Clare Mulvany 29/08/2024 Clare Mulvany 29/08/2024

When No is a Secret Gateway to Yes

When no is a secret gateway to yes.

You can listen to this piece here:

When no is a secret gateway to the real yes.

The morning sun still holds the promise of summer, yet there is a distinctive autumnal turn. The ‘back to school’ vibe is real, with its corresponding prepping mode. September always feels like a new start for me — my work is still connected to academic cycles, but my psychology is too. Come late August, I become squirrel, furrowing, burrowing, plotting and planning to give myself a good foundation for what are traditionally busy months ahead.

As a school kid, I loved the opportunity to get new stationary and the ritual of covering my new school books. I seem to need these physical triggers, to mark a new clearing. At the weekend, for instance, I did some tedious but deceptively pleasurable tasks. What was a fridge in desperate need of defrosting, now ordered to a ‘capsule wardrobe’ of condiments. I was never going to eat that ferment really. But alongside the physical sorting, there is the mental sorting. In the time it takes to clear a fridge, there is space for review, reflecting on learnings and reconnecting with priorities to buttress the months ahead.

In looking back, I have a chance to think about this past summer, one which held an incredible opportunity and incredible challenge. The opportunity: to take on the running of a beautiful building (cafe/ pottery studio/ learning space) in the village where I live, and develop community events and learning programmes. The challenge: exactly that!

So, trying to put into practice what I teach, I set about applying design methodologies to the task. There was so much learning in the process. From engaging in deep listening approaches, using community participatory practices and ultimately listening to my instinct, after almost three months of research, I realised on a fateful dark night of the soul, that while a wonderful prospect, the opportunity was not for me. There are moments in life you have to give a full yes, and there are moments in life where you have to listen to a full no. Embarking on the process, a strong values-driven yes, led me into the possibility, but it was a gut instinct, body based, no, which led me the decision to not to proceed. Sometimes no is a gateway to the real yes.

I’m so glad I tried. And I am so grateful to people, the place, and tools that have helped me. It was not the summer I expected, but it was a summer of learning, then letting go with confidence in the process which underpinned the path which took me here. (Given the richness of the learning experience, I have written more about the process over on Thrive School- which I hope might be a useful resource to those embarking on their own projects)

So, the real yes. Isn’t that always the challenge, and the opportunity.

I don’t think our yes is ever singular, or crystal or static. Our yes can speak in whispers, nudges, bringing us closer towards that idea, image or story that just won’t loose grip. It’s not always linear or logical. It requires listening. Sometimes over and over again.

For me, that yes starts in my journal. There are scribblings, sketchy inklings, allowing ideas and longings to land, perhaps for years, letting them ripen, grow, find ground in my psych and soul. The ideas which keep repeating, the desires which keep rising, over time, these patterns become evident on the page.

The listening is supported with ritual. Yesterday, I took a wander down some overgrown paths, on the hunt for blackberries. The picking is such a marker of the season, both in its turning and its gifts. As I was picking, with the birds and the waves as sonic companionship, I was thinking of the privilege and power of such space, of where I find myself. I was thinking of the preciousness of time, and how to use it wisely. I was thinking of hope.

There are so many needs in the world right now, so many causes and urgencies, no one person can bear. At times I find myself numbing, blanking out the news and the social feeds of another tragedy. And there is one part of myself which shames me for doing this- how can I turn away, how can I be so removed, from my place of privilege and vantage. Another part of my brain knows that the numbness is a protective mechanism from grief. It’s how the limbic brain has learned to be animal: fight, flight, freeze. Freeze can be strategy for survival. The challenge with freeze though, it’s cold and solid and immovable, and it too requires defrosting.

Plug out, remove the clutter, replace only the essentials, leave space.

Who knew that lessons from deep cleaning a fridge could be so valuable.

Alongside the briars, there are fruits, ready for picking. In a quiet, unplugged solitary afternoon, I pick enough to fill a small container. A few are bitter, but they are mostly sweet, products of time and weather, just enough sun to ripen. I return home, invite a friend over, bake a blackberry pudding, and together we eat the season, letting the inky berries stain our tongues, leaving them longing for more. So we have some.

