On crossing thresholds
Returning home / Write with me
Once we’re past the high arc of the summer solstice, back in June, thresholds seem to me somehow altered in density. Neither cumbersome nor burdensome, but perhaps more serious in outlook. Something like a small muscular shift across the brow. And now we’re middling August, the thresholds are coming thick and fast.
It’s cellular, the way I remember the end of the school year and the long stretch ahead of the summer break. It’s a pathway retrodden now by the rhythms of parenting. The giddy start of holidays, the falling away of routine with the fenceposts of time. Summer peaks and plateaus for a long moment around my birthday in July, and then the levity of thresholds is gradually exchanged for a weightier, denser bearing. I’m often away in July, and it’s not long past my birthday when my compass points homeward, invariably north. A return, inevitable, ambivalent.
And with that the return of other things. The reality of responsibility and routine, only ever suspended, coming to ground. The sobriety of different beginnings after summer’s fizzy pause. The reprisal of role summed up in the once again swapping of bags - beach for school, picnic for laptop.
It’s not entirely unwelcome to me, this return. Summer born I may be, but my spirit belongs to autumn. To its chill, to its colour, to its closer setting sun. To the necessity of jumpers, and fires, to the energy dialled slightly downward where I can most sustain it. This threshold, summer-into-autumn, beckons my gaze forward to other doorways in my life both professional and personal. I guess all of this is to say, I feel ready, eager even, to embrace the next threshold, and with that comes a new energy to meet and negotiate whatever lies on the onward path.
Here’s what I’m offering for the rest of the year:
The Sunday Pages returns, and I’m very glad of it! Equally I’m glad of the intentional break to refresh my energy and creativity for these monthly therapeutic writing sessions. Pause reminds me that in preparing the writing prompts and in guiding these live sessions, I learn and receive so much myself.
A couple of changes: one is that sessions now take place towards the end of the month, usually the final Sunday. Another change is that where before I moved the time seasonally between morning and evening, all sessions throughout the year will now begin at 6pm.
The theme for this month’s session on Sunday 25th August, is ‘Home’, and you can book your place here.
If you’re new to writing with me, and would like to know more about what therapeutic writing is, you’ll find this video helpful in which I introduce the what, the why and the how of The Sunday Pages. And do look out for my next email with my rekindled perspective on the value of therapeutic writing, both personal and collective, after 5 nourishing years leading courses and workshops.
On that note, I’m delighted that Alchemy also returns this Autumn for the third time since launching in 2023. Alchemy is my 9 week therapeutic writing course, live, immersive and online, that uniquely interweaves community and one-to-one support. The result is a soundly supported experience offering insight, release and deep self-awareness through writing and exchange, with the hope and intention that your life around and beyond the course is energised and enriched.
Alchemy begins on 25th September, and you’ll find all the details here. There are 6 places on the course, with three still available. If you’re at all curious, I’d love to hear from you. You can fill out my enquiry form on my website or simply reply here.
Finally, there are currently two spots available for psychotherapy sessions with me. Either in person at The Therapy Hut if you’re local, or online.
Here’s to our thresholds, yours and mine and ours. May we cross them with courage and curiosity.
Ruth