Midsummer Notes

Notes from the other side of the longest day.

Just past the longest day,
a note from the Garden

The solstice has just passed.

The longest day came and went, and I hope you felt it. I hope you stepped outside at some point, or turned toward a window, and let that particular quality of summer light land on your face. There is a richness to it, a fullness, that won’t come again until next June.

I’ve been sitting with it for a day or two now. That feeling of being at the top of something. The year in full bloom, everything leaning into the light before the slow turn begins.

This is what The Hummingbird Nest is for. Not the rushing through. The noticing.

And there has been so much to notice this spring.

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What has been growing in The Hummingbird Nest

When I wrote to you in April, I said I was tending this space the way a gardener tends her garden. Slowly. Layer by layer. Piece by piece. I told you something was being held here that wasn’t yet fully seen.

Spring has a way of making good on those promises.

On Friday evening, June 12th, a small circle of women came together around the Kitchen Table. It was the first gathering held in the newly reimagined Hummingbird Nest, and it felt like a beginning. Something that had been waiting a long time to be real finally was. I brought you into that space with us here.

A day later, we gathered again, this time in the Creativity Studio for the first Guest Creative session. Watercolour artist Chris Vabre joined us from Octopus Connection and led the most beautiful session. There was something remarkable about a group of women making art together, even across a screen. Chris brought such generous presence to the room.

Two gatherings in the same week, one around the kitchen table, one in the studio making something. It felt like the Nest had found its wings.

A few questions I asked, and why they matter.

I want to pause here for a moment, because it has always been my nature to bring you along with me.

Inclusion matters deeply to me. I think it has something to do with my value of fairness. I spent years working in environments where consultation was performed rather than practiced. Where the questions were asked but the answers didn’t really change anything. That always bothered me.

I remember years ago, I was a community facilitator for a provincial government program tasked with redesigning children’s services. On one particular day, we met with a focus group of single-parent moms receiving the services the government had designed and provided. The government workers proudly proclaimed, This is what we’re doing for you. The single moms pushed back hard. How could you know what we need, they asked; you never even asked us.

The government workers were in tears by the end of the meeting, having come face to face with a group of vulnerable women just trying to survive.

Looking back on it, it really was magic. Because it proved to me, also a single parent at the time, that consultation is critical to real community development. That the so-called experts can’t profess to know what others need simply because they think they are experts.

I feel passionately about this. So when I ask you something, I truly mean it.

Your answers shape what I create here. The experiences I plan, the themes I choose, the retreats I build. And I want to be honest with you about how that happens. Sometimes it’s a poll response that points the way. Sometimes it’s a comment that stops me and makes me think differently. And sometimes it’s something quieter. An intuition that arrives uninvited, the way the next Kitchen Table theme did. It simply came to me, and I knew it was right.

This is how the Nest gets built by all of us, together, and by the things that arrive when I’m paying attention.

With that, I have a few questions for you.

Where would you spend an unhurried hour?

I was thinking about the barn, the one I have been dreaming about building in the Alberta foothills for a very long time, and I found myself wondering about the women who will one day walk through the virtual door. So I asked in Substack Notes.

If you could spend one unhurried hour at a retreat, where would you be?

40 percent answered: around a table, talking deeply. The rest were split evenly between sitting still in the garden, making something at a worktable and getting lost in a good book.

I loved seeing that spread. It told me something true about this community. You are not all one thing. Some of you come to be still. Some of you come to make. Some of you come to connect. And some of you just need to disappear into a page for an hour.

The Hummingbird Nest is being built for all of you.

If you didn’t answer this question over on Substack, I’d love to hear how you would spend your time here.

And then, about friendship.

I shared something that came following a conversation I had with a dear friend about how friendship changes in midlife, how some friendships fade, how others deepen in ways you didn’t expect, how you can be surrounded by people and still feel lonely. How making new friends as a grown woman is somehow both harder and more tender than it ever was before.

One honest reply really hit home.

"I find that as I grow into midlife, and as a person, I crave deeper friendships with people who are in the same heart space as I am. Not many of the people I have journeyed with to this point in life are on the same path, and that can feel lonely. It’s one of the main reasons for setting up Kindred Founders, to be able to connect on the everyday with people who get me.” ~ Lucy - Business of Becoming & Press Publish, both on Substack

Note: You can find out more about Lucy’s Kindred Founders community here.

That landed. Because I think many of us know exactly what she means.

The poll on friendship in mid-life is still open. If you haven’t answered yet, I’d love to hear from you. Your input will help shape a half-day retreat coming in the fall.

What’s growing this summer.

We are spending this coming month in the company of flowers, and I’ll be writing more about that very soon.

July brings another Kitchen Table gathering. The theme is The Things We Carried Home, born from a trip to Italy that left me with more questions than souvenirs. Things about beauty, about slowness, about what we are actually hungry for. I can’t wait to bring it to the table.

We also have a Guest Creative session coming with Lise-Lotte Design. I’ll share details as the date comes together.

And something I have been looking forward to for a while now.

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In Full Bloom

In Full Bloom is my open house, coming in early July, for everyone curious about The Hummingbird Nest. A chance to come in, look around, meet each other, and make something together. I’ll be leading a flower pounding session, which feels exactly right for midsummer. Flowers pressed into fabric or paper by nothing more than a hammer and a little patience.

All are welcome. I’ll share the date very soon.

Today I’m writing to you from the other side of the longest day, grateful that you’re here.

The Hummingbird Nest began as a dream. It is becoming something real, held by real women, shaped by your answers and your presence and the things you bring to the table.

You are part of what’s growing here.

Thank you for that.

Warmly,
Kathy

A little about me

Hi, I’m Kathy. A guide, a gatherer, a maker of sacred space, and a woman who found her way home to herself after years of putting everyone else first.

For years, I wore many hats at once. Single parent, community manager in a role I was promoted into before I believed I deserved it, event organizer. And later, a family caregiver. Learning all over again how to give without losing yourself in the giving. Caring for everyone, in every direction, all at the same time. What I had to learn, slowly and imperfectly, was that I mattered too. What I found on the other side of that, through stillness, creativity, and the women who gathered around my table, became everything I now offer.

There’s a place at the table with your name on it.