Instagram story viewer> @mrsmombastic> Posts

Kate Sillars

@mrsmombastic

24K

followers

5912

following

Raising two humans. Building things. Questioning everything.
Sober • feminist • strong • curious
Women, wild places, good stories + life lived fully

POSTS STORIES REELS

I’m home.

@hatari.travel is not your average place to visit.
It’s warm, and it’s family.

Here, together, we are capturing the story, the history, and the heart and soul with some incredible people.

I can’t wait for you to all see, but in the meantime, heres some behind the scenes 🫶 by @mrsmombastic

Reflections. I’ve always hated my birthday. It’s a huge trigger point. You’ll have to read to the end of slides to understand why…

Making the decision to go sober on my last birthday was huge. Year after year my birthday would include some for of self sabotage.

The best gift I have ever given myself (other than my best friend in the whole world taking me to Paris a few years ago 😘) has been sobriety.

It’s reminded me to feel again. It’s reminded me to love again. And it’s reminded me that we all go through shit but we absolutely can grow and learn from it.

Happy birthday to me and happy one year sober to me.

Seriously though @guinnessworldrecords would that hair win or? by @mrsmombastic

Slow Food began as an act of resistance.

In 1986, when a fast-food restaurant opened near the Spanish Steps in Rome, it became a symbol of something… food becoming faster, and more disconnected season, culture and people.
Basically, how most people are with food today.

But Carlo Petrini and the founders of Slow Food pushed back.

By 1989, representatives from 15 countries had signed the Slow Food Manifesto in Paris, defending something incredibly simple and increasingly radical… the right to pleasure.

Over time, that grew into the philosophy Slow Food is known for today.
Good. Clean. Fair.

Good food that tastes of where it comes from.
Clean food produced without destroying the landscape that gives it life.
Fair food that values the farmers, fishermen, growers and makers behind it.

And I think that’s why I’ve fallen a little bit in love with it.

Because in a world where food is so often reduced to calories, macros, convenience or fuel, Slow Food asks us to pay attention again.

To the history. The hands that made it and passed it down. The ingredients. The love and care and attention.
The reason something tastes the way it does.

After years of undernourishing, rushing, counting and treating food as something functional, there is something quite beautiful about learning to enjoy it properly.

Not just eating.
Understanding. Appreciating every bite.
Putting faces and people to the food that we see before us.

At Emilia in Portonovo, handmade spaghetti, wild moscioli pulled from the Adriatic just metres away, recipes shaped by the coastline and passed down through generations.

The restaurant has been here since 1950, and its famous spaghetti ai moscioli grew from that same relationship between sea, family and tradition.

Nothing is overcomplicated because it doesn’t need to be. The ingredients carry the story.

That’s what I love about Slow Food - food with a memory, a place and a reason for being exactly as it is. by @mrsmombastic

My daughter wrote a poem for school.

She spent days working on it.

We discussed rhyming words, structure, tempo, beat.

I love poetry. Now she does too.

Her classmates asked if it was written on AI.

She’s 9.

My fear that she will start to wonder if poetry is just something she can create using AI frightens me.

Because we are at a crossroads. Poetry is faster to create on AI. And people will question it anyway….
So what’s the point?

The instinctual response already at this age is so unbelievably scary to me.

AI cannot replace art.

Creative minds - we must keep fighting to keep this space.

Feeding creativity to our children so that they can devour it, and remind them that poetry is more than just finding a collection of words that rhyme…

It was never meant to be quick.

It takes time. Effort. Work. Craft.

It means tapping into the emotion that you are trying to spill out onto a page.

It’s meant to be cogitated, deliberated, thrown away, rewritten… sometimes many times over.

It’s supposed to be messy, and angry, and beautiful, and funny and painful.

I don’t want to imagine a world where writing and poetry - the very tools that so many of us use to express our emotions - are replaced.

We are moving towards a place where our time becomes worthless.

And that is so incredibly bleak.

If emotion is now conveyed to us through AI - then what does that even make us as humans?

Keep art alive. Keep writing. And most importantly.
Keep feeling deeply. by @mrsmombastic

A year ago (but not quite) I made the decision to remove alcohol from my life… and this was the trip that made me decide;

We were in Spain. It was beautiful. And yet, the whole time, all I could think about was where I could get my next glass of wine.

I was stressed. Mostly of my own making. I wasn’t achieving the things I wanted to in life. Career wise. Fitness wise. Parent wise.

I’m hard on myself.

And I felt like alcohol was the way to switch my brain off: to unwind. But the problem with that, is that once the effects wear off and you’re faced with reality in the cold light of day, the overwhelm hits you like a ton of bricks.

It shames me to admit that on the journey home from this trip, the flight was at 8am. And I craved alcohol.

The lines between drinking to unwind, and drinking because my brain believed I needed it were becoming more and more blurred.

My partner wouldn’t let me have one. I knew he was right. I cried the whole flight home. ALL OVER NOT BEING ABLE TO HAVE AIRPORT BOOZE?

I would pride myself on drinking a half decent bottle of wine - like somehow that meant I was a sophisticated drinker. But, what’s the difference between that or shots of Tesco value vodka in the local park if the intended outcome is the same?

That night when I got home, I drank a bottle of wine. And cried again.

I made a promise to myself that night that I was done.
I was becoming a person I didn’t want to be.
And I would change.

