Mom, author, publisher and founder – Linnie von Sky on writing, her visions, mental health and being a mom

Linnie von Sky is an author, mother of two, and businesswoman. She has her roots in Berlin, lived in Canada for a long time, and is now back in the capital.

She writes her own children's books about immigration, bullying, and depression, has founded her own publishing house, and when she published a letter to her daughter Ella on Facebook in 2016, it appeared online shortly afterward on the Huffington Post. She has already appeared in front of the camera with her youngest daughter and talks to us today about her books, her visions, mental health and everyday life as a mom.

1. With our current AW19/20 collection "WHAT ABOUT YOU?" we want to celebrate diversity, individuality, and the quirks and edges that make each of us unique: it's our diverse roots, personal stories, and experiences that define us. Dear Linnie, what is your personal story - what about you?

So many stories intertwine to form my own personal one. I was a Berlin child, breastfed by my 18-year-old mother on the lawn of the Waldbühne theater, while my 21-year-old father shaded us with an umbrella and sang Wegner's "Kinder." From the age of three to six, I was allowed to run around freely in SO36. My territory was Markthalle 9, the farm at Betanien Haus, the Wall, and the Mariannen Platz backyard bordering Naunynstrasse. My father was a student, and even back then (at 23 with three daughters), my mother hosted our regular kitchen table, where she deloused, fed, and encouraged all the children I brought home.
She was a great example of how to collect people and their stories, celebrate them, connect them, and integrate them into our family. When I was in sixth grade, my family emigrated to the States for a year. After that, I went to the John F. Kennedy School. Puberty was never my cup of tea. I was too loud, too colorful, too nonconformist. I always wanted to please and never really made it. My friends often abandoned me and I was bullied more than a little. At 18, I moved to Prenzlauer Berg. That was the era of cookies in the backyard of the bakery. I also managed to get my high school diploma and then worked in a few marketing agencies. In 2003, I emigrated to Canada with my family to study. It was at this moment that, from afar, I truly missed Berlin for the first time. I was homesick and had a throbbing longing for my mother city. I came home from 2006 to 2009. Unfortunately, it was only because my dearest, longest-standing, and best childhood friend was diagnosed with cancer. I lived in smog for those three years. I began writing, smoking weed, and doubting. By the time she fluttered away, I had long since lost myself, scattered, and strayed. I regularly asked myself why I was allowed to stay, since I felt I had nothing to offer our world. Sometime in between, my first texts were read publicly. By Laura Lopez Castro and her magical voice. Unfortunately, my brain doesn't remember that moment very clearly. I was already quite far away and lulled into a deep depression. I owe my recovery to my loving family. My parents brought me back to Canada to live with them in their homes. There I had a fantastic therapist, shortly afterward fell in love with my Berlin husband, and unexpectedly found myself sitting with him in Vancouver, happy and completely myself. I was 31 when I wrote and published my first children's book. My second and third books followed in 2014 and 2015. In 2015, after three years of practice, I was finally able to become a mother to our first daughter. Within her first two years, homesickness for Berlin's air and spirit carried us back to the embrace of our mother city. Here I now sway, finally able to stretch my branches: in my city, where my roots are deeply embedded beneath the cobblestones and soak up the life. Today, I can't imagine the journey any other way. All of life's nooks, crannies, dents, and gullies have led me to myself, and today I truly enjoy being me.

2. You write your own children's books. You wrote your very first story, "Our Canadian Love Story," on three Air Canada airsickness bags on the plane. Was that completely spontaneous, or had you been thinking about it for a while?

My stories always fall out of me in one fell swoop. I don't dwell on them for long. They're suddenly there. That's how it was with "Our Canadian Love Story." That's why it was written on barf bags. My little characters are always completely themselves when they leave my brain: imperfectly perfect, and completely lovable.

3. Bullying, immigration, and mental health are very important, yet rather unusual, topics for children's books. How did you decide to focus on these topics?

The topics in my books are topics that have shaped and marked my own life. These are topics that we as adults rarely find easy to access. An approach that children deal with quite naturally. I believe that addressing these topics early on is valuable for our children. We adults can learn a great deal from our children about dealing with difficult topics in an unprejudiced and instinctive way.

4. And how do you implement these topics in your books so that they are child-friendly and easy to understand?

My books tell stories of animals experiencing one thing or another. They're not pretentious or preachy. Nevertheless, they provide a conversation starter where there might not otherwise be one. Ideally, they also encourage adults to talk about and reflect on their own stories.

5. How do you teach your children about issues like bullying and mental health? Do you read your books together?

I hope to allow my children all of their emotions and to encourage them to express and experience them. The sun doesn't always shine on our backsides, and the grass isn't always greener on our side or the other side. They see me grieving and crying, laughing and living. They see me naked and honest. As in all families, we have illness and arguments and separation and grief and death. I don't hide. I talk a lot. I listen to them. I try to explain things to them, but I ask them for explanations at least as often. When my brother-in-law, their uncle, recently died, it was our eldest daughter's behavior and her comments that repeatedly brought sunshine and laughter into the depths of grief. Even when dealing with our mother's cancer, it was our children who never felt inhibited or had a botched conversation. If our daughter wants to read my books, then Dad does it with her. For reasons I still don't understand, I get a little shy myself when it comes to reading to my book babies.

6. To what extent are your books influenced by your own life experiences?

I often lose myself in the heaviness of this life. I want to spare our children as much of what they inevitably still have to feel. Instead of shielding them from the feelings that are inevitable, I try to give them the tools and courage to share. Bearing feelings and moments alone makes them much harder than they need to be. I wish I had had the courage to share earlier. I hope my little stories and my courage to be open will encourage that.

