What If Something New Is Coming?

October has arrived while the weather still seems slightly undecided about the whole thing. There is warmth hanging around, but the clues are everywhere now: darker evenings, leaves beginning to turn, that particular smell in the air and the first quiet instinct to prepare ourselves for the colder months ahead.

Nature is changing the set while we're still standing on the stage.

Maybe that's why I've been thinking so much about new seasons.

Not the new year, new me variety. I mean the less polished kind, when something in your life has begun to shift before you quite understand what it is. The things that fitted before don't fit so comfortably. Certain conversations feel different. Your appetite changes—not only for food, but for people, places, noise, work, relationships, even the things you once thought you wanted.

And because we don't yet recognise what is replacing them, we can assume something is wrong.

I've certainly done that.

I've spent periods of the last year wondering why life felt quieter, why certain things seemed to be falling away and why direction wasn't arriving in the form I expected. I've prayed about it, because that's what I do, but I've also realised that I'm quite capable of asking God for direction while simultaneously having rather firm ideas about what the answer should look like.

Preferably with clear instructions.

Possibly laminated.

Then I came back across some words in Isaiah that I'd read before but hadn't really heard in quite the same way: don't become so fixed on what happened before that you miss what is happening now.

“Behold, I will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth…”

It goes on to describe a way appearing through wilderness and rivers running through desert.

A river in a desert shouldn't really be there.

Perhaps that's why the image stayed with me.

You don't have to share my faith to recognise the possibility in that thought. Something new, by definition, may not resemble what came before.

And perhaps that's where it gets interesting.

When the new doesn't look familiar

We are creatures of pattern. If something worked before, naturally we try it again. If an opportunity arrived through one particular route, we keep an eye on that route. We return to familiar people, familiar strategies, familiar versions of ourselves.

Sometimes that's wisdom.

Sometimes it's habit dressed as wisdom.

I've been wondering whether we can become so busy looking for life to repeat itself that we don't recognise something completely different arriving.

Something can have been absolutely right for one season and not be right for the next. That doesn't make it a mistake. Its time may simply have ended.

There is a time for everything.

Perhaps some of the confusion comes because we think moving forward requires carrying everything with us.

It doesn't.

Some things simply can't cross over.

Old habits, old expectations, environments we've outgrown, relationships that belonged to another chapter, other people's definitions of us. Sometimes even the person we had to become to survive an earlier part of our lives.

That version of you may have done an excellent job.

You can thank them.

But perhaps they don't need to run the next chapter.

Buried or planted?

I've just completed my first year of herbal medicine studies, and after spending so much time learning about plants I've become even more fascinated by what happens when apparently nothing is happening at all.

A seed beneath the soil isn't particularly impressive to look at. For quite a while there is no visible evidence of progress, yet the seed is responding to its environment. Roots are developing. Change has begun long before anything breaks through the surface.

We understand this perfectly well in nature.

We're much less patient with ourselves.

I've thought about that in relation to seasons that have felt hidden or isolating. We tend to assume that if nobody can see our progress—or if we can't see it ourselves—nothing is happening.

But buried and planted can look remarkably similar from above the soil.

Maybe some of us haven't been buried at all.

Maybe we've been developing beneath the surface.

I don't say that to make suffering sound poetic. Some things hurt. Some experiences are unfair. Betrayal is still betrayal, loss is still loss, and there are parts of life I would never tell somebody they should be grateful for.

But I do believe something can grow from ground we never would have chosen.

And perhaps that's partly why those ancient stories have survived for thousands of years.

Joseph's story, for example, is so familiar that many of us first encountered it with Andrew Lloyd Webber, a technicolour coat and an extremely catchy soundtrack rather than through Genesis. Beneath the West End spectacle, though, it's quite a story: betrayed by his brothers, sold, falsely accused, imprisoned and eventually placed in a position nobody could possibly have predicted from the prison cell.

Moses has had the Hollywood treatment too. Plenty of people know The Prince of Egypt without necessarily thinking of themselves as remotely interested in the Bible.

Perhaps these stories endure because, faith aside for a moment, we recognise something human in them.

Being overlooked. Starting again. Finding yourself somewhere you never intended to be. Discovering that a chapter you thought had ruined the story somehow wasn't the ending.

My faith gives those stories another dimension, of course. But I rather like that you don't have to begin where I begin to find something useful in them.

Maybe that's true of faith itself sometimes.

We can dismiss things very quickly once we've decided which box they belong in. Religion. Science. Spirituality. Nature. Psychology. Ancient wisdom. Modern thinking.

