Hello!

And welcome to A Gentle Gail.

6 years ago, I created a blog called “Life of Gailypi”, which I then rebranded a few months later to “Sherbet Aurora”. It took a few days of deliberation for me to come up with a final name, much like it did for A Gentle Gail!

Sherbet Aurora, at the time, had a focus on travel and tourism, as that was what I was studying. I wanted the name to be something that would reflect the sky or travel, as well as something that would reflect on me as a person. I decided on Sherbet, because I love sherbet, and it’s colourful, and I am a very colourful and bright person. Aurora came from the Aurora Borealis, the Northern Lights. They’re in the sky, and that loosely related to air travel. It also just sounded really nice alongside Sherbet.

In the last few years, I’ve not felt the passion that I once did. I began posting less and less and didn’t really have a new direction I wanted to go into. I kept thinking to myself “oh, I’m interested in this thing! I should write about that!” Then never do it, repeat that 10x over. Even when I found something that I did kinda like, the name just didn’t feel right. There was so much history on the blog as well that would be so difficult to untangle and it felt like the time had come to make a difficult call.

I’ve gotten very into environmentalism, sustainability and conservation and I thought it was the right time to let Sherbet Aurora go. It’s really sad for me, and one of the hardest decisions I’ve had to make but when the right time comes along, you can’t ignore it for much longer. I’m not going to say goodbye completely yet! And anything that I want to talk about which doesn’t fit into this blog, I’ll be posting about over on www.sherbet-aurora.co.uk! It’s just that those posts will be few and far between.

So let’s quickly talk about this new blog. Why A Gentle Gail?
I had a list on my phone of potential names. I thought that, considering I’m going into a very nature-oriented theme, I could make some form of connection to my name – Gail. I thought about things like “The Wind Of Change” and “Voices In The Wind“, even things like “A Second Wind” and “Easy breasy“! I put a couple of polls on Twitter and Instagram in the end (Hey, follow me! I’m @agentlegail on both of those!) and it came against The Wind Of Change and A Gentle Gail, with the overwhelming majority of people voting for that option. The name is a bit different and differentiates me so I thought “Okay, then! We’ve got the new brand name!”

In terms of what you can expect on this blog, I want to talk about environmentalism, sustainability and conservationism. I adopt 2 orangutans at Monkey World Ape Rescue Centre in Dorset, England, and am on the journey to be more environmentally conscious. On that topic, I also want to make something clear just now, as I’m aware that as the future of my blog goes on, this may be a topic of discussion.

I am trying my very hardest not to buy fast fashion where it’s possible for me. However, I don’t have a lot in the way of disposable income and so there are times where I do purchase from brands such as Primark, H&M and Peacock’s. I also want it to be very clear that if I ever purchase from a FF brand, that I will never discuss it on this blog. But, and I hope to do this much more in the near future, if I purchase from a charity shop, or from a local business, I will talk about those. Additionally, anything I potentially purchase from a FF brand, I will do what I can to ensure it doesn’t end up in landfill, and recycling wherever possible. My hope is to one day never buy FF but I’ve had to forgive myself for it at present. I hope you forgive me for this, too.

I already have a few ideas on things that I want to talk about, but also if you have any ideas please let me know as well!

I’m really excited to get started on this brand new journey, and I look forward to you coming along with me.