Power of the Parent 2: 2: Ebony Lyon – Formy Books

Episode Transcript

Charlotte Speak  0:12  

Hello and welcome to Power of the Parent, the podcast. I’m your host Charlotte Speak, I’m a level seven CMI accredited coach, a Strengthscope Master Practitioner, Mental Health First Aider and talent consultant. And I’m also the face behind Power of the Parent. In this podcast, I’ll be speaking to parents in the workplace. Some of them are in traditionally employed roles, others are running their own businesses. And we’re having conversations about life in general insights about being a parent and having a career and exploring the strengths that parenting has awoken for people. We will talk about things like the value that they’re bringing to the workplace, as well as my guests very generously sharing their personal stories and anecdotes about everything life can throw at us.

Today, I am joined by the absolutely glorious Ebony Lyon. She is one of the founders of Formy Books, who are an independent family run publisher with a passion for Own Voices children’s books. I first discovered Formy in 2020, I think probably not that long after they set up when someone shared their wonderful book Later on Instagram, and I have been a fan ever since. Ebony is the marketing and commercial brains behind the growing team at Formy. She describes herself as a nuanced human and I would also add to that an absolute style icon who rocks a blazer and a bold lip like no other. Welcome Ebony.

Ebony Lyon  1:45  

Thank you. That was a really great introduction. I don’t know if I’m gonna live up to that. I think a few of those words were Curtis’s and, well, very similar to what Curtis added to the website. And he also just put it on there before telling me because he knew that I’d say no, you can’t say that. And I do love a blazer. And a bold lip never I’m never really seen without them apart from today.

Charlotte Speak  2:20  

And blazers and bold lips love you. I was having a DM conversation with your mother in law not that long ago. [Oh, she’s lovely.] And I was sharing notes with Cynthie saying, I’ve never seen anybody rock a blazer like your daughter in law does. And yeah, it was just fab.

Ebony Lyon  2:43  

Isn’t she wonderful? She’s great.

Charlotte Speak  2:46  

I was talking to you know, one of the starring roles in Later.

Ebony Lyon  2:49  

She is, she’s in there. And I often say like, I don’t mean to brag, but like, basically my mother in law is amazing. It’s really so true. But yes, thank you for the intro. That was, yeah, it was accurate.

Charlotte Speak  3:06  

Okay, I am really excited to talk to you. Like I say, we connected probably about a year ago now. And I absolutely adored and continue to adore what you and Curtis are doing and also Lauren now as well and the rest of the growing team at Formy, because when I looked at my bookshelf at home, all of the cliches that were playing out in social media, were on my bookshelf as well. And I think the really impressive and kind of powerful, but also gentle way that both you and Curtis hold space here is so important. And it’s been incredibly eye opening for me personally, but also, like Later is one of our favourite stories in our house. And it features a lot and I cannot wait to get my hands on one of your upcoming books this year. And you can share with us a bit more about that, hopefully. I’ve been seeing the teasers for Curtis’s latest creation. But you’ve had a lot on in the last year. A lot of it is coming out on social media, we were talking about that before we started, what does your world look and feel like at the moment?

Ebony Lyon  4:27  

So to be completely honest, it looks like how I treat my technology, which is awful, and all the tabs are open, all the time. I shared something on Insta stories the other day, which just had me in bits laughing because it’s so true. I have all my tabs open all the time. And that’s pretty much like my brain. I find it really hard to shut things off. So it’s just like this. You don’t want to go in there, but the past year has looked really busy, really hectic but so much fun. It really has been like the whole journey has been just a journey of passion, it’s completely different to what I do in my day job in terms of I’ve never really felt that my employment was something I’ve been passionate about, I didn’t have a vocation. I think I shared that a while ago on social media, it was, it’s something that I do, I’m grateful that I’m in a position that I have the job. I’m grateful that it’s afforded me the lifestyle we have. I’ve been able to travel, security, but it’s not a vocation. It’s not something that I am passionate about. I’m very good at it. But that’s the truth. But with Formy, it just clicks. It’s just so important, and so rewarding to do the work that you think is so important. I’ve never understood when people said it before, because I’ve never had the experience. So it sounds really cliche, sounds really cheesy. That’s probably what I would have thought before. But that’s what it is. So although it’s really busy. And I’m often kind of asked that question, because I do have a full time job as well. And obviously, we have three children. And we’ve been on lockdown. They haven’t been at school for most of it. But I think that myself and Curtis, just find a way to do it because we want to. And it’s important, and I think it doesn’t get put to the side for those reasons, really. So that’s the best way I can describe it. My brains, like my technology, all the tabs are open, there’s mental tick lists. I’ve tried to get better at writing things down and ticking them off, because that’s how I work, I have to have a day plan and I have to kind of tick things off. So I just try and get through as much as I can and try not to be too hard on myself when I don’t, which is easier said than done. But yeah, no real secret just just trying to juggle everything, I suppose.

