Last night in The Living Page, (the fortnightly online writing group) we explored The Acorn. We began with the story, then moved through a series of writing invitations, following what the Acorn might reveal in our own lives.

I’ve gathered all of tonight’s invitations here so you can return to them in your own time. -

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Thursday 3 September · Online · 2 hours

This Thursday, The Living Page gathers again, and this time we’ll be writing with the acorn - exploring ancestry, inheritance, the things that travel through generations, and the strange question of what a small seed can teach us about everything we carry.

The Living Page is my online writing gathering where ecology, story and imagination meet. Every two weeks, we take something from the living world, a seed, a migration, a fruit, a process unfolding in the more-than-human world, and use it as a doorway into our own writing.

You don’t need to be a writer to come, and you don’t need to arrive with anything prepared. Some people come because they already write and want to find new ways into their work; others come because they want two hours to think, wonder, remember and put something onto the page.

I bring together story, ecology, science and the old ways humans have understood the living world. There is a longer story at the heart of the evening, periods of guided writing, shorter writing doorways that take us somewhere unexpected, and time at the end to share some of what has emerged if you would like to.

There is no expectation to make something polished or finished. The writing can be messy, surprising, strange, tender, fictional, remembered, half-formed. You might leave with the beginning of a story, a piece of poetry, a memory you had forgotten, an image you want to follow further, or simply a page of words that did not exist two hours before.

We write together quietly, cameras on and microphones off while we are writing, with the company of other people making something alongside us. There is something I love about that - being alone with your own page while knowing that, in rooms and kitchens and bedrooms elsewhere, other people are following their own threads through the same story.

Throughout the evening, there are invitations to share some of what has emerged on the page. Hearing where the same doorway has taken other people is one of the loveliest parts of writing together, and often opens something new in the room. You’re welcome to share whenever you would like to, and equally welcome to simply listen when you don’t.

Afterwards, I send everyone a written version of the gathering, including the stories and writing invitations, so you can return to anything you want to explore further.

This Thursday, our doorway is the acorn: a tiny thing carrying an immense inheritance, and a beautiful place from which to wonder about what has travelled into us, what lies quietly within us, and what we carry onwards.

All you need is the link below, something to write on and something to write with, perhaps a cup of tea and a comfy place.

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LINK……

You need to be a paid subscriber to access this link, if you don’t want to subscribe, but would still like to come, you can book a space through eventbrite here - Eventbrite

ZOOM LINK for paid subscribers BELOW……

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Hello

Here is the link for tomorrow’s (Mondays) Creativity Circle. 12.45 - 3 (you can leave when you want to though of course)

I really look forward to seeing all those who can come.

Brigit xx

Link -
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87527658108?pwd=uCNwm8QCp6wzEw7WKdRE0kZ1kz92az.1

Meeting chat link
https://us02web.zoom.us/launch/jc/87527658108

Meeti…

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Hello

Here is the link for tomorrow’s (Monday’s) Creativity Circle.

This is a space in which to bring something you wish to explore creatively - perhaps something you are already working on, something you have been wanting to begin, or simply a curiosity you would like to follow.

We begin by arriving together and sharing a little of what we are bringing to the circle. We then move into a longer stretch of quiet creative time, staying together online with cameras on and microphones off, each of us absorbed in our own making. You might write, draw, paint, stitch, work with clay, collage, or simply follow whatever wants your attention that day.

We come back together towards the end, with space to share something of where the time has taken us if we want to. There is something lovely about creating in the quiet company of others, having a place in the week where our creative lives are given time, attention and room to move.

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LINK…….

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Illness has always had a way of illuminating what is precious to me.

When the body can no longer keep pace with the life I have made around it, so much falls away. The errands, the plans, the work I thought could not wait, the messages I meant to answer, the hundred small urgencies that ordinarily crowd a day. Energy becomes something I have to spend carefully. I begin to understand it as a finite substance, something held in the palm that I cannot afford to scatter everywhere.

