Why Am I Here?

Sometimes I know
and sometimes I don’t.
Sometimes I’m afraid to ask
and sometimes the answer simmers,
then boils,
in my belly.
Sometimes I rage against being told: by whom?

Myself?
Because I quit.
I don’t want it.
Any of it.
I’ve changed my mind,
after all.

Here is some place and Here is no place
and Here I love and Here I hate
and Here knows me and I know Here
and Here is everywhere and Here is

Near…
She whispers in my ear
when no one else is listening,
as the moon keeps vigil,
steady in the dark. ‘Stay’,
She says, and then I cry.
‘Stay’, She repeats. ‘Do not die.’

How many are the times
I have dreamed of dying
rather than of being
Here.

But now I Know,
sometimes like a pounding drum
and sometimes like a trickling of delight,
that I was never
really ever
Here.
What I hated, feared and fought was not
Here.

Here is a new place,
a familiar place,
a warm face –
my own face – seen
for the first time,
in a mirror unlike any other.

Here is my lover

Intimate
Subtle
Abiding
Eternal

Here is where I wish to be
more and more
simply
me.

(March 2024)

I am Anger:
With a single spear and no mercy,
I stab deep your soft flesh and unleash a body flood.
I am Anger:
I fire a million arrows upon you
And shower you with piercing pain.

I am Anger:
Set me free now,
I am too big for you.
I was never meant to stay here so long,
Only to pass through.

Breathe me out like fire,
Breathe me out into the river.

I am Beautiful,
Beautiful in my Freedom:
Just
Like
You.

Remember who I am;
Remember me truly, by letting me go.
And when I visit you from time to time,
Open the door to me,
But do not lock it behind you.

I am Anger:
Through me, may you truly Be.

(February 2024)

Cracked

“How do you spell love?” – Piglet.
“You don’t spell it…you feel it” – Pooh.

A.A Milne, ‘Winnie the Pooh’

There’s a New Yorker cartoon in which two women are standing together and looking at a child who is playing on the floor a few feet away from them. “Nature or Nurture” one of the women says to the other, “Either way, you’re to blame”.

When my fellow parent showed me this cartoon one night last year, I laughed so hard. ‘They’ve nailed it again!’ I said between fits of laughter. The ‘they’ to whom I was referring was the New Yorker cartoonist whose comical depictions of parents’ struggles had become for us a much-appreciated source of comic relief. I laughed so hard, and then I laugh-cried.

Last year I fell down the proverbial rabbit hole of, ‘This child’s struggles and challenges are proof of my parental failings’.  If you are also familiar with this rabbit hole, then you too may have experienced how it can lead to a potent cocktail of self-blame, self-criticism, guilt and shame. Moreover, if you are the one who carried said child in your womb, gave birth to them, and fulfilled the role of their primary carer in their formative years, then you may also be familiar with the super-sized version of this same cocktail of suffering.

In my case, this suffering was further compounded by a barrage of ‘shoulds’ in relation to my child: namely, that as a Counsellor, as a mother, and as someone on a ‘spiritual’ pathway, I should know, do and be better…so much better.

In order to tell you about my rabbit hole experience, I first need to introduce you to the statue in this photo. This statue stands on a shelf in our family living room. I had wanted one of these statues for years, long before I had met my partner, let alone had a child together. There was something about the flowing inter-connectedness between the two adults/parents and the child – the attitude of gentleness, love and care that connected them to one another – that really touched me. One day a fair-trade shop I frequented were having an online closing down sale – and they had one of these statues! Without hesitation, I bought it.

When the statue arrived in the mail, I immediately unwrapped it. In my excitement when I had made the online purchase, I had overlooked the website’s mention of some ‘damage’ on the statue. As I now held the statue in my hands, I saw the damage was a crack on the base, between the child and one of the adults/parents. I didn’t mind the crack; it didn’t dampen my joy in the least.

As I look back now upon the years since I bought that statue, I realise that so much of the suffering I’ve experienced, particularly as a mother and a woman, has come from perceiving what appears to be a huge and terrible crack that is simultaneously in need of repair and beyond repair.  I realise what power I have unwittingly given over the years to those stories about myself that see not beauty; not lovability; not goodness; not courage; not wisdom; not innocence; and not power – but something inherent within me that is both cracked and damaged.

