Prayers laid and tears offered for the I, the We and the All.

Bowing to all who care for this soil through time 🔥

🤎🖤🧡

For years the doe and her fawns have walked with me, in delicacy and death.

One leapt head first into the side of my car in self-sacrifice, protecting us from a falling tree around the next corner. She was the first large living being to die in my arms and became how I taught my son of the honouring of life in death. Songs and sacred tears on the school run.

I’ve been out on snowy midnight mountains with hunters, bringing prayers and offerings to the land for the gift of meat. The bullet and the blessing.

They welcomed us to our new home, snuggling up to the boy in the garden. Deer kin recognising human kin.

And the stag is incoming.
The horned one walking me through worlds and opening up liberation, love and magic. Its thresholding power beckoning…

Have you found your elders?
Are you calling them in, with fierceness and clarity?
Are you longing for them?

Not just your stone ancestors but your human elders also.

I was,
so much,
in deep longing and readiness.

I prayed in ceremony for my elders to find me and other beloveds held this prayer for me also. And they began to find me. A text here. An unexpected meeting spouting tears of recognition there. I was courageous enough to recognise them when they came knocking, saying “Hey, see you, I need you.”

And do you know what I heard back?
“I need you too. My elderhood can’t be awoken without you calling it forth”

We can’t do this work alone, we’re not meant to. Relational infrastructure is critical to systemic health. Find your kin, find your sacred sisters, your brothers, your lovers, your partners. And find your elders.

If you are ready to be met and accompanied on the next phase of your path, I am here.

If you are longing to be held as you descend, release and find your roots, I am here.

If you want to be held as you create, reach and soar for your highest possibilities, I am here.

And if you simply need companionship as you navigate life today, I am here.

This summer I have mentoring spaces opening up. This is not an A-Z programme with promises, it is a relationship with accountability. It is not a course with modules, it is a weaving with wisdom.

One-to-one work is a deeply sacred container, focusing on the relational wisdom that reveals itself in our shared field. And yes I’ve a ton of coaching models and frameworks too, if they’re needed for extra support.

Drop me a note if you’re curious about being in connection and seeing what working together can reveal for you.

In love and revelation, Lydia 🌹

This beam means time, place, beginning, turning.

We live at 1000 ft on the north side of a mountain, it’s cold and windy and for a few weeks each winter the sun does not even touch the ground in the back yard.

What this beam means today is that the sun is now high enough to begin peeking over the ridge, shining directly in a window which it hasn’t done for months. Seeing this beam on the floor heralds the return of the light into the house.

The opening, the budding, the thawing of hearts, minds and bodies.

Imbolc is not just a one off ceremony, it’s a season of unfolding that comes as much alive in the mundane for me as it does in the majestic. As within, so without. As above, so below.

As the bees begin waking up they’ll be stumbling along sleepily, needing nutrients for energy.

Mix some water with honey or sugar and pour it near them or drip a drop onto them.

We had three big beauties indoors today, loving their sticky little bath and then getting resourced to fly off 🐝

📸 pure spring moments with @enthusiastic_plantsman

This excerpt is from a podcast the Seasonal Alchemy team were invited onto, Embodied Pathways with @dr.adrianh , after Adrian attended our Lughnasa retreat in the Forest of Dean last year. Loved the chats!

Yesterday I posted a clip from a podcast I did but it didn’t upload fully - here is some more. Thanks for the lovely notes about sharing my voice… after working through tons of fear and rage in my throat, I am beginning to be able to express myself more cleanly and clearly. It’s a long and never ending journey but I’m liking this current place 🌀🌀🌀

__________

Personal reflections on my first meeting with the Celtic wheel of the year in 2011, and how I find its mapping of time and state medicinal for these times.

This excerpt is from a podcast the Seasonal Alchemy team were invited onto, Embodied Pathways with @dr.adrianh , after Adrian attended our Lughnasa retreat in the Forest of Dean last year. Loved the chats!

What if feeling aligned with time, place and purpose was simpler than you thought in a world in chaos.

Seasonal Alchemy is your invitation to step out of the rush and into a rhythm that is natural, joyful, and deeply connected.

Imagine waking up grounded in who you truly are, surrounded by the beauty of nature and a supportive community.

Join us for a transformative retreat where ancient Celtic wisdom meets modern life—bringing clarity, purpose, and a renewed sense of self. Seasonal Alchemy is an invitation to slow down and reconnect with who you were before the world got so noisy and challenging.

Retreat: March 7–9, 2025

For details on the retreat and booking, go to our website at www.seasonalalchemy.space

Comment below or message me and I’ll get in touch with more information

It’s times like these that we need to re-member and re-source ourselves through ritual and connection.

Join us for an Imbolc ritual online to honour springtime and welcome in the light of new beginnings… as our ancestors did.

Be guided by the Celtic map of time, locating ourselves in our personal and collective experience.

The fire of Brigid’s belly is alive and hosting seeds of the future… let’s listen together and unfurl into the unknown.

Thursday 6th February
7-8.30pm Irish time
Free, all welcome 🔥

To sign up, go to our website www.seasonalalchemy.space and to the Register page.

We live, love, devote and die,
underneath the same ancient-future sky 🌕

📸 Last night’s moon taken from bed

I’m glad of this snow snap because there’s been some confusion up here in the hills… daffodils trying to pop up in the warmth, big drunk flies rolling around wondering why they’re still here, the land flickering one eye awake.

The ruthlessness of snow clarifies exactly what to do.

Back under we go.

A reminder that we’re
meant to be
deeply resting
at this time.

It’s not the time for resolutions or goal setting.
It’s the time for creating the
internal condition
for inspiration.

That internal condition is emptiness. Stillness. Void.

Finding moments to be still, listen deeply and help your internal void grow.

This can be tricky when there’s kids and life, preparing for back-to-work and back-to-school life…

Let the land show you how

Be out with her…
don’t hike, sit.
Don’t run, walk.
Don’t hurry, go slow.
Let her show you how to cultivate conditions for growth and inspiration so that when the time comes to create, you are in deepest alignment 🏹

Deep underground she can let go into the abyss… and rest.

Dormancy has purpose.

We’ve been listening to our community and heard many of you share that you value the flexibility and accessibility of separate weekend retreats.

With this in mind, we’ll be continuing our modular, stand-alone seasonal weekends. These retreats offer the same powerful rituals, practices, and opportunities for connection, with the freedom to choose which seasons to engage with—at a pace and level of commitment that feels right for you.

Our first seasonal weekend is 7-9 March, and we’d love for you to join us.

The Spell of Self-Improvement whispers that we need to be more, do more, achieve more—convincing us that our worth is somewhere out there, waiting for us to earn it. It programmes us to be in perpetual summer.

