Nightowl, COP and Constellating

You can listen to this post here. 9 mins. I hope enjoy.

The light has been pared back now, almost brittle in the sky. I watch it linger for moments on the crest of waves, then dance into the long night. In its absence, I seek to create my own. 

November affords the creative hours with a strange sense of abundance. As a natural night owl, much of my imagination comes alive at around 6pm and peaks at around 10. This week, on a few occasions, I found myself wide awake at 3am, still writing, painting; ideas and plans swirling. My mornings, I let my body linger in sleep. My mother tells me I’ve been like this since I was a child. Getting to school on time was a perpetual challenge (Why does school have to start so early anyway?). The evening hours. Time stretches. Email beeps, door knocks, daily obligations, these seem like distant relatives to the rising stillness. It’s taken me a long time to allow myself to trust my own circadian tides, at times feeling like I    am trying to swim against the dominant current. I am still learning to trust it; my nocturnal ways, and the light I find there. But what if I flip that narrative too. What if swimming against is also, in a sense, swimming towards. And what if that’s exactly what is needed. 

Finding, and trusting our own rhythms is anathema to the race, of course. The race to produce faster, more, then more. It is part of what has got us into such a mess, careful of how I use ‘us’. It is a small ‘us’ that has caused the larger body of ‘us’ to find ourselves where we are; in a different kind of race now, literally to turn the tides. 

I watched the images and narrative coming from Cop27 this week. Here we have the regular cast of decision makers. Mostly male. Mostly the dominant political elite. Like others, I found myself asking; ‘Where are all the women?’,’Where are the indigenous voices? Where are those who will advocate for voices of the future, human and more-than-human, not just the profits of the future? Then quickly, my own internal critic chimed in, ‘And where are you Clare. What are do actually doing’? It is a voice that frequently rattles me. And rattles me loud. Am I making the right choices? Am I doing enough?’ 

I was asked to run for local political office once. My ego toyed with the idea for a while, but it was a brief while, because a part in me knew myself well enough- that active political office would be running against my own tide too. It is easy to mistake public profile with importance, with success. The lure is real, but at what cost? To our own callings be true.

Real too is our need to express our ideas, our own marks to make, to honour our own particular gifts in our own particular ways. For some, importantly so, that means running for office, for some it is setting up schools or teaching in them, for others it is holding a child’s hand and helping them to grow into their particular gifts. Notice I am deliberately using the plural here- callings, gifts, longings. We are plural beings, layered with complexity, multiplicities, shadows, and equally with gifts, talents, capacities. We are constellations, and when we allow ourselves, we too can be bright lights in dark times, for dark times indeed need their north stars. 

I’m looking into the future now, the not too distant future, seeing the ways humanity needs to adapt and respond to the times we are in. This is monumental change on scales we have never experienced before. The need for us to bring our gifts, our unique contribution, is real too. And as vital as breath is. We need the engineers, scientists, political negotiators, mediators, meditators. We need accountants and financial planners, city planners, marine stewards, stewards in general. We need the nurturers, the storytellers, the media makers, the healers. Space-makers, movers and shakers. We need every gift and talent there is, yours, mine. The table is large, and we can create even more space for everyone. I want to pull up more chairs. 

The dominant narrative, of course, is counter to this. It is of fear, apocalypse, permacrisis. But that’s part of the problem- the dominance of this narrative, the singularity of it, when, in reality, in parallel to the dominance, there is always plurality, there are other possibilities taking shape, already taking shape. I look around as see these new stories growing in momentum. Some are organisations doing such interesting and important work. I am inspired by The Presencing Institute, initiating and co-creating transformative educational models across the globe. Or The Bio-Leadership Project, offering alternative business models and networks. Some are movements, a rising up of a new narrative, as the women in Iran have, cutting their hair in acts of symbolic resistance to the hegemonic norms of expectations and control. I turn to writers like Robin Wall Kimmerer, or Robert McFarlane, who are sharing their exquisite craft of language to write new landscapes of awareness and possibility into being. I am enthralled with artists such as Jackie Morris, and musician Cosmo Sheldrake, who, through visual and auditory expression bring the voices of the natural world into the hearts and minds of thousands. From that one woman on a protest march in Iran, to the millions and millions of others around the world who are working on regenerative energy projects, new architectural designs, sustainable policy work, circular economy business operations, and on and on. Yes, there is so so much work to do, which also means there is so much possibility, for all of us. I think of all these people, each expressing their gifts, each part of an evolving narrative, each offering their own light in these dark and troubled times. Suddenly November is constellated. 

