A gathering in the darkness.

an invitation to meet around the collective glow of togetherness.

I’m Lyndsay, mother, creative and storyteller with a background in interiors PR. Story & Thread. is a weekly letter exploring the intersection of creativity, mothering and the living world, with a home and a garden at the heart...

Please feel free to share parts of this newsletter that connect with you — here on Substack, on social media or I would love you to send it on to someone special to you.

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Everyday magic at home.

Hi everyone

How are you doing this week?

As I wrote in my last letter, we are now very much embedded in the darker half of the year here in the Northern Hemisphere, even more so since the clocks fell back in time at the weekend and with the drenching onset of Storm Ciarán.

The darkness around us continues to reflect the heaviness on a global scale which feels deeply divisive, and so instead of solely cocooning myself, I am finding some glints of light in talking and togetherness.

I loved introducing ATELIER last week, a new collaborative interview series about our creative spaces, processes and rituals, and really appreciated the enthusiastic and supportive responses — I look forward to it unfolding with you all.

I have been so inspired by the raft of generous posts over the last week or so that set out to celebrate beautiful writing and the people behind the words…

• Claire Venus
  and
  Kat River
  have collaborated to create a beautiful offering ‘Substack Love’, a community nomination station with the opportunity to share writing that you have been moved by in order to support each other’s work….

• Claudia Wilde
  has launched a new series called ‘Sunday Flowers’, a gift of sweetness on the last Sunday of the month where she shares the people she is celebrating and the resources she has been inspired by…

• Hannah Ashe
  shares her tales of connection in unlocking her own creativity in the post ‘Collaboration is key’…

• To celebrate reaching an amazing 100 recommendations for her publication

  Haver & Sparrow
  ,
  Charlene Storey
  has started a series on Notes to highlight the newsletters she recommends…

This spirit of collaboration leads me to my letter today and invitation to join me as we step through the misty portal in the darker days ahead…

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The leaves turn in the garden.

A potent portal.

The week spanning the end of October and the beginning of November is a potent and spellbinding portal that marks the midpoint between the autumnal equinox and the winter solstice.

It is an ancient gateway carved into a backdrop of otherworldliness — the swirling depths of Scorpio season, alongside remnants of the Full Blood Moon, the lingering magic and mayhem from Halloween, and the most enchanting of them all — the festival of Samhain (pronounced Sow-wen), meaning ‘summer’s end’; also the name for November in Gaelic and once marked the Celtic New Year.

It is a threshold, symbolising endings and beginnings — the end of summer, of growth and abundance, closing a chapter on a year; whilst it is the beginning of winter and a natural turning inward as much of the living world dies back into the earth, coming into rest.

A threshold is defined as any place or point of entering or beginning — it is a space rich with potential, dancing between one thing and another. Enhancing the feeling of liminality at this time of year is the ancient belief and inexplicable feeling that the boundary between this world and the Otherworld is at its thinnest — allowing us to access the magic, beauty and wisdom of the unseen realms.

Seasonal hints at home.

A pause.

As well as being a portal to pass through, a threshold involves the act of ‘threshing’, which demands active participation in transformation.

For me right now, active participation means taking a pause. A moment to sit in the darkness and listen inwards to whispers from the shadows.

In this chapter of my life, the unseen speaks to a kind of magic that is nestled within the everyday, intertwined with the invisible micro-moments of mothering — the holding, the carrying, the learning and unlearning, the unravelling whilst providing a steadiness and a home within me — so subtle and often entirely imperceptible to the outside world.

A pause nudges me towards stillness, a rootedness that takes me away from overwhelm and is woven by the shape of my family, my home, my ancestry, my local surroundings, time in solitude and in the memories and nostalgia of my childhood.

A pause means stopping to discern, refine and shed — letting go of the many ‘shoulds’, to instead turn my gaze inwards, towards a contentment in what we are creating by simply showing up each day, noticing the intangible spirit within our home, laced with light and a wash of magic.

An invitation…

Historically within communities at Samhain, home fires were left to burn out in the hearth as the last of the harvesting took place. Instead, a collective, community fire was lit that provided warmth and light, representing the sun in its absence. After the dancing, feasting and gathering, people re-lit their home fires with light from the community fire.

This notion prompted me to the idea behind this post as an opportunity to gather together in the darkness, illuminated by the soft glow of a collective fire.

As well as writing, reading the stories and reflections of others feels incredibly nourishing to me. It helps me to make sense of my thoughts, which in turn tumble into new ideas, allowing me to slowly remember and uncover my voice — a voice that becomes clearest when it is expressed, nurtured and reflected in connection and collaboration.

It is a voice that invites us all to take up a little more space, to reclaim a connection to ourselves and to our place in the world.

Taking a pause at home.

With that in mind, I would love if you were to gather here, to pause if you can and linger a little while…

*Take a few moments to introduce yourself…

*What lights you up?

*What feeling do you hope to embody in the darkest days ahead?

I’ll go first…

I am Lyndsay, mother, creative and storyteller with a background in interiors PR. Before having children, I worked with interiors brands, designers and architects in London and internationally, travelling to Venice, Brussels and Miami to visit fabric archives containing ancient textile fragments, glittering art fairs, and the homes of artists, collectors and creatives. I am now very much rooted in my local surroundings in North London, creating my own home as a foundation to nurture my two little ones, as well as a canvas of creativity and an anchor to my surroundings, as the seasons turn in our corner of the world. I hope to find a way of aligning my interests with my past experience to create an offering, more on that soon…

Connection and collaboration light me up. Discussing ideas and drawing out stories in a meaningful way has always been at the heart of things for me.

I would like to embody contentment and magic in the darker days ahead.

I would love to hear your stories here in the Comments (or feel free to reply to me directly if you are not on Substack…). I hope we can take a glimmer of light and warmth from a collective fire back into our own homes and lives.

Lyndsay x