Get to know our author of our book of the month for January, Jodi Wilson. Jodi Wilson is a bestselling author, yoga teacher and postpartum doula. Her work has been published in the Guardian and ABC and she writes two weekly newsletters on Substack. She lives in Tasmania with her partner and their four children. This is her fourth book.
To begin with, why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself – where were you born? Raised? Schooled?
I was born in England and raised on the Central Coast of NSW. I went to a Catholic primary school where my librarian, Mrs MacGuinness, instilled in me a love of reading. In my final years of high school, I took three English classes and my teacher, Mrs Walls, nurtured my passion for writing. We studied Tim Winton’s Cloudstreet and I still have my copy that’s tabbed and dog-eared, countless notes in the margins and hundreds of sentences underlined. It was the first novel I studied deeply, really picking apart whole paragraphs to get to the root of the story and it proved to me that there are many layers to the novels that stay with us for life.
What did you want to be when you were twelve, eighteen and thirty? And why?
I was a pre-teen in the mid-nineties so like many girls of that era I was obsessed with dolphins and therefore it made complete sense for me to pursue a career in marine biology. I came to my senses in high school when I realised that biology and chemistry were definitely not my forte. At 18 I was studying journalism at UTS and from day one we were walking the streets looking for leads; it was a wonderful, practical degree that instilled in me the belief that if I was doing the work, I could call myself a journalist; I didn’t need a degree to give me that qualification. A few years later my life shifted quite dramatically; I met my partner and we had our first baby. I remember thinking that my dream of being a writer was over because motherhood required my full immersion and there wasn’t much space or time for words. I started writing online about my mothering experience and by the time I was 30, I had enough self-belief in my words to begin to imagine a career as a writer; eight years later I published my first book.
What were three works of art – book or painting or piece of music, etc – you can now say had a great effect on you and influenced your own development as a writer?
I will break the rules and list far more than three:
Ann M Martin, Judy Blume and John Marsden were mainstays in my tween and early-teen years. You never forget the impressionable novels you read as a child, the comfort stories that help you understand yourself as you’re growing up.
Alison Lester’s Are We There Yet? is the story of her family’s road trip around Australia in a campervan. My firstborn was in a school play based on the book and while we were in the theatre, my partner leaned over to me and said: “We could do that, we could travel Australia in a caravan.” Eight months later we had sold 80% of our belongings and we drove out of our suburban street with our 4 kids and only the essentials packed into a caravan, and lived on the road for over two years. It changed a lot of things, mostly our understanding that you don’t need a lot to live well. It really changed our priorities as a family and we decided to settle in a small town in Lutruwita/Tasmania where we still live now.
Finally, Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird, Instructions for writing and life. I’ve read it many times but it really resonated when I was in the whirlwind of life with four children and trying to pack up our lives for our road trip. I should have been packing books into boxes but instead I started rereading Anne’s words and her simple instruction to take it ‘bird by bird’ or ‘box by box’ felt so achievable considering my mind was a sea of overwhelm. It’s true though, small steps are how we all move forwards, and sometimes we have to take a step to the side when we feel the need to slow down, take rest and live a little lighter.
Please tell us about your novel (which is also our BOTM!), A Brain That Breathes.
It was the book I needed to write. At the start of 2024 I had written three books in three years and I was navigating profound exhaustion. I wondered: what do I need to do each day so my mind doesn’t feel so full, so stuck? I wanted to better understand my brain, mostly what it needs for clarity and creativity. I was also curious about the fact that everyone seems to be so overwhelmed by normal life.
So, I read the studies and interviewed the specialists and they all came back to one essential point: there’s a disconnect between our biology and our normal, everyday reality. Our brain wasn’t designed for a world that demands 24-hour consistency and equates ‘success’ with constant productivity and achievement. But there is one thing we can reinstate in our lives to ensure we have mental clarity and a calm nervous system: breathing space. I define it as ‘small moments of downtime, often’ and while it may look like ‘nothing’ it’s actually the proven antidote to stress.
Two years into this unofficial project to better understand my brain and I can confidently say that I’m a more grounded, settled, clear-headed human; I wore more efficiently, I honour my need to rest and I’ve fostered a very real contentment in my quite ordinary life.
