International Women's Day...and us!

Happy Sunday!

Ohhhh, my friends! Come over to my kitchen table today in Sydney and I will share my figs. I’d love to slice them for you fresh, and serve with some beautiful soft cheese and biscuits. Or I would poach in a rich caramel sauce, and set a gorgeous white bowl in front of you with a cup of tea.

Can you tell I’m feeling a little bit stretched at the moment? And female friends are ALL I want around me: friends and sisters and friends-like-sisters and female colleagues and smart women in shops. I want the sisterhood this week because I’m tired, and that’s what International Women’s Day is all about.

We lift each other up. We carry the load for one another. I had this image the other day that all of us know how to greet each other: we sling that backpack of rocks to one side, we pop our heavy baby on the opposite hip, and we look into one another’s eyes and ask, “How are you? (How are you really)? What can I carry for you?”

That is what it is to be women.

Way back from the dawn of time we’ve been doing this for each other. And it makes me think of Julian of Norwich, the first known woman to write a book in English.

So many of you here are English and / or you love to travel, and I wonder if any of you have been to the fabulous exhibit in the British Library: Medieval Women: In their own words? Julian of Norwich’s The Revelation of Divine Love is in that collection, and this is the first book definitely authored by a woman. Julian was a mystic who lived from ~1342 - 1416.

She wrote these brilliant words that still resonate with women today.

I wonder if there were women before 1360 who were able to get the supplies to write their own books? I wonder how hard it was for women to get any tools to create art?

We’ve come such a long, long, way…and we stand on the shoulders of giants who just kept pushing. Julian wrote a BOOK when she’d never seen another woman do it before her. That’s why her reassurance still reaches us today. I say it to myself often: it’s the repetition that’s the wisdom. “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.”

  • ALL things - the big things

  • And all things - the everyday

  • And all manner of things - the tiny, the hurts and worries and niggles that maybe mattter only to you

ALL OF IT shall be well. Somehow we grow through it, and come out on the other side.

Thinking of you all on this beautiful Sunday. I hope you are well. Thank you for being here with me, and for being internet-friends.

Love, Catherine x

P.S. The Fun Stuff!

  • Chatting with a favourite bestselling author on Wednesday night at 8pm AEST — Monica McInerny! Link is here for our Facebook Live chat. Please join us! (Irish friends, that’s 9am on Wednesday morning for you!)

  • Learn a little more about the exhibit at the British Library, Medieval Women In Their Own Words.

  • Thank you for all the love and patience while I launch The Bittersweet Bakery Cafe into the world. Reviews are dropping now, and women are loving it 🩷. But here’s the behind-the-scenes…we’ve got to get this book into women’s hands one by one. When you’re Lee Childs or Liane Moriarty, there are stacks of books everywhere. When you’re a debut author, not so much 😊 and this makes sense because publishing is a business and big names sell. The best way for women to find my book is through you! If you’d like to…and if you enjoyed the book:

    • Tell your book club, your female friends and share a link.

    • Request it at your library.

    • Gift a copy to someone, if that’s in your budget.

    • Write a review.

  • What’s the big rush? Launch week is so, so important. And more behind-the-scenes: bookshops simply can’t carry all the new releases indefinitely, so it’s important to support a book early if you can. I’d like to get a chance to write another one!