Here’s another story for you. Many years ago, in a job I had in the B.C era (Before Child), I received a phone call. The caller was an older man and he was very distressed. He’d been in a motor vehicle accident a few months earlier and, as he went on to share, he’d lost all memories of his life before the accident. Having forgotten so much of his past, he was now trying to piece it together with what evidence he could find: a house of photographs of him with people he presumed were his family; the absence of any visitors whilst he was in hospital or  since he had returned home; a phone book full of numbers that, when he called them, no one answered; a laundry filled with bags of empty bottles. From this evidence, the man was coming to fear the worst. ‘Who am I?’ he cried. It was in this state of distress, despair and loneliness that he had called that day.

During our phone conversation, I realised that he and I weren’t so different. That realisation has remained with me over the ensuing years. It is of course not the same as that caller’s own experience, but I too know the suffering that can come from a certain kind of ‘memory loss’.  I’ve experienced this memory loss in various ways over the years, including as a parent: last year, the further I fell down that parent rabbit hole, the more I seemed to lose the memory of who I truly was. I wonder, don’t we each know, deep down, the suffering that comes from that kind of memory loss?

Don’t we each know what it’s like to believe that our inherent worthiness can be diminished by our past choices and deeds?

Don’t we each know the exhausting and futile search to know ourselves, by reference to who or what is present – or absent – in our lives?

Don’t we each know what it’s like to experience our environment, including these bodies, in a way that serves to disprove our innocence and lovability, and to prove our separation from each other?

Don’t we each individually know the pain and dis-ease of this collective amnesia about who we truly are?

“Either way, you’re to blame”: oh boy, in the lead up to that New Yorker cartoon, there were times when it was as if I had completely forgotten that there was any goodness in Sarah and that she was worthy of love, kindness and compassion.

I used to be ashamed of talking about my experiences of suffering. Now however, whilst I’m not here to advocate or glorify suffering as a path for awakening to our true selves, it is also true that good has come from my experiences. My ‘memory loss’ experiences have ultimately taken me to a kind of honest and raw state of feeling that has been capable of piercing through layers of falsities and lies about myself from which I’ve been unwittingly living.

It was through that (rabbit) hole-y time that I came to more deeply feel, and therefore directly experience, something I’ve known to be true about Love for some time; a ‘personal truth’ of sorts. I am going to pause here for a moment because I can inwardly sense that something is coming….I can feel it…It’s a subtle and internal pulsating sensation…I can feel it in my solar plexus region…Now it’s rising up to, and through, my heart area…Now, it’s settling in my throat…There are tears coming, just a few; they rest now in the corners of my eyes…My breathing is becoming slower and gentler…Everything is slowing down now as my focus turns more deeply inward…

With my inner vision, I see now a white dove flying up into the sky.

More tears are gathering into warm and wet pools in my eyes…The breath returns now more fully – at once a soft and flowing, and alive and energising, presence…

It is here – from this place in which I am in feeling-contact right now – that this deeper experience of my personal truth has come as a result of my hole-y time as a mum:

Love is everywhere, in everything. Nothing in the past, present or future – no choice, no deed, no object, no feeling, no thought, and no relationship with another person – has the power to make this more, or less, true. It’s only the depth of my own direct and personal experience of Love that can ever change.

The other day, I heard someone quote a Leonard Cohen song: “There is a crack, a crack in everything/That’s how the light gets in”. Yes, I thought, there really is a crack in everything! But my personal experience is that the ‘light’ doesn’t get “in” through these cracks; rather, the cracks can reveal how the ‘light’ is already inside.

Love is in everything – and that includes this one called ‘you’ and this one called ‘me’. I am already who I am. You are already who you are. The cracks we experience in our lives don’t need to be proof of our imperfections; they can help more of us to emerge – the already whole, radiant, beautiful, lovable, good, courageous, wise, innocent, powerful us.

The cracks are helping to set more of me free.  Last year, the parent rabbit hole of amnesia offered me an opportunity to suspend belief in those stories and their characters who say, “This is serious, Sarah”; “You have really failed now”; and “This is real and you are powerless to change it”. Over time, I began to press the ‘pause’ button on these stories. No amount of loving, compassionate and wise support from my partner and friends; or professional knowledge and skills; or spiritual studies and practices, could alone have done that for me. All of these forms of support were very important (perhaps even necessary) for me, but they weren’t enough. Ultimately, the decision to suspend belief needed to be a choice that was made from within me, by me. I think the age-old suffering I was continuing to experience, now in the form of a parent down a rabbit hole, ultimately brought me to that place within of making that choice for myself.

