On a billowing morning in view of the hills, I walk a stone labyrinth alone, mug of tea in hand. Staring at my feet, I take one slow and intentional step at a time. I look up occasionally to see retreat staff wandering around with tins of paint and empty trays. Some of the attendees are leaving, others are in the fire temple burning paper names. What am I doing? I ask spiralling towards the standing rock at the centre while trying to not, well, spiral. A fresh, dry wind pulls at the newly greened beech trees.
It’s been a full time of late. Before I was in Yorkshire helping out with a retreat, I was in Cornwall talking about Weathering. Before that, something I have already forgotten to the annals of last week, that distant place. Things have felt exciting again with all of this movement, but I have also been fighting an idea that has taken root in recent years that I can’t do too many things close together because it will exhaust me. It’s partially true (I have symptoms that require tests) but also partially not.
The danger of being surrounded culturally by burn out narrative is that, as I perceive it at least, one can become hyper vigilant for every twinge and strain that might indicate the tipping point is coming, rather than simply being read as a normal state of tiredness from a life being lived within relatively normal parameters. I also believe there are many people, like me, still emerging from the suppressing shadow of the pandemic; people still finding their healthy levels of outward selfhood after a long period of excessive interiority (Put simply: we got scared, right?) But my body tells me things all the time – that’s what it’s supposed to do – and over-vigilance turns me against myself. In many ways this time is an energising one. I am, by and large, empowered and resourced enough to make good choices left to my own intuitions, but I doubt myself when all yawns lead to raised eyebrows.
But it’s also true that I have felt a little confused recently. Unbalanced. The pulling up of anchors to set sail has left me with little time for some of the practices that ground me; the ‘House Work’ in a literal and metaphorical sense. The basic, habitual upkeep of body and mind. At the same time, I see myself following fascinations I can’t expand into because the gatekeepers are too efficient at this stage in my life, and saying yes to things I would rather not do because I can still fall into patterns of scarcity and/or over-compensating for feelings of insufficiency. I see myself pushing on closed doors, because the ones open to me have lost a certain appeal or would ultimately take me in a direction I don’t wish to travel.
Again. What am I doing?
In the labyrinth I am seeking clarity, hoping I will arrive soon to the definitive, emotional heart of matters. But it’s never that simple. Underneath the superficial questions, lie deeper, unwieldier ones. Is my work relevant? Am I relevant? If so, to whom? Is that enough?
My walking is an asking, and though I don’t need an urgent reply, I do feel the pinch of time tightening around me as I close towards the centre and touch the rock. A pigeon rushes overhead, and someone readjusts a ladder against a yurt under renovation and swears. Maybe I have been lost since Weathering was published. Since before typesetting. Since the idea was imagined and therefore, in its own way, already done.
I stand for a time.
As I un-spiral back to the beginning, it occurs to me that maybe I’m not lost at all. That perhaps I am (and always have been) over enamoured with the idea of being lost: to the enduring romance of being a creature adrift. Culturally, we still prefer a woman in need of being found than a woman who doesn’t need to be, and being lost is a great excuse to throw up ones hands.
Then it comes to me that I have been learning about ‘navigating the city’ in my Italian lessons and how the phrase Io sono di qui e io sono mi perso - I am from here, and I am lost - gave me both a laugh, and pause. Duolingo improbably capturing my existential dilemma. Somehow, I know exactly where I am, yet still I look around bewildered. Somehow, I know exactly who I am, yet still I look around as if I don’t.
On an embodied level, realising we are lost is usually associated with coming to a stop after a period of momentum. Something causes us to lose faith in where we have been, or where we are going. Maybe the terrain suddenly looks unfamiliar and confusing because we weren’t paying attention and had become complacent. Maybe our blood sugars got low and we lost our perception faculties for a bit. We cast around, panicking. Nothing looks like it did a moment before. How did I get here? Where am I going? What am I doing?
That question.
At the edge of the labyrinth, I realise it’s not direction I need. I have plenty of that to be going on with. It’s not any particular or new clarity, or even courage and persistence to continue. I am still, always, in the near-field of my life, wandering far at times, yes, but rarely off course if indeed we are such riverine things. It’s really just the nourishment to resume and come back to my senses that I need. And not the nourishment of what others presume. It’s not more sleep, or cancelling things, or meat in my diet, or following the prescription of well-meaning others. It’s the nourishment I’ve always needed: some quiet time alone.
To be found is a form of consumption, I realise. When I am found, I am consumed. Perhaps this is also why it’s alluring to be a ‘lost woman found’ because to satiate others can be as delicious as being sated oneself.
Back at home now, I’m washing my clothes ready to hit the road again. This time though, it isn’t for ‘out-facing’ work, but the beginning of two weeks off for some ‘in-facing’ work. For a long time, I have waited to attend a workshop with internationally renowned movement teacher and artist Helen Poyner, and finally I got the call to say a place has become available this weekend. I head to Dorset today to spend three immersive days moving in and around the landscape of the Jurassic Coast. Immediately after that, I’m heading off to Estonia alone to write, to do some research for my next book, and to be silent. I first visited 10 years ago to witness the Great Crane migration, and the country has been calling me back ever since for a period of deeper contemplation. This time around I’m going to spend time with the glacial erratics of the northern coast who wandered from Finland during the last ice-age.
For the next fortnight then, I am making sanctuary before my next appointment with Weathering, and the world she brings to me in new rooms full of new faces. I love that world, but I need to be in my own too. To grow things. To sustain myself.
I wish I could put in words what this post means to me, how deeply grateful I am for your writing it. Your generosity and openness and imagery are each such gifts. Sending you deep stillness for your time away 🤎 🪨
Thank you for every word of this 🙏🏻 I crave solitude and silence frequently and do all I can to claim it. I loved the word “riverine”. I spiral with similar questions. I will come back to read again. Here’s to making sanctuary. With love and gratitude x