Girl Mossing in 2024 (on grounding, nourishing, and healing )

Letter 7 ❧

The days are long and lovely,

and everything is yellow here. Lawns and palms appear singed and sallow, struggling to survive the heart of summer. Birak is the burning season, and all the foreign greenery isn’t made for this boodja’s searing intensity.

I know how they feel — these burnt, tired, hopeful plants, so obviously out of place — and I wish I could tell them it’s okay to let go.

I wish I learned sooner that I was never meant for the fast life.

The hustle of it all.

The time-blocking and planning to the minute. The exploitation of moments for material. The layers upon layers of expectation I seem doomed to forever chase but fail to meet. The aversion to rest that has evolved into a hum of constant nervous electricity. The insatiable need to please or compete. The belief that more is never enough.

But I have had enough.

So this year, I am Girl Mossing.

“Girl Mossing” has become my 2024 mantra.

It represents a return to myself. A return to nature and the natural rhythms of life. A return to living delicately, peacefully, and intentionally. To me, Girl Mossing is the antithesis of hustle culture. It’s about making space for the things that nourish you and bring you joy — especially if they’re considered unproductive.

In the waning weeks of January, I created a morning routine that embodied this change because I just didn’t want to wake up with my phone anymore. I’m tired of shovelling down my breakfast, throwing on what’s easiest and running out the door (3 minutes late and counting). I’m tired of feeling frazzled, rushed and time-poor from the minute my eyes flutter open.

It’s such a hollow way to live.

These days, when I can, my mornings stretch an hour long. They’re gentle and blanketed in a quiet solitude I’ve come to revere. Breakfast is now a must, and it seems the heirloom tomatoes we’ve been growing knew it was time to plump and ripen. I still write my morning pages, those sacred 3 pages of rumination and reflection, stowing away yesterday’s aches so I can begin anew. I’m taking time to care for my skin and dress nicely. It feels like an offering to myself:

here, let me love you before we go out and share our love with everything else.

the bellies of heirloom tomatoes fascinate me

Girl Mossing is also about connection — connection to the earth; connection to the moment; connection to each other. By the time 2023 came to a close, I felt like an apparition who’d forgotten how to place her feet on the ground and listen to the breeze. Life moved past me and through and around me, but I never seemed to move with it.

Time is a luxury we only have the joy of experiencing once and then it’s gone. I’m realising now that I’ve spent so much of my own chasing the clock or someone else’s ideals, that I’ve forgotten how to live in the moment. I’ve forgotten what it means to connect. And I’ve never craved genuine connection as deeply as I do now (though, that’s a topic for another time).

All this to say, I’m relearning presence.

I remember when Girl Bossing went viral — a call to meet businessmen at the top, to (subtly) relinquish the nuances of womanhood to perpetuate an exclusionary image of success through academics and a career — and I embodied it completely. The work hours, the mindset and the inevitable burnout were my reality during university and the early years of my career. Multiple personal crises, a breakdown and a lifestyle shift later, I’ve come to feel the term is more akin to an infantilising trojan horse than the feminist movement it had originally hoped to be.

While Girl Mossing is very much just a term I’ve glorified for personal benefit, each time I recall it I am reminded of the beautiful lifestyle I want to create for myself; the values and ideals I want to embody moving forward, the green, abundant life I hope to cultivate in the coming years, the connection I hope to rekindle. Silly terms are just for us, after all. , so while Girl Bossing continues to work for many women, Girl Mossing is what’s working for me. And I love that.

From my trip to Tasmania end of 2022…

What is a writer if not an observer, a translator of moments?

…How can one write about the vivid and enchanting nature of life if one doesn’t experience the magic within their own?

…How does one translate the vulnerability of a moment to the page if one is unable to be vulnerable in those difficult moments themselves?

…How can one write of peace if one does not know how to pause?

These are the questions I find myself asking.

Girl Mossing is my answer.

Will you Girl Moss with me?

Featuring Rob Mullholland’s “Vestige” in the forest of Aberfoyle, Trossachs

Yours from the forest floor,

Caitlin ❧

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