Charlotte Speak  7:04  

I am really curious about your children in this? Do they get to see the books first? Are they kind of executive editors?

Ebony Lyon  7:17  

So with Later and just a bit of a recap with that, because I know that you’ve obviously been with us from the beginning. And literally one of the biggest cheerleaders, you’ve been such an amazing support. And I’ll touch on our community, as I’d say a bit later, because that’s really what’s kept us going and enabled us to do what we do. But Later was a surprise. So Curtis had literally written the book, sourced the illustrator and done everything. And I found out by accident, so it was supposed to be a surprise to me and the children. And I think I was using his MacBook for something because we have separate laptops, and he never leaves anything open. So he’s the opposite of me or tabs are closed, everything’s great. And he left the manuscript up. And I didn’t even think anything of it, I don’t think and then he’s like, ah, you’ve seen it, so he told me. So it was a complete surprise. And originally, he’d written the book as a gift and as a surprise, born out of frustration really, not being able to find his family represented. So that’s an Afro Caribbean family, but also with a stay at home dad and a working mum, that kind of intersection we just didn’t see in books. So he’d written one. And it was beautiful. And the copy arrived. And his plan was still just to have a copy for us. That was the gift. And I was like no, absolutely not, it arrived and it was just so beautiful. And so much love and care had gone into it. And then my kind of commercial head came on. And I was like, no, we have to make these available. But still, we were still thinking on a small scale then. So we just kind of dropped it on Instagram. We were like Curtis’s book is here. And if you want to copy just DM us. And yeah, they sold out really quickly. And that was a big thing for Curtis. He suffers from social anxiety so he doesn’t share a lot. He does more when we’re kind of having to be more public. But in general, he’s not very public on social media. I’m not sure if you follow him, I think he has a private account, but completely the opposite of me. And that’s absolutely fine. It works really well. So this is a big thing for him kind of, you know, putting his art out into the world. And the feedback was just phenomenal. And then we ordered more copies. And then in the end we had a decision to make because we’d kind of spent the very little savings that we had on the original small print run and obviously paying the illustrator, all of the work that goes into self publishing is quite expensive, first of all when you’re not buying in bulk. And when you’re having to do everything for the first time, and you haven’t bought things like ISBN ‘s or all of that, all of that kind of adds up. So we had a decision to make. And we decided that we were going to run a Kickstarter to go back and kind of, we’d already paid for the illustrations and everything. So we had a finished copy of the books, and we’d sold copies. But just to fund a larger print run, basically. And we didn’t do any of the things that people tell you to do with Kickstarter, we did no pre-launch with the first one, we did no planning, we didn’t tell anyone we were doing it. We didn’t follow the rules. We just said, this is what we’re doing. We wanted it to be authentic. We wanted it to be truthful, we wanted it to be organic. So we just one day said on social media, our Kickstarter is live, please, please, back us. And luckily, people did. They really did. And they shared, they supported us, they really got behind us. And just had such a vested interest in seeing, first of all, the Kickstarter hit the target, but also the book succeed. And that was just, honestly such a wonderful experience, you were one of those people just really getting behind us and showing what’s inside the book, why we wrote the book, or I didn’t write the book, taking credit there. Why we wanted to share it. And what we wanted to do, and already during this time, we’d been putting the initial plans together for Formy books. So this is what we wanted to do. There’s a need for this, we often talk about windows and mirrors in literature. The metaphor created by Rudine Sims Bishop and again used by Emily Style. And I think it’s very easy to look at windows and mirrors as kind of the analogy. But really, we’re trying to look at it deeper than that. So we talk about all children needing to see themselves reflected in literature. That’s true. But the mirror image needs to not be distorted as well or it’s not a true reflection. And this is why we really focus on positive representation and an accurate representation as much as we can. And for us, that’s why Own Voices is important. So Own Voices. I’m gonna read the definition. So Own Voices is a hashtag that was coined by a writer Corinda Voice. And it refers to an author from a marginalised or underrepresented group writing about their own experiences from inside the group rather than someone outside writing from their perspective, but from an underrepresented groups perspective, if that makes sense. So it’s about marginalised writers being able to tell their own stories, and it doesn’t always work. To a certain extent, the hashtag has been slightly hijacked. But the reason that we think it’s important, especially as a black British family, is because we can’t tell everyone’s story. So our background, I’m mixed race. So my mum’s white British, my dad’s Jamaican, Curtis is half Grenadian, half St Lucian. So they’re the islands that are reflected in our house. And we often find that black people are treated as kind of a monolith. So one black person story is the same as another black person story. And that’s just not true at all. And there’s such a richness to the many different black cultures that we felt was missing from children’s literature. So we really wanted to focus on authentic representation and also positive as well. There is a need for books to be learning tools, there definitely is but I don’t want my children to only have access to that or to only see suffering and trauma within the books that they read. And it was really simple as that was, that’s the core. That’s what we wanted to do. And we wanted to be inclusive, we want to make sure that all children are represented. And for us that meant first of all, that we were putting the accurate representation out there for black children because they just don’t have it. But by extension, we want all children to be represented in children’s literature. So that was what we wanted for Formy books. And with the first Kickstarter, we just realised that there was such a need for it. People’s stories, the DM’s that we were receiving, the messages, so many marginalised groups, because, you know, again, these things intersect, there are so many different marginalised groups, children with disabilities are rarely represented within children’s literature. And again, groups with disabilities aren’t a monolith as well, or different families, single parent families. There’s just not accurate representation or not written by authors from those groups, or illustrated by and that’s one of the things we wanted to try and increase representation of as well. So when we decided to do the second Kickstarter, it was obviously on a bit of a grander scale. So we had big plans, and we’d seen the stats, we’d read the stats. I think one of the stats that we shared over an 11 year period, there are 20, Black British creators of children’s literature. And when you think about the fact that there are also actors or famous people that go into writing children’s literature, you really start to see how dire those stats are. So if my children want to work in book creation, this doesn’t seem like a viable career choice for them, because they don’t have any representation. So it’s not only about the characters within kids lit, it’s also about the creators as well, we want to amplify that talent. And there’s a lot out there. So yeah, so we did the second Kickstarter, on a bigger scale for four books. And we hit that target, and it was wow.

