View from Mam Tor, Derbyshire

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August 1. High summer. The midpoint of this hot, dry summer.

A day when our ancestors celebrated Lammas, which in Old English means ‘loaf-mass’, and is when the year’s first harvested grain was made into bread and brought to the church to be blessed. It was a time of feasts, of giving thanks to the earth for its crops.

It’s one of the eight heartbeats of the year: the two solstices and two equinoxes mark the astronomical start of each season. Lammas and its fellow ‘cross-quarter’ festivals of Imbolc, Beltane and Samhain mark a season’s midpoint.

Each, with their accompanying rituals and celebrations - at Beltane, on May 1, for example, there were bonfires, flower-gathering in the woods and dancing – would have given our ancestors an opportunity to pause from their regular routines.

As a twenty-first-century city dweller, I don’t do much in the way of observance. I might remember to meditate on the winter solstice, and set some intentions for the year to come. And I always take my son trick-or-treating at Halloween, but easily forget – as we scrabble for sweets on Primrose Hill doorsteps – that its origins lie in Samhain, a time when the veil between the physical world and the realm of spirits was believed to be at its thinnest.

But I do clock these beats: with relief at Imbolc, knowing we’re finally halfway through winter. And with some sadness at Lammas, knowing we’re already halfway through my beloved summer, and entering the year’s final stretch of days where daylight outweighs darkness.

This year, by chance I got to properly pause at Lammas and the days straddling it. First, in Derbyshire, staying in a seventeenth-century thatched cottage, where I’d get up before my husband and son and sit alone on the dewy grass with a mug of tea, listening to the birds singing and the apples gently thudding from the tree. We picnicked by the river and walked through the Peaks to the prehistoric hill fort at Mam Tor. I barely cooked. Early evening found me on the lawn, not at the stove, reading this excellent novel, a glass of wine beside me.

Back in London, home alone for 72 entire hours, I sat in Marylebone’s beautiful Paddington Street Gardens with a friend, chatting and drinking coffee under the shade of a plane tree. I continued to barely cook – which, while I love, also gets somewhat tedious doing on repeat day after day – and ate almond croissants from the farmer’s market for lunch. I spent my first ever Monday morning at the sauna, slipping in and out of the cold plunge - especially delicious on a thirty-degree day. Then ate toasted coconut bread at one of my favourite breakfast spots.

I loved how these days took me away from my usual routines and my to-do list. So much of my life – and yours too, perhaps? – is spent emptying the dishwasher, working, doing the Ocado order, replacing the broken lightbulb, fixing my laptop, renewing the TV license.

And life is, I find, racing past. Scarily so. This year, for the first time, I’m even finding the school summer holidays are flying by a touch too fast. Something I never imagined happening.

Pausing from life’s rushing rhythm slows down time. We need to create these interruptions for ourselves. No one else will hand them to us; and there will always be more we could be cracking on with.

Of course, getting a swathe of days like I had recently is a rare luxury. But we can create pause points in smaller increments: daily, weekly, monthly - at whatever beat makes sense to us.

I try and do one thing a week just for me. Lifting weights, for example, which I get up early a few times a week for, doesn’t count. While I kind of enjoy it, it isn’t exactly unadulterated pleasure in the way sitting in a café – even for ten minutes – savouring a flat white and people-watching is. Or taking a walk in Regent’s Park with a friend. Occasionally I do something bigger – like an exhibition or a movie: last month I watched The Invite in an almost-empty cinema at 2pm, which felt like the ultimate indulgence. And made me so happy.

Carving out these pockets and pouring something joyful into them helps remind me what a privilege it is to be human and be part of this world. Of course, it’s a world also filled with challenges and heartache. Which is all the more reason to connect with its lightness, wonder and beauty whenever we can.

‘Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?’ wrote Mary Oliver in her famous poem, The Summer Day.

For years, I thought those two final - and most often-quoted - lines were about what you were going to do with your life. Purpose with a capital P. But I’ve now read it enough times to realise I was wrong. In the preceding lines, she wrote:

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?

‘To be idle and blessed.’ What a beautiful invitation. I hope you are finding ways to do so this summer. I’d love to know how. Please tell me in the comments – or by email! It’s always a pleasure to hear from you.

Love,

Annabel

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I’ve been dreaming of it for 40 years: the risotto I ate, as a child, for a handful of Augusts, at a restaurant in a Tuscan hilltop village.

I’ve been searching for it ever since, hoping to find it in every other mushroom risotto I’ve eaten. Of which there’ve been a fair few. But none quite lived up to that perfect childhood one.

There was one, in Bath, on a late October night a couple of years ago, which came close. The risotto – with its al dente rice, porcini mushrooms and dark brown earthy colour – reminded me of the Tuscan one. But the couple sitting next to me and my husband, scrolling on their phones all night and barely acknowledging one another, and the sweet, hip young waitress who said, ‘Lush choice,’ and ‘I hope you’ve had a good day of R&R’ were a million miles away from that family restaurant, presided over by a Mama, probably well into her sixties.

I’ve attempted to recreate it myself. This is the best recipe* I’ve found. It’s delicious and – the Italian Mama would no doubt turn in her grave – doesn’t need constant stirring. But it’s still not quite as good as the one in my memory.

Did it even exist, though? Perhaps time had morphed it into something fantastical, which lived only in my imagination.

Last month, I finally returned to Tuscany. The night before I left, while checking the route from Pisa airport to the hotel, I realised we’d be staying a 10-minute drive from the village with the risotto.

Was the restaurant even still there? Most of my London haunts from my younger years – like Café Delancey in Camden Town, with its café au lait served in dark-green cups rimmed with gold, or the original Pollo bar on Old Compton Street, with its vast plates of tagliatelle con spinaci – have long gone.

I typed the name into Google. There it was, still standing proudly on the piazza, next to the medieval fortress. And still owned by the same family who’d opened it in 1922.

When I was a child, the village’s narrow, winding main street had just a handful of shops, which closed for several hours during the heat of the afternoon. I remember slipping through soft, thick ropes of door curtains into the cool interior of the greengrocer’s or the Latteria, with its unfamiliar scent of strange, foreign cheeses.

On my return, the same street was filled with cafés, gelaterias and gift shops selling ten-euro packs of rainbow-coloured pasta and amaretti biscuits.

The restaurant still inhabited the same square-shaped building, once a family home, with its pale-yellow stucco façade. We always ate in the dark wood dining room, tables covered in red and white checked cloths, surrounded by the chatter of Italian families. On this warm June night, the room, which had been completely redesigned, was deserted. Everyone was on the terrace, which I don’t remember even being there.

My husband and I watched the local kids play football on the piazza, their ball thudding onto the fortress’s ancient stone walls. On the far end, a band were warming up on a podium, and the sounds of Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door drifted through the air, along with the scent of wood smoke from a nearby pizzeria.

I ordered risotto. I couldn’t not. Equally, I wondered if some things are best left as memories.

Not this, it turned out. Dark, buttery and dense with porcini, it was possibly even better than the imagined version I’d been searching for.

But, to my surprise, unlike Proust’s famous madeleine moment – where the taste of the small cake dipped in tea unleashed a flood of early memories – I wasn’t transported back to those August nights of my childhood, and the bittersweetness of knowing that, then, I’d shared the table with my sister who is now gone and with my parents who are now too old and frail to travel.

Instead, I found myself anchored in the here and now, enjoying the food, the ice-cold Prosecco, and my husband’s company.

The following day, in Florence, which I’d also not visited since childhood, again I experienced delight, not nostalgia, as I walked through its backstreets, the air smelling of leather, perfume and focaccia, the old buildings so beautiful, as were the store displays, sandals and handbags poised on white plinths. I ate panna cotta, stared at Rothko paintings for what felt like hours. And later, in the shade of San Spirito church, drank cool Campari Orange.

And I realised that in spite of all the changes, the losses and the gains these past 40 years have brought, there’s a part of me that has remained unchanged: the part that takes great pleasure in the world’s beauty – in its tastes, scents and textures. A part I hope will always be with me.

Love,

Annabel

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* I don’t think you need a subscription to access the recipe, but any issues, drop me a line and I can send it to you as I’ve saved it!

And here are some things I loved on my Tuscan holiday:

La Torre, Castellina in Chianti for the risotto (best to call ahead and pre-order, as it’s off-menu these days)

Vini e Vecchi Sapori, Florence (no website but there’s a nice CNT review here). It’s surprisingly hard to find good food in Florence, but this was fantastic (and home of the above-mentioned panna cotta), friendly, plus blasted out an excellent Madonna playlist! Do book ahead (by phone).

Mark Rothko exhibition at Palazzo Strozzi, Florence on until August 23^rd. Sublime.

Pisa, which I mistakenly thought was just an airport and a leaning tower, is actually gorgeous. We had an excellent lunch at Ristoro Pisano. Next time, I’d like to spend more than a couple of hours there, and have my eye on Palazzo Feroci, to stay at.

Queen Elizabeth II garden, Regent’s Park

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Last Wednesday, in a gap between storms, I slipped away from my desk and headed towards the new Queen Elizabeth II garden in Regent’s Park. Walking along the Broad Walk, the sky was grey, the air cool, but the canopies of the lime trees flanking the path were full and green.

It was the memory of another May day, exactly 24 years earlier, which insisted I break my mid-week routine, and propelled me towards the park. That day, in 2002, had been perfect, blue-skied. It was a Monday, and I should have been at work. Instead, I was in the car with my mother, driving along the Outer Circle, which wraps round Regent’s Park. Both of us were in shock.

The supposedly benign lump I’d had removed from my left breast four days previously was, I’d just been informed, cancer.

In the gaps between the hedges and railings encircling the park, I caught glimpses of the Boating Lake, of geese strutting across the grass, and people picnicking on it. This pleasure garden now felt like a world to which I no longer belonged.

