Lately, October

Turning the corner

I felt ready to turn my face to autumn at 11.32 am this morning.

Sycamore seeds were hitting my studio window, the wind felt a shade crueler and the pumpkins I’ve grown are finally orange. I am finally, reluctantly ready to light fires, drink turmeric latte light the candles and succumb to the ‘dark half’.

I’m looking forward to gathering together in community in this descent into hibernation - I reopen the online studio doors for ‘the settling’, four weeks, four November Live Mondays at 7pm, four faces of the moon and a growing group of community joining me for candlelit rest and quietude. Who will we be one orbit later? And would you like to join the seventeen of us already gathered? You can do that here.

Antidote Additions

The width of our grief anniversaries, a restful guided hour of autumn restorative hibernation from the studio (I’ll be adding in another in November) , a cathartic ‘the half marathon that cracked me open’ voicenote and the reproductive trauma straws that break our back. All handily linked below for mooching. Voicenotes and practices are behind the paywall/door to my house.

our grief anniversaries really matter

Bracken; a guided rest journey

The Half

death by a thousand paper cuts

The Comedown

I no longer live in the punctuations of a half marathon plan. I finished the plan, lost a toenail, rode high as a kite and landed somewhere left of centre, in a good kind of way until the following Wednesday. Then I didn’t feel good at all. The endorphins fell away to reveal an untethered, agitated gloom. I hear this is normal.

We’re exposed to what’s happening inside our interior plains sometimes in ways we don’t get to walk past. The last week felt hard and.. real. Four days is the longest span I’ve gone without running since March. Yoga has played second fiddle, flight winning over stillness. So, I’ve had a glorious reunion of finding coherence on the mat, in clouds of incense smoke, essential oils and so so much writing onto pages. Then I signed up for another race. It’s a flying season it would seem.

Things I read and remembered

I’m hitting the Substack icon more readily that the Instagram and that feels like nourishment. I am stood in a library and I don’t know where to even begin. Systematic ‘this is what I’m looking for’ has yielded good things and there has been joy in the stumbling into the things I didn’t know I was seeking. Here are two that have stayed with me.

Carissa Potter wrote about ‘defriending’ a year ago and I only just saw some words that would have been very helpful in 2022.

How to know if you should de-friend someone?

Jennie Agg wrote about her our of reach ‘golden jar’ of grief this month and it hit me right in the feels as my own jar is currently being filled in a room I can’t even see. Thanks Jennie.

No room to grieve

And that’s it, I’m off to make a recipe that has gained the rare accolade of being the messy page the cookbook opens to because it is So Loved.

See you in a November week. H x