I’m up late again, drawing. A little Wren has arrived, a tiny tiny creature, so small and so seemingly insignificant. But only a few hours ago, that drawing didn’t exist, and now the world has expanded in the tiniest of ways. Yes, tiny, but even that is expansion, part of the unfolding, and it makes the light in my own heart shine that little bit brighter. I’m turning inwards for the season now, into my own creative cave, seeking what stories I can find there, and offering them to the wider narrative, hoping to join other lights there, yours, theirs. I too am constellating. The dark may not be that dark after all. 

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On Stumbles with Patti Smith and The Fragments.

 You can listen to this post here (6 mins)I’ve started writing this piece to you many times. Each time the words begin to crumble, then fade. The words seem to be resisting the hold of an idea, and the form of what I hope may be useful to you right now- something tangible- is eluding. I have noticed my own frustration and confusion rising as a result. I’ve torn up pages and deleted many words.It’s scary when the crumbling happens and the blanks seem to lengthen. For someone who hangs so much on words, it is frightening when the lines don’t seem to arrange themselves in coherent, cogent forms. I begin to question if they will ever come back. Then I begin to question everything. Instead of wholeness, I find fragments. Instead of coherency, I find tangents. It is a moment which tests, utterly. I’m grateful for the power of practice in these times. I’ve learned through the years that the only way through is to move with honesty into what is happening, what’s real and alive in front of me. When I don’t, I’m just resisting the resistance and everything calcifies. So I begin writing, sensing the fragmentary nature of the beginning. I start to write around those fragments- seeing what ideas want to gather. I give myself permission to write something, anything, even if it is scattered, for in the scattering I can at least feel motion. I read some poetry. I go for a walk.  I tear up some more pages. Then I watch a little clip of Patti Smith, and I exhale. I think I may have found the exact bit of humanity I needed, right in the nick of time. She is at the 2016 Nobel Laureate Prize giving. The auditorium is full of black tie and Kings and Queens. She is there to perform a song to honour Bob Dylan. She can feel the privilege, and the weight of it. She is wearing a tailored black jacket and a white shirt with a pristine, angular collar. I notice how contained she seems, how compact almost. There are thousands of formal eyes upon her. Then she begins, until she doesn’t. Around the second verse, her voice goes blank, and there is a freeze, then a stumble, and then, ‘I’m sorry.. I apologise, I’m so nervous’. The audience breaks into applause in what seems like an act of recognition. This is humanity and humility both at work. So she begins the second section again and I think I love her all the more now, all the deeper. Her insistence on continuance. She sings as best as she can, in that moment, with all her nerves, and she gives it everything, even if she feels that her everything is not quite enough. Patti wrote a piece in the New Yorker about her experience. She took her ‘public struggle’, and told us, ‘This strange phenomenon did not diminish or pass but stayed cruelly with me. I was obliged to stop and ask pardon and then attempt again while in this state and sang with all my being, yet still stumbling. It was not lost on me that the narrative of the song begins with the words “I stumbled alongside of twelve misty mountains,” and ends with the line “And I’ll know my song well before I start singing.” As I took my seat, I felt the humiliating sting of failure, but also the strange realisation that I had somehow entered and truly lived the world of the lyrics’.I get it. Sometimes we feel we are giving our everything, but it feels like it is not quite enough, not as good as it can be. But, in that moment, it is what we have to offer. Even the imperfect fragments, even the stumbles.So I stumble through my notebooks, gathering the fragments, the broken shells, the ill-formed and the unhatched, and I take a moment to look at what is there. As I zoom away, I begin to see something. It wasn’t an essay I was writing at all. Poetry happens in the most unlikely of places, and especially in the cracks.  The Loam WomanStuck to a place of no traction, I am finally ready to fall. From the residue of rejections, the unknowns, looming large, ask me: What is the gift of this dire uncertainty?  A woman with an old voice, and hair as white as loamgallops into my eyes.  She is evidence of continuance:  Advance with an openness, to what is present, she says, let humility be your gait, You must sing yourself into the lyrics of your own song, to truly enter. Later, as the moon is halved, and the stars are veiled in the sea-mist, I think of what is behind the real darkness and can feel only the hand of this old woman, coaxing me out into the great nightsaying, here, this is your stomping ground, now go, write yourself there.  Now, as I raise my pen to the sky, I feel her hands on the cusp my head, as if she is stroking the back of a stunned mare, kicking and singing, rearing her hooves into the inky strands of the pageentering into the long long night both of us falling deeper into our great unknown song. ..  May we write our ways into our own song, stumbles and fragments, half-moons and all. Until soon, with love Clare. x  