And in that paring down, I become acutely aware of what I want my life to be made of. Who I want beside me. What I want to give my remaining strength to. Where love lives, where joy rises, what draws me towards beauty and aliveness.

This time, unexpectedly, my attention has fallen on people.

The particular value of those who can lead me towards the joy that already resides in me, towards love, laughter, beauty and the desire to be here. With so little energy to draw upon, I have felt more keenly what a remarkable thing it is for another person to awaken more life in me; to leave me with more access to myself, rather than less.

During this illness, blood from someone I will never meet entered my body through a thin tube and became, for a while, part of what was keeping me here. I find something profoundly moving in that: one human being giving something of themselves so that an unknown life might continue.

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And perhaps this is what I keep circling - what becomes possible in us through contact with another living being.

I know this intimately through plants.

Plants have a way of directing our attention towards what already lives within us. Through their qualities, their medicine, the way they grow and the stories they carry, they can remind us of our own strength, tenderness, resilience or capacity for change.

A rose can lead me towards my own heart. Their scent brings my attention there, to the tenderness and love already living within me, to my capacity to soften and open.

Nettle brings me somewhere else: into my spine, into strength, into the knowledge that the ground beneath my feet is mine also to inhabit.

Dandelion takes my hand and leads me towards what is still living and breathing beneath stagnancy and toxicity, towards movement, possibility, the life continuing underneath.

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None of these things are given to me by the plant. They are mine. And yet relationship with another living being can make them easier to reach.

I am seeing clearly how people can do this too.

There are people in whose company I become more fully myself. Something in their presence leads me towards the joy that resides in me, towards my own capacity for laughter, curiosity, beauty, play. Around them, my nervous system seems to remember another language. My body becomes less occupied with vigilance. I can feel the world again. Food tastes good. Light catches my attention. I want to make things. I want to go outside. I hear myself laughing and recognise the person making the sound.

Illness has made me understand the value of this more deeply. When energy and capacity are stripped back, what nourishes life becomes easier to recognise. I have become more aware of the people after whose company there is more life in me, and of how precious that is: to spend time with someone and find myself returned to the world with a greater appetite for being in it.

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There is an ecology to our relationships that I understand more clearly now.

A woodland is shaped by relationship: roots touching fungi, fungi reaching minerals the tree cannot reach alone, birds carrying seed, insects moving pollen from flower to flower, dead matter becoming nourishment for what comes next. Life is constantly entering life, altering what becomes possible.

Humans are no less ecological. Our bodies are continually being made and sustained by what exists beyond their edges: by air, water, food, bacteria, plants, animals, and the innumerable lives and processes on which our own lives depend.

And during this illness, that dependence has reached me through another human body too.

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I could not make my own red blood cells quickly enough. I could not will haemoglobin into existence. I lay beneath a bag of another person’s blood and allowed their body to help mine.

There is humility in that which I am still trying to understand. To be alive because other lives have touched mine.

There is another truth here that is harder for me to write.

I love working with people. I am deeply interested in them, fascinated by the strange and intricate ways we become ourselves. I love being in groups, and the intimacy that can grow through sharing and opening with each other. I adore my friends, and I love my boys beyond anything else in this world. And yet being cared for by people is difficult for me. There have been enough experiences in my life where closeness has come with harm that some part of my body still understands receiving as dangerous. Care can feel as though it might lead somewhere I do not want to go, as though accepting something will create a debt I did not agree to, or place me in hands I cannot easily leave.

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It is much easier for me to receive from the more-than-human world.

I know how to let a river hold me. I know how to lie beneath trees and allow my breathing to change. I know how to take medicine from a plant, to put my hands into soil, to follow fungi through the dark. I have trusted these relationships with parts of myself I have found much harder to place in human hands.

And perhaps this is why what I have noticed during this illness matters so much to me. I have felt the medicine of the right people. Not only what they have done for me, but what their presence has made accessible in me: laughter, pleasure, love, curiosity, a greater appetite for being alive. The medicine remains mine, just as the tenderness a rose leads me towards is mine, but relationship can help us reach what we cannot always reach alone.

