Surprising myself, I compiled a book of my poetry focused around a period of my life that contained a huge amount of loss. Self publishing feels like an odd thing to do, it is also a way of compiling my work and having it accessible and shareable.
The grief journey transitions us into new lives we never dreamed could hold such memories or feel so empty of the loving presences we once took for granted.
Hanging up there against the bright blue
like a golden jewel
in a necklace centerpiece.
Do you have the urge
to pluck and place it
in your own tiara?
Or perhaps give it to the goldsmith
with a hammer to beat it thinly
into a gorgeous dish.
He would not need a forge,
may not be able to hold all
that heat with his tools.
I could see you wearing it like a halo,
the way you did
when I first saw you
standing on the sand.
The sky a crisp backdrop
for your silhouette,
wearing the sun like a crown.
August 28. When we started this journey I didn’t realise how time-poor we would be. It has been an education.
From Lourdes we took 3 trains to St Jean Pied de Port, a small town in the lower Pyranees. We arrived at 1pm when everything was closed except the cafes so lunch was the first stop. It was very hot and I had the first tickle of unease about our days plan. My pack was too heavy and it had taken time to arrange to send some stuff forward. To do this we needed to wait for the post office to open. So we had lunch, wandered down to the post office, packed up 3kg of items into a box, including my one dress, my spare tights and a book among other things. Having already left a fleece blanket, a teeshirt and some underwear in Lourdes, I felt I had trimmed enough. Later in the day, I knew I hadn’t.
We had got our Compostellas or pilgrim passports in Lourdes, so needed a stamp from the pilgrims office. Finding that took a bit, the lovely man, Patrick phoned ahead to Orrisón to let them know we were coming and advised we needed to be there by 6pm. Even though we had booked and paid, our beds would be given away if we did not get there. Nine km, 3 hours? Piece of cake!
We set off at 3pm in 33degC and got on to The Way. It is marked with yellow arrows and yellow shell signs. The shell being the sign of the pilgrim on the Camino.
Leaving town, the road went up, and up, and up. It was hot, the pack was heavy, and the road was very very steep. I plodded. Watched my companions disappear in front of me. I sweated, drank a bit of water. Stopped in whatever shade I could find to rest a moment and then plodded on. I hoped that Brenda had enough in the engine to get us booked in by 6pm, I knew I didn’t. It was hot, the heat was unrelenting. By this time it felt like the road was perpendicular and required a grappling hook and crampons.
It was too hot and too hard. And it was day 1. The track deviated from the road into a dirt goat track around 2km short of the destination. Oh Holy Mother I was going to die on this hill!
I stopped and prayed for a ride, any kind of ride. The only thing that came along was a tractor. So much for that.
Shuffling on up the track using my trekking poles to haul me up, I stopped in a bit of shade. Hard to get started again, I felt like a failure. A year in the planning and this hill was going to beat me.
Funny thing about having no choices, we all kept going, in our own particular kind of hell. At one point I decided sleeping under a tree would be a good idea. But kept going anyway, gasping every step of the way.
Why, when the cold that had put me in bed for 5 days 6 weeks ago and left me very weak had I thought this was a good idea. Fair, fat and over 50, what the hell had I been thinking?
Finally I popped out the top of the goat track onto the road. Staggering up the hill a little I saw a building, yes! But no, it was the alburgue before Orrisón. Oh hell.
Then a van came along. Holding out my hand, he pulled up. I asked how far to Orrisón. I had no French, he had no English and could not tell me. I think he may have thought I was going to have a heart attack on the spot, he could have been right. He waved to the passenger seat and I caved, hell yes! Prayers get answered sometimes. He gave me ride the last 900metres. Shite. 900 metres, if I had known that I would have staggered on but as it was I made it in time for dinner in just under 4 hours.
