played in Liam Payne's death, and this is just a piece of the larger puzzle. If your first thought at witnessing someone else's struggle is to centre your own, then you are failing to connect with others on a human level.

I don't think everyone is doing this. As with everything online, the minority shouts the loudest.

Once we stop being able to recognise that each person is an individual with their own struggles, that's when we've lost our connection.

But why should we care about other people’s suffering, when our own is bad enough?

“Charity begins at home”

I think this happens on two levels - a societal one, and an individual one.

Recently, I saw a news article about pro-Palestine marches in Newcastle city centre and, of course, I stupidly clicked on the comments section. It was a shitshow.

“Charity begins at home” is one of these people’s favourite phrases, inferring that we only have a certain quantity of compassion, and that must be spent on local and national issues before it is sent abroad. It’s funny to me how centuries of colonialism have further intensified this “us vs them” mentality that many British people have. I’ve written about how British, especially English, colonialism past has played into a long-term lack of empathy and narcissism on a national level before:

My own moments of weakness

On an individual level, I think feelings of jealousy and competitive struggle are interlinked. I’ve noticed this in myself since becoming a parent, in particular. I’m not embarrassed to say I’ve found the early years of parenting hard, and this is made significantly more difficult by the fact that I don’t have astrong familial support network to fall back on. I see grandparents everywhere while I am chained to a desk working to pay for nursery.

So, in my weakest moments, I have certainly fallen into a pattern of self-pity. But then I see the developments my daughter has made at nursery, and also I think about all the parents who would love to be at the softplay on a Tuesday afternoon rather than the grandparents, and I am the one who is there because my lifestyle allows that for me.

It’s not as simple as “count your blessings” because simply the knowledge that you are better off than others isn’t enough to fix your own struggles. But equally, taking time away from the screens, and acknowledging what you do have - however small - can truly make all the difference.

We had a rare child-free night on Saturday, so we went into town to see The Substance and have a pizza. The former was hilarious and disgusting, the latter was delicious.

Other than that, I have been either parenting, walking the dogs or building websites.

Other things I’ve also enjoyed this week:

📺Midnight Mass (Netflix) - We were very late to this party, but we finally caught this Netflix show, and it was a perfect spooky October watch.

📽️Woman of the Hour (Netflix) - Anna Kendrick directed and starred in this adaptation of a true serial killer story. What makes this different from other similar pictures is that it focuses heavily on the victims and witnesses, rather than romanticising the killer.

📚Orbital by Samantha Harvey

See you next week,

Ellen x

🎧I’m on Spotify!

If you like the audio version of this newsletter, you can listen to them all over on Spotify. Here’s last week’s:

💌 About this email

I’m Ellen, and I write about mental health for the chronically online. I am a freelance copywriter, strategist and web designer, and I work from home with my husband, Craig, at Content By The Sea. We have two rescue greyhounds, Potter and Harmony, and a toddler.

I started this newsletter in March 2020 and have sent over 180 emails; currently, I have over 1,200 subscribers. I write about a wide variety of topics, including diet culture, my love of running, jealousy, my life falling apart, mam guilt, and this dystopian world we all live in.

💛 How you can support me

If you like reading my weekly emails, you can give me a kickback in one or more of the following ways:

📨 Share this post

📬 Subscribe for free (if you haven’t already!)

💬 Leave a comment on this newsletter

💰Sign up to be a paid supporter of the newsletter for just £4 a month or £40 a year.

The current perks of being a paid subscriber are receiving one extra Touching Grass email each month with all of my top films, shows, podcasts and books. Most importantly, you are supporting me in continuing to write this newsletter week after week.

Get full access to Conversations By The Sea at ellenforster.substack.com/subscribe

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I realise I am shopping myself for writing this newsletter on the same day of sending it, but life is chaos, and so am I.

The world woke up to the news of yet another untimely celebrity death this morning, with Liam Payne of One Direction fame passing away at just 31 years old following a pretty horrific accident in Buenos Aires.

What immediately got me about this story is that just days ago, I saw several videos taking the piss out of Payne. It’s no news to anyone that the singer has been going through a rough time, and having substance abuse problems in the limelight brings with it its own special brand of hell.

None of Payne’s story is new.

And that’s why it’s so tragic.

This is happening all the time. The court of public opinion loves nothing more than witnessing a public figure fall from grace. Fellow Geordie Sam Fender probably said it best in his song Poundshop Kardashians:

We love them we hate themWe want to see them fall from graceWe laugh at them disheveledOn the front page of The Mail

Then grab ourselves a pitchfork and go in for the killTogether light vigilsEulogize them on the Internet when they top themselvesWhen they couldn't take it no more

These prophetic verses so cleverly summarise the journey that many celebrities are on in the public eye. We’re all harping on about mental health awareness and #bekind - which came as a result of Caroline Flack’s passing in 2020 - but then we also love to laugh at their downfalls.

There are a few factors at play here. The first is the depersonalisation of celebrities. Once someone becomes famous at a certain level, society no longer sees them as individuals.

We’re witnessing this in real-time with the outrage directed toward singer Chappell Roan following the cancellation of a couple of festival gigs amidst a mental health crisis. Roan has been pretty open about her situation, even sharing her bipolar diagnosis, in the hope of receiving an inch of empathy from the public. But if Roan cancels festival appearances, the general consensus is that she’s letting her fans down. And yet, if we checked our phones tomorrow morning to see she was no longer with us, the narrative would immediately shift.

This is, I guess, what’s angering me today. I am not a One Direction fan, I don’t even think Liam Payne was a particularly good person, but I could also see he was struggling. The clip of him at Niall Horan’s recent concert is just one example of how the narrative has shifted - when I originally saw videos from this gig, the comments were mostly taking the piss out of Payne, remarking on how he is clearly under the influence, and how he is just generally a bit of a knob.

But now Payne has passed away, we have seen a massive transformation in how people are talking about him. People are shocked and saddened - quite the change from laughing at someone who is, quite clearly, suffering from a mental health crisis.

The second string of the narrative I wanted to explore is the concept of collective grief.

The world is now grieving for someone only a handful of people actually knew.

And this happens all of the time.

I remember crying in school at the news of Heath Ledger’s death. I was a huge fan, and losing a star so young felt so unfair. But I didn’t know him - I wasn’t really grieving for Heath Ledger, I was grieving for the idea I have of him in my head.

So, we now have a weird situation in which people who openly mocked Liam Payne are sharing tributes to the star, while he has a family, a partner, ex-partner and even a child who actually knew him, and are now having to grieve in the limelight.

Even as I was searching for that video of him at Niall’s concert, the algorithm suggested “Liam Payne fall video” - TikTok literally wants me to hunt down a video of his death. I have no idea if such video exists, I really hope it doesn’t. But even the idea that the app wants me to look is sick enough.

That’s humilitainment!

As a society, we love to witness the downfall of others. In fact, humilitainment - a portmanteau of humiliation and entertainment - has long been one of the most profitable forms of television. Think Big Brother, Biggest Loser and Love Island. All of these shows are designed around the humiliation of their participants, with the promise of fame and fortune as a result.

In psychological terms, this is an extreme form of schadenfreude - the concept of feeling pleasure at another’s misfortune. In Payne’s case, and that of other celebrities, it’s not only that we, as a society, enjoy seeing them humiliated, but also that they are everything society tells us we should be - rich, famous, powerful, and influential.

These are all goals of the world we live in, so when we see someone who has, on paper, achieved such goals and isn’t doing particularly well as a result, we are bitter. There’s a reason why celebrities have shorter lifespans than the average person.

Liam Payne isn’t the first celebrity to die amidst a mental health crisis, and he won’t be the last. But I have to say, it’s wildly interesting to me to see people go from mocking to grieving in the space of just a few days - while we also continue to berate other stars for not living up to our impossibly high expectations.

I’m interested in what people think about this - I personally don’t enjoy the mocking of anyone, but equally, I don’t partake in eulogising people as faultless, one-dimensional individuals. Humans are complex; even the ones we do know die and leave behind very tricky terrain for us to navigate.

Let me know what you think in the comments.

Further reading

I wrote a similar piece in the wake of Netflix’s Baby Reindeer and explored the court of public opinion concept a little more over there, so feel free to give that a read.

It was my birthday on Tuesday, and by sheer coincidence, one of my all-time favorite artists, Ben Howard, was playing in Newcastle. This was a ten-year anniversary tour celebrating his 2014 release I Forget Where We Were - which we also saw live (in Edinburgh, I believe?). Old Pine was our first dance. So, you get the idea -I love Ben Howard, and it was great to see him live once again.

Other things I’ve also enjoyed this week:

📚Boulder by Eve Balthasar Sardà - This novella from the Catalan poet was beautifully written.

See you next week,

Ellen x

🎧I’m on Spotify!

If you like the audio version of this newsletter, you can listen to them all over on Spotify. Here’s last week’s:

💌 About this email

I’m Ellen, and I write about mental health for the chronically online. I am a freelance copywriter, strategist and web designer, and I work from home with my husband, Craig, at Content By The Sea. We have two rescue greyhounds, Potter and Harmony, and a toddler.

I started this newsletter in March 2020 and have sent over 180 emails; currently, I have over 1,200 subscribers. I write about a wide variety of topics, including diet culture, my love of running, jealousy, my life falling apart, mam guilt, and this dystopian world we all live in.

💛 How you can support me

If you like reading my weekly emails, you can give me a kickback in one or more of the following ways:

📨 Share this post

📬 Subscribe for free (if you haven’t already!)

💬 Leave a comment on this newsletter

💰Sign up to be a paid supporter of the newsletter for just £4 a month or £40 a year.

The current perks of being a paid subscriber are receiving one extra Touching Grass email each month with all of my top films, shows, podcasts and books. Most importantly, you are supporting me in continuing to write this newsletter week after week.

Get full access to Conversations By The Sea at ellenforster.substack.com/subscribe

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On seeking external validation, finding flow state and why Sally Rooney is rejecting fame.

If you know me IRL or follow me on Instagram, you’ll know I haven’t really shut up about Sally Rooney’s latest novel, Intermezzo. This is the Irish author’s fourth full-length novel, and she’s only 33. Her youth - alongside her talent for capturing the millennial experience - has made her a person of interest in the media for many years.

Following the BBC TV adaptation of her novel Normal People, Rooney was cast into the limelight in a way she openly disliked. In general, she rarely shares anything about her personal life. She doesn’t do many events or even book signings. She has even said she won’t be optioning any of her other novels for TV any time soon.

For an author who is commonly regarded as at the top of her game, it’s so interesting to me that she has, essentially, chosen the alternative path of fame.She is in the position many of us could only dream of - with millions of people avidly awaiting her latest novel (which she typically takes 2-3 years to write and publish), but she has never bowed to the pressure to write more, do more, or even say more.

In a rare interview with the New York Times, Rooney talked about how she isn’t just apathetic to career growth, but she’s downright against it. She said:

I don’t care about my career. I think about, How do I make this book the perfect version of what it can be?

If you’ve been here since this newsletter’s humble beginnings in 2020, you’ll know I’ve been tooting the horn of anti-hustle culture for many years. But, back when I wrote about knowing when it’s time to quit or the “I’ll be happy when” mentality, it didn’t feel like there were any specific people I could look up to. I just knew, in my gut, that this wasn’t the right approach for me.

I’ve written extensively about my years working in corporate hell, and how it basically led me to a mental breakdown. For a few years, I was fixated on my career - or, at least, the career I thought I was building. We initially discussed going travelling in 2015, but I couldn’t imagine taking a year out of my job to pursue something so frivolous, as I would never become a Marketing Director that way.

Every decision I made was with the ultimate aim of furthering my career. I wanted to be noticed by the right people, appraised by my peers and seen as the most capable individual in my department. Obviously, this was all pointless as I now know that it doesn’t matter how hard you work for a company, they will always see you as disposable. You are just another number to them.

In recent years, my priorities have completely shifted, and I have seen this in parts of society, too. I am not sure whether that anti-hustle culture rhetoric was always there, and I only saw it in 2019-ish, or whether the pandemic brought a sense of “what’s the point of it all?” to many people who were living for the weekend, like I had been only a couple of years before.

In the context of Sally Rooney’s interview, it’s incredible to me to hear a woman my own age, who is really ‘living the dream’, saying that she has no intention of growing her career. She told the NYT:

There is a huge cultural fixation with novelty and growth. Everything has to grow all the time. Get bigger, sell more and be different — novelty, reinvention. I don’t find that very interesting.

It goes without saying that Rooney is in a position of privilege - and she does recognise this. Not all of us can be, or ever will be, NYT bestselling authors. And, we do all have to work to pay our dues - we do live in a society, after all.

But she isn’t saying that she doesn’t want to work.

She’s saying she does want to work.

In fact, it’s all the other s**t that comes with the work that she hates. All she wants to do is write her novels. She says:

I feel very enriched by what I do, so there must be some level on which it’s not just the satisfaction of a good day’s hard work done.

How many people can say that?

Not many.

And yet, the gold standard of career success is often a better job title, more influence, more money…. and so rarely is it a question of whether that work is truly enriching or satisfying.

I’d argue finding this state of true internal validation is almost impossible in today’s world, but it’s a good goal to have. I am in no way immune to this, either. I still feel sad when I notice multiple people unsubscribe from the newsletter, and I definitely get a buzz when I get new sign-ups.

As humans, we can only seek to embrace our imperfections. What if the better versions of ourselves aren’t those with zero screentime and zero intrusive thoughts… instead, we acknowledge that we are always works-in-progress and there really is no end goal.

Perhaps the peace doesn’t come upon achieving the goal, but in the act of doing the thing?

Going with the flow

State of Flow is a psychological term that refers to the feeling of being completely immersed in an activity. This is often a peaceful or even euphoric state, which I am not sure everyone experiences. You’ll have to let me know about that in the comments.

For me, I guess I enter a state of flow while writing this newsletter, as I often feel like these emails need to be written. It’s like I have to get it out of me, regardless of whether people will read it.

We know that the flow state is highly productive, in some ways 500% more productive than when carrying out an activity in another mental state. It’s also linked to several feel-good neurotransmitters, notably dopamine, which is released when we overcome challenges or feel a sense of achievement. (I’ve written about dopamine before, including how it works for people with ADHD).

The aforelinked medical journal on flow says:

People in flow mention that they become so absorbed in the activity that they do not have any attention to spare to become distracted by anything else. People have also mentioned a collection of other psychological phenomena associated with states. These include: (a) a feeling of control over the activity; (b) an experience of time distortion, in which a person loses awareness of how time is passing (c) the removal of self-consciousness in which a person loses the awareness of themselves as well as thoughts of everyday problems; (d) a feeling of transcendence where the person feels a sense of unity with the activity.

I don’t think it’s a stretch to bring together the concept of flow with Rooney’s proclamation of feeling happiest when she is writing. She is, essentially, saying that the act of creating the art is the most satisfying part - and by rejecting the fame that comes with her success, she is consciously choosing to invest her mental energy in finding happiness from within herself, and not seeking external validation for quick-hits of dopamine.

It goes without saying that we can’t all be novelists with an audience willing to wait three years for our latest creation. Many people don’t find such satisfaction in their job, and I am of the firm belief that not every job has to be satisfying on a soul level. But that doesn’t mean that we Normal People (see what I did there?) can’t find a flow state in other aspects of our lives, be that exercise or starting a creative practice like painting or knitting, or even writing.

The studies are there to show that this mental space is a goldmine for positive emotions, while relying on external validation to make us feel good will never work. Not least because it puts our own happiness outside of our control, but also because it means we are holding ourselves up to a standard set by a society that treasures money and power over everything else.

Rooney’s mentality is in direct opposition to studies that show that over half of 16-25-year-olds want to be influencers. I don’t want this to come across as ‘anti-influencer’ as I follow and enjoy lots of content creators, this is specifically about the aspiration to become someone who influences others - and, in turn, finds validation in other people’s opinions of them.

I am not sure whether any of this will make sense outside of my own head, but I couldn’t help but feel pretty inspired by Rooney’s shunning of what society typically deems the ultimate reward, and if someone as successful as her can do that, then maybe we can look at our own value system, from where we seek approval, and, ultimately, how we allow this to dictate who we see ourselves to be.

It’s rained all week, so I have barely touched any grass. I have started a new running plan to keep me going through the winter months, so I am still going to Parkrun and enjoying countless little treats with our toddler as the spooky season begins.

Other things I’ve also enjoyed this week:

📚Intermezzo by Sally Rooney - Obviously, Rooney this whole newsletter, but the novel itself is a masterpiece. If you like her work, you’ll like this - but if you weren’t keen on her previous novels, you likely won’t like this as it is very much inline with her style.

📺Heartstopper S3 (Netflix) - Nick and Charlie are back on our screens; this has to be one of the best page-to-screen adaptations ever? How they replicate specific scenes from the graphic novels is truly remarkable.

See you next week,

Ellen x

🎧I’m on Spotify!

If you like the audio version of this newsletter, you can listen to them all over on Spotify. Here’s last week’s:

💌 About this email

I’m Ellen, and I write about mental health for the chronically online. I am a freelance copywriter, strategist and web designer, and I work from home with my husband, Craig, at Content By The Sea. We have two rescue greyhounds, Potter and Harmony, and a toddler.

