“Running with Feathers”

July arrives with the brink of the Summer holidays in sight. Mere days to go until we take a much-needed family break, and the girls have time away from both school and usual sporting pursuits. A few peaceful weeks, with less places to have to be, and also, with the space in our days to visit and experience places and situations new to us.

July’s arrival also sees me having completed June’s month of 5km’s. One each day for the full thirty days of the month. With life so full and busy day to day, having made space for this endeavour has felt like a challenge. I therefore leave June feeling capable, accomplished, and also proud and so glad to have raised some precious funds for a charity very close to my heart.

Running has been needed in the last five months, so greatly. Providing space to not just grieve, but to find hope and ideas. Space is created and light is observed. Moments wondered upon and pathways wandered. Movement helps.

In process of doing so, many feathers have felt placed in my path. Lifting them to hold. Collecting so many, and I plan to create new feather-based works. Feathers have always provided such inspiration to me. I know they always will.

I am not so sure they were placed there by my Mum or by my Dad, but I do always feel that I was meant to notice them. Be the one to find them.

Talismans or totems, imbued with magic of sorts. Pertaining to a somewhere else, whilst also pertaining only to me. Fitting that talisman that implies ‘good health’ should be found on a run, where I myself am making sure to be my best version of myself. A deliberate choice.

Totems, significant, this connection to nature, and the world, and more, around me. The feeling of a something old, treasured. A story not just of the now, but of the always.

I read recently, that although my parents have left this world, my world, the love will never be taken away. Thus, for a feather to feel like the love somehow remains, is something I hold onto in their absence.

Hold onto them I do… whilst running or walking. Tightly bound in steadfast clasp of fingers held. All around my usual routes they travel with me.

“Running with feathers”, therefore, I am the “Girl Who Runs With Feathers”, it seems.

Not linked, but in a similar vein, also… a speckled wood butterfly flew into my path on an early morning “Father’s Day” run. My first without a father of my own. I know I hadn’t spotted one quite there, or in my woods, before. I took a photo for posterity, capturing it rested upon leaf.

Then, later at home on the same day, my girls shouted, “Mummy, there’s a big brown butterfly in here!” Looking up, to roof light window, where it rested high. Another Speckled Wood Butterfly…

This time, I think it was him. Just as a Red Admiral Butterfly also visited me, upon my Mum’s passing.

Now, I think I do have to create some butterflies too. Wings abundant. Moths, feathers, birds, and butterflies. They all feel meant, do they not?

The world lets me in, and I continue to love, to feel them in my life.

This Summer, I hope the love I feel for them is felt too, by my own children, in how I choose to live my own life. For them. In turn.

Life continues.

Ever onwards.

Jen x