The wisdom of the daisy — reclaiming softness and strength.

IWD - Daisy Chain Flower Crown.

Mar 08, 2024

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...

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A spring-like morning with The Floral ABC and The Daisy Fairy.

“Each daisy stands up like a star

Out of a sky of green.”

—Christina Rossetti.

Hi everyone

How are you all doing this week?

You may (or may not) have noticed that I am writing to you a day late this week as I have timed this week’s letter to go out at 11.11am GMT on International Women’s Day, as part of a daisy chain flower crown woven with women’s words. A small and powerful seed planted by

Claire Venus

and lovingly nurtured by many other wise women, it feels like a beautiful way to honour ourselves and each other today (and everyday) — there are so many stories that I can’t wait to discover and hope you will find your way to them too.

My letter takes the form of a floral oracle with an empowering message from the daisy and goddess Freya, going on to reflect on a time that I needed their wisdom most.

As I write, the growing strength of the early spring sunshine is casting a spell of light, reminding me of the beauty in softness and new beginnings….

The flower oracle.

The daisy.

softness and strength | divine feminine | new beginnings.

The daisy is delicate yet strong, delightful yet wild, gentle yet resilient, simple in its beauty yet many-layered — a floral symbol of the divine feminine energy within all of us.

Illustration from A Floral ABC by Elizabeth Cameron.

Message from the daisy.

The name daisy (Bellis perennis) comes from the Old English dæges-eage, meaning ‘day’s eye’, referring to the way the flower opens at dawn and its yellow centre eagerly traces the sun throughout the day, until it sets at dusk when it closes its petals into a closed cup.

Perhaps it is for this reason that alongside the associations as a flower of purity, childhood and innocence, it has a deeper connotation tied to new beginnings, and is often a flower given to mark the transition into motherhood.

Freya, the all-encompassing Norse goddess of love and beauty, fertility and childbirth, war and death is associated with the daisy and its message of new adventures and life transitions. It is said that Freya’s tears turned into daisies and as such it is her sacred flower.

Freya signifies the depth and strength found within the divine feminine, the energy that exists within each of us regardless of gender — an energy that encapsulates and integrates both the light and dark aspects of the feminine.
It is soft, abundant and empowered.

Freya represents a bold energy, she urges us to take embodied action towards our dreams, an advocate of self-belief and self-love, she encourages us to honour and celebrate ourselves in our fullness.

Accessing divine feminine energy requires us to turn inward and connect to our inner desires, our gifts and our inimitable spirit. By connecting to our wholeness, we can transcend feelings of comparison, inadequacy and judgement (of ourselves and others) because our true self-expression, combined with our individual experiences is incomparable to any other offering in the world. From this place, we can step into our power, creating our own reality, alongside and not in competition with others.

About the daisy.

The daisy is thought to be one of the oldest flowers in the world with depictions dating back to 3000 BC. It is part of the Asteraceae family, one of the biggest plant families with over 32,000 species, the name is derived from the Latin astrum meaning star, reflecting the shape of the flowers. Despite being a wildflower, the daisy has been revered over the centuries for its medicinal properties, daisy tea is reported to have health-giving and restorative properties.

Daisy-shaped memories.

Daisy chains hold familiarity and wistful, whimsical memories for many of us — I spent many-a sun-filled lunchtime on the school field playing handstands and making daisy chains in my childhood. In more recent times, I instinctively showed my daughter how to weave daisies into chains in our first garden together, when she was just one and a half and I was pregnant with her little brother.

Somewhere between learning the art of weaving daisy chains as a child and the natural handing down of the knowledge as a mother, I unknowingly lost my path of intuition for a while — a time that I needed the flower oracle and the wisdom of the daisy to lead me back into the fullness of both softness and strength.

Making daisy chains with my daughter, summer 2021.

Losing my wildflower way.

For a chapter of my life, I began to override my body’s inner knowing. I fell into the ‘trance of busyness’, striving towards elusive, external goals pushing myself too hard and teetering on the edge of burnout.

I had become lost in a fast-spinning ‘virtuous’ circle of external validation — I was consistent, visible, committed, disciplined, efficient and physically strong. At the same time, my mind felt jittery and I was unable to relax; I slept terribly, waking up to anxious thoughts and a racing heart; and my body became smaller, silent and brittle. I didn’t realise at the time that my body was extremely stressed and not being nourished in the way it desperately needed. My adrenals depleted, my hormones out of balance, exhausted and injured (including a torn hamstring, a broken foot and a broken wrist along the way), my body and the universe were as one screaming quite loudly (!) for me to slow down. But I carried on, pushing through the injuries, ignoring the signs that my body was not functioning as it should, at the same time losing its capacity to be still, and forgetting how to feel.

At the same time, I became attached to my identity that was made up of the things I did, not who I was. Whilst I was striving for outwardly accepted virtues and achievements, my innermost essence had become cloud-like, obscured and hidden away.

Slowly but surely my body and mind stopped talking to me. My commitment and dedication to an ideal had conversely led me to almost complete disconnect, to a point where I felt either distracted, anxious or felt nothing at all.

I was no longer treating my body like a home.

New beginnings.

I now realise that the path towards motherhood began long before pregnancy, with a shift in mindset and I spent the next couple of years patiently cultivating a relationship with my body — by slowing down, listening, appreciating and nourishing to bring it back into balance. I began to honour my body’s energy levels, making decisions based on whether I would feel energised or depleted. I existed in a kind of ‘winter’ where rest and nourishment were paramount.

