A fox standing behind the trees

On gifts

This is a free post: a gift from me to you. A wee tenderness warning: baby loss is spoken of, alongside many gains. It is my hope that this post fills you from your toes to your teeth with a kind of love that changes the way time works. A kind of love that feels like being carried from the forest after a day of winter magic, by a pair of arms that are your safe place, into the branches of your warm nest.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Friends, here we are, nearing the ending of The Omen Days.

I have missed this space, and you all, but I have never needed the dark & the silence; the dream time of the year, as much as these last weeks.

I am, as many of you know, trying to find my way back to the world after the loss of our wee Gabrielle. The grief, a month in, has changed shape; as grief is wont to do. The colours have been, in these last weeks, transformed beyond compare too. It has been a deeply humbling experience, this grieving. I have been changed by it in ways I may never understand. My closest friend took the picture at the top, and right after she did, she cried deep, ancestral tears on a stony beach at sunset, as we held one another.

Everything has changed she said.

The whole world is changed forever.

And never have I felt that words were more true, more real, more human, in all of my life.

Since I lost that wee being in a physical way, my friend and I—other people in my life, too—have actually gained them, in another way. A way that has been so hard to talk about with words.

A way that feels like an ancient, wild, untameable thing.

Feral and free.

And I have been drawn away from words, actually. Away from my own, from those of others too, for the first time in my life. I thought this would be a terrifying thing. Even in the bleakest depths of PND, I still found a way to write. To read too. They each were such comfort to me; solace in the darkness. I imagined losing my grip on words would break me, it had long been a fear that sits heavy as a stone in my heart. But my oh my, the freedom I have experienced as I untied myself from it all. I’m not sure I will ever be able to explain that feeling.

As someone who’s written their whole life, who reads hungrily; who makes sense of this world through words: this is the wildest thing I’ve experienced.

This moment of edgeless silence; this wordless womb of a place.

In place of words there have been images.

So many of them; so deeply moving.

Most appearing as gifts; it is the season for this, after all, despite this hungry grief.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Wrapped in gold, in a walnut crib, moss to keep him from the biting cold, a star above to keep him safe— the Christ child.

I have never needed to hold, in my shaking hands, a wee felted baby, as much as I did that winter morning he arrived….

And this, the final of three foxes to arrive with me, to fall quite literally into my lap, since our baby died.

And the second one of them to come with a message— the same message, in fact— a fox standing behind the trees.

And pairs of creatures, so many of them I know they need their own post, but this wolf couple have felt such a gift these last days. Lavender chocolate, gold embossed, made in County Down, the place Gabrielle embedded their wee self into my wee self.

The message of it all, the gift.

And there have been oak leaves, so so many oak leaves, and I have been held by them; healed, too.

Made by the hands of women I love, or chosen by their hearts, too.

These images speak, of course they do.

And I am listening.

Today a Christmas box arrived from my best friend, having been through the whole country on its customs holiday, and as usual every single thing in it was a pure gift. That card, second from bottom right, is from her and I am extremely moved by the image. A huge Christmas tree being taken home by three cars together, tied on with beautiful pink ribbons.

Yes, the work may be heavy and hard.

Yes it may feel, right now, like you simply don’t know how to do this all.

Yes, sometimes there simply are no words.

But take the heavy load and share it with friends, in primary colours, with pink ribbons. This heavy load is precious, actually, and — in many ways— perfect, too.

Sometimes we need things other than words, and that is a gift, at times like these.

A golden baby.

Forest creatures.

Oak leaves.

Gifts, each and every one.

And my heart is glad, so very glad, and I am grateful.

I am also grateful to share that we will meet for our first MOSS MOTHER MOON of this new year on Monday 13th January 7-8 pm GMT on zoom.

All women are welcome.

Email inchwhooperswan@gmail.com to book.

These gathering truly are gift beyond all words.

And here, a few wee words, to mark my making my way back towards them tentatively, and in gratitude for these omen days.

For the gift they are, this year, more than ever.

With a glad, glad heart.

X