For the rest of that year, while going through treatment, I took a leave of absence from work - having soon realised chemotherapy and my 60-plus-hours-a-week job as an architect were not a good match. And I spent a lot of time in the park.

There were languid summer afternoons, lying on the sweet-scented grass reading a novel. Oh, the luxury of having swathes of time to do the things I once fantasised about, while sitting at my desk cranking out packages of construction drawings. Albeit at quite some price.

There were autumn mornings walking through the park to daily radiotherapy, my feet crunching on the copper, gold and crimson leaves now carpeting the grass, my senses drinking in this landscape like never before, as the fear I might be living on borrowed time rumbled through me.

Meanwhile, the wedding invitations and pregnancy announcements kept coming; all the stuff you’re meant to be doing at 30. How was it that, while friends’ bodies grew babies, mine had managed to grow a tumour?

***

Sixteen springs later, on a beautiful April morning, I walked through Regent’s Park, exhilarated, and exhausted. I’d been awake since 3am - which was when I’d done the test, knowing it would be impossible to go back to sleep and wait until daylight.

Two blue lines had almost instantly formed a clear cross in the stick’s window. No need to desperately scrutinise it - as I’d done endless times over the past five years - praying to find that second line which, however faint, apparently meant you were almost certainly pregnant.

The clinic where I’d had the embryo transferred 11 days earlier requested I come in for a blood test to check my hCG hormones, which would indicate whether the pregnancy was progressing as it should be. I walked through the park’s Avenue Gardens, my secret curled inside me, the pale pink cherry blossom in full bloom.

Eight days later, I woke up to discover I was bleeding. It would be five days before a scan could show whether or not the embryo had a heartbeat. I was told not to teach yoga, and to avoid anything strenuous.

During what felt like an eternal wait, and with too much time on my hands, I headed to the park each day, taking slow, steady steps, fearful of disturbing the embryo I was far from certain still even carried a life force. I tried to use the hundred-year-old trees, the air fragrant with elderflower and the heron poised on one leg by the water’s edge as anchors for my spinning thoughts.

Eight months later, my belly now heavy with the baby, my heart heavy with grief, once again I found myself drawn to the park almost every day. My sister had died, suddenly, nine days before the baby was due. And in this surreal space, poised between death and birth, the bleak December landscape, with its bare branches, black soil and wind whipping my face was strangely comforting.

Once the baby arrived, I took him to the park most mornings, knowing that however sleep-deprived a night I’d had or however grief-stricken I was feeling, fresh air and nature would help. I’d push the pram along the Boating Lake, hoar frost coating the grass on crisp winter mornings and sunlight sparkling across the water.

By summer, when I’d started to get used to this new life without a sister and with a son, my husband and I would head to the rose garden most weekends. We’d place a rug under the shade of a tree, looking out towards the pink, yellow and white beds of roses, and pour cold Prosecco into glasses. And we laughed as the baby, who was now sitting and eating solids, tore handfuls of mozzarella off our takeaway pizzas.

***

Twenty-four years. It is shocking to write those words. In a good way, obviously. Because on that May day in 2002, I never dreamt I’d be granted this privilege.

It felt right, last Wednesday, to return to this park that has held me through the joys and sorrows which 24 years more of life inevitably bring. And to take a pause from its usual rush and routine to remember this privilege.

I’d intended to sit quietly on a bench in the Queen Elizabeth II garden, taking in its landscape of wildflowers, water and woodland. I found one in the quieter northern section, overlooking tall, wild grasses. But no sooner had I sat down, the wind picked up speed and rain began to fall. A minute later, thunder roared through the air and hailstones tumbled from the sky, scattering across the gravel path.

I stood up and ran towards the shelter of the nearby park café. As hailstones stung my skin, part of me was thinking ‘What the fuck - it’s mid-May!’ And another part was smiling, as I felt my heart beating and my body so alive and awake.

Love,

Annabel

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I refreshed my emails. Again. And possibly for the twentieth time that day.

It was the Thursday before Easter, and after a grey, cold April morning, the sun was finally out. I sat on a bench in my local square, beside a cherry blossom tree heavy with white flowers, chatting to a local nanny while my son played with the boys she looks after.

But I was distracted. Kept checking my phone. No new emails. Hardly surprising, given it was late afternoon and the UK was winding down for its only four-day Bank Holiday weekend of the year.

I was hoping for an email from a newspaper editor. A week earlier, I’d submitted an article she’d commissioned. It was the first time we’d worked together.

‘It must be a bit terrifying pressing send,’ a friend had commented while I was in the middle of writing the piece. It always is, because I have no idea how what I’ve sent will be received.

The editor had replied within minutes, acknowledging receipt. Then, there was radio silence.

On previous occasions, whenever I’ve written for a newspaper (I’m still relatively new to it, so don’t exactly have hundreds of examples to go by), the editor would come back to me within a few days, requesting minor tweaks, or a bit more information here and there.

I assumed this occasion would be no different. And given my article was a time-sensitive one, which needed to be out by Easter, once it got to Thursday evening and I’d still heard nothing, I started to imagine the worst: the piece wasn’t good enough to be published, and the editor was too busy or embarrassed to tell me.

As I don’t know many other freelance journalists, I even turned to the oracle, ChatGPT, for advice:

Silence doesn’t necessarily mean rejection, the bot assured me. It can even be a good sign. If there were major issues, you’d have heard by now. They may even just do some light internal edits themselves.

Yeah, right, I thought. You’re just a people-pleaser, designed to placate.

By the time Good Friday arrived, I’d concluded the piece was definitely terrible, I’d blown it and would never be able to write for that paper again. But I wasn’t going to let this ruin my weekend, not least as Easter is one of my most treasured times of year.

It was still early when my husband, son and I drove through the quiet London streets to Bloomsbury, to buy hot cross buns from one of my favourite bakeries. I walked back into our flat, carrying a bag of still-warm buns, inhaling their yeasty, cinnamon and citrus scent.

My phone pinged. It was a message from a friend’s mum:

Hi Annabel, congratulations on your lovely article! Just reading it now with my coffee. Cx

I went online. There it was, with barely a word changed from the copy I’d submitted a week earlier.

***

In the Hindu philosophical school of Advaita Vedanta, there’s a famous story about a man walking down a road at dusk. He sees a coiled snake lying on the ground, blocking his path, and is petrified. Eventually, he realises that in the dim light he’d mistaken what was actually a piece of old rope for a snake.

This story is an excellent reminder of why we shouldn’t always believe our thoughts, however solid and convincing they may seem.

Not least because humans have an innate negativity bias, which means our minds tend to assume the worst, not the best. This is an ancient survival mechanism, which was very useful back in the days when we might have actually been eaten by a tiger, as it helped us recognise and escape from danger.

When we combine this negativity bias with our tendency towards mind reading (even though we usually have no idea what someone is thinking, particularly someone we barely know), we end up concocting some pretty wild stories in our heads.

I’ve done this way too many times to even recall.

Like the time a couple I’d never met came to my yoga class. The man looked grumpy throughout, and when his wife returned alone the following week, I assumed he hadn’t enjoyed it. Weeks later he reappeared, explaining he’d had to miss class because he’d had surgery. He went on to become one of my most loyal students, attending all my retreats and workshops.

There was also the time I’d just got together with someone I really liked. Two days later, I flew to Bali for a month-long yoga teacher training. We texted back and forth on our old-school mobiles - it was just before the smartphone era. Then, a text I sent went unanswered. As did a second one. By the third day, I’d decided the only possible explanation for his silence was that he’d got back together with his ex.

The next day I woke up to two messages from him. I could see they’d been sent within minutes of my texting him. Something had simply gone wrong with the network. Sixteen years later, we are still together.

Sometimes, like last Thursday, it feels as if a slithering snake has taken over the entire room. When this happens, one of the most useful things I can do is step into another room for a while.

That evening, I went to a yoga class. I followed my teacher’s cues – breathe into your back ribs; root your legs and lift your heart – and in doing so, I connected to a quieter, more spacious place. After, the snake was still there, lurking at the edges of my mind, but it no longer took centre stage.

The following day I learnt, of course, that particular snake – just like the grumpy student and the ‘changed his mind’ new boyfriend – wasn’t even a harmless piece of old rope.

It was actually a coil of gold.

Love,

Annabel

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On the top of Primrose Hill with my 10-day-old baby, January 2019

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A few weeks ago, I taught a postnatal yoga class for the first time. The regular teacher was unwell, so I stepped in last minute. It was the first time in years – my son is now seven – I’d been in a room filled with new mothers and babies.

I loved teaching the class. Occasionally, I even got to hold a baby while instructing a pose, so its mum could get a chance to move her body freely.

After, I was elated. And also a little sad. Because being in that room really brought home how that season of my life is gone forever. The babies were adorable: a gaggle of them crawled over to the mum with the best selection of toys and sat beside her mat, forming a little circle. The tiny, pudgy hands of one clutched a squeaky giraffe, while another’s stroked the bright fabric wing of a firefly.

Watching them, I thought how could I not have enjoyed every precious moment when I had one of my own?

‘Are you loving every moment?’ I’d sometimes get asked back then. Often by women whose children had grown up. The question would infuriate me. And make me feel guilty.

I adored my son, and loved carrying him around London in a sling, his body warm against mine, and breathing in the scent of his head. I loved the way his hands twitched with delight whenever he saw his bottle coming, or how he’d sit on a rug in the park taking in the world with his huge blue eyes.

But I was not loving every moment.

I was often battered by sleep deprivation, and would fantasise about checking into a hotel for a week. There were long, dark winter afternoons at home alone, rocking my son and attempting to soothe his unfathomable screams while counting the minutes until my husband returned from work. Escaping solo to the corner shop to buy milk had become an exciting, almost illicit adventure.

