P A T I E N C E
Let patience and failure be bedfellows, for to be a great teacher is also to be a diligent student. To be a great writer is also to be an avid reader. To be a great friend, is to learn to be a friend to ourselves. To be a great whatever, is to be an apprentice to the part of us that longs to grow. In that longing their will be flaws and detours, errors and mishaps. There will be learning we'll sometimes call slow and sometimes wonder if we are moving at all. Our patience is in the honouring of the journey ahead and also in gratitude for the path, however wandering, which takes us there.
P R I V I L E G E
Robin Wall Kimmerer’s remarkable books of essays, Braiding Sweetgrass has been a balm and buoyancy aid over this last year. Her words, rooted in her deep knowledge of plants and grounded in her own wisdom tradition of her people- she is a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation- are meditations on reciprocity, gifting, stewardship of the earth, and true love. Her words carry both weight and wonder. Her message is clear: it is time we offer our gifts, in our fullness and in our gratitude, in service to Mother Earth. The last lines of her epilogue in the collection have been my constant companion. I read them when doubt and fear start to erode my courage, or when I am beginning to question why I do what I do. They are words I share at the end of each writing workshop I host, and they are words which come with an invitation: to create, with the power of this potent time with us, in return for the privilege of breath: These are those words. My wish is that they may become your companion too. ‘The moral covenant of reciprocity calls us to honour our responsibility for all 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 our blankets our 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.
B L E S S I N G
A Blessing for Work May your work today be of service, be a prayer, be an offering.May you express what is seeking expression.May nourishment fill up the well of longings in hearts near and far.May you be guided to find the resources you need to bring your vision into form.And may that vision be a lighthouse, sparking insight to thrive, as nature intended.
W I L D
F L O W
It's not all steady and gentile, the rhythm of our creative tides. We can cross continents before the burst of energy overtakes us. But, as sure as the waves of our inhale and exhale, the waves of creative energy are ever-present. We tend to them by showing up to our craft; we nurture them with our attention; and we tune into them with a willingness to let them transform us too.For as we create our art by offering our gifts to the world, our art and our gifts also create us. This is the wave of generous reciprocity in cyclical, flowing, action.How can you nurture trust in your own creative flow today? .
For International Women's Day
To honour the women, we honour the feminine within us all. It begins with honouring the Great Mother, Mama Earth, Gaia; this singular and magical home of ours, the original birthplace. And it involves honouring the womb: the dark place of possibility and potential deep within; our creative well, where fecundity is a birthright. We honour those who have gone before- the mothers who have lead the way and opened doors, and the mothers of mothers. And we honour the flame of feminine power and voice. In this honouring of the feminine, there is acknowledgement of the masculine. The yin and the yang; the need for both within all of us- male and female- to circle the cycle of a whole life. Our global systems were built in the main with patriarchal structures- government, business, education, healthcare- linear and hierarchical, with the dominant push power, which unchecked, can repress and negate the feminine. For systemic change to happen- to create systems which are sustainable and dynamic–our systems need also to embody the feminine principles of vulnerability, flexibility, cycles and empathy. They need to capture the fierce creative potential in the womb of our imaginations to vision and actualise new ways of being in the world. We need leadership with compassion at its core, we need fluid and dynamically responsible policies and practices which protect our earth, our collective home. We need to speak of love as a cohesive force—a powerful love which can unite us as fellow citizens of the world. So this International Women’s Day, whether you are male or female, or however you choose to express your gender- may we all celebrate the feminine internally, so that the feminine externally may rise with its great power and grace to evolve us to wholeness.
Write to Your Truth: Announcements & Early Bird offers
I have a flurry of announcements for you today. Write to your Truth is deepening and expanding! Write to your Truth is a writing process designed to tap you into the power of your stories, and support you in transforming the raw material of your life into crafted pieces of writing. It’s a creative, exciting journey of discovery of your own inner world, the stories which have shaped you and the story of your life you want to live onwards. Along the way you learn ways of tapping into your senses for meaning making, and a layered story mapping tool which will help you to see how the stories in your life interact and can be crafted into narratives. You don’t have to be a writer, but you do need to be curious about how story shapes your life, and be willing to do some reflective writing to weave those stories together. If you have been wanting time and space to write, this is also a great structure, focus and kick-start to a regular practice. If you want to craft your own story to help you develop your own leadership, voice and clarity, this process will also support you. I have THREE different ways you can now engage with the process, online and live in person. 
