There are some people who move through the world collecting possessions, achievements or milestones. My mum has always collected something entirely different.
She has spent her life collecting moments of wonder.
This year she turns eighty, although somehow that number doesn't seem to belong to her. I think she is ageless. Not so much physically (although she is doing ok in my opinion). She is one of those rare people who never seems to stop evolving. She is still learning, still questioning, still creating and still fighting for the things she believes matter. I don't think she will ever become a finished project, and I hope she never does.
Trying to describe my mum is almost impossible because she is full of beautiful contradictions. She is fiercely brave, yet quietly vulnerable. She seeks the light but has never wanted the spotlight. She loves deeply, and when something she loves is threatened, whether it is a person, an animal or a tiny corner of the natural world, she would sacrifice almost anything to protect it. Exquisitely talented yet filled with self doubt. An enigma.
She is also one of the most extraordinarily gifted artists I have ever known.
Although saying she is an artist somehow feels far too small.
There doesn't seem to be a creative medium she can't master. Paint, charcoal, graphite, pastel, sculpture... if she picks something up, she somehow understands it. She can paint on almost any surface, in almost any style, and create work so realistic that people often mistake it for a photograph.
But what has always fascinated me isn't her technical skill.
It's what she chooses to see.
I grew up on what felt like a magical bush property. There were sandstone cliffs waiting to be climbed, little caves to explore and an abundance of wildlife that wandered through as though we were simply sharing their home rather than the other way around.
To me, it was just where we lived.
To my mum, it was a living gallery.
She never walked through that landscape without noticing something extraordinary. A dragonfly resting on a branch. The delicate architecture of a spider's web glistening with morning dew. The way sunlight filtered through gum leaves. A tiny wildflower pushing its way through impossible ground. She saw beauty everywhere, not because she was searching for perfection, but because she had taught herself to notice.
Looking back now, I realise that she wasn't just teaching herself.
She was teaching me.
Some of my favourite memories are of wandering through the garden and suddenly discovering a tiny sculpture tucked beneath a fern or nestled between rocks. Sometimes it was a fairy. Sometimes another mythical little creature quietly watching over its corner of the garden.
They were never placed there to change the landscape.
They belonged to it.
It felt as though Mum was quietly acknowledging that we weren't the only ones who called that place home. Whether you believed in fairies or not was never really the point. Those little sculptures invited us to slow down, to look more closely and to remember that the world is far richer than we often allow ourselves to notice.
She hid the same little surprises in her paintings too.
A tiny fairy peeking from behind a tree.
A mythical creature tucked quietly into the background.
Little discoveries waiting for someone observant enough to find them.
I think she understood something long before I did.
Adults become very good at looking.
Children know how to see.
There is a difference.
Children crouch to watch a line of ants disappear beneath a rock. They stop to admire a feather. They become completely captivated by a dragonfly hovering above a pond.
Adults often walk straight past.
My mum never did.
She still doesn't.
To this day, she will squeal with joy and does the happiest little dance whenever she sees a dragonfly. She smiles with exactly the same delight she probably did as a child, and for a moment you realise that wonder doesn't have an age limit.
That childlike joy has never left her.
Neither has her love for the natural world.
She kept bees long before many people understood how important they were. Chickens wandered through our lives, along with ducks, sheep and goats. There were geese too, although my childhood memories of them mostly involve running as fast as I could while they enthusiastically chased me around the yard.
Those animals weren't simply pets.
They were teachers.
We learnt that every creature has a purpose. That bees quietly hold together so much of the world we take for granted. That caring for the Earth isn't an abstract idea; it's something we practise every single day in the way we treat the lives around us.
Mum has spent much of her life writing about the planet and what she lovingly calls "the Innocents"—the countless creatures who share this extraordinary world with us and depend on us to protect it. Long before environmental conversations became common, she was already asking people to tread more gently, to look more closely and to remember that we are only one small part of something infinitely larger.
When I look back now, I realise she wasn't simply teaching me to appreciate nature.
She was teaching me to belong to it.
That may be the greatest gift she has ever given me.
People sometimes ask where the inspiration for the Enchantress Collective comes from. They imagine it began with crystals, jewellery or beautiful objects.
The truth is, it began much earlier than that.
It began with a little girl growing up amongst cliffs and caves, learning from a woman who never stopped seeing magic in the ordinary.
Not the kind of magic found in fairy tales.
The real kind.
The magic of a dragonfly's wings catching the light.
The miracle of bees quietly holding the world together.
The beauty hidden inside a tiny wildflower.
The joy of discovering something unexpected because you took the time to really look.
Perhaps that is what it means to live an enchanted life.
Not believing the world is magical.
Simply remembering that it always has been.
A Thought to Sit With
I often wonder what it is that allows some people to move through the world with such a deep sense of wonder.
Were they simply born that way?
Or is wonder something we can choose to cultivate?
Somewhere between childhood and adulthood, many of us stop noticing the little things. We become busy. Practical. Efficient. We stop looking beneath leaves, listening to birdsong or celebrating dragonflies.
Perhaps nothing about the world has changed.
Perhaps only the way we look at it has.
Who first taught you to notice beauty?
Was there someone in your life who encouraged your curiosity, nurtured your creativity or helped you see the extraordinary in ordinary things?
Maybe it was a parent.
A grandparent.
A teacher.
A friend.
Or perhaps it was a place that quietly shaped the way you see the world.
Whoever or whatever it was, those gifts rarely leave us.
They become part of who we are.
Today, maybe pause for a moment.
Notice the birds outside your window.
Watch a bee moving from flower to flower.
Smile if a dragonfly happens to cross your path.
You never know...
It might just become one of your own Hyacinths for the Soul.