I began to learn about coming into conversation with myself by listening closely, treating myself with kindness — inwardly whispering in order to regain my body’s trust and to find out what I needed. I slowly began to hear my inner voice returning and was able to sit with myself in stillness, knowing that that was enough. Finding a sense of contentedness in quietude began a journey back to a birth-like state, ruled by instinct and intuition.

“Progress is when we forgive ourselves for taking so long to treat our bodies like a home”.

—Yung Pueblo.

A deepening of the path.

Motherhood was a catalyst for deepening the relationship with myself — the outer identity and everything I thought I knew fell away as I became a mother. In pregnancy, I yearned for stillness over movement and a sense of nostalgic comfort whilst my body became a home and grew a life. In the early days of mothering I learned a different kind of stillness made up of a million unseen micro-moments — whether it was feeding, rocking, walking, comforting or holding that was required, I was unable to do any of the things I used to do. Both a slowly erosive crumbling away and an overnight seismic shift, gentle and brutal in equal measure.

Although uncomfortable and unsettling at times, this new way has allowed me to find a place of embodied intuition. I recall a thought entering my mind whilst stroking my baby daughter’s back as she lay sleeping next to me, that I might be creating ‘bad habits’. As quickly as the half-formed thought appeared, a strong, primal feeling moved through me like a tidal wave, assuring me that of course my tiny baby needed the comfort of my touch and my full self in a boundless kind of love that goes beyond the thinking mind.

My body is softer and rounder now, and yet I have a new appreciation for what it has done — to grow, hold, birth and feed two babies — and continues to do on a daily basis. I feel a different kind of strength, knowing what it took to birth my children, a deep resilience and belief in what seemed insurmountable at times. With every daily challenge mothering two young children brings, there is always a choice to soften. It is not always easy or available in the intensity of the moment, but it is something I continue to choose as much as I can and I find strength there.

I have been often floored by the physicality of mothering — the feeding of course but also the constant need for closeness, the carrying, the micro-moments of doing that require deep anchoring; and not forgetting, pushing a heavy double buggy up extremely steep hills most days…!

I had a welcome realisation in the early days of my postpartum period with both babies, that they don’t see the visual narrative and societal expectation of beauty that we are so often fed, but instead sense the value in my body as their home, and I resolved to see it that way for myself too.

“My mother was my first country, the first place I ever lived.”

―Nayyirah Waheed.

Finding seasons of creativity.

From having a complete disregard of the cycles and seasons both within and unfolding around me, I now look to them as my anchor and point of orientation. Becoming aware and aligned with the lunar cycle and seasons of Mother Earth allows me to respect my energy in a way that feels right in my body and deeply honours the divine feminine.

This winter, I have felt drawn to an inward energy, of embracing the darkness to make space for dreaming without any pressure to act on ideas. As we move slowly toward spring, my mind turns to sowing seeds, nurturing quiet growth and finding pockets of expansiveness. Life chapters too, can take on the character and qualities of a season and I feel that in this chapter of remembrance and of nurturing myself and others, I have been in a deep hibernation, self-tending in a cocoon-like way with unseen magic taking place but concealed within.

From this place of introspection, of being rooted in myself, my family and my home rather than out in the world as I once was, I soon learned that creativity would unfold in different ways. It is about honing my intuition, tuning out residual external noise, becoming attuned to my dreams and aligned with the beauty that surrounds us — often found in the unremarkable in-between moments. As my children grow, I spend incrementally longer spells in solitude and space enters my thoughts, which are now seasoned with a stronger sense of self as I feel everything more profoundly.

My sense of worth has become less about what I do and more about the feeling I hope to embody and emanate. By reconnecting with buried parts of myself, I am paving the way for the pieces of me to come back together, rearranged, working towards wholeness and with that comes a softness and a strength.

Remembering and reclaiming the wisdom of the daisy chain.

The daisy chain represents a remembering of our past selves, a reclaiming of our innermost essence and a reverence for the selves yet to be woven into our story. As Freya and the daisy’s wisdom tells us, that by remembering the pieces of ourselves and bringing them into wholeness, we move beyond the comparison and feeling of ‘not enoughness’ that leaves us seeking external validation.

Instead, the world needs women connected to their inner wisdom, gifts and joy, celebrating their fullness and finding home within themselves — not afraid to take up space, embodying both softness and strength.

One daisy woven with others becomes a symbol of support, crafting an intrinsic interwoven connection. The daisy chain is perhaps the first and most repeated gift we give others, beautiful in its simplicity, meaningful in its everyday magic and generous in its pure intention. The daisy chain reminds us of our first circles, sitting and sharing in togetherness, healing the wounds of competition, scarcity and division.

The daisy chain lays the foundation for writing new beginnings based on the deep-seated truth that together we can fill the world with our beauty.

Thank you for reading the wisdom of the daisy and my own story of finding softness and strength in a kind of resistance to the outside world’s call to make ourselves smaller and harden our soft shells.

I’d love to hear if the oracle of the daisy speaks to you?

Have you ever been led away from your path?

When do you feel most connected to yourself and others?

I do hope you will have a moment today to sit in softness with yourself to realise the beauty you bring to the world.