Holding

On the unseen

This is a free post.

If you value my work and would like to benefit from receiving all my posts, perhaps you would consider becoming a paid subscriber. I so much appreciate you all being here x

Here we are, nearly at the end of August, and with that, the ending of summer.

We are making our way towards the year’s velvety darkness.

The circle is turning, turning.

And with her, we turn, too.

I’m home just over a week from one of the most beautiful, moving, life affirming times of my life.

Together with gorgeous

Lucy Beckley

, I held space for a group of amazing women, all at different stages of their creative paths, at a Full Moon retreat in Cornwall.

How do we write of such times?

Times that take us & rattle us— like the winds of this season— and leave us changed beyond all compare.

What a time this is to be gathering in circle with other women.

A time like none I have ever known.

And the only thing that’s made any sense to me as I navigate being alive in this body in this world in this moment is holding and being held by women.

Most of the time I have to make do with this holding happening online, in a zoom room. Don’t get me wrong, I am exceptionally grateful to be able to have the community I have to lean into at all, and am consistently shocked by how intimate an online space mostly feels.

But this time in Cornwall with these women reminded me of the deeply curative power of the bodies of women in a physical circle in this world.

During MOSS MOTHER MOON— my full moon circle I held there— I had a moment where I genuinely felt I might not be able to hold it all in place inside me.

The exquisite joy and hope and pain and love and magic that is sharing our truths with each other as women.

In a world where we so very rarely are given the space and time and tenderness to allow ourselves to be vulnerable, to feel raw, to open, and refuse to force ourselves closed again immediately: placing our trust in the women by our side feels like a wholly revolutionary act.

And the care and love put into every single detail of the stay there at Lucy’s made the while thing feel like we were part of something that would change us all, really & deeply transform parts of us, forever.

Sitting at this table, with these flowers placed there for me, light streaming through, mice scampering outside, the Cornish sky above me, made me feel like all the wishes I’ve made along the way of my writing life had been granted.

And that feels soothing in ways I can’t quite explain.

And full of a very particular kind of promise.

And the food. Oh. My. Heart.

I’ve been mildly obsessed with Meg from One Field Farm for years on instagram, and to have her cook her exquisite banquets for us all was beyond my wildest dreams.

Veg and fruit grown within a few miles of the cottage, made with love and passion, and eaten together by candlelight, sharing stories and bread, was just pure nourishment for my whole being.

Sunday morning was spent here, in a sauna on a cliff, overlooking the sea. And I’m not sure I know how to say the impact such an experience has on a person, for this to be the way work looks.

This is joy.

Sunday morning ice baths on a cliff edge should really be an option for all writing retreats, I feel.

This may sound like a shallow thing to be mentioning, in this sharing of the ways this retreat changed my life, but believe me this is a very important part of it for me as a woman.

One of the women had the same dress sense as me, and every single item of clothing she put on made me oooh and ahhhh as though she were the most precious, delicate flower (which actually she really is.)

She loaned me this lush yellow dress, to try for size, and then allowed me to wear it for the day. Never in my life has this happened to me, and it felt like a kind of magical cloak; armour; a new skin.

Lucy had arranged for us to do these cyanotypes as a memory of our time together in the closing circle, and it felt such a visual representation of something she said to us all a number of times over the weekend: often what it most beautiful of all is that which is unseen.

Quiet labours of love.

Unspoken caregiving.

Hidden gestures of tenderness.

All which holds us in place; steadies us, that is far from visible in our daily lives.

One of my favourite poems of Lucy’s, Small Acts Of Attention, pays heed to these unseen things, speaking of living a life —

‘Full of the essential yet often invisible/

Full of the ordinary and generosity of the everyday’

May we all know this life, may we do all we can to protect and support all those that make the everyday shine.

In brightness,

X