A Note on: Manure, Motherhood, and Magic in the Mundane

This past Sunday was Mothering Sunday in the UK, and to mark the day, I went on a walk with my mother and two of my sisters. The sky was vast, the wind gentle, and in a field close to our family home, the ground was thick with manure. How fitting—that on Mother’s Day, we found ourselves wading through fertile ground.

Motherhood, too, is fertile ground. It is where life unfolds—where growth comes through mess, where transformation happens unseen. It is a paradox—both raw and miraculous. It stretches us, breaks us open, and rebuilds us in ways we never could have imagined. It is not a linear path but a spiralling journey of trust, surrender, and resilience. It is both ordinary and sacred, rich and messy, wild and unseen. It demands faith in the unknown, in the process, in the slow unfolding of something greater than ourselves. The path is never clear, but the unknown has its purpose.

And yet, the mundane can feel like a loop—a perpetual cycle of nappy changes, counter-wiping, floor-sweeping, repeat. It is the unseen labour of love, the work that builds a life. It is so easy to believe that life is waiting somewhere else. I remember hearing these words last year: The life you long for is hidden in the life you have. And they have stuck with me ever since.

Because this is it. These are the days. The hard days and the long days, but the best days. And I know these days will slip away. I know the tiny hands reaching for me now will one day reach for something beyond me. The rhythm of my days will shift. The house will be quieter, the floors will stay clean for longer, and my arms will ache for the weight they once held. And I will long for the mess, the giggles tumbling through the halls, the sacred simplicity of our everyday togetherness.

So tonight, tomorrow, and in every moment ahead, I will soak it in. The chaos, the exhaustion, the joy. Because this work is moulding me into something greater than I could have ever planned for myself. This love is stretching me, refining me, making me new. It is humbling; it is holy.

Motherhood is the great alchemy—turning the everyday into the eternal. It is the sacred act of weaving a life, a home, a love that will last beyond my own years. And what a beautiful blessing it is to be given this life, to walk this path, manure and all.