Infocus: with HOWL founder Haylee Collins
Image by Georgia Smedley
“I only became aware upon becoming a mother that my adult life has been built around this careful system of control. The arrival of a child, let alone one who is my energetic opposite, makes living that way difficult. It’s part of why motherhood has been so transformative for me, personally.”
Haylee Collins is the founder of HOWL, a biannual print magazine exploring the intersection of creativity and motherhood. We predict HOWL will be on every new mother’s shelf, with Issue 01 out in early 2023.
A bookworm at heart, this fastidious and brilliant creature has spent many years in publishing, working at establishments such as Thames & Hudson and Hardie Grant. A talented natural-born storyteller (intimidatingly so), the woman behind the pages is modest, a self-professed introvert and a good friend.
When we asked Haylee about what it means to be present with her son Avery (2.5), she replied, “Being present as a parent means meeting my child at his level, and seeing, loving and accepting him for who he is wholly. But it means doing that for myself too – which can be hard.”
This interview is for those who love to think deeply and reminds us that simple rituals are often the most enjoyable. In this interview, we spoke about HOWL, how dreams are realised with community and observations about self-study and getting to know yourself.
This is our final Infocus for 2022. Here’s to a joyful Christmas with your kids and making lasting memories. Please make sure to head to HOWL’s site to register your interest for Issue 01,here.
Image by Georgia Smedley
Tell us about HOWL …
HOWL is a soon-to-be-launched biannual print magazine exploring the intersection of creativity and motherhood.
The concept evolved in the months surrounding my return to work when Avery was one-year-old. I realised I’d experienced a profound expansion of my identity – my insights and inspirations were all interconnected in this whole new way. I was writing again for the first time in years with newfound clarity and purpose. It gradually became apparent that returning to the level of seniority and responsibility I’d held previously, as a marketing manager in book publishing, would’ve only been possible if I increased my days and in-office hours and I couldn’t envision that sacrifice of time with Avery leading to the balance and creative fulfilment I was seeking.
Alongside these thoughts, I found myself yearning for in-depth conversations and writing that was philosophical, political, cultural – the same subjects I was interested in before becoming a mother, really – but explored anew through the mothering experience. There’s no blueprint for mothering as a creative person. I wanted to ask big questions of mothers and creatives and know their full and terrible and profound answers. Create something that was about the artist more-so than her art.
I’d run a print magazine with a co-founder years earlier and found that was the medium that called most to me when trying to pull all these threads together. HOWL solidified in my mind, and I left my career at the beginning of 2022 to slowly bring it to life.
I guess it’s a typical origin story: HOWL has been created because I, as its founder, needed it to exist.
Was HOWL something you had been yearning to do before birth or something that happened after the fact?
I’d been keeping myself open to the possibility of a new project. I secretly assumed that I’d come out of maternity leave having mastered various hobbies and business ideas. But the first six months of Avery’s life was spent mostly in lockdown, with my partner working long hours out of the home. Being on your own with a new baby wasn’t conducive to any sort of traditionally valued productivity.
It was only as I began to regain a sense of myself as separate from my son – planning my return to work and finding care arrangements for him – that the thoughts that grew into HOWL began to take root.
I had actually said ‘never again’ to magazines after the first one I ran. They’re notoriously difficult and expensive to sustain as a business. But, I don’t know… it’s a natural culmination of my career working across digital, magazine and book publishing, and marketing art books and before that children’s books – of which most buyers are mothers. It all lined up so naturally. In some ways it feels fated.
The hours you do your best work are…
We’re a family of early risers and I’ve been conditioned by years of office work and early commutes, so I’m usually productive from around 7:30am until the 3pm slump hits. On workdays after dropping Avery off around 9am I return home, sit at our dining table, and put my head down for 5 or 6 hours. It’s difficult for me to work at night. I prefer sunlight and a bright spot to sit in, with a view of outside.
To be a present parent means….
This is something I give a lot of consideration to. There’s the practical answer that being present means phone down, no distractions, which is true. It’s easiest to be present with Avery when I’m not trying to get anything else done – which can mean sitting with him as he plays, chatting while we drive somewhere, reading together. Usually outdoors is where we’re at our best and most present as a family. We have various spots we love to explore around the Mornington Peninsula. Walks we like to do along creeks and coastlines. Encouraging a love of the natural world in him is equal parts divine and frustrating – at almost three, he’s as likely to marvel at a trail of ants as he is to crush the delicate beauty of a flower under his boots.
