As of… Wednesday, June 10
I’m in my happy place and doing my happy things (hanging out with friends, swimming, hiking, biking…)
Creative highlight: I hosted my first retreat!
New to me: I climbed La Tournette and met some goats.
Looking forward to: meeting up with Daniel in Holland. xo
Reading… nothing. Falling into bed exhausted.
La Tournette
Trying to get some higher elevation training under my belt before my big Swiss hike in August.
Met some friendly goats. (Alpine ibex)
Lake Annecy, from La Tournette
my daughter
her spirit animal
Heading back down the mountain.
Hosting my first mini-retreat
Yesterday I hosted my first mini-retreat! We were seven women total - from France, Switzerland and the UK.
We used the GROW framework to workshop each person’s business challenges. Our goals: to create community and to encourage each other to make progress on our biggest job/career challenges.
Some reoccuring themes:
Being intentional about career and life choices
How to find/create work that aligns with personal values
Figuring out how to charge more while remaining accessible
I received some really positive and constructive feedback. With a few tweeks, I’d love to do something like this again in the future!
My little nut & seed pots
I’ve been working very hard to add more protein to my diet - I aim for a minimum of 20 grams per meal. When my protein intake is high, I have noticeably more energy and focus. Plus, I have fewer sugar cravings! Which is so important for me because once the sugar cravings start, it’s a downward spiral to iced rosé and salty chips for dinner.
This is an easy hack for adding 20 grams of protein to your breakfast. I add it to my yogurt and it keeps me full (and without cravings) until lunchtime. I just hosted a girls weekend at the lake house and these were a big hit.
Notes:
This recipe makes 8 pots. Each pot contains about 18-20 grams of protein, depending on which nuts you use. I like to use a mix of almonds, walnuts and hazelnuts.
Ingredients for a batch of 8
Hemp seeds — 1 cup (160g)
Chia seeds — ½ cup (95g)
Pumpkin seeds — ½ cup (70g), toasted
Sunflower seeds — ½ cup (70g), toasted
Chopped nuts — 1 heaping cup (120g), toasted (almond/walnut/hazelnut mix)
Instructions
Toast your nuts and seeds on the stovetop in batches. (optional, but dramatically improves flavour)
Then make a little conveyor belt system and load your pots…
Each individual serving gets:
2 TBL hemp seeds
1 TBL chia seeds
1 TBL pumpkin seeds (toasted)
1 TBL sunflower seeds (toasted)
3 TBL chopped nuts (toasted)
As of… Monday, 1 June 2026
I’ve relocated to Lake Annecy for the summer! My plan is to read, swim and drink rosé on ice. I’m off to a really good start.
Creative highlight from last week: A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Shakespeare’s Globe in London. What an incredibly special night!
Current project: Preparing for the Women’s Retreat I’m hosting in June. It’s called the Get Your Shit Together Retreat.
Reading: One Golden Summer by Carley Fortune - which is the very definition of a summer read and I’m loving it!
As of… Monday, June 1
I’ve relocated to Lake Annecy for the summer! My plan is to read, swim and drink rosé on ice. I’m off to a really good start. :)
Creative highlight from last week: A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Shakespeare’s Globe in London.
Current projects: Preparing for the Women’s Retreat I’m hosting later this month. It’s called the Get Your Shit Together Retreat. It’s fully booked - but you can sign up for my newsletter to hear about future events.
Reading: One Golden Summer by Carley Fortune - which is the very definition of a summer read and I’m loving it!
The start of summer
watching the sunset after dinner
breakfast in the sun
Lake Annecy, France
A Midsummer Night's Dream
at Shakespeare’s Globe, London
What a magical night! Emma Lim's production is utterly delightful. This is Shakespeare for people who think they don’t like Shakespeare. (Buy standing tickets and you might just end up on stage!)
London looking beautiful on a gorgeous summer night.
Is there anything more empowering than female friendship?
Fried Green Tomatoes
Sophia’s home, so it’s been a week of movies, plays and art projects. The above was a favourite.