S M A L L

 Nature teaches us that smallness and delicacy are intricate to the very fabric of creation. Through the filagree threads of veins and chlorophyll filled cells, life flows. Every healthy eco-system relies on the rightful place of those who take up their position. From the giants of the forest canopy to the microscopic mycelium, every element has a role to play. Wholeness is constituted in parts.Yet, like so many things out of balance, our social, political, and economic systems have been predicated on the idea of scale, infinite growth and power 'over' rather than power 'with'. One glance at the headlines will tell you how we are going with this. In short: not well.I think it is time to reclaim the power of small.Small means using less, buying local. It means looking for solutions in the margins. Small can squeeze into gaps, plug holes, turn quickly, change direction, pivot fast. Small is the handcrafted, the bespoke, the individually tailored, the limited edition. It's tending to a close network of intimate friends. It's deep connection. It's seeing the beauty in the detail. It's realising that the resources to keep producing in the way that we have been are not infinite. Small is acting on a knowing that we are stronger, together, then focusing our time and attention on where we can best make a difference.So, if you are feeling 'small' today, how might that be a good thing? How can you use it to your advantage? And what might you notice and catalyse from here?Remember: a small pebble can have a big ripple effect and the beginnings of a garden are in the seeds.

R I T U A L

 The blank page. One of the most inviting, most intriguing and scariest places I know. Here is where I face myself- the layers of self, the multiplicities, and write myself forward.It is the place I go to find a pocket of communion with the inner world- the access point to the creative stream, the clarity before intentional action, the place from which the future can grow. It is a re-wiring and re-writing of the story I'm living out. The place of re-invention, of renewal.When I don't know where to begin, I ask the page, 'Who am I today', and the page responds with the unfolding.It's a question I offer to you too. If you are stuck, if you want to begin a journalling practice, or if the blank page is beckoning, you can ask, 'Who am I today'? And see where the words take you. Then tomorrow, ask again. And the next day, and the next...As we practice, so we become.

What is the measure of a life well lived?

From my look out spot, some reflections:What is the measure of a life well lived?So often we measure our success based on our productivity, output or some external indicator which society places on us. This usually arrives as a 'should'- 'I should have more money by now, or more opportunities, or more X. I should be here in my career. I should be doing more'.But 'more' is not an indicator of depth, value or lasting impact.Instead, what if the measure of a life well lived was the quality of questions we lived into:Am I learning? Am I contributing to something which feels larger than myself? Am I experiencing wonder? Am I finding myself drawn into conversations which help me see things differently? Does curiosity tap me on the shoulder and lead me down new paths? Am I growing? Does my heart break a little bit every day to crack me open to the real and raw? Can my being here be a balm to another, and a friend to all beings, now and for the generations to come?  The right questions can lead to the right quests.

Why Write?

