Junk Drawer

I used to write a long journal entry every New Year’s Eve, hoping I could become someone new when the clock struck midnight, and consign my flaws to the past. The year didn’t feel complete until I had performed this ritual, the small act of summoning a new self. It had to be on the 31st of December. A clean finish.

Last year, in Wellington, New Zealand on the 6th of January 2023, I wrote in my journal:

It’s almost a week into the new year. We’ve been here for two weeks. I’m sitting on our bed, looking out onto the harbour. Blue sky, blue water. I’m overwhelmed by the time we’ve had so far. The beauty of this place. The never-ending blanket of family love that is smothering Luna. Exploring a new place with Luna, as the Becker family. Indulging in alternate time, time away, holiday brain, holiday feeling, holiday habits. It really feels like an escape. A pocket of time away from normal life. How lucky lucky lucky. I’m so absorbed, I can’t think forward. I want to reflect on the past year and the year to come, but I can’t bring my attention away from being here. Maybe that’s okay. Maybe I don’t need to pull myself out of this headspace yet. I am just appreciating where I am and who I’m with. Right now. I also want to share this time. Share the beauty and the feeling. But I don’t want that to occupy so much headspace. Why do I want to share? To show off? To brag? To genuinely share the experience with the people we care about? To show what I see and feel and think?

This year, in London, on the 6th of January 2024, I wrote an email:

Dear Sophie,

I stumbled upon your Motherhood prints in Clerkenwell in July when my husband and I were out for dinner on our eighth wedding anniversary, nine months after having our first child.

I was ecstatic—I could barely peel my face off the glass to walk away! One of my biggest frustrations from the first year of motherhood has been the lack of realistic depictions of one of the most universal experiences (this is where we all come from!) I was in awe of how you created such stunning images of the reality that is rarely seen, let alone made beautiful.

I read your accompanying article. I also found solidarity in Lucy Jones’ Matrescence through the raw early days, and like your mini linocuts, started writing little fragments of a blog (junkdrawer.blog if you’re interested) in the little moments I could catch to myself in the days at home with a baby. I also started this work without expectation, but it has been revelatory for me, and I completely relate to the freedom that comes from expressing the experience rather than keeping tight in your chest.

Anyway, thank you for your work, I’m so glad it exists in the world. We’re about to get a completion date on our first home and I would love to buy some for our wall! 

From your Motherhood series, I would love:

Stitches

Night feed

Midnight hug

From your other prints, I would also love:

Pizza

Wine vault

Thanks so much and let me know,

Ella 

And she wrote back:

Dear Ella,

Thank you so much for your message – what a wonderful gift to land in my inbox. It means such a lot when somebody connects with these works, and thank you for your generous words.

Many congratulations on your own baby and on the blog – I’ve only had time to read a couple of posts but my goodness I’ll be back. In your piece on work & baby & writing I felt a rush of recognition at your line ‘I want to be seen, but not exposed’ – that absolutely captures my own doubts about putting these linocuts out there (especially ‘Stitches’ – I am honestly thrilled you’re buying one. You’re one of the few!).

All the prints you mention are available. The last two have colour options, so let me know whether you’d like the Wine Vault in burgundy or bottle green, and Pizza in midnight blue or phthalo green.

Thanks again for sharing your writing – I’m excited to read more.

With best wishes,

Sophie

I look at the same date, one year apart, not intentionally referencing the 2021 Capitol insurrection.

A year ago, I was visiting New Zealand with a newborn, interrogating my desire to share. A year later, at home in London with a one-year-old, the sharing of that very experience sparks an unexpected and meaningful connection.

Neither year, did I manage to find closure on December 31st. One year folded into another and I started to let go of neatness in favour of jagged edges.

Like last year, I still struggle to think too far ahead, or envision a new version of myself. The present has felt so dense with life, so urgent to navigate now, I can only be in it and respond.

Over the course of a few weeks, my grandfather died, we hosted Christmas, traveled for New Year, and got a possible exchange date for the purchase of our first home. Luna seems to learn and grow at an exponential rate, we work and we are tired. Nothing special, the tangle of it all is the stuff of life. A pretty charmed life.

I used to think I could just wish myself a new me, and not have to do it. But the doing is where we are forged.

I am still drawn to the idea of reinvention. But I think we are slowly reinventing ourselves all the time, in little moments of trying something new or being brave in only ways that we can see.

This year I hope to keep doing what I’m doing and see what, who and which version of myself I stumble into.

Sophie’s gorgeous and very reasonably priced work is shared with her permission and can be found here:

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