The effect of suspending belief in those untrue stories was like being given a magic wand and – when I waved it at the seemingly solid and impenetrable forces before me – fizzle, pop, zing…they transformed before my eyes! I began to choose for myself to respond to the challenges I was facing as a parent with…more of myself, including more of the playful, creative, spontaneous, and light-hearted me. It was a process of actively re-connecting with and appreciating more of myself. This re-connecting process wasn’t hard inner work in either a spiritual or psychological sense. Quite the opposite. It became a form of self-pleasure because I was not only embracing more of my self, but enjoying – with great pleasure – more of my…SELF.

At one point during my challenges as a parent last year, I made a poster and stuck it on the wall beside the bed so that I would at least see it every morning and evening. It served as a visual aid for me as a parent. On the top of the poster I had written: “I appreciate you, I appreciate your creative and playful spirit”. The “you” was intended to refer to my child, but in practice, it was us both. As the daily challenges continued, these words became a living love letter to us both. I was feeling and expressing appreciation for both of us and all of us.

So that really brings me to the end of the story that I wanted to share with you about my hole-y experience as a mum last year. If you’re anything like me, you’ll be wondering what became of that caller from years ago. In that job, callers phoned anonymously so there was never any opportunity for a follow-up. What I can tell you is that, by the end of the call he was crying again, but this time for a different reason. After sharing story after story with me of his experiences since his car accident, he was beginning to realise just how much he was loved. Remembering this, talking about this, brought him to tears.

I suspect that in all of the writing I share with you, all of my ‘talking’ from the Heart, that’s what is happening for me too: I’m remembering just how much I am loved. I’m still a parent and the parent rabbit hole still exists, but nowadays my trips down there are less frequent and shorter. It’s as if my journey down, through and out of the rabbit hole last year has helped me to more truly take up my rightful place within the real-life version of the statue; I am more fully becoming both the giver and the receiver of the gentleness, love and care that had first drawn me to the statue all those years ago. The New Yorker cartoon still makes me laugh, but I know that I’m not “to blame” for the nature and the nurture. I am responsible (response-able).  And I continue to discover how much easier and wonderfully liberating and enjoyable it is to be able to respond with Love; a Love that I can’t truly spell, but little by little can more truly feel.

As the moon shines through the curtain-less windows of our house each night, I can just imagine the statue in our living room coming to Life…three figures singing and laughing and dancing – with tears of gratitude in their eyes.

(Written in October 2023)

In the Garden

Come, join with us! The garden sings out.

I walk barefoot across dry earth, spiky weeds, and sharp stones, to the soft grass beneath the garden archway. Vines of tromboncino zucchinis snake their way up and over the archway’s rusty mesh frame. Through the mesh, the tromboncinos’ trumpet-like forms hang with their yellow flowers wide open, as if blasting in musical celebration.

To the side of the archway stand tall rows of rainbow coloured corn  
I see how the tendrils of the corn are intertwined with the tendrils of the zucchinis
Where does one end and another begin?! I can’t even tell now 
From the same earth they once grew
Yet come now from different directions – corn rising, zucchini bowing
That they may meet here like this
Their tendrils, once separate, now inseparable.

Ah, the breeze brings to me the smell of the sweet peas!
Their sweet smell draws me in close
After that big storm, when branches fell and the water was deeper than the weeds
These sweet peas lay prostrate upon the ground
Made heavy by the relentless rain, they had fallen from their climbing frame
It was believed they could only grow upright with such help
Yet here they now rise up to my knees – without a climbing frame in sight
How is this possible?
Like the zucchinis and corn, their tendrilled fingers have joined
Hand in hand now, they support each other to grow up towards the sun
No longer having any need for their old structures.

I notice the three small trees in the distance and go to them
Walking not on the soft grass, but through the muck
Oh, the muck! It’s so….mucky
But it’s quicker and easier to go through it than around it
And this here is the true gold (how often I forget!) from which so much grows.  

I kneel down now before the three small apple trees
They bear no fruit yet
For now, they are spending their time growing strong roots
As I stroke their tender leaves, I remember
That one day a young child ate an apple here in this garden
And when the child finished the apple, they held three of the seeds in their small hand
Wondering, ‘Could these become trees?’
Then they dug down into the dirt and planted each of the three seeds
With small hands filled with possibility.

