The roots that sustain us
✨ Welcome to Tiny Teachings, a twice-monthly newsletter where I share a letter to my daughters about living intentionally in transitional times + a roundup with inspiration and ideas to try.
This month’s letter reflects on our essential need for belonging and connection to place, and my efforts to build a community where we live.
April letter, 2025
Dear girls,
I’ve spent years working on global transformation. I’ve learned frameworks and theories for change. I’ve participated in online communities with people from every continent. Recently, I realised that I’m connected to more people on the other side of the world than those who live on our street. I’ve never truly turned around and asked myself, ‘What is my relationship to this place we call home?’ The place we’re supposed to know and care about more than any other place in the world.
I’ve invested so much of myself and my efforts “out there” that I’ve forgotten what’s right here. I’ve forgotten that it’s our roots that hold and sustain us.
Some days, it feels like my work has become a veneer to hide behind. I spend most of my time asking others to change while knowing that it has done little to change how I personally live. If working for over a decade in sustainable transformation has not transformed me…then what? Am I the only one?
As an antidote, I’ve decided to walk my talk and start building relationships with the elements of our actual thriving- the land and all that lives here. I think many of us long for this in our lives, but we’ve forgotten.
That’s why my friend and I began a new community centered around the Celtic Wheel of the Year. We bring people together every six weeks to pay attention to the changing seasons and spend time together in nature. Over time, we hope to get to know each other and the various forests, beaches, copses, and beauty spots of the Island we call home.
We had our first gathering a few weeks ago, and initially, I wasn’t sure whether to include you both. You’d be the only children there, and we’d be walking up a big hill. You didn’t know most people, which sometimes sends you into withdrawal, with little hands grabbing everywhere for reassurance. It would be easier, I thought, to just socialise with adults. Then I remembered why I was doing this. It’s not about making it comfortable for me or having a beautifully curated experience. It’s not a retreat. We simply wanted to know what it feels like to gather with people of all ages, in the expanse of nature, and hang out. Humans have been doing this forever, but it’s becoming a lost art as we move deeper into our technological lives.
In the end, it was through you that I witnessed the true power of community.
You brimmed with excitement from the first moment we met everyone at our meeting place. You stomped up the huge hill, which would usually be a great source of complaint, with enthusiasm. You came around to each person with small cupped hands to gather up the bright yellow gorse petals that we thumbed away from their thorny cages. You played and ran and whooped with such abandon that I had to keep stopping to watch. Unprompted, you gathered flowers to make our camp look beautiful. You carefully stacked kindling into cross hatches, building your first fire and fanning it diligently to keep it burning. Flora, you watched your dad share an old poem he had written about picking gorse and then sat for twenty minutes writing your own. To my astonishment, you stood up and read it aloud to everyone, claiming your rightful place around the fire.
Blossom blooming
On the tree
Wait and see
If it is a Cherry tree
Eat the cherries
Take the seeds
Then grow another Cherry tree
By Flora (age 6)
You both seemed so free— returned to your natural state, alive, vibrant, thoughtful, engaged, lifted by the experience of being joined with others in this way. As I watched you returning home to yourselves, it was as if we’d always been meeting in community.
If you hadn’t been there, I’m not sure I would have seen this so plainly, the natural ease we can access when we gather in safe spaces built on real-world connection. It awakened something essential and familiar within you. I thought of you when we were at home, stuck in repetitive, necessary routines. It seemed so different from when we set you loose within the held space of a community.
The ease with which you little girls entered into this experience reminded me that this is not new, strange, or quirky; this is us as we are meant to be, as we have been for most of human history. This is us.
Love Mama