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Leadership Developer •
Coach & Facilitator • Writer
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Welcome to the May 2025 Newsletter
Hello there and
welcome to May, when we're past Beltane, in this hemisphere
anyway, and heading towards summer pastures. My garden
is looking lovely and I've put (some of) my winter clothes up in
the attic.
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After March was
full-on with work, April was almost empty - and that was a gift
because I got to have a few days doing some nature-collaging at
West Dean, had a stunning reading week on Gower, lots of
time in bed reading, plus many sea dips with the water so
much warmer. Although, a tenacious sinus infection and then
a cracked rib from body boarding did get in the way. One
gone, the other healing slowly.
And so this month:
- a new piece of writing about rest - in part to shape the
content for the next Acts of Love which will explore love-as-rest
- starting to turn my attention to thinking about what role love
plays in coaching and sharing the wonderful work of Clare
Norman on that topic
- reminding myself of the importance of an opposite world
- one of the most wonderful creations I've seen in a long time -
for those of us who like poetry as well as opening to intuition
and 'messages from the field'
- and lots of great reading to recommend
So until June, and in the meantime, a reminder that every
storm eventually runs out of rain.
With love
Helena x
(pic: Nguyen
Thi Kim Hong))
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I've been reading
about rest, from a few angles. Partly because I think our
relationship to rest is getting a bit wonky and partly to help me
think about the ways that rest might be a form of love (which is
the theme for the next Acts of Love workshop later
this month).
I pulled together some thoughts and made a blog from them.
You can read that here.
(pic: Faben des
Lebens)
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Over the summer,
I'll be recording a series of conversations exploring the role
that love plays in coaching, as part of hosting a podcast series
for The Association for Coaching.
In the meantime, you can read what the wonderful Clare Norman says about how
the two things go together in her really thought provoking series of blogs on that
subject. And yes Clare will be one of the people I'll be
talking to on the podcast - a conversation that's long overdue.
(pic: from my time
at West Dean, fabric dyed with natural dyes from madder root,
onion skins, turmeric...)
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A long
story found me booked into West Dean College, for a 3
day Mixed Media Journaling workshop It's worth saying that
I have no creative practice using my hands at all. Never
have. No practice and no skills either. At home it's Dom
who does stuff like making jam or mending clothes (and so much
more - spoon carving, making his own clothes, visible mending,
shibori ...)
But I'd booked onto this Intermediate course as a beginner and
here I was.
All day doing things with nature and my hands - drawing, doing
cyanotype (an early form of photography using sunlight), dying
material from onion skins, madder root and logwood. Stitching.
Collecting foraged stuff from the grounds to work with, sketching
...
I had some difficult moments. Some anger. Not with the fact
I was a beginner and the others on the course were 100% not (one
was a mosaics tutor, another a costume maker making the clothes
for Bridgerton). My difficulties were about how the hell
could I be spending 3 days fiddling amateurishly with bits of
paper when the world was on fire? How could I bear my
middle class indulgence in spending a heap of money on something
that was good-for-nothing when it could better be used at the
foodbank?
All those remained true (and the work I produced is about the
level of what's on your fridge door from your children).
But here's the thing. I left those three days deeply
rested. Reconnected with nature. Soothed and restored.
Reminded there were other ways of being in the world other than
my own. Somehow a bit more balanced out. 100% loving having
been there and glad I went.
Yes, it was a form of rest, of course. And
it also reminded me of what Nick Petrie says about the importance
of us having an 'opposite world'.
(pic:
Disa Lesmana)
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'Who do you
choose to be for this time?'
Margaret
Wheatley
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I'm sure
you already know the wonderful work of Maria Popova and The Marginalian. In
which case you'll know she's been working on this stunning deck of cards -
part simply things of beauty in both bird and word - and part
divination/wisdom cards. And yes, I've pre-ordered a
set.
If you love a bit of divination then do also check out Cat Blissett who coaches
uses tarot cards. It's super interesting, to bring in the mystery
and intuition in this way.
(pic:
Maria Popova)
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'I look at
young people and marvel at their ignorance of what's coming,
and the old people look at me.'
Sarah
Manguso
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THE LOVE LAB
It's
filling up nicely.
The Love Lab 2025 is on Friday 28 Nov, in
central London, and full details plus the link to book are HERE. This
is the fourth or even fifth time of running this event - and it
remains one of the highlights of my year.
When it's easy to make a choice to disconnect, what might
be possible when we connect?
If it seems to make sense to make our hearts small to
cope with what's around us, what greater sense might it make to
allow our heart to soften and expand?
In The Love Lab, that's what we're trying to understand - how we
might tap into the love that exists between people - and people
who don't know each other - so that we can create a bigger
version of Us. A version of Us that can provide buoyancy
for choppy seas.
