She spent a long time running.  The monster which hounded her needed to be trapped, to be managed.  She ran as far and fast as she could, hunting for answers to tame this demon.  She stayed up late at night with ink and parchment, scheming, studying, before rising before dawn and setting off again, always just ahead of her pursuer.  Sometimes she would encounter it, on a lonely woodland road or in open moorland.  They would wrestle, and, for a time, it would leave her alone.  Sometimes, by cunning arts, she would devise a means to hold it in check, a potion or enchantment, and for a time she would imagine it gone.  But it would appear, a shadow at the edge of vision, a lurking dis-ease in her quiet moments – and the chase would continue.

Months passed, years, decades.  She grew older.  Her hair began to streak with silver, her skin showed gossamer lines around eyes and mouth.  The monster aged too.  Its pursuit continued, but there were months when it vanished entirely.  One dark night she sought refuge in a cave. Water dripped gently from the roof and a cool breeze wafted up from the deeper dark. Exhausted after a long day’s ride she fell asleep.  She woke to the sense of presence.  A breathing nearby, the sound of movement.  Heart in her mouth she lay still.  Silence fell, a heavy cloak.  The darkness of the cave was impenetrable.  She waited.  Her heart slowed.  Her breathing steadied.

Time passed.  With the moon’s rise a grey light began to seep into the cave mouth and finger its way across the floor.  Slowly her eyes adjusted.  She could make out the monster’s bulk.  It had fallen asleep.  Gently, so as not to wake the beast she crawled across the floor.  Now that it lay here, vulnerable, her curiosity took control.  Perhaps she could kill it, finally, as it slept.  Perhaps she could find a way to trap it in the cave and secure her freedom at last.

She reached its first massive paw, black with five inch claws like iron.  She noticed the sheen on its black coat, the lines of muscle running across its legs.  Captivated by its strength she forgot.  Looking up she met with a bright, yellow eye, golden as ripe corn, staring straight down at her. Before she could move the giant paw lifted and pinned her to the ground. The beast shook itself, raised itself up onto its four legs and regarded her.

This is it, she thought.  It is over.  She waited for the claws to rip her stomach open, or tear her limbs asunder.  In this final moment she closed her eyes, and allowed herself to breathe.

It came like a thought, a whisper in her mind.

“Why are you running from me?”

She opened her eyes.

“Don’t you know who I am?”

She shook her head, whether to answer the question or shake the voice she wasn’t sure.

“All this time,” said the voice.

“I was afraid,” she answered, her voice barely a whisper.

“Do you know who I am?” the voice insisted, “Remember.”

She had a sudden picture of herself, barely in her fifteenth year, travelling on board a sailing ship to visit foreign lands.  Of adventures in strange cities.  Of long hours studying at the university.  Of romances.  Of her children and the struggles they had faced when the kingdom was invaded.  She recalled the disappearance of her husband, lost to dark enchantment, she remembered quests and trials.  At each of these times her nemesis had hounded her, clinging on at the edge of perception, pursuing her, increasing the challenges tenfold.

“I don’t know,” she breathed, the weight of the enormous paw making speech difficult.  “I thought you were my enemy,”

“You were wrong,” the creature spoke in her mind.

“I am your shadow,  your strength,  your power.”

It lifted its paw.  She lay very still.

“I was afraid,” she said, rubbing her chest where the paw had left its mark.  “I thought you would destroy me”

“Never,” the creature said, “I was there to keep you safe, to show you the way beyond your limitations, to help you reach the depths of your strength, beyond the thinking mind.”

“I didn’t know,” she said.  She wept a while then, and the creature waited.

Time passed.  A different light crept into the cave as day returned.

She stood, stretching her limbs, grown tired from the cold, earth floor.  The creature rose and shook itself.  They paused at the cave mouth, side by side, facing the dawn.

“What happens now?” she asked.  “If I am not running, what will I do?”

“Now,” said the creature, “You will live.”