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I want to hold on to that thread. I know how easily it could leave me once I am well, caught on the old winds of self-protection, until I find myself once again believing I can make a life from trees and rivers and plants and animals and very little else.

But a forest has never taught me that.

A forest is made through relationship. Fungi enter into intimacy with roots. Trees feed and shelter other lives. Bacteria make nutrients available. Birds carry seeds beyond the reach of the tree that made them. Life is continually being made possible by other life.

I need the river, the fungi, the plants, the trees. I need the creatures with fur and feather and scale. I need all those lives that have taught me, steadied me, fed me and brought me back into relationship with myself.

And however carefully, however discerningly, however much my body still wants to argue with me about it, I need some of the two-leggeds too.

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Tonight in The Living Page, (the fortnightly online writing group) we explored The Dark Harvest. We began with the story, then moved through a series of writing invitations, following what the dark harvest might reveal in our own lives.

I’ve gathered all of tonight’s invitations here so you can return to them in your own time. We didn’t do the ‘Harvest Offerings’ invitation together, but I’ve included it here anyway for anyone who would like to continue exploring.

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Hello lovelies,

A little reminder that The Living Page (our online writing gathering) is gathering again this Thursday evening, when we’ll be entering The Dark Harvest.

Thursday 20th August · 7–9pm · Online

There comes a point in the growing year when we get to meet what all our tending has made. We gather what has ripened, taste what has grown, give thanks for what nourishes us.

And there is another part of harvest too.

The things we have faithfully watered and fed that no longer taste good. The fruit we keep eating even though our bodies recoil. The things we have grown without quite meaning to that we are frightened to taste. The strange abundance of a life: what has flourished, what has taken over, what we are ravenous for, what we have had enough of.

This is the territory of The Dark Harvest.

We’ll begin with the story of harvest - moving through late-summer hedgerows, ripening fruit and my grandmother’s old kitchen table - before letting it lead us into our own writing.

From there we’ll write. We’ll play with image, story, memory, the body and the imagination, following some strange and earthy doorways into the gardens of our own lives and seeing what appears on the page.

There will be space to share if you want to, and absolutely no pressure to do so. Your writing can remain entirely your own

These evenings have become such a rich and nourishing stew of words, people, wild stories and unexpected places on the page, and I’m really looking forward to gathering with you again.

Let me know if you have any questions

Brigit x

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* If you’re a paid subscriber, your place is included with your subscription - your link is at the bottom of this page.If you’re not a paid subscriber (and don’t want to become one), you’re very welcome to come along too. You can book a one-off place through Eventbrite here:

EVENTBRITE LINK → https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/1997567467067?aff=oddtdtcreator

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Hello lovely people,

I’m home! I’ve just got out of hospital after needing to spend some unexpected days there receiving some emergency treatment, and I can’t tell you how glad I am to be back in my own little corner of the world.

And I’m really looking forward to seeing you all at Creativity Circle tomorrow 12.45 - 2.30/3.00 UK time. After the last few days, the thought of spending an hour together, writing, creating and being in each other’s company feels especially precious.

See you there

Brigit

Below is the link for tomorrow’s circle: a place to come together and share, before sinking into your own creative practice, held in the quiet company of others doing the same. At the end, we gather again to share whatever has emerged and say goodbye.

It’s a space to give your attention to something you’ve been longing to explore, begin, return to, or simply spend some uninterrupted time with. You might write, draw, knit, collage, paint, sculpt—or bring whatever creative practice is calling for your attention.

LINK——→

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The Dark Harvest

Hello,

I hope August is treating you gently.

Below is the link for the next writing gathering on the 20th August.

I’ve been gathering thoughts for our next Living Page, and finding myself thinking a lot about harvest, though maybe not quite the harvest we usually imagine.

There is a point in the year when the question begins to change.

For months, the living world has been busy with becoming. Bud, blossom, fruit. Energy poured towards growth. And then comes harvest: the moment of tasting what all that tending has made.

I’ve been thinking about harvest as something more than gathering what is good.

Because sometimes we grow things we no longer want to eat.

