Welcome to Gently Does It

Hello, I’m Harriet and I’m writing to you from my home in Ilkley, West Yorkshire and this is my writing home, Gently Does It.

The stories I share are those of a 53-year-old woman who’s experienced a few of life’s challenges. There’s the grief that came with the death of my parents and grandmother in 2015, my recovery from breast cancer in 2018 and then there’s the question mark over where home is after uprooting my young family from our family home in Bath, where I married and our three children were born, to the south coast in 2014 and up to Ilkley Moor in 2017 due to redundancy.

And then there are the day-to-day pressures. The challenges that come with work, relationships and friendships on top of parenting teens and young adults.

The sun always shines and the sky is always blue in Yorkshire, honest.

Where do I live this gentle life?

This corner of west Yorkshire has been home since September 2017 yet it’s a place that’s full of faint childhood memories too. Childhood memories of being squished next to pillows, duvets and suitcases in the back of mum’s maroon Mini Clubman. Blinking in the dark as we zoomed past the cats eyes on the M1 from our family home in the south to stay with my aunt, uncle and cousins.

Memories of scrambling up Ilkley moor and posing in front of Cow and Calf rocks. Birthday fish and chips at Harry Ramsden’s. Visits to Bolton Abbey and the Yorkshire Show in a convoy of cars driven by parents, uncles, aunts and grandparents, backseats packed with children, boots packed with picnic food.

Dreaming of a Yorkshire stone terrace

I grew up harbouring dreams of living in a Yorkshire stone terraced house, just like the ones my aunt, uncle and cousins did, the setting for many a family summer and Christmas gathering. It still bamboozles me that I ended up living in this very same corner of Yorkshire, because living here, in Yorkshire wasn’t in my plan, until it was.

But if I know one thing, it’s this. You don’t tend to get to your early fifties without having encountered a few challenges along the way and while my experiences aren't unique, the deaths, cancer, relocations and redundancies did come thick and fast over a short period of time.

And so, on the back of a throwaway comment a friend made in 2016 after my parents died, I started writing and it's brought me here, to Gently Does It.

Conversations and connections

I write because I love it. My shoulders relax as I move my hand across the page. It helps me to walk through life (and on the moor) a little more easily. Writing helps me to clear the clutter out of my head.

It’s cathartic and it helps me to accept and enjoy where and who I am now and I hope that in sharing my thoughts, you might find something that chimes with you too.

The icing and cherry on the cake that comes with writing are the connections that come with every like, comment and share. The conversations in Notes on the Substack app (where I love hanging out) and the replies that land in my inbox.

So please don’t be shy about getting in touch, I’d love to hear from you and I’d also love to know where you feel most at home.

If you enjoy reading Gently Does It, why not subscribe so that these weekly letters from Yorkshire drop into your inbox without you having to go looking for them. All my writing is free, paid subscription is only there as an option if you want to support my writing.

Thank you for stopping by and reading, Harriet

To find out more about the company that provides the tech for this newsletter, visit Substack.com.