On Food/Travel Writing
Food writing is probably the purest form of travel writing. I can think of no better example than Anthony Bourdain, as discussed in this article. some notes:
voice - When you start a travel‑essay, ask: Why me here? What viewpoint am I bringing? What stakes (emotional or personal) do I have?
observation - Write a scene of five lines; then remove one adjective per line. See if it still jumps off the page.
curiosity - Bourdain often emphasised that his work was less about mastering a place and more about trying to understand it. Include a moment when you were wrong, surprised, or humbled. It will, most likely, resonate.
show the scene - “This is the way so many of the great meals of my life have been enjoyed. Sitting in the street, eating something out of a bowl that I’m not exactly sure what it is. Scooters going by. So delicious. I feel like an animal. Where have you been all my life? Fellow travelers, this is what you want. This is what you need. This is the path to true happiness and wisdom.”
Identify three full senses (smell, sound, taste) in your next scene and build around them.
the myth of neutrality - Travel writing is not inherently neutral. When you’re a visitor - to another culture, country, community - your gaze matters. What do you assume? Whom do you centre? How do you handle difference?
suggestions -
Start with an image that surprised you.
Let sensory detail lead.
Allow yourself to not know.
End with not the summary of what you “learned”, but the question you’re left with.
Write what you see, not what you expect.
Let discomfort into the narrative - if you feel out of place, lean into it.
Structure your piece around a question, not a conclusion.
Think in terms of scenes.
Your confusion is part of the story so welcome it in, don’t hide it.
Edith Eger
Suffering is universal. But victimhood is optional. There is a difference between victimization and victimhood. We are all likely to be victimized in some way...
Survivors ask, what now?
On meeting Ruth Ozeki
I met Ruth Ozeki!!!!
She is hands down one of my favourite authors. Never mind the fact that no one I know has ever heard of her, and that I had four tickets to the event and could find NO one to go with me except my daughter, who went primarily because she felt sorry for me.
For the record, I would’ve been absolutely fine going alone - but in the end I'm glad she came, because she convinced me to get my book signed. When it was my turn, I COMPLETELY FROZE and Sophia had to jump in and say "This is my mom, she's a writer and she loves you so much."
And Ruth was so gracious and sweet and said nice things. At which point, encouraged, I said something like "I became a yoga teacher because you're a Zen Buddhist priest." (what?!?!) And she responded as if ours was the most natural conversation in the world. Bless her.
Some craft tidbits from her talk:
Her Zen practice helps her write from the brain and the body of her characters — she can drop into a meditative state and experience the scene from her character's perspective.
Her eye as a filmmaker helps her figure out from which perspective to tell the story.
Her experience as a film editor taught her how to move a story along quickly.
Assume you and your reader are on the same wavelength. You don't need to over-explain.
Thanks for visiting London, Ruth. xoxo
London’s Southbank on a summer night is magical. Food stalls, lights, music, dancing - it's such a great scene. And not just for young people! People my age were leaving the BFI and the Literary Festival and getting caught up in the energy. I didn't dance exactly, but I wiggled my hips.
The Consciousness of Creativity
From the Telepathy Tapes, S2 E3 -
Elizabeth Gilbert: "Ideas are conscious entities outside of ourselves that do not come from us but to us. Artists are sort of antennae who absorb ideas, that ideas swirl around the world looking for human collaborators, knocking on our doors and tapping on our shoulders and coming to us in the form of inspiration."
Gilbert's writing discipline: sit at the desk for 60 minutes, no standing up, no internet, no rule about producing anything. "You are not allowed to stand up from this desk for 60 minutes... Like, were you available so that if ideas came, they could find you at your desk?" The point isn't to write. The point is to be findable.
Ideas pick collaborators who are available. If you can't host them, they move on.
Rick Rubin: "The best artists seem to have an antenna open to whatever the universe wants to happen now in this moment. The information comes in and it's magic. And then we - the rest of us - we're the craftsman."
Rubin again: two artists can channel the same idea and make completely different things. The download is the seed; the labor is the manifestation.
Tom Waits to a melody muse on the LA freeway: "Can't you see I'm driving? Do I look like I have a piano here?... If you're serious about wanting to be a song, you know that I spend eight hours a day in the studio. The next time you see me in the studio, come and see me then. Otherwise, stop bothering me and go bother Leonard Cohen."
My name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout
That’s when I learned that the work gets done if you simply do it.
—
You will have only one story… You’ll write your one story many ways. [So] don’t even worry about story. You will have only one.
