What are Taster Notes? They highlight the details of a gathering. A little taster for you at home. My hope is that you’ll escape, even for just a moment, and that it will feel like you were there with us.
On Friday evening, June 12, a small circle of women came together around the Kitchen Table. It was the first gathering held in the newly remodelled Hummingbird Nest, and it felt like a beginning.
I want to bring you into that space with us.
Imagine knocking at the door and being greeted by a warmly lit room. The hostess welcomes you and invites you to pull up a chair. It’s your time to slow down.
Candles and wildflowers. A linen runner in warm, earthy tones.
Immediately, as so often happens when women gather, a hum of conversation begins.
The hostess presents the menu. Tonight’s gathering has a shape to it. An appetizer to ease us in. A table touch. A main course. A side dish, a dessert, and something sweet to carry home.
Before the gathering, new members receive something called The Kitchen Table Truths. Not rules. More like a quiet understanding of how we hold one another here.
Appetizer
To arrive and settle in, the hostess offers a small blessing before we light our candles together.
This candle represents the warmth of gathering. Though we join from different homes and different circumstances, tonight we share a table.
May this light remind us that we do not journey alone. We learn from one another’s stories, courage, and wisdom.
Like birds traveling together, we benefit from the presence and encouragement of others as we find our way.
Whatever you carried here, you can set it down now. You’ve arrived.
This time belongs to you.
And then, from different rooms and different corners of the world, we lit our candles together.
Our theme for the evening was Taking Flight.
I shared how this theme arrived through a short video. I’m happy to offer it to you here as well.
Table Touch
After the candle was lit and the theme was shared, I offered our Table Touch. A special detail brought to the table each gathering. This night, a quote…
“When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.”
— John H. Secondari, written for the film I, Leonardo da Vinci, 1965
I love this quote because it speaks to the truth of taking flight. It changes us. Once we have known what it feels like to soar, even briefly, even quietly, we carry that knowledge forever. We walk differently. We look up more. We know what is possible.
I wondered if that was true for each of the women at the table that night.
I think it was.
Main Course
Before we moved into our Story Bowl conversation, I offered a meditation. A way to arrive more fully. To set down whatever the day had been and be present at the table.
Take a few minutes to listen if you like. Then come back.
Storybowls is truly the heart of the evening.
Each gathering, I reach into a bowl and draw out questions. One by one. And the women at the table answer. Not with quick replies, but with real stories. The kind that take a breath before they begin.
It is where we begin to truly know one another.
The questions for Taking Flight were drawn from three places: looking back, looking within, and looking forward. I won’t share them all here. Some things belong to the table. But I will tell you this.
Each woman told a story that allowed her to be known just a little more.
Side Dish
Before we closed the evening, we made something together.
Wings & Words is a simple creative practice. Two colours for the page. Five lines for the heart.
Each woman chose two colours and let them move across the page first. No plan. No right way. Just colour and instinct. Then five lines, beginning wherever the colour took her.
There is something about putting colour down first. The hand finds things the mind hasn’t caught up to yet.
One of the women in our circle gave me permission to share what arrived for her. She painted a sunshiney sky and ocean blue, then wrote her way into it.
I am standing on the edge of a new life.
I am holding peace in my body.
I am releasing expectations.
I am reaching for the sunlight.
Waiting in the air surrounding me is knowing.
If you’d like to try Wings & Words yourself, the tutorial is included below.
Dessert
We ended as we began. With our candles.
As we extinguished them together, I offered this blessing.
As we extinguish our candles and return to our lives, may we carry with us the stories we have shared, the wisdom we have received, and the connections we have strengthened. May we leave this table encouraged, inspired, and reminded that we never journey alone. May we trust the next step, however small it may be. And may we continue to gather courage, one twig at a time.
After-Dinner Mint
We ended the gathering with a brief walk together through The Hummingbird Nest. The Garden. The Creativity Studio. The Kitchen Table. I’ll be sharing a full tour with all of you very soon.
July at The Kitchen Table
I arrived at July’s theme in a very unusual way. Let me explain…
I went looking for something under the bathroom sink.
I found Italy instead.
Two bars of soap, still wrapped in brown paper. A shopkeeper’s careful taping. A memory held in place since May 2025.
My daughter and I had taken a boat across the Venetian lagoon to Burano. The colored houses. The lace. A blue scarf I couldn’t resist.
I’d already spent too much. Then a shop window stopped me.
Linen aprons, hanging still. Exquisite. The kind of thing you stand in front of longer than you mean to.
You could almost see the women who would wear them. Hands floury. Glass of wine on the countertop. Something on the stove. A family waiting to be fed.
I went in anyway.
The aprons I could only admire. The soap I could bring home.
I didn’t know then that she was wrapping up more than soap.
Neither of us did.
Which got me thinking about the next Kitchen Table gathering. And it shaped my theme.
The Things We Carried Home. Coming to The Kitchen Table, Friday, July 10, 6:00 - 7:30 pm MDT
There’s a place at the table with your name on it. We’d love to have you join us!
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.
Thank you Kathy! This was another delightful event at your kitchen table. Hugs 🩵 🩵 🩵