Meeting June with nostalgic notes...
A gentle arrival into the month that speaks to me through the scent of the rose and fragments of light...
Hello to anyone who is new here… I am Lauren, a Mother of two daughters, a Writer Soulful Business Mentor, Website & Branding Creator, Human Design Guide, Sacred Space Holder and multi dimensional human being. You can find out more about my work here. Please do subscribe to join the journey, and if you enjoy this, and you do have the means, I would be so grateful if you chose to support my creations for £5 a month…
If you prefer to listen to this you can press play on the audio below.
Hello dear heart,
How are you feeling today? How are you tending to yourself?
I didn’t think I had anything to write to you this week… but then I opened up a note on my phone once the children had settled into bed on Tuesday evening, and decided to see if any words poured out… of course they did.
As the blank page began to fill I realised I had lost my way a little… again. I seem to forever be caught in a state of wandering off my writing path and needing to gently re-route myself. Again.. and again… and again.
I had forgotten to allow myself the purity of just being a channel for inspiration to drop in and flow through my body, instead getting stuck in my head concerning myself over what I ‘should’ be writing.
I sometimes worry that there needs to be a useful purpose to each piece I write, and yet some of the writers I admire and enjoy the most seem to write simply for the beauty of the words merging together.
I write to reach parts of me I haven’t been able to see. To activate different perspectives and viewpoints of the world and to weave words together and turn nothing into… something.
As I wrote the words below, simply honouring what is surfacing within me as we greet the month of June, there was no agenda other than to spark a FEELING in myself. In being brave enough to meet a blank page with no ‘agenda’ I remembered the magic and mystery of writing.
It’s a spell. It’s a prayer. It’s a devotional practice.
I needed to be reminded. I needed to lose my way, to find my way once more.
I wasn’t going to show up… I thought my words didn’t matter… that my ramblings are so insignificant in a world that’s collective heart is breaking.
And yet, some part of me knew I needed to, perhaps the stubborn part of me… so I did.. and it soothed a part of me that I didn’t know needed tending to.
Sometimes, it’s the showing up to our heART that really matters. Not the metrics, the stats, the engagement, the comments… of course it’s beautiful to have your words witnessed and held by community, but truly… for me it is the way that my body, soul and heart FEEL as jumbled sentences and fragments of ideas begin to take shape in front of my eyes.
It truly is alchemy of the heart, so today’s piece is just that… heART poured onto page. For me. For you. For those who need to receive it.
A greeting for June…
Hello June… we meet again.
Your cracks of light greet me in the early hours of the morning… you have a different shade of brightness to the other months. Somehow more luminous… more vibrant… more ALIVE.
As you beam your glimmering rays through the gap down the side of my blinds I feel a conflict awakening within. A sense of ‘what am I missing?’ stirs as I stay here in my bed while the world is waking up to an early Summer morning…
In another lifetime I would have been walking in this moment… greeting the sunrise as she climbs high up into the sky to shower us with shards of light for the coming day.
Sunrise has always been my favourite.
It’s Hope.
It’s proof of life…
…proof of being alive.
To live another day. An honour I truly do not take for granted.
Another chance to dance with my breath and my flesh and my bones…
But today. Now. In this current life season… I peer through the crack and soak up the little shards of light that find their way to my skin, while my youngest sleeps in the bed beside me and my eldest snuggles safely under her covers next door.
A thousand parts of me long to be outside, to breathe in this newness, to greet this fresh start.
A thousand parts of me long to savour this moment, stay here in this bed, sleeping babes within metres of my heart.
A thousand parts of me break and ache knowing how lucky I am to be here… when so many mothers don’t get to be.
I am made of thousands and thousands of parts… how magical is that?
June… you feel like hope.
You speak to me through the decadent scent of roses, the taste of sweet strawberries, the sight of pink mottled skies as sun sets and clouds form, the feel of warm air as I step outside in the evening, the sounds of birdsong and children’s laughter traveling across gardens.
The long evenings of summer still plentiful, the potential of warmth reaching my skin (which it is so desperately craving right now) and picnics and garden play dates swirl around my mind.
But June, you also feels a little like a void month in many ways.
As May half term closes for us — as I already seem to live my life via the school holidays — I remember nostalgically the excitement of this last chapter before summer holidays began.
Growing up there was always an excitement as we eagerly awaited the freedom that 6 whole weeks without school would bring. Not because I didn’t enjoy school, but because unstructured days and sunshine had such an allure back then. They still do now to be honest, although it looks a little less ‘carefree’ these days.
For me Summer holidays meant hours and hours of horse riding, forever walking around in a fog of the potent smell of citronella that we used in our homemade fly repellents for the ponies. It meant long hacks through the dappled trees and shady spots for cheese sandwiches, salt and vinegar crisps and cartons of orange juice to provide sustenance for our adventures. It meant cooling down with a dip in the local school pool, or a paddle in the stream at the bottom of our village.
And then there was the annual family trip to France that nearly always fell over my birthday at the end of August. I would start my packing weeks before we went, laying out all of my clothes and trinkets ready to set off. Two weeks of swimming, pain au chocolat for breakfast, bowls of salty frites and card games with family and any friends we managed to gather along the way.
Summers back then were full to the brim but in the most simple of ways.
As we tenderly meet each other once more June, I am acutely aware that this is the last one before my eldest starts school in September and I’m met with the usual paradoxical collection of emotions that I have come to accept as part of Motherhood…
Grief… that this is the last summer we have without the structure of school…
Excitement… for this chapter of my daughter’s life, that she is so ready for…
Anticipation… for what is to come and how our family will shift…
Apprehension… for how big a transition this will be for all of us…
Guilt… for not having cherished every moment with her ‘enough’ over these early years…
As summer expands in front of me.. with hope and possibility — I’m taking most of the summer holidays away from my creative work so I can be with the girls — I feel both grateful and excited at the prospect of open days and a slow summer AND there are moments when I wonder how I will survive without the anchoring of childcare and my more spacious days to just write and create as I wish.
Even though it’s only two days a week that I have those days, those moments tether me somehow.
And so I find myself meeting you, dearest June, with anticipation, with a slither of apprehension, but mostly an openness to what you will bring for us this season. I have hope and faith and trust, and a little anxiety too. I am, afterall, human.
How will I fare? Can I stay present with it all? How can I bring more softness, more tenderness, to this liminal space?
Questions that are all yet to be answered…
Hello June… how lucky I am that we meet once more.
If you are feeling weary, here is something for you…
So many people I speak to at the moment are depleted, exhausted and feeling the impact of a world where there is so much pain and heartache. I offer you this yoga nidra practice below — the paywall has been removed for now — to lean into a holding for your aching heart right now.
Please do let me know if you take a moment to receive this practice, I love to know who I have shared space with, even through a recorded audio.
As always, I welcome your comments, shares and connection here. I hope that you can go gently with yourself as the month unfolds.
Until next time…
With so much love and gentleness,
Lauren
xxx
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Loved this Lauren. June does seem so hopeful so full of life, and sooooo much light. Sometimes I almost feel like a vampire, squirming away from the light. This year in particular I long for more winter and rain, but that always tells us something doesn’t it? That perhaps we fear the hope. Fear and faith are both imaginings of a future so I think that June tells us to chose the latter instead.
It’s also funny that my summers now are more about enjoying those long days, and the garden and the reading. When I was younger I used to get bored I was so ready to return to school after a couple of weeks. I was so in the doing. Thank you for your words as always. Happy June ✨✨✨
This was wonderful, feeling it all ❤️