Charlotte Speak  16:30  

Well you say hit it, you smashed it.

Ebony Lyon  16:35  

Yeah, we did, we did smash it. Yeah. And again, that was just thanks to absolutely everyone that backed us, shared it, constantly as well, because Kickstarters I mean, you can run them for longer, I wouldn’t recommend it, because a month feels like a long time. But that’s for 30 days. And we had people just backing us and sharing us and making sure we got in front of the right people. From the start Mother Pukka was one of those people who really got behind us from the start, shared her platform with us for numerous posts. And, you know, that made such a difference, because the days that we had those posts, and were just in front of all of those people and all of her followers, and the knock on effect of those sharing the Kickstarter as well, and the message. And then also going to look at their books, looking at what we were saying, seeing that it was actually accurate. And making changes from that, I was completely blown away. It’s something that I just keep saying, but it was just brilliant. And she also arranged for us to have a photo shoot with Charlotte Grey. So you see a lot of those beautiful images on my page, which I’m so grateful for, because that’s something we’d never done before as a family. So that was such an experience. And the writers had headshots. It was just great. So the Formy community as I call everyone. They just said yes, we’re hitting this target. And they just made sure, I had people messaging me like I’ve been refreshing it, seeing it going up, someone actually messaged me to tell me we’d hit before I saw, those things are so nice, because they don’t know us. So you only kind of have a snapshot of what you see on social media. We all genuinely are authentic, but you don’t know that. So to me, it’s nice that people were getting to see us and really believe in us and our message and what we were saying as kind of honest and authentic. And backing us for that. And not only monetary backing, but also just really trying to make sure that Formy books was a success. So we’re just eternally grateful.

