Always Look Up

There are many childhood memories that contribute to this piece of writing. Funny things, childhood memories…..

My earliest is from around 2 years of age. I was sat in a rugby club changing room, watching a group of naked men getting in the biggest bath id ever seen, together. But that’s another story….

I have a little motto “Always Look Up” which stems from my other most vivid childhood memories ..

Lying on my back in the long grass, cloud watching.
Sitting in trees, wildlife watching.
My dad making me climb mountains and hills.
Standing at my window at night with my mum, star-gazing, waiting to spot a shooting one to wish on before bed.
Full moon gazing alone for hours, giving my instinct room to be heard
Being repeatedly told by my Nanna to “walk tall and hold your head up high girl”

If you spend your time looking at the ground, you see very little.
When we see little, we don’t connect.
When we don’t connect, we lose all hope.

If you look up you see birds in flight. That reminds you that your soul is ultimately free.
If you look up you see clouds passing by in the wind. That reminds you that things are always passing, nothing stays the same.
If you look up you see stars shining. That reminds you that you too must shine bright, which in turn allows others to do the same. We are all capable of shining.
If you look up you see the trees that grew from a tiny seeds. That reminds you that strength is in you from the start of your journey and just grows stronger from the attack of the winds and the rain.
If you look up you see the Moon. She reminds us that we are all just a tiny speck of dust in comparison to the universe around us and from that perspective is learnt.

If you look up, you see what is around you. The people who love you, the animals that comfort you, the nature that sustains you and the sun that shines on you.

And if you properly see all of that on a regular basis. That is when you realise you are blessed

Blessed Be x

Poem from my daughter Boo

I have a great mother

we get along with each other.

Sometimes we fight,

but shes nearly always right

I have the best mother

and i will always love her, 

every day, every night,

in dark and in light.

We don’t have secrets

and we don’t tell lies.

You hold me tight to calm my cries.

We have a love which never dies

and when you are sad it brings tears to my eyes.

You are the one who makes a house a home

and without you I would be alone.

Love you Mum x 

Swan Song

I have been watching the swans a lot on recent dog walks; we have an old, established pair living on the stretch of river by me. Mr Swan has got himself in a bit of a twist of late, over an outsider swan that has recently appeared. Most of his days, it seems, are spent chasing the unwanted swan out and away from his home, his partner, his patch. I have seen many animals prove that loyalty and stamina are natural qualities but none quite so much as the Swan. These magnificent creatures are a sight to behold when they are being threatened, they can raise themselves up almost to the height of a man, they have no fear of coming right at you, hissing, huge wings flapping, to warn any potential predator that they will fight to the death ……. And they will.

Swans have amazed me ever since I worked as an RSPCA Ambulance Driver in the 90’s. A swan job soon became my favourite callout to attend, especially as it usually involved speedboats and an adrenaline dose of sheer danger! My one and only RSPCA Commendation came from taking part in a swan rescue in the Midlands. The birds had landed right in the middle of a lake with no water on it, just thick, sticky mud. They had tried to free themselves but had become weighted down with the mud and were stranded, exhausted, with no hope of getting to the banks. Being the only “girl” on the callout and therefore smaller and lighter than my male colleagues, guess who got roped up and sent out onto the lake to bring the birds back in! The rescue was a success and the swans were taken to a rescue centre to recover from their ordeal. I will never forget the feeling it gave me on the drive home that evening. Driving a transit van back up the M6 covered from head to foot in mud sure got me some very strange looks from other motorists but I was on top of the world, I felt alive, like something inside my heart was singing … It brought to mind the myth of the Swan Song.

The ancient belief was that the mute swan (Cygnus olor, to give it its Latin name) would be completely silent throughout its life and then in its final moments before death it would sing one beautiful song. We now know that not to be true, they do not sing at all, at any time in their life. Their voice may be silent, but their life is the song. They are a symbol of love and loyalty; they represent Grace, Balance, Union, Purity, Self-Transformation and Togetherness. They move as if suspended above the water, effortless and smooth. They stand up and fight for their right to life.

“The Silverswan, who living had no note,
When death approached,
Unlocked her silent throat.
Leaning her breast against the reedy shore,
Thus sang her first and last, and sang no more:
“Farewell, all joys! O Death, come close mine eyes!
More Geese than Swans now live,
More fools than wise.”
- Orlando Gibbons

I wonder …… what is your swan song?