What I saw in the yoga studio that morning was one side of new motherhood: mums who’d managed to get themselves dressed and out of the house for an 11am class, and who told me they were doing well. Babies who were mostly content.

Though I suspect that behind some – perhaps all – the women’s calm demeanours were also moments of bone-deep exhaustion, claustrophobia and rage. And that one day they too might remember their beautiful babies and think, Why couldn’t I have just enjoyed every moment?

This is the reality of much of life, and not just the radical unravelling of new motherhood: when we look back at what is forever gone, we yearn to both relive its good parts, and to live out the idealized, perfect version that was never going to happen.

Because life is multifaceted and every experience – including the ones we desire and choose – has many different flavours at play. When we’re in the thick of it, it’s usually impossible to enjoy every single moment.

Parenting a seven-year-old is much easier than caring for a newborn. Still, the chaos of a flat bulging with toys and where wooden railway tracks snake across the living room floor unsettles me. (These days I fantasise about hiring a skip and chucking everything into it.) As does how the school holidays seem to roll round again every five minutes, and usually just when I’ve settled back into my own work rhythm.

Yet I know there will come a day – probably sooner than I expect – when I’m sitting alone in a calm, pristine flat, the weeks stretching out ahead of me. My weekends will be free again for friends, exhibitions and relaxation. And I will ache for evenings curled up on the sofa next to my son as he reads to me from his school book. For the small, warm hand that slips into mine every time we cross the road. For always knowing exactly where he is.

Love,

Annabel

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It began in a hotel bar, on low, velvet-upholstered seating, close to the fire’s warmth, sipping amber liquid from a delicate coupe. It was the first Tuesday of the month I’ve always proclaimed is my least favourite. We had the room almost to ourselves, unlike in previous years when we’d visited in the frenetic run-up to Christmas.

Our December ritual of a cocktail and dinner dates back to the start of our relationship, when we realised we’d be spending our Christmases apart, as we each wanted to be with our own parents. Now we have a child, we spend it together. But our night out has remained sacrosanct. If anything, it’s now more needed, given how parenthood has morphed our day-to-day relationship into something akin to flatmates cum carers.

But the Christmas just gone, when December seemed busier than ever, it felt like one thing too many. January was, my husband and I agreed, walking the quiet, dark streets of Marylebone to the restaurant, a far better time for it. With almost empty diaries, slow-cooked lamb doused in a buttery, cinnamon-scented gravy and sprinkled with toasted almonds was now a luxury to be savoured. And - along with a glass of red wine - a small rebellion against January’s unofficial code of abstinence.

I’ve been there: the 21-day raw food diet, lugging green juice and dehydrated almond and mushroom burgers to work, sometimes eating lunch on a damp bench between meetings while looking longingly at sensible people streaming into warm cafes for pasta and soup. The nights spent under the glare of the gym’s bright lights, pounding the treadmill I loathed.

Luckily, those days are long gone. But every January my inbox is still bombarded with messages telling me about the weight loss potion, the green powder or the £999 confidence-building course I must buy, if I am to become a better version of myself.

On the back of so-called Blue Monday, tired and unmotivated, I booked a visit to the pop-up sauna at King’s Cross; not in the spirit of self-improvement, but simply because I love saunas. Walking there through Camden’s chilly, wind-buffered streets, the idea of an outdoor ice bath suddenly seemed like madness.

After being cossetted in the deep heat of the wood-fired sauna, I submerged my body into a near-freezing tub of water with its view of the sweeping slate roof of Coal Drops Yard silhouetted against the late afternoon sun. It revitalised me.

January’s had its bleaker moments: relentless rain-soaked days where the wet and the cold seem to take up residence deep in my bones. But there’s also been Galette des Rois, with its flaky pastry and almond frangipane filling. The exuberant crimson-stained interiors of the blood oranges I crave. And the morning sky on the walk to school, streaked with clouds of palest tangerine, the just-risen sun transforming the shiny white cladding on the blocks of flats we pass into rose gold.

Maybe the secret to January is to let it be its idiosyncratic, flawed self. Just as we might do well not to aspire to some perfect, impossible version of ourselves.

Today is its final day. Tomorrow is Imbolc, the Celtic Festival celebrating spring’s first whispers and marking the midpoint between the Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox. I last wrote to you on the solstice, and those six weeks seem like mere seconds ago.

Life is flowing fast. I don’t want to waste swathes of mine wishing January and its wintry companions away. So rather than compare it to the bright ease of a summer’s day, I’m dismantling the fortress wall I’ve long had up; the one which insisted I loathe you, January. The one which stopped me from seeing you as you really are, with your many small moments of joy. Moments which, in a world that feels increasingly unsteady, are all the more precious.

I’m paying attention to your dark rain-slicked pavements capturing the neon lights of Piccadilly Circus, like an urban art installation. To steam rising from the kitchen of the Soho noodle bar as thick, slippery udon glide down my throat. To the comfort of my bed as rain drums against the window.

Here’s to January: messy, imperfect and beautiful January. I think I might finally be falling in love with you.

Love,

Annabel x

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PS if you’re a yoga teacher or a dedicated student looking for something truly nourishing to do this winter, I highly recommend this Restorative Yoga Teacher Training , which is taking place in London in March, and is taught by my wonderful colleagues Joyce McMiken & Ali Masterman (plus the amazing Andrew McGonigle for the anatomy segment).

As this will be my last letter of 2025, I wish you and your loved ones all the very best for the holidays and for 2026. Thank you for being here.

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By 6.30am, we are in an Uber, gliding through London’s empty predawn streets. Golden angels, spun from hundreds of tiny lights, straddle Regent Street. In the darkness, they appear to float. We reach Piccadilly before the restaurant has opened, and stand outside its arched stone entrance and tall metal doors, shivering.

‘Nothing to eat after 8am,’ the hospital had instructed me. In a vaulted, double-height space with marble floors, once a 1920s car showroom, I eat pancakes with berries and crème fraiche and drink strong tea. At this hour, we are almost alone in the usually bustling room. It feels like the last meal we will ever share together, just the two of us. Because that’s what everyone has warned us about: no time for each other; make the most of it while you still can.

When we leave the restaurant, daylight has finally broken through: a dull-skied December morning, its clouds threatening rain. We still have a few hours before we’re required to arrive at the hospital. Not quite sure of what to do with ourselves in this liminal space, we wander along Piccadilly and up Burlington arcade, its shops still closed, shiny red baubles suspended from its glass roof. Winding through the Mayfair backstreets, we find ourselves pulled towards the church where we married, four years previously. We push open its heavy wooden door and light a candle for the baby.

The baby I am longing to meet, and longing to keep nestled inside me, so I don’t have to succumb to the sleepless nights and to a world where having a leisurely shower or drinking a cup of hot tea become unattainable luxuries.

One hour before sunset on the winter solstice, he is lifted out of the dark interior of my body and greeted by the bright lights of theatre. And with his body no longer tethered to my own, and needing all my care and attention, I step out of what Germans call the Zwischenraum and into the next chapter of my life.

Sol-stice: the sun stands still. While it doesn’t literally stop moving, it appears to do so, before changing direction. A good reminder that so often life is the opposite of steadily ascending a staircase, its treads and risers equally spaced and exists, instead, in chapters and in the spaces between them.

Sometimes, like the day my son was born, we’re very aware we’re on the cusp between one cycle and the next. Other times, the gap between them is - like the almost imperceptible pauses between an inbreath and an outbreath - so small we find ourselves catapulted between worlds. And sometimes, it’s only with the benefit of hindsight we realise:

Nine winter solstices before the one on which my son arrived, I was meant to be meeting a man with whom I’d had a brief relationship earlier in the year. It had fizzled out, with good reason, but lonely in the run-up to Christmas and fearing I’d never meet my perfect match, I’d convinced myself this was a mistake and had engineered a dinner date. That afternoon, he cancelled: a snowstorm had hit London and there were no trains into town.

Stuck alone at home that evening, I logged into Guardian Soulmates, the dating website I was signed up to. I clicked on the profile of a man I’d spotted a couple of days previously: he had huge blue eyes and was holding an old-fashioned camera and smiling. As snowflakes tumbled from the sky, I typed him a message.

While the route towards us actually becoming a couple had its twists and turns, when I look back on the night my now-husband and I first made contact, I now see it marked the end of all those years of being single, and the pause before the next chapter began.

The winter solstice has been celebrated for centuries, with festivals such as Yule or the Chinese Dongzhi, marking the shift from darkness to light. The ancient Roman version was called Dies Natalis Solis Invicti – or Birthday of the Unconquered Sun.

Today is, of course, the birthday of my son. We will celebrate by returning to the restaurant on Piccadilly for breakfast, as we do every year; a ritual of sorts. One where he now always orders the pancakes and I always remember that dark December morning, seven years ago, where I stood on the threshold excited, scared and uncertain of what came next.

Love,

Annabel x

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FREE NEW YEAR’S DAY YOGA

I’m teaching a free yoga class at Home on New Year’s day, from 2-3pm. It can be attended in-person or via Livestream. You can book here. I’d love to see you! If you want to come in-person, I recommend booking soon, as it’s already starting to fill up.

PS I’m not teaching my Sunday class today, but will back on December 28.

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‘I have so many figs,’ my mother says. ‘Are you sure you want them all?’

‘Perhaps,’ she suggests, ‘I should make fig jam. Or a tart.’

I do want them all. Because I can never have too many figs, especially when the crop from the tree in her garden is like this year’s: plump, swollen fruit, where the pressure of my fingertips against their surface leaves indentations on their dark purple skin. And while I like fig jam and tart, there’s nothing better than a whole fig, sliced into halves or quarters, its beautiful red and white interior revealed, its soft, sweet almost syrupy flesh filling my mouth.