 Why write? It is this strange thing really: letters falling onto blank pages, making words, to make meaning, to communicate this human experience.Do we find ourselves in the sentences? Or in the pause between sentences?Do we discover each other there too, not just the outsides of each other, but the inner workings and the tickings of another mind?Why write?This for one: the stories we choose to shape, and the stories we choose to share. I think they have a potential beyond the sum of their parts. More than words alone, more than mere sentences, what we can find there is the connective tissue of our humanity; the things that bind us and the things which make our hearts yield to the possibilities in each other. When you share yours, it gives me permission to share mine.Then there are the daily evocations of our moving through the world. Story is where my ordinary —the making of the coffee, the folding of the sheets, the mending of a torn friendship, the sowing of some seeds — meets your ordinary, but also our extraordinary— that glimmer in an eye, that constellation of experience which makes you who you are. It is where our common humanity rubs shoulders; where I can find out what it is like for you to laugh, or cry, or have your heart broken. But then it is also a way to realise that in your broken is also my open, in your speaking of forgiving is my way to understand forgiveness, and in the telling of your grief, I can take some steps on my own path of healing. Of course, you might also tell a story of a love so great it nearly blows us both apart, then plants us back in hope. I think, ultimately that is the power of stories: when we really let them into the marrow of us, they are redemptive and alchemical, changing the very mould of our beings. We are like rubber bands that way, once expanded there is no going back to our original shape.So, yes, I write to make sense of things, but I read and listen so as to step outside my own world for a while, and expand my boundaries of understanding. It helps me realise there is always another way of seeing things, and that each story is a pathway deeper into the well of our being here together on this little blue dot called earth, and then a bridge to another life, or another land. Perhaps story is just our fastest way of travelling from here to there. Why else?Well, there is always the beyond. I write as a way of staying in connection to a creative capacity which seems to live just outside the known of me. It is a way to keep that river of undiscovered self in flow and force. Sometimes it feels magical. Sometimes it feels alive. Those sometimes keep me going too.We all write for our own reasons. The writing itself reveals them to us. That is the beauty of the creative process. It is not the end result which is the gold, it is the engagement in the process itself. It is generative, it is affirmative and it is one of the greatest gifts we can give to ourselves: the gift of honouring our own intrinsic creativity which in turn gives life to who we are to become.What if the world was fuelled by blank pages, words and the curiosity to see where our story wants to takes us next? And what if we realised our creativity was that very fuel.I think we’d sense it is time to stoke some fires, gather around, write some tales, then listen. I’m in. Are you?.............Write to Your Truth Coming to Lisbon- 18/ 19th May 2019.  I can’t wait to be heading to Lisbon to host a weekend ‘Write to Your Truth’ salon. We’ve found an elegant venue right in the heart of the city, there will be glorious food, I hear the weather in May is generally delightful, plus you'll get to dive into our stories, learn some creative skills, develop your writing practice, and experience the wonder of words. Here, Emily - my co-host and I- tell you more.

To book online head on over here.

A letter to Mary Oliver

A Letter to Mary Oliver, with thanks. You have passed on, but your words have not. I think there is an extra chamber in my heart where they fully inhabit, pumping wonder and beauty into the places in my being which need them the most. I know your words circle in others peoples hearts too, lining them with awe, and grace, and now an infinite beat of gratitude. We have much to thank you for. You let your words rest on blank pages, arranged in configurations of strange symbols which we place together as consonants, then poems. But your configurations have a special quality, something rooted and ethereal at once. More constellation than star, more forest than seed. We could say your poems carry the touch of mystery, but I think you’d call it love instead; that your pen was a point of capture and your words a place of gathering, so we can see it more clearly, in the grass and the way light falls daily, or the way a cricket carries its song. You reminded us that it is all love really, this earthly presence of being, this wild and precious life. Little did you know it Mary, but for more than half my life, since I first read your poems, you have come everywhere with me. I’ve packed you in my backpack and we have travelled the world. I’ve taken you on bus journeys, planes journeys, ferry rides and long undulating walks. We’ve stayed up late at night with a torch under the bedcovers. Do you remember the time when we on a beach in Greece reading poems to the sea? Or the time when my little dog sat beside me and I read your dog poems aloud to her? Or the multiple nights on my yoga mat, when you’d tuck into position by my side, and tell me, over and over, to trust in the way of things. You’d let me cry tears if needed, whether of joy or sadness, and you’d always wipe them with beauty. You have been my companion in dark corners and tunnels which I thought would never end. Your words, the best of friends. Your poems, a lighthouse. ‘You do not have to be good’, you whispered to me in one particular dark patch’, ‘you only have to let the soft animal of your body loves what it loves’. That became my mantra, recalled with regularity and devotion.You have given instructions for living a life. ‘Pay attention, be astonished, tell about it’. In this, I can say, I am trying. And you have reminded me that the 'boxes of darkness can also be gifts'. I open them differently now. You have said the world offers itself to our imaginations, no matter who we are, no matter how lonely. So you have been training me to seek the imaginative possibility. Belong to this world, you suggested, and give yourself to it, ‘married to amazement’.  In this I can say I am wed, only my vows need to be renewed daily. Your poems take me there. You have spared me the worry of haste and urgency. ‘Don’t worry’, you say, ‘things take the time they take’. And then you offered me one question which thread so close that is has changed everything. ‘So, tell me, what is it that you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?’. I wake up with those words on my lips and each day I long to live into them. It it the best kind of quest. Yours was wild, yours was precious, and you have made mine all richer through the gifting of your gift. I hope to thank you in the pay it forward kind of way, in a way I think you’d like, with the simple gestures of love, and a heart seeking always to speak to the wonder of it all. Rest in peace dear Mary Oliver. May your words work their infinite wonder in the hearts of many more, With love and eternal gratitude. Clare.xx  

A time to harvest your gifts: Autumnal Reflections and Seasonal Planner.