But this relentless flourishing leaves us feeling like we’re never enough, as if our value lies somewhere just beyond reach. I know this place of striving and longing… and while there’s great power in owner our inner driver, it’s also how we burn out.

Imagine, instead, letting go of the weight of needing to prove yourself, and living from a quiet, powerful truth within: you are whole as you are.

Seasonal Alchemy honors this truth, creating space for self-compassion and allowance. teaching that transformation doesn’t require striving, but rather a gentle opening to our inherent worth.

In stillness, we find our rhythm in the natural cycles around us. Each season offers space for healing, a reminder that sometimes growth is found not in pushing forward but in resting, listening, and being.

What if, today, you allowed yourself to feel your inherent completeness? I don’t think the trees worry about not blooming properly.

On last year’s Seasonal Alchemy one man said that before he joined us, he saw his life as travelling down a tunnel with a light at the end, sometimes with an oncoming train hurtling towards him!

Now he sees his life as perennial cycles, full of possibilities for renewal at every turn and his relationship to time has utterly transformed.

The Spell of Time teaches us that life is a straight path—always forward, never pausing, rarely circling back. We’re told that growth means moving onward, that progress is a line, and the past is something to leave behind.

In the quiet moments, do you feel the truth of your relationship to time is a little different?

As we think about it: nature doesn’t rush forward. It moves in cycles, embracing seasons of bloom and rest, each with its own wisdom. Imagine if our lives could do the same, allowing time for deep breaths and reflection, for circling back to learn and heal, for embracing beginnings without feeling ‘behind.

At Seasonal Alchemy, we’re inviting you into this rhythm—a way of being that doesn’t race ahead but instead honours each moment for the richness, gifts and challenges it brings.

What might happen if we allowed our lives, our growth, even our healing to flow in cycles, like the turning of seasons?

How could it change the way we live, teach, or simply exist?

Find a path in tune with nature’s own wisdom here: https://www.seasonalalchemy.space/

The Spell of Conformity tells us that fitting in and following the crowd will bring us closer to acceptance and a sense of belonging. Sometimes we fit in by rebelling and finding belonging with our other revolutionaries…. all of which is completely normal and part of being human.

But what does true belonging feel like?
What if it doesn’t come from hiding parts and blending seamlessly into the world around us?
What if belonging is rooted in knowing who you are at your essence, rooted in place and also perhaps in ancestry?
What if it includes building a connection to the natural world?

At Seasonal Alchemy, we believe in breaking free from this spell.

We invite you to reconnect with the land, to tune into the ancient rhythms that honor both individuality and our inherent interconnectedness.

This journey is about embracing your true nature, letting go of pressures to conform, and finding a community where your unique spirit is not only welcomed but celebrated.

What does it feel like to truly belong—without compromising who you are?

Check out our website to know more: https://www.seasonalalchemy.space/

Sometimes, life gets so loud that we forget our own voice. We’re busy—tangled up in routines, demands, and the constant push to keep going, keep achieving, keep up.

And somewhere in all that noise, there’s a quiet part of us that begins to fade, that we lose sight of without even realising it.

Until one day, we stop, look around, and wonder, “Is this really me? Is this all there is?”

Imagine what it would feel like to step away, not as an escape, but as a way to remember. We don’t retreat, we return. To pause, to breathe, to let go of all the roles, titles, and expectations, if only for a moment. A place where there are no demands on you to be anything other than yourself. Just quiet. Just space. Just you, free to reconnect with a simpler, deeper part of yourself, surrounded by beings who live without rush or pretense.

Sometimes, we all need that moment, don’t we? To step back from the grind and just… be.

This is what Seasonal Alchemy offers—a journey through the seasons, held at the Asha Centre, where you can reconnect with your truest self through nature and ancient wisdom. It’s not just a retreat; it’s a return, a way to experience life anew, guided by the rhythms that have always been here, waiting.

If you feel called to step out of the grind and truly be, join us.

Check out our website to know more: https://www.seasonalalchemy.space/

The Spell of Control tricks us into believing that we must be the architects of our own destiny, ignoring the natural unfolding of life and the intelligent power of emergence. In a world that idolises mastery over every detail, the restlessness for control can consume us. For those of us drawn to create meaningful change, releasing control opens space for a deeper well of purpose and resilience to unleash.

The journey of Seasonal Alchemy invites you to soften your grip and step into the wisdom of emergence—where life flows with greater harmony, guiding your every move.

What might unfold if you surrendered control over just one aspect of your journey?

Check out our website to know more: https://www.seasonalalchemy.space/

The transformational journey can be simplified into stages, and when layered onto adult development theory (Robert Kegan and Ken Wilber) can look something like this…

1. We wake up out of the illusion - this is when we focus on who we aren’t anymore, stepping out of dominant social norms, listen to our soul’s cries, and probably make large life changes. This can be chaotic and painful, and like the caterpillar in the cocoon we get utterly mushed. You can be years in a dark night of the soul based on your access to resources and social supports as you begin to turn your life inside out.

2. The next stage is when we activate our soul connection, find our voice and claim our power, inhabiting our independence. There may be rapid upskilling and movement here as you reorient and revitalise your life around your soul and claim your new identity and purpose in the world.

3. The next stage can look initially like a backwards step as you release grip on the new identity that you fought so hard for. You surrender into the flow of life and open to interconnection with all things - land, relationality, bodily presence, stillness, love.

4. Let’s find out 🌀
 
If you’re exploring stages 2 and 3, you might be curious about a developmental nature connection and ancestral journey we run in England, called Seasonal Alchemy.

This is our second year holding this programme and we have a free introductory ritual call, to celebrate Samhain, next Friday first of November at 1 pm.

More at Seasonal Alchemy.Space

We looked at some of these false narratives that shape how we think, live, and interact with the world. The Spell of Self-Improvement, for example, drives us to constantly strive for more, leaving us exhausted and feeling inadequate.

At Seasonal Alchemy, we believe you are enough as you are. Through nature connection and community, we explore how to break free from these limiting beliefs. This journey is about rediscovering your wild, authentic self—just beneath the surface of modern life.

What would it feel like to break free from these spells? We work fireside and with ritual to support this work across all dimensions, and this fireside shot is shared with permission.

Our next Seasonal Alchemy journey begins on December 13, 2024.
Enrol and join us!

Checkout our website to know more: https://www.seasonalalchemy.space/

Seasonal Alchemy is a year-long journey of in-person retreats and online ritual gatherings that we’re hosting beginning December 15th, to reconnect with self, purpose and the wisdom of these Celtic lands.

Guided by a timeless ancestral map, this seasonal journey reconnects you to rhythms that have guided humanity for centuries, fostering resilience, compassion, and an intuitive approach to life and work.