Oh, wherever did time go?
Here now is the moon, to softly usher in the night
As the sun sets in farewell
The laughing kookaburras arrive:
In concert with the flaming-pink sky
They surround the garden now
An amphitheatre of laughter
That blesses this day
As I swirl and swirl in joyful circles – into the coming darkness.

Dear One

This wild laughter, these sky flames – may they serve to remind
That Love, in all its variations
Is infinitely more Powerful
Than any of fear’s creations

May you allow

There is a Beauty, a Peace and a Power within you
That you will come to know
When you trust that what you most long to plant
Will indeed grow

May you continue

There is one inside you
Who can see with such Innocence
Living moments of wonder and magic
Freed from tales of experience

May you let go

Love grows so easily when it’s allowed
That’s the gift always offered to you
May all be touched when we join hand in hand
May together we dance to what’s True

Thank you

(‘Garden Delights’ was written February 2022)

When a surprise visitor arrives with a question, what follows is a big and deep journey through space and time. This is a story about Everything.

I completed The Question at the commencement of 2022.

Listeners’ feedback…

An exquisite message of love for our times

What a gift! What an amazing, creative, vulnerable, powerful, delightful, insightful, inspiring, delicious, brilliant, radiant Soul Expression you have put out into the World, inviting us forward, to open, to be inspired…WOW, WOW, WOW, and thank you for this creation.

…amazing, tantalizing, insightful and inspirational…Filled me with compassion, hope, joy and strength…

As I travelled through your story with you…. I could see, feel, hear, taste, smell it all. So relatable and such a powerful message. Magnificent and touching beyond words.

The weaving of the love we all are with your knowing of self-love touched my heart so deeply.  For me you were able to make that connection of both a unique journey with the all-encompassing us, or better stated perhaps the oneness of the whole.

Note: ‘The Question’ comprises nine chapters and the total duration of the audio is 42 minutes.

‘Mum, can we draw a picture together?’
I cross the room and join Joseph on the floor. He is sitting before an A3 sheet of butcher paper. I settle down beside him and cross my legs.

‘O.K…’ Joseph begins as he looks at me, ‘Let’s draw!’ He is smiling. His smile widens as I wordlessly pick up a crayon. As my hand approaches the butcher paper, it hesitates. Suddenly I feel very tired. I have no idea what to draw. I rest the crayon upon the most inconspicuous part of the blank page: the very bottom corner. Slowly I begin to draw a small and wonky rectangle. Then I draw an identically small and wonky rectangle trailing behind it.

Joseph leans over my picture with great interest.’What are you drawing mum?’ He asks.
‘Uh…it’s a, um…steam train.’ As I draw a wonky line to connect the two wonky rectangles I am already planning my exit. I don’t want to be here. He points at the first wonky rectangle.
‘What’s that?’
‘Uh’, I falter again, ‘The…engine?’
‘Where’s the cab?’ He asks.
The cab?!!?!
‘Here’, I lie, drawing a small square in the front bottom corner of the first rectangle.
‘No’, Joseph matter-of-factly replies, ‘That’s not where the cab goes’. He then draws a box behind the engine. ‘The cab goes here’.

I am keen to recover some degree of credibility and to save face before this steam train aficionado. I point to the second wobbly rectangle and lie again. ‘Here’s the coal carriage’ I say in a confident voice. But a four year old is not interested in such matters as credibility and saving face.
‘That’s not how you draw a steam train,’ is all he says.

And then it is as if an invisible switch is flicked. ‘I need a picture of a steam train,’ I hear myself think aloud. My voice is higher now and I am talking faster. ‘Then I will be able to draw this properly’. I ask Joseph to please go and find me a picture of a steam train in one of his books. But Joseph doesn’t get up. He doesn’t even move. It’s enough to break the spell. Suddenly I become aware of a subtle feeling of heaviness, of world weariness. It’s the echoes of that old thought: I am not good enough. Nothing I do is good enough.

What follows next is almost comical. Joseph picks up a crayon and as he leans forward he announces, ‘THIS is how you draw a steam train!’ His small hand hovers momentarily above the centre of the paper and then swoops down and begins to move in rapid circles. His hand is moving so fast that his whole body is now in motion.

He stops as suddenly as he began, and leans back. My heart is still beating from the wild and frenzied energy I have just witnessed. Referring to the thick scribble of a spiral that is now in the middle of the page, Joseph smiles a huge and beautiful smile at me and says, ‘This is the engine’. I stare at that scribble, mouth open. He picks up another crayon and scribbles now a wide and thick spiral, followed by a connecting long and thin vertical spiral. ‘And this is the cab’.