Blessed Be x

Open letter to a misogynist

New Year 1993 …. No … We haven’t gone back in time!! I have, albeit briefly, to remind myself what has made me who I am today …. To remind my sisters that there is a fire in the belly of us that is stronger than at first you may believe. A divine feminine light, that you must hold on to at all cost.

As Morrissey once sang … there is a light and it never goes out …

Dear First love/cruel love
When I first met you, I was young and naive. I was watching my mother die slowly from a brain tumour, watching my brother dealing with his own personal aftermath of the First Gulf War. Watching my family unit fall apart, right before my very eyes. But you knew that didn’t you? …you smelt the vulnerability in me ….you actually seeked it out!
You were 10 years older; I thought you were wiser than me. I was just a girl, breaking inside and you pretended you wanted to make me feel safe. I didn’t make it easy, but that just upped your game, made it more of a challenge for you, thing is… it wasn’t a game. It was meant to be love. My first, serious love. You sweet talked me and hoodwinked me into it, made me think that in your eyes I was the most special girl in the world. And when you got what you wanted? When you had pushed my friends and family as far away from me as you could? Then you changed.
You and I are the only ones who will ever know the level of violence and abuse I suffered at your hands for almost a year of my life. You and your friend that is. I still think of him, I still remember the only night there was a witness to your cruelty. I remember calling out to him to help me, begging for it to stop. I can see him now clear as day still, coming into the room. You told him to stay out of it, and he did. I will never forget what I saw in his face, he knew you were wrong, he knew I wasn’t deserving of such treatment but he closed the door and he left me there, alone with a beast. In many ways it took me longer to forgive him than it did you. When I last saw him, I looked him straight in the face but his shame wouldn’t allow him to meet my eyes.
The last you saw of me was the time you threw me down the staircase. I lay there alone, crumpled and crying, until I found the strength to stand and leave .. And as we both know, that was the last time you were to ever lay a hand on me. What finally snapped in my head that day to save me? It was a light, the divine feminine light filling my soul with the belief that I was better than where you had put me, lying on that floor.
It was the light that saved me, the very thing that frightened you in the beginning to make you behave the way you did, the very thing that you wanted/tried to beat out of me. You nearly got to me, almost, but the light in my heart was always too bright for your dark to beat.

Blessed Be from the girl with the light that has kept her alive

 

KICKING AND SCREAMING
Kicking and screaming, they tear at your soul,
Swearing and crying, but they just won’t let go
Clenching your fists you try to fight back
But each defence is met by a stronger attack
You’ve reached your limit, you can’t take the pain.
Their blows come down on you just like hard rain.
Then you wake up, a bruised heap on the floor
With the comfort of knowing they can hurt you no more.

Feminist or Daughter of the Divine Feminine?

I have been called many things in my time. Some are just funny … being called a Tree Hugger on the basis that I’m ‘in to’ Nature (don’t tell them but I do actually, physically hug trees!!) Some not so funny, delivered from hurt, anger or haste or even truth. Some are labels that I have been handed, just as we all get given from time to time. There are times in the past where these may have cut like a knife, been taken on board by my mind and dwelled on, dissected and analysed. Now they just interest and amuse me and I rejoice in being called a ‘Trouble Maker’ as it is only ever used when I simply stand up for what I believe to be true. 

I have often been called a feminist, that’s not an insult, it’s a label but it doesn’t quite fit for me. I am a Daughter of the Divine Feminine. The Divine Feminine is the true state of every woman on this planet, the natural wild woman within;

“Within every woman, there lives a wild woman, filled with passionate creativity and ageless knowing – but repressed for centuries by a value system that trivializes emotional truth, intuitive wisdom and instinctual self-confidence” *

Men and woman are never going to be ‘equal’, how can we be when we are so different? I am not fighting for ‘equality’ with men in this world as we know it. I am fighting to not have the Divine Feminine snatched from my soul by a patriarchal world.

If we buy into this culture we have been presented with, this unreality we are being shown, then we lose the woman within. To know her is to live simply, be with nature, to listen to yourself, to avoid what mainstream media is telling you a woman should be. How could they possibly know? Only a woman knows how to be the woman she is and the only place she will find that is by getting in touch with the wild woman within herself.. Not, from a copy of She of Marie Clare (other magazines are available)!

We as women have been divided from one another, we are fighting among ourselves in so many areas of life, and we have lost our natural way, our combined force and our true state of being.
If every single woman on the planet united together in consciousness of the true divine feminine … that combined force could actually heal this world.
Oh what a wonderful world that will be.

