The turning

Last week I celebrated 39 trips round the sun.

A dear friend messaged me the day before thinking that was my birthday, two other people messaged the day after; my birthday has always felt like a foggy, liminal, thin place. The date has always felt a little in flux. I wrote about thin places in my first book, and was taken by the notion that particular times can actually be thin as well: the middle of things; the moments directly before or after phases and stages; the in-between of times. I was born in the midway point between Christmas Day and New Years Eve. That time, for those who celebrate, where it’s easy to forget what day it is; in-betwixtmas, I’ve seen people call it recently…Restaurants, galleries and more are often not open yet. People are away from home, not free, too busy with other things to mark birthdays in these days. Money is at as much a stretch as time or energy; emotions are high; tempers worn thin. I’ve spent a lifetime struggling with my birthday; trying to make a sad, hard time feel ok. But this year, something changed.

I’m not entirely sure what it was that changed; like with anything, I suppose it was a whole host of things that changed. All I know is that this year, for the first time ever; I marked the turning of the year in a way that felt right. This is only my second birthday as a mother to a babe in the physical world. Our wee one has never been away from myself or his dad for even one moment; he has spent his entire time within vision of his parents (mostly both of us at the same time). It’s very hard for me to admit this but I’ve spent a huge portion of my time as a mother thinking that I have failed somehow. Feeling that this lack of a village  around us—there not being one single other person nearby who can be with our precious small person so that his parents can be alone together—is in some way my fault. And then feeling guilty for even wanting that time. And then feeling even more guilty when I realise this is an inter generational wound; this feeling of not being good enough; not feeling secure enough to voice need; feeling outside of the truth of my own belonging.

Estrangement is a peculiar thing; anyone who has a tricky relationship (or none at all) with their family may well understand the layers of self hatred that can creep in under your skin. I hadn’t realised before I became a parent that it would be very particular moments in a given year where this might be triggered: birthdays are the heaviest in my experience.

It is an extremely rare thing for me to be alone now; despite the fact that until I met my partner I was almost always by myself.  Sometimes I find myself imagining an entire week away just me. I can well understand how nourishing and healing such time as a mother could be. How that if the mother in a home feels nurtured, everyone else in the home benefits. However the thing I’ve craved most since having our child is not time alone but actually time on my own with my partner…I’ve spent the best part of a year craving a meal just one on one with him outside of our own small, chaotic home. It has obsessed me; this impossible event. I told my partner that this was what I would wish for my birthday and he was shocked. He answered that we get lots of quality alone time, in his opinion. That it’s really about perspective.

Yes our time alone together is few and far between, with an energetic wildling that really doesn’t want to go to bed; as two parents bone tired at the end of any given day, but he felt like it was no less worthy just because our son was asleep a few feet from us in our tiny house. Every meal my partner makes us, he does so with deep love; full of care. He didn’t use these words at all but what I heard when he spoke of this was that his cooking for our late-night, post bedtime-circus, solo dinners is an act of deep, intentional meditation; a tender offering in the hushed dark.

This thought extended itself right out for me, and I began to think of the lighting of our candle, the choosing of music, the tending of our stove— as similar offerings. Suddenly; extraordinarily— our everyday became magical, ritualistic; full of something that felt like home. Real home; the one that we carry like a North Star inside of us.

A lovely friend gave me this book for Christmas and honestly it feels like one of the most important things I have ever read. So full of deep wisdom; giving the reader permission to really lean back into their past trauma; offering a way back home. I’m a firm believer that things, people and places have a way of finding their way onto our path just when we need them most…

It is no coincidence that I was reading it in the run up to my birthday; the first birthday in my life where I really, honestly felt content. The night before my birthday I read it in a candle lit bath, really feeling myself as belonging in a way I haven’t really ever before. Belonging to this moment ,this place (even though we are trying to leave) , this changed body and this changing world.

I made a promise to myself that I would honour any feelings that arose in the year ahead; that I would sit with my dreams and my sorrows and my joys alike. I’m marking the old Celtic tradition of the omen days again — leading us from St Stephen’s Day to Nollaig nmban, or Epiphany—through mindful, meditative looking and listening to that world beneath the snow; on the other side of the glass.

The way I approach these days is to be a humble, as quiet and as open as I am able. To be out in the winter world free from intention. To allow the world in, and then to write it all down as best I can; to mark the signs that may be offered so I might learn. Each day correlates to a month of this new year; my birthday holds the seed of March in old tradition. And I am in for such goodness this March, if my birthday is anything to go by. I awoke to such deep gratitude in my soul this year.

The day was given over to quiet, meaningful beauty. It began with song, and stars, and story. There was cake, and a swim with a soul sister in wild, icy Atlantic waves,as our babes read books in a cosy van with my love.

There were grey blue clouds above a bull field and soft, folkloric seeds in a wee box. Three curlews overhead and oystercatchers all around.

There was a child kissing my face all day and giving me the moon (“mondi, mama”), over and over and over.

There were two phoenix birds on the window of my favourite pub as I returned for the first time sober; for the first time as a mother; for the first time since the world changed forever.

The next day I walked on a long, freezing beach alone as my baby slept and my lover read. The light was the kind that only winter can provide for us; peach, watery, arrestingly beautiful.

I gathered pieces of plastic the sea had spat out in the night’s storm: forest green; pistachio; battle-ship grey; dove.

Cornflower blue; California poppy pink; buttercup yellow.

I thought, as I walked, about what exactly a gift is. How that those moments in that winter light by the sea felt like an offering unlike any I had ever received before; unlike any I could ever properly reciprocate. I thought, too, about celebration. About ritual and the marking of things and times. What it means to lean back into the wind and allow yourself to be carried back home to your own being; in all its layers.

I read, too, on my birthday, this wee book. There is a part where the wind is like two white horses and the night of my birthday I dreamed of being carried from one part of the Atlantic to another by a creature I couldn’t see. If the most important part of a dream is it’s feeling; the dream was about feeling content.

Being carried back to myself.

At night now, my child names all of the creatures he loves and in doing so carries himself to sleep. On the night of my birthday I did the same, silently, and carried myself, gratefully; not just to sleep but to a place of belonging I’ve never even known before.

I hope the year ahead we might all rest here, in this place of belonging; even just for a little while.

As ever I am so grateful to have you here. If you’d like to support my work , please consider becoming a paid subscriber if you can.

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In gratitude x