Soft Evidence, April + May

proof of life (on earth)

Hi friend,

It’s been a hot minute. Literally. At the time of writing this, the air con in our car is broken, and I just paused typing to check if my hands still smell like this morning’s suncream that I wrestled onto my youngest’s milk-bottle skin in an attempt to savour the last few days of the heatwave. Why does every single supermarket suncream have that a distinct, nostalgic blend of something like plastic and childhood and synthetic coconut-vanilla? GAH, I love it.¹

This week I got to sit side by side with two dear friends at Helen’s Bay, and despite a chaotic picnic smooshed into the sand and rogue runaway children (mine, always mine!), we LOCKED IN on the catch-up. So that’s how I picture this Soft Evidence round-up finding you: a virtual edition of the side-by-side beach hang.

I’m also just going to come out and tell you what I told my friends, which is that I’ve been feeling anxious recently. And anxiety, while I have enough experience to recognise it in my body when it wakes me at 3 am, it is not the mental-health affliction my body usually bends towards. So that’s been... weird.

I told my writing bestie the same thing over voice message, and I knew she’d make the connection when I also said that writing feels very clunky at the minute.

I’m currently cooking up an essay about the London Marathon, Mile 18 in particular, where I stood for four hours melting into the concrete waiting to see Paddy for a handful of seconds. I keep getting stuck trying to find a way to tell you about the people I met and the stories I absorbed, up close and from afar, like the eternal people-watching creep that I am. For now, it’s much easier to tell you about the day before the marathon, when I was left to my own devices while Paddy did all of his runner-ish, preparing things.

That morning, the freshly released Noah Kahan album blasted while I got dressed for the day veeeery slowly, a pure luxury, and then I got coffee and an almond croissant at the market and had a mooch around the shops, trying on clothes until I sweated all my make-up off and ripped the zip on my skirt from taking it on and off so much. There were tears in the Lush store, and I met Paddy for pasta and tiramisu thanks to the gift of a very generous friend, before parting ways again for him to get a good night’s sleep and me to see Wicked (!!!).

In case you didn’t know, Wicked releases front-row tickets for the following week’s shows every Wednesday, and your girl managed to bag a £27 front-row seat for her first-ever West End show (!!!).

As is my true nature, I left my prescription sunglasses on a bus, spilt Coke down my white skirt during Defying Gravity, got the wrong Tube back to the hotel because I was absent-mindedly following the crowd, and had to write the room code on a scrap of paper with eyeliner because my phone battery was about to die.

It’s no surprise, really, because if you know me then you’ll know about the purse I lost in Rome, the phone I left in an Uber in Lisbon (with my boarding pass on it), or the other phone I left on a flight to Dubai or a train in Cambridge (because I had a baby in one hand and a book in the other, to be fair!), among many other travel faux pas.

And still, this impromptu alone time in London was one of the best days of my whole entire life.

There used to be more of this kind of thing before I met Paddy, both with my eldest son, a toddler at the time, and on my own, thanks to grandparent sleepovers. Despite being a pickpocket’s dream come true, I used to feel the exact same way about those wee bits of solo escape—suddenly fully alive, with a beating heart and blood pumping through my veins.

And then, because of some kind of misplaced forever-lurking motherhood guilt, I wondered if I was really just running away.

At the same time, it’s been a few weeks now, and I still can’t stop thinking about the Artemis 11 mission and Moonjoy, probably exacerbated by also seeing Project Hail Mary in the cinema. Which, if you aren’t familiar, is the story of a school science teacher who wakes up on a spaceship as humanity’s last hope and forms a deep emotional connection with a stranded alien called Rocky while trying to save both of their worlds.

In real actual life, we have the trailblazing Moonjoy crew completing humanity’s first crewed lunar flyby in half a century, and, in the midst of it all, they’re sending heart-shaped hand signals back to their families. They trained for years to put language to their experience, and they’re still speechless at the beauty they see. They’re telling us here on Earth that they love us “from the Moon,” and they’re naming a bright spot on the lunar surface after Mission Commander Reid Wiseman’s late wife so that her family can always find her there.

They’re saying things like:

“Planet Earth, you are a crew… When we burned toward the Moon, I said that we do not leave Earth—but we choose it. We will explore... But ultimately, we will always choose Earth. We will always choose each other.”

And:

“We live on a fragile planet in the vacuum and the void of space… And our purpose on the planet as humans is to find joy, to find the joy in lifting each other up.”

All that equipment and intellect and scientific precision and terrifying vastness, and these astronauts are still just humans with Big Feelings pursuing beauty and connection at the heart of it all. There is still love and grief and longing. There is still someone missing someone else across impossible distances between Earth and space, life and death.

It’s been a good and terrible month to be a romantic.

The distances are a bit different in my life but it all counts: a husband training for a marathon. A flight to London. A perfectly timed almond croissant. A front-row ticket to Wicked. Children who smell like suncream. Friends on the beach. A body capable of anxiety and awe in equal measure.

I think it’s helpful to leave your orbit for a minute so you can see what you’ve been circling all along.

The astronauts came home talking about choosing Earth, and maybe that’s what I was doing too.

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The Honourable Mentions i.e. what I’m reading, watching, writing + living.

Okay, buckle in, folks, there were a few bangers on the reading log recently and a few less so, but hopefully you can find a little something to wet your bookish tastebuds.