We invite you to step out of prevailing cultural narratives, into a story rooted in interrelationship, mystery, and soul.

Join us.

“I have attended all four of the 2023-4 Seasonal Alchemy retreats and enjoyed them enormously. I was very attracted to the concept of honouring the four seasons and learning more about the Celtic calendar which does so.
They chose a wonderful location… Lydia, Hamish and Jed are each very skilled facilitators in their own rights, and together they made a wonderful team.
They blend proactively designing the weekends with flexibility to what the group wants and brings. I’ve especially appreciated such a wide range of embodiment practices, most of which celebrate nature.
I’ve found the whole ‘cycle’ nourishing, joyful and heartwarming, including making lovely connections with the developing community. I cannot recommend the experience more highly.”
— Lucy West - Coach, Writer, Activist

More info at Seasonal Alchemy dot space

Had a work meeting with a colleague who was driving up to me in Wicklow from Cork, I said we should meet along the way for both of us… how about Lough Gur. And we ended up here… many roads this year have been leading me here.

Ceremony under Hawthorn and gratitude to the ancestors comes first, before any middle world work.

It is an honour as an Irish woman to share indigenous wisdom on English soil and tenderly walk the intricate intensities these times demand.

To call us into a re-remembering of who we were before we forgot that we were connected, that we were land, that land was us. All of us.

Land, magic, ritual, trees, Celtic wisdom, nourishment from plant beings, breathwork, nature facilitation, story, movement medicine… woven alone and in community. We drank deep.

We’re honouring and integrating the completion of this cycle and the next spiral will begin at Samhain. More coming soon.

I love how each county has its own distinct feel and landscape. Crossing country is a shamanic journey as the ground alters, the trees whispering in the wind to the rocks.

Such a joy… time with family, old new friends, work trips, sauna and ocean, nail painting with littlies, ceremony for the diaspora ancestry on the rock of Cashel, the divine mother activating my myrrophore 😭, a miraculous moving statue, ritual with Rose and Mary and Rosemary, magic and more magic…

The rose on 8 and 14 are the same, a week apart 🌹

Endlessly grateful for the mundane and the miraculous ✨

Allowing days of gloopiness unfold through me in days of family snuggles and travels.

I usually take January and August off to drop into receptivity and rest, to languor in the in-between. This time of listening and communing usually becomes a phenomenal momentum activator down the line. 🏹

Lughnasa love x

My friend @erikagagnon11 is bringing her beautiful blessings and sacred tobacco practice to these shores, generously carrying her healing work around Ireland.

A long time ally of these lands, Erika will be in Athlone tomorrow and I recommend attending.

Having sat in various circles with Erika over the years, I love her lightness, her storytelling and her solemn depth. Go if you can 🙏🏻

Back in the Forest of Dean on the magical land at Asha… staying in beauty on the fringe of indigenous forests and hosting a group through the autumnal portal 🍂🌳🍁

There are 1000 types of roses here… I seem to go from one rose garden to the next these days 🌹

We were in water ceremony tonight at the sacred well adjacent to Asha and it absolutely poured down rain and thunder upon us. The uisce baptism into the West has begun💧

Harvesting, honouring and conscious completion time 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

Last year, 9 orchids came to me for care, with the clear message that they had chosen me to mind them while their owner lived overseas.

Me who, although I’m a fairly feral, couldn’t even keep a succulent alive.

Y’see, there was a space between my deep interiority and my external enactment… a gap in the continuum of my life force living just outside my skin. Those closest to me felt it and either persevered in connection or left.

I was very aware of this gap, and had 20 years of personal development hacks to mask it and function fairly well. But it was always there. This sabotaging split, like a gash in my relational field.

There are all sorts of diagnostic names I could have put on this split but I became less interested in labels and more interested in its meaning and its medicine for wholeness. Not just for wellness!

Then this winter I got sick - like proper sick sick. For weeks I couldn’t eat or move, praying my way through pain and disorientation. One night in the base of this cauldron something broke open inside - I had a vision of a concrete block being smashed by a pneumatic drill revealing an orchid in its centre. The orchid was me.

I used to believe that I was the concrete - strong, safe and suitably porous with infusions of orchid, but now I saw that it was actually the other way around.

That I am the orchid and I had this magnificently effective block of concrete around me. For 40 years it had done an incredible job and now it wasn’t needed anymore.

The conditions were right. The essence was ready to shine. And everything that was inverted got righted.

Life took off in a way I’ve never known and the last 3 months have been wildly beautiful. I feel entirely different and yet also more me… simultaneously more sensitive and soft and also more clear and firm.

But back to the 9 orchids - they all went to sleep for winter. I was so so nervous I’d killed them and that they’d picked the wrong caretaker… until this week. As I lay languorous in the soft, restfulness of Summer Solstice they began to bud and open up again…

Continued in comments

in social impact work

It’s been interesting being in the heart of the beast at election time. Those I spoke with, who hold nuance, were voting for change but were not genuinely thrilled with any political option out there.

In my work with 7 social impact leaders this week, we explored polarity and how next level leaders need to be with the full human and more-than-human experience.

It’s sobering realising that the values we proclaim to live have shadow also living through us. And it can feel cringeworthy. And shameful. And yet is an undeniable truth.

Turning towards the hard stuff is such brave and beautiful humaning!!!

I love that I get to doula folks through this ♾️

Closing out the last season with awe and reverence. It’s still working me, big time, and while I don’t have fruits yet, some meanings are beginning to form.

I’m off to London for work this week, delivering a leadership programme. While@I was designing them I knew I needed to sit in ceremony before I left… to honour and release what’s gone before so that I can open up to what is unfolding this week.

Some days I feel like gloop, lost in the messy middle and others I feel like a staunch motherf***ing wise crone. Some days I’m an orchid and others I’m a deer pelvis. Shape shifting whether my hair is up or down, whether I’ve been in ceremony or not, whether I’m feeling connected or not, whether I’m in right relationship or not. Or maybe just because that day I’m gloopy.

But every time I turn towards ceremony things clarify and open… I am so grateful to the ways of these lands that reSource me. And to Fire who shares its ruthlessness. I offer my gifts and love in service to her and all her beings.

Solstice prayers into the Lough Gur stones for friends in love in the north, for peace in the east, for the depths of winter in the south, those sun dancing in the west… praying we can all come into peace and union with ourselves, each other and the land that holds us all.

May peace and peace and peace be everywhere 🤍☀️

Bare feet. Bare bones. Bare souls.

The land is calling her fragmented souls home, the displaced parts of herself all over the world are hearing calls to return. To re-turn. And re-remember.

From all over the planet folks are travelling to Ireland for deeper connection to self, land and each other… for ancestral pilgrimage and cultural reweaving. Reclaiming forwards.