I'm becoming increasingly interested in opening the box before deciding there is nothing in it.

What if the discomfort is telling you something?

Perhaps this is why transition can be so uncomfortable.

We're changing, but our surroundings may not have changed with us.

Sometimes you can physically feel when an environment no longer fits. You find yourself editing your words, swallowing your opinion, making yourself smaller or constantly having to fight for the right simply to be yourself.

I've become much more aware of that.

There are times when silence is wisdom. We don't need to attend every argument we're invited to, and having a voice doesn't mean using it without thought or kindness.

But silence and being silenced are not the same thing.

You are allowed an opinion. You are allowed to think differently. You are allowed to question something simply because everybody around you has agreed not to. You are allowed to say, actually, I don't see it that way, without somebody immediately trying to force you back into the approved version of the conversation. You are allowed to take up space.

Perhaps we've become rather bad at listening to each other without treating disagreement as something that has to be defeated.

Hierarchy can do it too. So can workplaces, families, relationships, institutions and groups. Sometimes the expectation isn't explicitly stated, but you know perfectly well where the line is and that life will be easier if you quietly toe it.

Over time, we can become so accustomed to editing ourselves that we stop noticing we're doing it.

And maybe that's another form of discomfort worth listening to.

Because what if the next version of you isn't willing to disappear quite so easily?

What if the new thing isn't initially a new job, house, relationship or opportunity, but you finding your voice?

Not becoming louder for the sake of it. Not assuming you're always right. Just becoming more honest about who you are, what you believe, what matters to you and what no longer does.

There is something incredibly freeing about realising you don't need unanimous approval to be yourself.

What are we telling ourselves?

Of course, not every voice trying to keep us in an old season belongs to somebody else.

Some of the loudest ones live in our own heads.

The stories we repeat about ourselves can become so familiar that we stop questioning whether they're true. That we're too old, too late, not clever enough, not qualified enough, too damaged by what happened before, or that everybody else somehow received the instruction manual we missed.

We are shaped by our thoughts in ways I think we're still learning to understand.

And this is another place where I find old wisdom and modern understanding bumping into each other in interesting ways.

Thousands of years ago, Proverbs was talking about guarding what we allow to settle in the heart. Philippians talks about directing the mind towards what is true, good, lovely and worthy. Today we have different language—rumination, stress responses, neural pathways, mind-body health—but we're still fascinated by the relationship between what happens within us and how it affects the way we live.

I love that.

Science doesn't diminish my sense of wonder; if anything, learning makes it bigger.

My herbal studies have done that too. The more I learn about plants, the human body, ecosystems and the extraordinary relationships happening in the natural world without any instruction from us, the more questions I have.

I believe creation has a Creator.

You may not.

And that's okay.

You don't have to believe what I believe to stand beneath an enormous old tree and feel something. Or watch the moon rise. Put your hands into soil. Grow a seed into something you can eat. Sit beside the sea long enough for your thoughts to quieten down.

Perhaps wonder is common ground.

And I think we've lost some of it.

Are we making room for the new?

So this is where all these thoughts have eventually brought me.

What is happening for you?

What feels different lately?

Perhaps nothing dramatic has happened at all, but you've noticed something shifting. You're suddenly less willing to tolerate something. Something that once mattered enormously doesn't anymore. An idea keeps returning. You're drawn towards a place, person, project or possibility you hadn't considered before.

Maybe you're restless, excited, absolutely terrified.

Maybe it's all three.

And what are you holding onto simply because it's familiar?

Because we can ask for change while gripping the old with both hands.

I've been thinking about a phrase I wrote down recently:

If it's from God, it will chase you even if you run. If it's not from God, it will run from you even if you chase it.

That's how I understand it through my faith, but perhaps there's a broader question inside it too.

What in your life requires constant chasing, forcing, explaining and resuscitating?

And what keeps quietly finding its way back to you?

There is still work to do. Courage matters. We have to plant things, turn up, make decisions and sometimes knock on quite a few doors.

But there is a difference between tending something and trying to keep alive what has already finished.

I'm learning that too.

The environment doesn't get the final say

This brings me back to that strange image of a river running through a desert.

The environment doesn't support it.

That's precisely what makes it interesting.

We can become very good at looking at the evidence around us and deciding what is possible: there isn't enough money, we don't know the right people, we're the wrong age, the opportunity doesn't exist, nobody has done it that way, perhaps we've missed our chance.

Sometimes those are perfectly sensible observations.

But sensible isn't always the whole story.