A life can be full of things we have tended faithfully for years - ways of being, relationships, habits, ambitions, roles, stories about ourselves, and somewhere along the way we lose our appetite for them.

The body often seems to know this before the mind does.

Something that once nourished us begins to taste off. Something we once reached for without thinking sits untouched. We keep tending because we have always tended, feeding because we have always fed, long after some quieter part of us has begun to say: I don’t want this anymore.

And there are other things, too, that have ripened almost without us noticing. Things we want to gather close. Things worth carrying into whatever season comes next.

This is where we’ll be going in the next Living Page.

The Dark Harvest is an online writing gathering on 20th August, 7–9pm UK time. We’ll begin, as always, with a story from the living world, moving through ecology, science, folklore and poetry, before following it into our own lives through writing.

We’ll be tasting what has grown: what still nourishes us, what we have lost our appetite for, what we want to gather and carry forward, and what we are ready to stop tending.

£15, or included with your paid Into the Woods subscription.

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LINK to The Living Page: The Dark Harvest →

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Hello,

For those who couldn’t come, or for those who did and want to explore a little further, here are the writing invitations from our last Living Page, where we explored the story of Migration.

We began with me reading the story of migration, following some of the extraordinary journeys taking place across the living world — birds crossing continents, salmon returning to rivers, butterflies carried on currents of air — and the many ways living beings know when it is time to move.

From there, we explored what these ancient movements might stir in our own lives: the pull towards somewhere new, the knowing that it is time to leave, the uncertainty of what lies ahead, and the inner compass that can begin turning before we quite understand where it is leading us.

Below are the writing invitations we moved through together. You can follow them in order, choose the one that draws you, or come back to them whenever something in your own life begins to shift.

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Hello Love Bugs,

Below is the link to tomorrow’s women’s creativity circle, 12.45- 3 uk time, as always, it will be lovely to see those of you who can come.

It is taking me a while, but I am still looking into when I can create an evening one for hose who daytimes are a little tricky.

For those who haven’t been before, this is a space to come with something you’d like to explore- writing, drawing, weaving, sewing, knitting, painting, dancing, journaling, poetry, reading, singing, planning, dreaming, crafting, collaging or some creative something.

We gather, share a little of how we are, then turn our mics off and spend an hour together, each doing our own thing. At the end, we come back together and share a little of how the time was for us.

It’s a space to explore something you’re curious about, play with an idea, practise something, or simply spend time getting to know a creative part of yourself. You don’t need to think of yourself as an artist or even particularly creative to come — only to want a little more creativity in your life.

People often say there is something about being in the quiet company of others that helps them stay with what they’re doing. Things they might otherwise put off, get distracted from, or struggle to make time for become easier to give their attention to. For an hour, there is simply a little space held open for whatever you want to explore.

LINK……….

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Below are the links for this week’s Creativity Circle on Monday and The Living Page on Thursday. It would be so lovely to see those of you who are able to join us.

Monday – Creativity Circle
12.45–2.30/3.00pm (UK time)

Mondays Creativity Circle is a gentle, shared women’s space for anyone longing to spend time with something they feel drawn towards. Whether that is a long-neglected creative practice, a new curiosity, or simply the desire to make something with your hands, this is a space to finally give it some room.

We begin by checking in with one another, sharing a little of how we find ourselves, before settling into around an hour of uninterrupted creative time. During this time our microphones are off and our cameras are usually on, creating a quiet sense of companionship as we each disappear into our own work.

People come to weave, draw, paint, journal, write poetry, knit, stitch, collage, sculpt, dance, plan, dream, forage, mend, or simply sit with an idea they have been longing to explore. There is no right way to spend the time.

People say that there is something quietly powerful about creating alongside others. The space seems to hold our attention in a way that is difficult to find alone, helping us remain with the very thing we might otherwise drift away from. It becomes easier to follow curiosity, stay with the process, and discover where it leads.

There is never any pressure to share, and you certainly don’t need to think of yourself as an artist. This isn’t about producing beautiful work. It’s about giving yourself the gift of time, attention and permission to follow whatever is quietly asking for your care.

