Welcome here,

Our April theme has not unfolded in the way I expected.

When I named this month as Play, I imagined something lighter. Something easier to step into.

But instead, this month has asked something different of me.

It has brought me into contact with resistance.
With anger and rage.
With a growing unwillingness to participate in ways of living that feel extractive, performative, and disconnected from what matters.

And yet…

Alongside that, something else has been quietly emerging.

Not play as a feeling I can create or sustain.

But something more relational.

This week we arrive at D — Discover, guided by a meta-relational lens.

A meta-relational perspective invites us to notice not just what is happening within us, but what is happening between us — between people, between communities, and the more-than-human world.

Discovery, from this perspective, is not something we achieve.

It is something that becomes visible when we stop trying to organise everything around ourselves.

This month, I have not discovered play in the way I expected.

But I have discovered something about joy.

It has not arrived when I tried to generate it.

It has appeared in moments of relationship.

In conversations with others who are also questioning the systems we are part of.
In spaces shaped by the work of Joanna Macy and others who speak of the Great Turning — a shift away from extraction and toward life-sustaining ways of being.
In the shared language of those exploring Outgrowing Modernity, Vanessa Andreotti’s work, where we begin to name the patterns we are no longer willing to consent to.

There is a different kind of aliveness in those spaces.

Not always comfortable.
Not always light.

But real.

And relational.

It reminds me that joy may not be something we access individually.

It may be something that becomes possible between us — when we are no longer performing, proving, or pretending.

And more and more, I find myself asking what kinds of spaces make that possible.

Not only for those who can gather easily, speak fluently, or participate in expected ways — but also for those who communicate differently, move differently, process differently, or need relationship to look and feel different.

I think part of what I am longing for, and trying to build in my own small way, here in the West of Ireland, is space where people are not valued for how well they perform connection, but for the particular way they are already in relationship with the world.

A space where all are welcome.
A space where all are respected.
A space where what each person brings is acknowledged, even when it does not arrive in familiar or easily recognised forms.

That feels important and vulnerable to name.

Because relationality is not only about gathering.

It is also about learning to recognise one another beyond the narrow terms that modern systems use to measure participation, worth, and belonging.

As we move closer to Bealtaine, there is a sense of this in the land too.

Growth is no longer hidden.

But it is also not controlled.

It unfolds through relationship — between soil, light, water, air, insects, animals, and human presence.

No single element is in charge.

Because much of what has felt difficult this month has come from trying to locate play and joy within myself, as something I should be able to generate.

But what I am beginning to notice is this:

Joy may not be something we produce.

It may be something that emerges when we are in right relationship.

And that shifts the question.

Not:
“How do I feel more joyful?”

But:
“What relationships am I participating in — and what becomes possible there?”

In Occupational Therapy, we understand that participation shapes wellbeing.

A meta-relational lens widens this further.

It asks:

Participation in what?
And under what conditions?
And who gets recognised as participating at all?

This week, you might gently notice:

Where have you felt even a small sense of aliveness recently?

A moment where something felt more connected, more real, more shared.

Perhaps in conversation.
In community.
In time spent outside.
In a moment where you were not required to perform.

That may be where joy is already present.

As a byproduct of relationship.

An offering

This week, I’m sharing the work of Joanna Macy and the concept of the Great Turning — a framework that explores the shift from an industrial growth society to a life-sustaining one.

You can explore Joanna and what she offered here:
https://www.joannamacy.net/main

It offers language and practices that help us understand that what we are feeling is not just personal — it is part of a wider transition.

A Glimpse Ahead

As we move into a new 4 week cycle, another question begins to take shape.

I now understand for me that joy and play are relational, not individual — how do we continue to live in ways that support that? How can I express gratitude and acknowledge the abundance of opportunities that these relationships bring.

Before you close this email, take a breath for yourself, and a breath for the relationships that hold you — seen and unseen, human and more-than-human.

A closing blessing

May you notice the relationships that bring aliveness.
May joy find you in shared spaces, not solitary striving.
May you trust the connections that feel real, even when they are unfamiliar.
May you help create spaces where difference is welcomed, not measured.

And somewhere nearby, the ladybird lifts gently into the warming air, not because she planned to, but because the conditions around her made flight possible.