Mindfully Stylish 🌷

I’d taken some battering, I’d taken some pressure and drilling. And this was what remained. Excited as a child for my birthday, waking up alone, drawing an oracle card that said: ‘Persist ~ May Your Ripples Build The Swell’. And persist I would all the way through that long year.

I placed it on my mantelpiece in solitary ceremony and thanked the Ones Above.

My good friend Rosh says that we are all in a process of refinement. That which is sent to test is meant to sharpen us and make us stronger, our scars and flaws gleaned as we are extricated from the cliff-face making us shine more brilliantly, giving us more depth and, ultimately, making us prize ourselves all the more for having come through it, for having survived.

I am born in April. The diamond is my birthstone. I feel incredibly lucky that I have a connection to a metaphor such as this. That day, when everything felt so lost and so simultaneously full of love, my sister and her partner Luke picked me up from my house and drove me to the lady who has been for my whole life a beacon of birthday surprises ~ my mum. That year, I shared my birthday with Easter, and she had made me this.

And this.

After a lunch of salmon, homemade cheese straws and the freshest greens accompanied by a piece of cake the size of a small doorstop and a few glasses of Prosecco to wash it down, we ventured out with the two spaniels, Jeeves & Wooster, to Scarborough, with a bit of a treasure hunt in mind…

Hazy skies with crystalline hues, an atmosphere that was both sleepy and bustling with life as the Easter weekend got into full swing. Salt and vinegar wafts of fish and chips, the sharp cry of gulls and hum and chatter of boardwalk games and slot machines were all around… We sought the quiet of hills above town.

Greenery desperate to burst into the undergrowth only sharpened the starkness of the trees’ black branches up above. But they seemed to be saying ‘We’re not ready yet…’

This is a paradox that has been with me all my adult life, caught in perpetual germination, soaking up sunshine whilst, at the same time, never having the endurance to put forth fruit or anchor down roots.

And yet, looking out at the bay from the other side, I felt the magic of the day all around me and, as though refracted from a mirror by the water below, received the message passed back that this was what truly mattered. Love in a time of inner conflict, hope for a brighter future, and a chosen day of celebration amidst the rough and tumble whirlpool of life.

A couple of places of note that we passed in our strides. The large, turreted white stucco building at the very summit is my favourite artist, John Atkinson Grimshaw’s, Scarborough home, which we stumbled upon completely by chance, his Castle-By-The-Sea, now part of the Scarborough Heritage Trail. I highly recommend taking a look at his artworks, the studies on moonlight are particularly beautiful.

And this panoramic, heavenly view is the churchyard of St Mary’s where the famous 19th century novelist Anne Brontë is buried, who was visiting from her childhood home of Haworth in West Yorkshire and, selflessly to spare her family the expense of transporting her body, requested to be laid to rest here in Scarborough, a place she was deeply fond of, having worked as a governess for a local family ~ the town being forever immortalised in her writing.

As we drove home we had a bit of a sing-song in the car, winding between fields with an ethereal mid-Spring glow, cocooned in our jackets and coats with takeaway boxes warm on our laps. It’s moments like those you will never forget, the transitional glimmers of time passing, on our way to somewhere else but making the most of it while we’re there.

And home. Back to the remaining cheese straws. Writing this has made me even more aware of those who cannot similarly share in imperfectly jewel-like days that are perfect nonetheless. I am so grateful for those of you who join me in this beautiful mess.

In Love&Light, FS XOX