Welcoming Winter
Bracing air and pink, morning light.
I know winter is moving in when I feel a specific sort of bracing air on my face and notice a more delicate pink in the sky. The slow cooker comes out, and I want to go to bed earlier in the evening.
I watch my urban landscape – the people and plants – leaning into the cold and darkness by letting go or bundling up.
Sitting in my open window, around 7:00 am this morning of 20 November, I realised that winter is moving in.
One of the best things about the flat I have lived in for nearly 30 years is being able to open a big, south-facing window onto the amazing vista of a full, square block of tenement back-gardens. It is a fantastic tangle of greenery, seasonal colour and mixed efforts made by residents betwixt the 150-year-old stone walls, with several old trees whose height is now beyond the roofline.
I live on a main road, in the middle of the city, but if I sit in the back of my property and open the window, I am in an urban nature reserve. Before a gap-site from a fire was built on, nearly twenty years ago, I recall waking up to see a family of foxes in my garden, and a squirrel slept in my window box for the whole of one winter. Seeing that it was cozied up, tucked in under its tail, was added to my young daughters’ bedtime ritual.
Last summer I was fascinated to watch a cat and a crow playing…the crow staying near, but always out of reach. This year I have been struck by the number of goldfinches and bullfinches that have appeared, and enjoyed watching the adventures of 5 noisy, new magpies.
We are a couple weeks beyond the autumn’s midpoint, Samhain, on 1 November. Most of the leaves have fallen, and we can’t help but notice the darkness. Slowing down, letting go, cozying in, and bundling up. I feel myself preparing for the season of hibernation.
The winter solstice workshop will be happening on the day after the official solstice on 21 December, marking the start the light’s return and offering a reflective pause in the rush of the festive season.
The darkness of winter brings us a season of dormancy, renewal and gentle transformation. In winter we are reminded that work is being done even when it is not visible to us, and that these rhythms of rest and activity, of light and dark, are foundational to life. This will be our metaphor as we reflect, define intentions for this season of renewal, and nurture the seeds we are germinating for 2025.
The autumn workshop was attended by 34 women from different places in the world, ages 26-69, each doing her own, reflective work in a temporary community of women. I look forward to the winter solstice workshop being a similar, special space for us to connect inward as the season turns.
Being only a week back from an incredible holiday in South Africa where I met some fantastic women, I am alert to the fact that the seasons are not the same south of the equator. If you are a woman who lives somewhere that is moving into its summer, please know that while the season I will be focusing on is the opposite of yours, I am confident the 90 minutes to slow down and check in with yourself will be time well spent thinking about what matters to you in 2025.
If you would like to join this free, ninety-minute, online workshop for women of all ages on Sunday, 22 December, 4:00-5:30 pm GMT, please use the Eventbrite link below to register and be sent the Zoom link on the day.
Life Lab: This Shiny, New, Year
We all know the sense of possibility that accompanies the turn of the year - and most of us have done our best to harness it to make ‘improvements’ to our lives. Hopefully, we all have at least one story of this proving possible, amongst the many we likely have of things not quite going to plan.
This Life Lab is an opportunity for women of any age to come together, bringing their compassion for self and others, to consider the possibility of this new, shiny, year from a fresh vantage point.
This series of workshops may be particularly useful if the idea of a ‘resolution’ for the new year sounds too firm, too much of a stretch or even gives a little tug of fear or anxiety…but you think you have the seeds of one or more.
We will begin with by reflecting on 2024 and be intentional about what is crossing the boundary into 2025 and what is being left behind in 2024.
We will then spend time thinking about life as it is, bringing our curiosity rather than judgment. We will consider what is from new perspectives - polish it, shape it, and put down some roots for life to grow in ways aligned with our vision of what our best life can be in 2025.
Not what it should be, what YOU should be - but what you are ready for, what energises and excites you. What you believe to be possible, aligns with what you care about, and offers the stretch you are ready for.
We will use individual, reflective exercises, useful frameworks, inspiration from others through video/recordings, small and large group conversations, and individual work between sessions to map our direction of travel and strong intentions for 2025.
This Life Lab will be a series of three x two-hour sessions at the end of December, two hours in January and a final two in February.
We will meet on Sundays, 29 December 2024, 19 January and 16 February 2025 from 4:00-6:00pm GMT/5:00-7:00 pm European/11:00-1:00pm EST/9:00-11:00am PST
The cost for the three sessions is £120.
Please email me if you have any questions or would like to register your interest.
Gathering Women with Neurological Conditions
In October, I hosted a co-design meeting with other women who are living with neurological conditions, to talk about what we might be interested in exploring together. My offer was to use my professional skills to bring something that I am looking for into being – and it has begun!
Six of us met, most of us in Scotland but also a woman who lives in England but grew up in Windsor, Canada, which is, incredibly, less than an hour from where I grew up on the outskirts of Detroit.
The women in that initial meeting have MS at different stages, Parkinson’s and Functional Neurological Disorder. We agreed that to plan early conversations about travel (near and far), and the ways that we support ourselves beyond what is offered by the NHS, and to share our experiences as women living with neurological conditions, which we all acknowledged is a rare opportunity that we hope will be resourcing for us all.
The next conversation I am hosting for women with neurological conditions will be on 11 January, 12:00-1:30 pm GMT. I propose that our ‘topic focus’ will be how we support ourselves to live our best lives with, and beyond, the support we get by the NHS/medical model of care.
I also intend that we will set dates for meeting during the first half of 2025, including the opportunity to meet for coffee for those of us in Scotland.
If you are living with a neurological condition, or know a woman who is, please let her know this is happening. At this point we are seeking only to draw this community together, with no limits on numbers or where women are living. It is a very ‘grassroots’ initiative at present, a space to see where our interests and experiences might take us.
Please use the Eventbrite link below to register and be sent the Zoom link.
I will close with a quote from the book ‘Wintering’ by Katherine May.
“We are in a habit of imagining our lives to be linear; a long march from birth to death in which we mass our powers, only to surrender them again, all the while losing our youthful beauty. This is a brutal untruth. Life meanders like a path through the woods. We have seasons when we flourish, and seasons when the leaves fall from us, revealing our bare bones. Given time, they grow again.”
May the coming season of darkness, rest and renewal offer the nourishment you need to ‘grow again’.
