Tell Me Over Tea

Show Notes

Shelley, age 2 in 1972, and Nanna age 72, with Nanna’s precious doggie

Episode Show Notes

This week on Tell Me Over Tea, I sit down with Shelley to talk about her great-grandmother — fondly called Nanna — and the letters Shelley wrote to her across almost her entire childhood.

Nanna was born in 1900, and from the moment Shelley arrived, the two shared a special bond. Shelley tells the story of Nanna walking a long distance just to buy her a walkie-talkie doll for her second Christmas — a small act that speaks volumes about how much love went into that relationship. Every Sunday after church, Shelley’s family would make the hour-long drive on gravel roads to visit Nanna and her grandmother, a ritual that shaped so much of her childhood.

Shelley started writing to Nanna at around four and a half years old — her first letters scrawled on Wombles stationery, full of news from the farm. Nanna had arthritis and could never write back, but that didn’t stop Shelley from writing. They kept flowing right through Shelley’s teenage years, when — after her parents’ divorce — she found herself stepping into a motherly role for her younger sisters. The letters shifted too, becoming a private place to say the things she couldn’t say out loud, safe in the knowledge that Nanna would never repeat a word.

Shelley kept writing to Nana until she was nineteen. After Nana passed away when Shelley was sixteen, she continued writing to her, but those letters she burned as part of her grieving process. Years later Shelley inherited her Nanna’s old dressing table, and discovered a box tucked inside it full of letters she’d completely forgotten about. A time capsule of her childhood, from age four to sixteen, right there!

This is a beautiful conversation about the power of letters — how they can hold grief, joy, secrets, and the everyday.

Shelley’s first letter written when she was 4 1/2 on Wombles paper no less! I loved the Wombles too!

Shelley and her walking talking doll at age 2.

If this episode has you thinking about the letters you’ve written, kept, or wish you still had, I’d love for you to join the Lovely Letters Project — my free pen pal exchange, and a lovely place to start writing letters of your own.

If you enjoyed this episode, I’d love it if you would follow Tell Me Over Tea wherever you listen, and if you feel so inclined, please leave a little review — it helps more story-lovers find their way here:)

Kim x

Where to find me:

✨I write, on Substack, a weekly newsletter, you can subscribe to that here: Betty Mae Wrote newsletter. It’s the space where I share stories (both mine and other people’s) and it’s also a way of keeping up to date with all things Betty Mae Wrote, Little Life Stories, Lovely Letters and the podcast.

✨The Tea + Toast Letter Club! A little moment to pour yourself a cuppa, find a comfy spot, and enjoy a letter (and some other goodies) in the mail every month. You can read more about it here.

✨If you’d like to get back into the gorgeous slow soothe of letter writing, please know you are always welcome to join: The Lovely Letters Project (it’s free!)

✨To find out more about my memory writing program, Little Life Stories you can do that here: Little Life Stories

✨I’ve created a simple and beautiful starting point for your own storytelling: The Five Minute Memory List.It’s a short, exercise (a cuppa’s worth), to help you gather memories and begin. It’s fun and easy peasey and it’s something you can use in your letter writing, journaling and personal life writing. You can grab that by subscribing to my newsletter (you’ll find it in the welcome letter one you’ve signed up): here

✨Or if you simply need a good old sticky beak around the place, please head on over here to the website: www.bettymaewrote.com

✨Oh and if you’re an Instagram type, be sure to follow me on Instagram: @bettymaewrote

Tell Me Over Tea is a cosy storytelling podcast about the stories that matter — one memory, and cuppa, at a time.

Written and hosted by Kim, founder of Betty Mae Wrote — a slow-living space for letter writing, memory keeping, and everyday storytelling, from a tin cottage on the Far South Coast of NSW.

Music: Kim on the uke;) Rattling teacups – also KimProduction and Editing: Surprise, surprise, guess who? Yep! Kim again!

Art by Lewis Dillon (thanks, Lew!)

Show Notes

***Content note: this episode includes a letter that discusses suicide. Please take care as you listen.

This week’s podcast episode is a Kitchen Table Letters one. It is based on a beautiful, heart-led prompt: If you could sit at a park bench and talk to anyone for an hour, who would it be? What would you say to them? What do they mean to you?

The letters that came in response to this one are some of the most tender I’ve had the privilege of reading — each written to a loved one who is no longer here, imagining just one more hour together.

Penny writes to her father, picturing an ordinary, wandering day together — pelicans, sea lions, old jokes about Coca-Cola and cameras without film, and a shared sunset by the sea. It’s a sweet, funny, beautiful tribute to a dad she clearly adored.

Denise writes to her brother, Stewart, who she lost in 2023. This letter touches on suicide, so please take care of yourself while listening, and know it’s completely okay to skip this one if today isn’t the day for it. Denise’s letter is raw and honest, full of childhood memories, unanswered questions, and so much love.

