by with Layla O'Mara
Exploring a radically new way of mothering both ourselves and others, and the impact of that on how we manifest in the world. I have conversations with women doing this radical work - women who have ✺ opened my mind ✺ blown wide my heart ✺ pivoted how I see and navigate the world Pull up a chair and join us. <br/><br/><a href="https://laylaomara.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast">laylaomara.substack.com</a>
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5/19/2023
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April 17, 2026
<p><strong>Welcome to part two of BODY WORK - a series of conversations and workshops on the body - how we write it, listen to it, use it, create from it.</strong></p><p>Last week I had the pleasure of speaking with writer <a target="_blank" href="https://substack.com/profile/224243820-davina-quinivan">Davina Quinivan</a> about her new memoir <strong>Possessions</strong> and you can listen to that conversation <a target="_blank" href="https://open.substack.com/pub/laylaomara/p/possessions-a-conversation-with-davina?r=m9co9&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true">here</a>.</p><p>And next week we will begin a week’s series of simple physical and writing prompts to explore writing with and about the body, culminating in a live call in which we can share where the prompts have taken us. Learn more about this exciting week <a target="_blank" href="https://open.substack.com/pub/laylaomara/p/bodies-are-the-coolest-thing?r=m9co9&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true">HERE.</a></p><p>If you’d like to join us for what promises to be a very special week, you can sign up as a paid subscriber and if you do so before April 19th you can avail of a 50% off special offer on yearly subscriptions.</p><p>Ok, so let’s dive into this week’s conversation, which is with the wonderful writer <a target="_blank" href="https://substack.com/profile/106133652-ali-isaac">Ali Isaac</a> about her new memoir Imperfect Bodies. I had the pleasure of chairing a discussion with Ali for the Dublin launch of her book a few weeks ago, and we had such a rich conversation I was really eager to have Ali join me for a revisiting of that conversation that we could share with all of you.</p><p>Imperfect Bodies is a beautifully honest and raw account of Ali’s journey with her daughter Carys who was born with a rare genetic condition – CFC syndrome – and was not expected to survive after birth. Happily, miraculously, she did, and celebrated her 20th birthday recently. Imperfect Bodies tells the story of Ali and Carys’s journey through these 20 years. </p><p><p>‘Carys loves herself … she stares into her own eyes, at her curls, twists her head this way and that so she can stare at it from all angles, opens her mouth wide, examines her tongues and her teeth, pulls funny faces and laughs at herself […] She never looks at her clothes; like the scar, they are not who she is, and she appears to know that. … Carys loves herself, but without conceit, consciously and unconsciously. Despite her imperfections, she is comfortable in her skin. I wish I could be more like that.’</p></p><p>In this conversation Ali and I explore her experiences of disability and discuss how our bodies - 𓇸 perfect and imperfect, 𓇸 able and dis-abled, 𓇸 public and private, 𓇸 seen and unseen, 𓇸 young and middle-aged are regarded in the modern world. We talk about 𓇸 losing and finding ourselves, 𓇸 about motherhood, 𓇸 about belonging 𓇸 and about the power of story and words. </p><p>𓇸 We talk about challenging our definitions of normality and Ali offers us powerful explorations of what it means to care and what it means to be human.</p><p>𓇸 Above all, this is a book about and written from love and I think that is palpable in how Ali speaks about her life with Carys.</p><p><p>"So beautifully written, such an honest and raw account, a scrupulous interrogation of perceptions and attitudes towards disability in the modern world." <strong>Sara Baume, review of Imperfect Bodies </strong></p></p><p><strong>I’d love to hear your thoughts on our conversation - </strong><strong>What sparked for you? </strong><strong>What did you want to know more about? </strong><strong>What piqued your interest?</strong></p><p><strong>About Ali</strong>Ali lives in Ireland with her husband, two sons, and daughter, Carys. In 2020, she was awarded a mentorship for Imperfect Bodies with author Sara Baume by Words Ireland in conjunction with the Arts Council of Ireland. She was also selected for the Penguin Write Now Program 2020. In 2021, she was the recipient of a Literature Bursary Award from the Arts Council of Ireland. Ali has been published in literary journals The Stinging Fly, Sonder, Paper Lanterns, and Catatonic Daughters. She regularly writes on her Substack.</p><p>I hope you enjoy listening to this conversation as much as I enjoyed having it.Le grá,</p><p>Layla x </p><p>Enjoy this conversation? You might like to consider subscribing:</p> <br/><br/>This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit <a href="https://laylaomara.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2">laylaomara.substack.com/subscribe</a>
April 10, 2026
<p><strong>Welcome to part one of BODY WORK - a series of conversations and workshops on the body - how we write it, listen to it, use it, create from it. To learn more about upcoming episodes and workshops, check out my post on my homepage.</strong></p><p>‘Before others tried to change me, I tried to change myself. Instinctively, I developed a habit, perfecting the art of self-imposed conditioning, preparation for the more violent and pernicious forms of possession that were to come. And they were coming, thick and fast. All I had to do was wait.’</p><p></p><p>I recently had the pleasure of speaking with Davina Quinlivan about her new memoir Possessions: A Memoir of Transformation in an Era of Precarity. It is a wild, genre-bending narrative that charts Quinlivan’s ultimate rejection of ‘passing for something else’ as she reclaims her mind and body.</p><p>After two decades of academic research and undergraduate teaching, Davina and the world of university education, were approaching crisis; teaching online, ticking boxes for other people’s diversity criteria, stuck, like so many others, in a cycle of fixed term contracts. Yet as a child of Anglo-Burmese parents, growing up in West London, academia had promised a way out. Something better.