Charlotte Speak  19:03  

What a year, must be ready for a bit of a lie down.

Ebony Lyon  19:09  

Yeah. But we’ve had a bit of a- I suppose it looks like a bit of a lull. Behind the scenes, it’s been really busy because there are four books coming out this year. So now we’ve started to release. So Curtis’s new book, The Calicolour Cat is up for preorder now. And that is the first book out of four but the other three will also be released this year. So it is going to come thick and fast now so it’s going to be hectic again, in front of the scenes, behind the scenes. And we’re just so excited about everything if you can, you know, this is the first time that we’ve had a book available at the major retailers. And that’s a big, big step. So many things that we had to learn behind the scenes in order for that to take place and happen and seeing The Calicolour Cat available on Blackwells and Waterstones, I go, ahhh, I’m really excited. It’s just genuine joy.

Charlotte Speak  20:21  

Yeah, and it is so huge. And I think, listening to you and Curtis’s voice as well through social media, representation is obviously, first and foremost, and amongst lots of other incredible messages. But I think the thing that I pull out a lot, or would associate you as a team, is that in a world where we are in a bit of an echo chamber A lot of the time, particularly on social media, because you’ll follow the people who are also reflective of your thoughts, opinions. You shake that up, but as in your community, shake that up. So it isn’t an echo chamber there, everyone has a voice. There’s huge respect for each other, like reading comments on your posts are fantastic, and the community that you two have curated, and it is very magnetic, you are really drawn to you and your message and the way that your books have written and just everything from the story to the boldness of the the vivid beauty on those pages. Like it is such a gorgeous book. But fundamentally, I just think it’s so beautiful. And I love sharing with friends, or sending links and being like you need this book or, I’m expecting a nephew later this year, I’ve always bought books as newborn presents, very rarely have bought clothes. But Later and the next releases will absolutely feature. For people that are listening that think like how do I get this beyond me? Like if you read a book, and you love it, what do you do? What’s a really nice way of doing it? Personally speaking, I think the more you can share links, or if you are in a position to buy for other people, either as a gift or just because it’s a Tuesday, then that’s brilliant. And when my youngest leaves nursery this year, she starts school in September, and we’ll get some books for nursery because that’s us done with nursery then. And we’ve been at that nursery for like six years. So that’s another way to do it, isn’t it, like think about the childcare setting that you take your children to. I have various different opinions on things that get shared on social media by people and their childcare setting. But I think you know, that’s one of the really easy, accessible ways to do it and start some of these conversations. Like are your kids taking home reading books that they can see themselves in, or somebody that looks a bit similar to them that we know that they’re not going to be exactly the same? They’re not meant to be, but like, my kids get to bring home books all the time that they’re represented in or their home setup is represented? And because, like my kids are big readers, my eldest in particular, is following in the footsteps of your eldest daughter, like she will 100% need her recommended reading list at some point, but it still needs shaking up, doesn’t it? And you’re the powerhouse to do it.

Ebony Lyon  24:06  

I definitely, well, thank you.

Charlotte Speak  24:10  

No carry on with that. You are definitely the person to do it.

