Paper trails

Paper Trails #01: Following the threads of memoir, meaning + making

Welcome to Paper Trails — a behind-the-scenes glimpse into my creative non-fiction projects, and a place to explore brand story, life writing and the rhythms of the creative process.

When the ground shifts

On Sunday, I came back to a personal project for the first time in three years, but before I could get started, I read a story that threw me off balance.

A writer whose work had deeply moved me, arriving in a season of life that felt unrelentingly hard, was front-page news with an article raising questions about their story. I read it with a heavy heart.

This memoir, referenced in my creative nonfiction proposal, told the tale of a lyrical pilgrimage that gave me hope and was “proof” that it was possible to find a way forward. So the deception felt dizzying and showed me just how fragile the contract between reader and writer can be.

Making paper trails

Combing through my own memoir, it’s been a curious process, loosening the threads and prising words apart, realising I have more to process and research.

Over the coming months, as I return to writing, I’ll be sharing half-shaped thoughts in the form of rough notes. Exploratory and unpolished. I often sense this weight of expectation around writing, and I’m hoping to set that down.

Paper Trails is a space for accepting that not everything has to be finished to be worth sharing. It’s created in the spirit of beginnings. And my memoir, partly about not always having things tied up in a neat package (and many other things), feels like a relevant place to start.

In recent years, I just haven’t found the season for this project, not for lack of trying. But my commitment is simply to write. To be on the page. To move towards the words I’ve held at a distance and been circling for a while.

So what’s kept me away? Life. Vulnerability and unpredictability. But lately, in more spacious pockets of time, I’m easing back in. Read on for more, plus a flash memoir piece.

Into the work

I'm excited about the prospect of taking you behind the scenes. Not to share word-for-word, but to explore parts of the process together. I’ve always valued this kind of showing up as a business owner — it feels like it sits at the heart of Brand Seasons.

Of course, it may feel difficult at times, but as I said in my last post, “language is surfacing with new tenderness. I notice it in conversations, in the way a sentence catches in my throat and I’m somehow able to tease the thoughts out and express myself from a place of what feels like healing.” It’s writing from the scar, not the wound, as they say.

The words feel a lot less raw when they land, and I will, given current events, of course, be thinking carefully about what it means to write not flawlessly, but faithfully.

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Written in response to The Chain, Week One.

Note: I recently shared this piece with paid subscribers before submitting it to

Dr Lily Dunn

’s flash memoir competition. I’ve lifted the paywall so you can have a wee read!

A tiny act

Today is about snatching one or two moments for myself, in between the mothering and the messiness. So believe me when I tell you that turning up to a writing circle this morning feels like nothing short of a miracle.

Sometimes, it chips away at me, the lack of time that erodes my creativity and, occasionally, my confidence. But I’ve come to realise I need to get better at what I call the ask: expressing my wants and needs, and building the boundaries that might hold them.

Warming mug of cacao in hand, I settle into my seat and mark the moment by lighting a candle. ‘Passenger’, it’s called. I half expect to read about notes of surrender and resilience, but when I glance at the label, I spot spices and rosewood. I can almost feel the scent, wild and warm, wrap itself around me. The soft glow gives my writing space a sense of realness. Of readiness. I think to myself, yes, I am a writer — as if the ritual might help me believe it.

There is a desire, I notice, to say “yes” to writing today. To revisit stories once buried for a future day, or maybe even forever.

I want to unearth them, travel with them, adventure with them. As someone who breathes in every moment. The good times. The bad times. Especially the bad times. Because I never experienced true awe until I experienced true pain.

Loss and grief brought about in me a new kind of awareness. In myself. In nature. How the body of a tree looks and feels up close. How the scent of a bloom can carry on the wind. How seeing a tiny human lying in the palm of my hand could fill me, all at once, with fierce love and fragile longing.

On a recent walk, somewhat distracted by the drizzle, the hood of my waxy raincoat sticking to my head, I noticed the air was thick with the fragrance of roses. The garden ahead had been full of butter-yellow petals, soft like the paper of old letters, tales told and untold. Honeyed lemon, Turkish delights. If nostalgia had an aroma, this would be it.

I don’t know if you believe in magic, but yellow roses have always felt like they belong to my family. After losing my first son nine years ago, I chose a yellow shrub rose — something just for me. And it’s in moments like this, when passing something so full of life, I remember what it's like to live in colour.

Yes, maybe I'm weathered by experience, but also softened, because there’s something about grief that rearranges your senses. The world turns monochrome. But eventually, if you allow yourself, you begin to see in pigments again. Different. Heightened. Saturated. Small things stop you in your tracks. Even a rose, rain-tipped and half-wilted, that smells exactly like hope.

In writing today, I’m reminded that creativity doesn’t always need a wide window. I can show up in the cracks. Between the tug of socks onto tiny feet, the lick of a thumb and the gentle pressing down of hair, the packing of snacks for a trip with their daddy while I tend to myself.

Even in the noise, even in the fragments, this tiny act of choosing myself signals a pivot.

Of course, it doesn’t last long. My youngest son is soon clambering on top of me before the writing circle has ended. Pressing into me, he pleads, “Mama, done.” And my words are cast back into the margins again.

Cacao, cold. Glow, gone.

But as I return to the words during nap time, stroking the blonde curls of my boy, scrolling through the piece on my phone, I read what I’ve written in that seized hour and realise: this is what it means to create around the edges as mothers so often do. It feels raw, real. And I remind myself that what I’m writing isn’t asking to be a triumph, just a truth.