Summer at last

August at home

Thrift at Porthgain, Pembrokeshire after CHIPS

After a couple of months of feeling poorly, August brought me just what I needed. The chance to stop.

Fresh mint from the garden and one of my favourite summer things - shorts

Following a week and a bit on a field in North Devon, I’ve sat in our conservatory on the very old sofa that my parents bought just before they got married and I’ve read a favourite book. I’ve walked a bit, taken my medicine, talked with friends, stretched and even done a bit of gardening. We cut back all our mint, covered it in compost and to my delight, it is growing back! Some of you may think I am a gardener already because I know some plant names and spend a lot of time out there, but this is the first time I’ve actually dug.

After a week sitting and resting, the September transition began to loom, and inevitably, my inner critic took up the space I’d so carefully made in my head. Did yours? My inner critic is so afraid of failure and rejection, she says things like, “you are lazy, you not making enough of a contribution, you can’t handle a proper job, you are weak etc..” And so I am having to return to all the things I’ve learned when she has been afraid in the past.

A line from the poem (and song), Thrift by Robert Macfarlane, worked as a kind of a liturgy* for me through the winter and spring. ‘Dig in, dig in… show us hardship is a limit, not a failing, show us how to live in hope against the odds, you’re clinging on.’ I saw some thrift on the Pembrokeshire coast in July (photo above) and was so so happy. Living liturgies, I’ve discovered, are even better than poems and songs.

I think the following quotation from The Rosemary Tree might become a kind of liturgy for the next few months.

“How can one know if one lives?.. There are times when one feels made of ice.”
“A capacity to offer something… If it’s only your shame.”
- The Rosemary Tree, Elizabeth Goudge

In the midst of things, ordinary illness and extraordinary holidays, it’s hard to tell if we are really living. This answer of offering makes sense to me. I am offering laundry and words (others’ and my own), I’m remembering to say thank you and trying to see things from the perspective of others. I’m offering the shame many of us carry for being human. My brain is full of ideas that I find it difficult to prioritise, my studio is chaotic, I don’t have a regular job, I have a body that has bits that don’t work quite right and I feel so many and so much that sometimes I have to sit and stare and be looked after. I am very good at offering hot drinks and I almost always remember to make them! I’m offering space at Quiet Garden Hours and for people to explore writing in workshops (dates below). And I’m offering you a bit of my story so you know it’s okay to offer yours too. How has your summer been? Feel free to leave a comment.

As the school term finally begins and we feel ourselves stepping into old grooves in new shoes, I have been reminded of love. Transitions can be hard and we can forget who we are. But people remind us. Offers (see?) of suncream, and hugs, and time and understanding, remind us that who we are is loved.

Warmly,

Deb x

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Autumn Quiet Garden Hour | 10.30 | 23/09/23 No booking required

Writing workshops book with Something Less Boring

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*Liturgy: small practices and habits that form us - Tish Harrison Warren