Zoë Harris – Author

A leather bracelet engraved with the words "Category is..." and a compass pendant

Two little weirdos, one big day

18th February, 2026 / Zoë Harris / 0 Comments

There’s a strange discomfort that comes with living in a permanent state of almost-but-not-quite belonging. It’s quieter than rejection, but heavier than indifference. And it’s something I experience almost every day that I leave my house, here in a country I was not born to.

A couple of weeks ago, I felt it sharply. In my ex-partner’s home, in a room filled with sunlight and family, our child, whom we raised here in Norway, marked a milestone in a tradition that I can never truly claim.

an alarm clock on bedside near a sleeping woman — Photo by Anastasiya Vragova on Pexels.com

Where do I even start?

9th March, 2022 / Zoë Harris / 0 Comments

Hi folks! If there’s even anyone still out there . . .

It’s been a long, long time. That’s nothing unusual for this blog, of course, but I realised when glancing back over the most recent posts this week that I didn’t even write anything for International Women’s Day these past three years! 😱 That used to be the one day a year I could think of something to write. Yikes.

But everything in the world has changed in that time, hasn’t it? I mean, that’s not even a question. Everything has been, and continues to be, super weird and The Bad Place-ish and wrong-timeline-get-back-in-your-Delorian-and-fix-this-Marty.

Why people with depression are better at self-isolation than you are, and why that’s bad

5th May, 2020 / Zoë Harris / 0 Comments

Content warning: depression, suicide

Did you ever hear that story about a guy getting mauled by a giant panda and having to hold his own intestines in until help arrived? That’s kinda how I feel today. Just holding myself together until help arrives. Except there is no help. This is just how it is now.

At some point, my arms are going to get tired and I’m going to have to let go. Then all my guts will come spilling out like spaghetti from a can and I’ll sink to the floor.

And when I’m on the floor, I’ll know there are people on their own floors who got mauled worse than I did. Whose floors are colder and harder. And that’ll make calling for help harder.

And no one can put the intestines back in anyway. That’s my job. I’ll reel them in, wind them into a ball and stuff them back inside. I’ll peel myself up off the floor and sew myself back together. And no one will see the stitches.

I’ll do all this before 2pm today. That’s when I’ll be needed again. I won’t have achieved much else. Because it’s hard to do things when you’re holding your intestines together with both arms. But the floor, the reeling, the sewing…that will feel like a big achievement anyway.
@zoeselina

The Santa Claus Conundrum

24th December, 2019 / Zoë Harris / 1 Comment

Every Christmas, the internet is inundated with advice, complaints, pleas and general grumbling about Santa and the “lie” so many of us tell our children about him.

What a difference two months makes

28th January, 2019 / Zoë / 4 Comments

My last post was about staving off depression by posting exclusively positive content on social media throughout November. Shortly after November ended, I hopped a plane to Australia for Christmas and had one of the best visits “home” in my almost-13 years of living abroad.

After three amazing weeks of sun, family, laughter (oh, the laughter!) all my favourite nostalgia foods and finishing it all with a new year’s eve karaoke pool party, coming back to cold, dark Norway hit me pretty hard. My daughter went straight back to her dad, and thanks to jet lag, I worked from home those first few days back, which meant being alone at home with only my kitties for company. I started to sink again, hating my adoptive country for taking me away from the warmth of the Australian sun and my Australian people, who took such good care of me while I was away.

Oh, November

13th November, 2018 / Zoë / 5 Comments

It’s no secret that I hate November in Norway. It gets cold, but hovers above zero with moisture that hangs in the air until it finds hair to frizz, at which point it turns me into Cyndi Lauper circa Vibes, but without the invisible best friend.

I almost have nothing to say today – almost

8th March, 2018 / Zoë Harris / 0 Comments

It’s the one day of the year I can be relied upon to post to my poor, neglected blog. International Women’s Day. Arguably the most empowering day of the year to be a woman.

But, this year I’ve struggled to find something specific to write about. Not that I’ve run out of things to say on the subject of feminism – far from it – but more because other people, other women, are already saying it. They’re saying it louder, more often, and with more conviction than I can remember hearing ever in my life before. Women whom I thought had permanent blinders glued to their faces are waking up, tearing off their sleeping masks and realising the battle for equality isn’t won. We’re not done yet. We’re just getting started.

Design and Copy: Secret Best Friends

27th June, 2017 / Zoë / 0 Comments

Recently, as part of my job as a UX copywriter, I was asked to give a talk at a UX (User Experience) event that focused on impact. Since copywriting and UX don’t get paired all that often, I thought it was a great opportunity to share my thoughts about why they belong together.

My talk was really well received, and I’ve been asked about it by many friends and colleagues who weren’t at the event, so I thought I would share a version of it here (imagine the headings, pictures and quotes are slides and you’ll get the idea). And, if you have thoughts, please do share them in the comments.

A certain age

21st March, 2017 / Zoë Harris / 3 Comments

When I turned twenty-one (a landmark birthday in Australia, despite having no legal significance), my high-school best friend gave me a birthday card in which she wrote, “Only nineteen years until you’re forty!” We laughed. I probably threw a scrunched-up napkin at her. It was so far off. It was never going to happen, not to us.

A rambling mess o’ feminism

8th March, 2017 / Zoë Harris / 1 Comment

It’s International Women’s Day again, and as usual I have many feelings on the subject. I forewarn you that this post is likely to be somewhat meandering and a little incoherent. I want to say things like “feminism is a verb” (it isn’t, of course, but I mean this in the sense that it’s not static; we should be doing things), and I want to talk about privilege, and echo chambers, and how proud I was to be at the biggest world-wide women’s protest in history. I want to talk about the mushy mummy feelings I got watching my little girl skip off to school this morning with her beloved book about ancient Egypt clutched to her chest. I want to talk about how Mary Poppins started a conversation about Suffragettes in my house. I want to express my joy at reading our first Famous Five book together and rediscovering the fact that George defied all the female stereotypes of her day and ours. Any one of these subjects and thoughts could fill a blog post on their own. But together, listed like this in all their chaotic glory, they remind me that feminism is part of my daily life.

So, let’s talk words. I like words.

Zoë Writes