Janine writes to her dad, twenty years after losing him — golf games, tennis against the garden wall, scraped knees, and all the small everyday moments that added up to a lifetime of being loved by him.

This episode is a reminder that grief and love are so often the same thing, just wearing different clothes — and that writing to the people we’ve lost can be a precious way to keep carrying them with us as well as process our loss.

If you’d like to take part in the Kitchen Table Letters, I’d love to hear from you. Simply email me at [email protected] and I’ll send you all the details and the next prompt.

If you enjoyed this episode, I’d love it if you would follow Tell Me Over Tea wherever you listen, and if you feel inclined, a little review always helps more story-lovers find their way here:)

Kim x

Please email me at: [email protected] if you’d like to take part in The Kitchen Table Letters.

Where to find me:

✨I write, on Substack, a weekly newsletter, you can subscribe to that here: Betty Mae Wrote newsletter. It’s the space where I share stories (both mine and other people’s) and it’s also a way of keeping up to date with all things Betty Mae Wrote, Little Life Stories, Lovely Letters and the podcast.

✨The Tea + Toast Letter Club! A little moment to pour yourself a cuppa, find a comfy spot, and enjoy a letter (and some other goodies) in the mail every month. You can read more about it here.

✨If you’d like to get back into the gorgeous slow soothe of letter writing, please know you are always welcome to join: The Lovely Letters Project (it’s free!)

✨To find out more about my memory writing program, Little Life Stories you can do that here: Little Life Stories

✨I’ve created a simple and beautiful starting point for your own storytelling: The Five Minute Memory List.It’s a short, exercise (a cuppa’s worth), to help you gather memories and begin. It’s fun and easy peasey and it’s something you can use in your letter writing, journaling and personal life writing. You can grab that by subscribing to my newsletter (you’ll find it in the welcome letter one you’ve signed up): here

✨Or if you simply need a good old sticky beak around the place, please head on over here to the website: www.bettymaewrote.com

✨Oh and if you’re an Instagram type, be sure to follow me on Instagram: @bettymaewrote

My email address is: [email protected]

Tell Me Over Tea is a cosy storytelling podcast about the stories that matter — one memory, and cuppa, at a time.

Written and hosted by Kim, founder of Betty Mae Wrote — a slow-living space for letter writing, memory keeping, and everyday storytelling, from a tin cottage on the Far South Coast of NSW.

Music: Kim on the uke;) Rattling teacups – also KimProduction and Editing: Surprise, surprise, guess who? Yep! Kim again!

Art by Lewis Dillon (thanks, Lew!)

Show Notes

To celebrate 30 episodes of Tell Me Over Tea, I’m sharing another letter from my Dear Nan series — letters I’ve written to my nan since she died, as a way of processing grief and holding onto our story.

This one turns the lens further back, to my nan’s parents — my great-grandparents, known in our family as Big Grandma and Big Grandpa. Piecing together old letters, family memories, and stories passed down from Nan and Grandpa and nan’s sister, I try to build a picture of who they really were: a father who drifted from job to job through the Depression, with a gambling habit, but who also wrote his wife tender letters that reveal a softer side. And a mother — practical, resilient, and shaped by loss from childhood — who raised siblings after being orphaned young, cooked for prisoners, and once talked her way out of more than one hospital stay through sheer stubbornness.

It’s a letter about the contradictions that make our family human, and about how much there still is to uncover the more we ask.

If this episode has you wanting to write your own letters — to a grandparent, a memory, or just to yourself — I’d love for you to join the Lovely Letters Project, my free pen pal exchange. Details are in the show notes below.

In this episode we talk about:

* Celebrating 30 episodes with a cup of tea from Sarah at Ettie & Dorrie

* The Dear Nan letters and why I write them

* Piecing together my great-grandparents’ story from old letters and family memory

* A father shaped by the Depression, restlessness, and a gambling problem

* A tender letter that revealed an unexpected softness

* My great-grandmother’s resilience after losing both parents young

* Family stories of home births, illness, and quiet determination

* An invitation to join the Lovely Letters Project

The tea I sipped throughout this episode was gifted to me by the lovely Sara from Ettie and Dorrie. The tea I brewed today was called: Annette (The Home Blend) and it was a delicious, comforting tea with hints of maple syrup (though the extra addition was actually peach and peach blossom). If you’d like to get some of your own, you can do that here.If you enjoyed this episode, follow Tell Me Over Tea wherever you listen, and if you feel inclined, please leave a little review — it helps more story-lovers find their way here:)

Kim x

Where to find me:

✨I write, on Substack, a weekly newsletter, you can subscribe to that here: Betty Mae Wrote newsletter. It’s the space where I share stories (both mine and other people’s) and it’s also a way of keeping up to date with all things Betty Mae Wrote, Little Life Stories, Lovely Letters and the podcast.

