Hi Subscriber First Name,

It’s the 23rd of June and that means it’s been 2 days since the Summer Solstice. Did you celebrate it? Or maybe just witness it? It’s the longest day of the year and reminds us that summer is in abundant flow with nature in full bloom. Hopefully you can sense that energy in your life too!

It probably isn’t a surprise that I love witnessing the rhythms of the year. It’s a principle I use in my work and has opened up profound changes in my own relationship with the light and the dark.

These are now moments I consciously feel rather than just mark on a calendar. Something shifts in me at the solstices and equinoxes, a kind of internal weather change that I've learned to pay attention to.

But the summer solstice (21st June) would also have been my mum’s birthday. She would have been 76 this year and every year, I reflect on the gap between that number and the 49 she actually reached and it keeps me focussed on a Mary Oliver quote I love,

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

Adding to the emotions this year, Father's Day was also woven into the mix which brought its own complexity. There's the genuine joy of being a dad and then there's the deeper recognition of the lack of relationship with my own father. And all of that sits inside a culture that insists we perform certain feelings on certain days, whether those feelings are true for us or not.

So in all of that noise, I made a choice. I started the day at sunrise, at a place that matters to me, where some of my mum's ashes were scattered. It was exactly the right place to be.

What the day reminded me was that we always have a choice about what we face, what we witness and what we consciously set down.

These aren't the same thing and I think we collapse them too often.

Facing something means turning towards it fully, with the integrity to let it land whether we like it or not.

Witnessing means holding space for it without needing to resolve it.

And setting something down is not the same as dismissing it. It's a deliberate act of choosing which rhythms actually belong to you.

The best gift I received on Sunday were words from my children. They could have written them on a scrap of paper and it would have meant just as much, because the magic was entirely in the thought rather than the consumption. That distinction feels important right now, in a world that works very hard to convince us that feeling and buying are the same thing.

That presence is the foundation of my mum teaching me how powerful love can be as a life force. I only had 17 years with her, but she loved me more in that time than many people experience in a lifetime. So if I can offer one thing to sit with this week, it's this - trust your heart, your gut, whatever you want to call the intuition that pulls you towards your own truth. That's where love lives.

And following that (even when everything around you is pulling in a different direction) is both the most courageous and the most beautiful thing any of us can do.

It matters whether you're a business leader trying to work out what kind of company you actually want to build. Someone who has felt the gap between the work you do and the life you want to be living. Or someone mid-transition who can't yet see what comes next.

We are all, constantly, being handed rhythms and beliefs that belong to someone else's agenda and asked to perform them as if they were our own. The invitation, always, is to notice the difference. And it's not a soft invitation.

It takes something real to look at your calendar, your strategy, your relationships or your business model and ask honestly - which of this is true and which of this is just what I thought I was supposed to do?

That question sits at the heart of almost every coaching conversation I have and it's also the question the Natural Network was built to hold, not answer for you, but hold alongside you, in spaces with other people who are asking it too. We'd love you to be there this week either at Patch on Thursday or Four Acre Farm on Friday:

Upcoming Events

I’m lucky enough to be involved in some wonderful events soon. You can find the full calendar here.

And that’s not all. We also have the second of our dinner events:

The Longer Table At Four Acre Farm

10th July: 7pm - 9.30pm. Tickets here

We’re back for our second dinner at the farm. This time our theme is related to our perception of ‘enough’ and why we sometimes buy things we don’t truly need. What might happen if we sat with the question with others?

Wrapping up

I'm increasingly thinking about how we might be able to open our events up for those of you who aren't on the South Coast. Nothing confirmed yet, but an online route feels like the natural next step and if that would matter to you, I'd genuinely love to know. Hit reply and tell me what you think.

The solstice always asks something of us. What are you willing to face? What needs to be witnessed rather than fixed? And what are you allowed, perhaps even obligated, to set down? Those feel like the right questions for this time of year, and the honest answer is that you don't have to find them alone. That's what the space I provide is for.

Oh, and one more thing, I'm away next week, so there won't be a newsletter landing in your inbox on Tuesday. See you in July!

As always, with compassion and curiosity,

Nick