Two years of words and wonder on the page.

reflecting on the gifts of writing, a commitment to creativity and a continued becoming.

Apr 23, 2025

Hello, I am so glad you have found your way here… I’m Lyndsay — mother, creative and storyteller with a background in interiors PR.

Step inside Story & Thread., a cosy, layered home where the threads of creativity, interiors and mothering meet. Here, we unearth the stories from the seasons of our lives, with a house & a garden at the heart, and everyday beauty as our guide…

Two years of words and wonder finding their way to the page.

“The sense of wonder is so very important to us because it precedes knowing. It precedes knowledge…”

—Louis Kahn.

Dearest reader…

I hope you had a lovely Easter holiday.

Yesterday was the first day back to school and nursery for us — the holidays were a lovely pause from routine, a chance to explore and to spend precious time together, to wander and to wonder. It has been a time when life has stood still in some ways, folding in on itself, immersed in being together — as a result, a lot has been put on hold, and despite my attempts at working and writing around the edges, most evenings I was too exhausted to string much of a sentence together.

Last week marked two years of writing here to you at Story & Thread. on Substack. It crept up on me and wasn’t something I had given a lot of thought to, but when I paused to mark the moment, I realised that it represented much more than I had expected. This week’s post is a reflection on the last year of words and wonder, exploring what writing here means to me.

Today’s post is also intended as a big thank you for continuing to read my words, for encouraging my creative confidence, for allowing me the space to show up and express myself, for giving me a place to tell the everyday stories in this season of my life.

I would love to celebrate by offering you a 25% discount to join The Beauty Thread. paid membership — a cosy creative community inspired by the beauty within each day, in every season.

Join to receive the upcoming A Storied Home. in spring, a guide to creating a soft place to land and place to be inspired at home, and A Seasonal Salon. for spring, an online creative gathering, inviting us to create time and space to notice, and take cues from the beauty that surrounds us this season.

More details about the membership in full at the end of this post. This celebration offer makes an annual subscription less than £34 per year (forever), and is valid until the end of April 2025.

25% off forever

The next online gathering for A Seasonal Salon. spring edition, for members of The Beauty Thread. will take place at 10am GMT on Wednesday 7th May 2025.

We will gather together to light a bright fire within, to shed the layers we have been cocooned in, to step barefoot into a wildflower meadow blossoming with magic and potential.

In our time together, we will take time to contemplate and weave seasonal reflections, poetry and prose, flowers and folklore, in order to steep ourselves in the fullness of the season. Members of The Beauty Thread. will receive a link to register their space at the Salon.

Upgrade with 25% off

Writing as witnessing.

Writing here, to you, has become both interwoven with my life and has layered it in meaning. I witness the world around me in a subtly different way, not with entirely new eyes, but through a broader, yet more attentive lens of awareness.

My first instinct has become to find the beauty in my path — I look out for it, cultivate it and tend to it. The more I write, the more I notice, and it works the other way too. As my intuition becomes sharper, I soften to wonder.

“From beauty came wonder. Wonder has nothing to do with knowledge. It’s just a kind of first response to the intuitive…
Intuition is your most exacting sense. It is the most reliable sense. It is the most personal sense that a singularity has, and it, not knowledge, must be considered your greatest gift. If it isn’t in wonder you needn’t bother about it”.
—extracts from Louis Kahn, Essential Texts.

In ongoing difficult times for our planet and its people, which often renders me feeling helpless, I take a sliver of comfort in realising that there is a quiet power in noticing, cultivating and tending to beauty in our own small corners of the world.

By shifting my perspective to one of curiosity and openness to wonder, I am inspired by my own small patch of the earth, and I commit to experiencing fullness in each aspect of my life. By pouring time and energy into what I am responsible for and that what lights me up, surely something meaningful will find a way to grow…?

Writing as processing.

Although an additional layer of attention is a gift in itself, the process of writing it down bestows further potency. The act of recording my thoughts, ideas, observations and experiences provides me with an anchor — a framing of the little things that otherwise slip through my fingers, especially in this blur of mothering in the early years, where much is in danger of becoming a haze of half-formed memories in my mind.

“The vital part for me though is the recording of it all. Making the time and the space to get it down; to try to put into words an ineffable, ethereal and often times surreal feeling…
…Something known in our core but too hard to find words for, until we begin, and then we understand the process is the important and transformative part”.
—
Kerri ní Dochartaigh
, from The Omen Days.

Writing makes the formless tangible — it can capture a feeling, a sense, an essence, a moment. Writing creates a marker of time in ink, depicting the way that everything changes, yet with an undercurrent of familiarity.

Perhaps most importantly, the process provides me with an opportunity to make sense of my thoughts, it allows me a blank page to empty the contents of my mind, often a myriad of musings co-existing at the same time, but without the time or space to act upon them.

“I am in my head a lot of the time with my thoughts jostling for space whilst at the same time, my undivided attention being required by my children when I am with them. It feels more like brain fog than a heavy weight”.
—my thoughts on the mental load in motherhood from
Emma Del Rey
’s Defining the mental load, Motherhood Musings: Collection 2, Volume 1.

As I write, I work things out that have felt obscured — slowly the clouds part and seemingly disparate thoughts fit together, finding some semblance of coherency on the page, only then making sense in my mind.

Writing allows me to leave a trail of words, an indelible mark that says that I have been here, that speaks of the workings of the inner and outer landscape of my life.

Writing as gathering.

The act of putting pen to paper (or indeed fingers to keys) is a simple one, and so the magnitude of its magic is largely unseen. The act of writing itself feels like bringing together all of the pieces of me that have been pulled in different directions and strewn here and there, gathering them inwards with care. It is a way to find my centre and to re-establish who and where I am in the world.

