"Make your OWN perfect life, just for you, with flaws and mistakes and holes in it"

Campfire Chats Series - Slow Living with Sarah Raad

This post is part of my monthly Campfire Chats series, available free to all of my subscribers. This series is an opportunity to ask, interview, or feature my community and their experiences of one of the main topics that I write about here on Substack - motherhood, neurodivergence, mental health, running a creative small business, and slow living. If those topics are of interest to you, we’d love to have you in our community. Come join us?

Grab your favourite drink, find somewhere comfy to sit, and snuggle in…

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Today’s guest is

Sarah Raad

who writes Gather & Grow here on Substack.

Join Sarah’s paid membership for just £7 a month where you can join journaling sessions, Q&As on mindset and creative business/ life stuff and other sporadic membership loveliness! It's also just £70 for the year if you want to just dive in.

Ultimately, start living your own life, on your own terms as soon as possible. Wake up to the fact that you only have so many days on planet earth and you don't want to spend them doing a job you hate, in a mediocre relationship, watching endless TV, scrolling on instagram or feeling triggered by other people's perfect lives. Make your OWN perfect life, just for you, with flaws and mistakes and holes in it. But just make it. Time is flying.

A brief introduction of who you are and what you do

I'm Sarah and I am a mindset and business coach & mentor for creative women. I coach writers, illustrators, designers, jewellery makers, artists, coaches and more to run creative businesses and live lives that they love.

What made you start living a simpler, more intentional life?

* trigger warning for miscarriage

I had a very busy career in cultural marketing for 13 years. I was successful, productive, but it never really felt like what I ought to be doing. Then I joined my husband's branding consultancy which was fun, but not my dream.

I also lived in a very urban area, traffic, noise, hustle and once my hectic social life dwindled in my early 30s, I started to dream of living more rurally and stepping off the hamster wheel of my career. I trained as a coach, subscribed to Country Living and I slowly brought my husband on board with the idea!

When I was 36, after two years of traumatic times with fertility and multiple miscarriages, we had our son.

As soon as I became a mother, the need to slow down and live in a simpler, calmer way and away from the city grew even stronger.

I wanted our son to grow up surrounded by nature, within a community and in a place where he felt he belonged, where people knew his name.

So the search began! We found an amazing house in a former mining village, at the end of a road to nowhere but fields, meadows, woods and river and with a garden big enough for a home studio/ office and we moved home and business here in 2010.

I think ultimately starting a family, moving out of the city and living in a very small village and in a community where other people were living slower, calmer lives and were not as hooked into commercialism or interested in newness, gave us a clear step into living more simply.

What would your perfect, slow, 24 hours look like?

Well firstly it would be a Sunday because that's my favourite day! I would get up about 8am which is a lie in for me.

I'd eat something delicious for breakfast like pancakes and fruit salad if summer or maybe croissants and jam and then head off for my allotment (with coffee!) to do some weeding and tending.

I'd return for lunch, probably something like salad or soup or I might make some spaghetti fritters and then as a family we would go for a wander with our dog Boots, or maybe just get cosy with some board games - with coffee and whatever treats we have hanging about!

Maybe we would play music but mostly we would just have silence and chat. Something nourishing, and lovely for dinner, probably with pudding and with some quiet piano music, lots of candles. Then an evening of baths, reading, chatter, mending, garden watering and pottering and preparing for the day and week ahead.

Journaling, perhaps a podcast in my ears whilst I prep and plan, falling into bed at maybe 9.30-10pm and sleeeeeeeeep.

Tell us a secret to a simple life

Dropping caring what anyone else thinks or comparing your life with other people's. The lure of a commercial, 'modern' life is strong through advertising and the media is strong, as is also paying too much attention to what others are doing - or think you should be doing. How much people earn, what they buy, drive etc - urgh.

You have to disassociate from that - and find and surround yourself with people who also get what you are doing by pursuing simplicity.

What's the best advice you've ever been given/ read?

Every day eat the frog - otherwise known as, do the thing you least want to do in that day first and get it over with!

A book/ website or other resource everyone should read is...

Timeless Simplicity by John Lane - it's a little dated now and the style is old fashioned, but he makes his points and paints a vision for a simpler life beautifully.

One practice of your slow living life that you couldn't live without is...

Gratitude. Every day I carry out my gratitude practice. It reminds me of what's important, what is good around me and helps to stop any feelings of not enough. I've done this for more or less 20 years now and it's the single most effective, and simple, way to improve your mental wellbeing and give you a deep appreciation of the life you are living.

The biggest impact slow living has had on you is...

I feel more grounded and content. It has made me more confident as a person because I feel authentic. Ultimately I always know that I can handle things and weather any storm. I think stripping away the busy lifestyle has given me clarity in many ways and helped me see the real me.

One thing people should do more of is...

Mending things. My husband is a great mender! Consequently we save money and also the planet by not replacing things before their time. He also finds it really satisfying. We also mend clothes, sewing up holes, fixing buttons etc. You don't have to know what you are doing either - we fixed the tumble dryer recently with YouTube and a spare part and honestly I felt like a GOD!