Blessings on my sister Brenda who nearly burst a fufu valve, and also wanted to die on the climb, she put in tremendous effort to claim our beds so we did not have to sleep under a tree. Forever grateful to her determination. I cannot describe what an effort she put in. Huge gratitude to her, people were waiting for beds. Just as well we weren’t all under a tree, there was a massive thunderstorm in the night.
The dinner was fantastic! Just what the doctor would have ordered. Our hosts got everyone to stand and introduce themselves with where they were from and why they were walking. It was to prove very helpful as we meet with the same folk in various places along The Way.
Bed was welcome in a dorm of 10 people. Showered and in my sleeping liner, I listened to the storm outside. Tomorrow we had to climb the rest of the Pyranees to Roncesvalles. Oh Lord what have I let myself in for?
On a pilgrimage like this, with nothing between you, your thoughts and the sound of your feet meeting the trail, you meet yourself.
Having been invited to join my sister and her friend on their journey, I got organised and tried to train well. Things I did not understand – I wear my heart on my sleeve and needed to learn to hide my heart along with any pain and any thoughts. I was travelling with the ‘suck it up’ team.
In my job as a carer, I hear adult children bewildered by finding out a loved one has a serious illness they have not disclosed. The ‘stiff upper lip’ brigade we call them. Family are devastated that they have not had an opportunity to be included in the process and now it is too late. My travel companions subscribed to this mode of being, don’t mention it, don’t dwell on it, get hard or go home.
Steep learning curve for the soft one but I eventually learned to keep my thoughts to myself, that because I live alone, work autonomously and have no one to share these things with it is being self-centred to talk about myself or mention thoughts or feelings. This was a trigger for all of my issues with being ‘not enough’ in this world. Or perhaps a better expression is being ‘too much’ in life.
I started the journey out of shape, 30kg overweight, recovering from a bad cold and a fitness level that was well below par. In training I walked up to 15 kilometres on the weekends and tried to do 3-5km during the week. This gave stiff muscles time to recover and never gave my feet a taste of what they were in for. In my wildest imaginings I could not have imagined what my body would feel like day after day, walking a half marathon. So yes, I walked regularly, but did nowhere near enough.
To be fair, no one really has any idea of the endurance and tenacity needed to walk 800km in temperatures ranging from 15-35ºC. Cool mornings, brutally hot days. Only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun… Oh, how often that phrase danced around my brain as I willed myself forward in the blistering heat.
Weirdly enough carrying a pack, and walking everyday saw my life long back issues pale in comparison to the pain in my left knee which was to become my nemesis. It was an old injury so before leaving I went to a physio who showed me how to strap it and sent me off to buy K Tape. I diligently strapped the knee and off we went. On day one, the mountain climb to Orrison, I limped to bed with all the ligament attachment points throbbing. The next day, we went over the Pyranees, following the signs, I took the steep path down the other side, trying to protect the knee. The others went down the road. Not knowing there was another option, my knee got worse.
After nearly 10 days, I was limping on what felt like razor blades right around the knee. Strapping was useless. The joint was on fire and none of the drugs on hand was really touching it. My companions were annoyed with my lack of ability to suck it up, an area I still needed training in.
In Pamplona, we went in search of a knee brace, the pharmacy had a good selection. It was not cheap and it was the best investment I could have made. Pulling the brace on was like magic. Around 75% of the pain disappeared. Hallelujah! After that, unless I twisted or wrenched the joint, I was able to cope with the pain.
Twice I really twisted the joint, limping into Santo Domingo after twisting it early in the day by stepping badly on a rock and slipping. My companions, who also had sore feet, knees and hips didn’t need to hear me whining. I climbed into bed with a rolled towel under my knee, swallowed more ibuprofen and tried to suck it up. The second time was on the descent into Leon, a short day, we were there late morning. I stumbled on the way down the hill into town, wrenching my knee, setting all the razor blades going again. We spent some time in the town shopping, heavy packs notwithstanding, I was not coping well and in tears by the time we got to the hotel, determined not to mention the pain but I was sooo bad at sucking it up. Ordering room service to have something to take medication with, I swallowed 1600mg of ibuprofen and waited for it to kick in. I am sure my companions would have preferred me to take my drugs and holiday elsewhere at that point and I got the burden talk again. That day was the anniversary of my father’s death, on top of not coping it was just a hard day. Pouring a huge gin and tonic on top of the drugs did wonders. After that, I started each day with ibuprofen for breakfast and shut the fuck up.
