Watercolours that soothed my internal storm.

Emily Bagaric
Jul 31
3 min read

The Kitchen Table - the place where I connect with my passion, my work, and my community.

All amongst the calm and the chaos of family life.

It's messy, it's imperfect and it's the daily realities of meeting my needs alongside my family.

Enjoy weekly stories, musings and anedotes of raising kids in emotionally attuned ways.

An idea has been brewing...

I’ve been wanting a way to connect with you on a more personal level. A way to connect in with my purpose and passion, to share the stories and realities of what it’s like for me parenting two wildly unique boys, choosing a path of life learning, tending to my own needs alongside theirs, all whilst honouring their varied and sometimes challenging to be with emotional expressions.

And here it is! Stories from the kitchen table, a weekly story, musing, pondering, something from my world, delivered to your world, in the hope that you feel less alone, more connected, confident and competent that you are raising your own wild ones in the exact way that you are meant to be.

We’ve been experiencing some ‘boredom’ in our home and family dynamic recently. Mr 7 probably says that phrase most days and my agitation in the face of his body language and general mood when he declares he’s bored has been becoming increasingly big in my body.

To share openly and honestly here, I have responded more than once with a threat to take him to school or to force some sort of ‘work’ out of him. Not my finest moments, and he’s not having a bar of either.

And I know there’s more underneath the boredom and some times if he’s left with it, he will come to something on his own, but more often than not he needs a great deal of support with it.

So last week, after offering the usual ideas, you could draw, read, play a board game, lego…. I suggested we all do some watercolour painting.

He said yes!

Great, now I’m no artist, although I am pretty comfortable getting crafty, I do find watercolours a super simple way to engage them and myself. I can do this alongside them, and it’s easeful to find presence.

It was a bit of a shit show to start with. Torn paper and mounting frustration as he was trying hard to paint some machine from Star Wars. Something he’s great at drawing.

I began making shapes and marks and swirls on my page. Then water drops and patterns and literally anything that came as I steadied my breath and got him a new piece of paper.

He began copying me. Then his brother too.

I noticed he was playing with the patterns, coming up with things on his own.

We painted about 10 pages and decided they would be great as wrapping paper.

The boredom had gone, the reset had been done and it’s in these moments I look back and am reminded that we all get there, to a place of connection. It’s not always easy, usually always messy but so, so worth it.