 

 

It has started. On my knees in the dirt I have to pull them away to uncover the soil; brown, yellow, crisping, like old paper.

In the evening the air cools and the half-made moon wears a gauze cloak, her radiance seeping into the velvet around her.

I am living with ghosts. Old friends. Old friendships. I am haunted by the reality of a past present. I can remember  how that felt, the shared experiences, conversations. The triumphs, the survivals. I flick through the memory-album and it feels real.

There are a whole host of these people, once close, now distant, in time or space. I carry them with me, because they have held a special place. But it gets cluttered in my heart-space, crowded. I make futile attempts to reconnect. There is silence, a static crackle at the end of the line. They have moved on. New homes, new careers, new relationships, new lives.

I have too. The world turns and in a heartbeat something entirely other arrives.

The trees teach me how easy it is, when the breeze blows just so, to let go. There is a beauty and grace in shedding the old. A freedom too. Because in holding on I keep a version of myself who no longer exists. A way for them to know me. But she has gone, and I need to let that be. Or I cannot move; rooted to a spot, looking backwards, straining forward, burdened by old loves and likes, tired attitudes and thinking.

I open my hand, and watch the leaves fall. Shake my branches and dance in the breeze. You can see the shape of my soul etched against the sky.

Stop apologising.

You don’t make bad choices.  You think carefully. You review. You plan.  You seek guidance. You wait. You balance the options.

Stop doubting.

You are more capable than you dare to believe.  You can do this.  All of it. With bells on. You have the power. The wisdom. The grace. The humour.  You have the sheer nerve, grit, balls. The fire.  You have what it takes.  You always did.

But there was that voice.  The one that questioned.  That undermined.  That compared.

That voice talks bullshit.  It wants to keep you small.  Because small is safe.  Small fits behind the parapet, in the corner, under the stone.  Small is where you won’t be noticed.  Draw attention.

It began as a way to keep you safe.  But after.  After it was a way to contain. Manage. Silence. Chain.  Reduce.

You don’t need it now.  Now you are grown. Strong.  You survived.

Stop questioning.

Remember all those choices.  The ones people commented on, in an off-hand, semi-humourous tone.   They were yours.  You made them because you wanted to live in the most lively way you could.  Without compromises and half measures. In truth.  In honesty.  In vulnerability.  Authenticity.  Vibrantly. With joy.

Stop pretending.

That you can’t. Or won’t. Or don’t want to.  You do.  You can.  Oh my goodness if you could only see what I see. If you could only know the passion, the raw, molten energy I see pulsing below your skin, behind your smile, beneath your eye lids.

Stop denying.

The pain, the loss, the anger, the fear.  All of it is what makes you who you are. How you are.  All of this makes you strong.  Decades of life.  Of experience.  It moulds you. Shapes you.  Not to be regretted.  Hidden. Explained away.  To be celebrated.  To be worn.  To clothe you in your scars. Scar-clanned.  A badge of courage. Of honour.  The brave etched onto your skin.  Your soul.

Stop it.  Right now.

There is no time.  There is no time for more regret.  For more sitting in the corner wondering what happened.  This is the sharp slap, stinging across your cheek.  This is the ice-cold, breath-stealing, limb-numbing jump into the pool.  This is the jolt of the missed step.

Wake up.

You are ready.  It’s time to start.

Half way up the lane it drops into consciousness from a much watched movie, a fog breaking open, sun-split, revealing the hidden and obscured.  Turning onto the downs road, pressing the accelerator and shifting gear, I chant the words, over and over.  Each time they sound different and the meaning resonates like a gong, vibrations felt between muscle, in the cell’s core.

The unexpected twists and turns of life, the musings over paths taken, or lost.  The endless grey of depression, clinging like oily mist.  And then a sudden jolt, the brake stepped too firmly, a wet tile slick underfoot, the missed final step descending.  Wake up.