Ebony Lyon  24:12  

I agree completely with what you said. It’s not just buying the books. We appreciate everyone and all the purchases. Of course we do. But not everyone’s in a position to buy books and especially you know, there’s a lot of shaming of shopping on Amazon and things and we’d never do that. Both books aren’t available on Amazon at the moment. The Calicolour Cat will be when it’s not on preorder anymore. But there’s no shaming from shopping anywhere. Everyone’s budget is different. Everyone’s accessibility is different. If you have free delivery and it’s cheaper. And you might live somewhere where only Amazon delivers everyday, who knows. There just isn’t shaming I just don’t like it. It doesn’t sit well with me. Not everyone can afford to shop indie, that’s our preference. You can’t shame people for shopping on Amazon. That’s absolutely ridiculous. And we know that for us, we can’t offer free delivery. So when you buy from Formy books, it’s literally just impossible, we can’t. So you pay for shipping from us. But we know that on some of the links that we’ve sent, you’ll get free delivery. And that’s fine. Because everyone has to be able to do what they can. And everyone’s situation is different. We appreciate all of the support. And so it’s not only buying the books, we really appreciate that.

One of the things I really like is seeing return customers, and I see the names and they’ve come back and they’ve purchased for someone else. And that’s really, really nice. But sharing, you can share our posts, you can share the book, you can share the message, you can, if you can afford to donate copies to schools. With the new books that will be available, hopefully from the library, so request from your library, so that they get them in stock. And people can read them that way. So there are loads of ways that you can support and share without spending lots of money. Definitely, we’ve just actually run a giveaway on Twitter. Because one of the things we’ve noticed an increase of at the moment is primary schools and nurseries purchasing the book, which I’m just so happy to see that because we’ve donated to our local area and provisions and Cynthia, my mother in law is an early years worker. So she’s really experienced in that she’s done that for I think 30 years. So she’s our in-house consultant. So we ran a competition over on Twitter, we just gave away five copies, because we really want to see an increase in those settings as well. Again, like you said, children need to see themselves and their family setup represented. And that’s how they’re really going to form an interest with reading, you know, so there are loads of different ways, but just as simple as just sharing our social media posts is, you know, that helps to amplify the message and just put us in front of more people, basically. So lots of lots of different options. And, you know, we do have a really tight knit community that do that all the time. So I always see the same people commenting and liking our posts and sharing and it’s really heartwarming, it genuinely is just to see people that you’ve never met, you know, we’ve never met in real life. We haven’t met. But you always support and sometimes I’ll think to myself, Oh, I haven’t, because we know the pesky algorithm, we know what it’s like, oh, I haven’t seen, for example, Charlotte’s posts for a while, let me go on, you’ve had like 10 posts that I haven’t seen. So just realising as well, you know, social media doesn’t always put what you want to see in front of you. And it’s annoying, because you can’t remember everyone you follow all the time, but they might just suddenly think, oh, I haven’t seen such and such posts. And I’ll look and you know, there’s so many that I haven’t engaged on. But there are, yeah, lots of different ways. And I think whatever you can do, really, to support is great. But when they’re available at libraries, that’ll be a really cool way to just kind of order the book or request them to be in. Because that’s another huge step for us. That’s not been something we’ve had before we’ve kind of had to donate the copies, they’ve not been available on the library system.

Charlotte Speak  28:44  

That’s amazing to know. And that will be added to my list when we venture back to the library. I’ll make sure that our local one gets an order. You touched on there about social media. And so a lot of the last year and the growth of Formy has played out on social media, you’ve obviously got a few different hats on with this because you’ve got founder and business owner, you’ve also got parent as another hat and what that means for you and your family and like social media can be really noisy. And that’s one of one of the descriptors that my friend Maxine uses. When we’ve talked about media, in particular, like Instagram, I suppose that you can kind of go on and you’re immediately hit with a load of noise and some things. It can be really hard to kind of distil down what you need to be reading and like what’s what’s opinion. And yeah, I’ve seen some posts this morning about getting help for mental health and therapy professionals. There’s a trend around sharing reels and memes and things and there’s one school of thought that says like let’s make it accessible. Let’s get lots of this talk about and then you’ve got this, and the ones that I’ve seen this morning have been people who are a bit more purist than like, it’s not a replacement for actually getting help. And that specific conversation aside, but social media more in general, what do you kind of put in place to, I suppose, protect your boundaries. Because that’s obviously one of my favourite topics, you know, from a lot of what I talk about on there. But other things that you’ve had to be really careful about from specifically over the last year and how much focus Formy has had and how much it’s grown for you and Curtis.

