What I’ve been reading
I like to read in sequences, by which I mean I like to read a few things by the same author in a run, or explore a particular theme. This month, alongside the poetry books that I gifted myself for publication, I’ve also been enjoying tales from midlife and marriage from authors Miranda July (All Fours), Glynnis MacNicol (I’m Mostly Here to Enjoy Myself) and Molly Roden Winter (More). The first two are pretty new and much hyped, and I don’t mind saying that all have taken me on an exciting and curious inner journey around what it means to be coming into my middle years, and more specifically what it means to pursue pleasure in and beyond your 40s. The book that has stayed with me most is MacNichol’s memoir of friendship and passion in Paris. The content was delicious of course, but her exuberance also reminded me that it’s important that we still, culturally, write about joy. And that we don’t make joy, work. Times are hard, but they have always been that, and they are not only hard of course. I’m guilty of imagining that my best writing comes from heartache and hardship - or dare I say, other people’s - and if I look back on my poetry, it’s rare to find something uplifting in a conventional sense - but I feel myself slipping into a different gyre of late. As my friend Lyndsay said, the millennials are coming of age and occupying the oldest tranche of this sprawling group as I do, I recognise this truth. We’re getting older but we want stories that aren’t only about the inexorable creep of age. We want to engage with this difficult world but also to thrive with it. We want new voices and new role models talking about what’s possible. I want to be part of this conversation. I’m hungry to talk to people about their joy and hope. I’m eager to pursue my own and speak about it.
What I’ve been doing
While summer at last claws its way into the Isles, my garden and my wardrobe I’m resisting the visceral building of high summer energy and consciously staying cool in the shade. Book events are slowing to just a couple a month and I’m letting my busy spring dissolve, actively declining the invitation to make hay while the sun shines. Yes, there is lots more I can be doing, but do I want to? Not really. I’d rather savour now. Instead, I am taking my time with work, easing myself back into a very small therapy and mentoring practice, and sticking to a plan I made a while back which binds me to the commitment to only do one project from each of my other workstreams at one time. That is, one workshop not two. One book, not two. One art project, not three, and so on. So far, so good. This gives me space, and space is essential because I was starting to become unhinged with the claustrophobia of everything. It also gives me time to keep on top of the weeds, both literal and metaphorical.
What I’ve been thinking
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the perils of being ‘The Good Girl’ and what freedoms might come from releasing ourselves of this burden as adults enacting the ‘Good Woman’ corollary. It so happens that I have also seen this appearing all over the place, and found myself talking about it at a wellbeing event for therapists and counsellors a couple of weeks ago. Therapy lore tells us that 85% of therapists enter the profession showing behavioural traits and mindsets of what we might call co-dependency. My contention is that we become better therapists when we heal this wound and welcome back the exiled parts of ourselves that had to be banished in order for the Good Child to perform her duties.
Adjacent to this, I am preoccupied with thoughts of how to build physical community in person through my movement work - how to rebalance online presence with physical presence. And why on earth I didn’t buy Taylor Swift tickets. This isn’t all I’m thinking about of course, but I will spare you the frantic turning of my neuro-kaleidoscope.
What I’ve been loving
Wafting around in a loose dress this week. Not being cold and asthma triggered. Loving every hour I can spend with Juno. Intensively dancing. Having a great experience with a new GP. Getting a good bloodwork report. Workationing in the van for ten glorious days in Scotland. Researching. Making new batches of ice cream and chocolate-dipped cones. Seeing our garden transforming after a lot of hard work. Watching and crying at Lost Boys and Fairies. Buying a guidebook of somewhere I will probably never go, just because it looked great, and feeling OK about that. Receiving emails about how Weathering has moved, touched, motivated people.
What I’ve been nurturing
A hole in the ground full of water. Making a second wildlife pond in the garden has been a lot of fun, and has also tapped into a deeper desire within me to pool. To refresh and line the reservoir within. I see myself planting in a miniature bullrush and lily-type flower, anchoring them to the bottom and feeling a soft dollop of aquatic soil escape to the surface, and I can’t help but nod and smile as I sink my arms further in to my elbows, feel the squidge and succulence of it. What I want is dragonflies and damselflies. Will I get what I want? Can we ever?
What I’ve been learning
I’m on Day 171 of Italian on Duolingo (does this count as learning?) and I’ve got to the stage where I sometimes catch myself wittering useless phrases such as ‘No, I don’t have any daughters but I do have ten cats’ (another classic from last week!) and this feels like a sign of something taking hold at last.
I’ve also signed up to begin some sound therapy training in the autumn. I’ve been dithering over this for at least a year, deciding between this and something more ‘sensible’ or conventional on the CPD therapy platter. But the heart wants what the heart wants, who am I to deny it.
Lastly, I attended Ruth Charnock’s online workshop ‘Deinstitutionalising Your Writing’ this week and it really threw open the doors on my experiences inside and outside of institutions, revealed to me the ways I have been intuitively healing from their impact, but not always allowing myself to grieve the losses from being both inside them, and not being inside them. I carry a lot of ambivalence. We also talked about what it means to hold ‘soft rigour’ in our work - which is something that means a lot to me. I learnt about hard rigour from academia - I’ve spend a lot of time in that institution - but writing Weathering was a huge step forward in softening that knowledge for a broader audience. I learnt tonnes more besides, but I am still reflecting on that.
What I’ve been drafting
I am still working on my forthcoming zine/pamphlet Great Geological Controversies - a short compilation of erasure poems, photography and other thought snippets. This isn’t because it’s a monstrous and expansive piece of work, but because I only have time to give to it intermittently. But today I designed the covers for it, and I have most of the innards, so it’s nearly there and ready for print, I just have a few more bits to collate. I’ve also been drafting a short online writing workshop for mid-August, which I am very excited about. I will post more on that later.
What I’ve been fretting
This week I was interviewed for a future edition of Resurgence Magazine about my outdoor therapy work, and so I offered to show the interviewer around my outdoor therapy space. I haven’t been in practice up there for a few months and this was my first return to the site. What I was confronted with has haunted me in the days since. In Weathering, I talked about my belief that the site was being given over to recreation, but on Monday I was confronted with vast tracts of felled trees, decimating the land on which I have been with clients for years. The vision was visceral and profound in ways that I still can’t touch without welling up. All that life and habitat laid to waste, the desire lines eradicated. Every time I try to think of it I hold my breath. I’m not ready for what will come on the exhale.
What I’ve been anticipating
The General Election is just around the corner for us in the UK and I for one am eager to stay up all night and watch the end of this awful government. I will then be heading to Timber Festival to do a book Q&A with The Stone Club on Sunday 7th. Apart from that and the dragonflies, I have been anticipating Kathleen Jamie’s new book Cairn, which I am waiting to be delivered *squeal*.
I suppose I’m also anticipating a time when this whole list of little things won’t feel so extraordinary or noteworthy, but until then I’m grateful to be at the point in my cycle where everything matters and is keenly felt.
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If you like my writing, you might like my new book Weathering available from wherever you get your books. If you’ve read it and loved it please consider leaving a review somewhere prominent. This helps it stay visible. Alternatively, you might like to start with my first book Grounded. Thank you for your support.
That was a really beautiful update, Ruth. Thank you so much for sharing all of your reflections with us. They are encouraging me to dream a little more expansively into the summer also. 🙏
Thank you for this sharing - your words resonate and please know so many of us are trying to extract ourselves from the Good Girl mold that we were casted in when we were young. It’s both uncomfortable and liberating. I look forward to hearing more about your August writing workshop. My hope is that the time zones align somewhat for me to attend (no pressure 😆). 🌿🦋🪻