As our year of celebration for the first decade of Womancraft Publishing comes to an end, I feel a shift in myself, the cycles changing. I have just booked to attend the London Book Fair with my husband, Patrick. This will be our second time going there together. The first was eleven years ago, when I wanted to scope out the book publishing world and how it related to the self-publishing scene. There, sat on the ground together, we hashed out a plan, a way forward: the idea that was to become Womancraft. Weaving in the good bits of traditional publishing, with the good bits of self-publishing, and our own strongly held values on community, creativity and sustainable business to create a future-facing company in a dying industry. I am very, very proud of what we have achieved this far, all whilst raising our young family and navigating some of the most deeply challenging years of our lives. This time we are going with the intention of spreading our wings, expanding our community – seeking out international publishers to translate our works, audiobook producers, UK distributors and meeting our US distributors in person for the first time.
This has been a massive month – our first Compendium launch, and the same week as our first Womancraft Author group call, the same year as our first all-hands Womancraft team meeting, collaborating with our US distributor, starting a podcast, signing with a major audiobook producer, taking on marketing support… all massive energetic expansions for someone who has been, by force of autistic temperament, a lone wolf, who is naturally anxious of other people.
Yesterday, our fourteen-year-old daughter brought in her phone to watch videos of her early childhood that my husband had recently rediscovered. In those videos we all look so different, sound different enough as to not even recognise ourselves. How far we have travelled together, how much we have grown and changed together. The way we live now is not the way we lived then. We started Womancraft before any of our diagnoses, we have weathered many storms in our personal and business life. The only constant was me threatening to quit, to end it all, several times each year, when the overwhelm became too much, when someone came out of the woodwork on the attack, usually all guns blazing at me personally. It is a pattern I know well.
It took me the first fifteen years of my relationship with Patrick to fully trust him. This is no reflection on him, as anyone who has met him will know: a kinder, more caring, gentle and sensitive man you would be hard-pressed to find. No, it was all on me. And this is how I’ve done most of the big things in my life: dive head-first in, full of passion, take on too much, get overwhelmed, freak out, pull away, shut down. Anxious-avoidant attachment. Fear of not belonging, of being abandoned, all the while abandoning. Feeling desperately alone, weighed down by the world being my personal problem to solve, single handed.
What Patrick has taught me in our marriage about patience, trust, holding steady in the eye of the storm rather than pushing too hard or running away, I have learned to do in business too, with the strong and steady, loyal and ever-enthusiastic team of first Sharon, then Leigh and Sarah, and in more recent times Sophie as well. Women who most days believe in my capacity more than I do myself, who shoulder part of the burden with enthusiasm, challenge me when they know I’m taking on too much, come up with constantly excellent ideas and get on with things by themselves with the wellbeing and ethos of Womancraft in their hearts.
And then there’s Patrick, my right-hand man, who is unthreatened enough by strong, creative, emotional women to work in the background of Womancraft, never looking for glory or attention for himself, but in constant service to me, to us, to this thing we created together – he does our taxes, calculates royalties, builds and manages the websites, lays out the books, organises our shipments and printing, designs our covers…and most importantly talks me down from quitting when it all feels too much.
I was in my late teens when we got together, I knew I wanted four children. I thought we would have two and adopt two. I was partly right. I birthed three and then our fourth, our youngest, is Womancraft. An act of love and service, creating work that we love, supporting our family, together. I don’t know many couples who could work side by side day in day out, but it works for us. And so this is a birthday celebration for our youngest child, Womancraft, who is ten this year.
I realise that as I am shifting my relationship day-by-day in my marriage to one of secure attachment: learning not to push through the weeks alone, cutting myself off emotionally just to survive the stress, but instead to keep checking in, keep touching base, physically, emotionally, so we can co-regulate. So I realise I need to do the same for the next ten years of Womancraft. We already work cyclically, seasonally, publishing Spring and Autumn equinox, Summer Solstice and Samhain, and leaving fallow time for winter reflection and hibernation and summer fun. Each December I take stock of the year past and vision the year ahead using Leonie Dawson’s planners. We factor school holidays into our working schedules for us and our employees ensuring downtime then, and we work flexibly honouring our menstrual cycles, with rest and visioning time in the pre-menstrual and first couple of days of our cycles. And yet this is only the beginning, we are learning deeper each year how to support ourselves as we work, and ensure our work supports us all.
Womancraft regularly supports almost 15 charities through regular donations, we do business as kindly as we can, in every way we can. This hasn’t made us squillionaires – as a recent dream about the good ship Womancraft made clear – but that was never the intention. The intention always was, and continues to be, a values-driven, sustainable, caring business that does things differently, that creates the books I long to see in the world, supports creative people fairly, and centres women’s voices and experiences. This is what we do each day we show up to work.
I have been deeply touched by all the gratitude and feedback from women I have always received for my work over my whole career, but especially this last week as the Compendium has launched and more women have got to see close up what it is we do in the world, how we do it and what it feels like to be involved in that. It’s really reminded me that I am not (nor ever have been) doing any of this all alone, like my ego tells me when I’m shutting down and pulling away. Just as we share our books in ripples, so what makes Womancraft is wave upon wave of people who support our work and contribute to it: by writing books for us, working for us, reviewing, selling, buying and sharing our books. And there is one more ripple, one I often forget when I am stressed and busy and caught up in the mundane details: the originating spark, the spirit of Womancraft, the guiding light that appeared when I spread my arms to the sky and said, I am ready. She who holds us all who is so very, very grateful for this vehicle, these voices, this community in her name.
And so, as our tenth year draws to a close, I am remembering why we started Womancraft. Remembering I am not alone. Checking in more often, with myself, with the community. Keeping on evolving, committing to ever-more sustainable ways of working. Reaching out, harnessing the collective genius of the community. I am done with being scared, being anxious, feeling it all heavy on my shoulders. This last few days have reminded me strongly that we are in this together. And what we do matters. Women are hungry for this – for community, creativity, sharing our voices, living and working differently. We are not alone in this, none of us. Nor do we have to do it all by ourselves. We are in it together.
Visit us over at www.womancraftpublishing.com
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