small pockets of time
they exist if you stop long enough to notice
Tomorrow is a big day for me…we press ‘print’ on my new book, A Brain That Breathes - essential habits for an overwhelming world | what your brain really needs to be happy, healthy and productive.
I’m giddy! Also, I feel like there is so much genuine enthusiasm for it; so many lovely comments about how needed it is. I’m so buoyed by this genuine encouragement. Thank you!
It’s available for pre-order now and will arrive on your doorstep in early January (in Australia, the UK and the US).
Here’s what early readers have said:
‘Blending lived experience with psychological insight, this book is both reassuring and refreshingly human. With compassion and clarity, it offers a quietly radical alternative to quick-fix self-help’. - Millie Hardie, psychologist
‘A gentle, thoroughly researched book filled with quiet wisdom. Using powerful evidence, Jodi shows us true wellness begins with the brain.’ - Indira Naidoo, journalist
‘A kind, calm, warm book. Reading it feels like taking a deep breath.’ - Jessica Stanley, author
Perhaps it’s because I’m now the mother of an adult child, but I’ve spent the past few weeks deep in nostalgia; thinking about my children growing up and then, by extension, my own childhood. In these moments of quiet, invisible reflection, I pine for the slow, languid hours of ‘before’ that are tinged with soft light and summer heat. These memories are of salt and eucalypt; oregano that grew rambling down the garden path and the spindly sticks fallen from gumtrees that would burn under the hot plate of the barbecue.
I miss so much about the slow days of early motherhood but I do not miss the tiredness or the incredibly busyness. I always come back to this most resonant quote about time that defines motherhood: ‘the days are long but the years are short’.
The irony of life right now is that we’ve got more time than we’ve ever had (thank you modern conveniences) but we also have far more distraction. We pine for hours stretching out in front of us but we aren’t very good at noticing or protecting them in the moment. Here’s the thing: we don’t have any less time than we did 10 or 20 years ago, we’re just using the hours differently. Huh!
There is always a phone to reach for and once it’s in our hands, we enter a vortex of consumerism and comparison which leaves us feeling deprived and depleted. Nothing will make time pass more quickly than scrolling (the scientific studies aren’t yet published but we all know that feeling of looking up and being aghast at the hours that have passed).
Time - the speed of it, the disintegrating hours, making it, savouring it, remembering it, reflecting on it - is a constant hum in our head, isn’t it? The problem is we’re living in an age where society has normalised an unsustainable pace and it’s evident in the collective weariness and exhaustion we feel. We’ve simply forgotten that we can choose otherwise.