When my mother was pregnant with me, she craved figs. Tinned ones, doused in single cream. Perhaps that explains my love for them. These days, she has little interest in them. And my father dislikes them altogether, their flavour reminding him of medicine he was forced to swallow as a child.

When I was pregnant with my son, I experienced no cravings. And no nausea. Nausea, I’d read, is a sign of a strong pregnancy and one less likely to end in miscarriage. By week eight - by which time it’s usually kicked in, if it’s going to - I felt no different to usual. Was my hard-won pregnancy even still viable?

I was concerned enough to pay for an extra scan. The thump-thump-thump of a heartbeat blasted through the ultrasound monitor. On the screen, a 20mm embryo appeared, nestled inside my body. Still wary something might go wrong, I kept its existence hidden from almost everyone until around 20 weeks, when the swell of my body gave my secret away.

I hadn’t anticipated conception would prove quite so challenging. Even though I was in my early 40s when my husband and I started trying, I had the example of my mother, who’d conceived effortlessly at a similar age

Month after month disappointment struck. Despite doing all the ‘right’ things: acupuncture, supplements, boiling up bitter Chinese herbs, eating kale, blueberries and oily fish. Even visualising my body as a cosy, welcoming home for an embryo to take up residence.

Meanwhile, friend after friend - including several also in their 40s – conceived, leaving me feeling like the only person who wanted a baby and was being denied one.

By late 2017, the constant cycle of hope and disappointment had eroded my usually decent mental health. Anxiety pulsed through me, and I was only managing to sleep three or four broken hours a night. Life felt flat and drained of pleasure.

My jittery, sleep-deprived body felt so far from that safe, calm home I’d repeatedly visualised for my baby. I doubted I even had the mental and physical reserves to look after one.

In the early hours of an April morning in 2018, I took a pregnancy test as instructed by our clinic. Eleven days on from the embryo transfer, I barely dared to hope. One familiar line appeared. Then a second, crisp and certain.

Pregnancy was not what I’d anticipated. Along with no cravings or nausea, there was no gestational diabetes, no preeclampsia, no placental abruption. All of which, I’d been warned, were significantly more likely at my age. And even though, just months earlier, I couldn’t imagine ever feeling joy and ease again, those nine months were so full of it.

Some years, the fig tree in my mother’s garden yields only tiny hard fruit, which cling to the tree and are inedible. Other years, the figs have leathery, shrivelled skins and pallid, tasteless interiors. One year, the crop arrived in November, when we’d given up hope.

This year’s harvest is on its way out. Who knows what next year’s will bring. If there’s one thing I’ve learnt, it’s that ripening is rarely predictable.

Love,

Annabel x

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I’m on a bench in Marylebone’s public gardens. The wind picks up speed, its chill slapping my face and hands. The branches of the London plane trees sway, like ocean waves rolling above my head, and clouds drift across a cerulean sky. Copper leaves skitter across the grass and the bare black soil of the flowerbeds. Only the rose bushes remain, stripped of all but a few tiny flowers.

There’s a raw beauty to this landscape, as the year settles into its final quarter. Then I remember a June day here, the grass a soft, warm carpet for my body, the sun against my skin, an abundance of pale pink roses. A thought jumps in - I wish it were still summer.

It reminded me how easily my mind can be lured away from the present moment, and how often it lands in comparison.

A few days later, I have a quick cup of tea with a friend after school drop-off. She tells me the son of a famous actor attends the same football class as her kids. We google him. I remark how handsome he is, and she tells me how nice he is. Back home, I google his wife. She is also an actress, and a writer. Stunningly beautiful, and profiled by the likes of Vanity Fair and The Guardian.

After peering into her life (albeit its glossy surface) the day ahead of me - a nice, normal one writing pitches, eating the porcini mushrooms my neighbour brought me back from Sussex for lunch, and collecting my son from school - suddenly feels a bit less than.

When I reread that last paragraph, I almost abandoned this letter. How can I say my life is lacking, when I have so much? I’ve never even aspired to be an actress, and I’m very happy with the husband I have. But then I realised, if I’m guilty of comparison, maybe you are too.

We compare ourselves to others. We compare what we’re doing now to what we could be doing. It might be a natural human trait, but it steals from the goodness of the moment, giving rise to thoughts like I am not enough or This is not enough.

In contrast, being inspired by others reminds us what’s possible, and can help walk us towards what we long for. I became a yoga teacher because I was inspired by the amazing teachers I had. But once I started teaching, I often compared myself to them, and felt I didn’t measure up. It took years to let go of this and realise I’m not meant to teach like them, but like me.

When I fall into the comparison trap, I find it helpful to imagine the world as a vast garden, where we’ve each been given our own tiny patch to tend, with its unique climate and soil. Your patch might be too cold for hydrangeas, but silver birch will thrive. Mine might be perfect for bluebells, but not sunflowers. What matters is we tend to our own patch with as much care as possible, sowing the seeds we’re meant to sow, and enjoying what’s bloomed. Otherwise, we risk neglecting what’s right in front of us, longing for a crisp English lawn when we have a velvety Japanese moss garden.

If comparison is the thief of joy, presence is what restores it. It’s appreciating the sunlight pouring into my living space through the tall bay window, instead of wishing we could afford a house with a garden in this neighbourhood. It’s celebrating the writing commissions I’ve received, instead of wishing I had the prolific and extremely successful career of a writer I follow on Instagram. It’s seeing the beauty in this London autumn morning, yellow-green leaves and Victorian redbrick villas a blast of colour against a grey sky, instead of wishing I was back in the Alps, hiking through forests and swimming in lakes.

It’s choosing to show up fully for this life, and remembering it’s the only one -with its unique gifts and challenges - that is ours to live.

Love,

Annabel x

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I sense her slipping away. I no longer wake to the searing light of midsummer, but to a pale blue sky, buildings and trees still dark silhouettes in the morning twilight. Pumpkins have appeared on the farmer’s market. A few nights ago, in the waning 7pm light, my husband, son and I had possibly our last picnic supper of the year, the grass on our local square already scattered with crisp, coppery leaves.

There’s often a golden luminosity to these early September days. They are exquisite, yet bittersweet, reminding me it’s almost time to say goodbye to the season I love most.

Perhaps my love affair with summer is inextricably linked to all the memories I carry of childhood ones. Almost two months off school, the days stretching out long and free: running through the sprinkler in my parents’ garden, eating Zoom ice lollies, devouring Nancy Drew mystery stories under the shade of the oak tree, picking tart, sweet blackberries from the bushes which sprawled along the garden wall.

By my late teens, those slow-paced summers were replaced by jobs. Then, after university, by full-time work. Sitting at my desk in the concrete and black steel surfaces of a Clerkenwell architect’s practice, hammering out a package of construction drawings to a tight deadline, I’d hanker after their ease and spaciousness, yearning to spend all day lying on the grass doing nothing.

In 2002, my fantasy of an entire summer off came true, albeit at a price: a breast cancer diagnosis and, with it, a prescription for months of chemotherapy. The first session was scheduled for the summer solstice and the final one for shortly after the autumn equinox. I knew the demands of my job and the side effects of chemo would not be a good match, so took a leave of absence from work.

In some ways, it was the worst summer of my life: one marked by fear, nausea, hair loss and endless visits to the oncology unit. It was also one of the best: I lazed around, spending much of my time in gardens and parks, reading endless novels. I went to daytime yoga classes when I felt up to it and, with nowhere to rush to, ambled through London and lingered in cafés. Scared I might never get to experience another summer, I also started to pay attention to all the so-called ordinary things, like the patterns a flock of birds create against the sky or the beds of tulips in Regent’s Park so scarlet they looked as if they’d been injected with artificial colour.

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These days, I spend most of the summer looking after my son. In July and August, the routine and structure of term time, with its drop-offs, pick-ups and trying to crack on with work in-between, dissolves and life reclaims some of the ease and spaciousness of those childhood summers. Of course, my time is not my own and I spend much of it sitting near sandpits, half an eye on my son, or dealing with complaints about how we’ve walked too much.

Still, there’s a softness to those days, which slip by in a blur of stone fruits and sweet tomatoes, where weeks melt into one another, teeth crunch through the chocolate shells of Magnums on a weekday afternoons, and cool showers provide delicious relief at the end of a sweltering day out.

I’m grateful, now school’s restarted, to have some time to myself and some structure back in my life again. But September also means the end of summer. Every year, I ask myself, how could she have passed so quickly? The solstice, when the light stretched beyond 9pm and summer was a blank canvas, so full of possibility, seems like yesterday.

I find myself clinging to her final vestiges, buying more plums, blackberries and basil than I really need, determined to make the most of them while they’re still around. I pray for a few more days, even weeks, when I can go out in light clothes and feel the air embrace my skin, or lie on the grass and offer my body to warm sunshine. I press my nose against the straggle of roses I pass most days and inhale what’s left of their fragrance, longing to bottle it up and hold it close forever.

But of course, nothing lasts forever. And what I’m trying to learn – it’s an ongoing lesson - is to savour everything I love while it’s here, without anticipating its inevitable passing, not least because this anticipation can mar the delight of the moment. When I need yet another reminder of this, I turn to these lines from the poem, In Blackwater Woods by Mary Oliver.

“To live in this world

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.”

It is almost time to let go. Almost time to welcome invigorating park walks, crunching through the bright yellow and acid green leaves carpeting the ground, steaming bowls of soup, hot baths laced with essential oils on cold nights, and lighting candles on dark mornings. And to remember they, too, have their own unique beauty.