It is as if I have just been let in on a great cosmic joke. Without any effort, and from those wild scribbles, I can see a cab and an engine. Bloody hell…I can see a steam train! I’m not so sure it is with my eyes that I am seeing. As I look at the sheet of paper, I can feel that little steam train – that magnificent little steam train.

Suddenly it feels as if there is more space in my heart, my chest and arms. I am a wild bird whose cage has just been unlocked. My huge wings, which had always been too small for this cage, are unfolding, spreading out now into a vast and welcoming sky. I cannot stop smiling. Earlier, I thought I had no idea what to draw, but the truth was that I knew all along; it’s just that I believed I didn’t know the right way to draw.

This has been my long, at times rocky, road with self-expression. It’s not that I don’t know what to say, or to draw, or to write, or to move, or to sing. That has never been my issue. What’s been so hard has been the effort required to hold back all that wants to be expressed through me. Holding it back with the power of beliefs I have been carrying about what can and can’t be expressed and how it can and can’t be expressed. Rules, rules, so many rules…so many rules that I effectively ‘ruled it out’: ruled MY SELF out of life.

The quality of our emotional lives is also impacted by these rules. In my case, the emotional struggles I’ve experienced over the years have not come from the emotions themselves – emotions like despair, anger, grief, fury, fear – but the rules I’ve imbibed about emotions.

‘Women are to be quiet, gentle and understanding’
‘Spiritual people are to be trusting, peaceful and grateful’
‘In order to be loving, you must not express anger’

Such rules do not support a healthy emotional life because they are afraid of the emotions that are a part of life. Such rules are like the wooden rulers we used at school: straight, with a clear beginning and an end, and no deviation. You cannot draw a squiggly spiral with a ruler, any more than you can feel alive when your life is unconsciously lived by rules that don’t allow feelings. I am continuing in life to make peace with both the straight lines and the squiggles.

A turning point came when I began doing things as I felt moved to from within myself, rather than doing things as I had learnt that I ‘should’. For example, when I was pregnant I moved away from the meditation style I had learnt from teachers (sit still and in silence) and for the first time began to really trust my desires and inspiration during my daily meditation practice. I felt like a radical at the time! It was worth it. As I stopped following what I believed to be the sacrosanct rules about how to meditate, and instead trusted my own intuition – sometimes making sounds, sometimes dancing or swaying, singing, drawing, writing, visualising, imagining – I experienced a depth of ease, flow, joy, beauty and connection that had eluded me in the past with meditation. It’s not that I completely abandoned the ‘sit still and in silence’ style: that practice was also enriched for me by the other, but the difference was that I was now being moved by what felt true for me rather than being moved – or constrained – by rules.

In a similar vein, I have had so many rules regulating my desire to write and to share my writings. I could only write a book if it was a literary masterpiece! I could only write a spiritual memoir if I was spiritually awakened enough! That Sarah’s Circles even exists is a testament to the fact that it is becoming more important to me to express and share what’s inside me than to live in fear of being judged for my creations not being spiritually or technically ‘good enough’. So many judgements – of ourselves and of each other – are underpinned by a set of rules that shut us out of our own lives…that shut Love itself out.

I turn to Joseph and laugh with delight, ‘So this is how you draw a steam train?!…I can draw like THIS!’ Now I am unstoppable. Now I want to draw. I begin by drawing a series of tight spirals across the top of the paper, then roughly scribble thick bands extending out from either side of each of them.
‘What are they mum?’ Joseph asks.
‘Birds’. I reply without pausing. There is no hesitation now as I draw. All that matters now is this feeling sensation of no longer holding back what’s inside me. As I draw the birds, as my hand moves with knowing abandon – scribbles spiralling and growing on the page – I can feel the birds coming to life. We are free.

Now I am drawing long, fat and wide spirals in brown across the lower part of the paper. These are old trees. They will need deep roots. I knowingly move my hand in long strokes down and out, creating messy and strong markings that extend out from the base of each trunk, emanating out in every direction down into the earth. I am enjoying the sensation of drawing, of feeling this mighty river flowing through me. Without pause, I then pick up various shades of green and draw clusters of spirals on the tree trunk tops.

Before when I was drawing the steam train, I relegated myself to the bottom corner of the page. Now I am drawing anywhere I feel drawn to move on the page. I am no longer afraid to take up space, either literally or figuratively. Joseph is by my side. We are both drawing. The paper is big enough for us both.

