Happy Alban Arthan all! Winter Solstice is upon us and the light is returning. It doesn’t feel much like it right now, still so dark and cold, but slowly, slowly, minute by minute, the days begin to stretch out until before we know it, it’s Spring Equinox and we’re all about the light and the sun again.
As discussed in my last post, I was going to do a ritual today to mark my Irish citizenship and root into the land I now call home. I completed it this morning and it brought to the fore a thread I have been tentatively unwinding and following recently.
But before we follow that thread, we need to rewind back in time slightly, after my accident, one of the things I lost was my friends. Let me tell you, when the shit hits the fan, everyone disappears. There are a stoic few who remain to climb the mountain with you and they are priceless, but the majority float away like dust in the wind. There are many reasons for this but the biggest one is that they just can’t deal with whatever monstrous debacle you are going through. This was a hard lesson for me initially, I got promises of ‘keeping in touch’ that were quite frankly….bollocks.
I’m over it now, I’ve accepted the fragility of humans and our relationships and to be honest the years of human-free time I’ve had in recovery have been much needed. I have two close friends (who are both in England so we connect via computer), my partner and our two lovely doggy children and that’s the extent of my social circle.
Now, here we come back to the thread, I’ve recently been feeling a need for community, I try to dip into communities that are in areas of interest for me and every time I’ve come out disappointed. Especially when I’ve gone into places where I’ve expected more enlightened folk and found it full of…well…wankers.
I’ve always been an edgewalker, even when very young, I didn’t want to fit in, I couldn’t fit in. I wanted to do things differently or the opposite way to everyone else. This has been a constant motif into adulthood, I’m a weirdo, I like weird things; High strangeness, magic, the paranormal, Druidry, Veganism, talking about death, graveyards, folklore and tarot. I’m also politically left (not centre left, not liberal, proper left). Now, don’t get me wrong, I know that people exist out there who also like these things, I’ve found a lot of lovely connections on Mastodon (open source social media place, come find me at Lauren the Hermit) but when it comes to actual flesh and blood, standing in front of me and talking, it is non existent. I know, I know, I live in the middle of nowhere in a place that is still coming to terms with the trauma caused by its own civil war and colonisation and ‘ruled’ (I say that whilst laughing) by out of touch, shouty, older, white Christians. People like me are well hidden and scattered to the four winds and finding like minds is hard.
As a result, I’ve resigned myself (quite happily) to the fact that I’m in a small gang and that’s ok.
Until recently that is.
I have just finished the Foundation training to be a Death Doula, an experience that I went into with a dash of my usual cynicism and with my barriers up. It was around week seven on the course that my walls began to break down, the class watched a short video of a dramatisation of someone’s death in a hospital. It showed the differing reactions of their loved ones and the aftermath as they lovingly prepared the body after death. It was soundtracked by this
And I just lost it, full on snotty crying that burst out of me. A triggered memory from my recovery when I played this song all the time mixed with a feeling of “when I die, there’ll be nobody there” a revelation that I need community. Death is not done in a vacuum, it is having a community around us that helps us to have a good death. The funny thing about that moment is that sharing my vulnerability with my classmates allowed my heart to open like a flower. From then onwards, for the rest of the course, I was open and let the love I felt for that community flow.
This brings me back to the beginning of this post, during my ritual today whilst I journeyed, the importance of community was hammered home, whilst seeking to root into my ancestry, the land that is home and fully embracing my Irish heart I know I need to find community here. I was told by voices linked to the land that it was time to come out from under my cloud of safety and sadness and to begin finding joy. To be free-hearted and to stop taking things so damn seriously. I have had to be serious for so long, to recover, to heal my soul, to protect my fragile heart that there’s a part of me now just dying to be let loose with abandon, a part that was always pushed down (by me and others).
This Solstice with its new beginnings and returning light is a perfect time to begin this new path ( the fools journey has been discovered!) this coming year will be a time for the Hermit to forge community, in joy and in love.
The Hermits Grove 