Thursday – The Living Page
7.00–9.00pm (UK time)

This Thursday we’re exploring Migration.

We begin by stepping into one of nature’s most extraordinary stories, following the remarkable journeys of birds, salmon, seeds and countless other living beings as they respond to subtle changes in the world around them. Together we’ll wonder what it means to feel a pull towards something not yet fully visible, to sense an inner season changing, and to trust the quiet instincts that invite movement, even before we know where they will lead.

From there, I’ll guide you through a handful of gentle writing invitations, allowing the story of migration to become a doorway into your own inner landscape. As always, there is no expectation to be an experienced writer or to share your work. The invitations are there simply to help you meet yourself on the page, discovering what might already be stirring, shifting, or preparing to move within your own life.

I would love to welcome you to either, or both, of these beautiful gatherings.

Much warmth and dark blackberries

Brigit

LINKS —→

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August.

The year does not turn all at once. It leans. August is one of those beautiful leanings. One morning the light is simply different. It slips across the kitchen table with a softer edge. Shadows grow a little longer before evening. The air is different now. It carries the sweetness of ripening fruit, sun-warmed grasses and the faint earthy breath of leaves beginning, almost imperceptibly, to change.

The swifts still carve their crescents through the evening sky, yet somewhere within them ancient maps are already stirring. Seeds that only weeks ago clung tightly to their parent plants have begun to test the wind. Elderberries deepen towards purple. Haws blush red. Brambles offer their dark fruit to birds, foxes, badgers and wandering hands. Meadows that only recently shimmered with flowers now whisper with grasses, each stem carrying hundreds of seeds waiting for the right passing creature, the right gust of air, the right moment to continue their journey.

The vivid greens of early summer begin to deepen into bronze, olive, amber and shadow. Along the hedgerows, flowers have quietly become fruit. Everywhere the landscape seems to be gathering the work of the past months into nourishment, sweetness and seed.

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Our ancestors understood this month well. Lughnasadh, the first harvest festival, arrived while the fields, hedgerows and meadows were still full of life. It was a time to gather, to give thanks, and to recognise that abundance and descent have always belonged to one another. Bread was baked from the first grain while the swallows still crossed the sky. Berries ripened while rivers remained warm enough to swim. The living world has always known that nourishment comes before need.

Nothing in the living world clings to a season beyond its usefulness. Fruit ripens when it is ready to be eaten. Seeds loosen when they are mature enough to travel. Swallows leave while insects are still plentiful enough to fuel the first part of their extraordinary migration. Even decay begins before our eyes have learned to recognise it. Life is always preparing long before the future arrives.

I wonder whether we feel this too.

Spend enough time outdoors in August and it becomes difficult not to feel the season settling somewhere beneath your own skin. This is the month where summer and autumn become briefly entwined. Meadows still hum with insects. Rivers still call us into their cold water. Yet somewhere deeper than thought, the first descent of the year has already found us. It is felt as a subtle turning within the body, as though our own bones have begun listening to the same quiet changes unfolding through woodland, river and field.

It is no coincidence that the richest fruits begin to arrive now. The hedgerows swell with blackberries, elderberries and sloes, offering some of the most nourishing food of the year. Rich with the work of summer, they nourish the blood, strengthen the immune system and sustain the body, preparing us for the colder, darker months that are already quietly approaching.

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Summer still surrounds us. Autumn has already entered the body. It is a month that carries abundance in one hand and impermanence in the other. The hedgerows are heavy with food because they are feeding the journeys still to come. Every blackberry contains the memory of a flower and the possibility of another bramble yet to root itself into the earth. Every seed is both ending and beginning held within the same small body.

When I walk now, I find myself listening differently. There is a quiet concentration in the fields and forests, an ancient intelligence attending to ripening, storing, scattering and preparing.