I started this newsletter in March 2020 and have sent over 180 emails; currently, I have over 1,200 subscribers. I write about a wide variety of topics, including diet culture, my love of running, jealousy, my life falling apart, mam guilt, and this dystopian world we all live in.

💛 How you can support me

If you like reading my weekly emails, you can give me a kickback in one or more of the following ways:

📨 Share this post

📬 Subscribe for free (if you haven’t already!)

💬 Leave a comment on this newsletter

💰Sign up to be a paid supporter of the newsletter for just £4 a month or £40 a year.

The current perks of being a paid subscriber are receiving one extra Touching Grass email each month with all of my top films, shows, podcasts and books. Most importantly, you are supporting me in continuing to write this newsletter week after week.

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There’s a trend in “mum-influencers” where they admit they find playing with their kids to be boring. In some ways, I can understand this. In fact, many aspects of parenting are extremely boring - but, to me, playing isn’t one of them. It’s probably the least boring part of being a parent.

That’s not meant as an insult to these mothers who do feel that way, they are entitled to their opinions - I would never want this to come across as a criticism of any mother. It’s more that this just hasn’t been my experience.

Through becoming a parent, I have realised that there is a time in our lives when we prioritise play. Then, one day, that just… stops? I can’t really put a specific age on when playing stops being seen as necessary for our development or happiness.

In preparation for writing this, I simply Googled: “benefits of play”, and the top results were all about “how play helps children's development.” But if play is so important to children, then why is it not only not prioritised, but typically non-existent, in the life of adult women?

In the last four years of writing this newsletter, it feels like I have covered every topic already, and this one is no different. Back in December 2021, I wrote about the public reaction to actor Henry Cavill’s unashamed passion for his nerdy hobbies.

In a world obsessed with productivity and hustle, it’s pretty awesome that one of the world’s biggest actors still makes time to paint Warhammer and play online games with his lifelong friends. If Cavill can do something just for fun, then we all can.

And to go even further back into the archive, in August 2020 I wrote about doing what you enjoy, even if you’re not very good at it.

Play-don’t

Both of these pieces touch on the topic of play. Playing is the act of doing something simply for fun, although for children we are told that this can have educational benefits. It’s funny to me that we have to add the caveat that children are learning something when they play, as the act of just playing isn’t quite enough to prove a benefit.

From the moment babies are born, parents are under pressure to create the perfect, educational environment. From black and white baby books to toys built to develop fine-motor skills, you’ll find that pretty much everything has an additional benefit or purpose.

Now my daughter is two, she decides what she wants to play with - and sometimes she loves the ABC magnet toy (educational) and other times she just wants to make poops out of Play-Doh.

This week, Craig bought her Kinetic Sand - surprisingly this didn’t trigger my sensory issues with sand, as it leaves no residue and is relatively easy to clean up. We were building little sandcastles and she was having a whale of a time. That’s when I started thinking, at what age will she stop prioritising play? And why is play not a part of our lives as adults - particularly women?

Women and play

Men are encouraged to participate in sports well into adulthood, and attending football games, for example, is a male-bonding exercise in itself. Video games are also a huge part of male life, with the industry itself having a huge (and ongoing) issue with sexism - both in the games studios and in the fandoms.

What forms of play are women encouraged - or even 'allowed’ - to do in our society? And when are we even supposed to find time for such activity. Having a child, means I can tap into my playful side through her. I would never have played with Play-Doh or Kinetic Sand past the age of ten if she didn’t come into my life.

Craig and I are also big fans of boardgames, although we often don’t have time to dig out the big ones anymore, so we typically stick to small card and other tabletop games like Radlands, Star Realms and Hive.

Putting my armchair psychologist hat on for a minute, I wanted to know whether there is really any benefit to play for adults, as I feel like many of us are missing a trick here.

This article by the British Psychological Society explores why play is not as commonplace in our lives as it is for our peers in the animal kingdom:

Play and playfulness are clearly more central to adult lives than is commonly supposed, but why are humans different to other animals in this regard? One potential answer is that as a species our strength is in our capacity to learn and adapt across the lifespan, evolving culturally as well as biologically.

I had never even thought about this - I was too busy posing the difference between children and adults to consider that human beings are, bizarrely, the only primates who seemingly ‘grow out’ of playing.

The same article lists some pretty amazing benefits to play for adults, including stress relief, enhanced learning and reduced negative emotions. But even without the scientific evidence to back up the theories, surely just the fact that it’s enjoyable is good enough reason to do it?

Not only is playing fun, but it also has no point whatsoever - and this is what I like most about it. We build different shapes with the Kinectic Sand, and there really is no end goal here. I don’t care if she doesn’t learn about physics or architecture. I am not there to learn either, I just enjoy doing something for the specific purpose of there being no purpose at all. What else in adult life can you say this about? Nothing that comes to my mind.

If you have kids, or spend time around them, do you enjoy playing with them or do you find it boring? Let me know in the comments below.

Last weekend it was one of my favourite events of the year - The Great Global Greyhound Walk, an international event held in cities across the world where greyhounds come together for a cute little walk and fundraising activities. We’ve been a part of the Northumberland Greyhound Rescue community for over five years now (we even built their website) so I love going to support the charity, and seeing all the lovely hounds at these events.

Other things I’ve also enjoyed this week:

📚Only Here, Only Now by Tom Newlands - Debut novel from this Scottish writer, this one is so heartfelt and beautifully written. It’s about a young girl growing up in lower-working class conditions with undiagnosed ADHD in the 90s. If you liked Shuggie Bain, you’ll enjoy this one.

📺Mr McMahon (Netflix) - Wild doc series about the controversial king of WWE, Vince McMahon.

See you next week,

Ellen x

🎧I’m on Spotify!

If you like the audio version of this newsletter, you can listen to them all over on Spotify. Here’s last week’s:

💌 About this email

I’m Ellen, and I write about mental health for the chronically online. I am a freelance copywriter, strategist and web designer, and I work from home with my husband, Craig, at Content By The Sea. We have two rescue greyhounds, Potter and Harmony, and a toddler.

I started this newsletter in March 2020 and have sent over 180 emails; currently, I have over 1,200 subscribers. I write about a wide variety of topics, including diet culture, my love of running, jealousy, my life falling apart, mam guilt, and this dystopian world we all live in.

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Almost exactly a year ago, I wrote about ‘women who hate women’ exploring the ✨Not Like Other Girls✨ trend, and why girls - and women - are being raised to compete with each other, rather than work together. I wrote:

The true irony of NLOG is that women are often drawn to these attitudes in order to separate themselves from the bitchiness synonymous with groups of women, and by doing so they are perpetuating the division and judgement that they are actively fighting against.

Call me Mystic Meg, because the topic of NLOG has had a resurgence in recent weeks, with influencers flipping the age-old misogyny on its head and creating content about why they are like other girls.

I wonder if the bandying together of women is a collective response to the trauma bond of being a woman in a world where you’re more likely to…

♀️ Die in a car crash

♀️ Be murdered by someone you know

♀️ Have health limitations over your lifetime

♀️ Become disabled

♀️ Suffer from depression

The list goes on.

A world built for men

The reasons for these propensities are complex, but in many cases, it all comes down to the fact that men are the default. Car crash test dummies are typically based on male anatomy, for example.

If you’re a woman of colour, your odds are even less in your favour for many of these categories. Black women in the UK are 3.7 times more likely to die in childbirth or in the first year after birth. Women of colour are also more likely to face workplace harassment, and less likely to get promoted.

Laura Bates, author of Men Who Hate Women, regularly shares headlines about violence against women on her Instagram page.

We see this time and time again. The press uses passive language to focus on the victim, rather than the perpetrator. In the above example, you’ve be forgiven for thinking Barbara’s death was an accident or suicide, as the language infers this. A quick skim of the article reveals a 40-year-old man was the chief suspect in her death, who died in a lorry crash later that day.

Last month,the home secretary, Yvette Cooper MP, said that extreme misogyny will be treated as a form of extremism, with plans for a government crackdown on incel ideology. She said:

"[We will] identify any gaps in existing policy which need to be addressed to crack down on those pushing harmful and hateful beliefs and violence"

I can’t help but feel this is too little, too late. The annual Femicide Census shows that there has been no decline in femicide since its founding in 2009, with an average of 62% of murdered women killed by a current or former partner. The Census also shows that a woman has been killed by a man, on average, once every three days over a 10-year period.

Together, we are stronger

So, it’s interesting that, in a world where it’s increasingly bleak to be a woman, we’re seeing the in-fighting stop (or are we?) and a collective consciousness grow.

In some ways, I think it’s a step in the right direction that we are seeing more successful women on our screens - and, most importantly, in this context, it’s more widely accepted to admire and enjoy media created by women and respect women as artists in their own right.

We’ve got…

♀️ Women making box office-hit horror films (Coralie Fargeat, The Substance 2024)

♀️ A woman taking 13 hours off the world record for the Appalachian Trail (Tara Dower)

♀️ Women reviving the pop music genre (Sabrina Carpenter, Chappell Roan and, dare I say it, Taylor Swift.)

♀️ Women at the top of the NY Times Bestsellers’ List across Fiction, Non-Fiction, Middle Grade, and YA (as of today)

I’m not confident the in-fighting is done. Sure, it’s great to be like other girls now - but is that only if you fit into the mould? I can’t go by without mentioning that many of those things in the initial TikTok I shared are quite, well, materialistic.

These posts are often about skincare, coffee, make-up, shopping (all of which I love, by the way), and so rarely about the qualities that make women so special. I get that we, as a gender, are trying to move away from stereotypes of nurturing, motherly women, but that’s not all we have to offer.

Research shows women are:

♀️ More creative

♀️ Faster over ultramarathon distances

♀️ Better smellers and tasters

♀️Living longer than men

And those are just examples of studies I can find with a quick Google search.

We all know that the women in our lives are more than just facts and figures. We’re a culmination of all the women who came before us, the women who raised us, and the women who stand by us in the face of trauma, adversity, and harm.

Researching for and writing this piece has got me thinking about my own place in the womansphere. I, like many lasses who grew up on Tumblr, was proudly ‘not like other girls’ - but that couldn’t be further from the truth now. The women in my life inspire me every day, both the ones I know and those I see on screen. I listen to more music by women than ever before and read predominantly female authors.

Yes, the female experience is changing, but it can only evolve if we embrace and grow with it - acknowledging the good and the bad.

Autumnal weather has well and truly arrived in the North East, so we’ve been hiberating at our desks as work is very busy. Before the downpours started, we managed to get up to Alnwick to visit Lilidorei, the world’s biggest play structure, which is styled on a fantasy village. This is SO cool, and even our scaredy-cat daughter enjoyed exploring the site.

She even found her time in her busy day as a butterfly to pollinate some of the plants in Alnwick Garden.

Other things I’ve also enjoyed this week:

📚 The Lasting Harm: Witnessing the Trial of Ghislaine Maxwell by Lucia Osborne-Crowley - Incredible and painful read by Lucia, who attended every single day of Maxwell’s trial back in 2021, and spoke directly to many of Epstein’s victims. This is one of the best non-fiction books I’ve read this year.

📺 The Penguin (NowTV) - This great first episode of The Batman spin-off stars an unrecognizable Colin Farrell doing his best Robert DeNiro impression.

See you next week,

Ellen x

🎧I’m on Spotify!

If you like the audio version of this newsletter, you can listen to them all over on Spotify. Here’s the last issue:

💌 About this email

I’m Ellen, and I write about mental health for the chronically online. I am a freelance copywriter, strategist and web designer, and I work from home with my husband, Craig, at Content By The Sea. We have two rescue greyhounds, Potter and Harmony, and a toddler.

I started this newsletter in March 2020 and have sent over 180 emails; currently, I have over 1,200 subscribers. I write about a wide variety of topics, including diet culture, my love of running, jealousy, my life falling apart, mam guilt, and this dystopian world we all live in.

💛 How you can support me

If you like reading my weekly emails, you can give me a kickback in one or more of the following ways:

📨 Share this post

📬 Subscribe for free (if you haven’t already!)

💬 Leave a comment on this newsletter

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The current perks of being a paid subscriber are receiving one extra Touching Grass email each month with all of my top films, shows, podcasts and books. Most importantly, you are supporting me in continuing to write this newsletter week after week.

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Earlier in the week, I was stopped in my tracks by this post on /r/AskUK:

I am someone who doesn’t like being perceived at the best of times, so the idea of a stranger filming me and posting the video to social media is so, so stressful.

The general consensus in the comments is that the OP has no legal legs to stand on—he works in a public place, and unless management wants to ban the customer from the store, he just has to live with it.

I obviously went digging and found the video (I won’t link it because that would defeat the point, but you can easily find it).

The TikTok creator has hundreds of thousands of views, with one video - I suspect the one OP is referring to - racking up 1.7 million views. There is even an article in The Guardian about this particular ‘creator’ (in the loosest sense of the word), which seems to neglect to mention any privacy issues and focuses on the fun nature of the videos.

I have a few questions here: does the creator need to post the face of the shop worker in the video for it to have the same effect? What rights do we have, as members of the public - especially at work - to our privacy?

Personally, I don’t think the faces need to be in the videos. Some may argue they do, as the shop workers are positioned as “bosses” and “opponents” in a gameplay-style, but if the subjects don’t consent to being recorded, and posted online to millions of people, how is this fair?

It’s not.

Being the ✨Main Character✨

This whole situation screams of Main Character Syndrome - a phrase referring to people who feel that they are primary in their actions, and everyone else is secondary, essentially a real-life Truman Show.

On Main Character Syndrome, Psychologist Susan Albers, PsyD, said:

‘Main character energy’ is perhaps the more appropriate term for this set of behaviors, and with this kind of energy, you often present to the world as if a camera is on you at all times

“Having that perspective — that you are the center of the story — naturally changes the way you present yourself to others and how you act in a public setting.

“You view yourself through a storytelling lens, like you’re on a movie or a TV show, and the spotlight is always on you,”

This is exactly what is happening over on TikTok - as creators are viewing their lives through the lens of content, how it will perform, and what this means for them - the dopamine rush of going viral will ultimately overwhelm any empathy for anyone caught up in your net.

Behaviours like this aren’t unique to those making content, either. People have long struggled with understanding why they may or may not have the right to someone else’s image, time, or kindness.

Pop icon Chappell Roan recently spoke up on social media about her right to refuse fan photos and her dislike of being harassed in the street. Roan said:

“If you saw a random woman on the street, would you yell at her from your car window? Would you harass her in public? Would you go up to a random lady and say, ‘Can I get a photo with you?’ and she’s like, ‘No, what the fck?’ and then you get mad at this random lady? Would you be offended if she says no to your time because she has her own time?”*

I wholeheartedly agree that we, as fans, have absolutely no right to her, just because we enjoy her music. In the context of the shop worker above, clearly people are photographing and videoing random strangers for their own benefit - and they show absolutely zero regard for the impact this might have.

Fear of being perceived

Blindboy Boatclub, an Irish writer and podcaster whom I have referenced several times here now, has been a vocal advocate of privacy. Blindboy, who is autistic, wears a bag on his head as a literal mask, so he can draw a solid line between his work persona and personal life. He recently shared a story about being recognised at a wedding (which he was attending as a civilian), and how the news of his presence spread through the party, with many people asking for photos or videos of him without his mask.

For some people, being recognised is just part of being famous, and this is the price you pay for being in the public eye. But why should it be? If Blindboy wants to have a world-famous podcast but also go to a friend's wedding without being bothered, should he not be able to? Has Chappell Roan given up her right to privacy in exchange for global fame?

I can’t help but recall what even pre-social media viral fame did to the likes of Britney Spears, whose public breakdown is well-documented and cemented in the millennial public consciousness.

Should celebrities be allowed to do what they love, perform for millions of people on TV, record podcasts, write books… and still be allowed privacy in their daily life? Perhaps, if we took a more empathetic view of celebrities, it would allow them to stay in the public eye longer, while retaining their mental health. What if we did leave Britney alone? Would she have given us more in return? And been happier because of it?

Even if you believe famous people waive their right to anonymity, you can’t possibly think it’s fair for a shop worker to be exposed to 1.7 million people while simply doing their job. Sure, they aren’t doing anything troubling, and no harm is directly caused to them in the video - but what about the harm of knowing your face is online for millions to see, and there’s absolutely nothing you can do about it? I am curious if this gives others the sort of nightmares it gives me? Or is this unique to ND people?

Let me know in the comments below.

I had a busy weekend solo-parenting our toddler and dogs - not a lot of grass was touched as the whole thing was very tricky, but back to normality now.

Other things I’ve also enjoyed this week:

📚In Ascension by Martin MacInnes - I picked up a signed copy of this at Toppings when I was in Edinburgh for the Scottish Half Marathon, and I finished reading it this week. It’s a sci-fi tale akin to Our Wives Under The Sea and Project Hail Mary. Readers beware, while it falls under the genre of sci-fi, this is definitely a character-driven novel as family dynamics, mental health, and guilt all take centre stage.

🎭 Prima Facie (National Theatre Live) - I finally got to see Jodie Comer’s incredible one-woman show at the cinema. This story deals with difficult topics and comes with a hefty trigger warning, but if you can bear it then it’s absolutely worth a watch while it’s still in theatres.

🎭 Fern Brady (Tyne Theatre and Opera House) - I was so lucky to see Fern’s stand-up show at the weekend, and somehow, I must have booked second-row seats, so we have a fantastic view. Fern is one of my favorite comedians right now; her autistic honesty and self-deprecation are unmatched.