Life has surprised me enough times to know that ‘I can't see how’ and ‘there is no way’ are two very different statements.

My faith leaves room for God to make a way where I can't see one.

Perhaps you call it possibility, timing, providence, chance, coincidence or simply life being wonderfully unpredictable.

Whatever language we use, I don't want to become so certain about what cannot happen that I leave no room for what might.

Especially now.

Tending what comes next

Maybe that's why The Wild Remedy continues to evolve too.

It began through my own relationship with nature, wellbeing and recovery, but it keeps growing into something wider: plants, products, workshops, community, learning, conversations and creating spaces where people can reconnect with themselves and the natural world.

Completing my first year of herbal medicine studies feels part of that growth rather than a separate achievement. There is still so much I want to learn, which is probably exactly how it should feel.

As autumn settles in, I'm returning to the remedies and rituals that naturally belong to this part of the year. Our Magnesium Butter remains one of the favourites for supporting sleep and massaging into tired, achy muscles at the end of the day, while the Pillow Spray has become another lovely evening ritual—a simple mist before bed along with our natural essential oil candles as part of telling the body that the day is finally allowed to finish.

Then there are the botanical oils, balms and herbal things I love making, and our The Wild Remedy gift hampers, which begin to feel particularly lovely as we move towards gifting season. They can be put together as a collection of useful, natural things for somebody who needs a little looking after—or, quite legitimately, for yourself.

The workshops are another part of The Wild Remedy I want to keep growing: people around a table, learning about plants and natural ingredients, making something with their own hands, talking, laughing and perhaps remembering that we don't have to consume everything ready-made. If you're part of a community, workplace, school or group and would like to bring a Wild Remedy workshop to your people, come and talk to me.

And there is the Wild Circle, which perhaps makes even more sense to me now.

Because a new season doesn't necessarily mean going alone.

Sometimes the new thing is finding your people.

We have this precious thing called life

Perhaps that's where I want to leave this month's Journal.

Not with an answer, because I don't have one neatly packaged for myself, never mind anybody else.

But I do have a question.

What are we waiting for?

We have this strange, fragile, extraordinary thing called life. None of us knows precisely how much of it we get, yet it's remarkably easy to spend years postponing ourselves.

Waiting until we're more confident. Waiting for permission. Waiting until somebody agrees. Waiting for the perfect circumstances. Waiting to feel completely ready.

Who are you becoming while you're waiting?

Not the person your job title says you are. Not who somebody else expects you to be. Not the version of yourself built entirely around survival, approval, duty or keeping everybody else comfortable.

Who are you now?

Maybe you don't completely know.

I don't think that's a problem.

Perhaps discovering it is part of the new thing.

There may be things that cannot come with us into every season, not because they were all bad but because we are no longer who we were when we needed them. We can keep the wisdom, the people who genuinely love us, the lessons and the good memories without carrying every old fear, expectation and definition of ourselves along too.

I'm still listening for direction myself. Still searching in some places. Still wondering about others. Still praying. Still learning when to push and when to stop pushing.

But perhaps that's enough for now.

October doesn't need all the answers.

Nature certainly doesn't seem worried about explaining what it's doing. The leaves simply change when it's time.

And maybe there is something rather hopeful in that.

The next thing doesn't have to resemble the last thing to be good.

The path doesn't have to be familiar to be right.

And an ending isn't always an ending when you're standing too close to it to see the entrance.

So perhaps the question for this new season isn't what am I losing?

Maybe it's simply:

What is trying to begin?

~

A little something for October…

Before you go, here's something simple to take into the new season with you.

Make yourself an autumn infusion with dried rosehips, a few slices of fresh ginger, a little apple and a piece of cinnamon, covered with hot water and left to infuse.

Rosehips and apples belong so beautifully to this time of year, while the ginger and cinnamon bring a little warmth as the days begin to cool. Nothing complicated, just a way of pausing for ten minutes and drinking with the season rather than rushing straight through it.

(As always, herbs are natural but not suitable for everyone. Please check the ingredients are right for you, particularly if you’re pregnant, breastfeeding, taking medication or managing a health condition, and seek professional advice if you’re unsure. Listen to your body and enjoy mindfully).

And while it steeps, perhaps sit with one last question from this month's Journal:

What am I ready to leave behind—and what am I making room for next?

Write it down if you like. Take it outside. Sit by a window. Or simply drink your tea and think.

Sometimes a ritual doesn't need to do very much.

It just needs to make us stop long enough to notice where we are.

Until next time,

Bee x