✨The Tea + Toast Letter Club! A little moment to pour yourself a cuppa, find a comfy spot, and enjoy a letter (and some other goodies) in the mail every month. You can read more about it here.

✨If you’d like to get back into the gorgeous slow soothe of letter writing, please know you are always welcome to join: The Lovely Letters Project (it’s free!)

✨To find out more about my memory writing program, Little Life Stories you can do that here: Little Life Stories

✨I’ve created a simple and beautiful starting point for your own storytelling: The Five Minute Memory List.It’s a short, exercise (a cuppa’s worth), to help you gather memories and begin. It’s fun and easy peasey and it’s something you can use in your letter writing, journaling and personal life writing. You can grab that by subscribing to my newsletter (you’ll find it in the welcome letter one you’ve signed up): here

✨Or if you simply need a good old sticky beak around the place, please head on over here to the website: www.bettymaewrote.com

✨Oh and if you’re an Instagram type, be sure to follow me on Instagram: @bettymaewrote

Tell Me Over Tea is a cosy storytelling podcast about the stories that matter — one memory, and cuppa, at a time.

Written and hosted by Kim, founder of Betty Mae Wrote — a slow-living space for letter writing, memory keeping, and everyday storytelling, from a tin cottage on the Far South Coast of NSW.

Music: Kim on the uke;) Rattling teacups – also KimProduction and Editing: Surprise, surprise, guess who? Yep! Kim again!

Art by Lewis Dillon (thanks, Lew!)

Show Notes

MaryAnn spent most of her life believing she simply wasn’t a writer. As a child she froze at the thought of writing from the heart, and by her final year of school she was navigating an unplanned pregnancy and marriage and the HSC. Mary Ann went on to become a mother of five by the age of twenty-five. At that time writing was the last thing on her mind.

It wasn’t until grief entered her life — first the loss of her father, then her mother’s cancer diagnosis — that MaryAnn turned to journaling, just to get through. What began as a private coping habit slowly grew into something more: a voice, a practice, and eventually an identity she’d never imagined for herself.

In this episode, MaryAnn shares how journaling led her to creative writing classes, poetry, and a manuscript inspired by her mother’s life as a young, unmarried mum.

This is a conversation about the winding path to becoming a writer, and how it’s never too late to pick up the pen.

Mary Ann also happens to be a part of my Little Life Stories program and it has been an absolute honour to work alongside her as she writes down her memories and shares her childhood stories. She is an inspiration to me, and I hope that Mary Ann’s writing journey also gives you that little spur on to consider picking up a pen and open a fresh blank notebook page and begin recording your own memories.If you’d like some support in doing that, please know that you are most welcome to join Little Life Stories. You can read more about that here.

If you enjoyed this episode, follow Tell Me Over Tea wherever you listen, and if you feel inclined, please leave a little review — it helps more story-lovers find their way here:)

Kim x

Where to find me:

✨I write, on Substack, a weekly newsletter, you can subscribe to that here: Betty Mae Wrote newsletter. It’s the space where I share stories (both mine and other people’s) and it’s also a way of keeping up to date with all things Betty Mae Wrote, Little Life Stories, Lovely Letters and the podcast.

✨The Tea + Toast Letter Club! A little moment to pour yourself a cuppa, find a comfy spot, and enjoy a letter (and some other goodies) in the mail every month. You can read more about it here.

✨If you’d like to get back into the gorgeous slow soothe of letter writing, please know you are always welcome to join: The Lovely Letters Project (it’s free!)

✨To find out more about my memory writing program, Little Life Stories you can do that here: Little Life Stories

✨I’ve created a simple and beautiful starting point for your own storytelling: The Five Minute Memory List.It’s a short, exercise (a cuppa’s worth), to help you gather memories and begin. It’s fun and easy peasey and it’s something you can use in your letter writing, journaling and personal life writing. You can grab that by subscribing to my newsletter (you’ll find it in the welcome letter one you’ve signed up): here

✨Or if you simply need a good old sticky beak around the place, please head on over here to the website: www.bettymaewrote.com

✨Oh and if you’re an Instagram type, be sure to follow me on Instagram: @bettymaewrote

Tell Me Over Tea is a cosy storytelling podcast about the stories that matter — one memory, and cuppa, at a time.

Written and hosted by Kim, founder of Betty Mae Wrote — a slow-living space for letter writing, memory keeping, and everyday storytelling, from a tin cottage on the Far South Coast of NSW.

Music: Kim on the uke;) Rattling teacups – also KimProduction and Editing: Surprise, surprise, guess who? Yep! Kim again!

Art by Lewis Dillon (thanks, Lew!)