See you next week,

Ellen x

🎧I’m on Spotify!

If you like the audio version of this newsletter, you can listen to them all over on Spotify. Here’s the last issue:

💌 About this email

I’m Ellen, and I write about mental health for the chronically online. I am a freelance copywriter, strategist and web designer, and I work from home with my husband, Craig, at Content By The Sea. We have two rescue greyhounds, Potter and Harmony, and a toddler.

I started this newsletter in March 2020 and have sent over 180 emails; currently, I have over 1,200 subscribers. I write about a wide variety of topics, including diet culture, my love of running, jealousy, my life falling apart, mam guilt, and this dystopian world we all live in.

💛 How you can support me

If you like reading my weekly emails, you can give me a kickback in one or more of the following ways:

📨 Share this post

📬 Subscribe for free (if you haven’t already!)

💬 Leave a comment on this newsletter

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The current perks of being a paid subscriber are receiving one extra Touching Grass email each month with all of my top films, shows, podcasts and books. Most importantly, you are supporting me in continuing to write this newsletter week after week.

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I had a week off as we went on holiday and then immediately ran the Great North Run. Weirdly, I gained a bunch of new subscribers during that time, so I’m a little hesitant about coming back today. Especially given that I have chosen to write about quite a controversial topic.

Let’s get into it.

Before we went away, we saw Kneecap at the cinema. The film is made by and stars the West Belfast hip-hop trio of the same name. Kneecap are total jokers, but they are pretty serious about one thing - freeing Ireland from colonialism and the subsequent revival of the Irish language.

Fortunately, I wasn’t completely ignorant of Ireland’s history of colonialism thanks to my love of the Blindboy Podcast, and also my two best Irish pals Michelle | Specky Scribbler and Daire O S who actively answer any and all of my usually stupid questions about their culture and country.

Fee-fi-fo-fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman

While I am not proudly English, I am English. And, as an English person, it can be quite confronting to learn about my country’s history, and what our nation is responsible for, both on our own shores and, in this case, others.

Back in 2018, Craig and I traveled around South East Asia. One stand-out memory was our visit to the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City. I did actually study the Vietnam War in school, but this museum visit was the first time I realised that history is not fact.

It is an interpretation of the facts. They do say history is written by the victors, after all (ironically, a false attributed Churchill quote).

While exploring the museum and reading the wildly aggressive signs about the “evil Americans”, I found myself wanting to make it clear that I was, in fact, not American.

I wanted to absolve myself of any historical responsibility for the atrocities inflicted upon this country and its people, who had shown me nothing but kindness and hospitality.

Here lies the inherent paradox that many of us British (especially English) people feel and struggle with. I can’t think of another country where even the mere presence of our nation’s flag is synonymous with racism, exclusion, and discrimination. Being English is not only uncool, it’s really f*g embarrassing.

No country’s culture is free from influence. But no other nation (except maybe the USA) is quite as brazen about holding cultural ideals that are one or multiple of the following:

• Stolen from another country we colonised (cup of tea, anyone?)

• Appropriated from Indigenous cultures without recognition

• Actively oppressing other nations - and our own - but excused as being important for our heritage and tourism (coughs the monarchy)

How can we truly celebrate the country where we live without acknowledging everything that came before? Can we be proud of something that comes as a result of oppression? This is still a truth the most patriotic among us will refuse to examine.

I’ve written before about how ‘two things can be true’ - and, in the same breath, how it’s okay to change your mind. In many ways, this is an extension of that conversation, as it’s our time to acknowledge our nation’s responsibility for violence and, in even right now, acts of genocide.

It’s probably a silly idea to write about this controversial topic when I have just received an influx of new subscribers, but I don’t want to turn away from writing about important topics just because I am nervous about that subscriber toll getting smaller.

The more I learn, the more I realise how little I actually know.

Here in England, we are not taught in schools about Ireland, for example. We are not even given a factual account of the Vietnam War. We don’t examine the highly flawed character of ‘war hero’ Winston Churchill, nor do we look at British Colonialism over centuries, and even its lasting effects.

Meanwhile, many of our parents and grandparents’ generation are downright offended by us even questioning the integrity of the nation they are, indeed, really proud of.

So, where do we go from here?

It all begins with education.

It is absolutely paramount that we learn and absorb information from a wide variety of sources, especially own voices. To me, this is where the British education system is going wrong. We are not hearing from the people who lived through, or are directly impacted by, the historical events we study.

I remember one of the most visceral reactions I had during a school history lesson was upon seeing the very famous image of a naked Vietnamese child running away from a napalm cloud. The reason this photo is so impactful is because it shows the victims. It shows children. Just like you, me, or our own children.

Racist people don’t want to admit this, but the difference between us and them is just where we are born. That’s it.

Empathy is intrinsic to history.

If we forget things, we risk them happening again.

I’m going to keep learning and reading about my country, and other parts of the world. I will continue to take a critical look at what I am told is ‘factual’ and question what the source has to gain from this angle.

The more I learn about other cultures, the better person I can be, as it gives me a wider understanding of how other people live, and what matters to them.

We all live on the same planet, even though it might not always feel like it… We are better together than divided.

We went to Center Parcs for a few days and had a fab time; as you can see, Potter loved the off-lead area. He isn’t allowed off-lead day-to-day as he is a flight risk (and also likely to fall over).

Also, I can’t skip by without mentioning the Great North Run! We both completed it with course PBs and have raised over £1,500 for Pancreatic Cancer UK in memory of my Mam, who passed away in 2019.

Other things I’ve also enjoyed this week:

📚Avoidance Drugs Heartbreak & Dogs by Jordan Stephens - Fascinating memoir from Jordan Stephens, actor and one-half of Rizzle Kicks, about his life experience of having ADHD.

📺 Rings of Power S2 (Prime) - TOM BOMBADIL HAS ARRIVED!

📺 Colin From Accounts S2 (BBC iPlayer) - I love this show, it’s so feel good and easy to watch. I am glad it’s back on our screens.

🎧 Fred again.. - ten days

See you next week,

Ellen x

🎧I’m on Spotify!

If you like the audio version of this newsletter, you can listen to them all over on Spotify. Here’s the last issue:

💌 About this email

I’m Ellen, and I write about mental health for the chronically online. I am a freelance copywriter, strategist and web designer, and I work from home with my husband, Craig, at Content By The Sea. We have two rescue greyhounds, Potter and Harmony, and a toddler.

I started this newsletter in March 2020 and have sent over 180 emails; currently, I have over 1,200 subscribers. I write about a wide variety of topics, including diet culture, my love of running, jealousy, my life falling apart, mam guilt, and this dystopian world we all live in.

💛 How you can support me

If you like reading my weekly emails, you can give me a kickback in one or more of the following ways:

📨 Share this post

📬 Subscribe for free (if you haven’t already!)

💬 Leave a comment on this newsletter

💰Sign up to be a paid supporter of the newsletter for just £4 a month or £40 a year.

The current perks of being a paid subscriber are receiving one extra Touching Grass email each month with all of my top films, shows, podcasts and books. Most importantly, you are supporting me in continuing to write this newsletter week after week.

Get full access to Conversations By The Sea at ellenforster.substack.com/subscribe

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Last week, I wrote about how my toddler learned to self-soothe. Since then, I have been thinking about how we, as adults, could do with taking a note or two from her.

I’ve noticed that when we’re at a busy place, like a family gathering or soft play, my daughter will take herself to one side and play quietly. She might also ask for her ‘Guy’.

If you’ve met my child, the chances are you’ve met Guy.

Guy is so powerful, we actually have Two Guys - as the risk of losing one Guy seemed too much to deal with.

Guy is just a little shiny comforter my mother-in-law bought when she born. She wasn’t that interested in it for the first year or so, as she was still breastfeeding to sleep, but when she started sleeping alone (and sucking her thumb more often), Guy became the top dog in our house.

He’s called Guy because we just thought he seemed like a nice little guy, and after a few times of saying: “Wow, what a cute little guy” our early-talking daughter decided this would be his moniker forever more.

Growing up, most of us had some sort of Guy - a dummy (pacifier), blanket, or cuddly toy that comforted us. These items are often so loved they become so worn down - my own ‘guy’ is a knitted cardigan my Gran made before I was born. Yes, I still have it. Yes, it’s barely hanging on by a thread.

Whatever your precious item was, they all have one thing in common with Guy - they brought us comfort and allowed us to self-soothe and regulate our emotions as a child.

Eventually, we grow up and leave these items behind.

But our nervous systems still need regulation. We still have to self-soothe, we just do it in different ways - and many people might not even realise they are doing it at all.

The sandwich theory

I have this theory that many people, especially those who are neurodivergent, are often first diagnosed with anxiety and depression as if it is a condition in itself. But, in my experience, these are actually symptoms of emotional dysregulation.

If you spend your days in a world that doesn’t accommodate you (think square peg, round hole), eventually, these symptoms will make themselves known.

I picture it as if we are sandwiches (stay with me). You are the filling, and life/society/expectations/responsibility is the bread. If you push too hard on the bread, the filling will leak out.

It has nowhere else to go.

For many people, this leaked filling will present itself as depression, anxiety, panic attacks, poor sleep, etc. For a toddler, this might come out as a tantrum or meltdown.

Before long, you’re living your life in Fight or Flight Mode and have no idea how you got there.

So, how do you get out of this situation?

You can’t take the bread away because that would be a mess. A sandwich needs bread.

But how can we ease the pressure and keep the filling inside?

Ok, I am reading this back and thinking I sound absolutely insane, but it’s making sense to me, so bear with me.

We need to ease the pressure of the bread on the filling, and even reduce the amount of filling inside the bread - this will keep a better balance.

What I’m trying to say is that if we fail to regulate our emotions, we risk becoming consumed by them. They will always be there, so we can’t ignore them - but we can learn to acknowledge and manage them in such a way that allows us to improve our overall quality of life - and keep the filling inside the bread.

How to self-soothe

Self-soothing is the act of regulating one's emotions. It helps one step outside of a situation, observe one's feelings from an outside perspective, and determine what to do next. This is, in essence, what my daughter is doing when she steps away from a busy party to seek comfort with her Guy.

She just needs a few moments of mindfulness to self-soothe in a moment of dysregulation.

I don’t expect you to whip out a Guy at the office. It’s mostly about laying the foundations for a solid emotional base, so when the pressure of the bread does hit, we can hold onto our fillings with minimal mess.

One way I do this is through exercise; for me, this is running. I find running to be hugely self-soothing. As someone who is prone to panic attacks, I’ve found running to help regulate my adrenaline and remind my body that I am, in fact, not in life-threatening danger when I am waiting for the Metro.

Running itself can be mindful as it is one of the most basic of movements — it’s an allegory for life. One foot in front of the other is an idiom for a reason.

Other ways I self-soothe are probably less neurotypical. I allow myself to watch the same TV show on repeat without judgment. I shake my feet on the sofa. I choose to wear materials that don’t cause me sensory issues. I follow my curiosity and learn about obscure topics for the sake of it. I listen to my podcasts. I eat whatever food I fancy without guilt.

All of these activities are, in one way or another, self-soothing to me.

They basically act as wax paper, or whatever people wrap sarnies in, and offer that additional support I need for when the sandwich inevitably gets all squished in my bag and the filling leaks out.

Ok, enough about sandwiches for now.

This weekend, I had a solo couple of days with our daughter, and we went to see In The Night Garden Live at the Tyne Theatre. I know for many people, this would be a real nightmare experience, but I truly loved it - seeing her experience something like this for the first time was so magical. I actually shed a tear when she was dancing away to Iggle Piggle.

Experiences like this give me confidence in my current decision to only have one child. I get to give her my full attention and experience special moments with just her. Afterward, we went for sushi, and she kept saying what a good day she’d had. It was so precious; I’d highly recommend a little one-on-one day with a toddler if you have one hanging around.

Other things I’ve also enjoyed this week:

📚Headshot by Ruth Bullwinkel - This Booker Prize longlisted book caught my eye as it’s a pretty interesting concept. The whole novel covers one boxing tournament and tells the story of each of the young girls fighting through the lens of the bouts. It’s a quick read and had some real gems, but it wasn’t my favorite recent read. You can follow me on Goodreads to keep up with what I’m reading.

📺 Brassic (Netflix) - Sky’s answer to Shameless is now on Netflix and I’m here for it.

📺 Devs (Disney+) - We are late to this, but we have been watching Alex Garland’s sci-fi show from 2020. We’re only halfway, so still lots of questions but we’re hooked.

See you next week,

Ellen x

It’s now less than two weeks until the Great North Run now. I’m raising money for Pancreatic Cancer UK in memory of my mam, Miriam, who passed away from this vicious cancer in 2019.

Any donation is hugely appreciated!

🎧I’m on Spotify!

If you like the audio version of this newsletter, you can listen to them all over on Spotify. Here’s last week’s:

💌 About this email

I’m Ellen, and I write about mental health for the chronically online. I am a freelance copywriter, strategist and web designer, and I work from home with my husband, Craig, at Content By The Sea. We have two rescue greyhounds, Potter and Harmony, and a toddler.

I started this newsletter in March 2020 and have sent over 180 emails; currently, I have over 1,200 subscribers. I write about a wide variety of topics, including diet culture, my love of running, jealousy, my life falling apart, mam guilt, and this dystopian world we all live in.

💛 How you can support me

If you like reading my weekly emails, you can give me a kickback in one or more of the following ways:

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The current perks of being a paid subscriber are receiving one extra Touching Grass email each month with all of my top films, shows, podcasts and books. Most importantly, you are supporting me in continuing to write this newsletter week after week.

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I don’t write about motherhood very often despite it being a massive part of my life.

I was wondering why, and I realised this unveiled a difficult truth I am hesitant to admit.

I have an internalised prejudice against mothers who talk about being mothers.

So often, we see women become mothers and lose who they were before. They give up hobbies, sports, friendships, careers and other freedoms to dedicate their lives to raising children.

This was my worst fear when I became a mother.

So much so that I probably went too far the other way. I didn’t admit it was hard; I didn’t talk about the vast weight of motherhood with anyone except a few close friends who have experienced the same thing.

I don’t want people to perceive me as another mother who complains, so I just don’t say anything at all.

But why shouldn’t mothers complain?

If we don’t complain, no one will hear us. And we risk becoming even more invisible than we already are.

In the early days of raising my daughter, I read a few books about motherhood, desperately hoping to hear from people who had lived through (and survived) one of the hardest times of my life.

By far, the best book I read was Matresence by Dr Lucy Jones. I’ve written about this before, but it is essentially a memoir backed up with peer-reviewed studies and anthropological insights into why motherhood is so hard for us now and how things have changed over the last few generations.

One key area Jones explores is the concept of a village.

It takes a village

You’ve heard the saying before: It takes a village to raise a child. This is inherent in our very beings, as demonstrated by the snippet below from Matresence about a nomadic tribe in the south-western Central African Republic.

A recent study led by Nikhil Chaudhary of Mbendjele BaYaka hunter-gatherers found that alloparents - multiple caregiving adults - responded to a crying child 40 - 50% of the time, as well as providing close care, holding and physical contact.

But many modern mothers in the Global North, like myself, don’t have a village.

Yet, we are expected to embrace many parts of parenting that other cultures hold dear. Natural birth, attachment parenting, and co-sleeping are all inherent to cultures that live communally. Women can co-sleep with their babies and breastfeed all night because they have ‘alloparents’ (other adults within the community) who can provide support throughout the day.

Like so many other mothers, I had it in my head that I would do all those things but also run a business, pay a mortgage, and raise dogs… all while having only my husband to fall back on most of the time.

It doesn’t add up.

Attachment parenting is a philosophy that emphasises the importance of staying close to your child, both physically and emotionally. Babywearing, breastfeeding, co-sleeping, and gentle parenting are all part of this philosophy.

The concept of attachment parenting was developed by the American paediatrician Williams Sears, who essentially stole it from other cultures and whacked his own label on it (a classic colonial move). Sears spoke to two Zambian women about the power of babywearing, and later on, he nicked a few ideas from how indigenous people in South America raised their children.

Need I point out that this concept of parenting, so heavily placed upon mothers and a standard that is virtually impossible to maintain while living in western society, was founded by a man?

A man who never experienced birth trauma first-hand, or felt tiny needle teeth bite his nipples or had to ask if it’s “okay to have a shower?”.

Sears did have children (many of them), but it’s still funny to me that a man could colonise a parenting concept from indigenous women and then somehow level it as an unattainable standard for Western women, all while selling millions of books.

A sleeping timebomb

About eight months into my motherhood journey, I hit a wall. My baby only slept in two-hour chunks, and I was co-sleeping and nursing all night. I also made all of her solid food from scratch and worked one day a week (while Craig took the day off to look after her).

I fell into a deep pit. I couldn’t see a way out.

Like my birth journey, I had a vision for how this first year of motherhood would be - and that vision was fading fast.

Craig wanted to move away from co-sleeping and move our baby into her own room. We already had a cot set up in my old office, so there was somewhere for her to go. But I couldn’t grasp the idea of putting her into a cot and leaving the room unless she was fast asleep.

I tried a few times, but she woke up every time I put her down.

I was losing hours and hours, evening after evening. Breastfeeding her to sleep, then gently placing her in the crib, begging her to stay asleep.