According to Louise Hay, knees are about pride and the ego. Related to the inability to bend, fear, inflexibility and kidney problems. Well maybe this is what I have to work on… Later, I was to buy a brace for the right knee, to stop it becoming more of a problem.
So went the days of walking, trying not to rock the boat, suck it up and shut up. In spite of doing my best I was still ‘The too much woman’ – I was too loud, constantly being shushed, too clumsy, dropping my pack too heavily when taking it off, too destructive, if I sat at table and bumped it I was like an earthquake waiting to happen. One night on closing a door, locking it with the key that had a huge metal tab attached, which clanked. I was then of course the most heavy-handed person ever, not being able to do anything quietly. Judgement that may have been warranted however it was not kind.
The more I felt judged, the clumsier I got, the more I shrank inside myself, the more I tried to disappear, simply agree and pray that that was not the wrong thing to do in the moment. As I walked mostly on my own the problem with being too much everything weighed on me and the tears flowed a lot as I tried to hustle at my best pace to not fall too far behind.
I cried for who I thought I was and wasn’t. I cried because life had not been kind. I cried because I was rejected by the man I had loved for 35 years without realising he never loved me. I cried because I couldn’t phone Mum and talk to her and I was mad at her for dying. I cried because my relationship with my sister was not what I had thought it was. I cried because I was lonely. I cried because I had no one to hear me. I cried because for most of my life I have not been heard. I cried because I simply had too many tears to contain them. I cried because I could, because no one was there to judge me in the moment, because I had miles to walk and my knee hurt, because my heart was sore and I have no idea what life holds for me when I go home. I cried because I did not want to go home.
Stopping in various places we gathered with other hot sweaty pilgrims. I observed those that like me are overweight and struggling quietly pick up their packs and move on, their insecurities pulled to the fore by the relentless heat and energy expenditure. And I know, in that moment, I am not alone on this trail. There are other women out here that are ‘too much’ in life also.
(The first snow of 2020 happened during Lock Down. The world was different.)
I wanted to tell you about that day,
down by the river,
Then I thought perhaps I should call you,
So I could hear your breath catch
at my excitement.
Then I realized that you
may have no interest in the first snow
dusting the tops of the Rimutaka’s,
Or the icy water in the river
flowing over round stones
clear as crystal,
rocks visible even in the deep current,
Because the road and bridge works
have ceased, and the world is quiet for now.
Perhaps you wish I was quiet too.
There was that time, I looked up from my thoughts and there she was, all lit up like she was wearing a robe of stars. She simply walked out of the universe, fully formed from the void of all potential as though she had been waiting for that very moment to catch my attention.
Once, she told me, there was nothing, just the darkness of a long, long, dark night. A space that went on forever. It was like a great belly, full of potential. Shadows could be seen flitting across the deep-scape of the void. Some gathered together, liking the patterns they created. Others stood aloof, floating in their own part of the void, enjoying being at one with the potential they sensed they were part of. Every shadow knew where it should be, and each was attached to its beginnings back in the darkness of the deepest night, the darkest night, the longest night of forever.
Slowly, over eons, some shadows embraced others, others embraced them, and more embraces led to the formation of mass. Over time the masses became seeds. The seeds of potential and the children of the void. The seeds were attracted to each other, as they floated through the universe, their attachments to the deep night entwined, became thicker, pulsing with energy from the darkness as matter roiled around them. Time passed, as though waiting for a particular moment, a time where something exciting would happen. The seeds floated in and around matter that is the potential of all things. They began to gather matter to themselves, growing in volume, the added weight now moving them faster across, around and through the great void.
