back up blog

Darling Laura: some things for 2017. It’s that time again. Go to bed early. Stretch every day. Food is fuel, first. Wank. Stay soft. Be generous, but not a mug. Believe him when he tells you what he is. Call home. Take the flight. Expect nothing, experience it all. Miss people. Light a candle, lose a day to reading, photograph things just because. Wear red lipstick and eat with your fingers and laugh, loudly and without apology. Do not change. For 2017, do not make promises to yourself on how when you fix this and alter that, you will love yourself more. For 2017, forget pushing and becoming and targets and goals. For 2017, be. The woman you are is already enough. She always was. You do not need to be thinner, or bendier, or take a biotic culture supplement every morning. You are not more loveable by having inbox zero, nor more likely to get into heaven because you spent £35 on the good shampoo. Your family adore and respect you whether you sell three books or three million. The world

And, just like that, my second book was born. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I wasn’t looking for book two – not just yet. Getting published in June this year, with Becoming, seeing Tweets and Instagrams and four-and-five-star Amazon reviews on the THING I WROTE TO GET ME OUT OF THE SADDEST TIME IN MY LIFE was enough for me. Contributing to The Telegraph and RED and Stylist and The Metro,  going viral writing about celibacy , too, on top of that, well. It felt like a coup. Then I became a columnist for Grazia and I thought: bloody hell. Colour me done, lads. This is what success feels like. The thing is, is like I’ve documented , I was medicated for anxiety, and in therapy for depression , and had resolved not to write much at all, at least not for a little while, for the rest of 2016, maybe, as all of this unfolded. So “success” is a funny word. Outwardly – to the social media eye – it must’ve looked like I was living the clichéd dream. But, by the time the book actually came out I was