Then, Craig staged an intervention.

He could see what this was doing to me. He knew me better than anyone. But he also knew I would not change my ways. I would not let her cry or even whinge for a second.

He wanted to try a sleep training method called the gentle Ferber Method. In this method, you leave the baby in the cot and check on them after three minutes, five minutes, and ten minutes. Even if they are unsettled, you just wait until those minutes are up.

I cried.

I sat in the armchair with my noise-cancelling headphones, and I cried.

The breastfeeding advice pages I followed on Instagram would often share the view that ‘babies can’t self-soothe’ and that leaving your child to cry, even for a minute, was abuse.

I fully believed this. But, as a highly sensitive and determined person, I also seek comfort in facts.

In my quest for answers, I found a few scientific studies that affirmed Craig’s approach as the right one.

Many infants can learn to self-soothe between six months and their first birthday, and studies show this practice can lead to longer sleep stretches.

As is often the way in the cult of parenting, mothers are scared. We’re scared of what we are doing to our children. Are we damaging our children in any way by taking this approach?

There aren’t many studies, but those that do exist have found no impact on a baby’s attachment in the short and long term after gentle sleep training.

But do you know what the studies do show?

They show that poor baby sleep is directly linked to maternal depression and poor mental health.

So, Instagram mamas are telling us that babies can’t self-soothe, so we must continue to follow practices that are proven to negatively impact mothers, just to maintain the holier-than-thou perception that we are great mothers?

I cannot be a great mother or even a good one, if I am depressed, unwell or exhausted.

My baby needed me to be well. And this was a step we had to take to make me better.

The same goes for medical births, formula feeding, early childcare or any other controversial topic within the world of parenting.

If following that path makes you unwell, it won’t make you a better mother. No matter what the cult of Instagram mothers tell you.

That brings me back to the attachment parenting bloke. Instagram pushes so many parenting concepts on us, often taken from books written by men.

There’s an interesting chapter in Matresence about hypnobirthing (you guessed it, coined by a man) and how women have fallen into the trap of refusing medical support for their births in favour of natural methods— having been persuaded to do so by a woo-woo concept coined by someone who never even had the physical ability to give birth to another human being!

When I started writing this, I didn’t think I would go all in. I don’t like talking about sleep training, for example, because I still hold a small amount of internalised shame about it. I do feel guilty for those two nights when my baby whinged in her bed for three minutes at a time. Even though she went from sleeping two hours to all night within three months, she has been a fantastic sleeper ever since (she’s two now!).

Despite all of that, I still feel guilty.

But why should I?

There is no other phase of life where we are made to feel so guilty for protecting our own mental health. If we all treated ourselves like new mothers do, then we’d be queueing at the cliff edge like Lemmings.

If anyone deserves our empathy, it’s the woman pushing a pram with a crying newborn, having taken two hours to get out of the house, not knowing when her next shower will be, hanging on the promise of a luke-warm Costa Coffee will be the highlight of her day.

Yes, motherhood is a choice. But that doesn’t mean we should feel s**t for making that choice.

I am still working on that.

On Sunday, I ran the Scottish Half Marathon with Michelle | Specky Scribbler and Daire O S . I’ve completed plenty of half marathons before, but this was one of the hardest. It was so dull, with limited spectators and lots of sneaky hills.

Regardless of the struggle, I am proud we did it - and it’s less than three weeks until the Great North Run now. I’m raising money for Pancreatic Cancer UK in memory of my mam, Miriam, who passed away from this vicious cancer in 2019.

Any donation is hugely appreciated!

Things I’ve also enjoyed this week:

📚Sunburn by Chloe Michelle Howarth - Coming of age tale about Lucy, a young girl growing up in rural Ireland. Lucy realises she has feelings for another girl, sparking a journey of exploration and guilt, forcing her to make big choices at such a fragile age. I enjoyed this one, although it wasn’t my favourite.

📺 We Might Regret This (BBC) - Hilarious new sitcom from Kyla Harris about being “disabled before it was cool.”

See you next week,

Ellen x

🎧I’m on Spotify!

If you like the audio version of this newsletter, you can listen to them all over on Spotify. Here’s last week’s:

💌 About this email

I’m Ellen, and I write about mental health for the chronically online. I am a freelance copywriter, strategist and web designer, and I work from home with my husband, Craig, at Content By The Sea. We have two rescue greyhounds, Potter and Harmony, and a toddler.

I started this newsletter in March 2020 and have sent over 180 emails; currently, I have over 1,200 subscribers. I write about a wide variety of topics, including diet culture, my love of running, jealousy, my life falling apart, mam guilt, and this dystopian world we all live in.

💛 How you can support me

If you like reading my weekly emails, you can give me a kickback in one or more of the following ways:

📨 Share this post

📬 Subscribe for free (if you haven’t already!)

💬 Leave a comment on this newsletter

💰Sign up to be a paid supporter of the newsletter for just £4 a month or £40 a year.

The current perks of being a paid subscriber are receiving one extra Touching Grass email each month with all of my top films, shows, podcasts and books. And, most importantly, you are supporting me to keep writing this newsletter week after week.

Get full access to Conversations By The Sea at ellenforster.substack.com/subscribe

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I’m ashamed to say I've been fully absorbed in Love Is Blind UK this week. The Netflix reality show originated in the US, but this is the first series starring Brits who want to get engaged to someone without seeing their face.

The show itself is trash. You have to watch it with a critical eye, knowing full well that many of the scenarios are ‘set up’. While reactions may be genuine, the producers will always choose entertainment over the contestants’ mental health.

So, while I do watch this crap (and probably shouldn’t), I wasn’t going to let it go by without talking about some of the red-flag behaviours portrayed in the show

“I love my food”

Demi is a Londoner, a football player and a social butterfly. She openly discusses how she’s often perceived as “one of the guys” and is anxious to meet anyone she’s connected with in the dating pod because she “loves [her] food.”

I had to double-take. This lass is already making excuses for her size, even though she is likely still smaller than the UK average.

Regardless of whether she was in a larger body, we should never expect people to apologise for taking up space. And why is it always women who feel the need to do this? Obviously, we know the answer, as multiple generations of women have suffered at the hands of diet culture, raised by those who followed the Special K diet and watched Trinny and Susanna’s What Not To Wear.

I have to take into account the editing, but it seems to me that Demi is positioned as the “fat one”. The thing is, in light of all her interests and passions, her size is the least interesting thing about her.

We’re rewarded for shrinking

Even after four years of writing this newsletter, I have zero strategy for deciding what to write about. If I’m lucky, I write it on a Wednesday afternoon, ready for Thursday. If I’m unlucky, I write on Thursday morning and send it straight away. However, my brain is always thinking of ideas, and I keep all of these sparks of inspiration in the Keep Notes app on my phone.

There is a note in there that says: “rewarded for shrinking.”

I wrote it, and completely forgot what it meant— but the case of Demi on Love Is Blind just reminded me.

Not only are we advised to take up as little space as possible, but we are rewarded for shrinking. This isn’t just about women, either. Society sets standards for all of us, male and female alike. It goes without saying that women have been subjected to the most aggressive dieting campaigns for over three decades, but fat-shaming affects men, too.

Health = wealth?

During the Olympics, body-positive influencers highlighted the huge variation in athletes’ bodies. Jonny Landels, a male body-positive influencer, created this excellent montage of true body diversity at the games.

But remember, I live in an echo chamber. It only takes on visit to Jonny’s comments to see that not everyone agrees with his take.

So, according to the commenters on Jonny’s post and other similar body-positive reels, the worst thing you can be is unhealthy. There are so many issues here, and it’s time to unpack them:

Health is not a moral issue

Your health does not make you a good person. If you are unhealthy, you are not less deserving of love or care. Otherwise, if this is the case, then are we saying that disabled people are worth less than non-disabled people?

Does having a disease, physical impairment, chronic illness or mental health condition make you less worthy? Most good people would say no. And yet there are thousands of comments on videos like Jonny’s that are absolutely desperate to explain why not all Olympians are “healthy.” I wonder what they will all say when the Paralympics starts… will health become such a sticking point for them then?

“Obesity is preventable”

I know what you’re thinking: “But Ellen, you can’t compare obesity or another similar health condition to something like MS because that’s not their fault.”

Is obesity our fault? Does it even matter?

This attitude is rife on Instagram, where commenters will happily tell people to “just eat less and move more” like it’s some miraculous means of losing weight and becoming more healthy (and therefore socially acceptable).

Firstly, it’s not that easy— especially for women.

When it comes to weight gain, there are so many factors at play. Yes, lifestyle plays a role, but so do genetics, social class and the environment. Love Is Blind’s Demi later reveals she has endometriosis, a chronic illness affecting the female reproductive system. Women with endo experience hormonal fluctuations that can impact weight gain over time, and even make losing weight harder. Are we, as an audience, more sympathetic to Demi’s weight (I maintain she has no weight issues) if we know that it’s “not her fault”?

And, if obesity is your fault, then why does it so aggressively impact some parts of society more than others? Government data shows obesity is highest in the most deprived areas. Interestingly, obesity peaks between the ages of 55 and 64 for both genders.

Women are also less likely to be physically active. It doesn’t take a statistician to determine why this is. The mental load, pressures of domestic duties and lack of familial support all play a huge role in why women aren’t exercising. Studies show the chief reason is lack of time. Quelle surprise.

I also suspect women’s motivation for exercise has been sullied by the burden of diet culture, forcing us to believe that any and all movement must be for the end goal of losing weight.

This reminded me of our Demi for Love Is Blind, who is the only female contestant to openly talk about regularly playing sports, and yet she still feels as though she has to apologise for her body.

Last year, I wrote about “being good” - and specifically the morality of diet culture language. I don’t think anything has changed here, with diet culture still using angelic imagery and virtuous language in its marketing, particularly when targeted towards women.

Are we making any progress at all?

In some ways, I worry we are not. But then I spot the likes of Kim Stacey, founder of Body Image Fitness, a non-diet fitness company based here in the North East. Kim explores the NHS weight stigma and the mental health impact of weight discrimination in her posts.

She’s actively working to get people, especially women and non-binary folks, to enjoy the act of moving their bodies again. She wants to bring back joy in movement, and not punishment.

Her classes are available online and in person. I highly recommend checking out her website (which we built, but this isn’t sponsored. Kim doesn’t even know I’m writing this!).

I’d really like to hear from you in the comments section.

Tell me ways in which you’ve felt you weren’t allowed to take up space, or how subtle comments have impacted your self-worth. Do you think people are less worthy if they aren’t deemed “healthy”? Or is this something we need to actively fight against?

To me, this whole idea of certain people being more deserving of care is inherently ableist and discriminatory toward the most vulnerable people in society.

Let me know below.

Until today, we’ve had glorious sunshine here in the North East. I put my sensory issues aside (ew, sand) to take the little one to the beach at the weekend. She mostly just wanted to scoop sand and watch everyone else play.

Things I’ve also enjoyed this week:

📚Educated by Tara Westover - I have no idea how I hadn’t heard of this memoir until recently, I spotted it ranked highly on the NY Times list of best books from the 21st century and decided to give it a go. Tara was raised by preppers— her parents were constantly preparing for the ‘end of times’, with constant fear and suspicion of wider society. She writes about the abuse she experienced at the hands of her brother and how, in spite of everything, she managed to achieve huge academic success but lost her family at the same time. I really, really recommend this.

📺 Love is Blind UK, obviously.

See you next week,

Ellen x

🎧I’m on Spotify!

If you like the audio version of this newsletter, you can listen to them all over on Spotify. Here’s last week’s:

💌 About this email

I’m Ellen, and I write about mental health for the chronically online. I am a freelance copywriter, strategist and web designer, and I work from home with my husband, Craig, at Content By The Sea. We have two rescue greyhounds, Potter and Harmony, and a toddler.

I started this newsletter in March 2020 and have sent over 180 emails; currently, I have over 1,200 subscribers. I write about a wide variety of topics, including diet culture, my love of running, jealousy, my life falling apart, mam guilt, and this dystopian world we all live in.

💛 How you can support me

If you like reading my weekly emails, you can give me a kickback in one or more of the following ways:

📨 Share this post

📬 Subscribe for free (if you haven’t already!)

💬 Leave a comment on this newsletter

💰Sign up to be a paid supporter of the newsletter for just £4 a month or £40 a year.

The current perks of being a paid subscriber are receiving one extra Touching Grass email each month with all of my top films, shows, podcasts and books. And, most importantly, you are supporting me to keep writing this newsletter week after week.

Get full access to Conversations By The Sea at ellenforster.substack.com/subscribe

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I really wanted to dodge this topic this week, but I just couldn’t.

Everywhere I look, there are clips of riots in the cities I’ve called home, snippets of news articles about racist attacks, and updates from small businesses and charities closing their doors in anticipation of riots.

I will first point to Arlen Pettitt’s newsletter from yesterday about how racism is endemic in this country, and while these scenes are shocking, the views are nothing new:

It has not come from nowhere. It has been brewing for some time. The violence may die down, but the wounds won’t heal by themselves.

This is racism we’re seeing. It is terrorism. And that leaves lasting scars.

It’s important to remind ourselves of that, and to use those words to describe it.

Part of the reason why I wasn’t going to write about this this week was because I feel like I can’t add anything to the discussion that hasn’t already been said. But then I noticed a series of micro-aggressions from different parts of my life, and I wanted to explore a couple of observations I’ve made over the last week or so since this chaos leaked out onto our streets.

It starts with us

Firstly, I saw a great Instagram post that said, “Ignoring racism is racism”, and this has been replaying in my head over the last few days.

How do you react if you hear a friend or family member saying something you believe to be racist? You’d think that most people would “see something, say something,” and yet, in my experience, that doesn’t seem to be true at all.

In reality, I have known people to be told to “calm down” or even pushed out when questioning the use of micro-aggressions in casual conversation. We’ve all probably heard someone use a racist term to describe a person or make a comment about “them” coming over “here”.

But what you do in response to that is likely different to the next person.

Many of us will feel regret that we didn’t say anything, driving home wishing we’d told our racist uncle not to refer to the local shop as that. Or deleting a comment on your neighbour’s fake news post about the torrent of small boats.

We do this because we are guided by social expectations and, for most people, the risk of becoming a social pariah outweighs the benefit of calling someone else out on their behaviour.

I have often wondered why I struggle with this, as I’d have always preferred to be alone on the fringe, knowing I am doing the right thing, than be accepted by the masses for simply staying silent.

I am on my own neurodivergence journey (which I will probably write about in a future post as I unravel it for myself), and part of this is reassessing past behaviours and exploring them through a different lens.

Autistic people and those with ADHD often have strong justice sensitivity. This means they will likely stand up for what they believe, and their lack of understanding or conforming to social norms, allows them to speak up without fear of social exclusion.

[O]ne of the most common features of autistic people is that they have an innate sense of justice – they can't stand to see injustice around them, even if it's not directed at them - Autism - Myth and Reality, The British Psychological Society (Oct 2014)

For me, and for many of you reading, this might shed some light on why it seems impossible to stand back when the smallest ‘jokes’ are thrown about at the pub.

I wrote about this back in 2022, before it ever occurred to me that I might be neurodivergent:

Speaking to people with differing views is important, as it helps to shape your own perspective and also gives them the opportunity to see something from another angle. However, if you’re anything like me then you might find it hard not to get emotional about certain topics - which doesn’t always land in your favour.

Racism isn’t just about attacking people in the streets; it’s in quiet conversations, pub debates, and off-hand remarks— and that’s where we should start putting out the spark before it turns into a forest fire.

Fake news

This newsletter is about being chronically online, and yet the most internet-obsessed people are usually older relatives glued to Facebook feeds, actively spreading gossip and misinformation.

We’ve not just seen this with racism but also in the story of Algerian boxer Imane Khelif’s Olympic victories following unfounded questions about her biological sex.

I won’t even waste anymore of my time on the latter, as the whole topic is quite frankly idiotic. If you want to read more about Khelif’s completely legitimate success, and how Russia's corruption played a vital role in the wildfire of misinformation, you can read this great piece on Medium by Jesse Owen:

In doing so, we have inadvertently supported a narrative created by an agent of a imperialist, autocratic, Far Right regime to serve as a convenient smokescreen to cover various crimes. What we SHOULD be discussing is why the Far Right authoritarians can so easily bait us into heated transphobic arguments and how those arguments are too often a convenient distraction from their corruption and theft.

So, what do these narratives have in common? They are both being spread freely on the world’s biggest social media platforms, with no calls for fact-checking. I’d argue that critical thinking is less common than ever, as the online discourse so often pushes us to view every subject as a binary.

Nicola Muthurangu-Hall wrote about the wild-west of social media in her newsletter The Exposition this week:

Social media channels like X continue to enable far-right material to circulate, stoking the flames of hatred. Musk’s unsubstantiated claims of ‘civil war’ prove only that his purchase of the platform was no mistake - it was calculated and deliberate.

There’s rumours that bots programmed to destabilise the West through political dissonance continue to run rife online - that world continues to go un-policed and unregulated.

This is just one of dozens of similar posts I’ve seen in the last month or so on Facebook:

It goes without saying that ‘whataboutisms’ like this are often at the core of social media discourse— if you care about one thing, then you must care about another. It’s never that simple, and in the above case, it certainly isn’t.

