Weekly review
Before I begin my review I must acknowledge that, yes, I have abandoned my blog for far too long. I know it to be true and I am also aware of the different reasons for having done so, which to my mind are perfectly satisfactory.
One was that it has been a crazy year with so much uncertainty, confusion, moving house, brief homelessness stint and moving country (and that’s just in my life not to mention the shit show on the world stage) that I was in no fit state to write about anything.
I mentally could not focus on writing at all. The most I could muster were some social media posts and the occasional - ahem - ok, VERY occasional dabble at writing my book. And, if you know me at all by now, you would know that I am not a believer in forcing things. Everything has its timing and flows best when it comes from the heart, from a place of true conscious creativity. The sandstorm that was my life needed to abate so I could see a bit clearer before I had anything beyond word vomit to channel on to a page or screen.
This much needed clarity was also about what to do with Wild Swan Living. I started writing at the beginning of lockdown in an attempt to find my voice, to see if I still had one and whether I had anything interesting to say. What am I trying to say and how do I want to say it, were and still are the questions I was playing with.
My first blog and website I deleted because I realised that the domain name wasn’t working and I wanted to use the name gifted to me by my dear friend Kelly, who has since departed this world. Have I told you this story? I don’t think so. She named me Wild Swan Woman and is where the inspiration for Wild Swan Living came from. I’ll leave that story there for now and maybe return to it another time.
I had intended to transfer the old material onto the new blog and then continue writing but seriously it takes forever and that task keeps on getting bumped closer to the bottom of the list. Rome wasn’t built in a day, right?!
So I started my new website Wild Swan Living (which took me ages because I am not tech savvy) and began building up that platform, I even had a logo made - now that’s serious. But again, what do I want to say, how do I want to say it and how do I want to use this platform? These questions have been going round and round in me all these months as I have experimented with different mediums and ideas all while moving house (again), settling into a foreign system (again), getting Eli settled into a new school (again) and then recently getting covid. Yay!
As a nurse in the Toronto hospital where I had an emergency surgery on my seriously ruptured appendix, on my honeymoon I might add (another delightful story for later) said, “when it rains for you my dear, it pours”. It most certainly does.
As the dust settles things are getting a little clearer with what direction I can take Wild Swan Living in and I also acknowledge that I don’t have to have it all sussed out, that things are perfectly imperfect and permanently impermanent and I think I’m finally ok with that.
Ultimately, I know this has been a journey of realising that I am good enough, that I can do it, that I do have a voice and it’s ok to use it. It has been a giant lesson in trust. To trust myself and trust the process.
So, watch this space. I will be posting more regularly from now on (famous last words), in different ways and about different things. And Wild Swan Living will evolve organically into whatever it needs to become…even if that means nothing.
…
This week has been dominated by me being in a right and total ole grump. I have laid into Eli (numerous times), Pipoca, stupid people on twitter, the incessant wind that rattles my brain, probably even Starfly at some point, but she’s so cute it’s instantly erased from my memory.
Supposedly that’s what happens when you give birth, the baby is so cute you forget all about the horrors of childbirth. I wouldn’t know as the hospital messed up my labour and I had to have an emergency C-section and general anaesthetic. It took them a long time to stop the bleeding and stabilise me - and even longer for me to get over the trauma.
I don’t mean to be in a grump and I am acutely aware I am in one, which is better than being unaware, I just can’t seem to summon any sparkle at all. It’s as if someone pulled the plug on my energy reserves and I can’t muster an ounce of enthusiasm for anything or anyone. Coffee makes me mildly happy in the morning though.
I know this will pass. Whatever is going on with my energy will pass and I will feel recharged again. Just like the beautiful dandelions that are blooming everywhere at the moment, bright splashes of yellow littering the fields and holding fast between tarmac roads and old stone walls, unceasingly jolly even in the face of this horrid wind. They close their flowers at night or when the sun is hidden, preserving their energy, protecting it and when the sun comes out again they open forth and spread their joy and strength with the world. I take comfort in this and feel a certain kinship with them.
This is the beauty of plants. Their medicine isn’t just in the chemical compounds within them and how that reacts with our cells, it is in their spirit, their personality, their energy.
My amazonian friends find the way of the gringo’s medicine strange. Every plant is alive and has a personality, just as every person is different. Just because a plant has a certain compound does not mean it will be good for everyone or act the same way for everyone. You must talk to the plant to find out how it will work with the patient. Ultimately, the most powerful medicine is its energy, the information it is imparting to the patient that helps trigger the person’s own healing.
Even though I am in a general grump-slash-low-energy-slump I am at least conscious of it and doing my best to keep things balanced. I can still appreciate the beauty of life, even though I can summon no enthusiasm for it (except coffee). That’s got to be a good thing, right?
On Monday I went up the mountain to visit “the rocks”. They had been calling me and I knew something was going to be triggered by going there. I anticipated having a dramatic vision or feeling some great electro-magnetic force, as often happens to me in power places and I was quite excited about going, although at the same time open to the forest deciding to take us somewhere else. You have to be open on a medicine walk, you never know where the forest might take you and its always best to surrender to the intelligence of the land. A metaphor for life really.
Along the way we, my new friend Jay and I, (poor thing didn’t know what he signed up for and I think I put him off walks with me for life) came across countless wood anemones that drew our attention. Their beautiful faces, white and purple, are everywhere in the forest right now, a sign of an ancient woodland and also, according to his App, a symbol of protection and anticipation.
Anticipation, huh, that is an interesting word, I thought. I wonder what that means. Am I anticipating something?