Love,

Annabel x

The fiction I loved this summer

This summer, I fell in love with fiction again, having spent the last few years being more drawn towards memoir and narrative non-fiction. I loved all of these. And if you have any recommendations, please do put them in the comments!

Consider Yourself Kissed by Jessica Stanley

Flesh by David Szalay

The Echoes by Evie Wyld

Our London Lives by Christine Dwyer Hickey

Perfection by Vicenzo Latronico (translated by Sophie Hughes)

Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout

Show Don’t Tell by Curtis Sittenfeld

The Wedding People by Alison Espach

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A few days ago, a stranger called Ali rang my doorbell, to pick up some baby-feeding equipment I was donating via the Olio app. I’d pictured a thirtysomething mum, buggy in tow. To my surprise, an elderly man stood on my doorstep. ‘I’m collecting this for my daughter,’ he explained. ‘She has a six-month-old.’

He told me he had two daughters, neither of whom had wanted children. Then, aged 50, one found herself unexpectedly pregnant. ‘She loves being a mother,’ he said, eyes lighting up. ‘And I’m so happy - I never expected to become a grandfather.’

As he was leaving, he apologised for taking up my time (all ten minutes of it) by telling me his story. I assured him it had been a pleasure to hear. So much so, that later on I wrote down our brief encounter as one of the three things I was grateful for that day.

Gratitude journalling is something I go through phases of doing. I tend to return to it when I’m not at my most buoyant. Like during the first week of July, when a handful of rejected article pitches (an inevitable part of freelance writing, but never fun to receive), a night at A&E with my dad, and the start of the school holidays (i.e nine weeks of fulltime childcare) left me slightly flat.

Before going to sleep each night, I started to scribble down three things I was grateful for that day: the stunning pink geraniums I spotted on my street one morning; a cold shower, late afternoon, after a boiling day out; my son’s joyful face, as he ran around our local square with his friends; a delicious takeaway lunch of aubergine with green tahini sauce, eaten under a tree in Regent’s Park; the steady warmth of my husband’s palm in mine as we took a Sunday walk; the satisfaction of clearing out a cupboard.

This practice reminds me there are always nuggets of goodness to be found, however challenging life might be. And the more I keep my eyes open, the more of them I uncover. Humans have an innate negativity bias, which means we’re wired to notice what’s gone wrong. A gratitude practice acts as an antidote: studies have shown it connects us to the parts of our brain associated with positive thinking and reinforces the neural pathways that boost resilience and optimism.

By the time Ali showed up on my doorstep, I was feeling way better, though still keeping up my journal, enjoying sifting through my day to pick out three favourite moments. By writing them down, I was also creating snapshots, to one day look back on, of all these glimmers that could, otherwise, so easily be forgotten.

It wasn’t the first time a brief encounter with a stranger had made its way onto my list. Although, if I reflect on what improves my well-being, the likes of movement, meditation, dinner with a close friend, being in nature or reading a good book are way more obvious contenders than a random chat with someone I’ll probably never see again.

Thanks to a large body of research, it’s now known there’s a strong correlation between the quality of our social relationships and our well-being. More recent studies have also shown our ‘minimal social interactions’ (i.e. with strangers) form an important complement to our closer relationships. These so-called ‘weak ties’ help us feel anchored, connected and plugged into something larger. They also help make life more interesting by offering us new experiences and bringing us information beyond what we get from our inner circle.

However, we live in a world which, ever-increasingly, offers less opportunities for such chance encounters: we shop online or pay at self-service checkouts; we walk down the street plugged into our headphones; we can attend exercise classes, art classes and even church services via Zoom.

As a child, I was taught not to speak to strangers. As an adult, perhaps the greater risk is in avoiding them. When I sat down on a bench in Coram’s Fields Playground last week, and the woman next to me asked how I was finding the summer holidays, my first thought was ‘Why is she talking to me? I wanted to catch up on emails while my son plays.’ But our conversation, about the challenges of looking after young children during these endless weeks of holidays, yet the preciousness of spending time with them, proved way more nourishing than staring at my phone screen.

Connecting with the world around me, be it taking time to look at a beautiful bed of wildflowers in Hyde Park, having a fun chat with a restauranteur at a Hackney sauna, or savouring an iced flat white in the calm of a shady courtyard behind busy Oxford Street, never fails to inject a little more joy into my life. And when you stitch together all these small, seemingly inconsequential moments, I’d say they create a good foundation for a life well-lived.

Love,

Annabel x

PS I’m away next week, so won’t be teaching my yoga class at HOME Wellness on Sunday 23^rd or 31^st August, but I have great teachers covering it. I’ll be back from September 7^th.

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Share This Beating Heart

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Last week, two things happened. Both felt exciting. And a bit scary.

On Tuesday, an anthology on sibling loss was published in the US, with an essay in it by me. It’s exciting to have my words published, and an honour to have my essay chosen as the opening one for the anthology. It’s also scary, because it’s a deeply personal piece, about what it was like to lose my sister nine days before giving birth to my son. It’s the first time I’ve written in such intimate detail about the entwined worlds of birth and death, new motherhood and grief that I inhabited during my maternity leave.

I always knew I’d one day write about this experience. Partly because, in a strange way, I didn’t want to forget this otherworldly time: lying in my hospital bed the day after my C-section, my baby resting on my torso, his skin against mine, feeling the shallow rise and fall of his breath, in love with this perfect stranger, yet longing for the familiar embrace of my sister; of cold, bright winter mornings pushing my sleeping newborn through Regent’s Park, sunlight gleaming on the surface of the boating lake, frost clinging to the grass, and my heart so full of grief and wonder.

‘Is writing cathartic?’ I’m often asked. Pouring out words into a journal certainly is. But sculpting my scribbles into something more refined is, for me, less about catharsis and more about the healing power of creating something good (I don’t mean in terms of quality, rather the act of writing or painting or whatever medium we choose to express ourselves in is, I believe, an innately good thing) out of something bad.

It’s tempting, though, to hide my darker stories in a drawer and only share the lighter ones, about the likes of shopping or paying attention. What if the heavier stuff turns people away from me? Why on earth am I sharing such personal information? are questions that sometimes flit through my mind.

Yet I know, as a reader, how powerful reading the words of others who’ve been through similar challenges can be. Their stories have offered me solace and helped me feel less alone. They’ve been a beacon of light in the darkness, giving me the hope that I, too, might find my way through this. Which is why sharing my own, while exposing, feels important.

Last Sunday, I taught my final class at Triyoga, the yoga studio I’ve been teaching exclusively at since 2011. When I stepped out the beautiful, airy space my class took place in, knowing I’ll probably never return, I was sad to be walking away from what’s been a constant and joyful part of my life. I was also excited, because from early July I’ll be teaching at a wonderful new studio in Primrose Hill called HOME Wellness.

I was delighted to be asked to teach at HOME. It also happens to be located in the same place where I first fell in love with yoga so it, quite literally, feels like coming home. But leaving Triyoga, where I had well-attended classes and the loveliest students, also feels risky: I’ll be starting afresh, and will have to build up my classes again. What if no one comes? is a question that sometimes flits through my mind.

This is the thing with change: it can feel scary, even when we want it. Not least as those doubting, fearful voices within us are so good at rushing in and clamouring about all the reasons we shouldn’t take these uncharted steps. It helps to remember they’re just trying to keep us safe and save us from possible hurt, embarrassment or failure.

This ‘negativity bias’, where our mind focuses more on what can go wrong, is an ancient survival mechanism. Back in the days when we could actually have been eaten by a tiger, it was useful, helping us recognise and know when to escape from a threat. Nowadays it’s way less so, yet still hardwired.

But behind the surface noise of these voices, resides another: one we might describe as the voice of wisdom or deep knowing; one that instinctively understands when something aligns with what truly matters to us. I certainly felt that inner yes, when I was asked to contribute to the anthology and asked to teach at HOME. I don’t know what repercussions either choice will have. But I do know they’re the ones that make me feel alive, inspired and excited. Which is surely the right way to live.

Love,

Annabel x

As always, I’m so grateful for every comment, like and email reply. Thank you for reading.

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LINKS

The Loss of a Lifetime: Grieving Siblings Share Stories of Love, Loss, and Hope edited by Lynn Shattuck & Alyson Shelton is available to buy on Amazon

HOME Wellness opens on Monday 30^th June and I’ll be teaching Yoga Open every Sunday at 17.00, from 6 July. The class suitable for all levels, including beginners. You can book here. I’ll also be covering other teachers’ classes, so do check the schedule for updates.

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On a dark and rainy Monday night in late October 2001, I slipped through the gap between two buildings on a Primrose Hill side street and made my way to an old warehouse at the rear of a courtyard. I was there to try out a yoga class, with a teacher who came highly recommended. I’d done some yoga before. Although to be honest, I still didn’t quite get what all the fuss was about.

The class took place in a warm, candlelit first-floor room. It had a high, vaulted ceiling, a white floor and walls, and huge Crittall windows, which looked out over the neighbouring gardens. The space exuded calm. As did the teacher’s voice. He guided us through a sequence of movements, which were both fluid and precise. We spent the final ten minutes resting on our backs, eyes closed.

Lying there, I connected to a part of myself I’d long forgotten: peaceful, soft and spacious. A part so at odds with the rush of my day-to-day life as an overworked young architect, who regularly clocked up 60 hours a week at the office.

My previous experiences of yoga had not made me feel like this. I’d tried Iyengar classes, squashed into the sitting room of a teacher who was clearly brilliant, but not the right fit for me, at least back then: having spent all day sitting at the computer drafting working drawings and deliberating whether a door frame should be 80 or 100mm wide, my body needed to move more freely, rather than hold downward dog forever while obsessing over the exact position of my thumbs. Once, the teacher mentioned she was running a daylong retreat the following weekend, and I thought, why on earth would anyone waste their entire Saturday doing yoga.

