Early summer is a pause and a portal of possibility.

we don't have to peak now, there is still time...

Jun 09, 2025

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 mothering, creativity, home and garden through the seasons. 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.

“Green was the silence, wet was the light,
the month of June trembled like a butterfly.”
―Pablo Neruda.

Dearest reader…

I hope you have taken some gentle steps into June — how are you finding these beginnings of summer?

We are living within some of the lightest days of the year, as we stretch out towards the summer solstice in less than two weeks’ time. Each year the solstice seems to creep up on me, but this year feels a little different – a bright and warm London spring has created a more tangible lead up than usual.

Whilst we are undoubtedly moving towards the zenith of the light, I am also keen to reframe this moment in the summer, not as reaching the pinnacle or peak of the year, or even as the midpoint — but instead, a deepening, a pause, and a light-filled portal leading us on a path of fullness until the balance of light tips at the autumn equinox in September.

On the theme of taking a pause, you are invited to Gather & Tend. in early summer, at 10-11.15am BST next Monday 16th June 2025.

Gather & Tend. is our cosy co-working/co-tending space — a place to gather ourselves inwards once again, to be together, to take creative cues from the season unfolding, and to tend to our projects with care.

Let’s GATHER and turn towards the light in early summer, at a time where everything is illuminated. We make space to both bask in the rays, and to find respite in the shadowy corners and the edges, to TEND to what needs tending, individually but together…

The link to register has been sent to all paid subscribers to The Beauty Thread. There is still time to join us by upgrading your subscription, you would be very welcome to co-work/tend with us.

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You can have a look inside the first Gather & Tend. session that took place in early spring here…

A place to Gather & Tend. in spring.

Lyndsay Kaldor

Mar 21

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Deepening into summer.

If May is a softening, June is a deepening — there seems to be more of everything — sweetness, wildness, ripeness, magic. I slip into summer with more ease than the often awkward and uncomfortable transition from winter to spring. Although a different flavour to spring, the dawning of this season feels like a case of layering more on top of what has gone before, instead of starting all over again. It doesn’t require the same effort as conjuring a first draft from scratch, it feels more like the details coming to life, the flourishes finding their way onto the page. Life becomes a more vivid and defined version of the outline it was before.

Early summer is sunshine and long, light-filled days — it’s waking up bathed in cool, lemon light, and going to bed when the day is still syrupy and golden. It is the dreamy drift into dusk as night finally falls.
It is stepping outside into the garden first thing and gulping the early morning air; it is wild roses drenched by the rain; it’s breakfast smoothies, ice cream after school, and strawberry everything (even the moon).
It is the first sports day, class photos, and the candyfloss sweetness of the first school summer fair.
It is the very beginnings of twining and trailing sweet peas; it is seedlings growing towards the sun and finding their way into the ground; it is walking through the woods that are dripping in emerald green, with delicate patterns of light dancing on the forest floor…

On fullness.

This Wednesday 11th June plays host to June’s Full Strawberry Moon, named of course, in reference to the ripe wild strawberries harvested during this month. The June full moon is also referred to as the Rose Moon, Mead Moon or Dyad Moon (dyad meaning pair, and referring to either the twin stars of Castor and Pollux, or perhaps the sun and moon as they reach both reach fullness — this year as the sun is highest in the sky, the moon will be at its lowest, tracing the horizon, a celestial dance that only happens once every 18.6 years1).

This June moon falls in the adventurous, freedom-seeking fire sign of Sagittarius, which feels apt for the traditional joyful and unrestrained celebrations around the summer solstice — when bonfires were lit, intended to boost the sun’s strength for the remainder of the crop season and ensure a healthy harvest2. The full moon in Sagittarius is ruled by Jupiter, the planet of growth and prosperity, signifying a return to wholeness, to remembering our inner knowing and our deepest desires as a signpost on our path ahead, lit by the sun and the moon.

Ten days later, the sun reaches its zenith on 21st June this year in the UK — the summer solstice — when the sun appears to stand still in the sky, reaching its highest point in the sky at noon, and giving us the longest hours of daylight in the northern hemisphere. Named Litha, meaning ‘light’ in the Celtic Wheel of the Year, it has long been known as a time of wild and free midsummer magic — it was thought that magic was at its most potent during the summer solstice with tales told of the world turning upside down, and of fairy sightings at dawn and dusk of the longest day.