Maturing and listening deeper than we know we know how. But we know.

Fáilte 🌀

📸 Womandala na hEireann 2023

This is a gift I was working on years ago and it became an oak altar piece of Freedom, Saoirse. The piece was about bringing two distinct, ancient cultures together through wood and language, and the love formed through the polarity of self and all, old and new, union and freedom ♾️

Since my ginormous winter purge, magic and beauty have awoken, pouring through my life in great reunions and great separations, opportunities and releases, beauty and pain. And I seemingly have immense capacity to be with it all as the frame I hold keeps expanding.

Mu-raay and his son, Karwun, arrived 6 weeks ago and we dove down a portal of re-remembering… a wise and gentle Australian Aboriginal artist storyteller, he carries laws and lores of other times that are so needed for evolution today.

We were drenched in Áine at Lough Gur, swans signalling messages of hope, witnessed a private marriage at Grange Stone Circle, heard the sidhe in the Dingle mountains and wept with re-membering. The trees and the rocks woven together, whispered “You hold me up, I hold you together”.

We were hosted by the heartiest, warmest folk, finding kin and kindness everywhere we turned… it’s really all about relationships at the end of the day, isn’t it!

Spending precious time on land with dear ones is a beautiful part of this work… it’s not just about us re-learning the libraries of our ancestry, it’s also about simply being present in love and reverence with the land and letting her feel us, witness us. She teaches us receptivity and reverence this way.

I am called to walk barefoot, bare boned and bare souled in surrender and service to the great reclaiming forward… weaving the ancient ways and carrying them through my body into the present moment, for the future 🌀🏹

Reel to follow

Gorse plucked, buds soaked, any little wrigglies released, petals pulled and potioned. As Bealtaine beckons and the land opens up, we are beginning our summering together. It’s been a looong winter - pretty much 5 months of darkness here on the mountain. I am so ready to play together with her this year and am entering a cycle of passion, play and practice. Spring summer juiciness!

It feels amazing to imbibe with the land, I am it and it is me.

Thank you gorse for showing us how to open up with sacred beauty and protection, and how apparent guardedness can be a portal to magic 💛

🌀 Tons of talk about wisdom… rather you’ll be invited to experience nature experiencing you, and receive your own insights.

🌀Invited into a safe space. Safety doesn’t just appear once we speak to it, safety is a result of numerous little and big tendings to the container and regulation within my own system and the collective’s. As facilitator, I don’t invite you into a safe space, I invite you into a brave space where we can weave our way into relationship and safety together. In holding and realness.

🌀A New Age Experience. Meeting nature is not new age, it’s ancient work done today. It’s a re-membering, we are literally gathering parts of ourselves that have been lost and dismembered along the way and returning to integrity. No accoutrements needed.

🌀All Love and Light. Celtic wisdom has no shame around the uncomfortable parts. There is a place for all parts of the the human experience on the wheel, including and especially, your darkness.

🌀A One Stop Shop - reclamation of your essential nature and its relationship to nature is a way of living. There’s no silver bullet to our suffering but there are ways we can contextualise and make larger meaning of what’s happening in the world that can bring some ease. And through that ease we can unleash our own resilience and direction of how to move through the world.

Check out our super simple info site at www.seasonalalchemy.space and message me if your curious. Our next retreat is at Bealtaine, 3-6 of May in the stunning Asha Centre in the Forest of Dean where the land and an amazing team awaits.

Come and join us at our Bealtaine retreat in the heart of the Forest of Dean, welcoming the wisdom of the ancestors of all these Isles, through the wells, through the trees and into our bodies.

This three day and three nights summer retreat over the May bank holiday weekend will align you with The Natural rhythm of the year, preparing you to enter summer months with the clarity and vitality needed to flourish.

With 3 highly experienced hosts and ceremony leaders, you will be resourced and supported as you cross the threshold into summer.

Come and feel what it is to thrive through breathwork, ritual, Meditation, dialogue, coaching, nourishment, all held within the container of indigenous lifeways and reverence for these lands.

details in bio and at
www.seasonalalchemy.space

Small talk not really possible yet, I’d rather be communing with a flower pelvis. Integration takes time, I move slowly but I don’t leave any parts behind so each move hopefully only happens once.

How can we create the conditions for the margins to thrive, for beauty to flourish, for space to be left potent for life to fill it.

Here’s some orchid and deer essence to drink into your senses this Friday… as we weave our ways through the great split, unfolding, wounding and reweaving. We fall apart and we fall together. Big love 🌀

For hours I sit beside the sacred fire of homecoming,
writing my prayers and experiences onto pages and pages and offering them to the flames.

I don’t need to try and integrate, the elements and land do it
for me and through me. I just need to show up.

In deep gratitude I say hello to this land again,
bringing Ugandan hearth to Lough Dan.
Honouring this place that welcomes all parts of me home.

Through the strength of heaven
Light of sun,
Radiance of moon
Splendor of fire,
Speed of lightning
Swiftness of wind,
Depth of the sea
Stability of earth,
Firmness of rock.

The Deer’s Cry song has been resounding around my insides and outsides for the last ten days… reclaiming and reweaving its beauty and power. In another lifetime it was sung at my marriage ceremony and I had not been able to engage with it since, hearing only pain and Christianity … until now.

I sang it in a sacred grove opening space for our Ugandan Indigenous Commons gathering.
Prayed with it every morning in the scorching equatorial sun.
Paced it around circle before calling in the directions.
Soothed my aching heart with it when leaving community and returning to daily life.
A balm for the ache of separation.

One dark night last week in the midst of sickness, I visited our sacred tree grove, longing to be witnessed by the protective pines - wailing, crying, praying my heart into the earth.

The land received all of me and composted my waste. Bearing witness to my rageful purge amidst snot and wretching, in the pitch dark, the trees offered me a poem.

These beautiful evergreens who teach us resilience and commitment expressed my helplessness at the eternal cycles of horror we are inflicting on the earth and each other. Of course they did.

The Great Mother knows. And she knows her ‘No’.

I've been in the depths of sickness this seasonal threshold, being purged by winter, processing personal patriarchal poison and despair at our collective colonial horror. The body keeps the score and throughout this body’s life the scoreboard has been my throat.

Nights on end of no sleep, breathing through discomfort as my circadian rhythm flipped. Darkness was my friend, the lights and sounds of daytime hours attacking my nervous system.

Anaesthetics fell away as medicine brought no relief, sensory entertainment was unbearable and conversation was impossible as my throat swelled and my voice disappeared into a Donald Duck squeak.

Soon it became clear what I was really being asked to do was to turn and meet my physical and emotional pain on the inside, and engage with it there. It's nearly always about this.

Awareness is easy(ish). Being with awareness within the container of our own body that’s hard.