Autumn is on it’s way and I can feel the pull and the turning. I’ve been picking blackberries nearly every day. The bushes are literally bursting with their generosity, and now my freezer is too. Winter will be made all the sweeter by this season’s harvest.Speaking of harvest, around this time of year, I often run my Living Seasonally Autumn course. It’s a chance to reflect on the year so far and tune in with the rhythms of the seasons. It is particularly a chance to think of harvesting your own life, and then contemplating on what needs to fall away in order to create space for new growth down the line.The autumn equinox is not for another few weeks, when I’ll share the Celtic ritual for that threshold, but I am aware of the ‘back to school feeling’ at the moment. So many people have been speaking of transitions, and not feeling grounded.I decided not to run the course this Autumn. I am in the process of reconfiguring my online teaching, but that does not detract from the value of reflection and tuning in at this time of year- and I am feeling the gap too!I’ve been savouring the book Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer this year also, reading each essay slowly, and sometimes twice. It’s so rich and lyrical, and grounded. She speaks a lot of reciprocity and generosity as nature’s rhythms. The final paragraph sums up so much of my current thinking, which I am seeking to incorporate not only into how I share my gifts, but also the economy in which this operates.

‘The moral covenant of reciprocity calls us to honour our responsibilities for all that we have been given, for all that we have taken. It’s our turn now, long overdue. Let us hold a giveaway for Mother Earth, spread out blankets out for her and pile them high with gifts of our own making. Imagine the books, the paintings, the poems, the clever machines, the compassionate acts, the transcendent ideas, the perfect tools. The fierce defence of all that has been given. Gifts of mind, hands, heart, voice and vision, all offered up on behalf of the earth. Whatever our gift, we are called to give it and to dance for the renewal of the world.    In return for the privilege of breath’ 

Wow!So, for the moment, I have decided to offer you all the option of working through the Autumn planner for this season ahead, the planner that normally accompanies the course. Working through it will be a way for you to calibrate and connect with yourself, your gifts and your intentions for the next few months. There is space to think through your priorities and connect them to actions you might need to take.Then, if you feel called, and if you feel it is of value, I ask that you make some contribution to the work. This is a way for me to continue to offer my writing and planners in a spirit which feels generous and inclusive, and also a way for you to honour your own commitment and engagement in the content.If you are on my mailing list already, I've emailed you a download link, but if you are not on my mailing list, and would like a copy, please email me clare@claremulvany.ieAnd if would like to make a contribution, then here is a link to my ‘Paypal Me’ button. Thank you.Happy harvesting folks, happy reflecting.May your gifts of mind, hand, heart, vision and voice be offered. We need them now, so much.Onwards and with loveClare x..(I'm grateful to Orlagh O'Brien for her original design on the planner, which was the result of a gift exchange between us: her design services, for my coaching services— the gift economy in action).

Sile Na Gig and Feminine Power

 Residing in the Celtic heritage (and thus imagination) there are emblems of feminine power, resilience and guardianship. I met these figures of Sile NaGig in the Crawford Art Gallery in Cork last week, and once again was struck by the strength of the symbolism. The female, open vulva, open breasted, were placed on sacred ground, perhaps representing portals to the otherworld—fertile thresholds into creativity and receptivity, or as empowered emblems of the Goddess. No shame, no guilt, no corporeal covering or body blaming. Here, the feminine as sacred ground too– wedded to the land and wedded to the Gods, — the feminine of intuition, protection, fecundity,  and power. 

We see the feminine voice rising again, claiming back it's power through referendum and marches, movements and turning points in our collective history, and now too, I think, a time to deeply reclaim the feminine in not only our institutions and laws but also how we create each day we have been gifted and how we use our gifts. Whether male or female, we can honour the feminine (the intuition and power) by noticing all the ways we are giving it away. The 'always on', 'badge of busy', is based on linear models of growth and productivity. It comes from the industrial era, where to be productive was to been deemed efficient and thus worthy. But it's not efficient. It's eating our land's resources, it's constantly selling us things we don't need, it's advertising subverts the feminine form and feminine spirit in so many ways.

