Coming Out of the Quiet, a wild thing happened this summer.

September has come around quickly this year. It always feels like my real new year.

Far more than January ever does.

This September, my pace is slower and I’m far more aware of my journey because of it. Tuned into myself, and into the people and opportunities crossing my path too.

Looking for the little glimmers. The things arriving with ease.

The things that feel like they’re here to guide me rather than things I’m chasing. I’m trying to trust those glimmers more than I used to.

It’s been three years since I closed ALSO Home, and six months since I paused Elä Life. I don’t quite know where the time has gone.

I’ve been here, just not ‘on’ here. Focusing on family. On motherhood. On renovating our home. On my private label work that’s quietly kept things ticking over for years, and which has taken me to China and Vietnam a couple of times a year. All of it without the pressure of running a business with a full team and a growth target hanging over every decision.

Somewhere along the way, I’d stopped loving what I was doing, and lost a lot of confidence in myself and my own instincts. I needed to properly step back rather than push through, which isn’t something that comes naturally to me.

This summer has been the first time in years I’ve been genuinely available and able to set my own hours. Not tied to a desk, or mentally half in the office. Somehow though the summer has gone even faster than usual.

In the middle of trying to work out what my own next thing was going to be, my son came to me and said he had an idea for a business.

He’s fifteen, and he’s wanted to build his own online clothing brand for a couple of years now. Every time he raised it, I said yes in theory and quietly pushed it away in practice. I didn’t have the capacity to bring one more thing into the mix and I doubted if I could do it again or even help him.

This time was different. He arrived with a clear vision. His own designs. A brand name he’d already landed on. He’d even sourced a print-on-demand manufacturer himself. There was nothing half-formed about it.

And something in me woke up. Something clicked into place.

I caught his vision immediately, and together we took it from concept and design to a live online shop in three weeks - www.lovedfirst.uk

It’s been time-consuming, and a genuine learning curve for both of us. But somewhere in the middle of it, I recognised something I hadn’t been able to see clearly for a while. That brand vision, creative direction, sourcing, helping an emerging or pivoting brand find its shape is where my strength actually sits.

What I’ve learned from working with him

Building this with him has been as much a mirror for me as a training ground for him. Watching him design with a flair and an eye I couldn’t have taught him has shown pure instinct, pure intuition and been genuinely humbling and amazing. He said to a friend of mine this week when they asked him about his business, ‘I guess I’ve grown up seeing mum do it.’

It’s also taught me something about how I need to show up for him. I’m learning to ‘coach’ him through this, rather than simply doing it for him. To try and ask the question instead of handing over the answer, to be guided by his instinct for his brand, rather than doing it for him. It’s a different muscle to the one I’ve used for twenty-five years of running my own brands. I’m also discovering I need to practice using it though.

There’s been an unexpected gift in the distance to his brand too. I’ve always been slightly unsure of my own ability to market a brand. It’s felt like the part I doubt in myself the most. But watching his brand from just one step removed, rather than being inside it the way I’ve always been with my own, I can suddenly see so clearly how he needs to market himself and his business. The clarity was there all along. It just needed the right distance to show itself.

In April, I took him to Vietnam for a week. A working trip for me, work experience for him for Year 10. I worried beforehand that it wouldn’t really count for anything, that it wouldn’t hold any real value for him. But over that week I walked him through my whole process: initial idea, inspiration, briefing suppliers, visiting factories, watching a product come together in front of him. I know now how formative that week actually was. And giving him that hands-on grounding in how a product, and a business, really gets built has been one of the most quietly rewarding things I’ve done in years.

Where this leaves me

So here’s where I’ve landed, three years on from closing the doors of ALSO Home. I’m not back where I left off. I’m landing somewhere new.

This summer showed me, through building something with my own son, that the work I’m genuinely good at isn’t just the operational grind of running a brand with a team and a growth target. It’s the part I’ve always loved most and rarely named out loud: helping a brand find its vision and product range, its creative direction, and its next right step. Whether that’s a business just starting out, or one that’s lost its way and needs support to pivot. We’ve still got a long way to go with his brand, but I’m getting real clarity now for the journey of getting it out into the world and how best to support.

I don’t have it all figured out yet, this September doesn’t feel like a plan so much as a direction. But I know that whatever comes next is about passing on what I know.

Twenty-five years of building brands, sourcing product, bringing ideas into the world and now, it seems, learning how to hand that knowledge to someone else, and watch what they build with it.

Not at the pace or scale of before. Definitely not. But with the clarity this quieter season has given me.

More soon.