All paths lead here | part one.
weave the Story & Thread. tapestry with me, which thread will you follow?
Hello I’m Lyndsay, I am so glad you have found your way here…
Welcome to Story & Thread., a cosy, welcoming place to be inspired by the quiet power of noticing beauty & wonder. Here we explore our creative lives through the lens of the seasons, and what it means to tell our stories with meaningful PR.
All subscribers will receive regular thoughtful posts about creativity, mothering, home and garden through a soft seasonal lens. You are invited to become a member of The Beauty Thread., to join a creative community for online seasonal gatherings, home guides, co-working spaces and soon, guidance for crafting a considered PR kit for your creative business.
“Within every woman, there is a wild and natural creature, a powerful force, filled with good instincts, passionate creativity, and ageless knowing.”
Dearest reader…
How are you as we land in May, and move further into spring? We have had such warm and uplifting days here in London which has been very welcome — it is set to be cloudier this week, but there still remains a softer quality to the air in May.
I have been working on this post for a while, it is something that has been simmering under the surface for a while…weeks, months, possibly years… but it is only now that the light is lengthening, warmth is finding its way into our days, petals are opening and colour is returning that I have found the clarity for the intertwining thoughts to fall into place.
As with last spring, I feel on the verge of a new creative career chapter, with certain aspects of life shifting and changing and also melding and merging to combine and coexist. Spring’s rebirth within my 40th year feels like a good time to acknowledge and explore the interwoven threads that have led me here.
Looking back over the past three years of writing my publication Story & Thread., I can see that each post has been both a response and a stepping stone on the path of writing — allowing me to work out what matters and live most creatively. Each thread has shown up time and time again, making me feel something, and lighting me up. Each shapes the way I see the world and goes some way in explaining my reasons for writing and sharing my thoughts with you.
As I began this post (again and again), I came to realise that each thread is interwoven, it overlaps and intersects; with layers that both unravel and converge. I have split this post into two parts, the first being today’s letter that explores the threads of storytelling, beauty, homecoming and softening, with three more themes to come in part two.
My hope is that this post will act as an introduction, an invitation, a home and a signpost to all of the things that make up Story & Thread., and that you will explore them with me…
Weave the Story & Thread. tapestry with me…which thread will you follow?
STORYTELLING | we tell our stories.
Telling our stories leaves a trail — of our experiences, thoughts, dreams, wisdom, skills and gifts. When we share our stories, we are witnessed and written into a collective experience. Stories shape our reality, as well as what is remembered — by telling our stories we leave an indelible mark that says we have been here, a mirror fragment that may be found by someone else when they need it most.
Once upon a time, storytelling was a communal activity — evenings were spent gathered around the hearth, where stories were told by voice laced in firelight — customs, practices and rituals were handed down, and wisdom bestowed.
Although the ways and means of storytelling continue to evolve, almost beyond recognition, our innate longing for truth, resonance and authenticity remains the same (and perhaps becomes stronger in a changing world where it can be difficult to decipher what is real).
Women’s stories have been minimised, demeaned and silenced since the Early Modern period in our history, when the meanings of words were stealthily changed to degrade the way in which women talk, even laws were passed to forbid gatherings of women, which were seen as a threat to the establishment. Around the same time, the witch hunts turned women against each other, and the culture shifted from one of reciprocity and solidarity, to one of suspicion, competition and division.
Coming back together to share our stories as women is a special kind of alchemy — it is how we, rightfully, take up space, how we heal ourselves, each other, and the wounds of competition, scarcity and division3. Women talking together has the power to make seismic, lasting change, one word at a time.
How we tell our stories.
At Story & Thread. your voice, perspective, experience, wisdom, skills and gifts are welcomed to help to shape this space. Through our gatherings in The Beauty Thread. membership, we share the stories of our current chapter; we reflect, tend and create together. The upcoming introduction to storytelling with PR course will encourage you to find your voice, recognise your embodied wisdom and gifts to form an individual narrative and tell your stories to the world.
My intention is that this is a space where you are seen, supported and inspired. Story & Thread. is an invitation to write a new chapter together in women’s storytelling, where we encourage each other to take up space and be seen, knowing that we are already enough.
**What is your story to tell…?
You can read more about storytelling here…
BEAUTY | we notice beauty.
Beauty is noticing, it is paying attention, it is taking care, it is a glimmer of recognition, a mirror within; it is hope.
Noticing beauty around us evokes a feeling of both being firmly in the world, whilst also transcending the everyday. When we open ourselves to beauty, we connect to our surroundings, to ourselves and to something intangible, but unmistakably there — an endless source of inspiration, wonder and awe.
Our immediate response to beauty comes before thought, it is pure intuition and so is a powerful guiding force. Noting what we find beautiful can guide us on a path of discovery about ourselves — beauty calls us, and we seek it out in our own ways — in art, books, music, movement, in our relationships, in our homes and gardens, and in the living world around us. It is both in the witnessing and in the doing — we commune with something that calls us.
The beauty we notice becomes a part of us too — it leaves a resonance, we are left subtly changed by it — it is both uplifting and grounding, inspiring and comforting. These are the pieces that make up our inner scenery and shape the way that we move through life. Beauty leads us to awaken and surrender in the same breath, we are both softened and most alive. Beauty nudges us along our path of discovery, and it bring us home.
Since becoming a mother, I find myself pointing out the beauty I see amongst the broken glass, discarded rubbish, and food waste strewn by foxes within the streets where we live in North London…
The fleeting blossom and the chirping of baby starlings in a nest above my children’s bedroom, the fresh green of the baby leaves in spring, the first glimpse of the sun rising over the neighbouring rooftops during summer days, the kaleidoscope of autumn leaves spilling over the fence, and the mystical mist-laden gloom of winter.