1. Online Circle- with live calls and individual writing support.
Starting March 2nd.
The most in-depth version of ‘Write to Your Truth’ is my 8 week online course which is starting again on March 2nd. In this version you’ll be introduced to all the practices, plus you will get to work on two longer writing assignments which you’ll craft, edit and then have a chance to share with the group. There are also six live calls during the course where we will be learning together, writing together and sharing both draft and polished pieces. Anna, who took the first online version of the course in the Autumn, shared these words about it,“I have taken many online courses, and none compare to Clare’s Write Your Truth course. Clare’s experience, authenticity and guidance make writing not only effortless, but meaningful. The content in this course allowed me to realize that the stories I have within me, as well as the stories we all have within us, are endless. Clare showed me that my story was just waiting there, ready to be put into words, and when I leaned into that, it just flowed onto the page. The Write Your Truth course didn’t only give me guidance on how to be a better writer, it taught me how to connect with my truth and trust myself enough to say what I wished to say. I am forever grateful for everything I learned and continue to learn from Clare and this course.” – Anna Gannon, New York, 2018.The course starts on March 2nd.
**Early bird available until Feb 17th**
Find out more here and get on board today!
2. One day workshops, Schull, West Cork, Ireland.
Schull, West Cork, is a harbour village, on the wild west coast of Ireland. It also happens to be where I call home at the moment. In the village there is a wonderful country house, Grove House, which have been home to writers for the last 100 years. It is the perfect setting for a writing workshop. During this day I introduce you to the Write to the Truth process, and we have time to write & share. The day is about sparking your creative expression and giving you the courage and confidence to continue writing and delving into your stories. We also get a yummie lunch. And cake. Here is what a previous participant Ger said about the workshop: ‘Gained a realisation that writing is not just for the chosen few. I too have a story to tell and my own writing style. A potential for creativity which never got the chance to develop or flourish. I now have greater self belief’
Upcoming dates: 28th April and 20th July.
Find out more, select your date, and book here.
Only 12 spaces available per workshop.
3. Weekend Writing Salon- Lisbon, Portugal
And I am so so excited to share that Write to your Truth is travelling to Lisbon, Portugal for a weekend writing salon. I am teaming up with my friend Emily Avila, who is going to help host us in this beautiful city. We have found an incredible venue, and I know this is going to be a very very special weekend.
We’ll have lots of writing time, and we’ll be sharing our stories in this beautiful salon. I can’t wait!
Find out more and book your place online here.
Only 15 spaces available.
**We have a very special early bird available until 15th March**
.......................................................................................................................................................................If you have questions about any of the events, please get in touch by email (clare@claremulvany.ie). Hoping you will join me.Until soon, Clare. xx
On Listening to our Inner Spring
You can listen to this post here
I open my front door to a new day, to begin a new month. Fresh light enters. The air feels immediately crisp having recently been sea-bound. Not far away the waves are rumbling, as they always do, and life spins its onward turn.It is Imbolc. ‘Meaning: In the belly’. ‘Meaning: ‘What’s brewing?’The inner impetus at this time of year is a beckoning. In an act of ritual, I place my hands on my own belly, feeling the soft rounding of the years, and the rise and fall of my own breath waves: a perpetual motion of being. It is a time of year to pay homage to the internal inklings, those stirrings of ideas and insights which have been brewing in the hibernating wilderness of my wintering. The cracks are appearing in the night skies. At either end, the dawn and gloaming thickens. It is how the light gets in. To pay homage is to give the light at the end of the darkness, the cresting ideas, attention. The ritual helps to bring me there.We have the mythological underpinnings of this time of year in our Celtic heritage too. Goddess Brigid: lighter of the flame, kindler of the artistic flare, protector of the poets, feminine force of fecundity and growth. Her memory is here to give force to our imaginings. I find it reassuring that when we go into the deep layer of our collective stories we find a woman, myth or saint, who carried the flame of the arts, a champion of the poets and midwife to our creative potential. And so, the festival of Imbolc is a potent time to pay homage to our own creativity. In doing so we root ourselves in this Celtic lineage as we honour the story of the Goddess Brigid, whose legacy can remind us to trust that we already have what it takes within to bring form to our imaginings: our intrinsic creativity of being.Yet knowing and doing are two separate acts. We can feel those stirrings, but