The Ritual of Returning
A year of gathering, learning and coming home to the original intention
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. When I first imagined these gatherings, I wasn't trying to create a series of events. I was trying to create a rhythm. A rhythm that invited us to return to the seasons, to ourselves and to intentional connection in community.
Over the past year, these gatherings have become a place where creativity, conversation, nature and community meet. What I hadn't fully appreciated when I began this journey was that facilitating them would become a journey of learning for me too. Completing this first turn of the wheel has taught me as much as I hope it has offered to those who have gathered alongside me.
Perhaps the biggest lesson has simply been learning to trust the original intention.
The journey of questioning
Over the past several months, I've found myself quietly questioning what these gatherings are really about. Not because they weren't working, or because something felt wrong, but because I care deeply about creating spaces with integrity. Alongside that, I still carry some stubborn people-pleasing tendencies that like to whisper that perhaps I should be offering more, doing more or becoming something slightly different.
I started wondering whether simplicity was enough. Was I creating the thing I had originally set out to create, or was I beginning to drift? Was I listening carefully to feedback, or was I trying to solve problems that didn't actually exist yet? Surely I'm not the only person who has fallen into that trap.
Those questions led me to attend other gatherings, workshops and circles. I wanted to experience how other people held space, facilitated connection and created moments of reflection and belonging. Some experiences inspired me. Some challenged me. Some simply gave me language for things I had already sensed but hadn't yet found the words to express. Perhaps most importantly, they helped me understand the difference between facilitating events and cultivating community.
Returning to the original intention
Along the way, I found myself becoming tangled in questions about identity and expectation. Because the majority of people attending my Seasonal Gatherings happen to be women, I began wondering whether these gatherings were gradually becoming women's circles. It was a category that seemed popular. It reflected who had been showing up, and from the beginning I've always said these gatherings would naturally be shaped by the people who attend them.
Yet every time I imagined fully embracing that identity, something felt gently out of alignment. Not because there is anything wrong with women's circles. Some can be deeply meaningful and important spaces. It simply wasn't what I had set out to create. Looking back, I think I was pre-emptively attempting to fix issues that hadn’t even occurred yet. The more I worried about disappointing people or meeting every possible expectation, the further I drifted from asking the question that mattered most.
What am I actually here to cultivate?
The answer had been there all along. These gatherings were never intended to be about gender. They were never intended to define spirituality for others or to create dramatic experiences for people to consume before moving on to something else. They were created as an invitation to practise paying attention. Paying attention to the seasons. To the natural world. To ourselves and to one another.
The Wheel of the Year has always been a framework rather than a belief system. A calendar that gently reminds us to slow down, notice the changing rhythms of the natural world and remember that we are part of those rhythms too. Someone might experience these gatherings as deeply spiritual. Someone else might simply experience them as an opportunity to share a meal with kind people and spend an afternoon outdoors. Both are welcome.
What matters isn't why people come. It's the practice of returning.
This rhythm was never just for other people
As I kept asking myself these questions, I realised they were touching something much older in me.
Some years ago, a series of significant life changes led me to begin living more intentionally. Like so many people, I'd become caught in the habit of constant busyness. I kept postponing the things that brought me joy because there always seemed to be something more important demanding my attention. Somewhere along the way, I'd learned not to prioritise myself, which included my health, my interests and my creativity.
If I'm honest, much of my busyness came from insecurity and a scarcity mindset rather than authenticity. I was constantly occupied but rarely fulfilled. Learning to live more closely alongside the natural rhythms of the year became one of the practices that slowly changed that. Not accidentally. Not because I happened to remember. Because every year I intentionally put the seasonal celebration into my diary in advance and made a commitment to show up. I planned around those dates because they mattered to me.
That simple act of returning became life-changing (even for as cliché as that sounds). Now, I have a full and busy life, but one that is sustaining and grounded more than unfulfilling and overwhelming. I soon realised I didn't want to practise this alone though. These gatherings aren't something I've created because I've discovered a formula that other people need. They're a practice I need. I'm simply inviting others to walk alongside me and learn with me.
Connection is the practice
I was born into what many would describe as an oppressive religious environment. Growing up in American Christianity left me with a great deal of religious trauma to unpack, and after moving to the UK in my early twenties I spent much of the next twenty years doing exactly that.