Are you familiar with the expression, “Spiralling out of control”? What an interesting choice of words to describe a situation that is getting worse. I think it originally referred to a plane with a failed engine that is spiralling down from the sky, its fate worsening by the second. In my own life, the expression could well be used to describe a situation that is improving rather than worsening. It’s in the loss of control – the gradual willingness over time to let go of the judgements and self-righteousness embedded in my beliefs, perceptions, choices and behaviours – that I am recovering the very thing our controlling patterns are ultimately yearning for: Love.

That day as I drew with Joseph, he revealed to me with such playfulness and innocence another aspect of how I limit the freedom of my Heart, my Soul. In showing me a way to draw – to express – that didn’t play by the rules, my inner world opened up even more that day; quite literally, it opened up onto the A3 piece of butcher paper.

Dear Reader, I have a hunch that there is another way to live in the world. You’ve probably guessed by now that it is not to live by a set of rules created and handed down by others in fear. It is to live like this:

To persevere with the heartfelt desire to know ourselves. To spiral down into that warm and silent darkness within. To continue letting go of the world ‘outside’ and dare to dive ever more deeply into the world and the worlds within ourselves. To continue exploring these magnificent worlds within us, returning to the surface often with their shimmering treasures, that they may be expressed and shared with others. To keep finding the courage to live from that place within us, spurred on by the sheer enjoyment and delight of experiencing its treasures. To keep dancing, to keep singing, to keep creating, especially – especially – as everything is spiralling out of control.

As I sit here now, an image-feeling comes to me. I am dancing, spinning, with arms outstretched. I feel as if I am embracing the whole world with these arms. My face is an open smile, tilted up towards the sun. My chest is wide open and I can feel it being penetrated by the light of the sun. The sun’s power is warming me to the very core. I am like a whirling dervish, whirling in circles of circles of circles. I cannot stop smiling. I feel no fear. I am spiralling…I am spiralling…I am spiralling…I am dancing a forever dance.

(Written in September, 2021)

Nourish & Nurture

What we feed, grows…
Nourish and Nurture my essential Nature
With the care, generosity and patience of Mother Nature Herself
Be willing to welcome and receive the support that She so ceaselessly extends
In the recognition that a flower has never blossomed alone.

Many times over the years when I have sat down to write my book, I have instead ended up walking away. The weight of guilt and unworthiness I have experienced has felt impossible.  For several years, I was not aware that this was what was actually happening to me. What I was aware of – what I intuited for many years – was that something of beauty and power wanted to be written through me. But I had already judged myself as unworthy of both receiving and expressing that something.

One day as I sat before the computer, the thought came: How could I possibly write this book? I have done so many terrible things. Hurt so many people. How dare I write this book?  I have no right.

This time, I didn’t turn off the computer and walk away. This time, I left the computer on, walked towards the rug on the floor and lay down. As I began breathing in and out, gently and rhythmically, I felt into remembrance. I remembered and re-membered.

I am all of it and I am none of it. This body can receive it all, hold it all, breathe through it all.

Lying there on the rug, looking up towards the ceiling, all of it became present and huge: neither a stormy cloud nor an orb of light, though just as full as both. It all existed here. Yes…I have done it all, been it all, felt it all, known it all. The breath flowed easily for a moment – and then it stopped. A flash of panic, How can I possibly live with this?… Something deeper then moved into the foreground of my awareness…a feeling-presence I have become familiar with over the years: it has the quality of an almighty mountain – unshaken and unchanged, even as the world around it roars, trembles and forgets.

Time passed. If there had been words to accompany what I experienced, I imagine they may have been:  And still there is Love.

At some point, I rose up from the floor. There was a sense of completion and of peaceful, clear emptiness. I noticed this body walking over to the computer desk, as if it had a mind entirely of its own. There was a book waiting to be written.

And still there is Love.

(‘Still’ was written in 2020)

The Emerging Rose

[Note: I wrote this piece in June 2020. It was a tumultuous time, to say the least. The impacts of a consciousness that has created and perpetuated racial, gender, economic and social inequality was under the spotlight in the wake of the killing of George Floyd and in both domestic and international responses to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.]