Ebony Lyon  30:39  

Definitely, so as we kind of mentioned at the beginning, when we were chatting, my Instagram account was private, up until when Later came out last year. So I didn’t have a huge amount of followers. It’s very curated, who did follow me. So I didn’t have to think as much about what I shared. When I made my profile public, and then actually try to make it even more public, because that’s what promoting Formy books was, we really had to take a step back and think about what we’re sharing in terms of the children. So we 100% teach our children autonomy. And that’s very difficult to do when you’re kind of posting pictures of them on social media and their faces, because you don’t know when they come of an age where they can understand whether they’ll want that on there. So what we’ve tried to do is I only share pictures of my children’s faces now on my close friends list. So the children do feature on my account, but not their faces. So you’ll see them as either a faceless portrait or might be their backs, we talk about them, they’re still very much present. I haven’t gone back and deleted the posts where they are on there. For a couple of reasons, really, there aren’t a huge amount, but they were a lot younger. So I just made the choice, and it might be something that I change in the future, and I might just go back and delete them. But since we made the decision, I haven’t added any more and Curtis doesn’t have any on his either. And because they change so quickly, it just seemed like I didn’t need to go back and delete all of them. So there are old ones on there you can see them, but not new ones unless you are on my close friends list. And with my eldest and middle child, Tana and Miko. I asked their permission before I post anything, with Miko you barely see him because it’s usually a no from him, he doesn’t want pictures, he’s at that stage. He’s never still enough to have a picture. So he’s far too busy to have pictures taken. So you barely see him Yari, my youngest absolutely loves it. So you’ll see more pictures of him and Tana decides on a day to day basis. So I might say, can I use this picture? And she’ll look at it, and she’ll either say yes or no. And that’s that, there’s no kind of discussion on it really, we want to teach them that it’s autonomy. And that applies to social media as well. So that’s, I think one of the biggest changes is just really being even more cautious with what we share. Safeguarding as well. I mean, these are things that we wouldn’t do anyway. But school uniforms, street names, just being really aware that you are accessible to everyone, basically, if your profile is public, and I have quite nice followers, but I know some people really overstep the mark with some of the DM’s I see people receiving. So that kind of accessibility sometimes just makes people do really strange things. So yeah, just got to be really careful with what we share, how we share it. And in terms of being on social media, I probably post about once a week on my actual grid on Instagram now, stories I use more regularly, but I was going through, especially during the Kickstarter, I was posting every day, and then I just found it draining. And if I don’t enjoy it any more than I just won’t do it. So that’s what I’ve kind of tried to do and had a balance between Twitter and Instagram, because they’re very different platforms. And for me, that’s worked quite well. So I still check in on Instagram, I’m still there, I still do stories. I don’t spend a huge amount of time scrolling. I find that on Instagram, especially trigger warnings aren’t used very well. So the content is just delivered to you. And that doesn’t work well for me. I like to be able to choose what I’m going to read or see, especially if it’s quite traumatic. So that’s just why I don’t spend a huge amount of time scrolling as well. I tend to just check my friends’ stories and then if it’s got any post, I’ll go and read that. But just try and curate my feed really, and just see lots of beautiful pictures and lots of art. And I follow a lot of fashion things because clothes make me really happy. And magazines and books. Just try and follow all the things that give me joy really.

Charlotte Speak  30:43  

Which leads me, which I love all of that, by the way, just the whole, like knowing when you need to take a step back being clear on what your boundaries are. I am quite scared when my girls get older, and they want some sort of social media account. I’m assuming that they will, maybe they won’t. But I think the law of averages, am I using that in the right context? Tell me that they probably will want something. But I’ll deal with that when it comes. But what that does lead me into is my next question for you. So at the end of all of these podcasts, I’m asking everybody the same three questions, channelling my inner Giovanna Fletcher. So, self care has been a phrase and an approach that has become much more widely used. I’m really interested in what other people do to help themselves really, and look after ourselves. So what does self care look like for you?