It always reminds me of Maggie Smith’s words in her poem, ‘Good Bones’…
“I am trying
to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,
walking you through a real shithole, chirps on
about good bones: This place could be beautiful,
right? You could make this place beautiful’.
How we notice beauty.
Story & Thread. invites you to make the time and space to notice the world around you — to seek out the beauty, to note and record what you are drawn to, to follow the path to find more of it, and to nurture your own small corner of the earth.
Within our gatherings you will be offered prompts that remind you to pay attention to the little things that could be easily overlooked, or missed in the whirlwind of everyday life. Noticing takes remembering and nurturing, when there are so many demands on our attention, pulling us away from the micro-moments that make up our lives.
Here, beauty falls at the intersection of creativity, storytelling, homecoming, softening and seasonality. Your findings will lead you to where you feel most at home, and along a path of discovery, perhaps forging your next onward steps in the world…
**What calls you…?
You can read more about beauty here…
HOMECOMING | we turn inwards to find home.
We are pulled in many different directions from competing forces throughout the day, making it almost impossible to prioritise time to rest, or even to be still enough to hear our own thoughts and needs.
After experiencing layered symptoms of burnout in my early 30s after years of being always ‘on’ and giving a lot of myself to the world, I began a gradual quest to quieten the outer noise, to heal my body, and to slow down enough to hear my own inner whispers again.
My introduction to motherhood in 2020 thrust me into an even deeper homecoming, in the most essential way. In this chapter of remembering, caring and nurturing, my world became a lot smaller and yet my sense of ‘knowing’ became stronger than before.
Now six years in, I am aware that this all-encompassing caring role pulls me out of myself daily, as the needs of my children are often louder and more insistent than my own. I am peeling away another layer in the process of homecoming as I gather the pieces of me back together in the quieter moments, finding that most often clarity drops in when I make time to walk and think.
How we turn inwards to find home.
Story & Thread. is intended to be a place to land, to drop in, and return to, that provides you with uninterrupted time, space and quietude to come into relationship with yourself, and the world around you.
Both meeting together and gathering ourselves back inward is essential in reclaiming some of the time and space we crave and need within the blur of everyday life — to come home to ourselves, to find our inner rhythm, to receive our own unique medicine, and to tend to the things that require a deeper level of thought, that cannot be rushed or cut short.
You are invited to linger here, to remember what feels good, to put down roots, to cultivate your soil, to nurture your inner landscape — it is a place to grow from…
*When do you feel most ‘at home’…?
You can read more about homecoming here…
SOFTENING | we return to softness.
We all need more softness within our lives. Each of us begin cradled within the womb, hearing muffled sounds of the outside world, immersed in darkness, gently rocked by our mothers’ motion — touch, our earliest sense, becomes our first language.
Moving from burnout to homecoming was simultaneously a movement into softness. Physically, my body changed from being seemingly strong yet brittle, to softer and rounder (yet stronger in ways I could never have imagined), as I began to honour my energy and intuition, rather than an impossible schedule and expectation I had placed on myself.
Mothering continues to be a learning in how to soften — from the earliest weeks and months softening to an entirely new existence, where nothing was the same, and was led entirely by the many needs of a sensitive baby. The process also led me to become softer with myself and what was now possible — I learned how to choose the nap above attempts at productivity, to let go of the ‘shoulds’, to follow the most easeful path, and to adjust my expectations in just about every aspect of life.
And now, in a chapter of mothering young, spirited children where my own space is squeezed and I am a buffer between them and the world beyond, I am learning how to hold firm boundaries, whilst identifying where I can let go a bit more. In this phase of life too, stillness and order doesn’t feel possible, and I am coming to soften to the fact that a degree of chaos, and that the undone and unfinished are central to my existence in this chapter.
How we return to softness.
Story & Thread. is intended to be a soft place to land in a world that can feel hard, hostile and divided. Living softly is a movement — an embodied experience, a journey through the senses, a way of being, a remembering, a return, a rest and a retreat. Spending time here, you are encouraged to be, in the words of Irish mystic John O’Donohue, “excessively gentle with yourself”.
We meet through the seasons to explore the ways we can find more softness in our lives with ideas, practices and rituals from members of the community. The seasonal Softening gathering is a reminder to find ways to meld, merge, yield and breathe rather than to brace, tense, force and push – that there is power in allowing ourselves to bend rather than break — that rather than signalling weakness, there is unshakeable strength to be found in softness.
**Where can you soften…?
You can read more about softening here…
Thank you so much for reading, I hope you enjoyed reading about the first four threads weaving the Story & Thread. tapestry — part two to follow soon. I would love to hear which thread resonates most with you…?
Sending much spring love,
P.S. The Softening gathering in spring/summer will take place online from 11am - 12.30pm BST on Friday 22nd May 2026.
Everyone is invited to contribute something to The Softening — there is so much wisdom within our community and I would be honoured to share it. Below are the themes, but of course all are open to your interpretation of softness in spring/summer…
**vision, planning, growth, creativity, inspiration, expansion, blooming, expression, connection, joy, (re)birth, light, direction, heart, desire, fullness, deepening, abundance — all through a lens of softness**
More details about submission below…
P.P.S. Find out more about The Beauty Thread. by clicking the link below…
Introducing The Beauty Thread. by Lyndsay.
Tending and telling our stories inspired by the quiet power of noticing beauty & wonder.
*creative gatherings | co-working | considered space | crafted PR*.
I hope you will join us, you would be so welcome…
What a beautiful collection of ideas. 🦋
"When we share our stories, we are witnessed and written into a collective experience. Stories shape our reality, as well as what is remembered" - Lyndsay, your words found me just at the right time, in relation to a piece I've been working on for weeks, and they are just what I needed to hear as I move deeper into it. Thank you 🌸🪻🌹