Honest Mum's Vicki Psarias-Broadbent: From film director to 'broken mum on maternity leave' to blogger and children's book author

Former TV and film director Vicki Psarias-Broadbent was a “broken mum on maternity leave” when she launched her parenting and lifestyle blog back in 2010. That her Honest Mum brand would go on to reach an average of 20 million parents a month across her blog and social media platforms today was “utterly unimaginable” back then.

She didn’t start writing with a change of career in mind; rather, blogging was a way to rediscover her voice and regain her confidence after suffering from a traumatic birth. “A friend who was also a director banged on at me to write a blog,” remembers Leeds-born Vicki. “She didn't have kids and I would ring her and tell her about all these baby groups and this brave new world and how much I'd lost my identity, how sort of surreal it all felt. I went from being on sets of hundreds, at the helm, to suddenly being with just a baby and I was pretty lost, and far away from family too. So it was a really hard time. My friend was like just write about all these crazy experiences you’re having. So I did.”

Oliver, her eldest, is now 15, and by the time Vicki’s second child, the now 12-year-old Alexander, came along, she was blogging full-time, working with several brands and growing her online platforms. Now a mum-of-three (Florence arrived three years ago), Vicki is an author, content creator and TV and radio panellist, who has featured on the likes of BBC Breakfast, ITV’s This Morning, Good Morning Britain and Lorraine.

Those familiar with her work will know that it focuses predominantly on family life, as well as food, fashion, travel and beauty. But Vicki’s latest writing project has led her to a different field, learning all there is to know about Ancient Greece. Her debut children’s book - Greek Folktales, Myths and Legends - is released today, part of the Scholastic Classics collection. It is a series which sees timeless stories repackaged for young readers, with Vicki, in her book, featuring popular myths such as The Midas Touch, as well as lesser-known ones such as Bellerophon and the Pegasus. “Because I used to be a filmmaker I've tried to make them as cinematic as possible,” explains Vicki, who lives with her husband and children in Harrogate. “The Greek myths were the foundation stories for the western world. So the movies that you see today have been massively influenced.”

“These were the Gods to the ancient Greeks,” the 44-year-old continues. “They believed that they were real and that they controlled their lives and their destinies and they used to give sacrifices to them and stuff. So it's been really interesting to learn more about their belief system and how they lived their lives. They were such pioneers, such innovators. They've affected every part of our life from democracy to perfume…I don't want to be that person like the Greeks invented everything, but they did do - they played their part in a big way.”

For Vicki, producing the collection has been a way of reconnecting with her heritage, as the daughter of Greek Cypriot parents. When growing up in Ilkley, she would learn about Greek myths and legends and went to Greek school with her brother every Saturday. “That really supported understanding our heritage and learning the language, being able to communicate with my grandma and my family whenever we'd go back to Cyprus,” Vicki says. “I think we always felt very Greek but then we had a really lovely sense of identity of being from Yorkshire and being British as well.”

Whilst some of her early film work explored Greek stories, it had been a long time since Vicki had written about her heritage so her myths book was a “nourishing opportunity”. "I felt like I’d almost done a Classics degree to write this as I did such meticulous research,” she says. “The landscapes, the flowers, the plants, the food, everything in the book is reflective of that period. I wanted to make it feel very authentic historically.”

After studying media and communications, and then film-making, at Goldsmiths in London, Vicki embarked on a career writing, directing and producing, working on everything from drama to documentaries, music videos and commercials. Soon after having her first baby, blogging and vlogging became her full-time job taking her work from behind the camera to mostly in front, and enabling her to work flexibly, and from home, around her family. She told of doing just that in her debut book Mumboss, a guide to “surviving and thriving at work and at home”, which was published in 2018.

Today, Instagram and YouTube are a big part of Vicki’s work, though she says her blog is still flourishing. “What I was really adamant about from the start was that I didn't want mummy bloggers or creatives that were mums to be undermined and underestimated,” she says. “So I remember really early on thinking I really want to push the fact that you can be a really strong writer - just because you've got kids, just because maybe the other industries have underestimated you or whatever else, I wanted to prove that you could create something of a really high standard that's really meaningful that can connect (with people).”

Next for Vicki is a primary school book tour, taking in Leeds and the wider Yorkshire region. She hopes to bring to life the Greek myths and encourage children to become avid readers. “The ancient Greek Gods were always depicted as being as flawed as humans,” Vicki says. “They were adulterous, they were murderous, they were jealous, and the ancient Greeks really related to those stories…. So the Greek myths make for very exciting, adventurous, fun, funny and dynamic stories...I want kids to understand the beauty of them.”

- Greek Folktales, Myths and Legends by Vicki Psarias-Broadbent is out now.