Returning to the Path | New Moon Notes

Over the last week or two I’ve felt slightly untethered from myself.

Not dramatically. Not catastrophically. Just… off-course.

A bit overwhelmed. A bit exhausted. A bit emotionally flat.

My husband has been away a lot. Work has been intense. Life has been noisy and busy in the ordinary ways adult life often is. I’ve also been physically run down for a while — the sort of tiredness where you realise you’ve been limping along on momentum more than genuine energy.

Yesterday it all seemed to catch up with me properly. I was up in the night feeling unwell and ended up spending most of the next day under a blanket watching Game of Thrones because I genuinely didn’t have much else in me. A small part of me felt guilty about that. There is always a voice somewhere muttering that I should be making, producing, exercising, tidying, answering messages, moving projects forward, becoming a better version of myself.

But I think I’m beginning to realise that rest is not a failure of the process.

It is part of it.

Today’s new moon card features Oxford ragwort and cinnabar moth caterpillars. They immediately pull me back into childhood — canal towpaths, overgrown edges of paths, collecting caterpillars in little tubs and Tupperware containers because I found them completely magical.

I loved the idea that these bright striped creatures would quietly transform into something entirely different.

There’s something important to me about ragwort too. It’s often dismissed as a weed. Something scruffy and invasive and undesirable. But it survives. It appears in difficult places. It feeds pollinators. It becomes habitat. It belongs.

I think this card accidentally became about resilience.

Or perhaps not resilience in the triumphant motivational sense. More the quieter kind. The kind where you lose your rhythm for a while, neglect things slightly, feel disconnected from your own routines and practices — and then slowly come back.

Not by dramatically reinventing your life.

Just by returning.

Today I repotted my rudbeckia seedlings, which I’d abandoned a little longer than I should have done. I tidied a few things. I made this card. None of it was revolutionary. But it felt like looking back at the map after wandering away from the path for a while.

And maybe the important thing is this:

I didn’t throw everything away because I lost momentum.

I didn’t decide that because I’d stopped journalling regularly, or because I’d had a difficult week, or because I’d been lying on the sofa feeling sorry for myself, that all progress was ruined.

I simply came back.

I think I’ve spent a lot of my life imagining creativity and personal growth as something linear. As though once you begin a meaningful practice — whether that’s art, exercise, mindfulness, writing, gardening, spirituality, healthy eating, whatever it happens to be — you should somehow maintain it perfectly forever.

But real life has seasons.

Real life includes illness and overwhelm and emotional dips and days where all you can really do is survive comfortably.

A practice that only works when life is calm and inspiring isn’t really integrated into your life at all. It’s just a performance of the person you wish you were.

A real practice has to survive ordinary life.

It has to survive stress and exhaustion and distraction and sadness and busy Tuesdays and laundry and burnout and overthinking and disappointment and hormones and work deadlines and grief and all the other deeply unpoetic parts of being human.

And perhaps the rhythm was never broken.

Perhaps the rhythm always included rest.

Perhaps the path was always going to curve.

Perhaps becoming yourself is less about constant forward movement and more about learning how to return — gently, repeatedly, without shame.

Intention

To trust in cycles of rest, overwhelm, growth, and return. Losing my way for a while does not mean I am lost; I can come back slowly to the rhythms, practices, and small acts that help me recognise myself again.

Practice

Take stock without judgement. Instead of trying to fix everything at once, choose one gentle act that helps you feel rooted again — water something living, tidy a small corner, or return to a creative ritual for a few quiet minutes.