Now, I enjoy an alco free beer. If they made alco free wine that tasted half decent then I’d be thrilled.

But even the alco free beers are becoming less.
My cravings are so infrequent now that I barely notice them.

However, there is not a single day that goes by that I regret making this decision.

I’m happier (on the whole). I manage stress better. My career has improved drastically even in a year. And I feel like I am a better mum and a better friend.

Giving up alcohol might feel impossible. It might feel like it’ll suck the enjoyment out of your life.

But I promise it is better without it 🫶

Keep on keeping on. by @mrsmombastic

Pretty crazy, how the house has suddenly become so quiet.

Mornings used to be my worst times, as a mother.

Packing up school bags, trying to find just ONE BLASTED pair of matching socks, shoving feet into shoes, getting sandwiches prepped… and that’s before I’ve even thought about what I need to pack for myself for work.

All on so little sleep. The sleep deprivation making the workload of motherhood feel so much heavier.

But suddenly, it’s all very quiet.

Even as I sit here and write, I can hear the wind outside.
No TVs blaring, no thousand questions, no need for me to focus on my own self regulation.

Which is pretty crazy.

When I started Mrs m, I wrote a lot about gentle parenting and attachment parenting… it brought me to so many mothers worldwide as we supported each other in times where we felt like we were failing.

Not as an expert but through my own lived experiences.

You see, I remember so vividly as a child, my mum being my anchor. On the hardest days, I’d listen to her breathing, and smell her perfume… she would lie with me every single night. And everything felt suddenly… a little more manageable.

She promoted attachment and gentle parenting during times when it was considered nonsense.

That’s how I knew it was the route I should take with my own children.

It was hard. Nights seemed to roll on forever.
I had to learn to be patient.
I had to unlearn everything society makes us believe…

But thank god my mum was there to remind me that it was the right path.

I still think about those long nights sometimes.
That constant feeling of being needed is so intense.
It’s so hard.

But I’m sat here writing this now. In my kitchen.
No one crashing around.

Just quiet. As high school hours, and social schedules suddenly start to eat into family hours.

And that intense feeling of being needed is now so very far away.

I wouldn’t say I miss it. At the time the tiredness would be crippling… but I do not regret a single day of it.

As a mother, the shouting. The impatience. The moments where children can be so unbelievably loud…

But once the house starts to become quieter and quieter.
That feels almost deafening. by @mrsmombastic

Wondergarden is a movement.

A different way of thinking about food.

Across Tanzania, farmers are growing remarkable local ingredients — some familiar, some forgotten, some waiting to be discovered. We help give those ingredients a market, a story and a place at the table.

In our kitchens, they become something unexpected. New flavours. New combinations. A chance to taste Tanzania in a way you may never have before.

And every plate is part of something bigger: creating income for farmers, strengthening communities, and building a future where people, land and wildlife can thrive together.

Wondergarden.

Food with roots. Food with purpose. Food with a future. by @mrsmombastic

I used to work behind a bar, and once we got a TripAdvisor review calling me “the Dolly Parton character working behind the bar.”

They meant it as an insult.

Too loud. Too blonde. Too much.

But I loved it.

Because if someone tries to insult you by comparing you to Dolly Parton, they have got it spectacularly wrong.

Dolly was everything women are so often told not to be.

Visible. Glittering. Funny. Clever. Soft without being weak.
Kind without being small.
Completely herself.

She built a life in a world that underestimated her.

When questioned about how she found the courage to try and make it as a country artist in a male field, I remember her once saying, “What was the worst that could happen to me? I wasn’t gonna die.”

And I have carried that with me for years.

Through parenting, work, heartbreak, fear, starting again, walking into rooms I didn’t feel ready for.

I’m not going to die from this.

It might embarrass me.
It might humble me.
I might feel scared…
But that’s ok.

It won’t kill me.

And maybe it’ll make me stronger.

So today, with the news of her death, I’m thinking about her words.

Someone tried to insult me and accidentally gave me one of the greatest compliments of my life.

Because to be even a tiny bit Dolly is to be loud on purpose, kind, sparkling on purpose, underestimated…
But still walking into the room as yourself.

“Find out who you are and do it on purpose.”

Be more Dolly.

Heartbreaking news. by @mrsmombastic

Training for athleticism and skills requires your brain into viewing failure as a challenge to overcome…
And that’s pretty cool.

#fyp #strong #mums #women #strongwomen by @mrsmombastic

Ophelia, when I grow up - I want to be like you.

You are fearless. Never afraid to try something new.

Your sense of right from wrong is unlike anyone’s I’ve ever met…

Your ability to bring out the best in people is your greatest trait.

Your eclectic taste in music makes me smile every single day. Blue Suede Shoes is your favourite song.

You’re smart. Brave. Capable. Strong. And WEIRD (the greatest compliment in our family).

In this big old world, at times you may feel small and insignificant. This is normal. But to me, you ARE my world.

Keep being amazing. And keep inspiring all those around you.

Happy birthday my darling girl. My world. by @mrsmombastic

Visiting the family in Guernsey…

Crystal-clear water, white sand and beaches that could rival some of the most beautiful in the world. Sometimes you forget just how special this little island is. by @mrsmombastic

Happiness is where the sea is.

Beautiful swim today from Moulin Huet to Petit Port 😍 the sea is so unbelievably clear, the sand is so white and the children had the times of their lives…

Guernsey’s beaches are a true gem. by @mrsmombastic