Later, my work around death and grief introduced me to another world where assumptions about spirituality often arise. What I've come to realise is that being comfortable with mortality doesn't require any particular belief system. For me, connection itself is my spiritual practice. Not performing connection, but practising it. Connection through preparing food with care, chatting around a table or campfire, or making something with our hands. Through noticing the changing light and the new buds, through sharing stories and making room for joy alongside grief.
I think we often underestimate the quiet power of these ordinary things. Shared meals, walks, conversation, making things together…none of these things are extraordinary on their own, but offered with intention, they become deeply meaningful. And are very much a part of my spiritual grounding.
Hospitality has become one of the clearest expressions of this practice for me. Not hospitality as entertainment and not creating the perfect experience for guests, but hospitality as making room. Making room for people to arrive exactly as they are. Making room for different beliefs, experiences and ways of understanding the world. Making room for silence as much as conversation. Making room for people who would never describe themselves as spiritual but who still long for belonging. I certainly don’t get it right all the time, but I hope that my ability to make room in these ways continues to grow and expand over time.
Spiritual practice versus spiritual performance
One of the biggest reflections from this past year has been recognising the difference between spiritual practice and spiritual performance. The difference comes down to relationship; authentic spiritual practice grows out of relationship. Relationship with place, with community, with ancestry, with tradition and with the living world. When those relationships are removed and only the symbols or aesthetics remain, something important can be lost. A practice becomes something we consume rather than something we participate in. Ritual becomes performance rather than relationship.
One of the academic voices that has helped shape my own thinking on religion, spirituality and philosophy is Brittney Hartley, who says: "Extraction without relationship is not spiritual practice. It is spiritual performance."
This matters because I want these gatherings to remain rooted rather than performative. If we borrow from traditions, I believe we also have a responsibility to understand where those practices come from, acknowledge their origins and honour the communities that have carried them. Sacred objects, symbols and rituals are more than attractive aesthetics; they carry histories, relationships and meaning. For me, depth will always matter more than appearance. And I invite us to continue dialogue and learning about this as we move through a second year of the wheel together.
A year of returning
So after a year of gathering, what is it we're returning to? I hope it’s a place where strangers slowly become familiar faces. A place where care is practised through simple acts of intention. A place where creativity, nature and conversation weave people together. And a place where connection itself is the practice.
What can you expect?
If you attend our Seasonal Gatherings, you can expect to spend time with thoughtful, kind and curious people who share a desire to slow down and connect more intentionally. You can expect to share food prepared with care, hear poetry around the fire, listen to stories handed down from our ancestors that help us understand the land and the many ways people throughout time have tried to make sense of the changing world around them.
You might find yourself creating something with your hands, walking through woodland or along the shoreline, noticing the changing light, or simply enjoying unhurried conversation with people you may not have met otherwise.
You might be invited to write a reflection and place it into the fire before we leave, but you won't be asked to stir a cauldron or perform a ritual you don't personally connect with. Not because there’s anything wrong with witchcraft or any other spiritual practice, but because meaningful traditions deserve respect beyond being used as a seasonal aesthetic.
You might be asked whether you're vibing or venting with life at the moment, but you won't be asked to share your deepest wounds with strangers. Not because talking about the very real challenges of life isn’t welcomed here, but because this isn’t a closed group, new faces often join us, and asking people to share vulnerabilities with new people isn’t safe or necessary.
Instead, you'll be invited to arrive just as you are, contribute in whatever way feels comfortable, and participate in creating something together. Whether that's preparing food, making something creative, sharing a story, or simply offering your presence with intention, every gathering is shaped by the people who come.
Because community isn't built by attending an event. It's built by returning. Again and again. Whoever you are, whatever your background or beliefs, if you're looking for a slower, more intentional way of gathering in community, I hope you'll feel welcome here.
The takeaway
A year ago, many of us were strangers. Since then we've watched the seasons change together. We've shared meals, conversations, creativity, laughter, moments of uncertainty and grief. We've become familiar faces. That feels like a good beginning. If this first turn of the wheel has taught me anything, it's that community isn't built through extraordinary moments. It's built through ordinary moments, shared with intention. It's built by returning.
Perhaps this is your invitation to begin returning, too.
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