It's been a quiet start in our little house to this new decade. Much of December and all of January so far has been a blur of illness as one child or other, or me, has succumbed to the coughs, colds and winter infections that fly about so freely as this time of year. We've … Continue reading Make it Better Soup
Thirteen. Waving All The Red Flags High. Unpicking the Stitches of Silence.
I've always loved it when the thirteenth day of the month falls on a Friday. Friday 13th, despite the negative patriarchal influence, has always been a positive day for me. Maybe somewhere in my DNA, there is the remembrance of the feminine importance of 13. The number of the divine feminine, representative of the thirteen … Continue reading Thirteen. Waving All The Red Flags High. Unpicking the Stitches of Silence.
Mending Clothes as an Act of Rebellion
I have often wondered when it was that Western society collectively decided that visibly mended clothes were a mark of reduced status. Of a life worth less. Where a patch or a darn was certainly not acceptable in polite company. Many cultures across the globe value and respect the energy that is used to create … Continue reading Mending Clothes as an Act of Rebellion
Patchwork Days
I first learnt to cut and stitch patchwork sitting on the living room floor of family friend Barbara Thompson. Walking into her house, there was always the aroma of cooking spices, books, wool. The walls were covered in bookshelves, almost as though her house was built with stories, not bricks, and the books that didn't fit … Continue reading Patchwork Days
Unpackaging Life
It's been a bit quiet on the blog these last few weeks. I've been struggling to write about the tiny, small efforts we are making at home, because I haven't felt particularly inspired by them, in the great whirl of Extinction Rebellion protests, and the darkening knowledge of what is happening across the planet. The … Continue reading Unpackaging Life
Winter Healing From The Elder Mother
When I first moved into the house I live in now, there was an elder sapling in my back garden, brought by birds, and shooting up rebelliously between honeysuckle and philadelphus. The garden was very different then - with only two previous owners, both strong independent women who loved to garden, it had neat hedges, … Continue reading Winter Healing From The Elder Mother
The Boy With The Lead Balloon, and The Girl Who Wouldn’t Fly…
Today we walked in the woods. Two buses from home, across the River in the Derwent Valley, under a grim, threatening sky we walked in the woods. We saw a deer, chatted to some rescue horses, tracked prints along the muddy path and paddled in a river full of all of yesterday's torrential rain. We … Continue reading The Boy With The Lead Balloon, and The Girl Who Wouldn’t Fly…
Sleepwalking into Ecocide.
When I was in my late teens and early twenties, I found myself deeply connected with stories of the Holocaust. I read all I could about it, I watched TV shows about it, I found poetry and art that spoke to me of the horrors that could never, ever be allowed to happen again. When … Continue reading Sleepwalking into Ecocide.
Skill Sharing to Save The Planet
It's been a few weeks since I last put pen to paper here and that's because I've been busy creating a set of workshops, in partnership with The Paddock, to further the idea of sharing zero waste skills and the know-how of making plastic free alternatives with others. My workshops will be running on Wednesdays … Continue reading Skill Sharing to Save The Planet
A Charm of Bees To Tell Our Tales.
The summer that I turned 6 there were bees living under the floor of the wooden garage in the back garden of the house I grew up in. I can remember it so clearly. It was a proper, old fashioned garage, that would never been big enough for a modern car, but might have had … Continue reading A Charm of Bees To Tell Our Tales.
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