Later, I take out my journal, and can see the patterns more clearly again, these inky stains of longing. My pen meets some questions.

What am I longing for?

When that question is exhausted with ink, it’s time to go to the next one:

But what am I really really longing for?

And when that one is done, the next:

But what am I not giving myself permission to really long for, but secretly do?

This last question, it is hard, and revelatory. For me right now, it plugs me into long held ambitions around my writing, teaching, owning a home, and travel. It also brings me to questions about how I am using my voice to speak up and out about injustices, and climate, and the issues I care about. It demands that I focus and keep on dreaming. It demands that I keep going, even when the path ahead is uncertain. Longings are not tame like that; they make us become more of ourselves, so we can continue to bring our gifts to the world. Secretly, they have our back. And when we let them, perhaps not so secretly after all.

Your ten minute writing practice.

What are you longing for?

What are you really really longing for?

What are you not giving yourself permission to really long for, but secretly do?

Want to sustain your own writing process? I have a several ways to support you, online or in-person

Sanctuary: Next Session September 22nd

**Sanctuary**

This is a monthly guided writing gathering online. One hour of supportive journaling practice, in community . Find out more and book tickets here.

West Cork Writing Workshops

**Final in the Summer series.**
Live a New Story. September 7th, Schull, West Cork.
Learning about the art of personal narrative writing in this one day workshop. Book your tickets today.

New Writing Mentoring

There are many people reading this who know they have a book or writing project brewing but are not sure where to begin, how to structure it, or lack the courage and confidence to bring a draft to the next level. My writing mentoring packages are here to support. From private one-to-one workshops, a three month intensive, or a year long engagement, I hope your writing and story has a chance to grow.
Find out more here

**Hello. I'm Clare**

I'm a writer, educator and facilitator, living in beautiful West Cork, Ireland. I love to share resources and learning to help harness the regenerative power of words, place and story. I hope my work offers nourishment for mind and soul. Thank you for being here. Clare x

Clare Mulvany 03/07/2024 Clare Mulvany 03/07/2024

What Beauty Might We Yet Create?

A 5 minute writing practice and prompt.

Something a little different today. A five minute writing practice for you.

Here is a piece of my own writing, followed by a prompt, where I accompany you in your writing.

Grab a pen, paper and comfy spot. And press play!

July has come, with its attendant blooms and night songs. Dawn comes early too, and the chatter of the birds rises me. It is not the only the birds keeping me awake though. It is all the questions which are spooling in these times of uncertainty and change. Yet, it is the birds which give me courage. The butterflies too. And between every curl of foxglove, the darting swoop of swallow and wing. Yes, it is beauty which gives me courage, and nature’s insistence on becoming all it can be.

Recently I was editing a piece with reference to swallows. Moments later I walked upstairs, and there was a swallow sitting on a picture frame, shocked and surprised, both of us —an awe of encounter, and then, on my part, a flurry to open all the windows to encourage flight back to the skies again. This tiny remarkable being who has the will, power, stamina, determination to cross continents, cross deserts and mountains, seas; straddling its place in the world. Between Ireland and South Africa, a home in two parts, and an entire mystery of migration in between.

I wonder sometimes what would happen if we all stopped for a moment and pondered the true marvel of even a single blade of grass, or just one flap of wing; how the world might be different; how we too might insist on crossing continents, opening to our full bloom, rising in the early morning to let our song out. What would we sing? What beauty might we yet create?

…

The Prompt:

What beauty might I yet create…

Want to sustain your own writing process?

This summer I have a several ways to support to, online or in-person

Sanctuary: Next Session July 20th

**Sanctuary**

Next session: Sunday July 20th. This is a monthly guided writing gathering online. One hour of supportive journaling practice, in community . Find out more and book tickets here.