First up, some literary fiction: I have waited so long for Louise Nealon’s second book (her debut novel Snowflake is one of my favourites EVER) and Everything That Is Beautiful was just as gorgeous as I hoped. Few and Far Between by Jan Carson might be my favourite of hers so far? A good month for Irish writing. Plus, I FINALLY got my hands on Heart The Lover.

I may have said this before, but there are a couple of romance writers I would go to war for, and Abby Jimenez is one of them so I was excited for The Night We Met. Annabel Monaghan is another ride or die, and I am just waiting for my next Saturday off to completely dissociate and get lost in Dolly All The Time — but I’m not sure the self-control will last TBH.

Read two very different memoirs back to back, Strangers and Fame Sick, and kind of hated both, but also want you to read them, so we can unpack my anger??

Also read Wreck by Catherine Newman. And Yesteyear, which needs no introduction. I know there are a billion super-deep think-pieces going around about it, but I GOBBLED it up. By no means a perfect book, but deliciously addictive and so fun to discuss.

Two pieces I LOVED on Substack:

The Inefficiency of Motherhood

In Honor of My Space Era.

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Watching

So, you already know Project Hail Mary was a cinematic highlight, but if you aren’t convinced, then just know that my 12-year-old son sat to the very end of the credits then leaned forward with his hands clasped together and said, “Now THAT was a movie.”

I also recently watched The Rental Family with him, and while his review was less glowing— ‘a bit slow’, I LOVED it. It’s a bit of a love letter to Tokyo, but I can’t stop thinking about what it had to say about loneliness and human connection and purpose and adopted family and self-worth and human dignity and okay, yeah, basically All The Things. I’m so here for the Brendan Fraser comeback.

You know I was SEATED for the Remarkably Bright Creatures movie adaptation, and it was just as charming as I hoped. At the same time, I think it fell ever-so-slightly flat for me compared to the book, but I have an abnormally intense attachment to the book. Probably due to life circumstances during the time I read it. That happens sometimes, doesn’t it?

And now we’re taking a bit of a sharp left turn to chat about Off Campus, which I watched in, like, 48 hours??? It’s so bad it’s good and I keep seeing memes about happily married women in their thirties and forties obsessing over this yearning-filled college-kid romance where the hockey jock falls for the orchestra nerd and I have to confess I tick the box. It is the replacement we all needed for The Summer I Turned Pretty and reminds me of the nostalgic euphoria of summers bingeing One Tree Hill—but less toxic characters and more happy endings.

In a very different genre altogether, I am so sad the first series of The Testaments is over. I did not expect a spin-off from The Handmaid’s Tale to be… hopeful? I mean, we’re still in Gilead, so maybe hope is a stretch, but the focus on Gilead’s daughters and the coming-of-age themes are a much-needed breather from the intensity of the original, dark and relentless story. I think the final line of the final scene, when Daisy and her girl gang are walking down the corridor in slow-mo, sums it up perfectly: “I'm going to create my own army, because nothing can be more powerful than a teenage girl.” Chills.

Lastly, let the record show we survived watching Apex on Netflix, and while Paddy bowed out halfway through, I watched to the bitter end. Yes, I am still traumatised.

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Writing

While writing itself feels clunky, a couple of weeks ago I was chosen to share my work at a spoken word evening exploring the theme of “belonging” and IT WAS THE BRAVEST THING I’VE DONE MAYBE EVER.

In the end, I went with a story (about cheese toasties) that I first shared on Substack, and I just want you to know: I never in a million years would have considered that piece if my gorgeous Substack friends hadn’t been so lovely about it. Obvs you guys were right—it was a hit. If you ever need to borrow some courage, you can always count on a Belfast crowd to hype you/hold you at the same time. Truly the most generous bunch of humans.

Here’s to creating in community. The isolated lil teen mum in me, who started writing on the internet 12 years ago, would be BUZZING.

And in case you missed it, I published this essay in April. It’s dedicated to the big, brutal (and beautiful, maybe?) housing estate where we live. It’s about all the surprising love stories I’ve been noticing. And about fighting for my own in the middle of one of the hardest seasons we’ve ever lived through.

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That’s nearly it from me, but since the boys and I have been picking bouquets of dandelions and ‘wishies’ this morning, I wanted to leave you with this gorgeous blessing by my friend Kim, who just published her second book, Small Steps: Blessings to Lift Your Soul on the Pilgrimage of Life. Small Steps is a book of blessings meant to meet us in our daily lives, in all of the challenges and joys, struggles and triumphs. A few of the blessings include: For a Rough Morning, Listening to a Dream, Learning to Pray Again, and For an Ordinary Tuesday.

A Blessing for the First Warm Days

There’s a wisp of clouds
the snow piles are melting
glistening in the sun
the layers of sweaters and coats
hats and gloves
have been stripped off.

Oh, the glorious light and blue skies
the hope of all that’s waiting
beneath the surface.

May this thawing seep into our bodies
may we look into the eyes of our neighbors
with a wave and a good morning
may we reach out to friends and offer: I’m here for you
may any barriers and disagreements fall from us
like dandelions blowing in the breeze
may we be filled with listening and understanding
sentiments of mutuality.

May the reality of what is
not be greater than the potential for what could be.

And may we be the ones
unearthing this hope
together and in community
for the sake of the world.

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A Final Few Lovely Things

Phew, I think that’s it. If you made it this far, you’re my favourite.

Lots of love,

Reb x

1. But at the time of finally sending this out, we’ve been hit with dark torrential rain for the foreseeable.