Sara- The Seedling Researcher

I took a small hiatus to bring life into the world ✨
I won’t say it was fun but the result is pretty cute.

Full disclosure, This update doesn’t include all the to-ing and fro-ing from full time to part time I did over the last year or so due to miscarriage and morning sickness and I’m not actually sure if I AM in year 3 but *details *

It’s really all about analysis and writing for me now.

The small ones naps are unpredictable (baby sleep is a whole “thing”) but I’ve just been plugging away at bits when and where I can.

I’m technically on suspension “maternity leave” until January so anything I produce now is a bonus and I am placing zero expectations on myself so I can joyfully be present to my wee man.

That being said, I have been using Ai to help me build a little bit of structure by having tasks on hand I can begin as soon as nap-time begins.
As someone used to lots of time to get into my deep work groove and now having to make the most of every spare moment this is proving extremely helpful.

I think the main thing I remind myself of is that there really is no rush to completion. It will get done in its own time and my tiny one is already so much less tiny than he was before. I don’t want to miss it.
The many minutes I spend rocking in a dark room filled with white noise is fruitful for thinking and the very real opportunity motherhood presents for me to live my research in an embodied way is so very invaluable.

Onward 🐌

Picture credits: patterns .therapy
Plagues

Systemic educational change begins within.
What do I mean?
I mean, unless we can understand what we are feeling, speak aloud the uncomfortable truths and have the capacity to hold discomfort when others disagree with us in genuine dialogue we cannot have move beyond surface level solutions and shallow conversations conversations about the state of crisis we find ourselves in.

📖The Politics of Trauma: Somatics Healing & Social Justice - Staci. k Haines

One of my goals this year was to publish at least one article in a journal.

The challenge for me is that when I write or do something it needs to be meaningful. Writing for a scientific journal may be a career necessity but the lack of accessibility and actual relevance to kaiako in the classroom has always nagged at me.

This is why I’m so excited that my first article will be in .aotearoa a journal for teachers BY teachers that shares many of my own personal values including curiosity and compassion 🌱

Presales are live so head on over to .aotearoa to order yours 📲

👋🏽 It’s about that time again 🙈

Life lately 🌈
Posts like this feel strange to write but I feel that there are only some that take the time to really read these captions and as such I can share things publically but also, in a way, privately, with those who actually ‘care’ because they gift me that little bit of their time to actually pause and read.
I’ve been spending time listening to things that challenge me, painting with people that love me, collecting things that delight me and, for a brief time, growing a little life inside me.
That little life decided at 7 weeks that it wasn’t quite the time for them to continue growing and I am ok but also not but also I will be, you know?
I know these things are more common than we realise and I feel a deeper sense of connection to my fellow humans who have also felt the changes in their body stop and had to navigate the complex feelings this brings with it.
I continue to teach and to read and to collect data and appreciate all of you who read to stay connected with me as I journey through it all 🌱

I am increasingly aware that this (and any social media platform I choose really) is not interested in the nuances of thought or the wandering of my wondering.

These platforms demand relentless content production and a surety of position that I am not able, or more truthfully, not willing to provide.

That being said, I enjoy having a space to share musings and I value responses from the small section of the internet that know me and/or care about my escapades in life and academia.

Currently I am part of a few large “projects.” Projects that will likely span years.
I am, in these spaces, the youngest (at almost 34!) and with my age, achingly inexperienced.
I feel as a child might, sitting at the big kids table swinging my legs and wondering when it will be time for dessert.

It is also at these tables that I feel I am truly learning the business of changing things in real, tangible, meaningful ways. It took me a while to realise that this quiet, incremental learning in “rooms where it happens” are what I had been seeking when I jumped on social media led bandwagons demanding change with incendiary language and shareable sound bites.
The changes we want, in my view, will happen offline by people whose names you will likely never know and this thought gives me comfort.

I’ve taken on a role tutoring at the university that has me spending time with young people fresh to university life.
There has been lots of conversation about cultivating new habits and letting go of unhelpful ones.
A phrase that’s come up a fair bit is “finding balance.”
Balancing social life and mahi and study and life admin seems to be a perpetual challenge regardless of the stage of life you find yourself in.
Taking on this role alongside my own studies, my business, my friends, my family has asked me to look again at my own personal ideas of balance which is the way of teaching when you are fully immersed in it, what your students are called to do you are too.
Today balance looks like taking some time to pick blackberries whilst I hunt for eggs on our property musing on the idea of balance.
I’m not sure I came to any profound conclusion I just question whether balance is actually what I’m looking for.
Is balance just another way the perpetual grind we’ve been told life should be is continued? Is teaching balance just another way to demand maintenance of the status quo?
What if there was no balance there was just living life where I do the things I need to alongside the the things I want to and sometimes I do more of one or the other the way a wave laps or a plant grows.

Pictured are mushrooms amongst pansies.
Self seeding perennial plants amongst the fruiting bodies of that which decays and transforms.
The part of me that argues for the value of emotion is dying away because it’s no longer necessary.
Emotions matter, full stop.

I did my first podcast this week!
I talk about speaking hard truths, the value of academia and the role the body can play in becoming more conscious.
It was a fun experience getting to kōrero about things I love and I hope it adds value in some way 🥰🌱

You can listen to it on Spotify here:
https://open.spotify.com/episode/55fOuf0Uoatavn1rpHJa4v?si=hPvucmjQQeeIMy8OF-z-bw

After a weekend camping on the land of a woman I respect deeply in the company of other, incredible women, I feel renewed.

I am grateful for this photo of me in my practice, surrendered to myself, holding myself, connecting to myself.

I have been waiting for my knowledge to be enough, to be ready, to be legitimised in the eyes of others, waiting to blossom and bear fruit when the time was right.

Turns out, I have been blossoming this whole time.

Swipe right for some musings on one of my greatest loves.