10 Years Later: A brand new chapter for The Darling Academy

My Mum has always said that from the moment she first held me as a newborn baby, she had a feeling I would become a writer. Call it mother’s intuition, but she was right (as usual). I have always loved words, and it fascinates me that they can hold such meaning and power - writing has been one of the great loves of my life. But looking back now, I don’t think being a writer was ever really the final destination for my use of them.

It was simply how I got here.

For more than a decade, I have written books, blog posts and articles about womanhood, marriage, femininity and, above all, homemaking. What began with Ladies Like Us eventually became The Darling Academy, and along the way came English Etiquette, television and radio appearances, documentaries, interviews and more conversations about traditional womanhood than I could ever have imagined.

But the most important thing that came from all those years of writing wasn’t the writing itself. It was the women.

When I wrote Ladies Like Us ten years ago, I wasn’t trying to start a movement or become a successful author. I was a 30-year-old young mum and wife who simply didn’t feel she fitted in. I’d grown up in a world that celebrated women’s achievements in the workplace, yet seemed to have little regard for the work of creating a home. Marriage, motherhood, and the desire to build a family-centred life felt like ambitions we were expected to put aside.

I wrote what I wished I had to read and encourage me when I was growing into womanhood. A book for women who didn’t quite fit the lifestyle, ambitions and current cultural values they were constantly being told they should want.

It was meant for women who perhaps felt a little old-fashioned at heart, but who still knew their way around modern life. Women who wanted to choose charm, femininity, marriage, motherhood and home, without feeling that they had to apologise for it.

I wrote it for women like me, and something rather wonderful happened.

Through The Darling Academy, in lots of little magical ways, those women found one another!

The little corner of the internet that grew around my writing, my appearances in the media (even when it hurt), and my dogged, determined advocacy became part of a much bigger conversation about homemaking, marriage, femininity, family and traditional living.

For women who had often felt rather alone in those desires, discovering that there were others like them was enormously significant.

And that, I now realise, was always the most important and beautiful part of this entire journey.

Community.

The Trad Wife movement has lost the plot!

The conversation around traditional homemaking has changed enormously over the years.

Something that began, at its heart, as a conversation about women choosing a different way of living has become tangled up with social media, politics, personalities, aesthetics, controversy and the relentless pressure to perform a lifestyle online. It’s also now a cash cow that other women exploit for personal financial gain.

I’ve spent years trying to explain what being a traditional housewife as a calling actually means to me. I’ve spoken to journalists for hundreds of hours, answered the same questions again and again, and tried to have nuanced conversations about those of us who choose traditional marriage, femininity, and domestic life over a typical career.

Also that yes, you can be a homemaker and have a side hustle or a hobby that pays, but the home and you family’s needs always always always come first.

Eventually, I realised something rather important…. I don’t need to spend the rest of my life trying to convince people who have already decided they don’t want to understand.

There is a little Biblical phrase that has been coming back to me repeatedly:

Do not cast your pearls before swine. Matthew 7:6

Not calling anyone a pig, but I think there is wisdom in recognising when something precious is being deliberately trampled upon by certain people.

For a long time, I was giving away my time, my energy, my experience and, quite frankly, my peace trying to defend something that didn’t mean jot to the audiences it was mostly being put in front of!

When I stepped away from all the noise, and laid down the sword, I could see what had been there all along… What the whole thing was really about, and what I missed more than anything when I left Instagram and said “no” to it all for a while. The community!

The real mission was never the label of Trad Wife, or Traditional Homemaker, or being an influencer, or trying to change people’s minds.

It wasn’t about being a well known anything. It was about celebrating and edifying the women who love home, and being among them!

Women who want to learn how to cook properly, run a household, welcome people into their homes, create traditions, raise families and make ordinary life meaningful. Women who believe that homemaking is valuable, and women who want to find other women who feel the same! That is something much bigger than a cultural trend or movement.

So I have stopped trying to convince the world, and have decided to build something just for ‘Ladies Like Us’ instead

I really miss our little corner of the internet when it was in its heyday… we were all discovering and encouraging one another. Before the playground bullies found us and ripped our fun apart in one way or another.

I miss the sense of community that existed before everything became content, performance and algorithms. I miss women sharing what they had learned, asking questions without worrying how they would be perceived, and simply enjoying the beautiful business of making a home.