Blessed Be, fellow sisters, one and all xx

 

* Women who run with the wolves – Clarissa Pinkola Estes. A lexicon for the female psyche that every woman should read. I know it to be true for I dreamt of the Wolves long before the book found me. This book just confirms what every woman already knows deep within herself.

Render Loyalty

Our town is built within the loop of the River Severn  It encircles the town centre so much so, that there is only one way out of town where you don’t have to cross a bridge.  We have 5 bridges in total, The English Bridge, The Welsh Bridge, The Boathouse Bridge, The Kingsland Bridge and Greyfriar’s Bridge.

It was Greyfriars Bridge where i first met Geoff many, many moons ago. Geoff was homeless and would sit on the town side of the bridge, curled up with his dog and a good book. He would always be there, dog on lap and nose in book, only in really bad weather was Geoff not there.

If you took the time to stop and get to know this man you knew that he loved just two things in life, literature and Jess, his girl! He told me many times how grateful he was for his companion, he adored her completely, she was his whole world. He would say he ‘was blessed with what life had given him’. Geoff was a wise man, an avid reader, a philosopher, intelligent and humorous, a quiet man, a gentle man. Geoff was good company, If you took the time to find out.

He never asked a soul for anything. If you bothered to ask him if you could help him or offer him money, he would just say .. if you choose to give me a gift let it be a book or some dog food.

Crossing the bridge one spring morning I was suprised to see no Geoff. The sun was shining but Geoff’s spot was vacant, i thought it strange but carried on with my day …

Later that day my heart broke …. Jess had gone into the River for a swim, it seemed she’d got caught up in something by the bank, Geoff had gone in to help her and managed to untangle her and get her back on the side. But as Geoff tried to get out of the water, he slipped back and the river had swept him further away from the banks.

Witnesses that day, reported seeing a man struggling in the water and a dog repeatedly swimming towards him, frantically trying to drag the man out of the water.

Geoffs body was finally recovered but Jess had disappeared. Two days later, Jess turned up, she was found, exhausted, sitting in their spot by Greyfriars Bridge, waiting for her friend.

Render loyalty always, it is the most precious gift after love that we have to give.

Blessed Be to Geoff* and Jess* and one and all xx

 

*not real names 

Dreams of Wolves

Since as far back into my childhood as I can remember I have had very ‘normal’ nightmares and VERY vivid ‘not normal’ dreams.

The nightmares are of the average variety, being chased, falling off cliff tops and my favourite bizarre one; In 1978 I had months of a reoccurring nightmare that my parents SOLD me to Rod Stewart, I was 7 years old!

My dreams are a different matter altogether, many come before an event actually happens for real. On that basis I could be labelled a psychic, a clairvoyant, telepathic, a foreteller, a mystic, a nutter!! But I am none of these things. The dreams taught me long ago what I am … I am quite simply a dreamer (and a healer) *these two often go hand in hand.

I have been granted a gift that has been in many human souls since the old tribes roamed our British Isles (before those Romans turned up!) But most ‘gifts’ come with a price and mine can often cause me great discomfort. There are things that no one would wish to see. The responsibility of knowing something is coming and yet having no power to change it can leave me drained and feeling incompetent and hopeless.

A dreamer has no choice in their destiny to dream, it just is so. That can be quite a challenge in the 21st century, I’m just an average person, earning a living, paying a mortgage, bringing up a child, shopping in Asda! I am the same as anyone else out there, the only difference being that when we all close our eyes at night, I am one of those who SEE.

To cope with this, I keep my life as simple as possible, I avoid the ‘reality’ we have been SHOWN to be real, as much as I possibly can. Our present reality has been artificially created by men, and not good men either. We are bombarded with being told what is right, wrong, what to believe. We are being shaped by man’s hand, moulded into what suits their aim and their gain . We all have an inbuilt instinct but we are taught to not believe in that. We are taught to not listen to our gut, our dreams. We are being guided and herded into their hell.

The other thing that helps me cope? The wolves! I roam with wolves in my wildest dreams. They stand beside me when things become dark, they guide me through and for that I will be forever grateful for they have saved my life countless times

From an old soul, trying to survive in a new age.

Dedicated to three people who have inspired me to start writing down “My Voice”
   –     The fantastic, very talented, Miss Fuckity Off.
           Dear JJ, My gallant, noble, one true gentleman.
And,   The Fearless, warrior man from Mona.
Each one of you have touched my life in a way you could never imagine – Blessed Be xxx