There is always a small ache in August too. The dawn chorus softens. The ecstatic mornings of spring and early summer settle into quieter conversations. Somewhere behind all the sweetness of blackberries stained onto fingertips and rivers still calling us to swim, I begin to feel the faintest longing for woollen jumpers, wood smoke and evenings gathered around a fire. Summer is still here, yet autumn has already begun whispering its way into the marrow, as it does with every living thing. It makes me love these days more deeply, while quietly beginning my own preparations for the descent to come.

Long before the leaves begin to fall, the first movements of descent are already unfolding through the living world. August reminds me that so much of what matters begins long before it becomes visible. They ripen quietly, until one day we realise we have already begun to change with them.

This month’s gathering

Blackberry Vinegar (Rubus fruticosus)

Fill a clean jar with ripe blackberries, cover with raw apple cider vinegar and leave for two to four weeks before straining. The vinegar carries both the flavour and many of the minerals and pigments of the berries, becoming a beautiful addition to dressings, sparkling water or a spoonful taken through the colder months.

Traditionally used for: A deeply nourishing tonic, rich in minerals and the antioxidant pigments of blackberries. Taken to support general vitality, gently replenish the body after summer, and provide nutritional support as the seasons begin to turn. The vinegar also aids the extraction of minerals from the berries and can help support healthy digestion.

To take: Enjoy 1–tablespoon in a little water once or twice a day, add to sparkling water as a refreshing tonic, or use in salad dressings.

Elderberry Oxymel ( Sambucus Nigra)

When elderberries are fully ripe, gently simmer them before combining the strained juice with equal parts raw honey and apple cider vinegar. Kept in the fridge, it becomes a rich, dark medicine to accompany the journey into autumn and winter.

Traditionally used for: Immune support through autumn and winter. Elderberries are rich in anthocyanins and vitamin C and have long been used to support the body during seasonal coughs, colds and flu.

To take: Take 1 teaspoon daily through autumn and winter, or up to 1 tablespoon during times of seasonal illness.

Safety: Never eat lots of raw elderberries. They should be cooked before use, dont use red or green ones and dont put the stems into the medicine.

Blackberry Leaf Tea (Rubus fruticosus)

Traditionally used for: A gentle astringent tea, long valued for soothing sore throats, supporting digestion, easing mild diarrhoea, and toning the tissues of the mouth and gut.

To make: Gather healthy green blackberry leaves, choosing those that are clean and free from mildew or heavy insect damage. Use fresh, or dry them in a warm, airy place before storing. Infuse 1–2 teaspoons of dried leaves (or a small handful of fresh leaves) in freshly boiled water for 10–15 minutes.

To take: Drink one or two cups a day as needed.

Happy August Love bugs, may it bring you beauty, wonderment and wild stories.

Brigit x

PS. Post coming today with Links to Creativity Circle, The Online writing group and also a question about Full Moon writing prompts.

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This month, I accidentally missed sending the Moonlit Pages.

I had family staying, life became wonderfully full, and before I knew it the full moon had come and gone. I felt a disappointed. These monthly reflections have become something I genuinely look forward to sharing.

But as I thought about it, I wondered if the missed moon had arrived with an invitation of its own.

With The Living Page now unfolding twice each month, I’ll also be sending a written version of each gathering afterwards, so anyone who couldn’t join can still spend time with the stories and writing invitations. As I thought about that, I realised I’d be arriving in your inbox three times each month with writing explorations, and somehow that felt like too much.

I’d rather each offering has its own place.

So I’ve found myself wondering whether the Moonlit Pages might become something different. Rather than another set of journaling prompts, perhaps the full moon could become a space for something else.

I’m not quite sure what that is yet, but I have a feeling the missed moon this month might be the beginning of finding out. So here is a new Full Moon (just missed) offering.

If you have any thoughts about the Moonlit Pages, or about this little change in direction, I’d really love to hear them. Please do leave a comment below.

Moonlit Wonderment -

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Art by Jane Brideson

There are places in every woodland where one life is slowly becoming another.