Show Notes

Pop the kettle on and pull up a chair — this is a Kitchen Table Letters episode, where I read letters sent in by listeners and members of the Betty Mae Wrote community, written in answer to a question I’ve set. This time, the question was simple:

What’s something small in your daily life that brings you a quiet kind of joy?

In this episode I read four beautiful letters — from Karan, Peggy, Jen, and Kim — each one a small window into an ordinary daily ritual that holds meaning.

* Karan’s letter — winding her watch. A daily ritual of winding an analogue watch that can’t be rushed — and how it became a grounding practice after a period of burnout.

* Peggy’s letter — the coffee run. A 15-minute drive to grab a takeaway coffee, and the noticing of the world along the way — from the different feel of each day of the week to memories of her mum and sister.

* Jen’s letter — an evening (and a morning) at home. Written in two sittings, with candles, a writing lamp, and her dogs nearby — on chatting with her kids, her husband hanging out the washing, and her morning coffee.

* Kim’s letter — journaling through it all. Started on a hard 30th birthday, her journals have carried her through divorce, loss, new love, and grandchildren — now lovingly nicknamed “The Book of Grandma” by her granddaughter.

Want to write your own Kitchen Table Letter?

The Kitchen Table Letters is open to anyone in the Betty Mae Wrote community — Instagram followers, newsletter subscribers, Lovely Letters Project members, Tea and Toast Club members, and podcast listeners alike.

Email me: [email protected] to request the current list of questions, answer as many (or as few) as you like, pop a stamp on it, and post it in. Your letter might just be read on a future episode:)

In today’s episode I also mention something utterly beautiful and in perfect keeping with the theme of today’s letters.

Jenny of Nordic Stories — photographer and visual story teller, has created Nordic Chapters, a monthly club encouraging everyday photography as a way of noticing and remembering ordinary life and the small things that bring us joy.

Jenny is welcoming in new members for September And the doors are opening next week for the brand new chapter.

It is such a cosy, delightful space to enter into and as someone who is taking part, I could not think of a more lovely, gentle way of pausing and noticing the life around me. What a beautiful experience! You can read more about Nordic Chapters here, and find Jenny:

* Instagram: @nordic_stories

* Website: Nordic Stories

If you enjoyed this episode, follow Tell Me Over Tea wherever you listen, and if you feel inclined, please leave a little review — it helps more story-lovers find their way here:)

Kim x

Where to find me:

✨I write, on Substack, a weekly newsletter, you can subscribe to that here: Betty Mae Wrote newsletter. It’s the space where I share stories (both mine and other people’s) and it’s also a way of keeping up to date with all things Betty Mae Wrote, Little Life Stories, Lovely Letters and the podcast.

✨The Tea + Toast Letter Club! A little moment to pour yourself a cuppa, find a comfy spot, and enjoy a letter (and some other goodies) in the mail every month. You can read more about it here.

✨If you’d like to get back into the gorgeous slow soothe of letter writing, please know you are always welcome to join: The Lovely Letters Project (it’s free!)

✨To find out more about my memory writing program, Little Life Stories you can do that here: Little Life Stories

✨I’ve created a simple and beautiful starting point for your own storytelling: The Five Minute Memory List.It’s a short, exercise (a cuppa’s worth), to help you gather memories and begin. It’s fun and easy peasey and it’s something you can use in your letter writing, journaling and personal life writing. You can grab that by subscribing to my newsletter (you’ll find it in the welcome letter one you’ve signed up): here

✨Or if you simply need a good old sticky beak around the place, please head on over here to the website: www.bettymaewrote.com

✨Oh and if you’re an Instagram type, be sure to follow me on Instagram: @bettymaewrote

Tell Me Over Tea is a cosy storytelling podcast about the stories that matter — one memory at a time.

Written and hosted by Kim, founder of Betty Mae Wrote — a slow-living space for letter writing, memory keeping, and everyday storytelling, from a tin cottage on the Far South Coast of NSW.

Music: Kim on the uke;) Rattling teacups – also KimProduction and Editing: Surprise, surprise, guess who? Yep! Kim again!

Art by Lewis Dillon (thanks, Lew!)

Nan at 14

Show Notes

Episode 27: Dear Nan — A 1930s and 40s Childhood

A letter to my Nan about life growing up in the 1930s and 40s in Australia

Today’s episode is another of my Dear Nan letters — the series I began after my nan died in 2022, as a way of processing grief, honouring our relationship, and making sure that this beautiful woman was never just a blip on this earth.

Because she wasn’t. She was extraordinary. And her story is so worth hearing.

