St George's Day

This wasn’t the card I planned to make today.

In fact, I’d almost forgotten I’d marked St George’s Day in my turning year notes. But when I sat down to think about it, something in me reacted before I had time to shape it into something neat or symbolic.

The Green Man stayed. That felt right—ancient, rooted, something older than flags or politics. But the cross didn’t sit quietly behind him. It bled. And I didn’t stop it.

There’s an irony in all of this.

St George wasn’t British. Like so many of the things we hold up as “ours,” the story, the symbol, the tradition—it’s layered, borrowed, shaped over time. A kind of cultural patchwork. Which, when you think about it, is exactly what this country has always been.

And yet, there are moments where that complexity gets flattened. Where something shared becomes something guarded. Where a symbol that could connect is used to divide.

I think that’s part of what came out in this piece.

Because I do feel proud of where I come from. I can trace threads back through England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales—there is something deep and cultural and lived-in about that for me. But alongside that, there’s grief. About the division. The rhetoric. The narrowing of something that is actually wide and layered and human.

There’s frustration in this. A sense of being pulled between things that shouldn’t have to be in opposition.

And underneath it, something quieter.

Because the Green Man is still there. He hasn’t disappeared. He isn’t overwhelmed. He’s just… present. Watching. Enduring.

I added a little more shading around him at the end. I wanted him to feel stronger. I think that says something too.

Maybe this is what it comes down to for me—learning to trust a sense of identity that isn’t handed to me or shaped by the loudest voices. Not letting headlines or agendas define something that is actually lived, layered and personal.

Holding steady. Holding nerve.

And choosing, quietly, what feels true.

Intention: to hold a sense of identity that isn’t shaped by fear or noise, and to trust what feels quietly true
Practice: pause before reacting, notice what is influencing your thinking, and return to what you know to be yours