"All of us are artists. All of us are makers, within mortal terms and limits, of our lives, of one another's lives, of things we need and use." — Wendell Berry
My son sent me his flight details last week, quite unprompted, Jamaica to Houston. He knows I like to have these things, and the thoughtfulness of him knowing that and acting on it without being asked stayed with me. There is something in that kind of attentiveness. Not a grand gesture, just the knowledge of what helps and the willingness to provide it.
April arrives in much the same way with small accumulating evidence – a morning that feels different and the first phlox at the edge of the lawn before anything taller has remembered to grow. The beginning does not wait for conditions to be perfect. It requires only readiness.
I’ve been sitting with a thought about responsibility this month. Not the kind that accumulates until your shoulders ache, but the moment you recognise that this life is genuinely yours to shape, to decide, to build. That is rather different from the responsibility most of us were handed growing up, which arrived attached to obligation and the weight of other people’s expectations.
April’s energy asks something more precise. Not what are you responsible for, but what are you ready to claim?
Photo by Anastasia Belousova
The Pink Moon – 2nd April
Gate 21 — Control: The Hunter
The shadow is the impulse to over-control, which can look remarkably like competence from the outside. The person who manages everything, who never seems to need anything, may be operating from anxiety rather than strength. The grip tightens precisely when the underlying feeling is not control but its absence. That kind of holding is exhausting.
The gift is authority that does not need to grip, knowing the difference between what is yours to hold and what belongs to someone else. The siddhi of Gate 21 is valour. It takes real courage to stop over-controlling, to offer what is truly needed, and to find that it is enough.
Bottle 21 — The Key
Bottle 21, The Key, arrives as gold over yellow. There is an old tradition that around the age of twenty-one you are handed a key to the house. The door is yours to open.
Gold carries wisdom accumulated through lived experience. Not borrowed, not inherited, but earned. Yellow brings lightness: the ease that becomes available when you set down what was never yours to carry.
Together, Gate 21 and Bottle 21 say this: the key you hold opens your own life. The Hunter reads the terrain and takes appropriate authority. The Key reminds you that the doorway is already yours.
Working with April's Energy
You might like to take a moment with these over the coming weeks:
- What is mine to hold right now, and what have I been carrying out of habit or the belief that no one else will?
- Where in my life is over-control doing the work that trust would better do?
- What have I already navigated, learned from, and integrated, that I have not yet properly acknowledged?
Book Corner
This month I am recommending Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman.
Despite the title, this is not a productivity book. It is a clear-eyed argument for accepting your limits and choosing, from that acceptance, what is yours to do. Burkeman is particularly sharp on the ways we avoid committing to our real lives by staying available for a hypothetical better version.
Alongside Gate 21’s invitation to take appropriate authority, it offers a grounded reframe of responsibility when it is freed from overreach.
A Book of My Own
On Friday 17th April, Designed to Thrive, my co-authored book with Chetan Parkyn, is released. Some of you have been waiting for this one, and I’m delighted it’s finally here.
We wrote it for parents who are keen to unlock their child’s gifts. Human Design offers one of the most practical and compassionate lenses I know for understanding children as they are, rather than who the world expects them to be.
It has been a joyful piece of work, and I am very glad it is finding its way into the world at last.
More from me about this in May’s newsletter, along with an invitation I think you will enjoy.
The Inner Forge — April's New Moon Circle
Our April New Moon Circle takes place over Zoom on Friday 17th April at 7:00–8:30pm BST when we will be exploring the qualities of pink – care, innocence, unconditional love – and the habits that get in the way of them like people-pleasing and difficulty receiving.
Each month, Kit Mills, Mark Stevens, and I create a space to pause, reconnect, and tend what matters beneath the surface of daily life. You would be very welcome to join us.
Final Thoughts
April offers a particular invitation. To recognise what has already been earned. To take appropriate authority over your own life. To set down what was never yours to carry.
The key is already in your hand and it may have been there for longer than you realised.