West Cork Writing Workshops

**Come to West Cork this summer.**
Next sessions 6th July, 14th July or Aug 3rd
Across the summer I have a series of beautiful writing workshops planned, in Schull and in Leap. From nature writing to learning the art of personal narrative writing it’s writing + nature + west cork. What’s not to love. Book your tickets today.

New Writing Mentoring

Clare Mulvany 05/06/2024 Clare Mulvany 05/06/2024

Writing as Assemblage- and Overcoming Rejection

On writing as an act of assemblage, overcoming writing rejection and the transformative power of the creative process…

You can listen to this piece here…

There’s a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn’t change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.

- William Stafford

In personal narrative writing I’ve come to understand that the story is never singular. It is more layered and mosaic than anything chronological or linear. If anything, writing our story is an act of assemblage. It is about learning how the pieces may thread together to create something new which holds an adherence to truth (for it is only there that we get to the really transformative material). But there is also a call to beauty, asking us, ‘How can the story take shape in a new, artful way? What else might I uncover? From what, or whose, other perspectives might this be written from?

Holding out for duality, plurality, and beauty, opens possibilities not just within the narrative arcs, but in also in the writer themselves, a measurement of ‘success’ which is often outlooked when gauging the value of the writing process and outcome.

Publication is so often used as the final benchmark of writing success. Yes, it is one way to measure, but it is also such a small measure which the commercialised world thrives on. So many people try, are rejected, then stop writing. But we loose so much when external indicators of success are taken as the gatekeepers into one’s own power and potential; ones own story.

The publishing world is an industry driven by the judgment and validation of market forces and profit margins- it is an industry after all, with it’s own metrics. There are disruptors within the industry for sure (I love what Unbound Books are doing for instance, or The Pound Project), but as someone who has submitted many book proposals, and received many rejections, I am grateful that I understand the value of writing for my own growth, curiosity and creativity outside the limited bounds of these external markets.

When I was looking for a publisher for my own memoir which I wrote as a rite of passage/ ritual for my 40th birthday, the resounding response from agents and publishers was ‘we love this, but we don’t know how to sell it’. I came very close with several publishers, but in the end they choose not to take it on. I’ll be honest, the rejection was hard. With multiple doors opening, then closing, it felt raw, particularly with writing so personal. I had to remember: it is the book they are rejecting because they cannot see how it fits into their market, for now. It was not my writing or me they were rejecting. That shift in perspective has kept me going. I love writing too much to stop because of market forces. It is too much a part of how I navigate this world to give up.

I put the memoir down for now (I may come back to it again later), and I just returned to my journalling practice, and kept going. Page after page after page, and slowly something new has been emerging. I work with publication in mind, for sure, but I also work with my own creativity, imagination and love for the craft in mind. The process in and of itself is a gift I give to myself, one which continually helps to strengthen me, change me, show me a way forward, enrich.

Writing, particularly writing personal narrative, demands that we pay attention to the truth, lies, half-truths, and influences which mould and make us. In the assemblage we get to make the links and connections we otherwise would not have noticed, and ultimately I believe we can meet ourselves and therefore others, with more compassion and nuance. Whether one is published, or not, is not the final measure of success for me. Am I being true to myself? Am I listening? And I learning? Am I being of service? These are more interesting questions for me to help guide the process. Writing personal narrative- whether in essay crafting, in looser journaling form, in that sense, is a medium in which the transformation of self can be both moderated and witnessed. The words are the mould makers and the mould breakers. The words themselves are the alchemist’s thread, which I will happily follow. Where they will lead, I have no idea really, but it is a journey so worth taking.

Want to spark or sustain your own writing process?

This summer I have a several ways to support to, online or in-person

Sanctuary

On June 16th ‘Sanctuary’ commences. This is a monthly guided writing gathering online. One hour of supportive journaling practice, in community . Book tickets here.

West Cork Writing Workshops

Come to West Cork this summer!

In July, August and September, I have a series of beautiful writing workshops planned, in Schull and in Leap. From nature writing to learning the art of personal narrative writing it’s writing + nature + west cork. What’s not to love. Book your tickets today.

