What does it look like to live slow in a world that won’t stop racing?
Hello! I’m so glad you’re here.
I’m Brooke and I love words. I love reading them, writing them, listening to them, speaking them and playing around with them. So it’s a fortunate thing I became an author and podcaster, because there’s really no other job I feel qualified to do.
I started The Tortoise in March 2022, to dig in to the question of slow living in a fast world, and since then it has evolved into a beautiful community space where we look at life and all its human messiness through a lens of simply noticing.
I love it here, and hope you do too.
Join The Tortoise community
Everyone who subscribes will receive a letter each week(ish)* related to slow living, as well as a monthly episode of The Tortoise podcast.
You can think of these as a slow-living love-letter amidst the rush of life.
Here are a few of the most-read posts from the past few months, to give you an idea of what this space is all about:
Free vs Paid - What’s the difference?
In addition to weekly letters and monthly pods, paying subscribers will also get access to:
online slow living retreats (think: how to uncover and use your personal values, writing as self-care, using rhythms to simplify your life, etc.)
exclusive Sunday posts that vary from the more personal through to the highly practical
access to the full archive of posts
If you’d like to become a paid subscriber for AU$5 a month or $50 annually, please know that your contribution means more than a cup of coffee to me. It’s one meaningful, concrete way you can support my work, and I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it.
Additionally, if you sign up as a founding member for AU$150/year, I’ll also send a signed, personalised copy of one of my published books (your choice) to any address in the world.
(Also, for every 10 paid subscribers, I will plant one tree via ReForest Now - making sure this newsletter is carbon-positive, always). We’ve planted over 30 trees so far!
And who am I, exactly?
There’s a whole post here that tells a bit of my story, but in short, I’m a bit of a tree-hugger, a mum to two genuinely wonderful high school kids, a mountain-lover, an honorary Canadian (this is a made-up thing but I stand by it), a gardener, a bushwalker, frustrated skier, beginner crocheter and maker of a pretty bloody good marmalade.
We live in a small village on Gundungurra/Dharawal land (the southern highlands of NSW, Australia), in an old blue fibro house. We share our place with two dogs, lots of fruit trees, many wild birds who eat the fruit off said trees and a window spider named Fred.
I don’t think anyone needs qualifications to talk about slow living - only a desire to live counter-culturally and buck the status quo, but in case it helps, I’ve written three best-selling books on the topic: Destination Simple, Slow and Care, and alongside Ben, my husband and favourite collaborator, created The Slow Home Podcast back in 2014.
In early 2023, we announced that our beloved podcast was ending after more than 350 episodes, 9 million downloads and countless conversations with amazing people. Since then, we’ve launched The Tortoise podcast - a slower-paced, entirely unedited monthly show — a plodcast, if you will — that digs deep into the power of slow, in a big-picture way. We explore topics like the four-day work week, wellness and social media, learning to live in discomfort, the devaluation of care work, teens and technology and a whole heap more.
Why subscribe to The Tortoise?
Subscribing means you will get access to every Thursday letter, for free, as well as monthly episodes of the plodcast.
More than that though, you also get to connect with like-minded people. This is genuinely the loveliest corner of the internet, inhabited by the warmest, kindest people.
When I first discovered slow living, I spent years feeling like the only weirdo in the room. No-one else around me seemed to want to slow down. But now I know… there’s lots of us weirdos around! So come join us and become part of a growing community of like-minded weirdos.
Love, Weirdo-in-Chief,
Brooke xx
*Part of slow living for me right now is working cyclically, which helps me manage home stuff and health stuff. Please know there will be no new posts from mid-December through til the end of January every year, as well as during my kids’ two-week breaks at the end of each school term.