So, while I said I didn’t even want to write about this topic this week, the email has ended up being pretty long, so I’ll end it here.

We are united

Just as I was about to send this, I spotted several posts about the fantastic display of unity across Newcastle last night. Remember, the minority often shouts the loudest in times like this, leading us to forget that the majority of good people in our lives don’t believe this hate.

We will not tolerate racism in this city— and, for me, that’s not just about counter-protests but also about calling it out in the pub, at family events and when casually chatting with the neighbours.

Don’t stand down.

Don’t turn a blind eye.

See something? Say something.

There has been glorious weather in the North East this week, so I’ve been touching plenty of grass. I have less than two weeks until my next half marathon, so I’ve been enjoying sunny jogs (for about 1km before I realise I am too hot and want to die).

I also got away to a lovely lodge for the weekend, enjoyed the hot tub, and explored the quaint town of Richmond, Yorkshire.

Things I’ve also enjoyed this week:

📚Evenings And Weekends by Oisín McKenna - Wow, one of my favourite books I’ve read all year. This debut novel is set over a weekend in London and tells of a group of friends, all with their own burdens and problems to face. I really loved how this was written, and each character had such a unique voice. I avidly await whatever McKenna does next.

There’s not much else to mention here, as all I have been doing is watching the Olympics. I might have better craic next week (unlikely!).

Until then,

Ellen x

🎧I’m on Spotify!

If you like the audio version of this newsletter, you can listen to them all over on Spotify. Here’s last week’s:

💌 About this email

I’m Ellen, and I write about mental health for the chronically online. I am a freelance copywriter, strategist and web designer, and I work from home with my husband, Craig, at Content By The Sea. We have two rescue greyhounds, Potter and Harmony, and a toddler.

I started this newsletter in March 2020 and have sent over 180 emails; currently, I have over 1,200 subscribers. I write about a wide variety of topics, including diet culture, my love of running, jealousy, my life falling apart, mam guilt, and this dystopian world we all live in.

💛 How you can support me

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I’ve written before about my fascination with ordinary people doing extraordinary things— and surely the epitome of this is the Olympics.

Yes, this going to be an entire email about the Olympics. Apologies in advance.

In previous years, I haven’t been that bothered about it. I might have dipped in and out of the big events, glory hunting for Tom Daley or Jessica Ennis-Hill, but I have never sat down and watched it live.

This year, my second monitor is taking a break from showing spreadsheets, and is instead giving me the nerve-wracking background commentary of whatever obscure sport is taking place at that moment.

Why am I so hooked this year? Here is why I think the first post-pandemic Olympics is set to be the best of all time:

It’s about overcoming adversity

The week kicked off with Tom Daley coming out of semi-retirement to win a Silver medal alongside new diving partner Noah Williams. What I didn’t realise about Daley is that his dad passed away when the Olympian was just 17 years old. Robert Daley had championed Tom’s career, and the BBC screened clips of old interviews where he explained that Tom’s diving ambitions were his entire life. So, knowing Tom has continued to succeed on a world stage, and seeing his husband and two children (the eldest of which is named after his dad— an honour you know I appreciate having named my own child after my late mam), was truly awe-inspiring.

Losing a parent is hard at any age, but doing so when you are just 17 years old, in the public eye and already a household name is truly an unimaginable struggle.

As I was writing this, another incredible story popped up on my feed. Team GB just picked up a Gold in Women’s Quadruple Sculls Rowing. In the post-game interview, Lola Anderson tells a tear-jerking story about how she wrote on a piece of paper as a child, after watching the women’s rowing success at London 2012, that it “would be my biggest dream in life to go to the Olympics in rowing and if possible win a gold for GB.”

Unbeknownst to her, Anderson’s father kept this piece of paper and shared it with her seven years later, after his brain cancer diagnosis. Through tears, Anderson told the BBC: “I know that he would be so proud of me.”

I didn’t even know what scull-rowing was until today. I typically have little interest in sports. But what I do have great interest in is humanity's incredible drive. We continue to push for things that seem beyond our reach, even (and especially) in times of great adversity. This is what the Olympic Games are about.

It shows you can come back stronger

There are so many stories like this. Perhaps one of the most iconic is that of Team USA’s Simone Biles, the country’s most decorated gymnast who famously withdrew from the final individual all-around competition at the Tokyo Olympic Games to focus on her mental health.

I vividly remember an op-ed from Piers Morgan ripping into Biles, and especially her reasoning for stepping back from the world stage. Remember, this is the same athlete who was growing up in Team USA Gymnastics when convicted sexual abuser Larry Nassar was the team doctor. Biles actually gave testimony in Nassar’s trial, just over a month after her Tokyo withdrawal.

This is a woman who has experienced unknown trauma, and yet this hasn’t stopped her. Watching her and the team win Gold this week is likely to reign supreme as one of the biggest emotional highs of the whole games. It’s a comeback for the century, and big f**k-you to everyone who questioned her decision in 2021.

It’s a distraction

I know some will say it’s a distraction from the many ongoing global atrocities, but I say: what’s wrong with that? We can care about big world issues, and still enjoy watching people run really fast.

Of course, the games are not without their politics, but I do think showing the individual achievements of athletes all over the world encourages an open-mindedness that many other global sporting events do not.

There is (finally) gender equality

This is the first Olympic Games in history to have 50% gender parity.

I don’t need to explain why this is great (or long overdue). I am really interested in how the global visibility of female athletes at this competition will trickle down to a grassroots level.

Young women and girls need to see a diverse range of sportspeople— other people who look like them compete at a high level. To me, this is paramount for the much-needed shift away from exercise solely for the sake of weight loss, which is a motivator still heavily pushed onto women from a young age.

I could go on much longer about why I think the Olympic Games are so great, but I will spare you. If you’re watching all day every day, like I am, then let me know your highlights (and what you’re most looking forward to) in the comments below.

It’s finally sunny here, so I have been getting out and about with our toddler and touching plenty of grass. The National Trust membership has been particularly useful, as there are plenty of activities on all summer-long.

Other things I’ve enjoyed this week:

🎙️Should I Delete That? (Podcast) - I am a regular listener of this podcast from Em Clarkson and Alex Light, but I particularly enjoyed this week’s fun “Is It Just Me?” episode that had me chuckling away like a nutter on a run.

📺We Are Lady Parts (Channel 4) - Season 2 of this hilarious sitcom did not disappoint. It’s about a group of Muslim women who defy cultural expectations to become a pretty successful punk band. This is an easy watch and has some amazing musical numbers.

Like the things I like? Tomorrow, I’ll be publishing my monthly Touching Grass round-up, which includes a more personal blurb and greater detail into my top films, books and shows from the month of July.

This is only available to paid subscribers. You can subscribe for just £4 per month or £40 for the year. Your subscription helps me keep writing this newsletter and keep it free for everyone.

🎧I’m on Spotify!

If you like the audio version of this newsletter, you can listen to them all over on Spotify. Here’s last week’s:

💌 About this email

I’m Ellen, and I write about mental health for the chronically online. I am a freelance copywriter, strategist and web designer, and I work from home with my husband, Craig, at Content By The Sea. We have two rescue greyhounds, Potter and Harmony, and a toddler.

I started this newsletter in March 2020 and have sent over 170 emails; currently, I have over 1,200 subscribers. I write about a wide variety of topics, including diet culture, my love of running, jealousy, my life falling apart, mam guilt, and this dystopian world we all live in.

💛 How you can support me

If you like reading my weekly emails, you can give me a kickback in one or more of the following ways:

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The current perks of being a paid subscriber are receiving one extra Touching Grass email each month with all of my top films, shows, podcasts and books. And, most importantly, you are supporting me to keep writing this newsletter week after week.

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Do you get your best ideas in the shower?

Or do you scrabble to record frantic voice notes while driving out of fear you’ll forget that lightbulb moment?

This week, I learned that this is actually a known psychological phenomenon.

Default Mode Network (DMN) is when your brain is awake but at rest. You are not focused on any outside activity; perhaps you are doing something passive or routine, like walking or going to the loo. DMN kicks in when your mind is allowed to wander.

This is when your brain is creative, it’s allowed to explore new ideas and solutions. You likely don’t even remember what you were doing when this activates, like when you forget your whole journey despite arriving safely at home.

The default mode network, discovered by neurologist Marcus Raichle, spans a number of brain regions, incorporating parts of the prefrontal, parietal, and temporal cortices that show joint activation, or deactivation, in connection with particular mental functions. It is one of a number of such brain networks, which also include the salience network and the executive control network. - Psychology Today.

So, why I am suddenly going all armchair psychologist on you?

Learning about this neurological process has got me thinking about the impact that our digital addiction has had on this part of our brains since we are less likely to enter this state when there’s a screen calling our names.

Screentime is directly linked to our reward cycle. Social media and other digital experiences are literally built to hold our attention for as long as possible, and part of this is ensuring we are rewarded for our time, be that through the self-affirmation of ‘likes’ or the gamification of online shopping experiences.

So, given that the Default Mode Network kicks in when our brains are absent of stimulus, how what does that mean for us living in a time where we are never not stimulated?

Mariah Olson put this way better than I could in her piece Bailing on Boredom on Medium:

Because the DMN functions when we are alone with our thoughts and my previous research demonstrated that people don’t like being alone with their thoughts, I hypothesized that DMN activity is like homework for our brain — it’s necessary, but also (by definition) not stimulating. High connectivity in the DMN is also correlated with depression and rumination, another reason why we may naturally avoid this state of mind.

Reading this was a bit of a lightbulb moment for me, because it backs the theory I was already pondering about whether we are actively avoiding this state of mind through our addiction to technology? And how long before we start to see this taking an impact our our mental health?

To be honest, we are probably already there.

We already know that our attention spans are shorter than ever. One study by King’s College London found that not only do people significantly underestimate how often they check their phones, but they are also physically unable to not check their devices while focusing on other things.

If we can’t focus on parenting or working without checking our phones, how are we ever going to gain the benefits of an active Default Mode Network? No wonder all of my best ideas come to me when I’m driving down the A19, because there is probably no other moment in the day when I am not doing three things at once.

It’s like a dam breaking under the pressure of a torrential downpour. If the thoughts keep on coming, and we don’t give them space, they will leak out at the least convenient of times.

I also wanted to quickly circle back to the suggestion Mariah made about how we keep busy so as to avoid being ‘alone with our thoughts’. It seems ironic to me that we do everything we can to avoid the DMN so as to not ruminate, but then so many of us can’t get to sleep at night due to a slew of doom-and-gloom thoughts.

My thoughts (as someone completely unqualified to make such hypotheses) are that if we don’t make time for our brains to do what they need to do, then it will simply force us to. It’s a bit like how people often get ill on the first day of their holidays - because it comes after a period of high cortisol levels, which is directly linked to a lower immune system.

I wonder if I give my brain space to do what it needs to do, will it reward me in return?

By removing digital distractions, and giving my brain time to process thoughts, will I stop falling into a doom pit before bed? Or waking up with anxious sweats? Even better, will I start to get better creative ideas as these pathways are allowed to connect more frequently without the necessity for reward?

Over the next few weeks, I am going to experiment with this. I will leave my phone in another room, check myself when scrolling around my toddler, and maybe set some usage restrictions on my phone. Let me know in the comments below if you have ever done anything like this before or if you have any thoughts on the waging war between screentime addiction and our brains’ natural processes. I’d love to hear from you.

Here are a few things I’ve enjoyed this week:

📚 I Hope This Finds You Well by Natalie Sue - A fun debut novel that will likely strike a chord with anyone who has experienced toxic office culture.

📚 Private Rites by Julia Armfield - From the author of one of my favourite books of recent years, Our Wives Under The Sea, this novel is dripping with existential dread. Set during a climate crisis in a not-too-distant future, three sisters come together following the death of their estranged father, who was a famous architect preparing for the end-of-times. I think I preferred Armfield’s first novel, but this was still a fantastic read. Her prose is so beautiful, I don’t think there's any other author out there writing like her.

📽️ Longlegs (In Theatres Now) - We went to see this much-anticipated horror starring Maika Monroe and Nic Cage at the cinema last week, and we weren’t disappointed. I don’t often find myself feeling truly scared by a film, but this one got me good.

📽️ Past Lives (Netflix) - I’m late to this one, but I finally watched one of the most highly acclaimed films of 2023. I really loved this, and I think I need to watch it again to fully experience the subtleties of the cultural nuances.

🎧I’m on Spotify!

If you like the audio version of this newsletter, you can listen to them all over on Spotify. Here’s last week’s:

💌 About this email

I’m Ellen, and I write about mental health for the chronically online. I am a freelance copywriter, strategist and web designer, and I work from home with my husband, Craig, at Content By The Sea. We have two rescue greyhounds, Potter and Harmony, and a toddler.

I started this newsletter in March 2020 and have sent over 170 emails; currently, I have over 1,200 subscribers. I write about a wide variety of topics, including diet culture, my love of running, jealousy, my life falling apart, mam guilt, and this dystopian world we all live in.

💛 How you can support me

If you like reading my weekly emails, you can give me a kickback in one or more of the following ways:

📨 Share this post

📬 Subscribe for free (if you haven’t already!)

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The current perks of being a paid subscriber are receiving one extra Touching Grass email each month with all of my top films, shows, podcasts and books. And, most importantly, you are supporting me to keep writing this newsletter week after week.

Get full access to Conversations By The Sea at ellenforster.substack.com/subscribe

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This morning, I took Potter to the vet for his monthly arthritis injection and drove past my childhood street. I no longer live in my hometown (because I can’t afford to), and my family home now belongs to someone else.

Though angsty teenage me sometimes resented where I grew up, I now see in a totally different light. As I passed by my old street today, I was overwhelmed by how lucky I was to grow up somewhere so beautiful and safe. I had access to everything I needed, and I could play outside with minimal risk. What a privilege that was.

I’d never recognised that privilege until I met people from outside of my immediate area in my late teens and early twenties. I also encountered people who were far more privileged than me. For example, young people who didn’t have part-time jobs while studying, or owned cars in their teens, always had the latest trends, etc.

Privilege is a divisive topic, because no one likes to acknowledge that they have it. There is a common misunderstanding that recognising that you have privilege will somehow erase the hardships you have experienced to get where you are.

You can be privileged and still suffer.

I can’t help but laugh when someone from the baby boomer generation tells me how much harder we (Millenials) have it. I have even heard my own peers remark about Gen Z and Alpha, saying that things are easier for them than they ever were for us.

Some of these theories can be proven or disproven through cold, hard facts; while others can only be assessed through qualitative conversations exploring the lived reality of every individual. At the end of the day, we can only speak in averages, and each person’s experience may not be comparable, even if they are the same demographic on paper.

In 1969, the average first-time buyer was 25, and the average first-time house price was £4,000. Now, only 8% of people own a home by 25. In fact, over a third of homes in the UK are owned by families where at least one occupant is 65 or over. That’s what I call privilege.

Saying that, privilege isn’t a static thing. Many of those buying homes in 1969 would have been anything but privileged. Their parents likely fought in or witnessed WWII, and there was little to no research or literature on spousal abuse. Getting a divorce was very difficult until the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973, and it was actually legal for a spouse to rape their husband or wife until 2003.

A woman was unlikely to get a mortgage on her own until the late 1970s, and only in 1975 could they open a bank account in their own name.

So, when you think about a woman living in an unhappy, or abusive marriage, but owning a home with her husband in 1970… is she privileged because she was able to buy a house (thanks to her husband)? Or do the circumstances outweigh the benefits of privilege?

When you were born has a huge impact on your privilege— but that doesn’t stay fixed for your whole life. There will be women of that generation who experienced great hardship but now enjoy more privilege and financial freedom than those born later.

Nuance is the worst enemy of privilege

While writing this piece, I have googled all sorts of pointless questions like: “are we more privileged now than before?” and “who is the most privileged type of person?” and the only conclusion I can draw is that you can only measure privilege to a certain extent, and then it’s up for debate after that.

If you tell someone to check their privilege, you can guarantee this won’t land well. Most people do not like being told they have privilege, because it’s believed by some that having privilege means you didn’t work hard to get where you are today.

Ignorance is bliss

I’m sure you all remember that infamous interview with Masterchef star Gregg Wallace, in which he shared his totally bonkers perfect Saturday, where he only mentions his young child with wife, Anne-Marie Sterpini, at 1:30 in the afternoon. Where is your child until lunch, Gregg? Oh, he’s with your wife and her mother, who lives with you to provide “help in the house”.

I can’t help but think the editorial team had a good chuckle at this piece as they prepared to publish it, knowing fine well what a rage-baiting media storm it would bring. The level of privilege presented in this article is truly meme-worthy.

The issue isn’t that Gregg is privileged, as I’d argue most celebrities of his stature have help around the house, and are able to provide for their families on just one income. It’s the fact that he is completely ignorant of it. Playing his computer game for two hours in the middle of the day, when he has a job, a wife, a young child and all of the other responsibilities of any man his age? That’s wild.

Obviously, this is an extreme example, but it leads on nicely to the next section…

Male privilege is a whole other ball game

I think privilege is much more complex than the BuzzFeed quiz leads us to believe. Sure, if you are male, white, not disabled, and live in the Global North, then you have privilege. But this blanket attitude is only fuel in the fire of Men’s Rights Activists, who argue that this is the hardest time to be a man. It’s worth mentioning that MRAs are likely feeling the pinch of a drive toward diversity, meaning they are no longer the default choice for jobs or opportunities as the talent pool broadens.