A few days ago, I happened to see a friend’s open letter, in which she joined the call at this time for transformational change. As I read her letter, I was struck by the purity of her voice. It was a voice of love and of power – of clear seeing – free from judgement or attack. I also felt something else as I read her letter: a deep, deep sense of familiarity. I realised that this voice was also my voice. Waves of sadness came and, with it, a clear knowing that hurt and pain was obscuring my own True voice. The sadness was followed by volcanic rage. I stood in the centre of the room, feeling it silently erupting. Meanwhile, Joseph drew another drawing (he’s been prolific this month).

That night, I went to bed, feeling and noticing thoughts of unworthiness and hopelessness. I barely slept. Yet it wasn’t a disturbed night. I felt there were many with me all night, gently speaking to me, encouraging me to see myself clearly, without the distorted lens. They reminded me of the projects – the creations in this world – that I am working on, that are dear to my Heart. They reminded me of all that my Heart is yet desiring to create and to do in this world. They encouraged me to keep the faith and continue to be moved by this thread of desire.

The next morning, Joseph was recounting a recent trip to a mountain and lake that our family love to visit. He described how, on the first half of our walk around the lake, it was dark and icy, but on the second half of the walk, it was warm and sunny (we had visited on a very cold Winter’s morning). He said that his beloved soft toy, who accompanied us on our walk, was “resting” when we were walking on the sunny side but “awake” when we were walking on the dark side. And then he suddenly sat bolt upright and looked at me with bright shining eyes. ‘Awake, mum!’ He said, his voice filled with astonishment. ‘She was awake when it was dark!’

As I arose from bed, I could ‘hear’ Diana Ross singing:

I’m coming out

I want the world to know

Got to let it show

Diana Ross, I’m Coming Out

I had barely slept all night and yet I felt energised and weightless.

Joseph pointed across the room where our hula hoops were hanging from a ladder, near a wall. ‘Look at the hula hoops’ shadows [on the wall]’ he said, ‘There are lots of shadows, even though there are only two hula hoops’. YES! In my mind, the objects of darkness can at times seem many and overwhelming, but really they come from just a few sources.

I played Diana Ross’ song as we prepared breakfast.

Later that morning, Joseph was drawing at the easel. He invited me to come and complete the drawing with him. I looked at what he had drawn and noticed, not for the first time this month, the prevalence of thick black markings on the page. He had also drawn a purple cross in the upper centre of the page. I felt to pick up a red crayon and my hand drew a red rose in each of the four corners of the paper. Then my hand picked up the orange crayon and drew a spiral in the centre of the masses of black markings. And then, almost as an afterthought, I picked up the aqua blue crayon. I felt a soft smile spread across my face. I drew a thick arc across the top of the page. My whole body smiled. As I sat back and gazed at the image – feeling it – I could still feel her with me.

I always ask Joseph, when he completes a picture, if he wants to give it a title. This time it was him that asked me. ‘Mother Mary’, I replied.

Today, Joseph again invited me to join with him to complete a drawing. He took me by the hand and led me over to his easel. There were many black markings in this picture also, but this time there was just as much aqua blue. I immediately picked up the black crayon and, my body hunched, I drew hard and fast a black mass down the bottom corner. As I sensed a pull in me to let the blackness spread further across the page, Joseph gently took the black crayon from my hand and replaced it with the dark green crayon. As soon as I received the green crayon, I felt different. My body opened up, becoming bigger: it wanted to make large and open movements. I drew swirls and thick bands of green all around the border of the page.

‘What are you drawing, mum?’ Joseph asked excitedly.
‘LIFE!’ I smiled.
Joseph jumped up and down. ‘”LIFE”! We’ll call this picture, “LIFE!” ‘

As I lay the dark green crayon down, he suggested that we now move on to build something with the wooden blocks (the source of much daily glorious play and creativity for Joseph). ‘I’ll be with you in a moment’, I replied, sensing that the drawing was not yet complete for me. I knelt before the picture. My hand then picked up the deep red crayon. As it moved towards the picture, it felt like my heart was moving out and onto the page. It knew exactly where to go: deep into the centre of the swirls and streaks of black and aqua blue. Joseph appeared by my side, watching me draw.

‘What is it mum?’ he asked.
‘A rose’.
‘I can’t see it’.
I laid down the crayon and rested. ‘It’s emerging’, I heard myself say.

Truth is my Name

This short and simple song came to me during a rough patch. Over the ensuing weeks, I often found myself singing it. It became like an anchor for me through that rough time, singing me into felt remembrance of my deeper Truth.

You may be aware that ‘Name’ refers to vibration.