Sèna
Sublime
Your bond with your child can be mended at the table. Even on evenings when everything has gone wrong.
Gentle, practical ebooks, written in a real kitchen, for parents who shout and then regret it — and want to find their way back to one another, one small gesture at a time.
01 · The starting point
Being a parent?
I don't know about you, but one thing seemed clear to me. If feeding, clothing and schooling a child were all it took to help them flourish, the whole world would already be a paradise for us all: differences accepted, no one judged by race or wealth, and respect for everyone.
02 · The mask
The overwhelmed parent
These were my first experiences as a parent.
That was the role I slipped into when I felt cornered, exhausted and overwhelmed. Sometimes I shouted and threatened. I wanted everything to happen quickly. I wanted the day to be over.
I thought the children were the cause. I was wrong.
03 · The surrender
The surrender - and what it didn't fix
Then came the surrender. 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 little context?
How I went from feeling overwhelmed to letting go of the reins.
Ten years earlier, my daughter was born earlier than expected. I had had a very rare illness 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 awakened 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 those early days as a parent, I was full of fear and uncertainty. I thought control was the only answer. In doing so, I shut the door on everyone else.
When I surrendered, the doubts and fears loosened their grip. I opened the floodgates. But everything was 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 fifth child. My body was telling me something was wrong. I could no longer do anything around the house.
Then something clicked. I accepted my life. Accepted living far from home. Accepted that no one would come to my aid. Here, the rule was: "Figure it out yourself."
And I didn't panic. For once, I no longer saw pain as an enemy. I began listening to Gregorian chant again. That day, I was finally ready to listen to the pain. It said:
"And what if you did things differently?"
07 · Differently
What is the hidden meaning of this word?
Just boxes to untick, freedom to reclaim, a world to see differently. Perhaps it comes down to this:
“Why hold on to the judgements of a world that values only money?”
“Why listen to a world that looks down on parenthood?”
“Why follow the opinion of a world that rejects what it doesn't understand?”
“And what if you remembered where you come from, a world without burnout or the baby blues?”
“And what if you remembered home, a world where happy children and respect are not conditional?”
“What if, at last, you unticked the boxes of perfectionism, blind criticism and pointless striving?”
08 · The table
When cooking soothes what words can no longer reach.
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.
The table is the only place in the house where we gather every single day. We say what matters most there, often without knowing it, between the main course and dessert.
Parenthood can become a gilded cage. We love so much that we hold too tight. And there is a bridge: between the child who dreams and the adult who knows. It runs, almost always, through the kitchen. This house was born from the conviction that kneading dough alongside a child soothes them far more than lecturing them.
I wrote my ebooks in my kitchen, out of my own evenings gone wrong, my raised voice, my awkward silences. That's where I speak to you from. Not from above. From beside you.
09 · The Recourse
What does it contain?
A little booklet that brings together everything that helped me turn my life around by 180 degrees and find a balance between being a mother, being a woman and being myself. This booklet isn't a method. It's what I wish I'd been given.
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 thank the four women who reached out to me during my fifth pregnancy. They brought colour back into those painful days. My thanks to the midwives with hearts of gold.
They reminded me that kindness and generosity still had a place in humanity.
Here, you'll find words for the thorns of parenting. Words don't always solve the problem. But feeling less alone can make the path a little lighter.
11 · The collection
Is it worth buying ebooks?
Yes, if you’re looking for less theory and more tenderness you can put into practice. You can read the first chapter before you buy.
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.
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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 · Your voice matters
What readers are saying
14 · The Sunday note
A thought that fits inside your Sunday coffee
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15 · 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.
16 · 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
Soon I realised it wasn't the answers that had changed everything. It was the questions. Being asked again and again 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 voice, wholly intact, helped by tools that save 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.
17 · Sèna Sublime
Acknowledgements
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.
Read the acknowledgements
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 special.
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