I know I’m not the only one.

There are women who feel lonely in their desire to live this way, I alway have. There are so many women just like us out there who don’t have anyone in their real lives who quite understands why homemaking matters so much to them.

Women who are just beginning and don’t know where to start. Women who have been doing this for forty years and have a lifetime of wisdom to share. Women who simply want somewhere they can belong. So rather than continuing to explain homemaking to the outside world, I want to create somewhere for the women who already understand.

That is why The Darling Academy is now becoming much more than a blog and a couple of books… they’re too passive a format, and we deserve so much more!

Welcome to The NEW Darling Academy

Ten years ago, I named this little corner of the internet an “Academy” with a silly little dream that maybe it could actually become a “thing” in the future. A pipe-dream.

Looking back, I rather love the idea that those little seeds of a wish I planted in my heart has grown into something that can actually be that now. It has been a decade-long dream with many bumps in the road but I’m excited that we have reached that season of life now! The timing feels right, and it’s at a point where I think we all desperately want a space just for ourselves.

I know I do! In truth, I wrote Ladies Like Us for me, and this new chapter also comes from a dream to create something else I also wish existed…

I’m creating a private membership space for women who genuinely want the value of homemaking education, and a supportive community!

The Darling Academy!

Think of it as a modern finishing school for homemakers and would-be homemakers. A place to learn, grow, share and encourage one another, deliberately separate from the noise of social media.

There will be courses and practical homemaking education. Resources and downloads. Vintage-inspired extras, interviews, and guest contributions. Conversations about marriage, femininity, family values, home economics, and all those wonderful things many of us were never taught, or felt to embarrassed to bring up!

But the real heart of it will be the community forum. One that is free from the censorship social media platforms are putting in place, and also free from negative talk! A place for wholesome and heart-led conversation among women who are kind, and gentle.

Please know that I don’t want this to be another place where you simply consume my content and my writing - though that will still be there, but more than anything I want it to be somewhere you participate.

Somewhere you can ask a question and have like-minded women answer you. Somewhere you can share something you’ve made. Somewhere you can admit that you’re struggling and receive advice from ladies who care. Somewhere an experienced homemaker can pass on what she has learned, while learning something from a woman just beginning.

Most importantly, I want it to be somewhere you can make genuine friendships.

One of the things I’ve always loved about The Darling Academy is that it has never been about telling every woman to live exactly as I do. That there is only one way to be a good homemaker.

It has always been about asking bigger questions, exploring nuance, and seeing the bigger picture of life rather than chasing the current trendy carrots dangled in front of most of us.

What do we value? What kind of homes do we want to create? What does marriage mean to us? What does femininity mean? How do we best care for our families?

What can we opt out of in order to build the life we want?

How do we preserve traditions and skills? How do we make ordinary life meaningful? And perhaps most importantly, how do we find other women who are asking the same questions?

That is the community I want to build.

Not a collection of women who agree on everything, but a community where women can disagree graciously, encourage generously, and make room for one another.

Different cultures, different backgrounds, different personalities, different experiences, but a shared love of home and family life.

I don’t want to stand at the front of the room and tell you how to live. I want to build the room with you!

Because I think The Darling Academy was always supposed to become more than a blog, a book, and more than a movement.

It’s meant to be a home for the women who love home, and whose hearts go before them.

The Darling Academy Housewife School & Private Membership

Ten years ago, when I wrote Ladies Like Us, I thought I was writing a book.

I didn’t realise I was beginning a journey that would lead me here.

Looking back, the greatest thing those years have given me isn’t the books, interviews or television appearances. It is the women I’ve met along the way. The women who have told me that something I wrote changed the way they thought about their home, their marriage or themselves.

That is the part I don’t want to lose.

In fact, I want to build upon it. So The Darling Academy is entering a new chapter.

A quieter one in public, perhaps, but definitely a more intentional one. It’ll be buzzing behind the scenes - in our own little private escape.

A new home where we can simply gather together, learn from one another, encourage one another and get on with the beautiful business of making a home, loving our families and building meaningful lives right where we have been placed.

The doors to The Darling Academy private membership will be opening soon.

If you would like to be among the first to hear when it launches, you can add your name to the list here:

thedarlingacademy.com/enrol

I have a feeling this might be the beginning of something rather special, and I’d love for you to join us.

With love as always,