Evolution
An update from Coventina’s founder, Kate.
Things have been quiet on the Coventina front in my life. If you read the Lughnasadh/Imbolc edition of ‘The Gossip, ’ you’ll know that I took some time away from social media this summer as I attended 3 retreats, nearly back-to-back. I bounced from Cornwall to the Netherlands to Sweden for both work and personal development and came back to London feeling refreshed and brimming with new ideas for Coventina.
To get straight to the point, Coventina is evolving. This is a bittersweet announcement for me. Close friends and family will know that I’ve had a dream of building a resource for women to find events and circles that align with their needs and desires since 2018, when I first started frequenting these spaces and experiencing their transformational magic.
I have picked this project up and put it back down many times over the years. At the beginning of 2025, when I recommitted to bringing Coventina to life, something felt different. I started with enthusiasm but very quickly ran into walls - blocks in motivation, creativity, direction, and heaps of self-doubt. This wasn’t an entirely unfamiliar pattern, but this time I couldn’t fall back on the ready-made excuses I’d used in the past, like working a stressful full-time job alongside it. I hired a coach, and while I thought our work together would help me remove these blocks and self-doubt, what actually happened is that I remembered who I am and what I really want.
While I still deeply believe in this vision and want this resource for myself, I realised this summer that it is out of alignment with where I am in life and who I am now. That is not to say it won’t, at some point, reawaken in me in a way that feels more authentic and aligned, but this dream originated with a very different version of me; one who, to comply with the UK visa and immigration system, had abandoned some key parts of herself. In 2018, when I immigrated here for the second time, the most important thing in my life was to remain lawfully in the UK and meet all the requirements to become a citizen of the country I feel most at home in. I was completely immersed in the world of tech as a UX designer and researcher, but the companies I worked for never aligned with my values and interests. Despite that, I held onto the vision of Coventina as something I could create with my tech skills once I no longer needed work visas. But in a completely unexpected twist, since becoming a British citizen last year and leaving behind my tech career 2 years ago in the wake of the death of my father, my life circumstances and therefore goals and desires have fundamentally changed.
After working with my coach for 4 months, my summer of retreats began. This is one of those periods in my life that I will look back on and be repeatedly blown away by the serendipity of it all. I started in Cornwall, swimming in a private pond 2-3 times a day. Then I moved on to the Netherlands. During some free time, I initiated an excursion to the North Sea with fellow retreat participants because I simply couldn’t be a 30-minute walk from the water without getting in. After that, I went to Sweden to photograph a yoga retreat. Sweden was having a heat wave, so whenever I wasn’t behind my camera, I was in the lake at Shambala Gatherings. It was over these 3 weeks in July that I remembered: I’m most in touch with my true essence in water or behind a camera. Once I realised this, I was flooded with relief. Even writing this still brings tears to my eyes! Confirmation from my nervous system that this is my path forward.
When recounting all of this to Karen, who many of you know through her writings on ceremony and ritual in ‘The Gossip’ newsletter, she said something that really struck me. She told me that it had seemed significant to her that the first thing I was able to do when grieving my dad was to return to photography (my first career) - to update my website and start applying for photography competitions and exhibitions - and yet at the time I discounted photography as a meaningful career path for myself. I no longer see it that way. I now believe photography is one of the most meaningful ways I can contribute to this world.
I mentioned at the beginning of this post that Coventina is changing, not ending. What struck me in my realisations this summer is that the goddess this project is named after is one of water and wells, and I don’t believe that’s a coincidence. Water has always been a central force in my life. This project will continue to centre women and the sharing of women’s stories, but now through the lens of water and photography. Alongside this, I’m stepping more intentionally into water activism. This October, I’ll be taking part in the Surfers Against Sewage Dip a Day challenge. It’s a small but real way to join the fight for cleaner, safer waters. Their 2024 Water Quality Report revealed that UK water companies discharged sewage for 4.7 million hours across 592,478 spills in 2024, while paying £1.2 billion to shareholders. I want this new iteration of Coventina to be a voice advocating for the UK’s and the world’s waters. Beyond that, I can’t yet say how it will unfold. What I do know is that whenever I share this vision with another woman, she immediately tells me about her own connection to water, confirming to me that women and water have always been deeply entwined.
Over the coming months, I will explore ways Coventina can bring women together through water, photography, and storytelling. There will be one more issue of The Gossip as you know it on 21 September. Karen and I agreed that a name as good as The Gossip shouldn’t go to waste, so it will continue in a new form of its own. Both of us are in seasons of creative evolution, and while the details are still emerging, I’ll share updates on how to follow its next chapter and stay connected with Karen’s work. From 21 September, The Gossip will simply become the Coventina newsletter, where I will share stories of women and water. I hope you will stick with the newsletter or subscribe if you haven’t already, so we can continue this journey together. My bigger vision includes exhibitions, photo essays, collaborations, activism partnerships, and applying for artist grants and residencies, but for now, I simply want to share stories of women who love water as much as I do.
If water calls to you, too, I would love to hear your story.