The truth is, if everyone else is finally getting the boost they deserve, you will probably feel like you are being taken down a peg.

Why check your privilege?

This all comes down to empathy. If you are able to identify areas of your own life where you have received opportunities that others may have not, then you are well on your way to checking your privilege.

Knowing you have privilege in one area of your life may not translate to another. For example, I am a white woman who attended a state school in a middle-class area, but I am also a self-employed parent who lacks familial childcare support. I can see how, by virtue of being able to work from home, I am able to pay for childcare for my daughter, and in many ways, this is a privilege. But that’s not to say I didn’t overcome adversity or work hard to get where I am now.

I’m interested to hear what you think about this nuanced subject, how you would react to being called privileged, and whether you identify with this term at all. Let me know in the comments below.

I wouldn’t be surprised if this July ended up being the wettest one on record. Any and all touching of grass requires you to bring significant waterproof layers at all times. I did get down to the beach with our daughter at the weekend, and she managed about 30 seconds before falling into a puddle. So, we took shelter at the cafe and enjoyed an ice lolly while looking out across the wild North Sea.

Often, I find myself not wanting to do anything because the weather is rubbish, but then I remember it’s just water, and sometimes you just have to get outside anyway.

Other things I’ve enjoyed this week:

🎙️Films To Be Buried With - Best Films of the Year 2023 with Nish Kumar - I finally finished listened to this two-parter episode of one of my favourite podcasts. I’ve got so many films I need to catch up with now!

🎥 May December (NowTV) - I watched this based on a recommendation of the previous. It’s loosely based on the real story of Mary Kay Letourneau, who was charged with sexual assault of her 12-year-old student, only to get out many years later and marry him as an adult, and even give birth to his children in prison. The setup of the film is particularly interesting, as it follows Natalie Portman who is living with Julianne Moore (the Mary Kay character) as she is going to play her in a film about her life.

Before I go, I just want to mention my fundraising campaign for this year’s GNR. As usual, I am running for Pancreatic Cancer UK, a charity which is very close to my heart following my mam’s premature passing in 2019.

🎧I’m on Spotify!

If you like the audio version of this newsletter, you can listen to them all over on Spotify. Here’s last week’s:

💌 About this email

I’m Ellen, and I write about mental health for the chronically online. I am a freelance copywriter, strategist and web designer, and I work from home with my husband, Craig, at Content By The Sea. We have two rescue greyhounds, Potter and Harmony, and a toddler.

I started this newsletter in March 2020 and have sent over 170 emails; currently, I have over 1,200 subscribers. I write about a wide variety of topics, including diet culture, my love of running, jealousy, my life falling apart, mam guilt, and this dystopian world we all live in.

💛 How you can support me

If you like reading my weekly emails, you can give me a kickback in one or more of the following ways:

📨 Share this post

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The current perks of being a paid subscriber are receiving one extra Touching Grass email each month with all of my top films, shows, podcasts and books. And, most importantly, you are supporting me to keep writing this newsletter week after week.

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Growing up, everyone in my family voted. But they never talked about who they voted for. In fact, when I was very young, I thought it was an unspoken rule that you never discussed which party got your vote; this notion was perpetuated by ceremoniously hiding in the voting booth and covertly slipping your paper into the secret ballot box.

A few years later, it became clear to me that many people did talk openly about politics—we just didn’t in our wider family because it caused a ruckus.

In my house, there was no significant disagreement. My mam worked for the NHS for 30 years and lived through the diminutive pay rises for nurses while she and one other specialist nurse covered a radius of hundreds of miles, providing much-needed care for patients with Multiple Sclerosis (MS). My dad worked in waste management and later environmental services, including for the Environment Agency, so even at a very young age, I was aware of climate issues and how we can minimise our impact on the planet.

However, in our wider family, political opinions diverged, and my mam would joke that my grandparents ‘canceled each other out’ at the polling station. In my teens, I was (and still am) up for a good debate, so I would wind-up my grandad to no end about his Thatcherite opinions, fighting the typical fight of any politically-charged young person growing up in the North East listening to Rage Against the Machine amidst the downfall of local industry, normalisation of casual racism and wars in the Middle East.

Most of these debates were light-hearted, and I would typically get told to shut up and sent to watch Nickelodeon in the other room. However, for many families, politics is more than just a heated discussion topic; it can tear people apart. Lily O’Farrell’s podcast No Worries If Not has a great episode about what happens when families are destroyed by political beliefs, especially when misinformation and conspiracy theories take precedence over family ties.

Last week’s General Election saw a voter turnout of just 59.9%, down 7.4% from the previous election to result in the lowest turnout since 2001. For context, the Brexit Referendum drew a 72% turnout.

I’m not one to speculate about the specifics of why fewer people are voting, but I think one of the big answers to this issue lies in the disillusionment of young people.

There were people eligible to vote last week who could not remember life before Tory rule. This, to me, is crazy to consider, especially given I still feel like a young voter.

Fewer than half of 18-24-year-olds voted in the 2019 General Election, I will be interested to see if this number is higher or lower for the recent vote, but I suspect lower. If young people don’t vote, they are left to live with the consequences of decisions made by those who may not even live to see the results. A study in The New European poses that over four million Brexit voters have since passed away, likely older voters who backed the Leave campaign two-to-one.

Voting is a civil right and one we should exercise until our final moments on this planet. But if young people don’t turn up and older people vote in their own interests rather than those of next generations, what hope do we have for the future of the ballot?

The reality of this theory rang true in last week’s General Election, as the right-wing Reform Party picked up 14% of the vote share, acquiring its first-ever parliamentary seats and making milkshake-target, ale-quaffing Nigel Farage an MP for the first time in his 30-year political career. For context, this makes Reform the third biggest political party in the UK. This is a party with several candidates (including the one in my own constituency of Cramlington and Killingworth) who did not actually turn up to the count. In fact, Reform is now being pressured to prove some of their candidates were real.

Reform came second in my area. 9,454 people voted for a man who did not come to the count. He did not send me any leaflets, and his people did not knock on my door during the election campaign. There is no photo or biography of him on the party website. He is a faceless man who acquired over 20% of the vote share. I am absolutely dumbfounded.

I wonder how many of those who voted for Farage and his cronies will no longer be Earthside when the next election comes around? Or will we see the next generation of voters shift further right? It all depends on what happens under this new government, of course.

Whatever happens in the next four years, we must not stop talking about politics. Last week’s election taught us that complacency gives power to extremists, as those with radical views will always turn out to vote, regardless of whether you do too.

That’s why, unlike my own upbringing, I will talk about who I voted for with my child, and I will tell her why. I will explain to her whose interests I am voting in and what that means for the most vulnerable people in society. I will expose her to those who are less privileged than her and encourage her to develop empathy for people who do not receive the same opportunities as her. She can recognise her privilege while also understanding that being a female born and raised in the North East of England will bring many of its own struggles.

It’s okay to disagree, and debates will help improve our understanding and firmly establish our own political motivations. That being said, I know all too well how emotional these discussions can be. If you find it stressful to talk to family members or work colleagues about politics, then it’s fine to remove yourself from the situation to protect your own mental health.

If you want a less chaotic breakdown of what happened in last week’s General Election, I highly recommend ‘s Wor Room.

Last weekend, I ran the Great North 10k. I didn’t get a personal best, but I really enjoyed the day legging it around some of the most iconic landmarks Newcastle has to offer— including over the Tyne Bridge twice. I always recommend fledging GNR runners take on this route as preparation for the big day, and it was a humbling experience for me to say the least.

With that in mind, I am launching my fundraising campaign for this year’s GNR. As usual, I am running for Pancreatic Cancer UK, a charity which is very close to my heart following my mam’s premature passing in 2019.

Please consider donating to this fantastic cause. This small charity does incredible work carrying out research into the early detection of one of the most deadly cancers.

Other things I’ve enjoyed this week include:

📚 Margo’s Got Money Troubles by Rufi Thorpe - I absolutely loved this hilarious novel about a young woman who falls pregnant with her college professor and decides to embark on an interesting career with help from her pro-wrestler father. I was really sad when this ended, which is usually a sign of a very special book indeed.

🎥 MaXXXine - We went to the cinema to see the third installment of director Ti West’s horror franchise and, despite mixed reviews, I wasn’t disappointed. As usual, Mia Goth dominated the screen with her amazing performance. She really is the Scream Queen of this generation.

🎧I’m on Spotify!

If you like the audio version of this newsletter, you can listen to them all over on Spotify. Here’s last week’s:

💌 About this email

I’m Ellen, and I write about mental health for the chronically online. I am a freelance copywriter, strategist and web designer, and I work from home with my husband, Craig, at Content By The Sea. We have two rescue greyhounds, Potter and Harmony, and a toddler.

I started this newsletter in March 2020 and have sent over 170 emails; currently, I have over 1,200 subscribers. I write about a wide variety of topics, including diet culture, my love of running, jealousy, my life falling apart, mam guilt, and this dystopian world we all live in.

💛 How you can support me

If you like reading my weekly emails, you can give me a kickback in one or more of the following ways:

📨 Share this post

📬 Subscribe for free (if you haven’t already!)

💬 Leave a comment on this newsletter

💰Sign up to be a paid supporter of the newsletter for just £4 a month or £40 a year.

The current perks of being a paid subscriber are receiving one extra Touching Grass email each month with all of my top films, shows, podcasts and books. And, most importantly, you are supporting me to keep writing this newsletter week after week.

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You only have to glance at last weekend’s Glastonbury lineup to see how many acts from our youth are making their big comeback. Avril Lavigne, Bombay Bicycle Club, Bloc Party, Sugababes, Gossip and The Vaccines are all artists I would associate with my younger years. Meanwhile, Green Day performed at Wembley last week, celebrating 30 years of Dookie and 20 (yes, TWENTY) years of American Idiot. Netflix even dropped a Nickelback documentary exploring the band’s experience as the butt of the joke for the last two decades.

So, what is happening with us millennials?

I think there are a few factors at play here.

• We can choose

This is the first time in our lives that we (millennials) have had both the money and the means to attend festivals and gigs for those bands we’ve always wanted to see. My own example of this would be buying tickets to Interpol’s 20th Anniversary tour of Antics, having missed seeing them in my home city in 2007 when their gig clashed with Kings of Leon. I can finally see Banks et al in the flesh, something my 16-year-old self would have killed for.

• The power of nostalgia

None of us is immune to the warm, fuzzy feeling of nostalgia. We all look back with rose-tinted spectacles, and music plays a huge part in this.

This is the first time in a millennial’s lifecycle that our past is far enough away to be deemed nostalgic.

I am particularly fascinated by the journey we’ve been on with an act like Avril, whom we idolised in the 2000s and ridiculed with a death hoax in the 2010s. She entered the limelight at just 17 with her debut album, Let Go. By the time she released Girlfriend in 2007, many of us had moved on from our pop-punk era in favour of a more grown-up aesthetic, making this ultra-catchy anthem a bit, well… cringe.

But now, we embrace the cringe of our younger selves. We share photos of how we used to dress as teens and still remember all the lyrics to our favourite songs. While I’ve always been a massive hipster, I still remember singing along to Complicated fondly, and I’d be lying if I said I never wore a studded belt or fingerless gloves.

And now, many millennials are becoming parents themselves, and being a bit cringe is integral to being a parent. We’re sharing our youth with our kids, baggy jeans and all.

Green Day, for example, fell out of favour twice, gaining nostalgia points with both Millenials and young Gen-Xers. The band’s initial rise to fame took place over the 90s and early 00s. Their popularity was actually on the decline upon the release of the now-smash hit American Idiot, an angry tirade against Bush’s presidency and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Green Day then faded into obscurity again in the early 2010s when, like Avril, their angry pop-punk style no longer fit with the trending tastes. Don’t get me wrong; I’m not saying Green Day didn’t continue to attract crowds throughout the last two decades, but only now are they drawing 80,000 people to Wembley Stadium.

Everything cool eventually becomes uncool, but only the greatest trends get a second chance at glory.

Nostalgia is very profitable indeed, especially for a band with such a wide generational appeal as Green Day.

• It’s been a rough ride

Depending on where you fall in the millennial cycle (born between ‘81 and ‘96), your own experiences will differ— but one thing’s for sure: it’s been a rough ride being a millennial. We have lived experiences before the advent of the internet; we were likely studying or even starting our careers during the Great Recession (2008), and then, just as we got to grips with our adult lives, the pandemic hit and took it all away. There are only so many “once in a lifetime” experiences a person can handle.

When things are hard, music can help us both channel our rage and escape our daily struggles. And the music we grew up with is particularly powerful. In fact, studies have shown that, for all generations, whatever we listen to between the ages of 13 and 16 plays a formative role in our music tastes for the rest of our lives.

• We’ve stopped caring

Regardless of what generation you were born in, this one will ring true. When you are young, you care about absolutely everything. You don’t want to be seen as weird or like an outcast. Often you curate your tastes to align with trends, so as to fit in. Like all generations before us, millennials have finally outgrown this stage.

We just don’t care anymore. Belting our hearts out to Sugababes in a muddy field? Know all the words to Sk8r Boi? Actually don’t think Nickelback are that bad? Whatever your guilty pleasure, there’s no guilt in it anymore— we’re pretty much all over 30. We aren’t getting any younger. Let’s just enjoy things.

In the spirit of the great millennial comeback, I’d love to know what you’re bringing back. Excited for Freaky Friday 2? Went to see Mean Girls The Musical? Getting flashbacks to Gossip’s Standing In The Way Of Control in the trailer for Skins? Got tickets to see Blink-182 at Leeds Fest? Let me know how you’re honouring your millennial self in the comments below.

This week, I’ve been working away on various projects (including last month’s Touching Grass round-up available for paid members!). Here are some things I’ve enjoyed this week:

📚 Soldier Sailor by Claire Kilroy - Women’s Prize-shortlisted novel written in second-person to the narrator’s infant child. This beautiful book explores post-partum mental health, the mental load, marital conflicts and the wonder of having a baby. I highly recommend all mothers pick this up; it’ll break your heart, then fix it again.

📺 The Good Girl’s Guide To Murder (BBC Adaptation) - I remember thinking this book was a little YA for me, and the show definitely goes heavy into that realm, but it’s still a fun, easy watch.

That’s all from me this week— don’t forget to vote today!

Ellen x

🎧I’m on Spotify!

If you like the audio version of this newsletter, you can listen to them all over on Spotify. Here’s last week’s:

💌 About this email

I’m Ellen, and I write about mental health for the chronically online. I am a freelance copywriter, strategist and web designer, and I work from home with my husband, Craig, at Content By The Sea. We have two rescue greyhounds, Potter and Harmony, and a toddler.

I started this newsletter in March 2020 and have sent over 170 emails; currently, I have over 1,200 subscribers. I write about a wide variety of topics, including diet culture, my love of running, jealousy, my life falling apart, mam guilt, and this dystopian world we all live in.

💛 How you can support me

If you like reading my weekly emails, you can give me a kickback in one or more of the following ways:

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For a little while now, I’ve been keeping a list of lessons my mam taught me. As I get older and further into my own motherhood journey, I realise how many things I do are influenced by the teachings she shared with me during her life.

If you are a regular reader of this newsletter, then you’ll already know that my mam passed away in April 2019 after a very short battle with pancreatic cancer. She was 59, and I was 27.

My mam was born in the 1960s, raised three children in the 1980s and 90s, and worked for the NHS as a highly qualified nurse for over 30 years.

I’d be lying if I said we had a perfect relationship. Mother-daughter relationships are complicated at the best of times, never mind when we were both extremely stubborn people living in a very stressful environment. That being said, she did impart some fantastic wisdom in her lifetime.

So, this week, I just want to share that list of little lessons she taught me in honour of how she continues to influence my life every single day. You might not agree with them all, or they might be things you take for granted. Either way, I think it’s a nice way to remember the small ways a person has impacted your life for a long time after they’ve gone.

• Always check the label (inside left) to find out what an item of clothing is made from— cotton is best.

• You can tell if a pineapple is ripe by pulling out a leaf—if it comes out easily, then it’s ready to eat.

• Air out wounds wherever possible

• Cut the stems off flowers before you put them in a vase

• Add sugar to tomato pasta/pizza sauce to neutralise acidity (I’ve since learned bicarb of soda does this, too; I wish I could tell her!)

• Rinse tinned pulses to make them easier to digest

• Teabag and water first when making a cup of tea

• Never trust a man who wears his keys on his belt (I'm not sure where this one came from).

• Never take ibuprofen on an empty stomach

• How to make a salad dressing: acid (squeeze orange or lime), sugar (honey or maple syrup for me), olive oil, and wholegrain mustard. It never fails.

I’d love to hear some of the wisdom imparted to you by loved ones who are no longer around. Let me know in the comments below.

The sun is finally shining here in the NE! It was glorious for about five minutes, but now I’m too hot and grumpy.

Things I’ve enjoyed this week:

📚 Seven Days In June by Tia Williams - A whirlwind romance that got me out of a reading rut.

📺 House of the Dragon (S2) - The show that needs no introduction is back on NowTV.

🎭 The Underdog: The Other Other Brontë - I went to see this fantastic production at Northern Stage and thoroughly enjoyed it.

