Hunting the 'whatever comes'...

Just yesterday, a friend suggested that I start a blog and the shiny part of me that likes to be seen in the world thought “why not?” So here it is; time to stir the pot and create a magically delicious cup of toadstool tea.

I thought that this would be a good place to pull together the many threads of myself into who-knows-what beautiful pattern, to weave words, to have space to think, feel and share, and I thought that it might encourage me to write. I really loved 'digging the ground'; finding a name (thank you Jan!), looking for colours and images that I liked, trying different ideas. I am good at creating possibilities, finding potential, and yet now that I have prepared a beautiful basket for my words I am really struggling to write them. In fact, I just don't want to. I call myself a writer and yet the last thing that I want to do is actually write! I have spent some time today thinking about why that is (and that, of course, is the gift in all of this). I love to write short pieces on Facebook and have been told that I lay myself bare in a way that few people do. I am not scared of that. I really feel blessed to share my writing anywhere where there is an immediate reaction and interaction and honour the weaving of connection that that can create. And yet, now that I am sitting just with myself and this blank page I am full of fear and resistance.

I know that I trust the process of writing; that, even if I sit here for hours feeling that nothing will come, eventually the part of me that watches will come to hunt words with me and we will make beautiful tracks across this snowy white page. I find the moment when words come exhilarating and affirming and yet something stops me. Perhaps it is the thought of writing more, of showing off, of being too good, or being seen to be a fake. Maybe I can't write at all. Maybe I will be questioned, challenged, torn down. There is something so vulnerable and exposing about writing from a place of the heart that it will always be scary and yet, it isn't really that that stops me. Under any fear there is often a bigger fear to be faced, one that cuts to the heart of who we are, one that we really don't want to see. For me, that fear is sitting with the silence of myself and waiting for the 'whatever comes'. The whatever comes is a frightening creature who can't be controlled and sometimes what does come can be a bit too real.

I found some 'sitting with the silence' writing from last September...

Time, time, time...if only I had more time. I want to tidy my room, to make it the nest that I feel it to be, I want to write, and travel, I want to work as a counsellor, I want to sew the scarlet stitches and, in my own small way, help people to see the beauty that I see in our journey, no matter how painful. The beautiful pain shows me the way. My birth continues to sing through me, to sing of the healing that comes from such a deep connection to the wounded female underworld and to the spaces between life and death and love. There is such beauty to be found.

I am dreaming the future with every moment. I am creating new pathways of being. Somehow, although I am scared and feel that I haven't done enough, a powerful image of the life that I am building and the person that I will be stays in my head, never changing, always shining and calling to me. I will stay true to that.

All of that is still true and, I suppose, is the essence of my toadstool tea, the reason why I write and try to communicate. So, whatever comes, I am going to hunt my prey here, taste the magical tea, and see what happens. It won't be perfect. It won't always be as real as it might be. I hope that it makes me feel really, really uncomfortable. I hope that it always scares me.