knowing how to act on them, and how exactly to begin, is another set of skills. I see it all the time, in myself and in others: the moment of beginning, if taken too seriously, can stop us in our tracks. Attention, in this sense, is a verb.How to begin? I think it starts with trust, but the hardest edge of trust is trusting ourselves. Those little niggling voices of self-doubt and the greedy voices of self-sabotage, they are particularly vicious at the beginning of things when it can feel safer to stay in the comfort of hibernation rather than risk ourselves to the light.The poets, of course, have something to say about this. And one in particular I have been turning to, in remembrance.When word of Mary Oliver’s death came through, the internet was flooded with poetry for a few days. In between headlines of Brexit blunders and the myriad unspeakable horrors of the things that are deemed newsworthy, there was a collective embrace of wonder and beauty. It was like a thread we are all desperately clinging too, consciously or unconsciously, for our survival. So it seemed that this frail, powerful, quiet presence of a woman had entered into the hearts of so many, and altered them, utterly and eternally. Her poetic voice rounded the complex themes of metaphysics and philosophy, ecology and spirituality into pared back beauty and simplicity. And her poems, like pumice stones, proved that they could soften the hardened parts of our thick skins and the walls we’ve put up to protect us from those all too durable news headlines, and even the walls that separate us.So now I take delight in this: she may be gone, but her words will never go: therein the power of the word. Even more so, therein the power of the word which calls us to reverence, wonder, and particularly to connection. Words of hers like these:‘I would say that there exist a thousand unbreakable links between each of us and everything else, and that our dignity and our chances are one. That the farthest star and the mud at our feet are a family; and there is no decency or sense in honouring one thing, or a few things, and then closing the list. The pine tree, the leopard, the Platte River, and ourselves- we are at risk together, or we are on our way to a sustainable world together. We are each other’s destiny. I move through her collection of essays in Upstream, mostly in awe, jumping up from the page when I reach ‘Of Time and Power’. It was as if Brigit was speaking too, with a warning, and that reminder again:‘The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time’These are strong words from a wise woman. But Mary Oliver is generous too, and so offers us clues. How to begin? I think she knew we would be wondering.‘Attention is the beginning of devotion’. In Spring, we begin to notice. The swelling buds. The first sighting of daffodils, unusually early this year. The grass, putting energy again into its skyward journey. The blossom too, arriving, slowly at first, but knowing that soon it will be in flair. It is life seeking life in a beautiful insistence, as another poet, Brendan Kennelly writes, ‘that we forever begin’So what if paying close attention is all we need to forever begin? What if, this Imbolc, in honour of Brigit, we place our hands on our belly and really trust in what we sense there, in those stirrings that live below doubt and fear and are speaking not only who we are now, but who we are becoming, individually and collectively. We are each other’s destiny after all, and our links are our vitality.I have been taking part in an online gathering over this last week called ‘Story the Future’. From around the world, facilitators and trainers, teachers and leaders have been gathering to learn more about the practice of storytelling, and particularly how to use narrative tools for learning and building stronger connections across community and social divides. One of our hosts, Mary Alice Arthur, has a knack for weaving big and timely questions into the mix, by way of encouragement. She gave us this one.Where can I see elements of the future already manifesting in the present? ‘The future enters into us, in order to transform itself in us, long before it happens’, said Rilke. So, maybe our future is already inside us, and it is just a matter of listening, and being willing to give our active attention to what we hear.Imbolc, it’s our invitation from our ancestors to our very own spring, to that bud which is ready to bloom. So I continue the Imbolc ritual. My hands rest on my belly. I hear the ancient ripples of Brigid, and the poetic whisperings of Oliver, Kennelly and Rilke. I sense the connection of my breath to the tides, and from those tides my connection to every shore, and upon every shore, every stone, and upon every stone every footfall, and within every footfall, every beating heart. Yes, attention is the beginning of devotion.Then I ask myself.Where can I see elements of the future already manifesting in the present? For a while it is quiet. Nothing moving but my breath. But then a deeper stirring. ‘I think it is in the very next line that you write’. I know that line is a proposal. A new project has been brewing and it is time to give it attention. So I pick up my pen, I open a blank page, and I feel something rise within me, this intrinsic creativity of being. It is insisting, beautifully, that yes, I forever, begin.