Fears flared the unloved, unlived and unspoken parts of me, parts known but not honoured. Holy and unholy rage burned through my throat, ears, head, tongue, body sweats. Tears burned for the children. I prayed and wailed. The trees gifted me a poem for mothers (next slide)

The pointed lens of awareness metabolised things.

In a mythical moment at Imbolc, an abscess in my throat burst. Literally, blockage to my expression exploded in my throat, the truth channel, on 1st Feb. Brigid ain't subtle! However I didn’t appreciate the poetic beauty of it at the time as I was choking, feeling alone and terrified.

But then came relief and the space again for breath and nourishment to flow. The arc of this purge is a well worn track by now. And slowly, gently, the ascent to health began and sheepishly and reluctantly, vitality is beginning to follow.

📸 I can’t remember taking this photo. It might have been when I was assuring someone I was ok but couldn’t talk. Or maybe a version of me is getting comfortable with social media and recorded it for sharing later.I've been in the depths of sickness this seasonal threshold, being purged by winter, processing personal patriarchal poison and despair at our collective colonial horror. The body keeps the score and throughout this body’s life the scoreboard has been my throat.

Nights on end of no sleep, breathing through discomfort as my circadian rhythm flipped. Darkness was my friend, the lights and sounds of daytime hours attacking my nervous system.

Anaesthetics fell away as medicine brought no relief, sensory entertainment was unbearable and conversation was impossible as my throat swelled and my voice disappeared into a Donald Duck squeak.

Soon it became clear what I was really being asked to do was to turn and meet my physical and emotional pain on the inside, and engage with it there. It's nearly always about this.

Awareness is easy(ish). Being with awareness within the container of our own body that’s hard.

Fears flared the unloved, unlived and unspoken parts of me, parts known but not honoured. Holy and unholy rage burned through my throat, ears, head, tongue, body sweats. Tears burned for the children. I prayed and wailed. The trees gifted me a poem for mothers (next slide)

The pointed lens of awareness metabolised things.

In a mythical moment at Imbolc, an abscess in my throat burst. Literally, blockage to my expression exploded in my throat, the truth channel, on 1st Feb. Brigid ain't subtle! However I didn’t appreciate the poetic beauty of it at the time as I was choking, feeling alone and terrified.

But then came relief and the space again for breath and nourishment to flow. The arc of this purge is a well worn track by now. And slowly, gently, the ascent to health began and sheepishly and reluctantly, vitality is beginning to follow.

📸 I can’t remember taking this photo. It might have been when I was assuring someone I was ok but couldn’t talk. Or maybe a version of me is getting comfortable with social media and recorded it for sharing later.

9-11 February, The Forest of Dean
🌱We are in the space between, the idir ait, as our ancestors called it, and we need new ways for making sense of ourselves in this time between worlds, between identities, between relationships, between homes, between paradigms.

🍃Seasonal Alchemy returns for its Spring gathering 9-11 February in Gloucestershire where we will be working with the indigenous Celtic map of these lands to find some meaning in the present state of things, and opening into the whispers of the future.

🌰Creativity needs a vacuum.
As we emerge from the darkness of winter, we prepare to sew the seeds of becoming with intention, at Imbolc (which translates as ‘in the belly’).

🌸Spring is the time of new beginnings, and we work with the clarity and excitement of budding creativity. We find new parts, collaborations, energies.

🌷We innovate, refresh and see the world through new eyes.

🧹We listen to what we wanted to say YES to, and what we then have to say NO to in order to focus our intention, attention and resources to have our desired impact in the world.

Join us for a weekend of breathwork, solo nature quests, meditation, Celtic wisdom, community and craic! Hosted by the land in the Forest of Dean, @asha_centr e and lead by Hamish Mackay-Lewis and myself.

There’s a band of adventurers gathering already. Join us🌀

Details at www.seasonalalchemy.space

Following the success of our Community Menopause Evening last October, @orla_malone_acupuncture has organised another community event.

The aim of these events is to bring complementary wisdom to mainstream audiences. We want to support everyone in accessing knowledge that sometimes only those of who go down wellbeing rabbit holes, or make unusual career choices, get access to. We want to pass our wisdom along.

And we also really want to be with people and come together IN REAL LIFE.

This event is focusing on Mental and Emotional Health. There are brilliant speakers presenting their expertise and experience working with nutrition, plant wisdom, bio-magnetic healing, Celtic shamanism, and cultural wellbeing to support you being mentally and emotionally capable in today’s world.

Sometimes aspiring for ‘healthy’ can feel like too much so I like to aim for ‘capable’.

@raymon dbcadwell is a teacher in bio-magnetic healing
@nikki wnutrition is a nutrition queen
@d eezerteezer is a Therapeutic Horticulturalist and native plant medicine woman
@tsapacademy Geraldine Walsh is a shamanic counsellor and therapist
And I’ll be speaking about digital hygiene and the wider cultural cycles of wellbeing.
Hosting us is the amazing @orla_malone_acupuncture who has organised the whole thing 👏🏻

Together we are crafting an evening of multi-disciplinary approaches to mental and emotional health, looking at the mind, body and spirit.

Please come along or pass it along, everyone is welcome.

FRIDAY 16th FEBRUARY 7.30pm - 9.00pm
CLONDALKIN COMMUNITY CENTRE ÁRAS CHRÓNÁIN
D22 X856

Tickets are €8
All proceeds are going to Aware and a Gaza support organisation.

Tickets available on Eventbrite. Link in bio.

I forget how loud a functioning house is until the electricity goes. The walls and appliances fall still, their hum noticeable by its absence.

I love turning towards the stillness and the darkness at this time of year, inviting more of it to permeate my body. To have its way through me.

My Tree Temple is usually a summer haven but this week, the coldest of the year, I slept out to meet the silence and journey with medicine of this land.

Prayers for peace, purity and ferocity laid down by the fire.
🕊️💧🔥

Watching the light shine on the floor of the tomb/ womb at Newgrange this morning, with tears flowing… prayers for the return of the light.

I love Solstices as they give us pause to reflect.

What if it’s not - have we worked enough to earn our rest?
What if it’s - have we rested enough to be ready for work?

What if it’s not - have we warred enough so that we can cease?
What if it’s - have we stopped for long enough to see what else is possible?

Welcoming the return of the light this week and feeling a flavour of inversion… what if it’s all upside down?! This is not to try and anaesthetise discomfort or escape the darkness but more to feel what extended time in the darkness is like.

We drop into the void of the void and listen.

What are the whispers from the future that are beginning to call… and can we surrender long enough to hear them?

📸 a still taken from the OPW’s incredible live stream of the womb at Newgrange this morning.

9 souls gathered to grieve, dive deep, and explore the wisdom of cycles in their personal and larger cultural context.

