Emma Larkin Books – what drives and inspires me, plans for the future and reflections on 20 years as a Mother
My eldest child turned twenty yesterday and it made me stop and think. We celebrated his birthday yesterday, well as best we could under lockdown! I started reflecting on the fact that I have been a mother for twenty years now which seems like a long time! Becoming a mother at a relatively young age has made me who I am and has shaped me in an incredibly positive way.
What strikes me when I look back is that I have spent a lot of years, like many other people, being a mother to young kids with little room in my head for anything else. When my eldest turned 9, I had my second child and then another two children within the next four years! So as the 9-year-old was growing up, we were back in the trenches with 3 smallies! For me, this didn’t leave a lot of room for much else in my mind. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t regret a minute of it, and I am very lucky but what I have realised over the past two years or so (my youngest is 6) is that now, there is a small bit of room in my mind for things other than the constant cycle of feeding, changing and praying that they will sleep. To be blunt there is now a small bit of room to think about myself. And I don’t consider this selfish at all. It is just another stage in life I think, and I like it. But to be fair, I have enjoyed most stages of life, and this is just another one.
So what am I starting to think about with this small bit of free space in my head? Well “Emma Larkin Books” is a big part of it, and how I can continue to develop my brand and write more books.
I will be announcing more about my “Emma Larkin Books” brand over the next few weeks and months, as I launch my second “Izzy” book. I feel so passionately about what I am doing now with my new venture. In a nutshell, I want to inspire girls to be active, in any form, it doesn’t have to be competitive, and to enjoy being active. I am doing this in two ways.
Firstly, through the power of books. I love reading, I love writing and my newfound venture, writing children’s books with a girl in the lead role who plays sport is designed to inspire and entertain children.
Secondly, I will post more about my own fitness and sporting activities, in the hope that this will inspire girls and women of any age. I pretty much abandoned fitness in my twenties, after being an active child. I slowly came back to it in my late thirties, and now in my forties, it is a huge part of my life. I wish I had never stopped being active. There are lots of women on Instagram and other platforms, posting about fitness, sport and nutrition and I think it is fantastic. The more women who talk about sport and fitness, the more young girls they will inspire and it will continue to normalise active fit females. I absolutely love the hersport.ie and 2020.ie Instagram story takeovers by female Irish athletes, it’s so interesting learning about how they train on a daily basis. I don’t know if I will be able to talk to the camera on Instagram, I might get there some day, but I will keep posting about what feels right for me, in the hope that it will inspire people to be active.
My passions are reading, writing and fitness, and I want to continue to combine them and hopefully inspire and entertain.
I am so grateful to everyone who has bought my book, and who follows me on social media. Thank you all so much.
