Category: Foundations

I’ve been thinking about this line for a long time.

Not in the grand, heroic sense like I’m Frodo saving the world from evil, but in a much quieter one. About how small choices accumulate. About how ordinary people shape the world not through dramatic acts, but through what they normalise, tolerate, question, or quietly refuse.

Not long ago, I volunteered to make one-off companionship calls to people who wanted someone to talk to. On my very first call, the woman I spoke to told me a riddle I hadn’t heard before, though I later learned it’s well known in other contexts:

Lily pads double in size every day, as long as someone keeps tending the pond, and the goal is to fill the pond. If it takes 30 days for the pond to become completely full, on which day is it half-full?

My immediate instinct was that it must be somewhere around the middle – maybe 15 days in (I should probably admit at this point that I’m not very good at maths). However, the answer is that the pond is half-full on day 29 – just one day before it’s completely covered. For most of the month, it looks like very little progress is being made.

That riddle is usually used to explain the concept of exponential growth. But she used it to make a different point: that care and effort can feel almost pointless for a long time, even though they’re quietly making a difference.

This blog started in a very ordinary way.

It began over a decade ago, when my children were small, as a place to review and reflect on the places, products, and experiences that made up that stage of life. It was rooted in the concerns that feel immediate when you’re responsible for tiny humans and trying to do a decent job, as well as a need to find my voice after the confidence I felt I’d lost in the early days of motherhood.

Like many blogs from that era, it eventually went quiet. Life moved on. The children grew. Work, responsibility, and the wider world took up more space. I stopped writing here for a long time, not because the thinking stopped, but because the questions I was turning over no longer fitted easily into the shape the blog had been in.

Coming back to this space now isn’t about picking up where I left off. It’s about acknowledging that the context has changed – for me, for my children, and for the world they’re growing into.

As my children have grown, the questions that occupy my mind have widened. I find myself thinking more about the world we’re shaping around them. About the language we use. About the things we excuse. About how quickly certain ideas become normal, and how slowly we sometimes notice the consequences.

The Mum Reviews is changing to reflect this. It’s no longer primarily about parenting tips, opinions, or recommendations. Instead, it’s becoming a place to pause and examine the wider world we’re shaping – socially, culturally, and morally – and what we pass on, often without realising it. Parenting remains part of the lens, but it’s no longer the whole frame.

I want to acknowledge the people who were part of this blog in its earlier life. Many of you were fellow bloggers or supportive friends. The conversations, exchanges, and support that came with that period mattered to me, and they shaped how I learned to think out loud, listen, and engage with others. This next chapter grows out of that, even as it moves in a different direction.

I’m not interested in offering answers or telling people what to think. I’m much more interested in asking questions that don’t have neat conclusions, and in exploring how good intentions, fear, care, and power interact in ways that aren’t always obvious at first glance.

This isn’t a blog about winning arguments or staking out positions. It’s about paying attention. About noticing what we normalise. About trying to hold on to critical thinking, kindness, and a serious regard for human dignity, especially in moments where those things feel fragile or contested.

Some posts will be short. Some may be uncomfortable. Some may change my own thinking as I write them. I hope they’ll also create space for thoughtful disagreement – not the kind that tries to score points, but the kind that genuinely wrestles with ideas.

If you’ve been here since the early days, thank you for being part of that earlier conversation. If you’re new, welcome. This is a quieter kind of project, but an intentional one.

If something here makes you stop and think, even briefly, then it’s doing what it’s meant to do.