Mom Gossip: Claire by AVM

"The simpler you keep it, the better you feel."

Jul 29, 2026

Mom Gossip is a series celebrating the women who shape us. Today: a conversation between AVM and her mother, Claire.

I have written about my mother many times. I have sat beside her and spoken for hours. Over cups of tea reheated, coffee zapped in the microwave. Pains halved, grief shared, opposite experiences of life brought to bear.

Before I was born, she worked for what she would call the fashion service. As a journalist, critic, designer liaison, flying collections to Paris and Milan. Gorgeous and resourceful, she made her own way. As she started having children, she moved towards health; co-authoring and ghost-writing books, and undertaking homeopathy training. For a while she worked on a high-level gardening team, and finally as a music therapist.

In the last decade, after the dissolution of her marriage, fundamental changes to her life, and the minesweep of COVID, which saw her music therapy career unable to continue as before, she found a way back to sound. This time, as a healer.

I called her on a Wednesday afternoon, having just listened to a piece on the re-emergence of weight loss drugs and how health terms get co-opted by marketing. An apt introduction to the health-related spaces we have most closely shared.

There are many echoes. As many parallels as there are opposites. A woman of all-embracing taste, self-effacing wisdom, deep kindness, and radical commitment to joy. I give you my mother, Claire.

—Animal Vegetable Mineral

Mom Gossip: Claire by AVM
A valley in Somerset, UK

Can you remember the “health holy grails” being touted when you were growing up?

It was closer to the era of Weight Watchers. I think there are so many layers to the weight thing. As in every other area of life, there are people who are developing unhealthy habits, but they’re well disguised. I think the whole discussion about eating disorders was not nearly as open as it is now.

I knew one person who became very anorexic and left school for a while. And somebody else who was restricting their eating and lost weight but sort of carried on. But there was no information. It was desirable to be glamorous, svelte, and tan. Cosmo philosophy.

And what was said about health in your home? What did that word mean?

It was very general. We weren’t indulged, but it wasn’t a harsh environment. We ate nourishing food and we would go out for walks. So in that sense, health started and stopped in the body. The term mental health seems to have been almost dreamed up in the last 10 years.

I didn’t even grow up with that term.

No, the fact that it’s acknowledged is so new. There wasn’t much trouble taken over how we were feeling about things. Physically, it always came back to the eyes, teeth, and throat. I wore an eye patch when I was 10, which was not easy. And this tonsillitis thing came in quite early.

I remember being really unwell and getting special treatment. I can even see the nightie that my mother bought me.

I remember the pajamas you bought me once. I probably bent your arm about buying them because it’s not really your vibe. They were black. Velour, maybe. Almost a jazz pant?

I remember that. You were projectile vomiting. You had to be hosed down.

So worth it. For your attention, and putting on those lounge pants to eat matzo crackers on the sofa.

It’s a fascinating one. The idea that we have to be unwell to get attention. So damaging, really.

You have tremendous strength. But your downtime was not built into the framework of our family life. As a result, you often ended up removing yourself entirely in order to replenish. This chronic fatigue and tonsillitis would flare up, right?

I recently heard a wonderful practitioner, Eileen McCusick, talking about fatigue. She designed these Biosonic tuning forks, and a whole training program around them. They’re part of every sound treatment really, because they sound C and G, which is a perfect fifth, and a very balancing harmonic.

Eileen says that when we feel tired, it’s to do with what we’re carrying in our energy field. So if we are porous by nature, it can be a huge weight.

What does this new frame of understanding, through sound healing, give you?

I think it represents a simplification. Unhitching from earlier phases, putting stuff down. The sound healing training has just been a great gift. It’s really different to the music side of things—

You worked as a music therapist before.

Yes, and although you have to go through all the training for that, we are already constantly therapizing ourselves musically. But when one looks at the sound as a whole, it’s supported by quantum physics. It’s your breath, your body, your voice, your veins, your oxygen levels, your nervous system. We have the possibility of doing some really simple things and making a difference to ourselves.

It’s empowerment, authorship, self-knowledge. And it’s just saying “I do this because it makes a difference to me.” I need to do the thing that helps me look after myself, helps me navigate life. The simpler you keep it, the better you feel.

I’ve only been able to see this in a hazy, far-off way until now. Can I share something?

Of course.

There’s a symbolic loop around you, from your first experience of physical trauma to your sound practice now. This violation happened through sound; it was a sharp scratch at your sound body.

It’s incredible that you would think of all those things.

But there’s something so beautiful about the healing that you are doing now, for other people and for yourself through that medium. Like going back and darning holes.

In homeopathy, the remedy for grief is Ignatia, which I associate with the heart and the throat. The periods in my life when I have struggled to eat, the obvious catalyst was having to mine down into deep layers of loss and grief.

And I know that when I was doing the sound healing training, that thing came up about the lump in your throat — it’s when the emotion is coming up. If it’s too much, the throat constricts to keep it down. I think the word healing made me a bit uncomfortable, until I realized it came from the word “whole.” That’s the project I can get behind, reclaiming lost parts and staying intact.

What does it feel like to have a daughter?

It feels like a precious gift and also a responsibility. It’s a really beautiful and also delicate thing. To be able to share the feminine space without presuming on it. I treasure the fact. I feel blessed to have a daughter, to have you as my daughter.

That’s beautiful. Ok, if you wake up in the morning and feel terrible, what do you do to reset?

The five Buddhist affirmations, with some sound. Either a crystal bowl or four Himalayan singing bowls with a bunch of mallets and wands…I just sound my way through.

What’s the best part of your day?

A cup of Modhpur tea, which my twin sister brings over from Bangladesh, and a hot roll dripping in butter.

Shag, marry, kill: butter, salt, sugar.

Kill sugar. It’s got to be shag salt. Marry butter.

What would you like to see or create more of in the world?

Less forcing and pushing through. I think there’s something about being force-fed, being told what to do and not having agency. And then you find yourself up shit creek having followed everybody else’s advice.

Is there anything that you’d like to ask me about health before we go?

I would like to ask you how you’re feeling. Where are you with your health?

For a long time I’ve allowed my body to happen to itself rather than making a choice about what state it’s in. I don’t take comfort from having reasons to explain why I might be weak anymore. I’m ready to do whatever is required to be stronger, because I know now that I’m going to try and live.

That’s absolutely huge. It reminds me of something you wrote recently, that only we can work things out for ourselves. If we’re going to sustain ourselves, it has to come from us, and it has to be sustainable.

Thank you so much, Mama.