Sèna
Sublime
When cooking soothes what words can no longer reach.
Magnifiquement imparfait01 · The starting point
Being a parent?
I don't know about you, but it was obvious to me that if simply feeding, clothing and schooling a child were enough to make them a fulfilled human being, the whole world would already be a paradise for all of us: acceptance of difference, no judgment based on race or wealth, and respect for everyone.
02 · The mask
The unfit parent
This was my first stop.
It was the character I played when I felt cornered, exhausted and overwhelmed. So I would sometimes shout and threaten. I wanted everything to move fast. I wanted the day to end fast.
Wrongly, I thought the children were the cause.
03 · The surrender
A confession of giving up?
My 2nd stop. Shouting made me deeply uncomfortable. I could feel my children's hurt, and even more, I could feel something in me going out with every conflict.
So I let go of the reins completely. The children were very happy. But something was off.
04 · A look back at the past
A small point to clarify?
The shift that happened between the unfit parent and the surrender.
Ten years earlier, my daughter was born earlier than expected. I had had a very rare illness (SHAG) that nearly cost us our lives. I was put under anaesthesia. I woke up 36 hours later and suffered memory loss for two years.
What seemed like a misfortune opened other senses in me.
While my memory and reflexes were playing tricks on me, I had developed an extreme sensitivity to others. I understood children's needs as if I could read them.
This shift was necessary for me; I felt in my heart the pain of others, of children in particular.
05 · What had no name yet
What was wrong?
In the first stop, it was me, filled with fear and uncertainty, fatigue and pain, believing control was the only valid answer. In doing so, I shut the door on everyone else.
In the 2nd stop, the doubts and fears let go. And I opened the floodgates. Yet it was all for the children.
Guilt? Real virtues? Or simply an imbalance that had no name yet.
06 · The answer to all my questions
What was really going on?
The pregnancy with the 5th child. My body was clearly signalling that something was wrong. I could no longer do anything around the house.
Then something clicked. I had finally accepted my life. I had accepted that I lived far from home and that no one would come to my aid. I had finally accepted that here, the rule was: "Figure it out yourself."
And something strange happened. I didn't panic. And for once, I no longer saw pain as an enemy. I was certain I would get through it. I started listening to Gregorian chant again. I had never been so at peace with myself.
I was finally ready to hear it, the pain. It had always been present in my body since I was 12. It told me:
"And what if you did things differently?"
07 · Differently
What is the hidden meaning of this word?
Just boxes to unfick, a freedom to reclaim, a world to see differently. It can be summed up like this:
Why not set aside the judgments of a world for which work only makes sense if it earns money?
Why take into account a world that considers parents who no longer sleep, who no longer have time for themselves, who go non-stop all day, to be worthless because they don't bring in money?
Why should you take into account the opinion of a world that rejects difference and everything it doesn't understand?
And what if you remembered where you come from, a world where a mother knows neither burnout nor the baby blues?
And what if you remembered home, a world where happy children and respect for elders and their parents are not conditional?
And what if, at last, you stopped ticking the boxes of perfectionism, blind criticism, useless performance?
08 · The table
My story
Everything here begins at a table. Mine. That's where this house was born — in a place that you, too, have at the heart of your home.
There are three things I only understood late. The first is that the table is the only place in the house where we gather every single day. We eat there, yes. But we also say what matters most, often without knowing it, between the main course and dessert.
The second is that parenthood can become a gilded cage. We love so much that we hold too tight. We want to do so well that we forget to let it breathe. The most beautiful of prisons is still a prison.
The third is that there's a bridge. Between the child who dreams and the adult who knows. Between magic and wisdom. This bridge can be crossed in both directions, a whole life long. It runs, almost always, through the kitchen.
This house of ebooks was born from the conviction that kneading dough alongside a child soothes them far more than lecturing them.
My ebooks were written from my kitchen, from my own failed evenings, my too-loud voice, my clumsy silences. That's where I'm speaking to you from. Not from above. From beside you.
09 · The Recourse
What does it contain?
A small booklet that sums up everything that allowed me to make a 360-degree turnaround and find the balance between my life as a mother, as a woman, and as my authentic self.
10 · The blog
What is it for?
There were moments when I would have given anything to have someone to talk to.
I want to take this opportunity to thank the 4 women who reached out to me during my 5th pregnancy. They brought colour back to my pain. I thank the midwives with hearts of gold.
They reminded me that humanity could still rhyme with kindness and generosity.