The season and the land were so beautiful to us.

This work has 8 wisdom pillars:

• Nature wisdom
• Celtic wisdom
• Bodily wisdom
• Mythic wisdom
• Energetics wisdom
• Soul wisdom
• Collective wisdom
• Evolutionary wisdom

Next we will explore Springtime on 6-9 February but for now we pause as we honour and conclude this first phase.

With deep thanks to the land, humans and invisible beings at the Asha Centre that welcomed us 🌀🙏🏻

Do you have a grief practice?  Do you have a way of relating to loss and death already familiar in your system?  Or do you wait for loss to visit and hope you’re resourced when that time comes?  How are you coping in a world in chaos?

These are threads of conversations that I seem to be having a lot these days. From career change to a death doula, to recovering from political upheaval, to upgrading digital hygiene to cope with trauma recorded on social media… it seems we need to learn how to grieve well.

And, like going to the dental hygienist, I think knowing how to meet our grief is going to become a core skill for surviving and thriving as a human. Otherwise the emotional plaque builds up and creates rot.

I’m co-hosting a retreat this weekend where we are looking at Winter. Winter teaches us how to die well, how to be with loss in a creative way and how darkness is ultimately the beginning of the life cycle.

Here’s a resource I made a few years ago that may help get you started. www.Lydia.ie/atimeto

And our retreat in winter Gloucestershire is called Seasonal Alchemy www.seasonalalchemy.space

Links to both in bio

I had a gorgeous time delivering a keynote today with a wonderful company I work with @unplughq . We were presenting to an Irish medical device company and looking at our digital well-being in an always-on world.

Corporate wellbeing, like personal wellbeing is a moving feast and I deliberately don’t call it ‘wellness’. Wellness is fixed noun, a destination, and being well is the opposite of fixedness. Being well is a lifelong journey with no surety or security and central to it is how we relate to our personal and collective evolution.

It’s fascinating exploring cultural shifts as we awaken to our tech addiction and the reality that we are already chipped, it’s just that our chip lives outside of our body in the form of our phone.

Awareness, friction points, conscious choice and psychological disconnection are some of the keys that have been identified as helping to rewire the dopamine driver that keeps us tethered to our tech.

Doing in-person delivery is a great love of mine, and I feel so lucky I get explore topics like this with all sorts of groups.

It could be easy for me, living out in the wilds on the side of a mountain, to spout about “just turn it off” but I’m as prone to addiction as anyone and the anti-dote is not as simple as that. The hold that these devices and platforms have on us goes far deeper now, no matter where we live, particularly post 2020 and hybrid / remote working.

Sensing into the evolutionary needs of a culture and supporting the human beings in it is my happy place… somedays it’s holding shamanic circles and other days it’s delivering corporate wellbeing talks. I love it all!

Sensing into being of creative service, we begin with what is needed in the world at this time that I can be service to…

I forgot a slide for ‘tears and craic’!

The Seasonal Alchemy winter wisdom retreat will support you in finding…

• Paradigm shifting perspectives to support new ways of being in relationship

• A leadership approach that’s fit for changing times

• Friendships with kindred spirits

• More connection with your bloody intelligence

• A map to help you navigate the challenges and opportunities of daily life

• Practices that will resource your spiritual and personal growth going forward

• Deeper awareness of the natural cycles of life that are inside you, as well as outside

• A stronger relationship with the natural world

www.seasonalalchemy.space

The convergence towards Seasonal Alchemy, our winter wisdom retreat of Samhain, wisdom and ceremony… December 1-3 in The Asha Centre, Gloucestershire. Link in bio 🌀

Recently I was invited to speak at a Menopause Information Evening about the realignment women go through at this mid-life threshold and to dispel some cultural myths about the great pause.

As we ascend into queenship, our bodies go through massive transformation and relieve us of the possibility of physical procreation.

⤵️ After years of focusing outwards, our creativity shifts direction and turns inwards as we are guided to integrate life’s experience. We are called to harvest our wisdom and learn to hold space fiercely so that we lead and support the generations coming up after us, without taxing ourselves.

If you thought motherhood made you a lioness with your boundaries, queenship cements them.

Through adjustments in vitality we are forced to savour our energy and share it very selectively. We learn to live through pleasure 💦 And we prepare to be wise queens and elders in potent service of a greater story.

Maiden
Mother
Queen
Crone

We journey through the four directions and their archetypes, using this map as a portal to our physical and energetic states.

And as with any map the map is just a map, it’s not the territory. Our daily lived experience is the territory.

The other speakers were amazing and il going to list them here as a full spectrum menopause resource.

⭐️ Thank you @o malone153 for organising it and sorry I’m so late with the posting.

⭐️ For intuitive medical and shamanic healthcare, check out Tony @theintuitivem edic

⭐️ For nutritional care, see @nikkiwn utrition

⭐️ For relief of symptoms through acupuncture, Gillian Searson at Shen Acu and Airmid Keogh.

⭐️ For vitality activating practises, check out @raycarbullido

⭐️ For relief of symptoms through bio-magnetics, Laura at @abt_health .

We didn’t have a photographer on the night as we were totally focussing on the women in the room, but thank you to my wonderful Instagram boyfriend and co-presenter Ray for capturing some moments😍🙏🏻

Meet my wonderful friend and colleague Hamish Mackay-Lewis, who’s not on IG because he lives and breathes this work so much that he refuses to fracture his attention or wellbeing with another social media platform. You can find him on Linked In though.

We met in Budapest in January 2020, when I sat down beside him on the first morning of our Integral Facilitator training. Our working lives have woven together, like happy old kin, ever since.

Hamish is ex army, a leadership coach, wilderness guide and breathwork instructor and he is holding the sacred masculine in our SEASONAL ALCHEMY container.

Together we are hosting a weekend journey in Winter in the beautiful lands at The Asha Centre in the Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire.

Seasonal Alchemy: Winter: The Renewal
1st - 3rd December 2023
The Asha Centre, Gloucestershire, UK

If you feel called to join us for the Seasonal Alchemy of Winter this December or know anyone in England, Scotland or Wales who might like to join us, please pass it on. You can ping me a DM with any questions and I’ll also be sharing more on my page here over the next while.   The website is www.seasonalalchemy.space and there is more info at the link in my bio.   Samhain blessings loves… my from hearth to yours.

For over a decade I’ve been exploring the ways of our native ancestors, deep in personal practice and ritual, guided in Celtic study and shamanic initiation, and living in connection with the land… being in both the refinement and the messiness that comes with ancestral reckoning.

Across the range of my work with leadership coaching, facilitating group transformation and shamanic practice, I look out for navigation tools to help us through this quagmire of 21st century living and dying. I’m fascinated by process and mapping - how do people do what they do, in the way that they do it? Time and time again I return to the land under our feet and the trees out the window, and how they metaphorically and literally are an obvious pathway forward into more ease and evolution.