Next, I tried Bikram yoga, which is practised at 40°C. The studio was a brightly-lit, mirrored room, behind a battered metal door on a parade of shops in North London. Here, Savasana (the relaxation typically included at the end of a yoga class), was very much optional. In any case, lying on the grey carpet, which smelt of sweat and the disinfectant pumped through the heating system, was not exactly relaxing. Sometimes, I felt sick after class, but the teacher reassured me this was a good thing: I was supposedly detoxing. When my skin broke out in the worst acne I’d had since my teens, I finally clocked that, perhaps, my body was telling me it was time to stop going.

After that first class at the Primrose Hill warehouse, I was determined to go every Monday. Soon, I added a Sunday afternoon class, with a different teacher. Then, a Thursday morning one, pre-work, after which I’d race to the tube, praying for no delays on the Northern Line, so I’d make it to my desk on time. And when, in spring 2002, I was diagnosed with breast cancer and took months off work to have treatment, one silver lining was being able to attend daytime yoga classes whenever I felt up to it.

My teachers were all excellent. But they weren’t the only reason I kept returning. It was also because of the space. As Peter Zumthor - one of my favourite architects - said, architecture ‘is an envelope and background for life, which goes on in and around it, a sensitive container…’.

Buildings are typically created for people to inhabit. There’s a symbiotic relationship between the two, and when a good space meets good human energy, the effect can be potent.

I was reminded of this on a recent holiday in Puglia, where my husband and I stayed at a 16^th century farmhouse, now a small, family-owned hotel. The dining room, with its stone floor, open fire, walls lined with bottles of olive oil and wine, and sideboards arranged with bowls of lemons and jars of flowers, was beautiful. But the owner’s kindness – for example, taking great care to tailor the set dinner menu to accommodate my husband’s intolerances, and always checking we had everything we needed at breakfast – enhanced my experience of being in the room.

In 2014, I walked out of the Primrose Hill yoga studio for the final time. The landlord had permission to redevelop most of the site into luxury flats, and the studio was forced to find itself a new home, in nearby Camden Town.

I missed the old place, and would often conjure up memories of it. In each snapshot - whether mid-class, chatting to a friend in studio before the start of one or, eventually, teaching classes there myself – the space itself was as much a part of the memory as the people I was with or the pose my body was in. Spaces leave their imprint on us. Even when we no longer physically inhabit them, we carry them with us, and are forever changed by them.

I assumed I’d never set foot in that building again. But life moves in mysterious ways and a new yoga space, HOME, is currently being constructed on that site, set up by same person (Jonathan Sattin) who created the original studio. I don’t know exactly what it will look like, but I trust it will be beautiful.

And on a light, early July evening, I will step into it again, this time as a teacher, whose intention is to help you experience some of the magic yoga plus a good space can offer us. I would love you to join me.

Annabel x

As always, I’m so grateful for every comment, like and email reply. Thank you for reading.

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Practise Yoga with me at HOME:

When:Yoga Open 17.00-18.15 every Sunday from 6 July (suitable for all levels, including beginners)

Where: HOME, Primrose Hill Courtyard, 7 Erskine Rd, London NW3 3AJ or via Livestream

Booking: via homewellness.uk – the schedule (and, I presume, bookings) will go live next week. You can also find details of limited founder memberships here

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On an April morning in 2018, I had an embryo transfer, after which I spent the afternoon on the sofa. My parents had bought it before I was born, and they’d handed it down to me when I moved into my flat. That autumn, once I was well into my second trimester, I turned my tiny office into a second bedroom and installed a desk in the corner of the living space.

Inspired by this mini-renovation project, I looked at the sofa, by now rather battered, through fresh eyes. ‘Shall we get a new one?’ I suggested to my husband. ‘No way,’ he said. ‘The baby will only trash it. Let’s wait.’

The baby did, indeed, paw it with his sticky fingers. And as soon as he could walk, he discovered it made a great trampoline. Back in the late 1960s, when my parents bought the sofa, its crisp rectangular lines and chocolate-brown, woven wool slipcovers must have looked elegant and contemporary. But well before I inherited it, its upholstery had become sufficiently tired for my mother to drape it in a loose off-white calico cover. Under my ownership, the cover collected a number of indelible tea and ink stains. Along with a few rips.

In recent years, every evening my husband or I would ‘rebuild’ the sofa: by the end of the day - mostly thanks to our son’s antics - its back cushions had sagged and collapsed and its cover was in disarray. One night last November, there was a loud rip when I sat down on it. A seam on the cover had come undone, again. It was, we agreed, finally time for a new sofa.

I couldn’t wait for it to arrive. And was sad to be losing the old one. It held so many memories; had held me through so much of my life.

It was where my husband and I sat after he arrived at my flat for the first time, fifteen Aprils ago, when we were on the cusp between almost-strangers and boyfriend and girlfriend. It was where we sat, two months later, his arms round mine, and he said, ‘Whatever happens, I’m sticking around,’ after a routine scan picked up a suspicious lump in my breast, following eight years in remission from cancer. It was where, days later, I took the call from the hospital I’d been anxiously waiting for. After which, I sank back into my trusty old sofa and cried with relief.

It was where, as a child and teen, I’d lie and read for hours, the light streaming in through the large south-facing windows of my parents’ 1950s house. And where, decades later, I fed my son, his tiny hands twitching in anticipation of his bottle, his gasps of pleasure as he guzzled from it. Once he finally started sleeping past 5am, it was where I’d sit alone, savouring my first cup of tea, in the darkness and quiet of a December morning or the brightness and birdsong of a June one.

The sofa hosted so many conversations with friends, our heads turned towards one another, our spines resting against its cushions, as confidences were shared, on this piece of furniture that felt much more relaxed and intimate than sitting on an upright, rigid dining chair. While sofas originated in Ancient Egypt, back then they were hard benches (suffah, from which the word sofa comes, means bench in Arabic), and nothing like today’s upholstered ones.

Seven years to the day of my embryo transfer, the new sofa arrived. The 0.2mm speck of life I was scared wouldn’t implant was now well over a metre tall, and he watched eagerly as four men hoisted it in through the bay window.

When I sat on it for the first time, it felt odd: its seat was slightly higher than its predecessor’s, which my body was so familiar with. With its buttery leather cushions, the colour of burnt caramel, supported on slender chrome legs, it was a beautiful stranger.

Just like my son was, when we brought him home from hospital. It took weeks, even months, for him to feel an integral part of my life. Overnight, I’d gone from being someone in charge of my own time who (mostly) knew what I was doing, to someone who struggled to even make myself a simple toast lunch, and had no clue what I was doing. During those early days, I was terrified I’d drop my son, or fall asleep while he was resting on my chest. Today, I’m terrified of staining the new sofa, and have taken to drinking my tea sitting on the floor.

‘I love the new sofa, but I miss the old one,’ my son said. I explained how it’s entirely natural to feel two conflicting things at once. And I thought back to those early days of motherhood where I was beyond grateful to finally have my baby, yet desperately missed the freedom of my previous life.

Love,

Annabel x

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‘Do you exercise?’ asked the nurse, during my pre-op assessment call.

‘Yes, most days,’ I replied. ‘Out of interest, why do you ask?’

She explained patients who exercise regularly (pre-surgery) tended to recover faster.

Recovering fast: my forte. Over the past two decades, I’d clocked up five general anaesthetics, a spinal one for my C-section and a number of procedures requiring sedation. I was on my feet again within a couple of days of each and every one.

This time would no different, I assumed. Not least as this surgery was relatively small-scale: a day procedure to replace my implants. Eight Decembers ago, when the original ones were inserted into my body, during a much bigger operation in which my own breast tissue was also removed , I met a friend for a leisurely lunch in Marylebone less than three days later. Two surgery drains still dangled from my torso, which I concealed with my husband’s oversized winter coat. The following week, once the drains were removed, I whizzed round London in Ubers, not wanting to miss Christmas parties, my chest still clad in dressings.

This time there would be no drains, no need to sleep on my back for 10 days (hell for a side sleeper), and no need for physio. And it would be spring. A continuation of the glorious London weather that surprised us at the start of this month. Or so I assumed.

My surgery was last Tuesday. By Thursday or, latest, Friday, I envisaged myself strolling through a sunny, daffodil-strewn Regent’s Park, and walking the leafy streets of Belsize Park, to catch a daytime movie at The Everyman.

Instead, I found myself lying on the sofa or on my bed, a blanket draped over me, managing half an episode of Industry (which I usually find impossible to switch off) before drifting into a nap. Once, I woke to see hailstones tumbling from the sky.

While under normal circumstances, the prospect of a solo duvet day would’ve been the ultimate luxury, in this strange hinterland between sickness and wellness, I was exhausted yet restless, longing for human connection yet longing to be left alone.

The pain was minimal. But I felt sledgehammered by the experience, and with zero inclination to leave the warmth of my flat and step into the once again wintry London streets.

Will this ever pass? I wondered. And with my brain so foggy, my body so tired, I couldn’t imagine ever writing another article, teaching another yoga class, or lifting another dumb-bell. All of which I’d done, as a matter of course, the previous week.

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Seven days, almost to the minute, after climbing onto the operating table in a brightly-lit basement theatre at The Royal Marsden, I walked into a Primrose Hill café, sunlight streaming through its plate glass windows. After a couple of hours there, having a delicious brunch and brilliant conversation with one of my closest friends, I realized I felt more or less myself again.

I am, of course, fully aware a week is, in the bigger picture, nothing. Healing our bodies or hearts can take weeks, months, even years. But this experience was a good reminder of how when you’re in the thick of whatever it is, it’s easy to think you’ll be stuck there forever. Even though the reality is, more often than not, things do pass, and we do heal.

