A year ago, I invited a small group of people to begin marking the seasons together.

This August, as we gather for Lammas, we'll complete our first full turn of the Wheel of the Year. Eight seasonal gatherings. Eight opportunities to pause. Eight invitations to step outside, notice the changing landscape, share food, create together, reflect together and slowly build relationships within a community that didn't exist a year ago.

Looking back, I've realised that while these gatherings have been about building community, they've also slowly deepend my own understanding of the mission I’m on.

Last weekend we gathered to mark the Summer Solstice, the longest day of the year and a seasonal invitation to pause and take stock of the journey so far. With the sun making a full appearance for the Solstice, we made the decision to leave our usual spot on the beach and gather beneath the shade of the woodland at the beach’s edge. It proved to be a beautiful setting, offering shelter from the heat while still keeping us connected to the landscape that has become home to these seasonal circles.

We spend years building digital lives; storing photographs in the cloud, running businesses through email and websites, managing finances online, documenting memories on social media, and collecting subscriptions, files, passwords, and conversations across dozens of platforms. Yet very few people make a plan for what should happen to those accounts when they die.

International Picnic Day is Thursday 18th June and you’re invited to join me for one of life’s simplest pleasures…a picnic in the park.

Beltain asks us to consider what makes us feel alive. To mark this seasonal festival we brought life and colour to the WeSee Trees Community Tree Nursery, shared a delicious meal, connected with new faces and learned more about the local happenings across Weston.

It brings me a great deal of joy to bring people together for creative exploration, and I’m so pleased to announce the following creative workshops I’ll be offering in 2026. This page will be updated as new opportunities are announced.

Long before it had a name, people have been supporting one another through life’s most profound transitions; birth, death and everything in between. These roles were held within communities: by family members, neighbours, elders and those who, through lived experience, became skilled in offering care, presence and guidance at the end of life. This wasn’t seen as specialised work. It was simply part of being human.

Over time, much of this care shifted out of the home and into institutions. Death, like birth before it, became increasingly medicalised and professionalised. What was once held collectively was gradually handed over to hospitals, care systems and the funeral industry.

Get curious, come and eat cake and discuss mortality with strangers. Coming this Summer to Weston-Super-Mare, the Dead Curious café, community conversations exploring the inevitable, weird and wonderful. Join us at the Front Room - 14th June, 12th July and 9th August.

We marked the Spring Equinox to the sound of the waves and the warmth of a fire on Sunday evening. Creating space for reflecting on what’s beginning to emerge for us as we move through this year. There’s something really special about taking time to pause and reflect, especially in community with others.

Beltain invites us to reflect on what makes us feel alive, what we nurture in our lives and what we steward with care. It feels like the perfect seasonal festival to gather in a place that embodies all of that. We’re teaming up with WeSEE Trees, a community seed nursery in the Maltlands area of Weston-super-Mare. Assisted by Weston Town Council, community members, with Emily Burnell at the heart of the project, are working with North Somerset Council to transform the disused plot next to Maltlands Play Area into a space for growing trees from seed, caring for them and preparing them to be planted across the town and wider region in the future.

Dying Matters Awareness Week is coming up in May, and This Mortal Life is partnering with the Front Room Theatre in Weston-Super-Mare to bring you some of the most delicious cakes and fascinating conversation at this extra special Death Café on Thursday, 7th May. It’s free to attend and the bar will be serving a variety of cold and hot drinks, snacks and, of course, cake. Join us!

I love reading about women from the past, those whose paths helped lead the way for me to live and breathe the way I want today. I am privileged in many ways to be able to say that, as we know millions of women globally have yet to experience freedom to the extent I have being a white woman in my forties in the UK.

Whilst we still have a long way to go to achieve equality in all corners of the world, and at times it feels as though we are moving backwards rather than forwards, I remain deeply grateful to the women who came before us and simply refused to stay inside the boxes they were born into. For anyone who knows my story, it’s clear I have been inspired by the rebels that came before me.

I love a list, and I am nosey, so I love to browse other people’s bookshelves. Today I’m sharing mine. In honour of International Women’s Day I’m showcasing women writers, some who I’ve seen speak in person and have followed for awhile, others who are new on the scene, but all have offered something of substance. In no particular order, directly from my bookshelf, here is a list of just a few of the non-fiction titles and authors that have helped support my learning journey over the years.

The Spring Equinox marks the moment in the year when day and night are held in near balance. In the Northern Hemisphere, it signals the beginning of astronomical spring and the gradual return of longer, lighter days.

After the quieter months of winter, this seasonal turning point offers a natural opportunity to pause and notice the shift taking place around us. Buds have begun to appear, evenings stretch a little further and there is often a renewed sense of energy and possibility in the air.

My life, whether through work, learning or creative projects, has brought me into contact with an extraordinary range of people who live close to death.

Some encounter it through their work as end of life doulas or companions, funeral professionals, healthcare workers, celebrants or therapists. Others arrive through lived experience, holding a deep personal commitment to death awareness as a value and way of living.

Again and again, one shared need has emerged.

I had an experience recently that has stayed with me.

I offered a simple creative activity in a small group of women I know well. It involved coloured paper, scissors, glue sticks, and an invitation to create a portrait of another person from our group based purely on “vibes”…what this person inspires through colours, shapes and textures. A playful attempt to reflect how we experience one another beyond physical appearance.

For some, it was joyful and unexpectedly moving. As often happens, people began cautiously, thinking their way through the task, before something softened and creativity took over.

Imbolc asks us to notice the first stirrings of energy shifting around us, and inside us. As we approach spring with lighter days, more energy and the first sparks of life making themselves known, Imbolc provides a moment to reflect on what is beginning to start within us that we’ll soon bring into fruition in the months ahead?

Most of us live by a calendar that has very little to do with how life actually moves.

We mark time by deadlines, school terms, tax years, and diary appointments. The months pass, the seasons change, and often we barely notice. We feel out of sync, tired in winter when we think we “should” be productive, restless in summer without knowing why, and slightly unmoored from any real sense of natural rhythm. The Wheel of the Year offers a different way to mark time. One that is rooted in the earth, the seasons, and the steady, reliable turning of nature.

An attempt to make sense of what does not make sense.

I get the impression there are a lot of people who are not intentionally choosing the lives they are living. They are responding to what is in front of them: deadlines, responsibilities, news headlines, financial pressure, social or family expectations. Life becomes a series of reactions rather than a series of conscious decisions. And over time, a quiet misalignment sets in. It is hard to name, but it can feel like being in a constant struggle with yourself, a misalignment.

This is rarely a motivation problem, or a time management problem. I think it is often a values problem.

One thing I find endlessly fascinating is learning how many of our modern traditions are essentially mashups of cultural practices layered over centuries. Humans have always sought meaning and connection, weaving folklore and mythology steeped in seasonal wisdom to make sense of everything from weather patterns to fertility, loss, and renewal.