I’m running the GNR (again)

Please sponsor me for my third Great North Run in September. As usual, I am raising money for Pancreatic Cancer UK, a fantastic charity that is making huge scientific progress towards early diagnosis of the world’s most deadly cancer.

This year, I’ll be taking on the route with my brother Joe and husband Craig. This is the first time all three of us have tackled the run together, so it’ll be a great day.

Please consider donating to this fantastic charity. Although it is not as widely supported as some of the bigger organisations, the work it does is invaluable to both patients and families of those with this often fatal condition.

That’s all from me this week. See you next week for more of the same,

Ellen

💌 About this email

I’m Ellen, and I write about mental health for the chronically online. I am a freelance copywriter, strategist and web designer, and I work from home with my husband, Craig, at Content By The Sea. We have two rescue greyhounds, Potter and Harmony, and a toddler.

I started this newsletter in March 2020 and have sent over 170 emails; currently, I have over 1,200 subscribers. I write about a wide variety of topics, including diet culture, my love of running, jealousy, my life falling apart, mam guilt, and this dystopian world we all live in.

💛 How you can support me

If you like reading my weekly emails, you can give me a kickback in one or more of the following ways:

📨 Share this post

📬 Subscribe for free (if you haven’t already!)

💬 Leave a comment on this newsletter

💰Sign up to be a paid supporter of the newsletter for just £4 a month or £40 a year.

The current perks of being a paid subscriber are receiving one extra Touching Grass email each month with all of my top films, shows, podcasts and books. And, most importantly, you are supporting me to keep writing this newsletter week after week.

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I want to start off with a huge thank you to everyone who read last week’s very vulnerable newsletter about coming home from holiday early. I didn’t wake up intending to share something so personal, but the replies flooding in made it all worth it. If you missed it, you can read it here.

We got rejected

A couple of months ago, we were invited to bid for a project. We made it to the last two suppliers, but we didn't win the job.

Obviously, I was disappointed. As with any bid, I put my heart and soul into the pitch. I'm also very confident about what we do, and that we are really bloody good at it. And with little-to-no practical feedback, it was hard to work out why we didn't get picked.

Since then, we have actually picked up another client with whom we are even more excited to work. A brand that aligns closely with our values, and one that makes a real difference to the lives of many people.

Winning that latter project is part of why I am writing about the initial rejection now and not when it first happened.

Even after five years of running my own business, I still take rejection personally. This has nothing to do with the client, it's all on me.

There are so many reasons why people take rejection at work so personally. Without psychoanalysing myself too much, I suspect it has something to do with the pride I take in my work. I put a lot of myself into it, so when it is rejected, it can be hard to differentiate between which parts are me and which are the project. I could always not do that, but then I don’t think the work would be as good.

While I recognise it's not healthy to take every rejection personally, I do think it can be beneficial to have skin in the game. It's how you process rejection and what you do next that truly matters.

When you initially get rejected for a job application or don't win a bid, it's okay to feel angry and frustrated. But once the dust settles, you have to think about what you are taking from this experience.

Take responsibility for the role you played

You have to be gentle with yourself here, but it's worth looking at the rejection from an outside perspective, or even asking for feedback. Is there something you could have done differently? Take this into your next bid.

It's probably not about you

There are so many reasons why clients appoint suppliers, and often, it has less to do with the pitch than it does with the rapport they form. You will know yourself that some clients just get you and those are almost always the ones that stick with you for the long haul.

There's something else around the corner

I am absolutely not a spiritual or even superstitious person. However, I have found that a rejection is never the end of your story. Within days of losing the original project, we received an invitation to pitch for another. If we had won the first, we wouldn't have had the capacity to take on the latter and give it the care and attention it deserves. At the risk of sounding all icky about it, it was meant to be.

Rejection and ADHD

Rejection sensitivity is actually a common symptom of neurodivergence. Regular readers will know that my husband Craig has written about his ADHD in this newsletter before, but he didn't really touch on this little-known characteristic. I asked him to contribute his own insight into rejection and why it can be hard for people with ADHD to process it. Here's what he had to say:

Rejection eats at me like nothing else in my life. I hold on to negative remarks people made about me in school, nearly 20 years later. I push people with my jokes or my devil's advocate nature and then panic when I actually tip them over into being upset or angry at me and scramble desperately to win them back over. Because the alternative, to have someone reject or be disappointed in me, is too painful to bear.

When it's something I've created, like a piece for work, there's an added level of panic whenever I send stuff off to clients. As soon as I open my creative efforts to any type of opinion or feedback, I've exposed a vital part of myself. A hidden, secret hope that lives inside me that wants to be enjoyed and appreciated - but now suddenly faces the judgement of another person.

And that judgement, no matter how small, can be the difference between a good day and bad. It can, in some cases, be the push that sends me spiralling into a depression where I'm no good at my job, a terrible writer and I'm going to end up on the streets because why would anyone pay me if I can't even do this right...

You get the idea. Rejection, for me, isn't some obstacle that can be passed. It's an anchor that ties itself to my ambitions and drags them back down.

The only thing I'm very proud of is that I never let my rejection sensitivity prevent me from taking a chance. I walked into an MMA gym as a clueless teenager who'd been bullied in school. I tried spoken word poetry to see if I could do it. I went travelling even though I'm scared of flying.

Rejection sensitivity can't define me. It lives with me and is a part of me, but like anything else I'm learning to deal with it.

I can't be everyone's friend. I won't always get flawless feedback. Nobody wins every time. But I can't let that stop me from giving it a go anyway. What else is there to do? Give up?

I reject that.

This week I went to Atomicon, a huge annual sales and marketing conference that takes place here in the North East. I’ve noticed the event gaining traction over the last few years, so I figured I would give it a go, as I knew many of my freelance friends would be in attendance. The event itself wasn’t really my cup of tea. Although there were a few really good talks, the overall vibe of the day was a little ✨live laugh love✨ for me. I am glad I went, as I got to meet some of my internet pals, but I don’t think I’ll be back at this specific event in a hurry.

Other things I’ve enjoyed this week include:

📺 Lost Boys and Fairies (BBC) - Fantastic drama about a gay couple who are hoping to adopt their first child. Grab the tissues, this is a sad one.

📺 The Boys (S4 - Prime) - The dystopian superhero show is back, and it’s just as chaotically disgusting as ever.

📖 Blue Sisters by Coco Mellors - The author of Cleopatra and Frankenstein is back with another lit-fic novel; however, unlike the previous, this one really lives up to the hype. I was even hesitant about trying this book as I didn’t love C&F, but the good reviews encouraged me to dip in, and I am glad I did. This is a story of sisterhood and breaking intergenerational trauma. I highly recommend it.

That’s all from me this week, see you next Thursday for more of the same.

Ellen x

💌 About this email

I’m Ellen, and I write about mental health for the chronically online. I am a freelance copywriter, strategist and web designer, and I work from home with my husband, Craig, at Content By The Sea. We have two rescue greyhounds, Potter and Harmony, and a toddler.

I started this newsletter in March 2020 and have sent over 170 emails; currently, I have over 1,200 subscribers. I write about a wide variety of topics, including diet culture, my love of running, jealousy, my life falling apart, mam guilt, and this dystopian world we all live in.

💛 How you can support me

If you like reading my weekly emails, you can give me a kickback in one or more of the following ways:

📨 Share this post

📬 Subscribe for free (if you haven’t already!)

💬 Leave a comment on this newsletter

💰Sign up to be a paid supporter of the newsletter for just £4 a month or £40 a year.

The current perks of being a paid subscriber are receiving one extra Touching Grass email each month with all of my top films, shows, podcasts and books. And, most importantly, you are supporting me to keep writing this newsletter week after week.

Get full access to Conversations By The Sea at ellenforster.substack.com/subscribe

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Not only did I take an impromptu week off this newsletter, but I am also darkening your inbox on a Thursday afternoon rather than my usual morning slot. For all of that, I can only apologise. Quite honestly, I’ve been struggling.

As the title suggests, we’ve been on holiday. We went away for a few days to a caravan park, but we came home early because, basically, I couldn’t cope. This is one of those weeks where I could easily ignore my own internal turmoil and choose a more generic topic to write about, but that’s not what this newsletter is about.

You all signed up to receive a weekly email in which I basically pour my heart out, press send, and then ignore that it ever happened. So here it goes.

Anyway, back to our holiday.

I have never been particularly good away from home. I can’t remember if I’ve shared this story before (it’s been four years of writing this!), but one of the most notable occasions of me returning home with my tail between my legs was when I bailed on my university year abroad within in a few weeks of touching down in Barcelona. There were so many factors contributing to my failure here; most notably, I was working a 60-hour week at a very well-known hotel chain for 200€ a month pay and no benefits. I stood all day in a hotel lobby, mostly speaking English, and therefore, not improving my Spanish skills whatsoever.

This took place in 2011— a time before social media felt like a safe place to meet people. I didn’t know anyone in the city, and had no idea how to find others like me. I was also quite unwell with IBS, and the added stress of this meant I struggled to stray far from my apartment. All in all, I called it quits and flew home in time to start my final year of uni without the necessary linguistic skills (and somehow I still bagged a 2:1?).

I have always been the person to leave the situation first. I would skip out on sleepovers as a child, and even in my late teens, I’d prefer to hop on the last metro home rather than stay out until the lights came on in the club. Throughout my life, I’ve felt bad for this behaviour. Like it was somehow a character flaw that my social battery didn’t last as long as others, or that I was overwhelmed in situations where others thrive.

As an adult, especially in my thirties, I have become a lot more comfortable with who I am. I don’t really care if I’m the first to leave, and I don’t mind missing out on something if I know I will struggle. But this little caravan holiday caught me by surprise. It came after a busy few weeks, with the Edinburgh Half Marathon, a packed work schedule, a trip to Glasgow, and a few evenings out all piling up against each other. This holiday was supposed to be relaxing, but with a toddler and two dogs in tow, it’s very difficult to switch off at all.

I’m actually starting to find that I need to reframe holidays in general. A holiday isn’t necessarily going to be relaxing, especially while we have a young child. Not least due to the packing, washing, shopping, and other jobs that lead up to the trip but also because my own tolerance for certain situations leaves a lot to be desired.

I still struggle with my own internal judgement here. I feel as though I should be able to just go somewhere, drink a few beers, dance the night away, and rock up at the pool the next day. But, in reality, packing knocks me sick, alcohol makes me anxious, I’m overstimulated in the disco, can’t sleep in the bed, and want to die when my feet are still wet in my socks after a dip in the too-cold pool.

I haven’t delved too deeply into my sensory issues in this newsletter before because, quite frankly, I don’t like to complain. And also, I have been living with some of these issues for so long that I genuinely thought it was normal.

I know that many people live with debilitating problems that everything being a bit too loud for me isn’t really the same. But that being said, it takes a lot out of me doing these things that I personally find difficult (being near other people eating, going in public pools, hearing too-loud music, sleeping in an unfamiliar bed).

Previously, I have probably coped a lot better because I was only taking care of myself. But now I am a parent, my own needs always come second to those of my child, and, as a result, I end up in situations where I am stressed and uncomfortable, and often don’t even realise until the anxiety and fatigue hit hours or even days later.

So, I can’t sit here and say, “Be kind to yourself,” when I am struggling with that very thing. In all honesty, I am frustrated at myself. I don’t like that I now have to wear earplugs to the cinema, or that I have to wear a specific thickness of socks to sleep, or that when I eat meals with other people, the sound of them eating sends me west.

These are all things I would change about myself if I could. But equally, I know deep down that these things won’t change, if anything they might get worse as I get older, so I need to work on implementing coping mechanisms now, or the excess will spill out of the sides— and that’s exactly what happened on this trip. I am the reason we came back early, and while Craig was accommodating, he didn’t want to let people down. Letting people down is something I have to do to preserve my own mental health sometimes, and I am (very slowly) coming to terms with that now.

Stuff you should read, like, now.

A quick section to promote some fantastic pieces from fellow Substackers:

is talking about negative attitudes towards children, in particular in public spaces, and why it’s become cool to “hate kids”.

And has returned to our feeds with this beautiful piece about her post-Japan comedown.

📺 Inside No.9 (BBC) One of the greatest shows of all time has come to an end. The series finale was pure self-indulgent fan service, and I loved it. If you’ve never watched this show, then you have been missing out. It’s a fantastic anthology series on par with Black Mirror.

📺 Bridgerton (Netflix) - The second half of the latest series has dropped! I have my qualms with this show in general (I preferred Queen Charlotte) but it’s the perfect escapism for me and my fragile brain right now.

🎥 Challengers - Still watching this film all the time. I don’t even like tennis. Send help.

That’s all from me, see you next week when I will hopefully be making a bit more sense!

Ellen x

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On Sunday, I ran the Edinburgh Half Marathon and achieved a lifetime PB—a time that, for many, would be disappointing, but for me, was a huge win.

I’ve written before about my experience as a late-blooming runner, having completed the Couch to 5K app during lockdown and running my first Great North Run in 2021. So, I won’t go too far into my history, but I will say this: I am not born to run.

In fact, I am not particularly genetically blessed in any form of physical movement. I am very clumsy (I actually fell twice during Edinburgh training), and my brain-to-limb connection definitely doesn’t work in the same way as those who are naturals to the sport.

What appeals to me about running is its mindful nature. You are only competing with yourself, and there is no team relying on you to achieve anything. It’s just you and your own personal goals, whatever they may be.

As a woman, it can be difficult to extricate exercise from diet culture, something I have no interest in pursuing. Of course, there are parts of the running community dedicated to weight loss; in the same way, there’s a small group of men who seem personally offended by anyone who chooses to wear a running vest for anything less than an ultra. As with any activity, you have to find your tribe.

If you’re thinking about going for a jog, then there are some great slow-running accounts to follow over on Instagram. These lasses actively fight against the superiority culture upheld by some parts of the running community.

They say:

It’s okay if you walk

It’s okay if you need to stop altogether

It’s okay to abandon a run

It’s okay to run 40min+ 5K

Even after all of that, you can still call yourself a runner.

I particularly recommend following Jenny Mannion, Runs With Emily and Celina Stephenson.

The battle of the ego

For me, running has become more than just an exercise routine. It’s a fixed point in my week where I get to be myself— not a business owner or a mother, just someone who is working towards a little personal goal and getting slightly better every day.

Having a baby in 2022 knocked my running practice back by several years. In fact, I have still yet to beat my pre-pregnancy 5K or 10K times, which is why I was so surprised to knock four minutes off my half marathon time. But maybe it wasn’t surprising at all, as I closely followed a training plan (using the Runna app), and I diligently went on every run, keeping a slow and steady pace almost all of the time.

Nothing taught me about managing my ego quite like running. I fall over, I get a cramp, I have to walk, I lose my breath, and I am overtaken by a bloke old enough to be my grandad. And yet, I keep going because, in reality, it doesn’t matter what anyone else is doing as long as you are doing your best.

Training your brain

I have definitely noticed I am starting to apply this lesson to my life outside of running. I am taking a longer-term approach to goals, and I don’t feel like progress is lost if I am ill or parenting gets in the way. For example, we recently bid for a project that we didn’t win. I’d be lying if I said I was immediately fine with it, but I definitely feel like I got over the rejection quicker than I would have in a previous life.

And, since losing that project, a few others have come to our door that we wouldn’t have had the capacity for if we had won. I’m not going to say “everything happens for a reason” because as someone who lost their mam to a vicious cancer at 27, I don’t believe this at all. But I do subscribe to the belief that things don’t always come easy, and the journey to success isn’t linear. Perhaps most importantly, success itself is different for everyone but no less worthy.

I will say that the journey to my half marathon PB was far, far more brutal than the race. If anything, the race was kind of… easy? I only noticed aches and pains in the last mile or two, and for the majority of the race, I was in Zone 3, which is a relatively relaxed heart rate zone. I didn’t push myself to go faster until the very last mile, because I had 100% faith in my training. I knew that I had put in the groundwork to get the time I wanted, that was those 10-mile runs at naptime, faced with an afternoon of parenting a toddler or squeezing interval training in before pick-up, and then not getting a shower or food until well after my daughter’s bedtime. It was uncomfortable and tiring, but it was also the thing that got me through the week.

So, whether you are embarking on Week 1 of Couch to 5K or planning an ultra marathon, you can adopt this mentality. Any goal is achievable, but success doesn’t matter as much as the journey you take to get there.

Other than running the half marathon, I have mostly been reading or working this week. Here are some highlights:

📚 All Fours by Miranda July - A very, very strange tale of menopause and mid-life wants. Go into this one with an open mind.

📚 Is This OK?: One Woman's Search For Connection Online by Harriet Gibsone: This memoir had me laughing out loud as she discussed her early exploration of the internet, including MSN Messenger, niche forums and MySpace. If you grew up on the internet in the early 00s, then I highly recommend this.

That’s all from me this week, have a good one!

Ellen x

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I just wanted to start this week’s newsletter with a big thank you to everyone who sent positive feedback about the first audio edition of the newsletter. I’m aware I speak a little too fast, which is a common Geordie trait, so I have slowed things down for this week. Hopefully, you enjoy and can take me with you on whatever it is you’re up to on this rainy Thursday lunchtime.

I’m writing this through tired eyes this morning as we went to see Bruce Springsteen at the Stadium of Light in Sunderland last night. All the half-marathon training has clearly paid off, as I danced the night away with no problem at all.