In this letter, I write about my nan’s childhood — about growing up in 1930s and 40s Australia, during the Great Depression and World War Two. About a family that moved constantly, from Paddington to Narrabeen to Manly to Mona Vale, chasing the next opportunity, packing up in the middle of the night. About a dad whose gambling was quite possibly the invisible thread running through it all. About a mum who cooked and sewed and embroidered late into the night on Christmas Eve to make sure her children had something to wake up to.

My nan never used the words we were poor. But she was. And it took me three years after she left this earth to put the pieces together and really understand what her childhood had been.

This episode is also a little reminder of why I do what I do — why I help women write their memories down, why I believe so deeply that every ordinary life is full of stories worth keeping. Because we don’t always know what we’re losing until it’s gone. And the small jigsaw pieces our loved ones give us, if we’re lucky enough to gather them, are more precious than we ever realise at the time.

I also have a little chat today about Little Life Stories — my memory writing program — which has just had a bit of a makeover and is now available for $97. More on that in the episode.

Oh, and I’m sipping the most beautiful tea throughout — gifted to me by the lovely Sara from Ettie and Dorie. It’s called Dear Dorrie and it’s lemony comfort in a cup! If you love a good quality herbal tea, go and find her. You won’t regret it!

Pour yourself a cuppa.

If you enjoyed this episode, follow Tell Me Over Tea wherever you listen, and if you feel inclined, leave a little review — it helps more story-lovers find their way here:)

Kim x

Nan with Felix (left)

Where to find me:

✨I write, on Substack, a weekly newsletter, you can subscribe to that here: Betty Mae Wrote newsletter. It’s the space where I share stories (both mine and other people’s) and it’s also a way of keeping up to date with all things Betty Mae Wrote, Little Life Stories, Lovely Letters and the podcast.

✨To find out more about my memory writing program, Little Life Stories you can do that here: Little Life Stories

✨I’ve created a simple and beautiful starting point for your own storytelling: The Five Minute Memory List.It’s a short, exercise (a cuppa’s worth), to help you gather memories and begin. It’s fun and easy peasey and it’s something you can use in your letter writing, journaling and personal life writing. You can grab that by subscribing to my newsletter (you’ll find it in the welcome letter one you’ve signed up): here

✨The Tea + Toast Letter Club! A little moment to pour yourself a cuppa, find a comfy spot, and enjoy a letter (and some other goodies) in the mail every month. You can read more about it here. Oh, and from July on, there will be an extra special little gift waiting for one lucky duck subscriber. A ‘golden ticket’ will be tucked inside one envelope. Who will July’s ticket finder be?

✨If you’d like to get back into the gorgeous slow soothe of letter writing, please know you are always welcome to join: The Lovely Letters Project (it’s free!)

✨Or if you simply need a good old sticky beak around the place, please head on over here to the website: www.bettymaewrote.com

✨Oh and if you’re an Instagram type, be sure to follow me on Instagram: @bettymaewrote

Written and hosted by Kim, founder of Betty Mae Wrote — a slow-living space for letter writing, memory keeping, and everyday storytelling, from a tin cottage on the Far South Coast of NSW.

Music: Kim on the uke;) Rattling teacups – also KimProduction and Editing: Surprise, surprise, guess who? Yep! Kim again!

Art by Lewis Dillon (thanks, Lew!)

Sarah’s photo

Show Notes

Episode 26 Sarah Stamm from Salisbury and Maude: On Creativity, Courage and Making Things That Matter

From a childhood surrounded by wool and fabric to a celebrated handmade brand in regional Victoria — this is Sarah's story.

Today on Tell Me Over Tea I am sitting down with the lovely Sarah Stamm — the founder and creative director of Salisbury and Maude, a beautiful Australian brand known for its handcrafted artworks, botanical wreaths, quilts, knitting and fine art prints.

I found Sarah the way I find most good things — over on Instagram, where all the lovely creators are. And if you haven’t been over to have a look at her work yet, I want you to go the moment this episode is done, because it really is just so gorgeous.

What drew me to Sarah wasn’t just the beauty of what she makes — though it truly is stunning. It’s the way she makes it. Everything is bespoke. Every piece is released exclusively through Instagram and Facebook. She doesn’t have a website. She doesn’t take custom orders. There’s a quietness and an intention to the way Sarah works that feels very much at home here on Tell Me Over Tea.

Sarah grew up the youngest of four children in Albury, with a mother who could spin, knit, weave and draw — a woman who made something beautiful out of whatever she had, always with joy, never as a chore. That love of making was woven into Sarah early, and it never left her.

After more than 25 years in the world of interiors — from Westfield shop fits to magnificent old farmhouses across regional Victoria and New South Wales — something called Sarah back to making things with her own hands. Back to fabric. Back to craft. Back to the slower, more deliberate work of creating something from nothing.

And Salisbury and Maude was born — right there in the beautiful little town of Beechworth, where it still lives today.