7. Do you have any advice or tips you would like to share with us?

Dare to share. There's hardly a feeling, a hardship, a suffering that belongs to or concerns only you. Exchanging ideas and sharing helps heal. I experience the power that conversations give me again and again.

8. Can you tell us about your future plans? Do you already have a new book planned?

Oiweh. I think that's the question of my work-life balance. I have four book projects in progress. Three children's books (already written and illustrated) and a book of collected snapshots. They're about breastfeeding (The Birds and The Bees Don't Do It - A Milky Tale), hipsters (The American Sign Language Hipster Alphabet For Babes - A Coffee Table Book For Young Humans), death (The Rainbow Symphony for Tocoto Vintage), and motherhood (I'm not completely tight, My bottomless pelvis). All the book babies have been lying dusty in the corner for three years. They whine and cry and whine and nag for attention. I find it almost unbearable not to find time for them, and I live with constant feelings of guilt. However, our little, big, and big little people are still so dependent on me these days and nights that I have no leftover reserves for creative work, either day or night. Especially not for the publishing hassle, the bureaucracy, and the thousand steps involved in publishing, which I find sublime. Our youngest daughter has been settling in since August. However, she has only been there for ten full days since August. We have just survived another wave of illness. She is finally taking her afternoon nap there, and it feels like it has only been a second since my days have belonged to me again. I can breathe in and out deeply. My brain still doesn't understand how to avoid being distracted every two minutes. But I'm trying to sort myself out. My first reading of "Sadly The Owl" is on November 29th at the Wunderhaus. Eurico will be accompanying me on the cello, and it continues in January with "The Saddest Party Ever." My Sadly and I want to talk openly about mental health and celebrate our creative, colorful lives with our illnesses with loved ones, live music, readings, and panel discussions. We would love for you to join us.

9. You are not only an author but also founded Revulva Berlin. Would you like to tell us a little more about that?

You're welcome to listen to the live event podcast premiere of our Revulva in December. Perhaps some of you might even want to join us in person. We're still working on our Revulva adventure, and I'll be happy to tell you more soon.

10. You and your daughter posed for us in front of the camera. Among other things, you captured some truly beautiful breastfeeding photos, and as far as we know, you're also working on a book project on the topic of breastfeeding. Can you reveal more here? What does breastfeeding mean to you personally?

My little Henrietta the honeybee is a bit of a show-off. She is an investigative reporter for BeeBeeSee: "We bees pollinate flowers, make honey and drink nectar," she boasts. Then she is disturbed by loud smacking under the peony bush. She has to investigate where it is coming from. She meets Mama Mouse, who is breastfeeding her little mice. "What in the bees knees are you doing?" Mama Mouse smiles gently: "I am nursing my babies. This is how we do it. If you think this is cool, you should see how the bats do it. They do it upside down." Henri travels around the world and learns "that the polar bears do it on floating ice and the whales do it underwater." It is a love story about breastfeeding. I loved cuddling my babies and hearing them smacking their lips. I am so incredibly grateful that it was so easy for me and my little ones.

11. How long did you breastfeed each time?

I breastfed our older daughter for two years and three months. We enjoyed our closeness until the very end. I would have done the same with our youngest, but she had her own ideas. At ten months old, my nipple was spat out, my breasts pushed to the side, and the cheese was pointed at. It was over. All of a sudden and without consent. I'm still experiencing absolute breastfeeding nostalgia. You gave me a huge gift with your beautiful photos. Truly very special. I had no idea that our breastfeeding experience would suddenly become a closed chapter of my life.

12. What does being a mom mean to you? And what does a typical day look like for you?

Everything. It means everything to me. Period. Of course, for me too, the good moments are so incredibly good and the difficult moments so incredibly difficult, but I am a mother with every fiber of my being. One of the most beautiful and meaningful song lyrics for me is "Kinder" by Bettina Wegner: "They are such clear eyes that still see everything. You can never bandage them, otherwise they can't see anything anymore." She describes the openness of children, how they hear, touch, speak, see, and feel. That it is our responsibility to protect and safeguard these senses and sensuality. Our children are completely themselves. We can love them and inspire them and see and hear. Above all, we can trust that they will teach us more than we teach them. I hope I take the time to live that way too. Being a mother is so infinitely precious to me. We start every morning with a family breakfast together. The real deal, with wedding china, freshly baked bread, jam, and candlelight. Then I think for two loving seconds: "It's working!". By the time I'm getting dressed, brushing my teeth, and putting on a thousand warm layers, my "it's working!" runs away from me and jumps off the balcony. So, and then what? Somehow we drift and cuddle our way through the day. At home, everything really happens in the kitchen. We cook and bake and do crafts and read and play and sing and dance. In between, there are the usual tantrums, door slamming, nerve-wracking, and everything else that comes with having mom and dad with a four-year-old and a one-and-a-half-year-old. We are very lucky to have two wonderful grandmothers and incredibly loving aunts and uncles. They simply have more patience for endless role-playing games and special requests.

13. Last but not least: Do you have a mara mea favorite piece from the current autumn/winter collection "What about you"?

I can't fall in love with just one piece. Your textiles take me back to my childhood. My grandfather is Indian, my father grew up in India, and the most beautiful trips of my youth were spent amidst the colors, scents, patterns, and textiles of this incredible country. Mara Mea brings back such intense memories for me. What a gift. Thank you for that.

We thank you, dear Linnie, for this incredibly open, emotional, and inspiring interview! We hope to hear a lot more from you, whether as an author, mom, or Revulva Berlin founder.

Click here for Linnie’s Instagram account, here for her website and here for Revulva Berlin.