Ebony Lyon  36:20  

Anything that instantly uplifts my mood. And for me, the things so for example, I’m off work this week, and the children are at school. So reading, I love makeup, I love the application of makeup that really actually relaxes me. So applying makeup, I love lipstick. So lipstick, music, just loud music to dance to, the sun, being outside, just taking myself for a walk. They’re all really small things. When the children are here, we might do something different, that I know is going to just put huge smiles on their faces, which is instantly just gonna uplift me. But I suppose it is the usual books and magazines. I absolutely love a coffee table magazine. They’re pretty much my addiction. I’ve just got a couple of new ones that I saved for this week. I love looking at them. We have art books, so I just really like absorbing really beautiful things. And it instantly uplifts my mood. I love window shopping as well. So I can spend like two hours, obviously not in the shops now because we’ve been on lockdown, but just window shopping online and just putting together different outfits that I’ll probably never buy. But I just really love doing it. Mood boards, I have a Pinterest and I have private boards that are just for me. It’s not about engagement. It’s just me and I put together different boards based on book covers. So the book cover might be pink and orange. And then we’ll just find lots of beautiful couture outfits or fabric or pieces. And I’ll just have mood boards that I put together. That’s self care for me.

Charlotte Speak  38:17  

If people could see I’m like, being all dreamy, and like, oh my god that sounds amazing.

Ebony Lyon  38:23  

I love it. I could spend hours doing it. So anything like that. And you can see like, it’s anything so I just try and it doesn’t matter what it is. You don’t have to do what other people do in terms of self care. It doesn’t always work. I see people have baths quite a lot and relaxing. That’s not something I like to do that often. And what works for one person doesn’t work for others. Some people might find the thought of putting together Pinterest mood boards absolutely hideous and stressful. So it’s just not going to work for them. But for me, it instantly just lifts my mood. It makes me smile. There are things I want to do. And also just know when it’s time to take a break. Again, something that I really struggle with. I’m a mum of three, it’s busy. Whenever you spend time for yourself, I always feel guilty. It’s ridiculous. It’s silly, but I always have to get out of my head with that. It’s important that you put some time into yourself. So I have to actively try and do that as well. And then just cuddles. I still get cuddles from my youngest. He’s very cuddly. But I do get the occasional ones from my middle and eldest which are great. Especially when they come out of the blue and you don’t usually get them. They’re the best. So yeah, that’s my self care.

Charlotte Speak  39:42  

I think I might need to get into Pinterest. And I will be absolutely living for the day when I can come window shopping with you. Probably be like the end of 2022 at this rate, but it will happen one day.

Ebony Lyon  39:55  

It will definitely happen. Yeah.

Charlotte Speak  39:58  

So my next question is if you could kind of go back and give a piece of reassurance to the Ebony who was becoming a parent for the first time. What would that reassurance be?

Ebony Lyon  40:11  

That perfect does not exist in any way, shape or form. And to stop being so hard on myself. Yes, babies are fragile, but they’re not going to break.

Charlotte Speak  40:25  

Not the way that you parent.

Ebony Lyon  40:27  

They’re just not going to break. I just panicked about everything, I panicked about absolutely everything. And with your first it’s so much different because you don’t know, you think you’re doing everything wrong. I would also explain to new parent Ebony that, unfortunately, parenting is really competitive. And that’s one of the things I hadn’t realised. So you’ll find that a lot of people share things that just aren’t true. And I find it so unhelpful. And my friends have babies or new parents now, I make sure that’s one of the first things that I tell them, when they told me such and such is but no, they’re probably not people just tell you. They exaggerate. I don’t know, I just wasn’t prepared for competitive parenting. It was a complete shock to my system. And that’s why, although I don’t share too much on social media, I do try to be honest. So an example in particular that I can think of, I shared a picture of the two boys sitting down playing Lego together, and people were messaging saying I wish my children would play like this. And I said, to be honest, that was a snapshot of like, five minutes. They were at each other’s throats like right before and right after. It’s just a snapshot, it really is like, it doesn’t look like that all the time. So I try to be honest, because especially new parents are really hard on themselves. And I was so I would tell new parent Ebony perfect does not exist, and you’re doing a really good job.

