The Authenticity Project

by Clare Pooley

Emmeline Pankhurst didn’t chain herself to those railings so we could spend our lives as a tiny cog in someone else’s wheel. Be your own boss. Create something. Employ people. Be fearless. Do something you really love. Make it all worthwhile. So, she had done it.

‘Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, today is a gift,’ she’d chant to herself as she brushed her teeth. ‘It’s not happy people who are grateful, it’s grateful people who are happy,’

Meet force with softness. Recipe for life. Now you understand.’ And, strangely, he did.

Mother is a verb, not a noun. I think it means there are many ways to mother without actually being one. Look at you and your café. You nurture loads of people, every day.’

Surely it would be better to live a messy, flawed, sometimes not very pretty life that was real and honest, than to constantly try to live up to a life of perfection that was actually a sham?