Milly Molly Mandy

Summer 2015

In store now!

Are you living by the Instagram code?

I could tell you how perfect my home and studio is.

I could tell you children play quietly and happily close by, as I work and create.

I could tell you days are cheerful and committed to memory.

I could tell you partnering business and motherhood in the home is a magical experience and that I am honoured.

I could pretend this is all effortless.

I could make you feel self-deprecating, as you read; judged, fearful, neglectful and inferior.

Why would I want to do that?

I have been confronted with this theme in so much of my social media networking, and I came to loathe it. The Instagram code of life.

I have moved on since then and beyond finding it distasteful I feel obliged to show it up for what it is.

As far as I am concerned, reoccurring images of perfectly styled and temporary scenes of charm and family bliss is the literally undoing many of the mothers and women. 

We are the most educated, and knowledgeable female generation of history, so let’s not deceive ourselves nor each other with the falsity of every day life as a mother, whether in business or not.

Those of you reading this thinking, what is this lady on? I understand.

You are the woman who has enough support around you and your family that you do not get consumed in where you may be failing.

You are reassured you are doing a fantastic job mothering and working.

You are a part of a community, a real life one!

You have enough confidence in yourself to be grateful for what you have, and to know the reality of what you are seeing has been distorted, is styled and momentary- it simply is not true of the everyday. 

But, I receive daily feedback from customers, who consider themselves friends after the creative process of having something custom made for them.

I have been challenged and recently saddened by the private messages, asking me how life works for me as a mother of three and business owner. 

I receive constant message of comparison between them and me.

It has made me extra cautious to never be precocious in my editing. 

To never portray the lie of perfection that could damage someone’s fragile sense of self.

What alarms me is the volume of women who are struggling through a season of motherhood, feeling totally alone in it, and relying on social media to be the community that is lacking in their real life. When you rely on a community that is filled with edited and highly moderated images, your attachment to reality is shaky to say the least!

I live by the motto that riches always lay in the lesson of the process NOT the success of the outcome.

I fail everyday.

My very work is a process of error and correction.

My motherhood is a process of error and correction.

I am a series of beautiful, messy moments strung together to form something funny, off- balance and unique.

You are too.

I cannot think of a better combination for motherhood, when everything goes wrong, even though you deliberately planned for it!

We live in a fast paced world where the days seem long but the years are racing by.

Take a moment each day to resist the pretenses you see online, and know you are a beautiful, messy series of moments.

I promise you it will lift your spirits when you feel low and it has personally helped me to adhere to my own business goals and dreams, because after all they are mine!

Take a day at a time,

Warm wishes,

Shannon x

Why should we support handmade as women and mother's? An alternate view.

My social media news feeds are brimming with the highly styled vignettes of home interiors, and filled with pictures of perfect families in perfect locations, shot by professional photographers with no expense spared.

A reality that none of us are sharing in the day to day of motherhood or womanhood.

I wonder if the alternate realities we have created for ourselves amount up to a little paradise that we don’t actually reside in, we reside here in the messiness of life.

The attainment of perfection can only lead to the feeling of failure that undoes the path that the fight for feminism laid in decades past. It is women who are robbing other women of self-esteem and replacing it with new and impossible standards for family, work and rest.

In our factory manufactured, and fast paced society there is little room for the faults and flaws, that remind us of our humanness and root us in the earth. While the wonder of the Earth’s creation is complex and largely unknown, we do know that from the dawn of time the animal kingdom has existed and survived (with the exceptions of the interference of mankind) and this survival is born of instinct.

I fear, that if we are not free to experience the raw, unedited emotions of womanhood, we are actually captive to our world.

When we growl and gather our cubs to us, it is for refreshing and it is for protection. There is very little joy in gliding through our plastic and contrived lives, muted and edited, as opposed to living open and feeling.

The insightful and gracious Steve Bidolph, psychologist and author of Raising Girls, says “nobody can handle reality all of the time.” He encourages us to have outlets, channels to escape even for a few moments into another place, because the literal reality of a situation can be inexplicably too much at that time. In reference to the western world he states that, “ …people living in tough places were happier…when I came back to affluence, everyone seemed miserable. The experience convinced me: we are supposed to be happy. We are not meant to be depressed.”

Escaping the truth of a testing time is different to trying to live in perpetual perfection.

The resurgence of the handmade product in the past ten years is an huge step towards freedom of the mind and in womanhood.

The process of making and crafting something is a tangible way to react to our physical world by responding to it with a brand new creation. It is here, that we can find a harmonious way to leave those difficult realities momentarily, to recover ourselves, without buying into the fake reality sold to us through branding, advertising and consumerism.

The blessing in handmade is abundant.

In the developing world, women in small business use their talents, and work with natural available resources to craft practical objects for use.

In the developed world, we are free to responsibly source these sustainable, fairly traded products and enter small business across the seas in partnerships with these women. We face less hardship in a county like ours, I would encourage you to feel and get caught up in the joy of the maker. 

There is something very rooting, grounding and resilient about allowing the seed of a design to be shaped, grow and come to life.

We are all women, who face challenges, build resilience, possess skills and talents, and we do not want to be blinded to injustice any longer.

We do not want to mask depression with pretences.

We want to have the conversation that leads to freedom of the soul.

Before my passion for the handmade product, came my motherhood, and before my motherhood came my womanhood.

I want freedom in all of it.

My inner animal tells me to fight for my children, to fight for my passions and ultimately to fight to protect my heart.

It guides me in my integrity. It warns me of danger. It reveals injustice. It seeks truth, and resists the lie.

In it’s nature, my inner animal bonds me to the earth, and takes me on journeys where the process is the lesson, and that is where the riches lay.