Charlotte Speak  41:59  

Evidently. I think that’s part of the social media thing, isn’t it that we seem to assume that those snapshots are somebody’s whole life, and therefore we’ve got this right to comment or hold an opinion. I mean, everybody’s entitled to an opinion, some shouldn’t be as loud of an opinion, unfortunately. But I suppose it becomes a vicious circle, doesn’t it? That it’s hard to break that cycle.

Ebony Lyon  42:28  

Yeah, yeah, I completely agree. And then you can’t get out of your head. And it’s just really, it’s really difficult. Yeah.

Charlotte Speak  42:34  

Toxicity. [Yes and it spreads.] On a slightly more positive note, though, we’ve heard that you are the definition of multi hyphenate. At the moment, you’re spinning lots of plates, you’ve got lots going on. Your hopes for parents in the workplace. So all of my work is grounded in working with businesses now. What are your hopes for parents in the workplace, kind of now and in the future?

Ebony Lyon  43:01  

Just full flexibility for parents, it’s so hard. Things don’t just happen. You can’t pre plan for everything when you’re a parent. So all the guilt tripping, you know, when you have to leave early, you have to pick your child up, you have appointments, I just think all of that would be alleviated if we had full flexibility. And I know that’s something that Mother Pukka, that Anna Whitehouse is really investing a lot of time and energy into trying to make sure this happens. It will help with mental health so much, because it’s such a worry, and you’re constantly thinking, Oh, I’m going to have to ask to leave, I’m going to be late. I have to speak to the teacher on the way, I need to speak to the teacher on the way home and you constantly feel like you’re juggling all of these plates, which you’re not able to juggle properly. And I think just adding that flexibility and that understanding, just as a standard, not as a benefit. Oh, you know, we offer flexibility. Like that should just be standard, we are parents, things are going to come up. Yeah, I want an increase. Just a huge overhaul and increase in flexibility because I think it will help so much, especially with stress levels. You know, for me, flexibility wasn’t something I had at work at the start and it’s just an absolute nightmare. It really is. I do have it now and obviously I work from home full time now anyway. But even before that I did and it makes such a difference being able to work from home two, three days a week. So that’s just yeah flexibility please.

Charlotte Speak  44:39  

That was amazing. Thank you so much for joining me today. It has been an absolute pleasure.

Ebony Lyon  44:44  

It’s been lovely. Sorry if I rambled. I tend to do that.

Charlotte Speak  44:48  

Not at all. There was no rambling whatsoever and even if there was it’s not something to apologise for. If people haven’t found you on social media or your website, where can we come and find out and read more about Formy books and Ebony?

Ebony Lyon  45:03  

Yeah so you can, what is my Instagram? Let me have a look. So Formy books social media is always @formy_books. So across the platforms, you can find us on Twitter, on Instagram and on Facebook. And for me, it’s @ebonyjlyon on Instagram. And I think I have links to the other social media on there and then formybooks.com So you can find absolutely everything. And just come and take a look. And you can also sign up to the newsletter on the website on Formy Books as well. So then, as the new books are released, you can, you know, get access and find out first and all that good stuff.

Charlotte Speak  45:47  

I mean this when I say run, do not walk when you see those newsletters, because they will be flying out like hotcakes. I will put all of the links and website addresses in the show notes. So if you didn’t manage to scribble that down, or reach for your phone to go and find Ebony and the Formy team on Instagram or the other socials, they will be all there for you to find so much and I’ll see you on an Insta story real soon. And we need to plan a blazer shopping day, please.

Ebony Lyon  46:20  

Definitely. Thanks so much. Thanks, Charlotte. It’s been wonderful. Thank you. Bye bye.

Charlotte Speak  46:27  

Thanks very much for tuning in to Power of the Parent, the podcasts. I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you did, please rate, review and subscribe. And if you could tell all your friends about the podcast that would be wonderful. If you’d like to get in touch you can find me on Instagram. Just search Power of the Parent. See you next time.