In this episode we go right back to the beginning — to the little girl who painted everything she could get her hands on, to the teacher who let her borrow a Brett Whiteley book from her private library, to the sliding door moment that brought Sarah to Melbourne instead of Perth, and to the day she looked around at a room full of inherited fabric and decided to make her very first quilt.

We also talk about the nine weeks she and her husband spent camping across Europe in 2024 — no plan, 8,000 kilometres, and a boot full of the most beautiful, sourced fabrics. And we talk about what it means to make something by hand and stitch a little of yourself into every single piece.

This is such a warm and wonderful conversation. I think you’re going to love Sarah.

Sarah’s photo

A little something from this episode to take with you...

“I looked at what I had — not what I didn’t have. And what I had was fabric.”

And this, about her quilts:

“When you’re feeling lonely or missing home — just wrap yourself in your quilt, and I’ll be close.”

Sarah’s photo

Where to find Sarah:

Instagram & Facebook: @salisburyandmaude(This is the only place you’ll find her — and it’s well worth the visit)

If you enjoyed this episode, follow Tell Me Over Tea wherever you listen, and if you feel inclined, leave a little review — it helps more story-lovers find their way here:)

Kim x

Where to find me:

✨I write, on Substack, a weekly newsletter, you can subscribe to that here: Betty Mae Wrote newsletter. It’s the space where I share stories (both mine and other people’s) and it’s also a way of keeping up to date with all things Betty Mae Wrote, Little Life Stories, Lovely Letters and the podcast.

✨To find out more about my memory writing program, Little Life Stories you can do that here: Little Life Stories

✨I’ve created a simple and beautiful starting point for your own storytelling: The Five Minute Memory List.It’s a short, exercise (a cuppa’s worth), to help you gather memories and begin. It’s fun and easy peasey and it’s something you can use in your letter writing, journaling and personal life writing. You can grab that by subscribing to my newsletter (you’ll find it in the welcome letter one you’ve signed up): here

✨The Tea + Toast Letter Club! A little moment to pour yourself a cuppa, find a comfy spot, and enjoy a letter (and some other goodies) in the mail every month. You can read more about it here. Oh, and from July on, there will be an extra special little gift waiting for one lucky duck subscriber. A ‘golden ticket’ will be tucked inside one envelope. Who will July’s ticket finder be?

✨If you’d like to get back into the gorgeous slow soothe of letter writing, please know you are always welcome to join: The Lovely Letters Project (it’s free!)

✨Or if you simply need a good old sticky beak around the place, please head on over here to the website: www.bettymaewrote.com

✨Oh and if you’re an Instagram type, be sure to follow me on Instagram: @bettymaewrote

Written and hosted by Kim, founder of Betty Mae Wrote — a slow-living space for letter writing, memory keeping, and everyday storytelling, from a tin cottage on the Far South Coast of NSW.

Music: Kim on the uke;) Rattling teacups – also KimProduction and Editing: Surprise, surprise, guess who? Yep! Kim again!

Art by Lewis Dillon (thanks, Lew!)

Show Notes

Episode 25: Kitchen Table Letters: Windy Harbour, Grandparents & The Cosy Places From Childhood

Two letters, one thread — the places that never leave us

In today’s episode, I’m sharing two letters from the Kitchen Table Letters series — my project inviting women to answer reflective questions the old-fashioned way, with pen, paper, and a stamp.

This episode’s theme is place, and by beautiful coincidence, both letters lead us to the same tender ground: memories of grandparents.

First, we hear from Denise, (you can find Denise on Instagram), who takes us to Windy Harbour — her grandparents’ holiday house and a place that has been a constant in her life since childhood, still treasured by her and her own family today.

Then, we hear from Kym, (Kym also has a substack), who shares the magic of her childhood holidays spent at her grandparents’ house.

Grab a cuppa and settle in for a cosy one.

Want to send me a Kitchen Table Letter?Email me at [email protected] to let me know you’d like to take part, and I’ll send you the questions and all the details.

Want a pen pal?Join The Lovely Letters Project, my free snail mail exchange — details are here over oin the website. My mission is to keep letters and storytelling alive and well, and I’d love for you to be part of it.

If you enjoyed this episode, follow Tell Me Over Tea wherever you listen, and if you feel inclined, leave a little review — it helps more story-lovers find their way here:)

Kim x

Where to find me:

✨I write, on Substack, a weekly newsletter, you can subscribe to that here: Betty Mae Wrote newsletter. It’s the space where I share stories (both mine and other people’s) and it’s also a way of keeping up to date with all things Betty Mae Wrote, Little Life Stories, Lovely Letters and the podcast.