New Writing Mentoring

There are many people reading this who know they have a book or writing project brewing but are not sure where to begin, how to structure it, or lack the courage and confidence to bring a draft to the next level. My writing mentoring packages are here to support. From private one-to-one workshops, a three month intensive, or a year long engagement, I hope your writing and story has a chance to grow.

Find out more here

**Summer Writing Workshops, West Cork. June-Sept**

Join me for a series of writing workshops in Schull or Leap, West Cork, Summer 2024
More information and bookings

Clare Mulvany 28/05/2024 Clare Mulvany 28/05/2024

One of the scariest places

One of the scariest places in the world is…

What is one of the scariest places in the world?

It is a question I often ask students. I get a range of responses from sniggers to specific locations. ‘My grandmother’s knicker’s’, a student once said, to which the room took a collective gasp, then broke into hysterics.

‘How about the blank page… ‘ I offer.

They look at me as if I’m half mad.

But it’s true. I believe the blank page is one of the scariest places in the world. But it is also one of the most exhilarating, wondrous, powerful and transformative places there is. It’s a place not just where stories and books are born, but lives too. It’s a place of homecoming, connection. In times of loss, it can be a place of solace, and in times of joy, a place to celebrate.

The marriage of ink and page is a loyal companion to action and insight. The data confirms it: commit an intention or a goal to the page, write down specifics with a deadline, and it is more likely to happen. Writing is as much about making the world, as it is narrating it.

I’m sharing all this because I’ve been in a reflective space around the power of writing in my life. I started writing a regular journal when I was 11 and have kept one ever since. That’s a lot of blank pages. A lot of mundanity and lists too, yet when I look back on those pages I see the origins of my ideas and the evolution of how my creative life and career have mapped around them. I’ve seen that it is the habit of returning over and over to the page which has been the bedrock not just to my creative life, but to my career as well. The blank page + a pen + regular habit =…..

….

This summer I’ve lots of ways for you to engage with writing and supporting your own creative habits.

Sanctuary

On June 16th ‘Sanctuary’ commences. This is a monthly guided writing gathering online. One hour of supportive journaling practice, in community . Book tickets here.

West Cork Writing Workshops

Come to West Cork this summer! . In July, August and September, I have a series of beautiful writing workshops planned, in Schull and in Leap. From nature writing to learning the art of personal narrative writing it’s writing + nature + west cork. What’s not to love. Book your tickets today.

New Writing Mentoring

Find out more here

Clare Mulvany 23/04/2024 Clare Mulvany 23/04/2024

Trusting in a Return

Perhaps the silence is only ever an invitation into what really wants to happen.

I keep watching the sky for the swallow’s return. ‘Have you see any yet?’, I ask a local villager. No sightings here, but in other parts of the country, one. The slow return. I need to know the cycle is not broken; that the miracle of these tiny remarkable beings making their way across a continent — across mountains and desert, borders and seas — have made it to their other home, this island on the edge of a continent, offering haven.

The swallow’s return is one of those rhythms in the year I’ve come to rely upon as a marker of continuance. Mid-April I search the sky for darts of forked, swooping brilliance. After wintering, its signalling a summering, with the energy of bloom and birth. It reminds me of cycles and the mystery baked into it all. I take such reassurance in the return.

As in nature, so in life: to trust in the return. It’s been a wintering patch in this tiny corner of my creative life, not the wintering of darkness, but wintering of another kind, of composting. Lettings things fall, allowing time to decompose the constituents. To sense into what wants to be reconstituted is a fecund kind of darkness, too easily overlooked or mistaken as absence. Without the detritus of the harvest, the soil from which new growth emerges can not be sustained.

I am being, perhaps, metaphorically abstract. What do I mean by that in practice, the trusting in the return. Basically, it’s been a quiet patch, in work, in words. Most of the time I have tried to share anything, I’ve had a ‘rabbit in the headlights’ moment, set against what the world is facing and moving through, at times so destructively so. As someone who has relied on words to help them navigate complexity and has taken on an identity as someone capable of articulating responses, my words have felt muted, inadequate and radically falling short. They are only words, after all, and I am only one. I’ve shown up at marches, vigils, protests, but I find myself totally wrung out with tears. What use are tears, I tell myself, feeling somewhat ashamed. Social media too has felt like a minefield, and frequently, not a safe space to share, not just a response to the horrors, but creative output too. I know I am not alone in this.

