What Hello Toad is all about
“Hello, Toad.”
That’s how my husband greets me when he finds me squatting in the garden, face close to the dirt as I peer suspiciously at a beetle—friend or foe?—on my coneflowers. And while the comparison might seem rude to some, between us it’s an endearment, a gently teasing acknowledgement of everything I love: the forest and the rain and the slow progress of the garden. The nickname that encompasses all the things I value.
It’s taken a lot to get here on this hot summer day, crouched in the flowers. I’m in my second year of remission from stage three cervical cancer, and life only really feels like it’s coming back to some cadence of normalcy now for the both of us. Except it can’t, of course, not really. We’ve been fundamentally altered.
I could fill a book with the ways that cancer changed my life, but perhaps one of the biggest is how it laid so bare the things that actually matter to me. Previous to getting sick, I had prioritised work above almost everything. I measured myself against my career growth. But while it had brought me success, I was in a state of almost near-constant stress and burnout.
Then cancer happened, and I had over a year to sit on my couch and think (well, and sleep—chemo’s a bitch). And what came of all that thinking was the realisation that I had to slow down.
The busy to burnout pipeline
I’ve always valued slowness, though I wouldn’t have called it slow living, the term that seems to be going ever more mainstream lately. If pressed, I probably would have simply said that I liked to be cozy: evenings, solitude, sweaters, gardens, wood fires, tea (or let’s be real, whisky), books, hiking, wool socks, the forest—all these things felt restorative.
I had never critically examined the inherent disconnect between that ideal state of coziness and my fast-paced tech marketing job. I mean, everyone dreams of being elsewhere while they’re at work, right? And when I inevitably worked myself to burnout, those slow times were supposed to be my reward and my recovery, anyways.
Except that’s not what was happening. What was actually occurring was that I was working myself to burnout, and crashing on the couch in front of the TV or TikTok every night, turning my brain off until bedtime. Vacations felt like gasping for air. I wasn’t reading or resting or really doing much at all in my time off—all my energy was going to work.
These cycles of intense work followed by deep crashes were interrupted when I got sick, which gave me the opportunity to take a good hard look at how I was living my life. What resulted from that long look has taken time (and therapy) to unravel—especially now that I’m back at work, where it would be so easy to fall into my old ways.
Finding a slower pace
Here then is the crux of what Hello Toad is all about: building, learning from, and sharing the stillness that I find so restorative. I think about that stillness in three ways:
- Active rest: Similar to how it’s used in fitness circles, I consider active rest to be periods of moderate activity that nourish us (think gardening, journalling, knitting—activities that use our brain and body but don’t drain us)
- Intentional comfort: Everyone likes to be comfy, but prioritising our comfort where we can equips us to handle discomfort when it oh-so-inevitably arises
- Purposeful slowness: Here’s the slow living piece, where we schedule our lives in a way that allows for slow moments and quiet pockets wherever they fit in each of our unique lives
Maybe to some it seems counterintuitive to be so intentional or to schedule in rest, but I think the opposite—our world is built to drain our resources (hello, capitalism) and reclaiming rest on purpose is a radical act. I consider it a necessity for my healing, but I don’t think I’m alone in believing that rest and slowness can help us build better lives.
Hello Toad is the diary of my journey to do just that. I’ll share my own experiences slowing down, thoughts on slow living as a response to capitalism, and practical tips, learnings, and takeaways on building intentional slowness into your own life (linen dresses welcomed, but not required)—even if you work in corporate in the city.