✨To find out more about my memory writing program, Little Life Stories you can do that here: Little Life Stories

✨I’ve created a simple and beautiful starting point for your own storytelling: The Five Minute Memory List.It’s a short, exercise (a cuppa’s worth), to help you gather memories and begin. It’s fun and easy peasey and it’s something you can use in your letter writing, journaling and personal life writing. You can grab that by subscribing to my newsletter (you’ll find it in the welcome letter one you’ve signed up): here

✨The Tea + Toast Letter Club! A little moment to pour yourself a cuppa, find a comfy spot, and enjoy a letter (and some other goodies) in the mail every month. You can read more about it here. Oh, and from July on, there will be an extra special little gift waiting for one lucky duck subscriber. A ‘golden ticket’ will be tucked inside one envelope. Who will July’s ticket finder be?

✨If you’d like to get back into the gorgeous slow soothe of letter writing, please know you are always welcome to join: The Lovely Letters Project (it’s free!)

✨Or if you simply need a good old sticky beak around the place, please head on over here to the website: www.bettymaewrote.com

✨Oh and if you’re an Instagram type, be sure to follow me on Instagram: @bettymaewrote

Written and hosted by Kim, founder of Betty Mae Wrote — a slow-living space for letter writing, memory keeping, and everyday storytelling, from a tin cottage on the Far South Coast of NSW.

Music: Kim on the uke;) Rattling teacups – also KimProduction and Editing: Surprise, surprise, guess who? Yep! Kim again!

Art by Lewis Dillon (thanks, Lew!)

Show Notes

Episode 24: Tess Lehman’s Story - Never Going Back in the Box

On coming out, starting over, and learning to be exactly who you are

(Trigger warning: this episode contains some swearing. Just so you know what you’re in for — but I promise it’s worth it.)

Today I am joined by a woman I found the way I find most good things — scrolling Instagram at some point when I should have been doing something else.

Tess Lehman is a photographer based in Newcastle, and her Instagram bio reads: Photos that feel like home. Rebellion and magic. Not your average. And honestly, right there tells you everything you need to know about Tess.

She is as real and raw and as down to earth as they come. No bells and whistles. No performance. Just a woman with a big life and a beautiful, honest way of talking about it.

What a life it has been.

Tess grew up in a big, loud, blustery family on the edge of Inverell in northern New South Wales — one of seven kids, a voracious reader who hid in treehouses with her books so nobody could take them off her, a kid who threw down with her teachers (and won), and a teenager who, at eighteen, packed herself into a Subaru with her best mate and drove to Alice Springs because she knew if she didn’t leave, she never would.

From Alice Springs to the mines of northern WA. From Perth to Indonesia to Canada. Selling cars, working bars, laying 90 square metres of turf with three small children watching from the deck.

And then, at 33, painting a wall alone at 2 or 3 in the morning, she had a moment. A quiet, enormous, life-changing moment.

In this episode, Tess talks about coming out as queer in her 30s, and what it felt like to finally give herself permission to be the person she actually was. She talks about her ADHD diagnosis, and the strange grief of realising that the things you thought were just your personality — both the good bits and the hard bits — were something else entirely. She talks about her photography, and the transformation she witnesses when she turns the lens on women and reflects back to them a version of themselves they’ve never been allowed to see before.

And she talks about her precious sister. Her shining, hilarious, enormous-hearted sister, who saw Tess more clearly than almost anyone, and who died — and how you learn to live with that kind of missing.

This is a big, beautiful, honest episode. I think …. wait … I know ….. you’re going to love Tess as much as I do.

A little something from this episode to take with you...

“I am never going back in that box. I’m never going to be quiet. I’m never going to stop saying the things that are true for me.” Tess Lehman

Where to find Tess:

Instagram: @tessdoes_ and @wishmymothertoldme

The Podcast: Wish My Mother Told Me

Photography Bookings: www.tessdoes.com

If you enjoyed this episode, follow Tell Me Over Tea wherever you listen, and if you feel inclined, leave a little review — it helps more story-lovers find their way here:)

Kim x

Where to find me:

✨I write, on Substack, a weekly newsletter, you can subscribe to that here: Betty Mae Wrote newsletter. It’s the space where I share stories (both mine and other people’s) and it’s also a way of keeping up to date with all things Betty Mae Wrote, Little Life Stories, Lovely Letters and the podcast.

✨To find out more about my writing program, Little Life Stories you can do that here: Little Life Stories

✨I’ve created a simple and beautiful starting point for your own storytelling: The Five Minute Memory List.It’s a short, exercise (a cuppa’s worth), to help you gather memories and begin. It’s fun and easy peasey and it’s something you can use in your letter writing, journaling and personal life writing. You can grab that by subscribing to my newsletter (you’ll find it in the welcome letter one you’ve signed up): here

✨The Tea + Toast Letter Club! A little moment to pour yourself a cuppa, find a comfy spot, and enjoy a letter (and some other goodies) in the mail every month. You can read more about it here. Oh, and from July on, there will be an extra special little gift waiting for one lucky duck subscriber. A ‘golden ticket’ will be tucked inside one envelope. Who will July’s ticket finder be?