</p><p></p><p>‘I was so thirsty for the prize of academia, so thrilled to defy the fates, that I suffocated my own history and culture, my Burmese heritage and my mother’s language. By doing this, I also possessed my ancestors and made them dance to the tune of Imperialism. How could I be so wrong?’</p><p></p><p>Possessions is her powerful, compelling story of fragmenting and rebuilding from the inside out, one that is filled with the voices of both Burma and Southall. Haunted by the ghosts of colonialism, Quinlivan beautifully lays bare our blind spots as we grapple with decolonisation and the hypocrisies within our institutions of education.</p><p></p><p>Which possessions came before me, drenching my bones? Which ones did I accept, and which ones did I resist?</p><p></p><p>In this conversation we explore:𓇸 Trying to make our bodies fit into pre-made, preconceived moulds𓇸 Imaginative memoir and how it was a necessary way of exploring on the page her intersecting identities and lived experience𓇸 Portals, thresholds, magical creatures, goblin ancestors and not having line breaks between the living and the dead, the ancient and the new, body and soul. 𓇸 The changing face of higher level education system in the UK𓇸 The disembodiment that so often takes place in an online working environment𓇸 Ideas around shape-shifting, labour, productivity and motherhood𓇸 Ideas around presence and the value of witnessing, deep listening and community and connection</p><p><strong>I’d love to hear your thoughts on our conversation - What sparked for you? What did you want to know more about? What peaked your interest?</strong></p><p><strong>About Davina</strong>Davina Quinlivan is a research fellow at the Department of English and Creative Writing at the University of Exeter. For several years she has run F: For Flanerie, a series of writing and film seminars at The Freud Museum. She is also Artistic Lead with Paper Nations, an award-winning creative writing incubator funded by Arts Council England. Her writing has appeared widely, and she is the author of Shalimar (Little Toller).</p><p><strong>Possessions </strong>is out now.</p><p>If you’d like to follow along with this series of conversations and posts on writing the body, please do subscribe to my newsletter here:</p><p>le grá,</p><p>Layla xx</p> <br/><br/>This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit <a href="https://laylaomara.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2">laylaomara.substack.com/subscribe</a>
January 23, 2026
<p><strong>𓇸 </strong><strong>This is a beauty & bone long read article. If you’d like to subscribe to access, plus join us for our early morning writing sessions, and upcoming MULCH meeting in which we’ll start to feel into what the landscape of 2026 might look like for each of us, you can upgrade to paid here:</strong></p><p><strong>Ok, let’s begin !</strong></p><p>Hello friends,</p><p>Welcome back to the ELEMENT SESSIONS. For those of you new here, the Element Sessions are series of slow, seasonal check-ins throughout the year, using as a framework the Five Elements as described in Taoist practices and Chinese Medicine.</p><p>The Five Elements (Water, Fire, Metal, Wood & Earth) are all energetic expressions of pure life force. We have all of these five elements within us, and they also vibrate throughout the natural world, they are what makes up life. Each element is at its strongest at a particular time of the year - Earth in Late Summer, Metal in Autumn, Water in Winter, Wood in Spring and Fire in the Summer.</p><p>When I’m not writing or mothering I work as a Five Element acupuncturist, and so it felt like a simple natural step to create a series of slow, seasonal explorations of each of these elements, weaving in some creative writing prompts. There is, I feel, great power in exploring each of these aspects of ourselves in the time of year it is at its height.</p><p>Last year we explored each of the Elements through a series of podcast conversations, live calls and journalling prompts (links to our WATER session are below, including a wonderful conversation with <a target="_blank" href="https://substack.com/profile/11792961-easkey">Easkey</a> Britton). This year, as we continue our exploration, I felt drawn to <strong>using sound and the body</strong> to tap into the elements a little more.</p><p>In this short video on the WATER element and WINTER we:</p><p>𖥸 Explore what the qualities of this time of year are</p><p>𖥸 Use a simple sound and movement to wake up the Water meridians. In Taoist practice each of the organ pairings for each element have a particular sound associated with them, designed to vibrate at a particular frequency to stimulate them, get them moving, wake them up.</p><p>𖥸 Finally, I’d highly recommend also taking a listen to the conversation I had with writer, social ecologist and big wave surfer <a target="_blank" href="https://substack.com/profile/11792961-easkey">Easkey</a> Britton about the power of water in our lives. Our fascinating initial conversation can be listened to here:</p><p>And you can also listen to this wonderful practice that Easkey shared with us around grief and loss and the holding and healing potential of water:</p><p>These are conversations that have stayed with me since I had them over a year ago now, I’d love to hear how they land for you?</p><p>Layla x</p> <br/><br/>This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit <a href="https://laylaomara.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2">laylaomara.substack.com/subscribe</a>
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Exploring a radically new way of mothering both ourselves and others, and the impact of that on how we manifest in the world.
I have conversations with women doing this radical work - women who have ✺ opened my mind ✺ blown wide my heart ✺ pivoted how I see and navigate the world
Pull up a chair and join us. <br/><br/><a href="https://laylaomara.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast">laylaomara.substack.com</a>
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