After discovering I'd been heading in the wrong direction with my life's work for the longest time, I was lost. I decided to write daily, without any preconception of what to write, in the hope it would become a map for me, revealing a path forward in real-time. I hope these little pieces of writing, are solace and support to anyone who is lost or flying on a trajectory they no longer want to be on.
4) Growth
Oaks let the parts of themselves that can no longer serve them go, they do not seek to glue on branches felled by the wind or call back unripe acorns.
This effortless symbiosis that is growing, or stabilising, and letting go, sings to me.
Why would I chase something that has already had its time, that is worn and threadbare from my picking at it?
Why waste precious, life-giving moments longing for summer when autumn is here?
Autumn has an energy my body and soul resonate with, but my mind makes stories about.
I look from my hilltop window across the dell to the quilted fields that lie rolling out and surrounding me.
The colours are muted compared to Spring, harvest is done leaving some swathes of creamy gold stubble, some land ploughed to reveal the deep terracotta earth and some replanted and growing with a bright emerald green breaking through - seeming eerie in contrast to the dying year.
The hedges - at least those spared by overzealous fencers - sprinkled with red Hawthorn berries (which look and taste like tiny apples when I bite into them) and the rarer bruised blue-purple of sloes.
The trees here still have their leaves, though the Beeches leaves delight with shades of cadmium and Naples yellow, the Ash keys highlighted in shades of acid and phlalo green, Oaks steadily fading to nutmeg, while the conifers planted to execute the pheasant shoot stay, staunchly, darkly viridian.
What moves me is the softness gifted to the landscape from the low clouds and rising mists. There's no sharp edge delineating between land and sky. The clouds seem to linger and bless the earth.
And I think it's this softening into change that calls to me, softening into oneness.
Melting into a permissioning that it's the most natural thing in the world for our body, mind and soul to crave rest. And not only, but including, the physical.
The profound rest that is available when we stop. Stop trying, stop thinking, stop pushing, stop forcing - stop trying to glue back on broken branches!
And reclaim the radical idea that everything I am is perfectly OK. Everything is ok. Nothing to worry about, no one to worry about. And to let that persistent, highly strung, constantly, undetectably driving anxiety go.
That I should be anything different. A better mother, partner, friend, worker, member of society. That I should do more, say more, act more - no more!
That thickest and heaviest of forces has pulled my life away from the light that's available for so long, too long.
The Oak does not grow with others in mind. It just delights in its own unfolding.
I could repeat that there's a happy accident that in its effortless thriving and intelligent growth, it creates a whole ecosystem for many beings around it and makes medicine of all kinds for us humans. And maybe use that as a motivation for myself. That my own unhindered unfolding would nourish others.
But I don't want to say that, in this moment, because it will put me back in the space of justification - if I allow myself peace, rest, joy and expansion it will feed others so that's why I'm doing it. I can tell others that's why, I can give myself permission because that's why. I don't want that to be why!
Not today. Today, like the Oak, I must be here only for myself, for my soul, to let it emerge, blinking in the strong sunshine of my love and consent, sighing with relief, reorientating and recalibrating with the tenderness of the season.
5) Autumn Sunshine
Who could ever describe, capture or convey the experience of Autumn sun on your skin?
Wearing a jumper, bare feet comforted and caressed by the grass.
The light and warmth, seemingly ebbing and flowing behind opaque steel grey clouds making their journey across the wide expanse of blueness.
The deep gratitude tinged with the melancholy that the warmth will soon not be embracing my skin till the earth turns again.
A constant chorus of chattering crows, the disgruntled mooing of cows being asked to move, the hint and promise of songbirds somewhere near, the tinkling sound of a nearby cricket.
This moment. The precious, unique, unrepeatable moment. What is the most valuable and essential way to spend it?
Listening. Opening. In gratitude.
The previous installment can be found here: