The story of a home — a place to nurture and to grow.

inviting you in for a cuppa and a cosy chat — part four.

Jul 05, 2024

A warm hello to anyone new here, 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. I am so glad you have found your way here…

Motherhood, the Eternal Blossom by Amelia Heron.

“Home is where one starts from”.

—T.S. Eliot.

Hello everyone

How has your week been?

I wrote recently about how summer takes me outside by the hand, and yet the last few days I have been called back in. Perhaps it is the heavy grey clouds, cooler temperatures and pitter patter of rain that is less inviting (I am back in bright but cosy summer mode in jumpers but always sandals if I dare), but I also feel drawn into the enveloping cocoon of July’s new moon…

The new moon is the darkest time in the night sky, a time for trust and quiet introspection as the darkness cloaks distractions and reveals something of our own visions more vividly. Tonight it falls in the watery sign of Cancer, the sign particularly associated with a retreat inwards, an easing of the pace and a call to find sanctuary within ourselves and the protective shells of our homes.

It feels like the perfect time to embark on the next chapter of The story of a home, this time as a place of nurture and care (whilst writing I realised I have a lot to say on the matter…and so this post will hopefully be followed by more thoughts soon).

I hope you will be able to find a cosy but bright spot with a cup of something that nourishes you, to join me for the first glimpse into home as a place of nurture and care…

This letter is based on the INSIDER series which explores the inside stories of our homes as a foundation for nurture, creativity and as an anchor to our surroundings.

The first chapter in this story of a home series includes a re-introduction and my thoughts about creating a meaningful home; the second instalment explored home as a constellation of creativity; the third was about home as an anchor to our surroundings and the seasons, and today I am delving into home as a place of nurture and care — a place to grow from, to be followed by my aspirations and sources of inspiration.

I hope this allows you to get to know me a bit better through the (very slowly evolving) story of a home…

Nurture at home — a place to grow.

nurture /ˈnəːtʃə/ — verb, to care for and protect (someone or something) while they are growing.

A small handful of homes all within a 5 mile radius have played a nurturing role throughout my life — from my childhood homes that in part fostered my growth and shaped me remain deeply etched within (did anyone else have a lime green bedroom at one point…?!); to the homes of my late 20s and early 30s where I learnt how to nurture myself; to my current home — the heart of this life chapter, and the place where I am often absorbed in the care of others.

A photo album featuring my mum and newborn me (I still can’t believe she let me paint my bedroom lime green..!)

Home is where we begin.

Shelter is a basic human need1, we require a roof above our heads, a place to settle and to put down roots. Many of our earliest memories are tied to home — it is where our life begins, in a literal sense some of us are born at home, otherwise we are wrapped up like precious parcels and brought home as a rite of passage. We are introduced to the place that will be called home and it to us, and even then at our newest, there is a sense of return. It is home that we stay for the most part in our earliest days — a newborn cocoon, the gentle movement between bed and sofa provide the cushioning required to become familiar with the world beyond the womb.

A baby that actually slept without needing the comfort of my body quite as closely as his big sister.

Home is the foundation of life — not only providing physical protection from the elements and other external threats, it is a place to envelop us in safety and security. It is the basis of our stability, a solid ground to grow from — it is connection, care and comfort. It is here that the scene is set for the many hours spent feeding, comforting, soothing, carrying and holding that are required to nurture a baby — each task requiring us to soften, to stay, and to soften again.

It is both a comfort and a burden to realise that by providing this care at home, we are playing a part in wiring synapses for safety, for building a healthy brain. We create imprints of care when we move through space — home is the cavern containing the depths we are brought to by endless excruciatingly early mornings and the nonsensical dreamscapes of sleepless nights. I have often found myself grasping for points of familiarity in the room to orient me back to myself within the bleary half-light, knowing that things will be different in the morning.

A storied home.

Home is a vehicle of self-expression, we find the bones of our lives and substance of our cells within the walls we live in. It is the place we get to begin anew each day. It is where we start to take form, where we play, create and make sense of ourselves. It is where we realise all that we can be, and what we take with us into the world beyond our front door.

It is not only the backdrop of our lives but we also adorn it with our stories to create a feeling of knowing and comfort — we hang our memories on the walls, we fill the shelves with mementoes of places we have been, we bring in the flowers we love and can’t be without, we paint it in colours that allow us to feel good, we create a cocoon with fabrics and textures that soften our experience of life, we keep trinkets and talismans that are given to us by people who mean something.

Transitions and homecoming.

Home is the place that we should feel held by to be unapologetically ourselves — when we step through the front door, there is a physical and emotional homecoming, leaving our outside selves behind, we can be in our fullest expression.

Home provides a physical boundary between inside and outside, private and public, us and the world — and the transition between the two entities can be challenging, there is a shift in energy required. I have to remind myself that for my children to leave the house it requires more than the (sometimes seemingly impossible) formality of putting on shoes and buttoning up coats, it requires a reorientation of themselves to get to that point. There is a move from the slow motion, dishevelled, comfortable mode they have inhabited inside, to one of outward-facing direction and a reorganisation of themselves in the wider context of the world.

A rare moment of children sitting still without the use of a screen…!

Returning too, from a busy morning of nursery or the park, will often undo something within them as we walk through the front door — layers shed, shoes strewn, they ‘take off the day’ as they melt into the walls and drape themselves on the furniture again. This process is quite often accompanied with an intense release of emotion, there is a trust that this place and the people in it will hold it all somehow. And when intensity takes over, as it does, it is a temple where the healing takes place.

Taking care.

Our environment and how we surround ourselves has the power to shape us. We are deeply affected by the space we inhabit, with energy transferring from one to the other as we inevitably absorb the space around us through our senses, our breath and our soft skin. I always feel differently when I am treating the place I live with reverence and care, allowing it to become more than a purely physical experience.

Delicately suspended among all of this is the meaning, intention and thought we infuse into our homes. I have to admit that this is something that fluctuates in my life day-to-day but perhaps that is how it is meant to be… When there is little time or space to be as intentional as I would like, I bring meaning to our home by leaning into things that feel like natural rituals, which is often simply a case of noticing.

In the act of noticing I find that everything comes together, it is the meeting point of meaning, creativity and seasonality.

Noticing too, allows me to step into a more subtle realm and leads naturally to intention — by paying attention to shape, form and comfort I choose just the ‘right’ mug; by taking note of how I want to feel I am led to light a candle that conjures the exact sensory memory I am longing for; by observing the season, I see what is growing in the garden and the way the light falls on the living room floor. Each aspect, nourishing me from the inside out.

Bringing pelargoniums in from the garden.

Nurture and care are so often subtle and yet all-encompassing, it is the million micro-moments and repeated actions of noticing, choosing how to respond and what quality or tone to bring to a space and those who live in it. It is finding and inhabiting what feels most nourishing, joyful and soulful — and where we feel most comfortable to be ourselves. The hallowed walls of our homes contain multitudes and most importantly, it is here from which we grow.

How do you nurture yourself and/or others in your home?

Thank you so much for reading, I feel as though I have just touched the surface of my ideas about home as a place of nurture and care, and I would love to hear yours thoughts and memories too.

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