To both draw inwards and to pour myself out onto the page is a voyage of discovery — both a means of escape, and a tie to the present moment. Sometimes uncomfortable, like sitting in meditation, it is a ritual — a new sort of homecoming in the ongoing process of returning to myself again and again.

“Every time you step into your own sacred writing space to greet your words you change a little, grow a little. And then, when you are ready, you close the ritual, come back to your day and carry on, as if you haven’t just travelled to other worlds and back”.
—
Beth Kempton
, from How writing as ritual creates sacred space in our lives, with Beth Kempton, ATELIER interview.

Even when not in the elusive state of ‘flow’, time disappears when I am writing — be it staring at a blank document, formulating my thoughts in a notebook, finally finding the form of a piece of writing on the page, or endlessly tinkering with draft after draft.

Although the act of writing is quiet and often carried out in solitude, it is an act of empowerment to find my voice and to produce words on a page that find their way to you.

Writing words for This Creative Life, created and edited by Sarah Robertson.

Writing as integration.

Writing here allows me to gather together all of the threads of my life — the past versions of myself, and my continual becoming. It is a joy to have a space to explore and tell of the evolving role of my home and garden; the ancient and enduring magic of flowers and folklore; the unfolding layers of mothering and the simultaneous draw to creativity; each thread underpinned by the wisdom of the seasons.

Introducing The Beauty Thread. in autumn 2024 has become a way to honour my pull towards the cultivation and curation of beauty — not in a superficial sense, but rather my belief that when we are able to notice beauty within the everyday, we find inspiration and wonder in the world around us, and in turn, within ourselves.

Writing as connection.

Over the past two years, I have found a treasured community of beautiful, supportive readers, many of whom have become valued friends, colleagues, collaborators and confidantes, witnessing and holding some of my innermost thoughts with kindness and care. Feeling encouraged to continue to put myself and my words out into the world, and being seen and heard by others gives my writing much deeper meaning.

Receiving thoughts and comments is precious, and a magical source of inspiration, flooding my mind with more ideas and often initiating a thought trail that takes me down more different pathways than I could have imagined.

Reading the words of others too, and becoming part of their communities, is incredibly enriching, enveloping and very often moving. There is a beautiful and reciprocal network of support, and a culture of celebrating and lifting each other up in what feels like an intricately woven web of words across the world. Conversations sparked by writing have led to continued communication with people who now feel like old friends.

Many of my highlights from the past year have involved collaboration such as,

The Holding Stories in-person spring gathering in London last April co-created with
Lauren Barber
, and the other gatherings we have held together including Meet us in the Rose Garden, and the recent Holding Stories circle for International Women’s Day 2025, as well as our ongoing support of each other behind the scenes, and sowing seeds for layered collaboration which feels intuitive, long-lasting and of value.
Inspiring and informative ATELIER interviews with treasured writers about their processes, rituals and creative spaces including
Alice Vincent
,
Susan Earlam
,
Laura Pashby
,
Beth Kempton
,
Lucy Green
,
Layla O'Mara
and
Stephanie Elizabeth
.
Writing ‘Patterns of Time’, an article exploring how aligning with seasons can nurture a sense of balance, presence and connection alongside a beautiful illustration by
Océane Meftah
for
Sarah Robertson
’s inspiring mini-zine, This Creative Life, celebrating seasonality, playfulness and adventure.
Writing ‘star light’ a September floral oracle for
Layla O'Mara
’s Element Sessions as part of her publication beauty & bone.
Writing my contribution to
Emma Del Rey
’s Motherhood Musings, Collection Two, about the mental load in motherhood for her publication, Being in Motherhood.
Writing a winter floral oracle for
Claire Amritavani Brown
’s Winter Talisman retreat inspired by the Omen Days.
Contributing ‘A shell, a petal and a feather — a magic spell to remember your true nature on International Women's Day 2025’, as part of Siren Songs, a collection of women’s voices answering the call of the Sirens to share stories of knowledge and joy, conjured masterfully by the magical Laura Durban, supported lovingly by Claire Venus ✨, Lauren Barber, Georgia, Laurita Gorman | Therapist SEP, Emma Simpson and myself.
Being featured as part of MotherStack curated by
Aoibhín
.
Meeting with and getting to know many of you through the seasonal gatherings within The Beauty Thread. membership.
Conjuring a spell for Siren Songs, International Women’s Day 2025.

Writing as a continued becoming.

If you have been reading here for a while, you will know that I have become somewhat entwined with the concept of winterspring — something I define as the state of being somewhere between tentative emergence and hasty retreat. Subconsciously, I think I have been awaiting a grand emergence from the undergrowth of early mothering, but as I write, I have come to realise that emergence is not the goal — that the ebb is as necessary, natural, and central to the pulsation of life, as the flow. That we are the ebb and the flow, the moon and the sea.

“Creative life takes time. It is its own particular form of labour. Our quiet, our retreat, our own ebb is the fuel which can in turn fuel art, and art is the thing that can fuel revolutions”.
—
Clare Mulvany
, from ‘perhaps your tide is out’, in the {REST series} on Ebb and Creativity, part of
Layla O'Mara
’s beauty & bone.

With each tiny shift in my inner and outer landscape, a simultaneous, sustained unravelling and layering takes place. As we move through the terrain of thresholds and transitions big and small as the needs of my children shapeshift and change almost daily, a new iteration of myself comes into view. And just as I continue to show up here with words and wonder on a page, I commit to my continued becoming.

Thank you so much for being here and for reading my reflections on two years of writing here.

I would love to hear your thoughts on living creatively and what it means to you. I hope we can chat more in the comments, or of course feel free to send me an email/message, I really love to hear from you.