notes from the edge of 39
walking the spiral, the only way out is through the cracks
returning (maybe) from the in-between
Hello my dear reader! Yes, I know, I haven't sent you any writings for a while. I’m slowly coming back... from a lot of things.
Here are a few tangled thoughts I've been having over the last days, and a little about the general fog that descends when the outside world speeds up and your inner self is still moving slow.
This last week I went to Spain, with my little family. First Madrid, where I watched my daughter chase butterflies with her friend Julian, whose family we hadn't seen in two years... what an encounter! The two of them disappeared into their own world of invented games and shared snacks. We've missed our Argentinian friends…
Then we drove past hills dotted with wildflowers, had lunch in forgotten towns... The sun was generous. The countryside slow. My body softened and melted in the warmth. It was the kind of trip that doesn’t demand much from you, only that you pay slow attention to beauty.
Sunlight can be its own kind of medicine. My skin drank it in (and my back is now peeling like a tangerine... oh well). But something in me remained quiet. Still. Out of sync. I had a sharp pain in my leg and had one of my infamous migraines, all the while surrounded by extreme beauty.
There’s a strange dissonance when the outside world blooms and your inner world doesn't keep pace. Living seasonally becomes hard when your body says "not yet" while the earth shouts "Spring is here, it's almost summer!" I find myself both grateful for the longer days and slightly startled by them. Like I’ve overslept and the garden has grown wild without me.
But I love this season. I love how everything feels more possible... wilder, more alive. I love the green mess of it all, the birds building nests in strange corners, the dry earth dotted in colour. I love the way nature doesn’t ask for permission to begin again.
astral hell and the threshold of age
I am about to turn 39. Such a weird number. A limbo number. I don't feel like I did at 19 or 29, at the edge of something important and I don't feel like celebrating the end of this decade. I'm ready for forty, but not 39. Is that too strange?
In Brazil, we call these weeks before your birthday astral hell, or inferno astral — the personal storm before the turning of the year (and there is no astrological basis for this; it's just something someone "invented" and a lot of people went along with it... including me, oops). This is an astrological realm where everything feels heightened. I usually get sick. I question everything. Often, it’s just a very messy time of year for me, even though I've learned to deal better with this in the last decade...
This year, it’s felt more like a dull quiet hum beneath everything. An insistence to pay attention. To listen closer. To stay. Not just in the literal sense, but in my own skin: to not check out from my body, my choices, my grief, or my joy. Even to stay with my sickness.
I tend to think of age (and life) as a spiral staircase: we pass the same themes, but with a slightly different view each time. The questions return, but we can hold them, listen to them, or ask them differently. Less panic, more breath.
bluebeard & sisterhood
I’ve been leading workshops at the Hillingdon Women’s Centre. We’ve been working with the tale of Bluebeard, that serial murderer who lives in all our psyches. I think that from all my offerings, Bluebeard has been the workshop I've offered most.
We talk about the ways women have been taught to fear their own knowing, the rooms we’re told not to enter, the blood we are made to shed.
We sit in a circle. We drink tea and eat snacks. We share smiles and tears and metaphors. We name the ways we’ve made ourselves small. We remember. And we usually find, together, that the only way out is through creativity, embodied creativity. Through sisterhood. Through telling the truth and letting it be heard.
Some women cry. Others laugh in a deep, slightly bitter way that comes from recognizing themselves in a story you thought belonged to someone else. I told them something I needed to remember myself: we are here to be whole, not nice. To be creative, loved, loving, fierce and never ever small.
The only way out is through the cracks.
waterfall questions
Somewhere in the middle of our trip to Spain, we found a waterfall. El Charco Verde, the green puddle.
We sat by the rocks, my husband and I, while our child played nearby with butterflies, beetles, frogs and little stream spirits. We had one of our big life talks, one of many of the last 13 years of being together: about England, about the way four years can still feel like you haven’t quite arrived. About the sense of waiting that has followed us across borders and seasons. The “we’ll see” that never quite becomes a decision. About the financial and residential limbo we find ourselves in - again - what quality of life means to us, if we should buy a house or not, if we get out just of London or out of the UK entirely.
We didn’t solve anything, not really. But we always agree on love, staying together, what's best for our kid, what we want from life (more waterfalls, good food, travel and not counting pennies). Sometimes that’s enough. Sometimes just posing our questions out loud is its own kind of clarity.
The water was icy cold, make-your-bones-hurt cold. I went in, literally screaming and kicking. And then I sang for Mama Oxum, Queen of the Waters, my mother and protector. The waterfall makes a sound that doesn’t give room for your doubts. There is no room for questioning in Mama's lap. I sang, swam… and me and my daughter offered yellow flowers. Ora Yê Yê Ô Oxum!
one day at a time
This month I celebrated 14 years of sobriety.
No gold stars for that, no applause. This is a necessary and fundamental commitment to my own life. I celebrated quietly with family, a cold glass of water and a thank you to all the versions of me that got us here. I am grateful, endlessly, to my Higher Power and to the many other people in recovery that have held me in silence and prayer and laughter and deep understanding, in meetings, phone calls, circles.
Fourteen years of choosing to not check out of myself. Of waking up, even when I didn’t want to. Of learning presence. Again and again. Of doing the dishes, showing up for bedtime stories, learning how to grieve without running away.
A small breath. A hand over the heart. A reminder: I’m still here. One day at a time.
new moon in gemini
The last New Moon was in Gemini. A moon of duality, of questions, of messages in warm winds. A curious moon.
That’s where I am. In the curiosity. In the asking. In the part of the story where things shift below the surface but haven’t fully revealed themselves yet.
Gemini (I say this as a double Gemini, of course) holds the contradiction of release and connection. This moon reminded me that I don’t need to choose a single story. I can be in love with spring and still feel like I’m not ready to bloom. I can want change and still feel afraid of it. I can laugh while still holding some grief.
mothering in all directions
My daughter keeps me tethered. She wakes up singing. Wears whatever she wants. She's glitter and leaves mixed with dirt. She asks if teeth become stars when you give them to the toothfairy. She wants to know if snails love their shells and gives names to little bugs she calls friends.
Some days I feel behind. Other days I feel like I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be. Most days I feel both (hey-o, Gemini).
She’s teaching me how to be in the world with my whole self. How to let joy in, even when I’m tired. Playful motherhood, always. Trusting the small, wild rituals of being alive.
I think there is no perfect syncing of life and season, no universal bloom schedule. I believe we can find a quiet, pulsing yes in the middle of all the maybe. Just a willingness to stay while everything keeps moving.
And this, I think, is enough.
If these words found you where you are, come say hello in the comments. I’d love to hear what you’re sitting with, staying with, in love with. How are you this season?
I'm going to be really sitting with this idea of "mothering in all directions." Thank you for sharing this!