Lyndsay’s Journal - Story & Thread
I met Lyndsay during the covid pandemic. She attended my Baby & Me circle, which is primarily for mothers and babies in the fourth trimester, it transitioned online early in 2020, amidst those challenging times. My focus was on providing support for women becoming mothers during a period of profound isolation. Throughout their pregnancies, these women had envisioned the support and love they would receive from family and friends once their babies arrived. However, the reality proved to be quite different, I felt creating these safe spaces for mother & baby became incredibly important and despite being virtual, they held a magical quality where deep connections where made and continue to this day.
Lyndsay shares beautifully with us here, her experience of the early months of motherhood, and how during these extraordinary days she found a way back to herself and creativity as she discovered her way to mother within the backdrop of nature.
You can read more of Lyndsay writings via Story & Thread. and follow on instagram
Weaving everyday magic: a reimagining of motherhood while taking lessons from Mother Earth.
My painterly plans.
Most days I glimpse the prismatic pot of paints that I optimistically bought from the local art shop during those liminal weeks before my daughter was born on the last day in January 2020. Yet the paints have remained in the pot on the shelf, since unopened, gathering dust.
My visions of calm creativity in motherhood melted away in the early days, weeks and months as my exquisitely sensitive baby required constant contact — holding her in the container of my being for hours on end. Any successful attempts at ticking off a to-do list or really doing anything else, were left at the door when we arrived home with her, bundled up and cocooned from the chill of an inky night in early February 2020.
This unexpected intensity was amplified by a fresh and fierce all-consuming love, alongside a shattering of everything I thought I knew — thus leaving my life as I knew it (and the creative plans I had conjured) quite firmly on the shelf for some time.
I see now that it was part of learning to cultivate the most everyday version of presence, to tune in so deeply that I could recognise what was needed in the moment, without trying to change it.
Taking up space.
We were navigating our ‘new normal’ in the weeks leading up to the first lockdown of the Covid pandemic. As those strangely silent spring days of 2020 unfolded, my daughter very tentatively began to turn her face towards the early warm sunshine of that year — just as the world’s doors closed, rendering us all as individual islands left to navigate our tender, precious lives in isolation.
And yet, amongst the hush of emptiness, the birdsong grew louder, kaleidoscopes of butterflies danced in the sunshine (much to the delight of a small baby) and an abundance of green foliage seemingly with gold in its veins, reclaimed its rightful place — Mother Earth began to take up space, reconnecting with her ever-evolving expression of creation.
Reorienting myself.
It was during this time at home that I was learning how to simply be — whether the moment required feeding, rocking, walking, comforting, holding, I was unable to do any of the usual things I used to do. Time also passed in a blur — memories of the endless days we spent together (alone) dissolving into a dusky haze, and I began to pay attention to the reassuring familiarity of the seasonal shifts and rhythms in our corner of the world as a way to anchor and orient myself.
Once again, my local ancient woodland became a place of solace and the backdrop to many minutes, hours and days in lockdown. Each day, I left our home with my daughter cocooned in the sling, walking past the rainbow-adorned windows in the now-familiar front gardens offering seedlings of tomato plants, once-loved household items and boxes for food bank donations. We made our way down through the allotments that had a reassuring sense of aliveness whilst the usual signs of local life had been forced to shut up shop, into the shelter and sustenance of the woods.
A maze of daily restrictions played out on a canvas of warm spring days frothy with candyfloss blossom that became a sun-filled summer watching cotton wool clouds shapeshift across a glazed blue sky. Summer slipped into autumn with its antiqued hydrangeas and pools of light on an earthy carpet of fallen leaves. Winter arrived with charcoal silhouettes of leafless trees against a powder paint sky.
It became clear to me that we are not separate from nature — noticing the way the light falls, what is growing in the garden, the sound of wildlife in the woods and the feel of the air became a compass. With the seasonal shifts as a point of reference and reminder of my own internal rhythms, I immersed myself in the metamorphosis of matrescence, going gently as my body and mind repositioned themselves in orbit of this sweet, sensitive soul.
Creative imaginings.
I soon learned that the time I had envisaged for my creative pursuits was to be absorbed by the millions of micro-moments that make up mothering — at the same time honing my intuition and tuning out external noise. Creativity unfolded in different ways including an unexpected and fruitful collaboration with a friend to create a design framework weaving meditation and elemental wisdom in order to craft homes as places of nourishment, joy and comfort.
As the months passed and I was able to carve out some time on my own, I felt drawn both to my creative projects and by the invisible thread pulling my heart to my daughter’s — needing space but wanting closeness. There, evolved a dance of stillness and movement, creating with her in my arms and resting when I could.
I leant into this time to adopt an imaginative mindset in which I intended to inhabit the power that the mother (archetype, in its many forms) holds in shaping the energy of the home. It was not necessarily about creating a daily masterpiece but rather, becoming aligned with myself, my family and the beauty that surrounds us — often found in the in-between moments like lighting a candle at breakfast-time and soaking in the garden at dusk.
Sensing magic.
Despite finding ways to live creatively, it is only really four years (and another treasured baby) later that I feel I am beginning to find my feet in a new phase of self-expression. As my children grow, I spend incrementally longer spells in solitude, allowing space to enter my thoughts, which are now seasoned with a stronger sense of intuition as I feel everything more profoundly and embody everything more deeply.
And just as the world fell silent in the days of lockdown and Mother Earth reclaimed her space inspiring our surroundings with her magic — my own pockets of quietude too, are paving the way for the pieces of me to come back together, rearranged, and maybe there is a touch of magic to be found here too...
“There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature — the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after the winter.”