From the Desk of the Executive Head

The Seasons of Growth

September always feels like an invitation to begin again.

Spring arrives gently at first, almost imperceptibly, and then suddenly we notice it everywhere. The trees begin to green, the roses start to bloom, and the gardens that seemed so bare only a few months ago are once again filled with colour, fragrance and life. It is a beautiful reminder that no season lasts forever.

From my office window, I have a particularly lovely view of our gardens, and I have watched our gardeners carefully prepare for this new season. Before the roses could bloom, they had to be pruned. Branches had to be cut back. Some trees had to be stripped of what was no longer needed to make room for new growth.

There is something rather profound about watching this process.

Pruning can look harsh. It can seem counterintuitive to cut something back when what we really want is for it to grow. And yet, it is necessary. The cutting away creates space for something new to emerge. The bare branches are not a sign that the tree has stopped growing; they are part of its preparation for what comes next.

Perhaps our lives are not so different.

There are seasons when we flourish and seasons when we feel bare. There are times when growth feels effortless and others when we are asked to let go, to be challenged, to stretch beyond what is comfortable, or even to have parts of ourselves pruned away. Sometimes that process is painful. Sometimes we do not understand why it is necessary. Often it is only when we look back that we can see what that season was preparing us for.

Our girls know something about this.

Every year they are asked to grow. They are challenged academically, physically, emotionally and spiritually. They are asked to step beyond what they know, to try again when something does not work, to navigate friendships, disappointment, success and failure, and to discover more about who they are becoming.

It is not always easy. In fact, it is not supposed to be.

Education is not simply about making things comfortable for our young women. It is about giving them the courage and resilience to encounter difficulty, to learn from it and to emerge stronger and wiser. Sometimes the greatest lessons are found in the seasons that stretch us most.

Our staff experience these seasons too.

A school year has its own rhythm and, at times, that rhythm is relentless. We move from one event, one deadline, one assessment, one meeting and one responsibility to the next. There are moments when the pace is so quick that just as we begin to feel we might be approaching the edge of our capacity, we find ourselves moving into another season.

Then Michaelmas arrives.

There is something wonderfully grounding about this time of year. We are able to pause, even briefly, and look around us. We see the beauty of the gardens, the warmth of the spring sun and, perhaps most importantly, the young women sitting in front of us each day.

We are reminded of what all the hard work is for.

Recently, our Alumnae Lunch brought this idea of seasons into particularly sharp focus for me. To sit among women who had been at St Mary’s DSG 60, 50, 40 years ago, alongside those who had left only 10, six or even five years ago, was profoundly moving.

Each of them had experienced a different St Mary’s season. They had walked these corridors in different decades, worn different uniforms, sat in different classrooms and been shaped by different teachers and experiences. Yet, there was something unmistakably common among them.

They belonged.

Their seasons at St Mary’s had ended, but the story had not.

The young girls who once walked through our gates had become women of confidence and integrity, carrying with them the lessons, friendships, values and experiences of their time here. They had gone out into different professions, communities and countries, but the purpose of their education remained unchanged: to equip young women to make a positive difference in the spaces they inhabit and, ultimately, in the world.

This year has made that sense of continuity even more significant as we celebrate the centenary of the laying of the Foundation Stone of our Main Building.

A foundation stone is such a beautiful metaphor for a school.

A hundred years ago, someone placed that stone with an understanding that they were building something for generations they would never meet. They could not have known the names of the girls who would walk through those doors, the teachers who would teach them, the alumnae who would return, or the stories that would unfold within those walls.

They knew they were building something that mattered.

Here we are, a century later, still adding our own chapters to that story.

That is the extraordinary thing about St Mary’s. We are always in a season, but we are also always part of something much bigger than the season in which we find ourselves.

For me, personally, this is now a season of change.

Handing in my resignation was one of the most difficult things I have had to do. When a place becomes so deeply woven into your identity, it is natural to grieve the thought of leaving. There are people, moments, traditions and ordinary everyday experiences that I will miss more than I can adequately express.

I have had to remind myself that leaving does not mean losing.

We do not lose something simply because a season changes.

I will always be a part of the story of St Mary’s, just as St Mary’s will always be a part of mine. Once you have walked these corridors, once you have sat in these classrooms, once you have celebrated, struggled, grown, laughed and loved within this community, you belong to it in a way that time and distance cannot undo.

Perhaps that is one of the greatest gifts of a school like ours: we are always becoming, but we are never disconnected from what has come before.

As we move towards the final season of this school year, perhaps this is an invitation for each of us to reflect.

What have you had to prune this year?

What have you had to let go of?

What has challenged you, stretched you, or perhaps even caused you some pain?

What part of your life needed to fall away so that something new could take root?

Most importantly, what is beginning to bloom?

Standing at my office window, waiting for the roses to bloom after their season of pruning, I am reminded that growth does not always look beautiful while it is happening. Sometimes it looks like bare branches. Sometimes it looks like endings. Sometimes it feels like grief.

Then, almost imperceptibly, new life begins.

The roses bloom.

The trees grow.

The gardens become beautiful again.

We realise that the season of pruning was never the end of the story. It was preparation for the next chapter.

As we celebrate 147 years of St Mary’s, and 100 years since the Foundation Stone of our Main Building was laid, I am deeply conscious that we, too, are simply custodians of a story that is much bigger than any one of us.

We receive it.

We nurture it.

We add our chapter.

In time, we hand it on.

May this Michaelmas season remind us to pause long enough to notice the beauty around us, to honour the growth that has come from the difficult seasons, and to trust that what is being pruned today may be making space for something extraordinary tomorrow.

May we always remember that whatever season we find ourselves in, we are part of something enduring, something beautiful, and something that continues to grow.