Often we can find ourselves

- tech saturated
- more available + less connected
- energy wanting + power illiterate
- abundant + not prosperous
- deracinated
- liberated with choice + frozen
- privileged with safety + numb with overwhelm - feeling lost + full of love and longing

I see these as part of the paradox of being human today and I find that nature offers mapping for HOW TO BE in and with this age of chaos. We are in the idir ait, the in-between time, and there are signposts and practices that can resource and support us in this moment.

This year we are offering gentle but deep weekends, once a season, for folks who want to listen to the whispers of the land IN ORDER TO EVOLVE into who they are becoming and attune to the greater ways of all life.

We will be working with the micro in service of the macro… showing up as best we can with what we have, to we bear witness to a world on fire. Knowing it begins with us 🤍

The website is www.seasonalalchemy.space and there is more info at the link in my bio.  
Seasonal Alchemy : Winter - The Renewal
1st - 3rd December 2023
The Asha Centre, Gloucestershire, UK
www.seasonalalchemy.space
 Samhain blessings loves… my from hearth to yours.

But I do have work to share. That I want to share. I want to speak about the brilliant people I get to share my life with and work alongside. I want to allow my purpose and path to emanate through my words and imagery on this platform. I want to tell you about my plans, my loves and my teachings, in the hope that they may be of service.

I want to be useful.

And I am not turning away from the horrors taking place in our world on fire. We are in the bowels of collective Samhain and it is traumatic, horrifying, tragic, heartbreaking. I am trying to embody and transcend at the same time... I am turning outwards with an inhale and turning inwards with an exhale, feeling the tremors of our world through my body. My body - the great metaboliser.

It's a hard ask but we are able to be with more than one state at the same time, more than one position, more than one perspective, more than one experience.

And so in honour of the life I'm cultivating and the path I'm choosing, I'm going to wade through this resistance. I'm breathing into expectation of judgement, fear of abuse, shame of privilege, safety of my backbone, fierceness of my voice, intensity of my lived experiences.

I'm breathing into the gems in my wisdom.

I would like to express myself a little bit more over the coming weeks and months... share a bit more about what I'm up to and the great folks and projects I get to be a part of.

I'll inhale inwards and give the exhale outwards a go...

With love and a sword x

I’m honoured to be co-hosting this event on perimenopause and menopause with the brilliant Orla Malone, @omalone153 who has curated a short event of powerful speakers with tons of great information.

We are coming together to learn more about the great feminine pause.

There’ll be health experts and medics, and alongside them I’ll be speaking to this inner seasonal transition amidst the wider context of our lives and culture.

Friday 6th October
19.30-20.30
The Park Community Centre, Firhouse, Dublin D24 1H70

Link for tickets in bio

So excited to share that my friend and co-facilitator Hamish Mackay-Lewis and I visited the beautiful Asha Centre in Gloucestershire this weekend, to design and prepare for our ‘Seasonal Alchemy’ series of weekend retreats. I delivered youth leadership programmes at Asha 10 years ago and it feels amazing to be back 🌹

Seasonal Alchemy will be a transformational journey through the wisdom of the Celtic map of these lands, hosted with love and intention on English soil, to support you in navigating the challenges and opportunities of life today.

More info to follow but the dates are:

Winter: The Renewal 1-3 Dec 2023
Spring: The Beginning 9-11 Feb 2024
Summer: The Flourishing 3-6 May 2024
Autumn: The Honouring 20-22 Sept 2024

I met Anne’s voice first. Strong sean nós singing blew my heart open, her trained operatic voice and wild Irish soul searing through IG. And when she posted that she was returning to Ireland for a musical pilgrimage, I reached out and invited Anne to land in our pocket of paradise in the mountains.

A big joy and purpose of this place we call home at Lough Dan is welcoming people to land onto the land and into themselves. And Anne and her shruti box and loving heart and glamazonian presence landed.

We cried when we met.
I love how totally unfiltered things get when soul family meet… my whole self gets to play, excited at the recognition.

“I was nudged to offer you a cleanse - may I?”
“Yes please”
We weep, I bow and at airport arrivals out comes Brigid’s well water, a feather and rosemary from my handbag.
Airports are portals… talk about thin veils! ✨

Two days of connection and laughter in the hills, at the same time as my family crossed into the new school year… the magical and the mundane weaving together as is so often the shape of my life.

And now Anne’s off, weaving around Ireland on a re-turning of her Celtic wheel, bringing her unique flavour of ancestry and soft desire into voice.

Anne’s work is exquisite - if you’re interested in liberating your power and expression through voice, take a look at offerings at @canneuhandleit . This is not about musical perfection, this is about living soul-full ❤️‍🔥

Love you sister - tá fáilte romhat anseo am ar bith 🌱🌀💚

A while ago I visited Finn Lough and stayed in their forest bubble domes and meandered through their forest spa. Communion and Union. Heaven on earth 🌳

My Mum @siobhancampbell.1 got her dream polytunnel and in only 3 months, unreal fecundity has erupted out of the soil. She is a green fingered sorceress and the land is ready to be met and loved - they are the perfect team 🌱

Wild chamomile carpets the floor giving a gentle scent of pineapple, we have salad for weeks, courgettes, strawberries, beans, rhubarb, tomatoes, cabbage, kale, peppers… the generosity of mother + soil goes on 💚

She left a big area of space at the entrance for chairs and tables, an idyllic spot for a rainy July picnic or tea-party 🧺

After a few wine o’clock test runs with friends, yesterday we hosted @mair enig_ and her gorgeous qi gong students for their summer gathering.

It’s never lost on me how damn lucky I am to live here and be a guardian of this space, and even more blessed to share it with community.

The land is alive with magic and calling out to be borne witness to.

🌷ROOT AND CROWN - Reclaiming Our Sovereign Queenship

Join @marikennedywisdo m Dolores Whelan @celticspiritualit y and myself to explore and play with

🌀The Celtic Wheel
Mythology
Embodiment
Breathwork
Collective wisdom
Song, poetry
Ritual 🌀

Saturday 20 May | 9.30 am - 6pm | The Chapel of Ease, Irishtown, Dublin 4.
Sunday 21 May | 9am - 11am | The Hill of Tara

In mythology Bealtaine was known as a time when inaugurations of Kings took place. It was known as Banais Ríthe, the sacred marriage because to ascend to the throne the King had to marry the Goddess of the land. She bestowed flaitheas, sovereign power, on the King.

We will gather in the powerful energies of this Celtic threshold and the new moon in Taurus to reclaim our evolved Queenship and sovereignty 👑

As sovereign Celtic Queens we are agents of evolution healing the split and committed to the union of our inner feminine and inner masculine.