But I often think about how to be present in an abstract sense because my own capacity for managing too many competing priorities is pretty limited. Avery is quite high energy and gregarious, whereas I’m a low energy, introverted person who has gone through life carefully managing the demands of work, social and home-life to ensure I can function adequately without imploding, exploding, or burning out. I only became aware upon becoming a mother that my adult life has been built around this careful system of control. The arrival of a child, let alone one who is my energetic opposite, makes living that way difficult. It’s part of why motherhood has been so transformative for me, personally. I’ve written before that it feels like the bravest and weakest and most mysterious pieces of me have been dug up and scattered all around. They’re sitting there, glinting in the light thrown from this shining child. Now I must slowly collect all those pieces and fit them together into the configuration of my new self.
Being present as a parent means meeting my child at his level, and seeing, loving and accepting him for who he is wholly. But it means doing that for myself too – which can be hard! We are such complex creatures, riddled with our own unique traumas and emotional baggage. Parenthood is so triggering and relentless. It’s an ongoing balancing act of self-improvement and self-compassion.
You nurture and support Avery every day. Who, or what, supports you?
As a fairly solitary person whose matrescence occurred largely within lockdowns, I’ve realised I’ve not always invited the type of in-person community that leads to being well-supported by others. I rely mainly on my partner, whose job limits his capacity to support me in-person, and his parents, who already do a lot for us as a family. Family members who live interstate periodically come to stay with us and are very nurturing during their visits. But I let self-care fall by the wayside frequently – skipping meals, not moving my body enough – and haven’t yet figured out how to nurture myself in a sustainable way.
Making the call to keep Avery in the same care arrangements when I left paid work and went into starting HOWL was probably the best decision I’ve made for my well being. For a large part of the year, I’ve had space to work on HOWL, planning shoots, developing content, and designing the magazine and website alongside pockets of time for myself.
I also need to acknowledge that from a financial perspective, my partner fully supports our family right now. I feel it’s so important to be transparent about this, because it’s an enormous privilege many don’t have access to and makes a world of difference to what I’m able to focus my limited energy and attention on.
Image by Georgia Smedley
Do you feel like creativity and matrescence are inextricably linked?
There’s an undeniable shift in the perspective of self that comes with this experience, right? Your priorities get all shaken up and when the fizz of early postpartum subsides you’re left with a clarity of who you could be and what your life could look like – for some people that’s about leading a more creative or sustainable or healthy life, making a lot of money to support their child, or devoting themselves fully to their family. It’s a rough outline of what could-be. For those that are able to follow that vision in any sort of capacity, it is an act of creation. You’re creating yours and your child’s and your family’s future.
I’ve well and truly learnt that our experiences, particularly as parents, aren’t homogenous. But for me, motherhood has been the puzzle piece that has allowed me to see the picture of my life so much more fully. It’s put my history and my current self into context and with that has come waves of inspiration to create and connect and shape my future. To do it for him, and for me.
Perhaps that’s all tied to the act of biological creation and the rewiring of the brain that occurs there, but I think a lot is to do with the experience of raising a new being in this world. To discover the universe through their eyes, as though it’s all been created just for them, is a wonder. You see through them that you could be a wonder, too.
Advice you’d give for anyone else wanting to start something that is their own.
That the things we create are almost never solely ours. It’s almost impossible to create in isolation – whether that’s needing help in aspects of a project or business and outsourcing them, or inevitably drawing inspiration from outside sources, or the people who are our sounding boards throughout the process of creation. Accept from the start that collaboration is key and figure out how and where to invite that in.
Three rituals that make you feel grounded.
Connecting with nature – bare feet on the earth, weeding the garden, hiking, watching trees in the wind or the swell of the ocean, the trickle of a stream or clouds drifting by.
Reading a book – something I used to fit into any spare moment is now almost always reserved for the quiet of a sleeping toddler or an empty house. A good book empties my mind of life’s to-dos.
Co-sleeping – although it doesn’t always guarantee a great night sleep, laying down next to a peacefully sleeping child, or having him fall asleep on or next to me, completely centres me. I come back to myself.
Your favourite age of parenting.
Each step of the way has been uniquely wonderful and difficult. I loved the first year, with the gift of hindsight of course. At the time I was contending with the loneliness of lockdowns and had PNA and mild PND. But the liquid time of those days, full of closeness and discovery, were beautiful. The second year was extremely tough for me. But despite the huge physicality of toddler meltdowns, I’m enjoying parenting more again since Avery passed the 2 and a half mark. His conversations and general dialogue and developing interior world are joyful to witness and be part of.
Follow Haylee’s journey here.