Ripening - July

Sutton Courtenay Sisters, 9th July — our very first circle

High summer sits between the fire of the Solstice, but not yet at the first harvest. Everything is full but not yet ready. That in-between feeling was exactly where we began. 

We opened with grounding, a sense of roots connecting down into the earth — before lighting the candle and calling the circle open. For our very first gathering, we took time to introduce ourselves properly: who we were, what had brought each of us here, one word for how we were arriving that evening.

 The theme was Ripening. Fruit on the branch, full in shape but not yet sweet — a reminder that nothing here needed to be rushed. The old wisdom of the season is patience with active care: we tend the field, we water the root, but we don't force the fruit. A guided visualisation carried us into an orchard, to a single tree, to one piece of unripe fruit held gently in the hand — each woman letting it represent whatever in her own life is still becoming: a new confidence not yet steady, a relationship still finding its shape, a chapter not yet fully revealed.

 From there we moved into journaling, sitting with three prompts: what feels like a green fruit right now, where we're pressuring ourselves to bloom before we're ready, and what one small act of self-care might nourish that patience. A reading — Donna Ashworth's Becoming — carried us from the visualisation into the writing.

 We shared aloud, one at a time: something ripening in us, and what it needs from us right now. Then came the craft — making our own goddess bath salts to take home, with lavender for calm, geranium and clary sage for balance, bergamot to ease anxiety. Simple, tactile, something to carry the evening's stillness back into an ordinary bath at home.

“Not yet harvest. Just Ripening. Soften into your becoming.”