Having spent hours the past month buried in earth, haunting snails and woodlice with determined weeding, sinking into an awareness of nature and her patterns – the kaleidoscope of sunshine and showers, the cool of an overcast day, the pattern on a spider’s body, the silken length of her legs – having discovered a body which loves to work, the burn of limbs which have been used, the tingle of muscles overworked, I feel the wild waking.

And this truth. To live rather than reflect. To be rather than plan. To act and act again. To take the moment, a midnight-black berry, plump, ripe, and allow it to nourish, bitter sweet on the tongue.

Begin with the nudge behind your left ear. The whisper of the grass. The swelling and shrinking of the moon. Feel a yearning in your soul, your belly, your limbs, an ache calling you home.

Next question how you find the path (not realising you’re already on it) …start with purchasing…Books. Crystals. Altar tools. Essential oils. Sign up for online classes. Join Facebook groups. Follow the #witchesofinstagram. Google everything.

Next craft rituals, keep a book of shadows, lay out elaborate and mystifying tarot spreads, have a palm reading and study your natal chart. Read up on gods and goddesses.

Wake up one day and be captivated by the beauty of a bee on the lavender. Feel the earth pulse beneath your bare feet on dew soaked grass. Feel the breath beneath your ribs, thrill as a bat flies overhead on the hunt, feel your soul sing as you dip yourself whole in the clear, cold river.

Get simple. Find magic in shells and stones. In found objects or a twisted twig. Choose an acorn and a feather for your altar. Weave spells from string and pine cones, salt and kitchen herbs. 

Find the cauldron you seek tucked safely beneath your rib cage, behind your navel. Find your wand in your index finger. Feel magic beating in your blood and echoing in your bones, feel it rising up from the earth, warm and nourishing.

Know that you were born not made. That if they cut you in half it would say witch through to your marrow like a stick of peppermint rock. Be the magic you were made to be. Only you can.

When you come to the same place.  Revisiting. Wondering if you are repeating a pattern and finding instead you are standing on the spiral path, there are echoes, familiarity. But a different perspective. Viewpoints shifted.

Here we are then.

History repeating in a rebooted version.  My counsellor asked me what I have sent myself back to learn.  I am still wondering.

Today, heading down the A20 after an afternoon ramble, I dropped down into my life with the sensation of dream falling. I’ve spent weeks since our move trying to fit the previous strands of work and plans into a new mould.  Of course they don’t fit.  Nothing fits. But, waste not want not, I’ve been chopping and shifting and remodelling, those old wineskins again…My biggest worry has been about altering commitments. One of my work roles is regular, but uncontracted. I’ve been anxious about it, wondering how it will play out in the new term, what shape it will take this next year. I’ve been waiting for emails, full of tension, waiting for the reprimand, the call into the boss’s office…

Until.

Hold on one moment.

I’m the boss.

I’m self-employed.  I work for people on a casual basis, I go where the work is.  I weave together a range of different roles in a range of different places and this is how I earn a living. It’s a way of working which is in transition now my own children are grown and the need for a work pattern which fits with school holidays has gone.  It has been helpful though as I have recovered from burn out and had the flexibility to deal with family needs.

I have been working in this way as if it is for someone else.  I want to have happy clients, I seek to offer my best whatever I’m doing.  But I struggle to remember that there is no performance management coming up, no achievements to reach for promotion…So this anxiety is misplaced because the choices are ultimately mine to make…

Which spirals me back to another quest.  To claim my power.

Not the power of a dictator, all high boots and grandiose schemes, but the furnace-fire of my soul, bright jewel and essence, warmth, home.

I give it away. Locate it elsewhere. In others. In concerns and thoughts. I allow it’s energy to seep away and leave me cold. I fritter it in worries or fuss it away in perfectionism.

Perhaps I’m here again to reclaim that power. To uncover my maiden self and restore her, to recover the energy which fired me when I was younger, to reclaim my edges and the wild expanse of my soul.  Perhaps there is a chance to walk the shadow path to the edge of knowing and dip into the wild unknown.  Perhaps this turn of the spiral takes me away from one pattern and opens up a new way of walking through life.

