Your Smile is Infectious & Authentic Living This Week

Plus, gratitude, memories, writing progress and inspiring Substack reads

Hello Friends!

Here's what you'll find in today’s newsletter:

A Piece of Life in Focus This Week

• Your Smile is Infectious: Creative writing about love for my smiling little boy.

Authentic Living This Week

• Gratitude Corner - My birthday and bed rails

• Making Memories - Brunch date and school fate

• Reality Check - Toddler tantrums

• Fiction Writing Progress & Learnings - My first Beta reading experience

• Inspiring Substack Reads - Substacks about writing and fiction

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Welcome to My Substack! My Name is Tania.

I invite you to join me on a journey of embracing authentic living. Through honest stories, personal insights, and reflections on authenticity, I seek to find the extraordinary in the ordinary. Subscribe for free & tap the ❤️ if you enjoy this post!

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Life in Focus This Week

A short piece I came up with on a whim while admiring the cuteness of my youngest son.

You’re Smile is Infectious

With a wide-faced grin and a sparkle in your eye, I instantly catch the magic you radiate. When I see your smile, it grows inside me like a virus—spreading warmth through my body until my face is beaming alongside yours. If a giggle is involved I am surely lost. The joy kindling within divides and conquers all of me. And then a touch of your skin, a stroke of your cheek settles me, calms me and completes me.

Infectiously in love in your arms, always.

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Authentic Living This Week

This Substack series 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:

• A quiet birthday with family. My 3-year-old picked out chocolates and a card and helped my parents bake and decorate a chocolate cake for me with icing and sprinkles.

• Bed rails. I have two of them on either side of the bed I share with my one-year-old. I'd hate to think of how often he would have rolled out and onto the floor if they were not there. He is a parkour enthusiast in his sleep. It’s amazing I don’t get injured through the night from his epic manoeuvres.

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 my favourite memories from this week:

• Had a face-to-face brunch date with my work colleague at a local café and craft market. It was a novel treat for us both. We joked about how long it had been since we had seen each other in the real world rather than through video meetings. She bought me a hot English breakfast tea, and we shared hot buttered banana toast and talked office gossip for an hour like two adults.

• Hubby and I took the boys to the local school fate. It was much bigger than we expected and very busy. We forgot the pram and had a long uphill walk from the car, but once we were there my 3-year-old darted through the place like a hound looking for a fox. He found a petting zoo and barged his way in as the lady was letting people out. After that, he wanted fairly floss. He grabbed it out of the lady's hand before we paid and gave it one lick before deciding he didn't want it. Mummy ate it. A snow cone was his next target which he did shovel into his mouth before we headed home with my one-year-old shoving his hand down my shirt and yelling 'boobie' all the way back to the car.

What memories have you made this week?

Reality Check: Navigating Life’s Challenges

Writing about or vocalising the tougher moments in life helps us process them and knowing we're not alone in these struggles is helpful too.

Here is a struggle I’d like to highlight this week:

 I feel somewhat ashamed to say that there have been a few times when my eldest son either did or tried to hit me in public. The first time he did it was in a shop when I told him not to grab a delicate item off the table. I was mortified, and when I got back in the car I ugly cried.

Now along with the usual disciplining trends and 'gentle hands' rhetoric etc, which has not stopped these acts from occurring yet, I take it on the chin as a part of life with a spirited toddler with big emotions.

We had another episode similar to this in the local library this week after he grabbed a metal book stand off the shelf and put it in his mouth. Hitting, screaming and crying ensued as I tried to put him in the double pram and failed. He ended up crawling along the floor towards the exit while I followed behind with my 1-year-old in the pram. Once we got outside he was happy as sunshine again as if nothing had happened.

What do you feel like venting about this week? This is your safe space! No judgment here.

Fiction Writing Progress and Learnings

I’m currently focused on improving my fiction writing skills and am working towards the goal of publishing my first novel. Follow me on my journey…

I wrote a whole post about my first beta reading experience here. Thankfully it has been way more positive than I expected so far. I’m waiting for my other betas to get back to me with feedback on the first three chapters of my rom-com story before I submit it to the competition in a few weeks. I’ve already decided that I will finish and publish the story anyway, despite what the results of the competition may be. It just happens to be a fun bonus.

Along with listening to my new favourite writing podcast ‘Fiction Writing Made Easy’ by Savannah Gilbo, I’ve started to become involved in a few reading and writing Facebook groups too which has been fun.

Inspiring Substacks to Read

Inspiration helps drive us to do more, be more and perhaps even take our lives in a whole new direction.

Here are a few Substacks that caught my eye this week:

I need to be honest by

Penny Harrison

from Writing Life, Writing Fiction.

I know when I have read the truth. It’s the writing that makes me feel seen. It’s the kind of writing that makes me rejoice in the relief in not being alone. The kind of writing that makes me say ‘yes, yes that’s right. That is how it feels. That IS how I feel.’ And that’s the kind of writing I know I’m here to do.

Writre’s Block and ‘The Plot’ by

Amanda!

from The Certified Readers Department

And having someone actually reading (and resonating) with what you’re writing is one of the most important things that can ever happen to a writer.

People, Please! Like me!! by

Milena

from Helm the Overwhelm

If all our self-worth is built on being liked by others, we have no chance to be truly ourselves. Like a chameleon, we are able to adjust to other people’s preferences, but in playing that game, we fail to develop our own.

Nonfiction doesn’t teach you anything by

Annika

from The Internet is My Friend

Reading how the main character navigates a difficult relationship got me in touch with my own emotional intelligence, and improved it significantly. It helped me understand people more. Their motives and behaviors. Reading fiction made me a more understanding person, someone who can more easily adapt to different situations.

What has inspired you this week?

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Here are a few quotes from my recent reads to send you off for another wonderful week:

Life pressed forward with a burning velocity that left all of the beautifully-pressed details quickly forgotten. - Lynn Painter, Better than the Movies

The words they had spoken sat and soured. The words they did not say screamed between them. - R. Lee Smith, The Last Hour of Gann

Please let me know what you think of my posts by leaving a comment below or reaching out to me in the app. If you enjoy reading this newsletter consider hitting subscribe. Have a wonderful day!