It is, however, worth remembering healing doesn’t take place within a prescriptive timeframe, but within its own unique one. Which might be different, as I discovered, to our previous experience of a similar situation. Or different to our friend’s, or to that of someone we read about in a magazine article.

We are, after all, human beings, not machines; mysterious and fluid concoctions of body, heart and mind, forever responding to life’s myriad and changing circumstances.

Can we listen to our wise bodies, and try to give them what they’re calling for in the moment, rather than override their calls with shoulds and oughts. Can we let go of our expectations, which often involve narratives along the lines of ‘snapping back to normal’ as fast as possible. Be it sliding back into pre-pregnancy jeans post-partum, or getting back into dating post-breakup.

Some of the experiences that come our way are no small thing: being administered drugs strong enough to make you oblivious to the sensation of a scalpel slicing through your skin; carrying and nurturing a baby for nine months, then releasing it from your body and instantly being subjected to months of sleepless nights; losing someone you love. Why would we expect ourselves, or others, to bounce back?

Yesterday, I once again walked through a sunny, daffodil-strewn Regent’s Park. Tomorrow, I return to the hospital to have my dressings removed. In a few weeks, this experience will probably have faded into the background of my life, along with what has felt like this endless winter.

Things do pass. In their own sweet time. And the best we can do, when we’re in the depths of them, is tend to ourselves with as much presence, kindness and patience as possible, knowing the rhythm of our recovery may not align with the fast-paced one of the world we live in, but trusting it’s the one that’s right for us.

Love,

Annabel x

PS I’m not teaching yoga this Sunday, but hope to be back on either 30^th March or 6^th April, depending on what the doctors say tomorrow. Do check Triyoga’s schedule for updates.

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Late last summer, almost 10 years to the day my husband gave me my engagement ring, I noticed its stone had cracked. Formed from a thin, smooth sliver of diamond with delicate black carbon markings, I loved it very much.

This shouldn’t have happened, was my first thought. But when I brought the ring to the jewellery shop it came from, the woman there said, ‘If you wear something of this design every day for a decade, it’s inevitable it’ll experience wear and tear.’ When we’d chosen the ring, we had indeed been told that while it could be worn every day, it would never be as robust as a solid diamond.

Still, the cynic in me thought she was making excuses for something that, however gorgeous, had clearly been poorly-designed. But when I relayed her words to my husband, he thought they were entirely reasonable.

‘Things do wear and tear with time,’ he reminded me, yet again. Like he does whenever I bemoan the hairline cracks forever springing up in the walls of our home. I choose to forget our flat is anchored on the instability of London clay soil, with its cycles of shrinking and swelling. And being on the ground floor, it has the heft of three other homes and their inhabitants pressing down on us. Instead, I delude myself that its walls should remain pristine forever.

But does anything remain untouched by life? On the soft September afternoon my husband and I married, we were the brightest, most glowing versions of ourselves, buoyed by love and joy. A decade on, the love is still there, but there are cracks now, too.

Cracks which, to a large extent, have been created from becoming parents. Which is, of course, a huge privilege and a huge joy. But living with and caring for a young child has shrunk all the time and energy we once had for each other.

During a typical week, we now spend barely any time alone together, and our interactions are mostly reduced to logistics: did you remember to order more laundry liquid? Where did you put Alexander’s jumper? Don’t forget to pick him up at my mum’s after work….

As well as, sometimes, arguments, typically over who’s doing more childcare or chores: you went out three evenings last week. Yes, but you swanned off to get a haircut on Saturday afternoon while I sat out a three-hour birthday party.

But what we have figured out is that time alone together, away from our domestic world, mends those cracks. On our escapes - be it strolling through a London park, drinking basil-infused cocktails in a subterranean Soho cocktail bar, or hiking in a Slovenian valley - we get to reconnect with the versions of each other who exist beyond the tiredness, the grumpiness and the endless life admin.

Even though I miss the spontaneity and spaciousness of our pre-parenthood lives, where we might have texted one another at lunchtime to plan a movie and dinner that evening, there’s a preciousness to these occasional, organised snatches of time, which are so good at stitching us back together.

The jeweller’s told me my engagement ring would have to be sent to India, where it was made, to be repaired. The original sliver of diamond needed to be removed and replaced. We were emailed photos of six options for a new stone, and chose one somewhat blindly, unsure of how the image would translate into reality.

On a cold Saturday afternoon in January, my husband, son and I drove to the shop to collect the ring. What if I didn’t like it?

To my relief it was, if anything, even more luminous and beautiful than in its previous incarnation. I placed it on my left ring finger immediately, and couldn’t stop glancing at it. But that evening, when we got home, I took it off and carefully placed it in its box.

This was almost a month ago. Since then, it’s spent most of its time safely nestled in the bright pink velvet interior of its box, which I’ve tucked away in the back of a cupboard. I used to slide the ring on my finger every morning when I got ready. Now, I’m wary of exposing it to life, knowing if I do, it may, in time, crack again.

But is this wise? While it’ll remain intact in my cupboard, I’ll no longer experience the joy of wearing it every day. And isn’t life here to be lived fully? By doing so, of course we risk things cracking and weathering. But, as I’ve realised, they can often be mended. And sometimes in their reconfigured form, they are at least as beautiful as the one we left behind.

Love,

Annabel x

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The shortest day has now passed. Also known as ‘the return of the light’, it’s the one from which the hours of daylight will incrementally increase again, until they reach their peak at the summer solstice.

Yet we’re still in the belly of winter’s darkest days, its nights voluminous and swathing us for almost two thirds of a 24-hour cycle. And it’s January. The choirs singing carols and the daily doses of crumbly mince pies have departed, leaving the cold and the rain, with spring still a distant dream.

Spring and summer. My favourite time of year. And when summer fades and the grass is no longer a warm inviting carpet on which to lounge or enjoy picnics of pizza and Prosecco, I’m somewhat bereft. Come late October, when we’re firmly steeped in autumn’s crisp chill, and people start complaining about the clocks going back and the encroaching darkness, I find myself habitually nodding in agreement.

But while autumn and winter will never be my preferred seasons, a trip to the Arctic Circle in early December reminded me it’s possible to love the darkness.

At 66 degrees latitude, Harads, in the north of Sweden, is the closest to the North Pole I’ve ever been. I knew the nights would be long, the days short, but it was only on the flight from Stockholm up to Lulea, I realised quite how short. We took off at lunchtime, and once we reached cruising height, I looked out of my window to see the orange band of a setting sun hugging the clouds. When I disembarked at 2.30pm, it was into dusk.

By the time we left the airport, ‘night’ had descended. On the afternoon drive to Harads, we passed lone houses and occasional villages. Lights shone from kitchens and sitting rooms. And from the candelabras, paper starlights and fairy lights of Advent. Shining so brightly because they were suspended in darkness.

During my four days in Sweden, it was mostly dark. The sun would finally rise around 9am, hovering close to the horizon, as is it were a cosy mattress she couldn’t bear to detach herself from, then sinking back into slumber by early afternoon. But rather than being oppressive or gloomy, the darkness felt like a soft cocoon of black velvet. It also allowed me to really appreciate what light there was, be it the stars, the tiny sliver of the waxing Cold New Moon, or the stake lights dotted around the hotel grounds, demarcating the snowy paths from the surrounding birch forest.

When I returned to London, it was to a city full of light: angels straddling Regent Street, branches garlanded with what looked like hundreds of crystals, and sparkling Christmas trees.

But now it’s January and Twelfth Night, the official end of Christmas, has been and gone, the decorations packed away. I miss the pair of white paper starlights which, until Monday, hung in the side panels of the bay window in our living space. Every morning, as soon as I got up, I’d switch them on, the soft glow emanating from the tiny holes cut into their surfaces, offering just enough light to make a cup of tea.

This morning, I sat on the sofa drinking my first tea and looking out through the now bare bay window at the inky predawn sky and the black silhouettes of the trees in my neighbour’s garden. Two vertical rows of lights, in the stairwells of the flats I overlook, floated in the darkness. And I thought, this is strangely beautiful.

It’s easy to dismiss the darkness and see it as an intrusion, and not an opportunity. But if we let go of the assumptions we have about it, and the language we use about it, and look at it through fresh eyes, perhaps we can also discover its poetry; it is a time described by John O’Donohue as ‘the ancient womb’.

Perhaps, as we walk home in the evening, we can look through the windows of the houses we pass, and see their illuminated interiors, like stage sets, which offer a glimpse into a private world only the darkness really allows us to be privy to. And when we arrive at our own home, perhaps we can light a candle, cook a warm meal, retreat into a hot bath or early to bed with a book or a movie, all of which seem so apt when we’re held by darkness, rather than the luminous evening skies of high summer.

And while I’ll always choose summer over winter, I don’t wish to waste away big chunks of my life, longing for what is not. Which is why I’ll do my best to keep falling in love with the dark.

Love,

Annabel x

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This summer, on a train from Zurich to the Alps, I got talking to the woman sitting across the aisle from me. I’d guess she was mid-seventies to early-eighties. We lived in different parts of the world, but soon discovered common ground: she’d done her PhD at the same university I studied architecture at. Her father, like my son, was called Alexander.

While we chatted, I took in her face: sculptural, with prominent cheekbones and a strong nose. Big eyes. Her skin, a landscape of lines.

She was beautiful. Her good bones, lilting voice, intelligence and curiosity all contributed. And while I feel I’m supposed to say she was beautiful in spite of all the lines etched across her face, perhaps they, too, contributed to her beauty? They suggested (at least to me, a stranger on a train) a life fully lived and the courage and confidence to allow that life to inhabit her face, rather than try and smooth it away.