The rules, it turns out, are just ideas, once questioned they disintegrate, rice paper on the tongue, dissolving. I am full of wonder that I can have taken so long to wake up to this.  Again.  But patterns have a power of their own, they are well established and easy. What if I run into this spiral, though, if I charge headlong beyond the next bend, beyond what I know and feel safe with, if I go fast enough, will that energy throw m outwards, into a new orbit?

A sense of expansiveness and promise now at the edge of perception. Freedom and hope.

This is the long, slow pause between terms.  Once full of harvest, now the days between the end of one school year and another stretch and bend, unshaped.  I am still working full-time but without the edges of school commitments that work is different daily and the lack of pattern unsettles me.

This time of year reminds me of my own schooling, the milestones of examinations ended, of the impending next step of the autumn term.  I went to a grammar school.  It’s  a system in this part of England of state “selective”  education.  I’m still in the process of healing that time in my life, seven years of vital psychological and emotional development locked into a pressure-cooker of academic achievement left a mark and some unhelpful patterns.  While I often think about those years and the way in which they shaped me, I am less inclined to reflect on what I have learned since or what I learned which was helpful.  This is what I’ve got so far…

1. The most useful thing you will learn in school is that touch-typing course you took in the lower sixth.

2. You can work for twenty-six years on a factory packing line and be happy.

3. In five years no-one will be interested in your A Level results. In ten years no-one will be interested in your degree class.

4. You know most of the things you need already, in your bones and blood, listen for them, they will steer you true.

5. Knowledge is not the same as power.

6. Your life is a growing and a gift not a program or schedule, feel into that.

7. You are absolutely and unequivocally unique.  This is a given, encoded in your DNA. Stop trying to be someone else.

8. After years of fault-finding in feedback and in self-evaluation you will need to say something kind to yourself everyday.  And mean it.

9. There is more than one way to live a life, question everything you thought you knew.

10. Nothing you do will prepare you for your actual life.  It will happen around you in ways you couldn’t imagine.  Learn to ride it, to flow with it, to breathe through it, thirty years of planning won’t stop the unexpected…

 Right now the purple-pink thistle flowers by the river are setting seed. Each flower transforming into a shell of white fluff and preparing to scatter. In the death of one phase the possibility of the next.

 

Like the seeds in a dandelion clock. These images have shadowed me this year. The sense of a thousand possibilities. The feeling of chance encounters and their ripples. The unseen consequences of our words and actions.

 

I’ve spent the past fourteen years sand-bagging my life. In the event of sudden and unwelcome change shore up your defences. Baton hatches. Pull up drawbridge. Prepare. Plan. Train. Review, begin again.

Its been a journey, I suppose. But I am coming to wonder at this version of myself. She’s good at what she does. Determined. Focused. She perseveres. But in her attempts to safeguard herself she is missing life.

Driving out to see a client today I reminded myself that this is my real life. I am not play-acting. It’s not an imagined scenario; a training day role play, a childhood imaginary game. The buzzard thermaling there above the wheat, almost brown it’s so dry, is real. The newly resurfaced road, minus its dividing  lines, is real, the woman with her carrier bag and flip flops walking in the heat haze is real, the trickle of sweat through my hairline is real.

In unusual weather everything becomes surreal. The heat and lack of rain is revealing hidden secrets in the landscape, lost monuments, archaeological remains. It’s the same in my life. The bones of life are coming to the surface, harder to bury in the flinty soil…Here are the bleached remains. Here the signs of something deeper, more primitive, a primal, present, instinctive life.

I am learning, slowly, that the mind doesn’t have the answers, I have to feel into them. The me I used to live in is unimpressed. It isn’t very tidy or coherent. I often do things on a whim. I am like a child exploring her environment, because it is here and it wants me to. My plans and programs, my lists and goals are abandoned, a boot fair of clutter and unneeded processes.