A fallen oak lies softened beneath moss and bracket fungi, their pale shelves spreading across bark that once held leaves thirty metres above the ground. Beneath them, beetles tunnel through damp wood, bacteria release nutrients locked away for decades, and fungal threads carry the first stages of that slow transformation into the surrounding soil. Nothing appears hurried. The trunk may spend half a century returning themselves to the forest.

Nearby, acorns rest beneath the leaf litter through winter, carrying within them an entire tree that has yet to emerge. A young beech waits for years in the shade beneath older branches, growing only a little each season until a gap in the canopy finally allows enough light to reach them. Deep underground, fungi extend through the darkness long before their fruiting bodies appear, weaving invisible networks that may remain hidden for most of their lives.

Again and again, the woodland enters these intervals where something has already begun to change, yet the shape of what is coming cannot fully be seen.

Perhaps this is one of the oldest patterns in the living world.

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Hello

Below is a link to tomorrows (Mondays) Creativity Circle.

This will run at the usual time of 12.45 - 2.30/3.00 London time.

Im really looking forward to seeing all who can come.

This space is a gorgeous space where we come together, share a little of how we are, and then head into the creative idea we wish to explore, some people paint, some sketch, draw, doodle, journal, dance, sing, write poetry, write, craft, collage, sculpt, weave, sew, mend, knit, dream, plan………..We spend an hour in silence but together. We come together at the end and share a small something of how it was for us before ending the space.

This space always feels incredibly supportive in the way it allows someone to just spend an hour doing something they would love to do but always distract themselves away from. It is also a gorgeous community that has grown from this space.

Just a reminder this space is a women’s only space, Im hoping to create a mixed space soon.

My into the woods Letter will be heading to you tomorrow also.

Much warmth Brigit

Link…..

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Hello lovelies

What a beautiful evening it was on ‘The living Page’ I really enjoyed the sharing, the community and other peoples insight.

Here is the story and writing activities we explored in the time.

Thank you again for being there and bringing openness and loveliness to the evening.

Brigit x

The nights content is here -

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Hello

A reminder that The Living Page is tonight at 7 until 9, UK time, and I would love to see you there if it calls to you.

The Living Page is an online writing gathering where we explore a different theme from the living world each month, weaving together natural history, folklore, science and story as a doorway into our own writing.

We’ll begin by stepping into the remarkable story of pollination; the invisible exchanges that allow meadows, woodlands and hedgerows to burst into life each year. From there, we’ll follow a handful of guided writing invitations, allowing the patterns, questions and relationships found in the living world to become a way of exploring our own inner landscapes. Again and again, nature offers us images and stories that help us see ourselves more clearly, and this evening is an opportunity to discover where pollination might meet your own life.

You don’t need to think of yourself as a writer to come. Curiosity is enough.

Much warmth and golden pollen

Brigit

You can join here:

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There was a time when people knew that truth did not always arrive wearing the clothes of fact.

It came as story. As dream. As the flight of a bird across an autumn sky. As the name given to a humble weed growing between the cracks of a stone path.

It arrived wrapped in image, clothed in metaphor, carried on the backs of wolves and ravens, hidden beneath the bark of old trees and whispered through the smoke of a fire.

This was never a lesser way of knowing, it was simply another language. Somewhere along the way, we forgot how to speak it. Or perhaps more accurately, we forgot how to hear it.

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Now we are inclined to divide the world into neat categories. Science or superstition. Fact or fiction. Truth or fairy tale. Yet I wonder if, in becoming so fluent in literal language, we have misplaced another form of literacy altogether.

Take the old warning about burning elder.

Many people have heard that you should never burn elder because the smoke carries the Devil, who, would jump out of the smoke and spit in your eye. The story is often repeated with a smile, as though it were simply evidence of how fearful or superstitious our ancestors once were.

Yet burn elder and the smoke catches at your throat. It stings your eyes. Modern chemistry can tell us why. The old story tells us differently. Neither language cancels the other. One explains the compounds released by the fire. The other ensures that nobody forgets.

Or think of dandelion.