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A Creative Practice: In the belly (15 mins)
Want to do some listening and journalling and take some time to tune inwards to listen to what wants to be brought to life; to what ideas or projects are stirring from within? You can choose to do this practice sitting or lying down.Place your hands on your belly for a couple of minutes and sit in silence.Can you feel the rumblings of any new ideas, projects or stirrings? Can you sense into what is moving in your life? Perhaps it is something which has been underground for a while (a dream you have had for ages, a book idea, a project you have been churning for months). What is seeking to emerge? Where do I see elements of the future already manifesting in the present?Keep your hands on your belly, and after another few minutes ask: ‘What is your gut instinct telling you about all this? Is it time to take action? If so, what is the next step? Take note of any other thoughts or ideas which are emerging, then take to your journal and write for 10 mins, including these next steps which you listed. Toward the end of your journalling time, decide which next step you are going to action first, and schedule some time to make it happen in the next day or two. This step should be small and manageable- a phone call to a potential client, a blog post, a conversation you need to have. From that step you take the next, and the next. Our dreams are birthed one step at a time......
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Hope
Right now, this feels like everything.. “Hope”by Victoria Safford
Our mission is to plant ourselves at the gates of hope — not the prudent gates of Optimism, which are somewhat narrower; nor the stalwart, boring gates of Common Sense; nor the strident gates of self-righteousness, which creak on shrill and angry hinges; nor the cheerful, flimsy garden gate of “Everything is gonna be all right,” but a very different, sometimes very lonely place, the place of truth-telling, about your own soul first of all and its condition, the place of resistance and defiance, the piece of ground from which you see the world both as it is and as it could be, as it might be, as it will be; the place from which you glimpse not only struggle, but joy in the struggle — and we stand there, beckoning and calling, telling people what we are seeing, asking people what they see.
Your 2019 Intentional Year Guidebook & Workshops
Intentional Year Guidebook and Planner / Plus Audio Meditation.Around this time of year I love to take stock while reflecting and tuning into the next phase of life. But instead of setting goals or resolutions, I believe a more powerful approach is to learn to work with intentions that can be carried through the year as wayfinders and guides.So, by way of support, I have updated my Intentional Year Guidebook, which I share with you in the hope that it may support your own intention setting process. It includes exercises for connecting with what makes you feel alive, and it brings you through a creative planning process evoking the tradition of letter writing - but with a twist.Here is an extract from the guidebook to explain more about my understanding of ‘intention’Intention differs from goals or resolutions in that it hooks us up to the highest innate possibility within ourselves. It does not condemn our faults, it has no grievances with us, it does not resolve to ‘fix’ us or ‘heal’ us. Instead it recognises that we are already whole, beautiful, and sacred. Intentionality brings us back consistently to the remembrance of our intimate and intrinsic wholeness… Intention calls us to honour our deepest dignity and worth. It is not a fixed, static state as it enables us to move with flow and connects us to feelings of synchronicity and ‘rightness’. To be intentional is to be open to the natural flow of life’s calling. When we are intentional, we find that life bends to meet us. As we step in with our highest selves, so too does the world meet us. Aligning ourselves to our intention is a daily practice. As such, the more we practice, the more natural and refined this becomes. The exciting part is, we get to design how we want to practice. There is no fixed way, there is no right or wrong. Intention instead brings us to a feeling in ourselves which simply honours the best in us, and when we fall off track, it gently nudges us, taking us by the hand and showing us a way back to our highest selves within.....This guidebook is my gift to you.It also includes a 10 minute audio meditation ‘Finding Stillness’.
To Access:
Sign up to my mailing list here. You will be sent a link in which you can download the guidebook.
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Intentional Year Online Planning Workshops And come January, if you’d like some additional support I’ll be hosting two live online workshops to guide you through the process and give you a few additional planning tools in a nourishing learning circle.
Workshops will take place on January 6th and January 12th.
Find out more and register online today here.
Until soon. And until then: may we find stillness, and from the space of the pause may we locate that which is nourishing and wise to us. Onwards, with love, Clare x
Letters from Clare
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