I was grateful. For an interesting conversation. And for the reminder it’s ok not to attempt to pursue eternal youth. Not least because the week before we left for Switzerland, I had a wobble:

‘I assumed she was younger than you,’ an acquaintance had said to me, mentioning a woman we both know. But it’s the other way round: I’m about five years younger than her. Admittedly, this woman looks preternaturally young. Although I’ve no idea whether it’s thanks to great genes or tweakments.

Even though I’ve always said I’m going to age gracefully, it unsettled me to be told I looked older than someone who’s actually older than me. Was it time to up my game? Was colouring my roots and slathering on an antioxidant-rich facial oil at night really enough?

But the woman on the train restored my intention to let my face be. Which, in middle class London these days, can sometimes make you feel like an outlier: recently, at a busy Notting Hill yoga class, the room was packed with thirtysomething to fiftysomething women, with uncannily smooth faces.

I first came across Botox two decades ago, when I was designing the Urban Retreat Spa, at Harrods. George, our savvy client, called me one Monday morning. ‘I’ve had a brainwave over the weekend,’ he said. ‘Let’s include a space you can pop in and get a bit of Botox in your lunch hour. There’s already demand. It’s only going to explode.’

He was spot on. Although, 30-year-old me couldn’t understand why on earth anyone would want to inject something into their face.

In the years that followed, I had plenty of needles inserted into my skin. Not my face, but my hands and arms. Needles to administer chemotherapy, following a breast cancer diagnosis, at 31. Needles for blood tests, in its aftermath, to check my cancer markers. Then needles to monitor my hormones, while trying to conceive.

All those needles helped save my life, and create a new life inside me. Perhaps I’m just done with them. And perhaps part of me doesn’t want to banish the evidence of all these years of life I’ve experienced; ones I once feared I might never get to have.

There are lines carved around my eyes and mouth from all the laughter and smiles. Furrows in my brow from worries and losses. The landscape of my face holds life’s ten thousand joys and ten thousand sorrows. I’m not convinced I want them eradicated by injections to freeze muscles and infill wrinkles.

And do I really want my face to become something I forever scrutinise through a critical lens, hunting down new signs of ageing, and discovering more ‘problems’ to fix?

The Japanese aesthetic philosophy of Wabi-sabi finds beauty in what is imperfect and impermanent, in that which is aged and weathered. Kintsugi, which is one facet of Wabi-sabi, is an ancient Japanese technique used to repair broken objects. Pieces are glued black together using lacquer mixed with gold powder. These form visible gold seams along the crack lines, which become an intentional part of the object’s beauty.

Of course, when we’re talking about a woman’s face, it’s more complex than our relationship to a porcelain vase. Because we have, for an eternity, lived under the male gaze. This can mean it’s easy to feel our value is derived primarily from our appearance and our youthfulness.

I’m sure as I (hopefully) have the privilege of clocking up more years of life, there’ll be days I look in the mirror and am unravelled by what I see. But I shall do my best to remember women like the stranger on the Swiss train. And remember that while youth is beautiful (something we often only realise once it has passed), it is not the only kind of beauty.

Love,

Annabel x

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I love strawberries. They’re possibly my favourite fruit. I love them unadulterated, an entire one in my mouth, teeth gliding through its soft skin, to discover its sweet, succulent interior.

But it’s been months since I bought a punnet. I now only buy strawberries when they’re in season in the UK. Along with almost all my fruit and vegetables. With a few notable exceptions, like aubergines (a love affair) and lemons (an essential).

I’d love to say this is primarily to reduce my carbon footprint. But the truth is, I became tired of slicing into rock-hard mangoes from an online supermarket shop, their flesh more pallid than saffron. Or receiving, on a December day, a pack of withered-looking asparagus. And, conveniently, there’s a farmer’s market every Saturday on the corner of my street, in the playground of the local primary school.

Produce sold at the market has to be grown on soil within 100 miles of the M25. This has woken me - the eternal city dweller - up to the reality that to everything there is a season.

A season for plump, green asparagus, with their purple-tinged tips. When, for a few glorious May and June weeks, I toss whole bunches into bowls of pasta, laced with butter and pecorino.

A season for the red and crimson hues of the strawberries, cherries and plums, each briefly taking centre stage, before disappearing until the following year.

And a season when the leaves start to turn and there’s a bite in the air, and even the blackberries – summer’s final fling – are gone, the courgettes soon to follow.   

I’m always wistful saying goodbye to what I love. But alongside the letting go, comes welcoming in the new. Pumpkins, with their ribbed orange skins. Knobbly roots of celeriac, earth still clinging to them. The first pears.

I like pumpkin and celeriac. Not as much as glossy English-born aubergines, baby tomatoes and cucumbers, or the delicate, fragrant leaves of basil. But I’ve come to enjoy being forced (a self-imposed restriction!) to spend time with them, hunting down recipes that celebrate them, like this one, and trying to make the most of our time together.

A bit like with autumn and winter, which are not my favourite seasons: if I had my way, it’d be forever May and June. Yet there’s something so beautiful about late November’s waning afternoon light, semi-naked trees and final blast of golden leaves, that I’m strangely grateful to be forced into a relationship with it.

Yesterday, when I walked into my local newsagent’s, I was greeted by a shelf full of gold foil-wrapped Lindt chocolate bunnies. Tempting. Along with the hot cross buns I could pop into my Ocado shopping trolley. But the luxury we have, of being able to buy anything at any time of year, somehow renders things less precious.

I want to do my best to savour what’s here, when it’s here, and not get deluded into believing it’ll last forever. Be it the daily walk to school with my son, or the weekly visits to Gail’s for tea and cake with my very old father.

And somehow, showing up at the market on a freezing cold Saturday to buy crisp green bunches of kale, their frilly leaves glistening with raindrops, and knowing the months of berries and basil are still far away, helps me remember this.

Food is a passion, so it’s not surprising it’s ended up being what helps remind me to everything there is a season. There are so many differrent ways we could explore this, though: how we move our bodies at different times of year, the colours we wear, the scents we use in our homes, the morning routines we craft, to name a few. Or simply taking walks in nature, a park, or even along a city street, and paying attention to the ever-changing landscape.

Do you have any seasonal habits? And if so, have they reframed your relationship to time/life?

Love,

Annabel x

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Compton Terrace Gardens, London

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Occasionally, I take my son to an ice cream shop on Islington’s Upper Street. It’s a bit of a trek, but well worth it, for flavours such as dark chocolate with sea salt, or malt and crushed maltesers. And to get there, we take the Overground train, which my son loves almost as much as he loves ice cream.

From Highbury and Islington Station, the most direct route to the shop is to walk down Upper Street, an artery dense with traffic, buses, shops and cafés. But on the east side of the street, tucked away behind nineteenth-century black railings, and shielded by the mature trees dotted along its perimeter, is a long, slim public garden. And on the other side of this garden, is a pristine terrace of Georgian houses, in the midst of which sits the soaring red-brick tower of a Gothic-style church. It’s a world away from the noise of main road and the seventies-looking office buildings flanking its west side.

Even though it’s a slight detour, and involves crossing the main road twice, I always make sure we walk through the gardens to get to the shop. Because I want to immerse myself in beauty whenever I can. It’s easy to forget to. To be preoccupied, instead, with being efficient, and getting places as fast as possible. It’s also easy to walk right past beauty and not even notice it, because we’re so caught up in our thoughts, our worries.

But when we catch beauty, it lifts our spirits, and can inject some magic into an otherwise humdrum day.

Beauty is all around us. Sometimes, it’s right in front of our nose. Other times, it reaches out a tendril towards us, beckoning us to come closer and explore, like when I glimpsed those black railings and mature trees and was curious to discover what was tucked behind them.

I first came across the term ‘beauty hunter’ in a book called On Being Human by Jennifer Pastiloff. She describes it as ‘The key to surviving life. The key to being human. The key to climbing out of the catacombs.’ And while I don’t think we can have too much beauty in our lives (and most of us probably make do with too little), when we’re navigating one of life’s tough seasons, seeking it out is even more important.

I read On Being Human during an intense year, when the exhaustion and overwhelm of new motherhood was interwoven with the grief of losing someone close. Every morning, when my son napped, I’d force myself out of my flat, and push the pram through Regent’s Park, the ache of loss often palpable in my heart. And I’d try and soak up the little miracles all around me: the acid-green leaves clinging to the branches of a November tree, or the still form of a heron, poised on one leg, by the edge of the boating lake.

Beauty doesn’t obliterate grief or any other difficult emotions we might be experiencing. Nor should it, as it can be healing to make space for those, rather than trying to paper over them with a veneer of denial. But it can provide a much-needed antidote to whatever we’re going through, reminding us that however harsh life might be right now, there are also moments of wonder threaded through it.

In Divine Beauty, John O’Donoghue wrote, ‘There is, in each of us, an unprotected place that beauty can always reach out and touch,’ and, in an instant, can ‘awaken under the layers of the heart a forgotten brightness.’ But, as he reminds us, to enter its embrace we must walk this earth with reverence and patience.

I’m trying to remember to do so. This morning, on my way back from drop off, I found myself walking along the street, while texting my husband about a leaking tap. But when I put my phone away and looked around, I saw that even on this chilly grey-skied morning, on this London street, there was beauty: a final straggle of magenta roses, the textured bark of a cypress, the elegant Victorian villas, a tree resplendent with aubergine-coloured leaves.

These moments of connection are, almost always, the stand out ones from my days. They cost so little, demanding simply our presence, or a couple of extra minutes of our time. Yet give back so much.

Love,

Annabel x

Thank you so much for reading. If you enjoyed this letter, it’s a huge support if you leave a like or a comment below, or forward it to a friend. And I always love hearing back from you via email, too!

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