“[Midsummer was seen as] a time when the normal laws of nature or divinity could be suspended, when spirits and fairies could contact humans, when humans could exceed the usual limitations of their world”.
—Ronald Hutton, University of Bristol Professor of History3.

The magic and mysticism of the solstice and midsummer (officially taking place a few days after the solstice, this year on 24th June) seeps into our human world, the vastness of light as a mirror of our own expansiveness, a celebration of growth, potential, and our radiance — but it is also a pause.

The word 'solstice' comes from the Latin solstitium meaning 'sun stands still', as it appears to linger in the sky before changing direction. As well as a celebration, it is a time to gather ourselves inwards, and just like the sun in the sky, for us to linger a little longer — to slow things down, to reflect on the preceding season of growth, to notice what is blooming, to absorb the wisdom of everything that has brought us to this point.

Summertime as a moveable feast.

As I take a pause, mixed feelings surface about already reaching this point in the year. Although meterological summer began at the start of June, astronomical summer begins at the solstice — with the 21st June as the first day of summer. Despite talk of reaching the midpoint of the year in June, I certainly don’t feel ready to peak now, and so I take comfort in the solstice signalling the beginning of something instead.

June is only the midpoint if you begin the year in January, which is something I have eschewed (as much as possible) for some time now, re-writing January in the depths of winter, as a time not for new starts but for easing in, living softly and dreaming wildly. I am drawn instead to a new year around the spring equinox in March when the balance tips into the light for the first time since the autumn, and which feels like a far more sensible time to tentatively emerge from the winter cocoon. In which case, the summer solstice is a mere quarter of the way into the year, we are warming up, with the autumn equinox in September marking a midpoint before the descent into darkness.

A recent flurry of activity, work, creativity and plans has led me to buy my first mid-year diary, and I don’t it think it will be my last. The diary, beginning in July, reminds me that indeed any time can be a beginning, there is still time, that there is much more to come…

Melding the contrasts.

After the expansive full moon and solstice, the cooling balm of a new moon follows on the 25th June. The dreamy languor of sensitive water sign Cancer, the zodiac’s homebody, nudges us to nestle inwards, to protect and nurture. The moon is at home and it is time to find sanctuary in the summer shadows, another opportunity to go inward in a season of outward action, a reminder that sometimes it is easier to see when we aren’t blinded by the light.

Whilst the light and warmth certainly draw me outside in summer, I find it’s all too easy to fall into the mindset of needing to make the most of every drop of sunlight bestowed on us. Instead, with our first summer holidays ahead, I want summer to feel like a haze of loose plans, of slow mornings and unmade beds, leaving space for our summer stories to unfold. Amidst the inevitable mayhem, I hope to find stillness in the quieter corners of summer, where the light is lower and tinged with magic. Perhaps it is here in the shade that we find the space to notice, in the empty space around summer happenings that we absorb the warmth, and in the fading remnants of the day that we etch memories within us that will become an ache for summers’ past.

Summer is a time of wholeness, a melding of contrasts within and around us — of light and dark, of sunshine and shadows. It is a time of more — of everything, of deepening into wholeness, of finding our own way to bloom, and our fullest expression, whilst remembering that we are only just beginning…

Thank you so much for reading, I really appreciate you being here.

I would love to know how the beginning of summer feels to you? Does the idea of summer as a pause and a portal resonate with you?

I hope to chat more with you in the comments, or of course feel free to send me an email, it is always lovely to hear from you.

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*.

If you are feeling overwhelmed, out of alignment with your inner wisdom, and holding your stories tightly inside, this is an invitation to join The Beauty Thread. — a home that will provide you with time, space and quietude to come into relationship with yourself and the world around you. A place to put down roots, to cultivate your soil, to nurture your inner landscape, a place to grow from…
I would love to support you in your own homecoming with a multi-layered offering at The Beauty Thread. including seasonal creative gatherings, cosy co-working sessions, a series of guides to help you create an intentional and joyful home, and resources to support you in crafting the stories of your creative business using meaningful PR in a considered and sustainable way.
It would be an honour to welcome you into the cosy, creative community at The Beauty Thread….you can find all of the details are in the page below…