She told me that the collision of the seeds was something to behold, igniting sparks to light up the void, forcing the darkness to recede. The sound of the ignition reverberated across the galaxy, moving the seeds. Clinging to each other, the seeds hurtled through the void, friction creating a ball of heat around them which ignited into a fire that burned gases.
Once the fires were ignited, all manner of things were revealed and as the darkness receded, planets, suns and moons were strung across the dark-scape. Some were shining, some were reflecting and some were developing from seeds with the help of the elements. Earth created beings, fire ignited spirits, air helped breath life into them and water enabled them to flow together in synchronicity.
Eons later, after the fires had cooled, water had washed everything clean; the earth was verdant, growing and sustaining life. There came a moment in time when the stars aligned, gathering above the good creation like a jewel shining brightly in the Milky Way. Under a Libran moon that was full and fat and glowing I arrived, folding my wings very carefully and tucking them away. They flutter a little under the night sky, especially when the constellations align in the same patten they were in on the day of my birth.
The universe spat me out here! After 13 billion years in the making, there I was, just hanging about on the edge, surfing the waves or being tumbled about by the Holy Ones, shaken up, turned around, taken apart, and reconfigured to fit this world.
When colour explodes across the stars, ancient ones reach out to touch the connection that winds back to the void, pulsing with magic and secrets. As they watch She that is me, wings furled behind the shoulder blades of our earth form, walks slowly with fear and uncertainty and the elders’ smile for they know the truth of her courage.
We step quietly into being, chin tilted, savouring the warmth of the sun and the gaze of the grandmothers. Accepting that the peat bogs, fairy mounds and cold Celtic seas of her racial ancestors are not hers, they are an echo of what was once in her lineage. Displacement and lack of Belonging is an emptiness I know well. It was there in mothers’ heart as we listened closely to the pulsing universe before arrival. It entered my heart as a question with no answer and kept me busy, puzzling it for a lifetime. No claim to culture, only guilt and shame at forebears for their part in the colonisation of this sacred land that sings this soul even though it will never be our land. Six generations deep here, we belong only to the universe.
At the very edge of vision lurks the answer if I could just face the mystery of what is there. We let go, and let go and let go again and again into the mystery, Becoming a willing part of creation. Now She that is me walks as a pilgrim, the half shell a symbol of a vigil, a search into the self.
The map of life can be smooth or rough. Once our wings are folded, they do not open to save us from falling. The wastelands laid us bare to the raw bones. The grandmothers allowed it to bring me to my knees, tossed me/us into the river, carried us to the great ocean with no life raft. The only anchor point, the umbilical cord that provides an anchor back into the darkness of the great void. Somewhere there is a garden flowering with need, love, trust. Can I swim strongly enough through the depths of sorrow to find it?
You laid me bare
No muscle or sinew
To cover these naked bones.
You held me by the throat
Choking the life from me
Your name was grief.
You took me prisoner.
My truth is written in large letters, scrawled along the pulsing red walls of a heart well used. I am unique, people may judge me, but they cannot BE me. Only I am created in this particular Being by the Divine Breath. I am the right shape to hold all this stardust. This star-scape is co-created with my blood.
It has taken so long to find my marks, shapes and voice on this journey of Becoming. Slowly a thread emerges, a part of the intricate weave of life, connecting back to source. I have a place in this universe.
In this moment I both remember and forget the connection to self, to life, to the etheric world. For anything to rise up, something else moves downward, becoming compost on which the risen rests. A conundrum; for how do we rise, without sinking below the surface of shame and appropriation or forcing others to sink?
