The Power of Routine and Ritual

Another September and the start of the school/agricultural/gardening year and I am to be found wandering around a local National Trust landscape. It's a ritual I've been embracing for over thirty years. The early September ramble as a teacher, then a mother, then both has marked the boundary between the lazy days of Summer and the more structured back-to-school life that September introduces. It's bitter sweet but life ought to be full of ebb and flow, ice creams and homemade soup, holidays and workdays, freedom and structure.

Let's be clear. I am queen of spontaneity; I prefer to choose what's for supper on the way home from work rather than to formulate a menu and shopping list for the week ahead.

BUT

I have decades of lived experience to illustrate that when routine and structure disappear out of the window my mood, productivity, positive relationships and general wellbeing go too.