“After Easter, we should just keep going on the road I reckon”
Everything inside me sighs a relief and a resounding yes please, take me.
He speaks my ultimate love language — spontaneous last minute adventures...
The Crafters are currently on one hell of an adventure… 2,358kms under the belt in a week.
Photography: Matt Crafter
You’ll have to wait a few weeks for the four rolls of film memories currently been made…I promise to share the magic xoxo
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NOTE: Highly recommend…going off grid… then interstate…during eclipse season.
Man on man - you hanging in there sis?
All I know is we’re coming out the other side of this bigger and badder than ever before.
But for now, we hold ourselves in the tenderness and compassion that we would a child whom has growing pains…
April this time last year, the portal between eclipses, I felt the exact same way.
Like something major was happening to me, something cosmic, something ancient.
Something on the tip of my tongue, yet beyond words.
Something that required solitude and space, reflection and contemplation.
Film Photography: Sophie Crafter
Port Melbourne, April 2023.
My first roll of black and white film, that has sealed this moment in time in my heart forever xoxo I was just different after this stay in an old miner’s cottage that charmed the pants off me
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Honesty.
Who and what and why and where, was I giving my precious energy?
I emerged different.
I emerged more inspired than ever, to create.
Knowing that it’s what gives me the most life force.
Therefore it’s also my greatest gift to my loved ones and wider community.
But it took time, it took space, it took shedding and it took more space.
And Truth, so much Truth.
The Truth is fine tuned, sharpened like a sword. If not listened to, it cuts.
Boy does it cut!
I have been sitting with much.
Literally sitting…2,358 kilometres of it. Staring out the window.
Digesting, churning, processing…moving through the portal.
Of rain, torrential rain, of sun, of wind, of screaming kids, of kids holding hands, of parents arguing, of parents holding hands.
Today we arrived on the land my son was born… and on this day 2 years ago, my contractions, the waves, they started.
We pull into the first servo across the border in Queensland and as I wipe my vulva…blood.
My period.
I’d been logged out of my Clue app (blame the retrograde, the eclipse, whatever…) but I haven’t known my “day” for weeks…
The delight when I come to understand that here I am, bleeding as I arrive in the state where I gave birth to him.
It’s like my body knows (it does).
It’s like we were always doing this trip (we were).
Even though it only unfolded a week and a half ago.
All I can say is…
A Spark.
The Spark arrives as an idea, a quiet whisper, a vulnerable seed.
It arrives in a moment
“It takes 10 seconds of insane courage” - we bought a zoo
*Sound on for one of the most beautiful roads I have ever been on…and the trademark Crafter roadtrip vibes!!!
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The Spark is fleeting… sliding doors, if you will.
The same spark that made us pack up our home in April of 2021 and jump in the car with a trailer carrying our belongings and no jobs, no homes…
No worries…because following the spark is the surest thing in life, this I know for sure.
I sit on the beach this afternoon, our family frolicking in the afternoon sun, exhaling on the beach after a long week on the road.
Tears well in my eyes.
This is the life I always wanted to live.
I am living it.
I always feared that having kids would change our adventurous and spontaneous ways.
It turns out it’s only amplified it (I truly believe having children amplifies whatever and whoever we are).
The adventures are only getting bigger, riskier (although they don’t feel like a risk, when you know and trust the spark…it’s a muscle after all).
A week and a half ago it was let’s change a 4 day holiday to a 3 week holiday…why not.
In a year it will be let’s spend a month in the US on the road, promoting my book and seeing America.
In a couple of years it will be let’s go to Spain next week.
I find myself tempted to write some sort of disclaimer about finances and yet, Matt & I followed The Spark when we had <$50 to each of our names, in our first year of uni. OH the stories I could tell!
Like the night we drove down the Great Ocean Road, spent our last pennies on dinner & a drink at the pub in Apollo Bay, slept in the back of his ute, woke up by the ocean…and drove back to res (residence…we lived “on res” at Deakin Geelong campus:) the next day.
No matter your finances, or any other situation, The Spark ALWAYS feels like a stretch, an edge, a leap.
On the journey we wonder why we said yes to it…
Aka when two kids are screaming, when the rain is so torrential we have to pull over on the side of the freeway, when my daughter is not fully toilet trained, when my 2 year old son has no ability to listen or follow instructions (he’s an aries, fuck me lol), when we question why we’re going, what we’re doing…
And then, we burst out the other side, we arrive…in a place that feels like home.
We arrive in the ocean…
Cackling in the waves…
Salt in our hair
Salt in our eyes
Tears of joy
We land in the feeling…
Thank God we followed it
Imagine if we didn’t
And
Most profoundly…
I’ve never felt more like me.
I remember when Matt first suggested this trip, I was in the middle of a tech failure (you remember? Was that last week or a lifetime ago…eclipse/retrograde feels lol)
But what about The Spark? I thought.
But what about The Spark…this is the spark…after all.
With my family…just like the shoot. I am a Mother, so my work is birthed from how I live but inevitably how we live, too.
I couldn’t imagine anyone more qualified to teach this topic, than myself.
Honestly.
I live the most unreasonable life and every day, The Spark is my muse.
Come and learn from me who lives and breathes and bears the fruit of this every day.
And I want to learn from you too..what the spark is for you…I want you to strengthen and flex and love this part of yourself..in a space where it’s celebrated.
Coz there’s enough people out there who think you’re fucken crazy…
But we know deep down, crazy is the most sane you could be.
I know you know the spark too, you wouldn’t be here reading my work if you didn’t know.
But if the spark feels like an old friend that’s become more distant than you’d like…
“Nothing is ever lost, nor can be lost. The body, sluggish, aged, cold, the embers left, from earlier fires, shall duly flame again.” - Nicholas Sparks, The Notebook
Film Photography: Bri Horne
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