She that is me, tugs the cord that stretches back into the void and holds my hand to remind me that forgetting is a default position. Tugging on the weave that has secured my heart back in the deep void to remember. By the radiant arms of the Universal Truth, I am undone, naked before the suns and moons in the belly of the great mother. By the heart of the nova that explodes my myths, I am cooked to perfection in the great ovens of the mother-father Being. As I am here sliding through the portal into the next adventure, she holds my hand.
There comes a time when understanding that the universe resides inside each of our souls is a disturbing thought; that it is here that all the prayers of longing live. Hope and love live here also; anger and hate have no chance in a universe filled with beauty such as this.
To love this earth and see the devastation wrought. To love this earth and notice the deafness of corporations is to be awake. To love this earth and know her heart beats ever stronger for our love is to understand She is our mother, birthed of the great void.
There she is, she that is me. Her skin covered in the markings of the universe, flinging her hair to the sun. She strides along, through the stars, having a great time, not held down by human failings. She that is me, my large divine self has courage and my small human self, envies her that.
She that is me walks through the stars, using them as stepping stones to move from galaxy to galaxy. She is larger than breath and lighter than air, She moves with grace sprinkling courage in her wake. From the Celtic lineage, the Awen arises, like the three ketes of knowledge from this land of Aotearoa, as a symbol of mind, body, spirit or love, wisdom, truth. It appears – to remind me that the number three is sacred and the three drops of inspiration from the cauldron of Ceridwen has followed me from the lands of my ancestors.
I know with the deepest knowing connected back to the great void of the beginning of all things, that the ancestors watch me, knowing that I only need listen to myself and my own wisdom to find the courage I seek. When the pain of not knowing is too much to bear, the wisdom will come unprompted to save me from myself. I am made for these times; my fears have made me dry and shrivel, requiring tending the Soul to fill me with her essence. Finding myself is a lifelong quest, the work is in the reclaiming and reshaping of the space I occupy amongst the stars.
By the grace of knowing my pilgrim path and the inspiration of the Goddess I will continue to find the seeds of courage.
When I forget and fall unwittingly into my default position, the time will come when deep within She gives me a nudge and retracing my steps, by remembering the journey, is always an option.
13 moons, 13 billion years, 13 seeds.
Note: As this work was birthed, a line of the Aramaic Lords Prayer kept repeating over and over in my head. As it sang me and my brushes of colour, I knew this was my starting place, place of holding, and ending place. “Tey Tey Malkuthakh!”
Malkuthakh definition from the work of Neil Douglas-Klotz, Prayers of the Cosmos. 1990.
Mulkatuh, based on the same root, was the name of the Great Mother in the Middle East thousand of years before Jesus. The ancients saw in the earth and all around them a divine quality that everywhere takes responsibility and says “I can.” In a collective sense, Malkatuh can also refer to the collective ideals of a nation or the planet.
The Chore of Finding
Finding myself is a lifelong chore
Begun when I first heard the message
That a I am not enough in this world.
Oh, great Goddess
From the pile of ashes
I do not rise as a magnificent phoenix
I rise as a wounded bird
Tentatively shaking one feather at a time
Examining it closely before
laying it along my scarred side.
So many times, I have shed my pelt
Leaving it rolled up in dank cupboards
As I forgot how to dance.
Finding myself is a lifelong chore.
I reclaim the soundless music of my soul
Dancing to the end of space and time
Looking for the right path to everywhere.
I reclaim the heart that is scarred and battered
And more interesting because of its experiences.
There is glue in the cracks, not quite binding
Where the light of hope shines out.
I reclaim my perspective of self
Surprised that I am whole, as like dried shingles
That which has been imprinted on me
and no longer serves slides off the edge.
I reclaim the darkness
Understanding it is but a colour
So opaque it forces me to use my inner senses
To look more clearly, piercing the shadows
Allowing heart, soul, blood and bone to see
Into me and to hold others without judgement.
I reclaim the ability to live the truth of compassion
That holds the cells of loving together
Allowing it to shine out like stardust motes
Floating through the universe
Looking for the right Being to inhabit.