I want my life to be like thistledown. I want to grow, flower, and release. I want to let it all go. Not radio track the outcomes, simply set them to dance, fairy free without the need to know or monitor. They have their own life, they will live beyond what I can see or imagine. This is the magic. That each day I am sending thistledown out into the world, in my words and deeds, and that I only have to do this, as light as air, as easy as breathing, the rest is up to grace.

It is time.

For you too.

Take off the mask.

Reach into your heart and lead your soul-self out into the sunlight.

We’ve been hiding for too long.

Playing the roles given to us by parents and teachers.

Staying small so that we don’t upset, don’t challenge, don’t upstage.

Listening to the whispers of doubt, the naysayers; feeling the disapproving glances cast to put us in our place.  This far and no further, the smallest piece of the cake, chosen to be polite.

What does it look like if you take the biggest piece? And first?

What does it feel like if you shout and stamp your feet and sing and drum and scream and dance? Shameful? Ecstatic? What if you are the one on their feet first when they ask for volunteers at the panto? What if you’re the kid up on the stage getting all the limelight, bathed in glory?

What if you take the gift of yourself, the things you’re best at, and do those first, before the ironing or the grocery shopping or the pile of marking? What if you use the whole bottle of ointment, poured out and running over, over your whole head?

What if that is the work? To un-hide, un-mask, un-wrap in unimaginable, crazy, delighted wonder.  What if we break open and show the things we learned to hide. Let our hair blow wild and free, our hands muddy, our feet black from dancing on the bare earth? What if we shine?

 

It’s 9.55 am. Two and a half hours ago I had a phone call. J was in the hospital after a night out. The paramedics think he had his drink spiked.

Of course I blame myself. I have powerful thoughts. Last night I sat in bed at a reasonable hour with a fresh cup of peppermint tea and a good book and I felt like life was calming down. I shouldn’t have thought that because it tempted fate…This is magical thinking. I know it’s nonsense. That by thinking I precipitated the next drama. Of course I know that’s nonsense… Mostly.

So I’m sat in J’s flat in Margate having retrieved him from A and E and got him cleaned up. He’s shaken and feels like crap but will live.

I am constantly reminded that life is what you get. Each day just now I feel the disjoint between IG feeds and Facebook posts and what actually happens. I post a snapshot in a rare 5 minutes of leisure. Because it’s rare. Not because this is my life. If I posted about real life it would mostly be; a computer keyboard, cat litter trays, Morrisons (our local supermarket), a bowl full of washing up, laundry.

I’m beginning to think that I may have to shed the social. I don’t want to throw it away altogether, I have made some amazing friends and soul connections this way. But more and more it bruises my soul to be so constantly visible.

In magical terms it reminds me of a glamour. A glamour is spell which represents something which isn’t real, which shows you an illusion or something as other than it is. Glamours are deceptions, misrepresentations. It is a powerful magic which requires willpower and a strong sense of self to overcome. Tiffany Aching faces it when she deals with the faery queen in Terry Pratchett’s The Wee Free Men. It needs a bone deep connection to your own truth and confidence in your own wisdom to escape…

I’m not as strong as Tiffany. I want to be seen. This magic makes me feel real. If I am visible I exist. If you can’t see me I vanish, like a baby hiding it’s eyes, I’ve  disappeared…

I am working with breath and body. I am working to explore what is actually present, rather than what I think is here.

For years now I’ve been working hard to create a work life which encompasses my passions but while I know this is valued by those who work with me and I enjoy it, in real terms it’s not supporting us.

Life is I find a constant process of revaluation. Shifting clouds of circumstance. It is not helpful to persist with particular ways of thinking or believing when these are no longer working . If I were tending a garden it would be time to see what is actually growing. From many seeds planted what has sprouted? What is thriving? What needs watering, or pulling up and composting? What tiny fruits can I feed with the energy of intention and purpose as they swell and flourish, ripening for harvest?

I am giving myself permission to do this work. To make mistakes. To try and fail. To change my mind. This is the essence of life lived rather than observed. Reaching down to the roots of the soul to find the elemental self and bringing her into daylight, blinking in the light of an awakening life.