Look Up at The Stars & Authentic Living This Week
A reflection about stars paired with a heartfelt exploration of gratitude, memories, and the beautiful mess of everyday life.
Hello Friends!
Here's what you'll find in today’s newsletter:
A Piece of Life in Focus This Week
Look Up at The Stars: A prose poem / reflective essay
Authentic Living This Week
Gratitude Corner - Nature, nurture & vacuums
Making Memories - Butterfly art & park solitude
Inspiring Finds - Joyful podcasts & inspiring Substacks
Learning Something New - Smelly brides, quotation marks and the word 'hello'
Hobbies & Interests - Junk journaling
Reality Check - Sick kids, tired parents, skin issues & no TV
Welcome to My Substack! My Name is Tania.
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A Piece of Life in Focus This Week
After stepping out my front door into the brisk autumn air to dispose of our household rubbish, I found myself looking up at the stars. It's become a ritual, a moment of quiet reverence amidst the mundane. At that moment, I wondered if others looked up at the stars too.
Look Up at The Stars
Look up.
The stars are beautiful tonight.
I get a hit of wonder and awe every time I look at them.
We hide, tucked away in our boxy houses. Secluded from the awe of the stars.
A magical brilliance, a sight to behold, but we take it for granted. They are just stars.
Just stars? You can't put 'just' in front of spectacular phenomena such as planets, solar systems and supernovas - delights of the universe we will never see up close in person, but we can see them now, from a distance, when we look up at the stars.
How lucky we are.
The stars remind us how much more there is beyond our existence. Like stars, our lives are an endless expanse of countless opportunities and experiences, many of which we will never come to know or explore.
Stars represent the unknown, the uncharted the unexplored. From a distance, every star looks the same. Each one a seemingly insignificant speck amongst a sea of black until you go deeper, look closer and see the star for what it really is. Something unique, complex, and beautiful, beyond our feeble human comprehension.
So I stand here, one person in a vast sea of existence, looking up at the stars in wonder. Wondering why they exist, why I exist, why any of this exists.
But the stars matter to me, so my existence must matter too.
Authentic Living This Week
This section of my Substack is devoted to everything that I feel adds authenticity and realness to my life and I hope it helps you focus on the authentic joy you can create and experience in your day-to-day lives too.
Gratitude Corner: Finding Appreciation in the Everyday
Taking time to find things to be grateful for in everyday moments is a great way to stay grounded and remind yourself of the things that really matter.
This week I’m grateful for :
Having a nature reserve we can walk to from our house. It was ideal when my eldest was a colicky baby. As soon as we were walking through nature, we were calm and in the moment. I always timed it so he would nap in the pram to avoid the inevitable screaming session that came with me trying to put him down for a nap in the cot. Those moments of peace and quiet amongst nature saved my sanity. Today the reserve is our own little haven our family can escape to and enjoy when life indoors gets a bit much.
My husband. We've been together for 16 years and married for 6. He is an excellent father and works so hard for us to afford the comfortable family life we have that allows me to be at home with my boys most of the week. Shout out to all the amazing dads out there.
Owning a Dyson stick vac. I couldn't imagine the horror of having to lug the beast of a vacuum cleaner that my mum had to use in the 90s through my house. A massive, cumbersome, heavy and noisy thing it was. I pull my stick vac off the wall one-handed to do its thing, and it does it well. Thanks Dyson.
What are you grateful for this week?
Making Memories: Cherished Moments & Milestones
Making memories and recording them has always been incredibly important to me. Our memories tend to fail us, so keeping a record of precious moments enhances our memory-keeping abilities.
Here are some of my favourite memories from this week:
Making butterfly art with my oldest son. He squirts and splays paint carelessly onto the paper, I fold it for him and when it opens it transforms into something new, like a caterpillar turned into a butterfly.
In the little window of time before school pickup, we had the park and playground to ourselves. With no judging eyes watching I felt myself being able to let loose, be silly with my kids and just go all in on having fun and enjoying the moment.
My son loves bowling. The glowing shoes matched his beaming smile as he lugged the massive bowling ball in his little arms to push down the ramp and topple over the neatly stacked pins. His joy was infectious.
What special memories have you made this week? Typing them out or capturing them in some way can help you remember them!
Inspiring Finds: Podcasts & Substacks
Being inspired keeps our minds active and alive. These things can also lift our mood and help us become better human beings.
Here’s a mix of podcasts and substacks that inspired me this week:
I felt like I was meant to listen to this episode of The Creative Penn Podcast with author T Thorn Coyle. Despite being a writing podcast, this episode focused on authenticity and accepting your weirdness, which is exactly what I have been embracing and sharing in this Substack I had created only a few days prior.
I just discovered the Imperfects podcast. Turns out it's very popular here in Australia and now I know why. These guys offer the perfect balance between deep and meaningful and humour on big thought provoking topics. Here are my two favourite episodes so far about finding joy and impostor syndrome.
I love the writing style of
and this Substack post of hers this week was incredibly thought-provoking for me: What stories did you tell in order to survive?
Another must-read Substack post from
. The title speaks for itself. The lifelong benefits of befriending our mortality.
What inspired you this week?
Keeping Life Interesting: Creative Outlets and Fun Hobbies
In my last post discussing a cluttered life, I touched on the hobby of junk journaling. Here are some of my favourite YouTube accounts for learning the art of creative expression and journaling your memories with junk.
What hobbies or creative outlets did you indulge in recently?
Reality Check: Navigating Life’s Challenges
I find venting about struggles I face in life just as therapeutic as embracing joy. Writing about or vocalising the tougher moments in life helps us to process them and knowing we're not alone in these struggles is helpful too, so here are some minor struggles I faced this week:
I'm so tired - life with a one-year-old who co-sleeps with me and has never slept through the night combined with a 3-year-old who enjoys staying up late if he has a day nap results in not great sleep at the best of times. Add sickness to the equation and sleep is close to non-existent. I'm surviving on makeup day naps on weekends at the moment.
My skin is gross - when I don't eat well, my skin flares up, red dry patches of flaky skin around my hairline and along the creases of my nose are uncomfortable and unsightly. Must eat better.
We don't watch TV anymore. Since having a second child paired with our eldest toddler being a night owl who stays up far later than any other reasonable human his age, my husband and I no longer get time to watch TV together. Well, the TV we want to watch anyway.
What do you feel like venting about this week? This is your safe space! No judgment here.
Feel free to vote and share your thoughts in the comments below! I'd love to hear about the little things that bring you happiness and help you stay grounded in the midst of life's beautiful mess.
As we navigate the beautiful mess of life, remember that embracing authenticity, finding joy in the little things, and supporting one another through the ups and downs is what makes the journey so incredibly worthwhile – so keep sharing your stories, your laughter, and your love, and through this substack, I hope that we can build an amazing community of real, imperfect, and absolutely wonderful humans.
LOVE this so much! Thank you for sharing your view of the stars and reminding us to look up! ✨🫶 There is so much beauty in slowing down and taking in this moment and all its magic. 💖💖💖
Your "Gratitude Corner" is my favorite part of your newsletter. It's so heartfelt and makes me stop to consider what I'm grateful for. Definitely think the husband/dads deserve all the love! I have a good one too. And the junk journal thing looks FUN!