At 35, Hope Denton set herself a challenge: trying 35 new things, one for each year she had been alive. The paper-making session that left her grass sodden with pulp and her knees aching on hot concrete was one of them. It was not a success. It was, she says, exactly the point.
The Logic Behind Trying 35 New Things
Denton, a freelance writer and personal essayist who covers parenting, relationships, and identity, became a mother at 19. Her first son arrived before she had finished working out who she was as an adult. By the time many of her peers were discovering what they liked, she was learning how to keep a newborn alive.
She now has three children, aged 15, 13, and 6. For 15 years, motherhood has been the centre of her life. She works from home, which kept her perpetually available for school pickups, laundry, snacks, appointments, and the daily chorus of ‘Mum, where is my…’
Her husband coached their son’s football and soccer teams, volunteered with the church band, and played golf with friends. Her children had sports, activities, and their own growing social lives. She had, as she puts it, laundry. And dishes.
Nobody had taken anything from her. Her husband encouraged her when she expressed frustration. Her family wanted her to be happy. The problem was quieter than conflict: she had simply moved herself to the end of the queue, year after year, until she barely registered as a participant in her own life.
A Hiking Trip That Changed the Calculation
Earlier this year, a birthday trip provided the jolt. Denton went hiking and was surprised by how fully she responded to it. She had expected to tolerate the walk and perhaps enjoy the view. Instead, she felt, in her own words, awake.
The experience raised a question she could not shake once she was home: if she could still discover that she loved hiking, what else had she never given herself the chance to try?
The answer became a structured project. As she describes it on her Business Insider author page: ‘I became a mom at 19 and spent years putting myself last. At 35, I’m trying 35 new things to rediscover what brings me joy.’
The list has included clay magnets, Mod Podge-decorated planters, a vegetable garden, bread baking, peach cobbler, a book club, cyanotype photography, embroidery, hemming a dress, and sewing a toddler skirt. Some projects produced something she was proud of. Others produced wet, unidentifiable mush. The paper-making attempt belonged firmly in the second category.
Embroidery has been her favourite so far, and also one of the most demanding. Learning the software, the machine, the thread, the stabiliser, and the correct files took time she was not accustomed to spending on herself. At one point, faced with a machine, a hoop, and a tangle of thread, her instinct was to remind herself why people simply buy things from shops.
She kept going anyway.
What Motherhood Had Quietly Taken Away
The essay Denton published about the project is as much about time as it is about hobbies. As a mother who works from home, she had internalised a rule that every hour needed to be justified by its usefulness. Making dinner, folding laundry, helping with homework: these could be accounted for. Spending an afternoon pressing paper pulp into a frame felt almost illicit, as though someone would appear and ask to see a permit for the activity.
She describes that discomfort as the thing she most needed to confront. At first, making time for herself felt selfish. There was always something more useful she could have been doing. But she has come to understand that taking up space does not make her less devoted to her family.
There is also something she wants her children to witness. She thinks they need to see her try things she is bad at, laugh when something fails, and make room for enjoyment alongside responsibility. Trying 35 new things is not, in the end, a self-improvement programme. It is a demonstration that a parent is also a person.
She does not regret becoming a mother young. She does not regret building her life around her family. But she is learning that loving her children well does not require her to disappear into the role.
The paper experiment is over. The embroidery machine is still running.