✨If you’d like to get back into the gorgeous slow soothe of letter writing, please know you are always welcome to join: The Lovely Letters Project (it’s free!)

✨Or if you simply need a good old sticky beak around the place, please head on over here to the website: www.bettymaewrote.com

✨Oh and if you’re an Instagram type, be sure to follow me on Instagram: @bettymaewrote

Music: Kim on the uke;) Rattling teacups – also KimProduction and Editing: Surprise, surprise, guess who? Yep! Kim again!

Art by Lewis Dillon (thanks, Lew!)

Show Notes

Episode 23: The Kitchen Table Letters — Nadine’s Letter

Today is a very special episode of Tell Me Over Tea, because today the Kitchen Table Letters begins.

If you’ve been following along, you’ll know I’ve been talking about this for a little while now — an invitation for you, my listeners, to write me a letter. An actual, old fashioned, hand written, snail mail letter. And I’ll choose some to read here on the podcast.

Because stories connect us. And the stories of our lives — the small ones, the quiet ones, the ones we think nobody wants to hear — are all that we leave behind. And having them written down somewhere is one of the most precious gifts we can give to the people who come after us.

The very first letter comes from Nadine @rust_emporium, and it is a beautiful one to open this series with.

Nadine writes about her mum being handed a bundle of letters — written by her great grandmother Lottie, who lived in Brisbane, to her grandmother Jane, who lived in Oxfordshire — spanning twenty odd years in the late 1880s. Written in copperplate on tissue thin paper, folded into tiny handmade envelopes that would fit in the palm of your hand. Two women who never once met in person, but who treasured each other across vast oceans through the written word alone.

And Nadine asks the most beautiful question: what will my descendants think of me?

She also shares a quieter, deeply personal story — the day she stepped into a pine forest in Victoria to gather pine cones for her shop window, and how the hush of those trees stopped her completely in her tracks and changed her life.

This is an episode about letters and what they carry. About the forest and what it teaches. About slowing down before the world forces you to. And about the small, fleeting, everyday moments.

A little reminder from this episode…

They never met in person, Lottie and Jane.But they both treasured those pieces of paper until the day they died.And so did every daughter and cousin who came after them.

No one is ever disappointed to find letters. Never ever never!

Would you like to be part of the Kitchen Table Letters?

I would love to read your letter on the podcast. All you need to do is get in touch via the email address in the show notes and I’ll send you a list of prompts to choose from. Write your response by hand, pop it in the post to my address, and your letter might just be read aloud right here on Tell Me Over Tea.

You just need to be comfortable with me sharing bits and pieces — on the podcast, in my newsletter, or over on Instagram. If you’d prefer to keep some things private, just let me know and we’ll sort it out.

If you enjoyed this episode, follow Tell Me Over Tea wherever you listen, and if you feel inclined, leave a little review — it helps more story-lovers find their way here 🙂

Kim x

Where to find me:

✨I write, on Substack, a weekly newsletter, you can subscribe to that here: Betty Mae Wrote newsletter. It’s the space where I share stories (both mine and other people’s) and it’s also a way of keeping up to date with all things Betty Mae Wrote, Little Life Stories, Lovely Letters and the podcast.

✨To find out more about my writing membership, Little Life Stories you can do that here: Little Life Stories

✨I’ve created a simple and beautiful starting point for your own storytelling: The Five Minute Memory List.It’s a short, exercise (a cuppa’s worth), to help you gather memories and begin. It’s fun and easy peasey and it’s something you can use in your letter writing, journaling and personal life writing. You can grab that by subscribing to my newsletter (you’ll find it in the welcome letter one you’ve signed up): here

✨The Tea + Toast Letter Club! A little moment to pour yourself a cuppa, find a comfy spot, and enjoy a letter (and some other goodies) in the mail every month. You can read more about it here. Oh, and from July on, there will be an extra special little gift waiting for one lucky duck subscriber. A ‘golden ticket’ will be tucked inside one envelope. Who will July’s ticket finder be?

✨If you’d like to get back into the gorgeous slow soothe of letter writing, please know you are always welcome to join: The Lovely Letters Project (it’s free!)

✨Or if you simply need a good old sticky beak around the place, please head on over here to the website: www.bettymaewrote.com

✨Oh and if you’re an Instagram type, be sure to follow me on Instagram: @bettymaewrote

Music: Kim on the uke;) Rattling teacups – also KimProduction and Editing: Surprise, surprise, guess who? Yep! Kim again!

Art by Lewis Dillon (thanks, Lew!)