Finding myself is a lifelong chore.
I reclaim and reshape the space I occupy
In the beauty of this planet and in myself.
I claim the quietness of self
Where all my fears known and unknown reside.
A place of safety within my pelt which
I shall never shed again
This world is not ready for the rawness within.
I reclaim my right to feel safe on this world
Watching the stars overhead as I turn in unison
With the great mother herself holding me.
I reclaim my place as daughter of the Goddess
Praying for the balancing of masculine and feminine
For the world to turn once more on its axis to show us
How we come from the stars.
I embrace the chore
of finding myself among the stars.
Weaver of Hearts
She who is the weaver balanced on the edge
Pulls each thread tight as it passes under and over
Under and over again without tangling or leaving snarls
As she wraps the thread of Being in and out of the line
Dividing darkness and light.
Balanced like a tight rope walker above the abyss
Of the endless void with its sparkling darkness
And the bright heat of molten suns crucible
Warming the bright blue fabric rippling beneath
The veil of the universe.
She who gazes with compassion at the colourful threads
Her fingers flying to gather the breath of the dragon
Weaving, over and under, the ethereal magic into the hearts
Of the brave that waver on the edge of the wide mouth
Waiting and open to her ministrations.
She who is the Weaver of Hearts casts about
Gathering those souls broken perfectly open
While the spirit still soars above the darkness
Keening its anguish,
There is strength to mend and mend she will.
When She who is the weaver of hearts hears that brave call of the soul
Taking more of the dragon’s breath she threads her needle
Aiming at the rift with quick stitches making intricate patterns
Tenderly pulling the edges of the gaping wound close
Then allowing the heart to back gracefully off the edge between darkness and light
She who gathers the shadows as she weaves
Picking them carefully from the lips of the wound
Tenderly sitting each pool of tears on the rim
Ushering them after the mended heart, creating a cushion to cradle
The heart that birthed it against the next rending of the fabric of Being.
She who is the Weaver of Hearts of the Dragon Hearted
Invites those who are not afraid of teetering on the brink
To embrace their brokenness and allow the light to shine
Through the weaving that will hold it together
While never quite closing the gap of lessons learned.
Then she settles,
to watch and wait,
for your next visit
To the edge of the Universe.
The Journey (June 2018)
Over the past nearly four years my life has moved at an incredible rate in all sorts of directions I could never have imagined. I have had to leave my home, then moved five times, traveled to California and Colorado in the USA, hopped across the ditch to Australia, moved out of the Bay of Plenty for the first time in over twenty years, to Taupo, then on to Wellington.
Each place I have lived has become successively smaller, from a small farm cottage, to a flat, to a cabin, to a camper until now I live in a caravan with all my stuff in storage. I wonder how much stuff I actually need. Ending up with two storage units was not the plan, so in my own version of storage wars, I had to move everything once again into one larger unit, getting rid of some stuff just to fit it all in.
Then to show me stuff is really not important, life has done it again in the form of my sister convincing me that a pilgrimage is needed at this time of my life so in 2018 I will be walking across Spain on the Camino de Santiago for 6 weeks and 800km. The distances seem to vary, so the uncertainty in that feels just right. Why am I doing this? Just because. My life will be condensed to my hiking pack and good shoes. This raises several questions, like, why a pilgrimage? What has this to do with getting my life back together? How important is stuff? Hopefully I will find the answers somewhere along the path…
The first creative project of my CoW teacher training. She, who is Brave of Heart has a never-ending story to tell. Of hope and dreams, laughter and tears, love and commitment. She who does not need frills and embellishment, just honesty, truth and a path that aims toward the light. A desire to walk in step with my own tribe. Those who come and match their step to mine. Breathe deeply, courage is simply fear that has said its prayers. Courage is attained by first being vulnerable, putting yourself out there. So I did
Visions of Clarity 