March 2023 Soul Notes
I have sat before this page for many days now. Staring blankly, not knowing what to share. I've opened tens of books - turning to poetry and other writers for inspiration. Hoping that the answer of what to write might be found within other pages. I've been for long walks in what has felt like all the seasons. One day, I was battered by sheets of rain and came back braced, but still lacking inspiration. The next, blown by the winds and writing with birds' nest hair. The following day, I was forced to strip off my layers as the sun beat down in between the showers. Hot and sweaty hands still couldn't find the words.
I travelled to Dublin and visited the ancient Book of Kells. There, I fell in love with the intricate calligraphy – the Gospels of the New Testament scribed in a mix of art and letters in the 9th century – and I remembered how much this form delights me.
“When we say we are afraid to begin a project, we are actually saying something else “I am afraid of how I will feel as I continue”. We do not want to start because we do not know that we can continue. It is not the start, it is the finish that troubles us. Wanting to know where we are going is often how we fail to go anywhere at all.”
Wise words from Julia Cameron in The Sound of Paper and a familiar dilemma, especially as I sit down to write. Especially now.
She also says: “In order to begin, we must start from where we are”. A simple statement but in practice, not so. For more often than not, we're so focussed on where we're going, that we can struggle to locate where we are. The wanting, the longing, the expectation and sometimes the entitlement, crowd in on the present moment. There is no ground to stand on; no embodied presence to contain the experience. And so we flounder.
This is me, now. Wanting to know how this piece will read. Wanting you to want to read it. Wanting you to enjoy it. To see yourself in it. I want it to be inspiring. Clever. Insightful. Readable. Meaningful. Medicine. Start from that place, and you can be sure, you will write very little of any meaning. I know this, and still I find myself here…
Poet, Ted Hughes writes:
“What's writing really about? It's about trying to take fuller possession of the reality of your life.”
And to do this, we have to start from where we are. To own more fully (not totally) this life as it really is, not its aspirational version, or the version we're told we “should” have. Which means darkness and light; shadows and the unwanted parts; the clumsy and the mistaken; the shoots as well as the fully grown; the pauses; the vulnerable; the “thin skin” moments; the messy; the lost-for-words. This as well as the ”universes and galaxies” of Octavia Butler's poem – the “light, the light, the light”, the “stardust”. The depths and the peaks. The human version.
So right now, as I “try to take fuller possession” of all of this, I feel “stuck” and I hear my supervisor, Robert's voice in my head saying, “What if stuck is not “in the way” but is “on the way”?”
If it is “on the way”, then rather than battle with this feeling, as is so often the temptation, I allow a pause to breathe…….to breathe into the “stuckness”, to create space and feel into what it is here. Certainly all of the projection into the future, and longing for something brilliant – yes. And something more. Something quieter. Something more shy and tentative that is poking me from within.
There's a certain lostness that happens when something new arrives – whatever that might be. A creative project; a new job; a house move; a trauma; an illness; a change in relationship. We long to see the shore of certainty – to know how safe it is on the other side – to receive some guarantees that all will be well.
Soul Notes is not “new”. I have been writing to you for nearly 6 years now, almost monthly. This writing has helped me to “take fuller possession” of the reality of my life, and the reality of my emerging practice as therapist, coach, mother, friend, colleague, sister, etc…. It has been a way for me to consider more fully those issues and ideas that we all face; to offer reflections and inspiration as company for the way and to invite company from others. And it has brought me to a place – to this shy place – which feels difficult to name, where I long to write something else.
More and more, I feel called to write of the conscious feminine; to “take fuller possession” of the reality of the feminine in me and in our world today. I've hedged here for fear that it might feel excluding or too narrow but my hedging means that I've started to write for others rather than for myself, and I know that a lot more stuckness lies there. In that version, my ego gets to lead and I search for the inspiration outside of myself. Ego Notes, rather than Soul Notes.
If I come back to my true intention, it's always been to give space here to the soul experience. And right now, that experience is connected to the conscious feminine. For me, femininity is not about being a woman. It is an inner experience for all, irrespective of gender. It is found in a thinking heart, in presence and being, in embodied soul, in receptivity. As Jungian analyst, Marion Woodman writes:
“The true feminine is the receptacle of love. The true masculine is the spirit that goes into the eternal unknown in search of meaning. The great container, the Self, is paradoxically both male and female and contains both."
“The feminine has slower rhythms, meanders, moves in spirals, turns back on herself, finds what is meaningful to her, and plays.”
I'm not sure what this means yet. I have imaginings and dreams but I can't yet see the safe shoreline on the other side. I am making a crossing and want to make it consciously. It may be slower than I hope for but I'm drawn to the slower rhythm, the meandering. I am doodling my spirals endlessly and realising there is something more within them waiting to be seen. I want to play. And to create spaces for others to do the same.
So in the naming of all of this, I feel less afraid. And less stuck. As nature does – as the spring sunshine does – as the feminine does – I'm taking my time to allow all of this to unfold.
I'm sharing it with you here as you may notice some changes. And you may not. This perhaps isn't quite as radical as it feels on the inside as I give myself permission to reclaim this feminine energy; to take my time to explore what is calling, without knowing where it leads; to come home to my soul self.
Returning to Julia Cameron's words:
“When we say we are afraid to begin a project, we are actually saying something else “I am afraid of how I will feel as I continue”.
And sprinkling some wisdom of my beloved Dr. Estés over them…
“If you don't go out in the woods, nothing will ever happen and your life will never begin. Go out in the woods. Go out.”
“Stuck” is a stopover on the way. A necessary place to pause and take some breath before you head into the unknown.
I look forward to seeing you out there…..
With much love,
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