Hello, I’m Emma.

I’m a writer, adoptive mum, owner of a craftorium, Rock Choir soprano, voracious reader, lover of gluten-free goodies and armchair sleuth (when it comes to finding out how to be a better parent).

I started writing about adoption because becoming a parent didn’t look remotely like I’d imagined it would.

My first book, And Then There Were Four, tells the story of how my husband and I went from being a couple to becoming parents to two siblings. It’s a story about adoption, but also about family, love, infertility, bureaucracy, uncertainty, poo, inappropriate laughter and discovering that no amount of preparation actually prepares you for having children.

Then life carried on.

A few years into family life, the family we’d thought of as rock solid started to wobble. Parenting had become exponentially harder (and even throwing traditional parenting at it with all our might, we were NOT keeping up). We began to realise that we hadn’t just adopted two children. Trauma had moved in too.

My second book, And Trauma Made Five, picks up our story as the parenting techniques we thought we could rely on started spectacularly failing us. We had to stop asking “WHAT THE HECK?” as screaming reached I-need-eardefenders level and start wondering what their behaviour was trying to tell us.

That changed everything (but not overnight, nothing as neat and tidy as that).

The book follows our gradual, frequently messy journey from traditional parenting towards something therapeutish. We found a lot of ways to make things worse. We found some things that made things slightly better. Occasionally we stumbled across something that worked so beautifully I wanted to bottle it. And slowly, underneath all the chaos, we began to understand our children, and ourselves, rather better.

And Trauma Made Five is that journey laid out for you all to see, laugh at, wince at and hopefully pick up some tips.

And that’s what really makes me write.

It helps me understand myself and my family, and reflect on what is really going on at the end of a long, exhausting day when I’ve felt nowhere near good enough. I’m fascinated by the gap between how life is supposed to work and what happens when actual human beings get involved.

So although adoption and parenting are a big part of what you’ll find here, they’re not the whole story. Nibbles & Bubbles has always been a place for the other bits of life too: food, family, travel, ridiculous moments, difficult moments, things I’ve discovered and things I’m still trying to figure out.

I live in Yorkshire with my husband, our two children and beloved pets in a household that has never shown much interest in being quiet or predictable.

I’m not an adoption professional, psychologist or parenting expert. I’m a mum who has spent a lot of years reading, listening, learning, getting it wrong, trying again and writing down what happened.

Sometimes it’s funny.

Sometimes it isn’t.

Usually, somewhere along the way, there are snacks.

Welcome to Nibbles & Bubbles.