I’d be amiss not to talk about Bruce, and music in general, in this week’s newsletter, since my ears are still ringing from yelling Thunder Road into the drizzly Wearside air.

I recently heard that studies show that the music you listen to when you are young will solidify your taste for the rest of your life. So, if you’re still listening to the same bands you were when you were 14, then you’re totally normal. It’s all down to nostalgia, a very powerful drug indeed.

One study found that between the ages of 10 and 30 are when this “reminiscence bump applies”, so it makes sense that the music we listen to during our formative years will make a lasting impression. They even reckon that many people will stop listening to new music at all by the age of 30.

While I am prone to a little nostalgia, I wouldn’t say this was entirely the case for me as I have discovered plenty of fantastic (mostly female) artists in my early 30s, including Phoebe Bridgers, Self-Esteem and Wet Leg.

But that’s not to say the artists I listened to when I was a teenager haven’t stayed with me for the last two decades and continue to pull on my heartstrings every time I hear the opening chords of my favourite songs.

From 11, I attended regular gigs at the university students’ union and then the Carling Academy (now NX Newcastle). I saw some pretty incredible artists, and others I completely forgot. Highlights include Incubus (Glasgow, May 2004), Athlete (Newcastle, Oct 2007), Kings of Leon (Newcastle, Dec 2007), and many more.

When not scouring the internet for my favourite band’s latest gigs, I downloaded music to my MP3 CD Player and later Creative Zen (an iPod rip-off) to listen to on my walk to school and at break times in the yard. I have vivid memories of taking Led Zeppelin II to middle school in my CD player and sitting grumpily on the steps while listening to Heartbreaker on repeat.

And while I loved to see current bands live, it was the nostalgia of what came before that truly captured my imagination. Alongside Led Zeppelin, I was enamoured with The Doors and The Beatles— and, obviously, their deeply troubled frontmen.

The Jim Morrison fixation was one thing, but at least my extensive knowledge of John Lennon’s early life bagged me an A* in my English Language exam. I was nothing if not diligent in my fangirling.

And now we’ve come full circle back to Bruce. A core part of my youth was spent downloading bootlegged clips of Racing in the Street and watching the 1975 Hammersmith London performance on repeat. I can’t even really explain what captured my attention, as I had no experience growing up in 1950s New Jersey, but Bruce fans will tell you it’s not about the facts but the universality of the stories he tells and their brutally honest depictions of small-town life.

Being over 30 and a parent means my days of queuing at gigs from midday to try my chance at a front-row spot over, but even was the very depths of the stadium crowd, I still had the best time watching Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band perform for the fourth time in my life.

Given that Bruce is seemingly immortal, I may get a chance to see him again in my lifetime— but there are plenty of artists I never got the chance to experience live, or famous gigs I’d love to have attended.

• The Doors at the Whisky a Go Go (1966)

• Rage Against the Machine at Reading Festival (1996)

• John Frusciante at Paradiso in Amsterdam (2001)

There are probably more, but those are the top few I’ve coveted for many years.

In the comments, I’d love to know which bands you never got a chance to see live, and if there’s a single performance you’d go back in time to attend!

The weather has been crazy here in the North East this week. Only a few days ago, I was sunning it in the yard and watching the toddler play in the paddling pool, and now it’s cold and rainy again.

So, other than resting ahead of this weekend’s half marathon in Edinburgh, here are some things I’ve enjoyed:

📚Sociopath by Patric Gagne - A first-hand account of sociopathy, really interesting and nuanced. It’ll make you rethink the label often associated with the worst kind of people.

📚Bright Young Women by Jessica Knoll - On the topic of sociopaths, this novel tells a fictionalised account of a woman who survived a serial killer’s rampage in the 1970s. I believe this is based on Ted Bundy’s sorority killings, but the author purposefully chooses not to name the killer, nor does she focus on him and his actions in any way other than to tell the story of the victims and survivors.

That’s all from me this week; see you next week for more about mental health for the chronically online.

Ellen x

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This week’s newsletter has an audio counterpart. I can’t promise this every week, but I figured I’d have a go at recording it as a ‘podcast-style’ chat for those who prefer that format. Let me know what you think!

We enjoyed our first rays of sunshine here in the North East this weekend, and it was so lovely to spend time outside as a family. You can't overestimate the power of that vitamin D boost after a long, wet winter.

However, the sudden sunny weather illuminated a few unexpected feelings for me, and I’m going to talk about those this week.

It's okay if the start of summer hasn't completely transformed your mood.

Sure, the sun brings with it lighter evenings, crisp, air-dried bedsheets, and morning coffee on the doorstep. But it also shines its light on other areas, some that we may have kept hidden in the shadows, choosing to pop away in a box through the winter months.

While some might find hope in the promise of warmer weather, others may worry about their bodies. The heat came so suddenly this weekend that I had to drag my summer clothes out of my wardrobe and frantically (and sweatily) try things on to see if they fit. For many of us, the prospect of showing more skin is daunting. It’s not as easy as whipping out a pair of shorts or a floaty summer dress and getting on with our day. We grew up in the times of America’s Next Top Model, size zero, the Special K diet, ‘heroin chic’ and “nothing tastes as good as skinny feels.” That little voice doesn’t just go away. It goes into hibernation, crawling out of its pit at the first sign of sunshine, making us choose between the oppressive heat of jeans or the inherent fear of flashing some flesh.

Although I have (mostly) found peace with my own body, especially after having a baby in 2022, I am still not immune to this critical self-talk. Rather than arguing back to it, I just let it say its piece and recognise that this comes from my external environment - of course I have these thoughts, I was surrounded by this rhetoric from my earliest days as young lass growing up in the UK.

A second part of my life I'd rather keep in darkness is the state of my home. Last weekend’s glorious sun illuminated dust I didn't even know we had… and it revealed a backyard that makes North Tyneside tip look like the Costa Del Sol.

Everything’s a mess

I love my home, but when the weather gets better, I notice a green-eyed monster eyeing up those old houses with pristine French doors leading into beautiful gardens. This jealousy isn't something to be proud of, but it's there. Although, this weekend, we channelled this energy into transforming our crappy yard, clearing the rubbish and potting some ‘beautiful flowers’ (our toddler's favourite phrase other than “What the hell!”), I still found myself eyeing up those big, bountiful lawns on Instagram and comparing them to my dishevelled backyard.

Call me bitter (because I am)

The sun's oppressive rays have also shed light on another deep-seated pain of mine. My summers growing up were filled with family barbeques, trips to the beach and adventures with my grandparents. I always hoped I'd be able to gift similar memories to my own child, but it's not necessarily worked out that way. We do have some family, but it's not the same as it was for me growing up with a big extended network of loved ones. Perhaps I'm adding a dash of nostalgia to my childhood memories, but regardless, it's still painful to feel as though we are entering the summer without something that many other young families take for granted.

So, to conclude this week’s newsletter, I just wanted to say that it’s okay if the sunshine hasn’t immediately blasted away all of your negative thoughts. The weather can improve our moods, sure, but this time of year can also shine a light on some of our biggest insecurities. If you found that to be the case this weekend, then you're certainly not alone.

I've talked enough about touching grass in this week's newsletter, so let's just go straight into things I've enjoyed:

📺Happy As Lazzaro (Prime Rental) - Visionary Italian filmmaker Alice Rohrwacher’s magic realism picture is SO good. I watched this in anticipation of her latest release, La Chimera.

📺Dark Matter (Apple TV+) - Author Blake Crouch has turned his mind-bending sci-fi novel into a series starring Joel Edgerton and the inimitable Jennifer Connelly. The first two eps of this have been spot on - another great adaptation for Apple after Lessons In Chemistry.

That's all from me this week,

See you next week for more about mental health for the chronically online.

Ellen x

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This week, we're so excited to welcome Sophie Cross to the podcast. Sophie is a freelance copywriter and marketer and also runs fantastic marketing courses for freelancers under her brand, Thoughtfully.

This year, Sophie has launched the first-ever print magazine specifically designed for freelancers. Freelancer Magazine recently smashed its Kickstarter goal and the very first issue hit the shelves just this week, so it seemed like a perfect time to welcome Sophie onto Conversations By The Sea.

Find Sophie on Twitter: https://twitter.com/FullyThoughtOut​

Subscribe to Freelancer Magazine: https://www.freelancermagazine.co.uk/​

Find out more about Sophie's courses for freelancers: https://linktr.ee/thoughtfully​

You can now support Conversations By The Sea on Ko-Fi here: https://ko-fi.com/conversationsbythesea

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It's no secret that we don't agree with hustle culture... we're much more about the slow life than rise and grind. You won't catch us up at 3.30am for a tasteless protein shake or hammering at the emails until midnight.

In this week's episode, we take a closer look at two of the most famous and popular motivational speakers, Gary Vee and David Goggins.

You can also listen to this episode on Spotify.

Or watch on YouTube (recommend for full effect):

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In this week's episode, we chat to Newcastle-based digital skills and data privacy expert, Kate Watson, all about digital confidence, ageism in tech and how to work around what life throws at you.

Subscribe to Kate's fantastic newsletter here: https://cmlwconsulting.co.uk/newsletter/​

You can now support Conversations By The Sea on Ko-Fi here: https://ko-fi.com/conversationsbythesea​

You can also watch this episode on YouTube:

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In today's episode, we are chatting about how we ended up running a business together. We throwback to when we first met fresh out of uni working in a local bar, how we entered similar industries and what pushed Craig to take the leap into self-employment with Ellen.

You can now support Conversations By The Sea on Ko-Fi here: https://ko-fi.com/conversationsbythesea

--- FIND US ON SOCIAL 👇

Follow Ellen on Twitter: https://bit.ly/2N2nre6 ​

Follow Craig on Twitter: https://bit.ly/3oWV9Ps

💌 Subscribe to Conversations By The Sea Wednesday morning newsletter: https://bit.ly/3tvFdHz

Our Web Design and Content Marketing Agency, Content By The Sea: https://www.contentbythesea.co.uk

WHAT IS CONVERSATIONS BY THE SEA?🎙

This is a podcast about mental health, running a business and the bits in-between. Every Sunday, Craig and Ellen sit down and talk about topics in the realms of freelancing, productivity, hustle culture, healthy work/life balance and more. We often invite fellow freelancers on the podcast to chat about what's on their minds.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ellenforster.substack.com

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This week, we are talking about our love of dogs. From reminiscing about the time we worked at an animal shelter in Thailand to the first time we saw Potter (spoiler: it was 3 years before we adopted him), and finally how Harmony joined - and completed - our family.

🔗 Stuff we mentioned: Lanta Animal Welfare: https://lantaanimalwelfare.com/

​ Northumberland Greyhound Rescue: https://northumberlandgreyhoundrescue...

​ --- FIND US ON SOCIAL 👇

Follow Ellen on Twitter: https://bit.ly/2N2nre6

​​Follow Craig on Twitter: https://bit.ly/3oWV9Ps

​ 💌 Subscribe to Conversations By The Sea Wednesday morning newsletter: https://bit.ly/3tvFdHz

​Our Web Design and Content Marketing Agency, Content By The Sea: https://www.contentbythesea.co.uk

​WHAT IS CONVERSATIONS BY THE SEA?🎙

This is a podcast about mental health, running a business and the bits in-between. Every Sunday, Craig and Ellen sit down and talk about topics in the realms of freelancing, productivity, hustle culture, healthy work/life balance and more. We often invite fellow freelancers on the podcast to chat about what's on their minds.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ellenforster.substack.com

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In this week's episode of Conversations By The Sea, we are answering questions from the lovely freelancer community on Twitter. We chat about Ellen's journey from sole trader to VAT-registered limited company, how we are dealing with Craig's ADHD diagnosis, and how we cope with bad mental health days in the business.

Ellen mentions she is reading Grown by Tiffany D. Jackson.

You can also find us on YouTube:

--- FIND US ON SOCIAL 👇

Follow Ellen on Twitter: https://bit.ly/2N2nre6 ​

Follow Craig on Twitter: https://bit.ly/3oWV9Ps

💌 Subscribe to Conversations By The Sea Wednesday morning newsletter: https://bit.ly/3tvFdHz

Our Web Design and Content Marketing Agency, Content By The Sea: https://www.contentbythesea.co.uk

WHAT IS CONVERSATIONS BY THE SEA?🎙 This is a podcast about mental health, running a business and the bits in-between. Every Sunday, Craig and Ellen sit down and talk about topics in the realms of freelancing, productivity, hustle culture, healthy work/life balance and more. We often invite fellow freelancers on the podcast to chat about what's on their minds.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ellenforster.substack.com

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In this week's episode, it's just the two of us. We take a deep dive into Craig's career as an MMA fighter, including how he went from a bullied kid in school to winning fights in a cage.

We're both firm believers in the power of martial arts for boosting confidence, and Craig's experience is no exception to this theory. We explore the common misconceptions of a sport that has grown exponentially in popularity over the last decade and is continuing to rake in the view (and the cash).

Watch some of Craig's fights:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYJWb9huL-Y

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PPLasoYk4Q

Here's our vlog from Koh Phi Phi where drunkenly fought in a bar 😂

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PPLasoYk4Q

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​ Follow Craig on Twitter: https://bit.ly/3oWV9Ps

​

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​

Our Web Design and Content Marketing Agency, Content By The Sea: www.contentbythesea.co.uk

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ellenforster.substack.com

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This week, we are talking to freelance brand photographer, Lauren McWilliams all about dramatic career changes and bullying at work.

Lauren shares how she studied Criminology and went on to work at a homeless hostel in Newcastle Upon Tyne.

However, Lauren experienced bullying and gaslighting from peers and management, which eventually took a toll on her mental health.

Her personal love of photography guided her through such a difficult time and, eventually, she decided to try turning it into a career - and now two years have passed and For You Photography's photos have appeared all over in digital and print. Lauren started a women's collective called Duenna's Women, to support women to feel more empowered in the workplace.

FIND LAUREN:

For You Photography: https://foryounewcastle.co.uk/

For You on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/foryounewcastle/

Add Lauren on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lauren-mcwilliams-02501a87/

Find out more about Duenna's Women: https://www.facebook.com/DuennasWomen

Here are some helpful links about bullying at work:

• https://www.bullying.co.uk/

• https://www.acas.org.uk/if-youre-treated-unfairly-at-work/being-bullied

• https://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/tips-for-everyday-living/how-to-be-mentally-healthy-at-work/difficult-work-relations/

FIND US ON SOCIAL 👇

Follow Ellen on Twitter: https://bit.ly/2N2nre6 ​

Follow Craig on Twitter: https://bit.ly/3oWV9Ps ​ 💌

Subscribe to Conversations By The Sea Wednesday morning newsletter: https://bit.ly/3tvFdHz ​

Our Web Design and Content Marketing Agency, Content By The Sea: www.contentbythesea.co.uk

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ellenforster.substack.com

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This week we are delighted to welcome our very first guest, Katie Thompson of Katie Lingo, a freelance copywriter, proofreader and content marketer based in York, UK. Ellen connected with Katie in 2020 on Twitter while growing her freelance network and they soon bonded over shared experiences including studying Spanish at uni and losing a parent to Pancreatic Cancer in 2019.

In this episode, we chat about how Katie started freelancing, her plans for growing Katie Lingo and how she coped with grief while running a business. If you liked this video, please consider subscribing - we release a new episode every Sunday afternoon all about mental health, freelancing and the bits in-between!

We're also on Spotify, listen to audio-only here: https://open.spotify.com/show/6htLhMVe74dotgfIdv2MLm?si=PrPiY0ZeRLe2bEmRXiOQZg ---

🔗 Professional Copywriting and Proofreading Services from Kate Lingo: https://www.katielingo.co.uk/

🔗 Follow Katie on Twitter: https://twitter.com/katielingoyork

Connect with Katie on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katie-lingo-freelance-writer/ ---

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Our Web Design and Content Marketing Agency, Content By The Sea: www.contentbythesea.co.uk

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ellenforster.substack.com

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This week we are talking about our personal experiences with depression, including how it affects us running our business. According to Mind, 1 in 4 people in England will experience a mental health condition in their lifetime, while 1 in 6 people report experiencing a common mental health problem (like anxiety and depression) in any given week in England.

For many reasons, depression is often a difficult topic to talk about. Symptom and treatments are commonly misunderstood, too. That's why we decided to film/record this episode.

Every week, we chat about a different topic within the realms of mental health, freelancing and work culture. New podcast episodes every Sunday 💌

HELP & ADVICE FOR DEPRESSION

Samaritans - 116 123 - https://www.samaritans.org/

Mind - mind.org.uk

NHS-Approved Helplines and Support - https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/stress-anxiety-depression/mental-health-helplines/

FIND US ON SOCIAL 👇

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Subscribe to Conversations By The Sea Wednesday morning newsletter: https://bit.ly/3tvFdHz

OUR CONTENT & WEB DESIGN BUSINESS Content By The Sea - http://contentbythesea.co.uk/

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ellenforster.substack.com

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Ellen talks about the biggest lessons she's learned about being self-employed for two years, and the tragedy that started her journey into entrepeneurship.

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In the first episode of Conversation By The Sea, we’re talking about Craig’s Adult ADHD diagnosis and how that affects the way he works. Watch this episode on YouTube: https://bit.ly/3oQHaL3

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ellenforster.substack.com