March! Can you believe it? How is it going, so far?
This month I am focusing on a confluence of themes that are emerging and swirling and weaving themselves in and around my life in these opening weeks of 2023.
Home.
Belonging.
Choice.
After 20 months of gypsying, I have come to rest in my new home. I painted it in my favourite colours. (As you can see, we haven’t gotten to the “garden” yet!)
I am indebted to my friends who have been home to me in the liminal lands through which I have journeyed since July 2021.
Mary Oliver wrote her poem The Journey for me. She also wrote The Wild Geese for me. She never met me, but she knew me nonetheless and she wrote for me.
Heather Cresswell, Vera Wehrle, Amanda Bosman, Nicole Daniels, Deborah Zelesniak, Zann Hoad, Elizabeth Lovius, Clare Brook, Alexandra James-Gets, Ruth McCarthy, Melinda Painton, Maryse Barak, Creina Schneier, Laurence Tocreau, Susan Schuurmans, Nancy Kline and Karen Bruns
“…kept [me] company as [I] strode deeper and deeper into the world, determined to do the only thing [I] could do-- determined to save the only life [I] could save…
Until I arrived in my own home where …
“...the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting — over and over announcing your place in the family of things.”
Some of these women literally gave me shelter and provided home for me in their own homes, and all of them sheltered me in their hearts. Others provided me with the sanctuary of time to think, and be, and feel. A couple of them provided ballast for my boat. My participants and students kept me sane.
The liminal lands are not sexy. Frederick Hudson’s phenomenal Cycle of Renewal includes the Cocooning Quadrant. This quadrant does not make for good dinner party conversation. In fact, it doesn’t make for good conversation full stop.
It's tricky to feel like you belong in the world when you are cocooning. Our world likes goals and objectives. It celebrates accomplishment and results. Implicit assumptions around naval gazing and self-obsession abound if you are in a process that is requiring contemplation, heart-searching and self-scrutiny.
In the last 20 months, I found myself describing my Self as “homeless”, and then I felt immediately self-conscious and – well, to be honest, a little silly. Because, of course, that identity truly belongs to the people who live on our streets. And I have no inkling of what that is like.
But not having my own place to call home, facing the end of my marriage, navigating ‘empty nest’ as my children fledge, being in my sixties, the confluence of all these strands merged into a tableau of seeming insubstantial in the world of go-getting, where comparison is rife and compulsive.
It has been interesting to watch the nature of the mind during this time: the assumptions that arise spontaneously, implacable and resistant to being pacified.
“…kept [me] company as [I] strode deeper and deeper into the world, determined to do the only thing [I] could do-- determined to save the only life [I] could save…
Until I arrived in my own home where …
“...the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting — over and over announcing your place in the family of things.”
Some of these women literally gave me shelter and provided home for me in their own homes, and all of them sheltered me in their hearts. Others provided me with the sanctuary of time to think, and be, and feel. A couple of them provided ballast for my boat. My participants and students kept me sane.
The liminal lands are not sexy. Frederick Hudson’s phenomenal Cycle of Renewal includes the Cocooning Quadrant. This quadrant does not make for good dinner party conversation. In fact, it doesn’t make for good conversation full stop.
It's tricky to feel like you belong in the world when you are cocooning. Our world likes goals and objectives. It celebrates accomplishment and results. Implicit assumptions around naval gazing and self-obsession abound if you are in a process that is requiring contemplation, heart-searching and self-scrutiny.
In the last 20 months, I found myself describing my Self as “homeless”, and then I felt immediately self-conscious and – well, to be honest, a little silly. Because, of course, that identity truly belongs to the people who live on our streets. And I have no inkling of what that is like.
But not having my own place to call home, facing the end of my marriage, navigating ‘empty nest’ as my children fledge, being in my sixties, the confluence of all these strands merged into a tableau of seeming insubstantial in the world of go-getting, where comparison is rife and compulsive.
It has been interesting to watch the nature of the mind during this time: the assumptions that arise spontaneously, implacable and resistant to being pacified.
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