When we are in our creative bodies, tapped into deep core needs of belonging and 'aliveness'; when we are writing or painting or creating organisations,  businesses, or projects which honour cycles of time, and cycles of growth; when we refuse to define our worth by how busy we are or how much we can produce, this is the reclamation. And that's a radical thing, because it can topple these linear growth models. A woman in her full power, is not a full-on capitalist consumer- instead she is creating, sharing, connecting, yeilding, resting, opening her body and breast to the land and to the sky, realising her body is enough, and her creativity is her birthright. And as men, in their feminine, their emotions are their path and power, their worth too is not defined by how much they can earn or produce or contribute to the economy, but by their wholeness and their beauty too.

We all have so much to (re)learn. For me; it means creating the 'things' even when it doesn't make 'rational sense', for the sake of it. Does it make me come alive? Does it connect me to a deeper power and a deeper voice.

Then that, follow that.... this is my own personal revolution. And yours?

..

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The Immram, the Aisling and Listening to our Quests

Hello all, and hope the summer has been unfolding well for you.Time for some updates and stories. So, grab yourself a cuppa, make yourself comfortable, as I invite you to dive in. You can listen to this post below (10 min listen)

 The Immram and the Aisling.The weather is on a cusp between summer and autumn here in West Cork. Outside the coffee shop window the harbour is still cast with sails and the voyagers are off to seek their pleasure. The sails are bobbing and dancing on the dancing water, letting the wind take them further out. There is so much power in this unseen force.The sailboats shrink as they get closer to the horizon, leaving my sight as dots, then vanishing across a thin line. What must it have taken back in the day, I wonder, to journey across this line, into what was unknown, uncharted lands. What quest was strong enough to carry these men into the dark sea?The power of dreaming, and the power of quest, is a power, it would seem bequeathed to men back then, but I can’t help thinking of the women. How did they voyage? How did they quest? So I am searching for the stories.I turn first to the immrama. In ancient Irish mythology there are tales of men who embarked on heroic sea quests —an immram. They’d set sail on pilgrimages which had no end. It’s wasn’t about reaching a holy place, a Mecca, but the journey itself which held the gold. They didn’t know where they were going but trusted that wherever they landed would offer them clues and some unusual gifts. St. Brendan’s immram, for instance, was an epic sea voyage which took him and his monastic crew into islands of the otherworld, of the mystical and the fanciful, the magical or the surreal — each landing was an island of story and experience. There was the island of sheep and the island paradise of birds. There was an island of grapes- on which they dined for 40 days. Then there was the island on which they lit a fire, only realising it wasn’t an island at all, but a whale. Imaginal or real, the immram was always a creative, almost mystical adventure, the force of which had the power to transform those who dared to journey. One could only return a changed man. Still I wonder of the women.So, I turn to the Aisling, in search of clues. The Aisling is a poetic form which appeared much later, around the 17th Century, in which a dream or a vision was presented to a bard. The dream was to stir up nationalist or political sentiment, and incite feelings of love and loyalty towards Ireland. The ‘Aisling’, was always in the shape of a female figure who came as spéirbhean, or sky-woman, a heavenly creature who was the carrier of the dream. So, why was it always the men to have the big dreams and the license to sea-quest? So, once again I wonder—What of the women? How did they find their quest? What vision was presented to them? And to what were they called?

