Held by Claire

31/08/2026

When I am gone, do not fear my memory.

Do not be afraid to speak my name or look through old photographs.

Do not be scared to play old videos so that you might hear my voice and see me laughing.

Do not be wary of visiting my favourite places or eating my favourite foods or singing along to my favourite songs.

I know it will hurt. Those memories will remind you that I am gone.

They will stab at you like a knife in an open, gaping wound. Raw, excruciating pain.

But after a while the knife will become less sharp, the wound will become less open and the pain will become less raw.

And those memories will remind you that I was here.

That I lived.

Do not reduce my life to my death.

Speak my name, hear my voice, sing my favourite songs and visit my favourite places.

Because that’s how I can stay alive a little.

Right here with you.

******

Becky Hemsley 2022
Image by Juli Scalzi - Getty Images

'When I Am Gone' is from the book of the same name: https://amzlink.to/az0TFJ0YQ8FYa
(affiliate link)

31/08/2026

Today is National Grief Awareness Day.

Every year, we come back to how strange it is that grief is something almost everyone will experience, yet most people arrive at it completely unprepared.

Grief is still treated like a sometimes-subject. But every day, in every space, we are surrounded by people grieving. Many do it silently, feeling there are only rare moments when it is okay to talk about it.

So today, we want to say a few things plainly.

Grief is a normal, natural human experience. You do not need to rush to cure it, like a virus, or exorcise it, like a demon. What often eases over time is the intensity of the early pain. The grief itself, and the love underneath it, does not simply disappear.

There is also no single version of "normal" grief.

Grief can look like sadness, numbness, anger, relief, forgetfulness, laughter, or feeling fine for weeks before falling apart at a gas station for no reason you can name. All of this can exist within the broad, complicated, deeply human experience of grieving.

What makes grief harder for many people is the gap between what they expected grief to look like and what it actually is. Most of us learned about grief from movies, well-meaning relatives, and a culture that often reaches for platitudes when it does not know what to say.

Whatever your grief looks like, however long it has been, and whatever kind of loss brought you here, your grief makes sense in the context of your life, your loss, and your love.

After more than a decade of writing about grief, we keep returning to this: make a little more space for grief to exist. In conversation. In community. In ourselves.

If you are grieving, you are not alone. If you love someone who is grieving, the most helpful thing you can offer is often not advice. It is presence.

We are glad you are here.

30/08/2026

Sunday Stillness 💚🩵🌼🌹

28/08/2026

Update on wedding reforms 💞

📢 A quick but important update for anyone connected to OneSpirit.

On 16 July, the Ministry of Justice launched a consultation on weddings law in England and Wales, the most significant review of how people can legally marry in nearly two centuries. For the first time, it proposes a route by which belief organisations like OneSpirit could nominate their own ministers to conduct legal weddings.

We're following it closely, and we wanted our wider community to know it's very much on our radar.

Two things worth knowing alongside the good news:
Nothing changes yet. This is a consultation, closing at 11:59am on 24 September 2026, and any new law is still some way off. We can't promise couples anything just yet, but the direction is one we warmly welcome. For ministers in Scotland and Northern Ireland, your current authorisations are entirely unaffected, this consultation concerns England and Wales only.

OneSpirit will be submitting our own institutional response, and we'll be sharing guidance to our ministers via email for anyone who'd like to submit a personal response too.

If you'd like to read the consultation yourself, the web version is far easier going than the 100-page PDF, and you can dip into just the chapters that interest you.

Details here: https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/tying-the-knot-reforming-weddings-law-in-england-and-wales 🔗

And if you've ever thought about training as an interfaith minister, this is a genuinely interesting moment to start looking into it. Whatever happens with this consultation, the need for ministers who can hold space for people across every belief, and none, isn't going anywhere. Our Willow and Sylvan Pathways for the Class of 2028 are open for enrolment until 30th September.

28/08/2026

Some kindnesses are so powerful they move you to tears. Not because they are grand or loud or monumental, but because they arrive exactly when the weight is too much to bear.

A stranger who waits with you on the curb whilst your hands shake. A friend who texts "I'm here" without needing a reply. The colleague who says “take a break for a moment - I’ve got this.” These moments often don’t cost the other person a thing; and yet, they are priceless.

Because they don’t come to fix you; they come to make room for you. And in that room - spacious, gentle, unthreatening - you find, often without meaning to, that you can finally fall apart. That you don’t have to keep holding it all together. The armour you’ve worn for so long starts to slip, not because someone pries it off, but because - for the first time in a while - you’re not bracing for harm.

It’s the safety of it.
The tenderness.
The sense that someone is holding a bit of the weight with you, even if they can’t take it away.

And that gentle moment; that safe space, that permission - being allowed to crumble without judgment - can feel like relief.

Yes, some kindnesses are so powerful that they move us to tears.
But maybe it isn’t the kindness itself that makes it powerful.

Maybe it’s how much we need it.

*****

For anyone who's ever said (or been told) "don't hug me, you'll make me cry." ❤

Becky Hemsley 2025
Beautiful artwork by the brilliant Lisa Aisato

'Safe Space' is from If The Stars Could Speak: https://amzlink.to/az0MJ3gSiPVFX
(affiliate link)

26/08/2026

Sheep on a hillside don't check what flock the others belong to. They simply graze together, sharing the same ground, the same weather, the same quiet.

Interfaith ministry works a little like this. It isn't about blending every tradition into one, or asking anyone to set theirs aside. It's about being on shared ground: the same questions, the same longing for meaning, the same need to be met with care, while still belonging fully to your own path.

Community, at its best, doesn't ask us to be the same. It asks us to be present, together.

📸: Andi Kulse, Unsplash

23/08/2026

Sunday Stillness 💚🩵 (apart from the heavy panting) 😂🐕‍🦺

17/08/2026

This weekend I was privileged to again share this amazing system with a wonderful group of beautiful souls looking for direction by reconnecting with their soul purpose 🥰.
In order to keep the workshops personal to those attending I have to keep numbers small and already the workshops for September and 17th October are fully booked.
The next available dates for the 'in person' workshops at The Harmony Hub, Chorley are Sat 31st October (1-3pm) and Sat 21st November (12-2pm) and for the online workshop, Sat 10th October (10am-12).
If you are interested in learning more, please message me for more information and to book your place 🙏😃.

17/08/2026

17/08/2026

When the mind is festering with trouble or the heart torn, we can find healing among the silence of mountains or fields, or listen to the simple, steadying rhythm of waves. The slowness and stillness gradually takes us over. Our breathing deepens and our hearts calm and our hungers relent. When serenity is restored, new perspectives open to us and difficulty can begin to seem like an invitation to new growth.

This invitation to friendship with nature does of course entail a willingness to be alone out there. Yet this aloneness is anything but lonely. Solitude gradually clarifies the heart until a true tranquility is reached. The irony is that at the heart of that aloneness you feel intimately connected with the world. Indeed, the beauty of nature is often the wisest balm for it gently relieves and releases the caged mind.

JOHN O'DONOHUE

Excerpt from his books, Divine Beauty (Europe) / Beauty: The Invisible Embrace (US)
Ordering Info: https://johnodonohue.com/store

Lough Inagh, County Galway, Ireland
Photo: © Ann Cahill