What do you hope people take away with them after reading your work?
I hope that readers reinstate ‘breathing space’ in their vocabulary and their lives.
A Brain That Breathes isn’t a book about overhauling your life, but it is a book that encourages you to better understand yourself so you can make small decisions each day that are good for your brain. At this time of year we’re inundated with one message: ‘New Year, New You!’ and this instills in us the belief that we’re not enough, that we should ‘do better’ and ‘be better’- it keeps us on an exhausting and unsustainable treadmill. It’s helpful to flip the narrative and ask yourself: ’what’s enough for me right now?’ This is how you learn to care for yourself in meaningful ways.
If you are exhausted and overwhelmed, it’s really easy to presume that the solution is complicated. Evidence shows that it’s the simple things that really bolster us: drinking a cup of tea slowly while staring out the window, walking without headphones, spending time in nature, resting when you’re tired, letting your gaze wander when you’re in a green space (a practice called ‘soft fascination’). The charming will never win out against the engineered so we need to be quite intentional with including these habits in our days. When we understand that the mellow states of waiting, wandering and pottering are vital for decluttering the brain and relieving overwhelm, it’s much easier to include them in our day.
Whom do you most admire in the realm of writing and why?
Two Australian writers who are admired by many: Helen Garner and Charlotte Wood. They do such vital work for Australian literature and the reading and writing ecosystem.
Garner’s wit and tenacity is admirable but mostly I am encouraged by her dedication to the fine art of observing. She has the most beautiful way of writing the domestic; the very simple, everyday things that we can all relate to – the things that are most meaningful when it comes to being a human in the world. I always have at least one of her books on my desk and bedside table because her non-fiction is ideal for opening to any page and finding a perfect sentence. She’s also a stickler for correct grammar and I do appreciate that kind of discipline.
I’ve had the opportunity to learn from Charlotte Wood quite closely over the past few years and her curiosity about the writing process has really bolstered me and given me the confidence to experiment and persist, even when the words are clunky and few. She is wise and incredibly generous in sharing what she knows.
What advice would you give to aspiring writers?
Read. Carry a book with you at all times, read widely, borrow from your local library, ask for books as gifts. We have severely declining reading rates in Australia but studies show that reading for even five minutes a day lowers our heartrate, improves our focus and attention and nurtures our empathetic response. And then? Write in all the pockets of time that exist in your days. I think we’ve been conditioned to think we need great swathes of time to get the work done but so many good words can land on the page in the midst of normal life. No book is written easily and all require dedication and a resolute stubbornness but if you persist, you will reach the end of a first draft and experience the undeniable joy of knowing that you honed your attention, you did the work and you have something to show for it. Reading and writing helps you make sense of the world and your place in it.
A Brain That Breathes
Turn down the volume, let your brain breathe and learn to live well in this practical, actionable and evidence-based guide from best-selling author Jodi Wilson.
It's a lot, we say. And it's true – sometimes everyday life feels like too much. So what habits can we prioritise for mental clarity and creative verve? How can we continue to do what's normal and necessary but wind back to care for our basic human needs? In this gentle, wise and actionable guide, best-selling author and respected health journalist Jodi Wilson explores the simple, evidence-based changes we can make to give our brains the breathing space they need.
After a lifetime with anxiety, Jodi wanted to better understand herself so she could continue to be creative and productive without slipping into overwhelm and exhaustion. In this fascinating exploration of the brain and body, she discovers that neuroscientists and psychologists, as well as artists and sustainable living experts, all agree on the one habit that can change how we live. It's something our ancestors had in abundance but we've essentially eradicated from our lives: free time, spare time, leisure time – real space to breathe.
The modern concept of self-care we've been sold doesn't help – it costs us time and money and keeps us on an unsustainable treadmill. No one is making any money when we choose to rest and do less, yet it's the proven antidote to modern stress. Instead of looking ahead for answers, we need to consider our evolutionary biology; our brains were designed for life 10,000 years ago, so what would our ancestors have found helpful?
A Brain That Breathes is full of accessible and practical suggestions to embrace the power of 'enoughness', 'soft fascination' and intentional 'not-doing' so you can declutter your mind, restore your attention, and live every day with breathing space.
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