We came to a stream which called my attention. Slow down, the waters told me. Your energy is racing too much. I examined myself and asked why, am I anticipating something? Is this where the word comes in?
I could see that I was excited about the possibility of having a new friend. Although I know quite a few people here I don’t have many I share with on the level of a good friend. Everyone has their close friendship groups already and their busy lives, so it’s hard to develop meaningful friendships, especially with the language barrier. I definitely was hopeful to make a friend. Perhaps that is the anticipation the flowers were talking about?
I put my hands in the water and surrendered this anticipation, any expectation in this regard and let the stream take it away. I wanted to be centred and accepting with no expectation of outcome.
A few moments with the water consciously releasing and I felt better. I could now proceed up the mountain with a calmer spirit. When our spirit is calm it is easier to hear the voice of spirit that moves through all things.
I didn’t realise, until now, that I also anticipated something big happening at the rocks and having not surrendered that particular anticipation to the water, it has taken me these four days to see it clearly.
For nothing significant happened at the rocks that I could tell. I knew something was going on, on a subtler level, because Pipoca (my dog) was very disturbed, crying and fussing and demanding my attention, which is very unusual for him. When I stop to listen to the land he usually sits quietly near me, a silent and watchful sentinel. Jay and I talked a little up there but I felt cold, the wind whipping at me, scrambling my being into sloshy eggs. I knew something was happening and I wanted to find out what but at the same time I just wanted to leave.
Let’s go down, I suggested.
Yes, he agreed, but can we perhaps take an easier route?
There is no easy route down or up. The mountain takes you where it will but I was too scrambled from the wind and rocks to tell him this.
Sure, I’ll follow you, I said.
We started our descent, me hot on his heels, when he passed through a dead box tree and a branch flicked back and smacked me right in the right eye, folding my contact lens in half and pushing it behind my eyeball.
Great, I was now not only totally scrambled from whatever happened at the rocks but also lost half my vision. What was going on?
I could feel my energy level dropping steadily too, as if a plug had been pulled and it was being sucked out.
I slipped and stumbled down the mountain, totally impaired like a drunken fool. I was seriously a hot mess. What was going on? I couldn’t make sense of it, I just had to flow with it. Really there was no choice, I felt like I was being swept on a current of turbulent waters and literally swept down the mountain as I slid down whole stretches numerous times.
Finally we came to the fairy pool at the bottom and I paused to quietly thank the forest and mountain for the experience. The river acts as a boundary line. Before crossing to begin a walk you must pause here at the waters and be clear on your intention, surrendering to the experience and once you come back I always pause again to complete the circle and thank the forest.
He was all, it's so pretty here. But I was like, yes, yes, yes, oh here's the track back home, off we go.
I was desperate to get home and sort my eye out, feeling decidedly out of sorts, the grump settling in as surely as my energy was leaching out. I don’t think Jay will be coming for a walk again with me any time soon, poor chap. Oh well.
Since then my energy has been low, I can feel it draining from me but can gain no clarity on why, beyond to trust in the divine plan, in the great intelligence of the universe. I can feel a great brewing and movement of energy in vast bands of experience in, around and through the earth but all I am told to do is to wait. And be in a grump it seems.
Today I decided to go back up the mountain to rescue some trees Jay and I found that were being strangled by a rope tied around them and left there, serving no purpose.
I set off with Eli and Pipoca down the track to the fairy pool with the intention of going up from there and coming out just below where these trees are.
As we got closer to the pool, however, I began to feel even more tired and decided to pause at the pool to recharge and hopefully gain some clarity. It seemed clear we were not meant to go up the mountain again, not today. Our entry was barred. So I sat in the sun, on a mossy rock surrounded by the bubbling waters of the stream and fairy pool and slowed down my breathing, bringing my awareness in.
And here I had a vision. I saw a pool filled with green, algae filled water. Lilies and lotuses were on this pool with reeds around the edges trying their best to clean the water but it had become too stagnant, too full of algae and if something wasn’t done, soon even the lotuses would die.
I saw what looked like a giant plug being pulled and all this water started draining away. The water was full of life, algae, creatures of the deep and murky waters, everything being sucked into the whirlpool and drained away, this force pulling at everything in the pool. The flowers and reeds cried out, their roots being exposed, as they felt the waters drain away. They could feel this great movement of energy and it was unpleasant. Then the pool had to be scrubbed and cleansed before fresh water could be poured back in and health restored.
I knew this was a picture of what is happening to the earth at the moment. It was a glimpse of a bigger pattern.
What should I do to help? I ask.
Go home and scrub your shower and bath, a voice said.
Which is funny because this morning I looked at the edges of my shower and thought how it needs scrubbing clean. How dirt can sneak in on you unawares. I chuckle to myself at the patterns of life and how spirit speaks to us always.
How long will this process take? I ask.
3 months and 3 days, came the answer very quickly and clearly.
Ok, I thought. I guess we will see about that. I am always sceptical of numbers because I find time is measured differently in other dimensions and doesn’t always correspond but I am open and watchful without being rigid.
What can I do to help? I ask again.
Sit with the sun, welcome in the light from source. Protect yourself from the shadow and the cold winds generated by moving water and have patience. Don’t see this as a bad thing, worrying and fretting over it, fighting the process. Trust in the divine plan. Fresh water will flow again and with it you will thrive once more.
Just at that moment Eli walked up behind me and drew a line across the top of my head. I know he was trying to get my attention to say come on, you’ve sat here long enough, but it felt like my head opened up and in that opening light poured in, warming my heart.
On our way back we talked about dragons (of course), harvested some nettles and laughed at fart jokes. Watched over by the glowing, bobbing faces of a hundred dandelions.
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