I see the ‘rabbit in the headlights’ mode in every classroom and teaching space I’ve been in or hosted in the last year. ‘I am only one, and what use are tears/ words/ sadness/ shock’. For some, I see the sense of outrage combusting in anger which has no direction, or snap judgements; students operating on high voltage energy, not knowing how to direct it, or themselves. For others, like myself, there is a desire to retreat. As a response, in learning spaces, I bring in more reflective time, and breathing practices, and I try to create space for meaning making, then afterwards, I need to withdraw too.

I saw this coming in me months ago, and gosh, do I resist. Who am I without the platform/ identity/ role- small as they are, but clearly I am not immune to hitching my identity to the sways of productivity culture and staying relevant. And yet, continual output just hasn’t been an option for me and I realised my activism needs to show up in different ways right now. The introvert in me did some cartwheels when I took my foot off the pedal a bit. The detritus can fall, it was saying, and part of you can too. Time to compost. I just did not expect there to be so much.

And so, over the last year, I’ve intentionally tired to embrace the space, and the silence, which as freelancer who never quite knows when the next ‘gig’ is coming from, is excruciating. My newsletter became more sporadic, my social sharing too. I haven’t wanted to make the full move over to substack yet. I definitely have not wanted to be on X, and defiantly not tiktok. Then, in the midst of all this, one of my dearest soul friends and creative mentors died. Her death so premature filled me with a grief so strong it was as if an equally powerful wave of love moved through me. It is amazing what happens when we allow ourselves to be composted by love. Words started returning, ideas, energy.

Jennifer was someone to whom the creative life was one of the greatest mysteries and miracles, to which she dutifully served. She’d literally put on a pair of working overalls, and headed to her studio each to mine the creative wells for source material. A filmmaker and creative visionary (although she’d hate for me to have called her that — but to me she was), she taught me, among many things, the power of creative cycles and needing to listen to the dream, then follow it. The dream — the creative idea which won’t go away, the calling, the stirring, the story which keeps tugging, the imagination’s tide. Her own film ideas had seeded themselves in literal dreams, then he showed up to her creative practice with devotee levels of steadfastness. The first in her ‘cycle’ of three film, She Sings to the Stars, is completed, and the script for the second film which she had been working on for the precious few years I knew her, was in its final stages of completion. Now that she is not here to complete it, I am not sure that film will ever be made, but in one way it also is —because she listened, brought the story to the page, gave life to the dream. That was Jennifer Corcoran.

After her death, I had a ‘now or never’ moment. A story which had been following me, was tapping, loudly. A bonkers, beauty, wildly erratic story. Now or never, I told myself. And in I went. In the imaginational realm, I’ve found worlds and characters so real to me they feel like companions. In there, is a dangerously beautiful place, which expands my sense of what is real, and possible, of this world too. I know what I’m working on is my own ‘cycle’ of stories. Book one is in a semi-decent draft phase, and daily I am trying to coax it into shape. Book two and three are emerging, slowly. It was this story that took me recently to Mexico, and this story which is leading into places I never thought I’d venture. It’s terrifying. It’s beautiful. I’m listening. Perhaps the silence is only ever an invitation into what really wants to happen.

I am about to go for a walk with Milly. The sky is open, clear. I’ll look up and ask I’ll myself ‘Today?’ Perhaps I’ll see a swallow. But it not today, then soon. Soon. I am trusting in a return.

Writing Prompts:

Perhaps the silence is only ever an invitation into what really wants to happen.
What is your relationship to silence? What is silence inviting you into?

Your now or never.
Write about a ‘now or never’ project you have brewing. Is there a book in you? Or a creative dream? What does it look like? What is holding you back?