Here, you'll find words to put to the thorns of parenting. It doesn't always solve the problems, but not feeling alone can lighten the path.
11 · The collection
Is it worth buying ebooks?
It's up to you. The human psyche is far more complex than we're led to believe. Sometimes wanting isn't enough. But once you understand the mechanism behind your own reactions and those of your children, it can make all the difference.
You are exactly who you need to be for the children you have.
You are simply human, with a tired brain. And fatigue and stress are an explosive cocktail.
As for your children, they are not something to fix. There's just a thread, a connection to be found again.
12
The tales
Why ebooks for children?
I have always been curious about how the human unconscious works. So I became interested in psychology, in neuroscience, and above all in spirituality. Sometimes a simple little sentence can completely change the course of a human life: "You are worth everything, unconditionally. Your voice matters." Here, the tale offers the child's view of the adult ebook it accompanies.
13 · The Sunday note
A thought that fits inside your Sunday coffee
Three lines signed Sèna, twice a month. Nothing to do, nothing to prove — just a breath taken before the week begins. And as a welcome gift, your first note is already waiting for you.
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14 · Bibliography
Happiness, My Best Friend
Austin Macauley Publishers, 2025
Discover Sèna Gay-Vigan's published work — a luminous account of the art of embracing happiness in everyday life.
Sèna
The AI charter
The best of both our worlds
Open the charter
2022
In 2022, I wrote a book. Happiness, My Best Friend. I wrote it alone. I wanted to sell it alone too.
I knew nothing about web marketing. Nothing about landing pages, nothing about SEO, nothing about all those words I have since learned and which, back then, sounded like a foreign language.
And behind it all, there was the work. Writing, editing, laying out, translating, building, selling, replying, starting again. One person. Twenty-four hours in a day, from which meals, children and exhaustion still had to be subtracted.
I gave up. That's not a pleasant sentence to write. But it's the true one.
January 2025
I had dozens of titles and thousands of sentences racing through my head. The idea of a digital publishing house came knocking again. And with it, the same question as in 2022: how to get there.
I thought about artificial intelligence. I knew nothing about it. I attended a talk by Alégria, a leading AI voice in France. I only remembered one word: Lovable. A tool. What to do with it remained to be seen.
Then I heard about Claude. A video on YouTube decided everything. A single sentence: don't write to Claude like a developer, nor like a manager.
So I did what children do. I used my curiosity, my boldness and my intuition. The adventure began there.
What its questions revealed
Very quickly, it wasn't its answers that changed everything. It was its questions. From being asked why, for whom, at what moment, in which kitchen — I realised something. I knew exactly what I wanted.
For two months, I laid out this house's charter. I trained the tool on all my writing. My punctuation, my silences, my short sentences, my way of stopping before the end.
The line I never crossed
I already had the titles. I already had the sentences. What I entrusted to it was what I didn't know how to do: marketing, structure, technique. And on one non-negotiable condition — that my voice be respected.
It then became my translator. It translated my thoughts to Lovable, which builds this site. To Genspark, which illustrates my tales.
What you're reading here
Everything you see on these pages is unique. Born of my imagination. Created entirely from my ideas. Artificial intelligence tools allowed me to add colour and shape to it.
What they give me is time. They help me shape it, translate these books into ten languages, and refine the technical side so that nothing gets lost along the way. They carry the buckets of water while I paint.
The best of both our worlds is this: a human pen, whole and entire, enhanced by what saves it time without ever taking its soul.
For a mother of five children with dreams, this is immeasurable.
Legal notice — The works from this house are created with the assistance of artificial intelligence tools, under the editorial direction of the author.
Sèna Sublime
Thanks
Thank you. To you, first. You who have made it to the bottom of this page, on an evening that was probably tiring, looking for something gentle for your family. This house only exists because parents like you wanted to push open the door.
Open the thanks
To my children, thank you for going through the difficult hours as well as the beautiful ones with me. It's this whole life, yours and mine intertwined, that gave birth to these books.
To my father, who always treated me as someone set apart.
To my mother, who always made me believe I had the right to dream big and go all the way with my aspirations.
To my brothers, who made me love books and let me grow up in a joyful and sheltered home.
And to everyone who inspired this site. To Kelly Massol, for proving that a community is built before a product. To Quentin Merle du Bourg and his brother Edouard. To Authority Hacker, for the architecture of pillar pages. To Forbes Riley, for the art of selling a transformation rather than a product. To Alégria, for finally making artificial intelligence tools clear.
To all the tables of the world, where the things that matter are said.
With tenderness,
— Sèna