A WOOD SONG

On (m)othering through emergency.

‘And what shall we make ourselves from today?

A memory, a seedling, a word?

What can we hold up to the light and find despair has not yet touched?’

— Heather Christle.

I missed the Aurora Borealis, and not only that but — as usual— I’ve been floored by the solar energy that created them.

Not only did I manage not to witness one of the most beautiful, life altering, soothing displays on earth, but the reason I missed it was because I was in bed with a unthinkably bad migraine; created by the exact same thing that created them.

It has been over a year since I’ve managed to be in bed before midnight, and the one night I had to put all my work aside and sleep before a new day arrived, the entire island I live on saw my all time favourite things, dancing above their houses, gardens, cliffs, rivers and ocean.

I woke up the following morning in one of the lowest moods I’ve experienced for, again, over a year.

I’ve been telling myself and everyone else too that I am ok now, that I’m through the PND that I was convinced, for two years, I wouldn’t actually make it through. I’ve always caveated it with ‘oh, I know not to get complacent’, or ‘I’m not through it long enough to trust I’m fully through’, etc — but the truth is—I had become complacent.

I had begun to believe I was through the other end. I had begun making choices that stemmed from this very belief: that I had recovered.

This has come from a place of deep rooted desire: I have so much wanted to leave that part of the past, of my matrescence—of ME— behind.

I’ve wanted to not just walk but RUN.

Up from that underworld, away from that dark clearing in the thicket, out of the woods themselves.

The thing is, though, I still have work to do in the woods.

There are still lessons, there, with my name on them, and I need to find ways to lean back into that darkness; that hiding away of the light.

I’ve been back with Fiona Benson again this week.

Oh the power of her words; how she takes her own story of mothering, of loving, and makes it so universal, so true.

‘Daughters, when they come…

we’ll slip through the thickets

or take the water’s scentless course,

and follow the lichen

brightening north…

and there will be no catching us,

and no harm will come,

so keep close daughters

in the woods where we run’

—Fiona Benson

There is so much writing just now about women and land and the past’s imprint on our hearts.

About the ways our creativity is impacted by our place and our lineage, each. I have so much I’d love to say to it all too but I really just want to share a few small truths at the moment.

Some truths about mothering through emergency.

Some truths that I have carried, through these dark and winding woods, alone for far too long.