Mixed Emotions

All Ready for the
Birthday Girl

What an utterly  fabulous weekend! Apologies for the late posting, it has been non stop and we have been recovering from a wonderful long weekend of celebrating birthdays and lives of family and friends. We kicked off on Saturday with our beautiful daughter Sophie's 18th Birthday, how wonderfully perfect for a pre Mabon celebration - to celebrate a coming of age, a harvest of 18 years of love and nurture as our precious girl became a woman, a celebration of fertility and fruitfulness, mine not hers obviously! 

Birthday Bouquet

We had a garden party at my parents which had a Hollywood theme for her, complete with a photo booth that we had put together - perfect for a drama student! All week I had fervently asked Ker for beautiful weather, and plenty of energy and inspiration to make Sophie's birthday party a magical one..... and She didn't let me down! The weather was wonderful, everything went to plan

Much Prettier Than a Jar..

and I found energy and creative inspiration from somewhere! I was originally looking for a pretty jar to store the 'love and happiness' in but was struggling to find one, instead I went with the flow (not easy when time is running out and you know in your heart of hearts that you are a teensy bit of a control freak!) and found this beautiful box looking just perfect for my purpose! Once I had lined it with lilac tissue paper, scented it with a winter orchid and cassis sachet  and filled it with sequinned

Brim Full of love
 and happiness...

 and jewelled messages of love and happiness from all the women who had watched her grow up and had helped her to become the young woman she is, it was ready to go...   She loved it!
One of my best friends made her a cake, with her favourite film star on it, she was actually speechless! 

Awesome Surprise Cake

The whole party felt special as all our friends and family were involved in some way or another, whether it was helping to get ready, making a cake, contributing to her Memory Scrapbook, taking lots of crazy photos with a variety of hats and wigs in the photo booth, the lads - my son and his best friends letting off some amazing fireworks or all the guests simply just by being there, it was truly a wonderful celebration and I am so delighted and grateful!

This week and weekend of celebrating has left little time for anything really 'Goddessy' although in many ways I feel that the whole celebration has been just that - a celebration of the mother line and Goddess and wonderful women that form a circle around us, invisible but strong as my little girl became a woman! 
The following day we celebrated another 18th with lots of bubbly - that of  our friends lovely daughter and then on Monday said a final goodbye and gave thanks for the life to my Dad's Uncle in a simple but moving ceremony, it did feel a bit weird saying 'Amen ' after being so used to 'Blessed Be' but I figured that honouring an old Naval Officer for the last time his way was the right thing to do! 
I did however manage a couple of mediation journeys, if I'm honest, more out of need to de stress than sheer connection with my Goddess, the results unsurprisingly were rather odd! In the first one I was pregnant, huge bellied, ready to pop, I walked through fields caressing my stretched stomach before sitting in a cottage with  a group of old women who brewing something over the fire and rubbing my feet, gleefully grinning and nodding to each other about the impending birth, in the second one I flew above the rain (it was pouring outside our windows that morning) and swooped over the

A Birthday Toast

empty fields with a lonely pang and a melancholy  ache in me, guess which one was before Sophie's birthday and which one was after! 
An emotional week for me, which was reflected in these journeys, but let me leave you on a happy note, with a photo of me and my 'grown up' daughter and happy memories of "wow, what a party!" 


    Have a Wonderful week and  a Blessed Mabon x x