I took a boat to an island a couple of weeks, not to quest, but to be in conversation and friendship. It was a Tuesday. The sky was tussled but the sun was promised. So I packed a picnic, rain-gear and my swimming togs, popped Milly on her lead, and then collected my friend Jennifer from the next village over. It’s only a five minute ferry journey to Heir Island from Cunnamore Pier, and by the time we got there, we were already in a different world.In the two years I have known her, Jennifer has become a dear and trusted friend. She wraps me in listening and helps me see the truth of myself, and the truth of my future-self too. You see, Jennifer is a film-maker. She is one of those people who has a beautiful blend of talent and humility, so when she speaks of her craft and her creative process, she speaks as a learner and a fellow seeker too. She does not proclaim to have the answers. And so we read poems, and talk of open hearts and broken hearts. She tells me of the films she is working on. I tell her of the books I am working on. In between we laugh at silly jokes, drink another cup of tea, then jump into the sea. I am aware that it is a Tuesday, mid-week. I am aware this is another form of wealth. I am aware that this is not considered ‘work’, but I feel alive, and I feel clear, and I feel like I can, in fact, accomplish anything, if only I keep listening to the conversations which are alive in me, then following the conversation into my heart where I will be shown how to keep responding creatively, shown what to do next.Why am I sharing this with you? Because, I think it has to do with women, and their immram and their Aisling, how we journey, and how we vision. I think it is about how we make our way over the horizon to that place beyond our current sightline, a place we know our hearts are longing to be.A couple of nights ago I finished the final chapter of a memoir I am working. It is still very much in draft form. There is lots and lots more work to do, but I have made it to a point in the process where I sense there is light. A couple of months ago I wanted to pack it all in. It had been taking so much longer than I thought it would. The timeline of any of our lives is never linear and definitely not straightforward and I was still trying to find the core themes from which I could weave a stronger story. I had hit a part of the process where it all felt chaotic, unruly, even impenetrable. Here was a warren of stories which were not falling into a neat narrative arc, a thing I could easily call ‘a book’, and I was beginning to question the whole venture. ‘Who am I to call myself a writer?’, a little voice nagged, and ‘who was I ever to even begin?’

But that day on the island, something clicked. My journey, my immram suddenly came into focus. I was aware, yes, that it was a Tuesday mid-week, but I was also aware of the choices which had led me to this point, sitting on an island, feeling alive, feeling completely at sea. I have been led to voyage in new ways. It has meant listing to a voice which encouraged me to write, despite myself.  It meant leaving my home in Dublin and moving to an entire new place. It meant asking questions of myself, my mother and my lineage which I have never dared ask before, and it has taken me into a whole new orbit of friendships and connections, on a Tuesday, on an island, speaking of stories.So, I think I am beginning to see; our dreams, our Aislings, happen through the Immram, the journey. It’s how creativity works. We meet it halfway, and it takes us along for one hell of a ride. It’s not about waiting for the ‘sky-woman’ to descend and offer the dream, but the dream comes from the whispering of the unknown force. Call it a creative urge, the one deep within, which quietly keeps on tugging and says, ‘look here, this is interesting, follow me’.  There is no major fanfare, there is no ecstatic cry, but following the whisperings of our creative urges is like those boats being led to the great beyond through the power of wind and the power of sail. There is a sense of heart opening, an uplift, and a pull to follow the urge out over that thin line of knowing and not knowing.But here comes the challenge: the whisper- it’s so easy to silence. ‘Oh, that’s just a silly idea’, ‘Oh, that will never work’, ‘Who am I to write, or tell that story, or create that business, or start that thing’. So we sit in the coffeeshop, still waiting for the descent of the Aisling, while looking at others set sail, and we slowly begin to shut down our vital life-force, our creative power, the little voice knocking on the doors of our heart and saying, ‘follow me’.  Little do we realise that beside us in the coffeeshop is a Jennifer, a woman who knows that the Aisling is in the immran, and if you tap on her on the shoulder, and ask her to tell you a story about her journey and her questions, soon you’ll find yourself jumping into the sea of yours. Our guides are always closer than we think.

 After the island that day, with laughter lines still salty, and my hair knotted with sand, I realised the only way to get through the chaos was to face the chaos. So I got out my yoga mat, I put on some music, I danced until the sand fell out of my hair, and then I wrote. I wrote and wrote and wrote, until I got to the end of what I needed to get to, enough to know I was on the other side of the horizon. I came up for air, to say that yes, this journey, this life, this immram, the feeling, this is the dream that has been seeking me. Yes, it’s always closer than we think.So I want to tell you, reader, that urge inside, that voice which says, ‘follow me’, no matter how quiet, no matter how silly, this is our gold. Our creativity has a gift of aliveness, a gift of both the immram and the Aisling. We can not return, but changed. So, yes, as those ancient voyagers knew, it’s not about the mecca, but it is about the pilgrimage —the ultimate journey home. No matter who you are, your creativity is ready to take you on the ride of your life. The way is in the whisper. Listen, then listen deeper, then tap the shoulder of the woman next to you, and start the conversation. That may be just enough to begin.Onwards,With Love,Clare. x...Want to stay in touch? Sign up to my newsletter for letters and resources direct to your inbox...