Frances Punter and Tracie Breslin: uplifters

Everyone has a story. Every morning Islington Faces clicks on an inspirational WhatsApp, and often shares the uplifting message too. Here we meet Frances Punter (who sources the WhatsApp messages) and Tracie Breslin from Travel in Light helping to reveal the way that the future isn’t ahead of you, it’s inside you. Interview by Nicola Baird.

As Frances Punter starts to talk about her journey with Travel in Light, sipping peppermint tea at La Mia Cucina, this Holloway Road café’s music switches to Happy by Pharrell Williams. It’s a perfect choice to hear Frances and her friend and colleague, Tracie Breslin, explain the benefits of staying in the moment with love and light.

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Those morning WhatsApp messages are a definite labour of love from Frances who sends them to seven groups plus around 40 individuals. “I only realised that people are waiting for the morning message when I missed one and I got messages asking ‘are you ok’.  Or someone will say ‘I needed it just at that moment’,” says Frances warmly.

“Mornings are really important. If you start the day with a positive message, something uplifting, then you also think a little bit differently and that brings a different perspective,” explains Frances who was brought up in Islington, where her parents and grandparents lived.

As for choosing the daily wisdom – that’s where Frances lets the light in during her early (3am!) morning meditation. “I literally ask ‘what are we sending out today?’ I look and then know instantly that’s the one. Maybe someone asked [the universe] a specific question, but I’ll never know.”

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Places Frances & Tracie love in Islington

1. Frances: I like Mosaic in Archway on 24 Junction Road, N19. It’s got an outside area and feels very tropical, makes you feel like you are in a different country. The food is great and the girls that serve you are really lovely.
2. Frances: I like the dance at Sadler’s Wells, Rosebery Avenue, EC1 – Akram Khan shows are really good When I worked at the Business Centre I sometimes got free tickets.
3. Frances: I really like St Mary Magdalene church off Holloway Road, N7. The trees are so bi and thick – you can feel the energy from them. With the green parakeets it almost feels like a tropical place and reminds me of Costa Rica.
4. Tracie & Frances: We love the canal. It’s completely changed now – as children our parents said not to go there because it was all prostitutes and drug dealers.
5. Tracie & Frances: The Ringcross Community Garden on the Ringcross estate. It’s a really long space and we worked really hard to get that area for residents from Hyde Housing (success came in 2018). It’s a lovely place for people to get together. People get such pleasure growing things. We’ve got vegetables growing on 10-12 allotments and an eco-path where we’re focussed on giving back, so grow wildflowers that will bring in butterflies and bees and we’ve got bug hotels. We also really like the great things Savvas and colleagues are doing at the Ringcross Community Centre, 60 Lough Road, N7 with the food bank and for the homeless.
6. Frances: Caxton House at 129 St John’s Way, N19 is doing great things. It has a credit union, craft classes, cooking, gardening and free food.
7. Frances: La Mia Cucina on 500 Holloway Road. Really nice people own it and it’s quiet in the morning for a little private chat. I’ll have peppermint tea, then normal tea with milk.

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Now living in Lower Holloway, Frances, has published two inspiring books – a reflective blessings book and more recently a self-help book, I am Bigger than Me. “It was during lockdown, and it wrote itself,” she says. “An incident when I was younger with my granddad came to mind and then the growth that came from this incident, and I thought what a lovely story.”

Carefully constructed, each of the anecdotes in I am Bigger than Me is completed by a reflection designed to help people “see aspects of yourself. You will get what you need from it, resonating with different parts of you and different stages of growth,” explains Frances. “It’s a book to share with nuggets of growth at the end of each story.”

Frances went to Duncombe Primary and then Tollington Park (now Islington Arts & Media) but left school with no qualifications at 15. “I told my parents that ‘I didn’t want to take exams’, and my first boss that ‘I’m a really fast learner’,” she says. This CV pitch worked when she got a job almost instantly with a printer on Bavaria Road. “I started off as the tea girl and worked my way up to a wages clerk. This firm kept investing in me. I only left because my boss retired, and everything changed. I wasn’t happy anymore and couldn’t go higher.”

But Frances is no stick in the mud. “I love change. If things aren’t flowing, it’s stagnating isn’t it?” she says. “People get stuck in a rut. The majority of people do want to evolve, expand and become more. Sometimes change is quite frightening, that’s a fear of the unknown. When you release that fear and allow yourself to just be, embracing the unknown is a great thing.”

Working with Tracie, who lives on Liverpool Road, the spiritual pair are helping people of all ages to cope with whatever life throws at them. It’s all about plugging into the light, not a standard religion. In addition to Frances’ uplifting messages and books the pair intend to include podcasts and mindful music events that focuses on frequencies. They’re hoping to run some meet-ups next year (2024) in Brick Lane.

Birth of Travel in Light
The pair met nearly 20 years ago at the Rainforest Café, off PIcadilly Circus, When both had grown up daughters. At the time Frances was managing a pirate radio station. “I was booking DJs and venues, organising everything,” says Frances. “I had one earpiece in at all times listening to the shows, and everyone on the station knew. I needed to know that what‘s going out was positive and gives good energy, but it was so annoying for friends and family.” It was possibly quite tricky for Frances’ stress levels too.

“One day Frances and I did a meditation together as we knew we needed to be in a natural environment,” says Tracie. This led to a trip to Costa Rica that still provides them with inspiration. It’s not just spiritual energy (unity, understanding and compassion) that they have in common, it’s Islington.

Tracie was born in Enfield in the 1960s, where her Nan lived, but came to Islington in 1977 “just after the Jubilee. My family moved from Camden to the Ringcross Estate, so I went to Ringcross school (now Sacred Heart) and Archway School (now City of London Academy Highgate), But my parents moved around a lot, so I went to nine different schools,” she says.

“We come from a source far greater than us. I don’t label it as names have different meanings for others. Let’s call it a magnificent energy source that’s forever flowing,” says Frances. ‘When you open up, you get everything you need, and everything comes to you when you need it. That’s how we live our life, in the flow and we know that when we’re not in it, life reflects back. Then I’ll stop to meditate and get back in the flow.”

Similarly, Tracie’s tip for people is to, “stay in the moment. People get so fixated on their body image – but you’re not your body. You are in your body to carry your spirit around.”  Immediately Frances adds “We have no fear of death because you continue on in a different form. If people live in fer it keeps you very stuck.” This is a comforting thought in a month which for Islington Faces includes memories of two friends’ summer deaths and an upcoming funeral.

Summing up
Interview over I unlock my bike and head into the traffic. A car passes with the loudest stereo cheerfully thumping out It’s my Life which makes me spontaneously grin. I could have stared gloomily at the people stuck in traffic or the litter. Instead, I was drawn to the positive vibrations that help people focus on their own energy and what they put back, rather than getting stuck replaying bad moments. I think Frances and Tracie will be proud.

• To contact Frances and Tracie, or to join a Travel in Light WhatsApp group, please email, travelinlight2020@gmail.com

Over to you
If you’d like to nominate someone to be interviewed who grew up, lives or works in Islington, or suggest yourself, please let me know, via nicolabaird dot green at gmail dot com. If you enjoyed this post you might like to look at the A-Z  index, or search by interviewee’s roles or Meet Islingtonians to find friends, neighbours and inspiration. Thanks for stopping by. Nicola