One thing people should do less of is...

Social media. Absolute time suck and brain melt! I need to attend my own lectures on this still, but this year I closed down my Facebook group and page for my business and have dramatically cut the time I spend on Instagram. I understand the lure and the need to escape your thoughts or numb emotions but unless you are using it to genuinely connect, it's a huge energy drain.

Your favourite quote is...

'always wear your invisible crown' AKA don't let the bastards grind you down :)

A piece of advice you'd give to your younger self...

Stop worrying about if other people like you. Approve of yourself first.

What advice would you give to someone wanting to live a simple more intentional life?

Don't wait until you feel like you have the ideal opportunity as it may never present itself. Just find ways to simplify your life now, one little step at a time. You don't have to have simplicity in all areas straight away. Just start.

A top tip is...

Always set your day up the night before.

Have your clothes ready, tidy and set the table for breakfast, prepare breakfast as far as you can, make sure the house is neat, ensure that children have what they need (homework done, sports kits, packed lunches etc) and that you have a clear prioritised to do list.

This is my best advice for a calm morning and a productive day!

Tell us about the time in your life that you felt the most content

Ummm, lots of ordinary days actually! My life isn't perfect by any means and there are always challenges but I don't really live for peak moments. I live for those little times in normal days where you suddenly tune into the universe, or see something beautiful, listen to something profound, share a moment with someone.

One thing I love to do, especially in winter as it is starting to get dark, is go outside but look back into our home through the window. The feeling I get, looking into my little life, as if I am a stranger, looking at that friendly, restful, beautiful home is all the contentment I need.

The best thing someone has ever said to you

It's not just one person, but it's one thing. My clients so often say to me at the end of their session words to the effect of 'I feel so much better now I have spoken to you'. Every time it fills me up! A few people have said they'd like to keep me in their pocket and carry me around which is rather sweet too.

Your go to when you you want to be creative is...

I've explored many crafts and artwork techniques over the years and my house has lots of my work dotted around, mainly textile based art from sessions with Mandy Pattullo and Jessica Kinnersley but also a huge knitted throw that I knitted on my arms and also paper folding sculptures from working with

Yvette Ja

. However, on a day to day basis I express my creativity through writing and cooking for my family.

When it all gets a bit much, how do you bring yourself back to calm?

EFT. I tap most days, for whatever emption has come up, frustration, disappointment, anger. It also works really well for anxiety. I discovered it years ago, probably about 20 years ago and it had a really profound effect on me and my wellbeing.

Tell us about your biggest extravagance

Ooh I am so not extravagant! hmm... Books, notebooks, candles. Skincare! I love the pricer type of skin care. Lovely simple products with clean, calming scents. Blankets. I'm a sucker for a good blanket or eiderdown. or throw. or cushion...

Share a journal prompt for readers to ponder

Where are you currently holding yourself back? And what are you going to do about it?

A simple, beautiful memory you have is...

For years we have spent some of our holidays at a magical little site of yurts and huts in Northumberland called Wild Northumbrian. It's all off grid and each dwelling is set in its own location so you feel very secluded.

One time after dinner and as the stars came out, my son, who was about 7-8 then, climbed into a hammock under the big Scots Pine trees together, with blankets and cushions. We cuddled together, looked at and talked about the stars, felt the breeze and listened to the sound of the trees and the hoot of the owls.

I was chatting away to my son when I suddenly realised he was asleep. We stayed like that for maybe an hour. I was brought a mug of tea to sip and eventually my husband carried my son off to bed in the yurt. It was pure magic.

One thing that makes life instantly better is...

Coffee! My husband have a joke in the morning on our early morning dog walk where one of us will say to the other before the other remembers 'are you looking forward to coffee?' - I realise this isn't funny to anyone else but us, but it makes me smile! The first coffee of the day (I drink tea first thing) is life.

A favourite recipe that everyone should try is...

I'm a total foodie so this is hard! I make most meals from scratch and have dozens of cookbooks.

I would say, in the simple living vibe, Kat Goldin's Porridge cake. Makes breakfast for a household super easy, great after school snacks for kids and cake for elevenses. Make a big one and it lasts for days.

But I would also encourage people to make good, simple food in their own homes as much as possible. There's so much joy in a simple pasta dish, or in making your own jam, pesto and chutneys.

Where can people find you online?

• Substack

• Website

Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Campfire Chats Series. Please feel free to share this post by clicking the button below…

Speak soon,

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Take part in the series!

I’d really love to bring in other people to chat about their own personal experiences with parenting, neurodiversity, mental health, being a creative business owner, and slow living, or a mix of these (parenting neurodivergent children or creativity to help with your mental health, etc.). If you have a story to share about any of those, I’d love to speak to you about collaborating.

Below you’ll find some links to some very quick forms to fill out if you’d like to collaborate in an interview style, or, alternatively, if you have an idea for a guest post, then please DM me or reach out via email (findingsimpleandcalm@substack.com) to chat further.

• Slow living

• Parenting

• Neurodiversity

• Mental Health

• Creativity