The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse: a book I keep coming back to.

Books I recommend · On transitions, identity and reinvention.

I did not discover this book in a bookshop.

I discovered it at a WOW retreat.

We were in Ledbury, in the English countryside, one of those quiet, ancient market towns where the streets are narrow and the buildings lean slightly into each other as if they are listening to a conversation. One of our WOW coaches, Julie Rees, mentioned the book during the retreat. And then, almost as if the town had been listening, one of the participants found it in an old bookshop on the high street.

She came back holding it like she had found something important.

She had.

I bought my own copy shortly after. And I have not stopped thinking about it since.

A book that asks more than it answers

Charlie Mackesy's The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse is a slim, illustrated book that looks like it might be for children. It is not. Or rather, it is for anyone who has ever needed permission to be kind to themselves, to ask for help, to keep going without knowing exactly where they are going.

It is the kind of book you read in an hour and think about for years.

He dedicates it to his mum, his lovely, kind mum, and to his dog. That dedication stopped me before I had read a single page. I am a mum. I have a dog. And kindness is not incidental to the work I do at WOW, it is foundational to it. That dedication felt like a quiet signal that I was in the right place.

The quote that changed how I think about reinvention

There is an exchange in the book between the four characters, the boy, the mole, the fox, and the horse, that I have returned to again and again, especially in conversations with women navigating transitions.

The horse asks: what is your reason to keep going?

The boy says he wants to get home. The mole says cake. And the fox, who says very little throughout the book, simply gestures to the three of them.

You three.

I find this exchange quietly revolutionary.

Most of the conversation around reinvention, in leadership, in coaching, in the self-help world, assumes there is a correct answer to the question of why. Find your purpose. Identify your why. Get clear on your direction.

But this book refuses that. The boy's reason is different from the mole's. The mole's reason is different from the fox's. And all of them are right. All of them are enough.

What moves me most is the fox's answer. The reason to keep going is the people beside you. Not a destination. Not an achievement. Not even cake, though I understand the mole completely. Just the company of those who are making the journey alongside you.

That is, in three words, what WOW is.

On curiosity and becoming

The book is also full of invitations to be curious. Be curious appears not as a productivity tip or a professional competency but as something closer to a way of being, an orientation toward the world that keeps you open to what you have not yet discovered about yourself.

I think about this a lot in the context of transitions. The women I coach who navigate change most gracefully are rarely the ones with the clearest plan. They are the ones who stay curious long enough to find out what is actually waiting for them on the other side of the familiar.

Curiosity is not passive. It is one of the bravest things you can practice when everything feels uncertain. It says: I do not have the answer yet, and I am willing to keep looking.

Why WOW women have this book

Since that retreat in Ledbury, I have been pleasantly surprised to discover how many WOW alumni already own this book.

I do not think that is a coincidence. I think the women WOW attracts are already living close to the values this book holds: kindness, togetherness, curiosity, the courage to ask for help, the willingness to keep going without knowing where the path leads.

The book did not teach them those things. It reflected them back.

A question to sit with

If the horse asked you that question right now, what is your reason to keep going, what would your honest answer be?

Not the answer you think you should give. Not the professional answer. The real one.

Maybe it is something meaningful and large. Maybe it is something small and true, like the mole's cake. Maybe it is the faces of the people beside you.

Whatever it is, it is enough.

Find the book on Amazon