I think
it takes a bit of courage to sign up. When all sort of
things conspire to keep us separate from others and when there's
security in that, it takes a bold move to find ways to prop open
the doors of our hearts.
But
maybe that's just what's calling you now. if so, it would
be great to welcome you.
ACTS OF LOVE FOR TOUGH TIMES
And don't forget, the next Acts of Love workshop is
21 May. The theme is rest.
Rest-as-love
Love-as-rest
We'll look at the nature of these times we're in that make it so
important for us to rest - in a range of ways - so that we're
well and sane, and we're able to support ourselves and
others.
Book HERE - 21
May 0800 - 1000 BST
June date: 25 June 0800-1000 with link to book HERE. And the theme is
love-as-connection.
(pic: Marina Krasniasky)
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Talking
to someone the other day about how world events and our lack of
influence over them can really put us in touch with our own
helplessness. Then remembering another conversation with
someone who said in the face of this, our sphere of influence has
to be local and for him, from the Jewish tradition, that meant 40
doors in any direction – so your neighbourhood.
And then somehow remembering the BBC had a cracking podcast
called Café Hope where people had
taken something into their own hands and done something generous
and useful. Some of these things are mighty. But
some are totally within our gift to make happen. For
example, take a listen to the one about the Stockport riots last
summer…
And
another one that isn't about hope but that I find so
hopeful. And that's Life Changing, with Sian
Williams, where she talks (so wonderfully) with people who have
lived through extraordinary events and how that has reshaped
them.
(pic: string dyed with onion skins, madder
root and the like, from my few days at West Dean)
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We Lived Happily
During The War
And
when they bombed other people's houses, we
protested
but not enough, we opposed them but not
enough. I was
in my bed, around my bed America
was falling: invisible house by invisible house by invisible
house -
I took a chair outside and watched the sun.
In the sixth month
of a disastrous reign in the house of money
in the street of money in the city of money in the country of
money,
our great country of money, we (forgive us)
lived happily during the war.
Ilya Kaminsky
(pic:
Rita Gazubey)
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' Rested, we
are ready for the world but not held hostage by it'
David
Whyte
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Heaps
this month - partly because work is quiet and also because I had
a reading week solo on the coast in Wales.
James from Percival Everatt
is hands-down a stunning read. Linda Grant's When I Lived In Modern Times
was good, but a trickier read mostly because I was learning as I
went about Palestine in 1947, just before it become the state of
Israel. Margaret Attwood's The Penelopiad set me
up well for the Ralph Fiennes film The Return when it comes out
later this year. Whale Fall was beautiful,
from Elizabeth O'Connor. Clear, from Carys Davies, an
original read, deeply lovely. And Elif Shafak's Honour - also good. Tash
Aw's The South was lovely -
nothing much happened in it and yet it did - and it's intended as
the first of four and I'd have been happy to have carried on
reading if the other three were available.
And in my online Book Group we're reading John O'Donohue's Anam Cara - and we do it in
chunks, meeting every two weeks to talk about that section.
It's not going great for me - I adore his poetry but not his
writing, it seems. Such hard work. Not loving it.
And I also read Good Bye from Lizzie Bentley
Bowers and Alison Lucas - very good, a really practical guide for
doing endings well in organisations.
For the piece on rest above, my top reads are Rest is Resistance from
Tricia Hersey and Jenny Odell's How To Do Nothing -
both of them re-reads for me - both excellent. Plus Claudia
Hammond's The Art of Rest and Robert
Poynton's Do Pause.
(pic: the
library I took with me for my week on Gower)
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Not very
much at all in April. And I definitely notice that when I've had
time off my hamster wheel, so all the more reluctant I am to even
look at any hamster wheel at all when the time comes to get back
on. As I'll need to in May. Oh dear.
But there were two great days of action learning sets - one
in-person with senior Civil Servants and the other online with a
client where their leaders are very new to learning at all, which
is always a great place to be working from.
Launched a new cohort of Leading from Love with a global charity,
this time with folks from the US and Canada as well as
Nigeria.
And plenty of coaching and coaching supervision. I
have some space
for new supervision clients, by the way - just
drop me a line if you might be interested.
And it's not work-work but it certainly was work: completing the
written assignments for Module 1 of my end of life doula training
(9 pieces of writing, each of 1500 words...) as well as starting
the completion assignment for my Certificate in Coaching Supervision
from the Tavistock. I never love having to write stuff up
but it really does reinforce the learning.
(pic: Rita
Gazubey)
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Do get in touch and let me know how you're finding
these Newsletters, or if you'd like to see more info or
anything I could include. I love hearing from
you. You know where I am on LinkedIn, or connect via Email. Or call me of course,
whichever suits.
Helena x
helena@helenaclayton.co.uk
07771 358
881
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