Wellies & Wranglers: Calling All Secret Teenage Scribblers!
Confessions of teenage angst and secret crushes encouraged
I remember getting my very first journal the day I was dropped off at boarding school, aged nine. It had Garfield on the cover, because obviously, a lasagne-loving, nap-addicted cat with an annoying little brother felt very relatable to me.
From that moment, I was hooked. I journaled pretty consistently from 1987 for three whole decades. Then, well… life. Work took over. Motherhood followed suit. And my beloved journals slowly got shoved to the back of the cupboard, only to be resurrected when I was sad or simmering with Big Feelings that needed somewhere to go other than being stuffed way, way down into my psyche to fester.
Over the last few months, I’ve been leafing through my trunk of journals, equal parts amused, horrified and bored stiff. The early years read like a very grim school menu: baked beans with everything, meat you could resole shoes with, vegetables that disintegrated if you so much as looked at them. And then there was the daily class log: English, Latin, History, Geography, Art, Cooking. Honestly, who cares? Makes me laugh now to think my future self would want every mind-numbing detail, but that’s exactly the kind of overshare my M.A.M self adores.
After Mum died and I was clearing out her things, I also found a huge box of her journals too, and tucked among them were letters from all sorts of characters: old boyfriends, her parents, friends, distant relatives, people I’d never even heard of. It’s made me wonder if it might be a fun experiment to track some of them down, see where they are now, and piece together even more of her tangled, sometimes steamy stories.
The teenage years? Well, that’s where the good stuff is: midnight feasts, handwritten love letters from crushes (still saved, naturally… receipts for another day!), a scandalous encounter with a dodgy, naked bloke in the woods (traumatic at the time, comedic gold now), and my first real summer romance with a French gardener called Stefane. Oh, Stefane who wanted to turn up at my Boarding School and whisk me off to Paris...That was 34 years ago, I wonder what he is doing now? 🫣
When my beloved stepfather died, my journals transformed into letters to him, every page beginning with Dear Phil and ending Love Blossom, the nickname he used to torment me with during puberty which, miraculously, became a term of endearment. Now that Mum is gone too, my entries are Dear Mama, Love Me. Somehow, writing to them makes it feel like they’re still in the room with me, weighing in on my worries and reminding me to live my life to the fullest and have no regrets. I am trying!
So why am I telling you all this?
Because as I cackle (and cringe) my way through my tales of teenage angst, I can’t help but wonder, did everyone else do this too? Did you pour your heart out into secret diaries hidden under your mattress that your younger sibling inevitably tried to nick? I remember deliberately writing "I hate my #2 Brother" just to wind him up, he read it, burst into tears, ran to Mum, who promptly punished him for snooping. Did you record every single snack, every friend’s betrayal, every mortifying heartbreak? Did you chronicle, who was hot and who wasn't? Whether Neighbours was better than Home & Away (this will mean nothing to my U.S. readers) and whether Tom Cruise was hotter in Cocktail or Top Gun? And, if you did… what do you think when you read them now? 🫣
This curiosity turned into Wellies & Wranglers, a passion project with my dear friend Linzi Cora. We grew up in wildly different worlds, her Kansas upbringing straight out of an American high school movie, me living the diet version of Hogwarts (no broomsticks, no magic, just overcooked veg, scratchy uniforms, and strict rules). Despite the oceans between us, our teenage brains were stuck on the same loop: belonging, heartbreak, friendship dramas and that never-ending quest to figure out who the hell we were supposed to be.
✨ So here’s my plea: We want to hear your stories! ✨
If you’d like to contribute to Wellies & Wranglers, subscribe to the publication to get the latest updates, stories and/or fill out this form, dust off those pages (or your memories), and send us your tales of teenage torment, triumph or cringe worthy embarrassment. We’ll treat them with the love (and gentle mockery) they deserve.
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For more on how this all started, here’s our fun first post:
Can’t wait to hear from you… and your teenage alter ego.
Love,
One slightly older, marginally wiser, still-scribbling M.A.M🫶✨📓
I was never much of a journaler, but my mom was. She died fairly young from breast cancer, and I've loved reading all the things she wrote. Your children will probably appreciate seeing yours well into the future when they miss you, too.
I'm so envious you journaled in such detail for so long! I've been reading a lot of Sedaris lately and I know he is an obsessive journaler. My mind is such a sieve and I grieve for all the lost memories I wish I'd recorded; I just started (again) a daily journaling habit in hopes of rectifying this. And what a gift to have your mom's journals as well!