Until September
A photo journal and summer reflection-pausing for the season, with one live offering to come in July.
I’ll be hosting a live event July 27 on change and becoming — join me here.
I woke the other night
to the sound of spit,
and the wet pull of teeth—
a bear outside my bedroom window,
reared on hind legs,
plucking ripened cherries
from the tree at midnight.
I stood in the still night air,
listening to his breath
his hunger,
his joy
before calling through the screen,
telling him to move on.
To stop crushing the strawberries.
To spare the branch from snapping.
He lumbered off,
wide and heavy across the gravel,
fading into tall grass like a shadow.
Summer opens her hands,
and all things come running.
My roses are
breaking open from their stalks,
clustered and spilling.
The lavender has flowered.
Honeybees hang heavy from each blossom, glazed in golden dust.
The garden is spilling over
an overwhelming harvest
of courgettes and cauliflower.
From quiet green abundance
to the noisy feast of the city—
we took the boys on a culture crawl through Vancouver,
tasting everything we could.
Hugo was drained by it all
said his energy felt “zapped
from the soles of his feet.”
Leo loved every second
the uncharted, the racket,
the Persian food,
the soup dumplings,
the sea wind in his hair.
I moved slowly,
watching them rush ahead
all muscle and hunger for the world.
I was content in the city's bustle—
but I only gasped for breath,
for beauty,
when I stumbled on small gardens
in unassuming places.
Wildflowers under bridges.
Softness on street corners.
Dusk light
filtering through coastal trees,
slanting down alleyways.
It’s always nature for me
the way she slips her hand
into the clumsy palm of the human world.
Summer crept in
beneath a sky of soft grey cloud
and steady rain.
I love a season that eases in
nothing abrupt,
nothing bracing.
Just a gentle walk into another chapter.
A hand of warm sunlight
inside the hand of rain.
The two
squeezing,
alternating,
slowly.
Now, the heat has come,
swelling cherries the color of Merlot,
fattening the watermelon.
Everything flares open
and wilts by midday,
begging for the mercy
of shadow,
and mountain silhouette.
We’re home now,
the boys and I,
together in the long days
and I see it more clearly:
they no longer move like
plump-palmed cherubs.
They run,
climb,
leap,
tumble
loudly.
Wildly.
Flushed with strength in every part
of their growing bodies.
Leo reaches for everything
the height,
the vantage,
the far horizon.
He climbs to the roof
just to see further.
His last boy-years
rise in him like fever.
Like heat.
His shoulders are broadening.
He’s nearly my height.
I slow him.
He doesn’t want to be reined.
I know this place.
I remember it well,
the thirst
that never quite quenches,
the dreams
with long legs,
hands full of wanting.
These close-family summers
are already shifting.
Quickly.
I feel his fledging
the edge he stands on.
My figure
shrinking in his gaze.
His eyes
reaching toward the blue distance.
Hugo still stays close.
He lays his head on my chest,
reaches for me,
walks beside me.
He stops to smell magnolias.
Tumbles rocks in the tumbler.
Crochets quietly
on couches,
in corners,
beneath linen sheets.
He is not yet restless.
Still content
to be near.
To be held.
I vow to be the kind of mother
who stays awake to all of this.
But there is also resistance
a slow-burning rebellion
against the constancy of giving.
Some days I carry love
like a lantern.
Other days, like a weight
strapped across my back.
There is fatigue here.
There is longing
for some imagined elsewhere.
A quiet and shapeless grief.
This, too, is part of love.
The complexity.
The contradiction.
The rough edge
that shapes the whole.
I take the orange in my fist
and squeeze out what I can
juice, grit, and the stubborn seed.
I sip the changing season:
the heat,
the sweetness,
the last days
of closeness.
All this to say:
I am choosing presence.
To give myself wholly
to the sacred unfolding
of change
and love.
As I do each year,
I’ll be pausing my Substack
through the boys’ summer break.
Payments will be paused
until I return in September.
But I will be offering
one more live gathering—July 27—
on the force that carries us through change,
and the tender art of living inside contradiction.
If you’ve felt torn between a deep yes to life
and the fear of what it might cost,
this time will help ease the growing pains and strengthen your spine.
You can register here
I’d love to connect with you again.
I heard the other day
that our time with them as children
is shorter
than the time we’ll know them grown
That we are, right now
living in the blink
the brief moment
where they are still ours
I forget this sometimes
especially when I’m tired
or worried about the future
or picking up another wet towel
from the bathroom floor
But this life
this cherry on the branch,
this child in the hallway,
this version of me
and you
it’s all moving.
Not stagnant
not still.
This version is already
on its way
into something new.
I am in the blink.
May I love the ripening
as much as the falling fruit.
I’ll miss you all over the summer months
and anticipate my return.
Be well, sweet ones!
I love you.
Sarah