For centuries they were known by names meaning piss-the-bed, a wonderfully earthy reminder of one of their gifts as a medicine. They encourage the body to release excess water. Yet now I hear people who really believe that touching a dandelion will lead to them wetting themselves. The name survived. The language that gave it meaning did not.

How many stories have met the same fate?

How many have become nonsense only because we no longer recognise the way they are speaking?

Foxgloves became fairy gloves, their bells said to belong to the Little People. Whether those tales protected children from one of our most poisonous native plants, expressed something far older about enchantment and thresholds, or both at once, is almost beside the point. The story carried something worth remembering.

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Mugwort was hung beside cots, over doorways and strewn across floors to keep away bad spirits or the mischievous wee folk believed to bring illness and misfortune. Today we might smile at those stories, yet mugwort has well-documented antimicrobial and antibacterial properties and has long been used as a cleansing herb.

I find myself wondering whether those old stories were another way of describing something people could see but could not explain. They knew that homes where mugwort was burned or hung seemed healthier. They knew the plant was protective. They had no language for microbes or bacteria, so they spoke instead of spirits and the wee folk.

Did they know they were talking about bacteria? Who knows, but they did know the plant made a difference.

Sometimes I wonder whether spirits and bacteria are not as far apart as we imagine. Both are invisible. Both can enter our bodies, alter our health and change the way we feel. One belongs to the language of folklore, the other to the language of microbiology. Perhaps they are not the same thing at all. Or perhaps they are two different ways of speaking about unseen forces that shape our lives.

St John’s wort was gathered against darkness and evil spirits. Today we smile politely at the language while quietly acknowledging that the plant can influence mood and has long been turned to in times of despair. Again, medicine and metaphor refuse to sit neatly apart.

Perhaps this is what folklore has always known. The world rarely speaks in only one tongue.

Observation and imagination were never enemies. Ecology, medicine, symbol and story were not carefully separated into different shelves. They belonged to one another. A plant could heal the body, gather legends around its roots, appear in dreams and become a metaphor for courage without any of those truths needing to compete.

I sometimes wonder whether the greatest loss was not the stories themselves, but the way of listening they asked of us.

Because our inner world has never abandoned that older language.

Dreams do not announce that we are grieving, they dont hand us a PDF with neat langue telling us of our inner state. They ask us to wander through abandoned houses whose windows have fallen from their frames. They place wolves at the edge of forests. They fill our hands with birds, or lead us into rivers whose far bank we cannot reach. The psyche has never spoken literally. It has always trusted image to carry what ordinary language cannot.

Poetry knows this, so do myths, so do forests.

Stand beneath an ancient oak and it is easy to see how generations of people came to imagine such trees as old kings, wrapping them in stories of wisdom, protection, endurance and guardianship. Walk into a woodland at dusk and it becomes impossible to believe that every truth worth knowing can be measured with a tape measure or weighed in a laboratory.

There are realities that facts illuminate with astonishing clarity. There are others that reveal themselves only through symbol. Perhaps our ancestors knew that the world could be listened to in more than one way. They did not only seek meaning in what could be measured and named, but in dreams, in stories, in the behaviour of plants and animals, in the old names given to things, and in the images that rose unbidden from the depths of the human soul.

I wonder what would happen if we became fluent again. If, instead of asking only, Is this story true?, we also learnt to ask, What truth has this story been carrying all this time?

How differently might we read the old tales? How differently might we understand our dreams?

How differently might we walk through a woodland, or kneel beside a patch of dandelions pushing through a pavement crack?

Perhaps we would discover that the world both within and without, has never stopped speaking. Only that we have spent a long time listening with only half our ears.

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A reminder of the online writing workshop happening on the 23rd of July 7-9pm London time.

We will be exploring the story of pollination and the mirror it holds for our own lives. This workshop is included in your paid subscription.

More information and link to the group is here -

Hello Turtle Doves,

Here is the link for tomorrow’s (Monday’s) Creativity Circle.

I’m really looking forward to seeing those of you who can make it and sharing this lovely space together. It has become one of those rare spaces that seems to quietly hold us all in our creativity and our individual processes, and I have come to treasure being part of it.

We …

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