What we will explore and play with in our time together:

• The polarities of Giamos and Samos, feminine and masculine in the Celtic calendar
• Archetype of the Queen
• The mythology of Goddess + King
Míde - the fifth province, the sovereign centre
• 21st century sovereignty - redefining and embodying our sovereignty
• Banais Ríghe ritual - sacred inner marriage of our masculine and feminine

Exchange €185
Link in bio

https://www.thecelticwheel.com/celtic-wheel-summer-school

We can’t wait to gather with you beauties 🌹⭕️🔥

I’ll be offline for a little bit, dropping deep into initiation, and want to leave a note about the Vision Board workshop booking.

If you are interested in coming to the next vision board workshop in Lough Dan on March 11th, send me a DM to book and I will respond after Wednesday March 1st (excuse mistake in the slide).

📸 This photo was taken in the Cave of Cats by @rmulh all1 …. when we went on an adventure and crawled through a hole in the corner of a field to meet Morrigan. I highly recommend it!

It’s on Google Maps in Roscommon and is described as the Gates of Hell but we know it’s really a portal into the seat of power of the underworld. Take a road trip and check it out… turn the torch off and meet the gentle, alive, visceral element of darkness.

Paraphrasing Malidoma Somé -
Life is about preparing for and recovering from ritual.

X

🌗

Here’s what I say to coaching clients who are figuring out how to show up online and not feel icky -
“There’s a distinction between disclosure and vulnerability. Disclosure is sharing from inside the thing and vulnerability is sharing whole-heartedly but from a slightly expanded perspective, having sat with yourself for a minute.”

Personally, I like to integrate experiences through my body before sharing in words… anchoring vertically before weaving horizontally ♾️

I want to bring forth the fruits of my processing and the learnings of my practices, not necessarily the live bathroom floor moments (those golden gifts are reserved for my lucky inner circle and therapist!), though I totally appreciate that that’s not everyone’s way.

Some folks’ wisdom shines in sharing their process live and in the moment - sometimes that feels clean and it’s beautiful when it does, and sometimes it doesn’t. It’s such a fine balance isn’t it - being bravely open-hearted and also being safe?

Sharing the intimate details of what the messy middle has been like a little later feels good to me but I know I need lag time before framing my experience into words. Sometimes that lag time is years.

It’s not about perfectionism (Heaven knows I’m not a perfectionist), it’s about:

• ENERGETIC CONTAINMENT
There’s an energetic containment required for depth and potency, and I dig depth and potency. The more I contain something within my system the more it builds momentum. I work it through my psyche, heart and soma so that when I bring it outside of me, for the most part I feel in clean and clear relationship with it🏹

• SPIRITUAL AND EMOTIONAL HYGIENE
We are in a group technological nervous system here and we need to mind it, and mind ourselves in it. I’m all for sharing vulnerably but disclosure can carry an energetic charge that I don’t find helpful in this tender, collective online space. 🔥
⭕️

Pausing to allow expansion and beauty integrate.

A few weeks ago I was on a weekend silent meditation retreat… only two days, non-residential but the accumulated presence of 6 hours a day sitting in silence, meeting myself over and over, lingers. I feel a little bit more tenderised and resilient since then.

Today I am pausing after the expansion of last week’s workshop hosting, follow up and learning, to allow rest and integration in.

I like to move slowly through life, ensuring I leave no parts of myself behind so that when I do move, it’s like a fiery arrow in integrity, launching into a new spiral.

Of course I have tons of regurgitating traumatic patterning but when I move in this cyclical honouring way, the trajectory shifts for good and I fly further 🏹 🔥 Brigid Abú!

Today is the pause, exhaling and inhaling on the crest of the new moon, the Autumn Equinox of last Saturday’s vision boarding workshop… so so thankful.

Music rest meditation stool crafted by my fab brother-in-law Rob @rddesigns.ie

Off to the hills I go.
Stunning capturing as always from Sophie Strand @cosmogyny

We had a beautiful vision boarding workshop here at Lough Dan on Saturday. 8 souls in circle together going deep in listening, stillness and creativity.

I’m brimming with love and thanks that I get to do this.

A friend called me on Friday and asked when the next workshop is because she wanted to come but was going to the rugby. I said “Have a deadly time at the rugby - Go Ireland 🇮🇪 🏉- and why don’t we host another vision boarding gathering on the land in a month’s time so you can come?” So we are.

I’m following the whispers and we’re having another workshop on Saturday March 11th. DM me to book.

The land welcomes you🌀

Fantastically, the midpoint is not one thing or the other but is inviting us into a new way
🌀
Halfway between solstice and equinox we fall still and listen for the quickening
🌗
Where one phase ends and another begins is not clear and linear but yet we can sense something turning, when we fall still and silent
☯️
Imbolc is a whole season… enjoy the clarifying, seeding and budding

Off I love this woman’s voice! The talented and wise Grace Dyas has a fascinating film about Mary Magdalene playing for a final few days in Red Rua theatre and gallery in Tallaght. Go and see it and the pink rock installation… go experience Grace’s inimitable portrayal of this Spiritual Leader and Equal to Jesus in a contemporary context.

The film plays on loop throughout the day so you can catch it at pretty much any time.

‘A Mary Magdalene Experience’ is a new film by Grace Dyas, correcting the record once and for all. @rua_redo the hills I go.
Stunning capturing as always from Sophie Strand @cosmogyny

May her red cloak wrap you in fierce love and wild abundance 🔥

A cairde. Friends - would you like to gather together and play with the whispering visionings of Imbolc?

I’m longing to be with tribe on the land and honour what is wanting to reveal itself next.

I’d love to welcome you here to the mountains and waters at Lough Dan, to sit with community this early springtime and be with you as you create a vision for your year ahead.

Let’s attune to the mystical landscape and also cosy up in a warm house with tea, biccies, chats and craic.

Let’s create your vision board and discover what’s calling for your attention next, through wanderings in deep meditation and music.

You are lovingly invited to a vision boarding day in a beautiful space by Lough Dan, near Roundwood, on Saturday February 11th - a full day of tuning in and workshopping, hosted by me and the land, with supplies and food provided.

🌱Beauty. Togetherness. Food. Craic. Mysticism. Trees. Simplicity. Love.✨

DM me to book or email hello@lydia.ie

9.30am - 5pm
Cost: a sliding scale of contribution between €50 - €150 is welcomed.
Places are limited so a deposit of €30 will secure your spot.
Refreshments and a vegetarian lunch will be provided.
Full details given upon booking.

A new old card deck found its way to me recently and I’m beginning to relate with it… placing the whole deck on my altar, saying hello as I walk past, seeing where it wants to settle.

In the morning when opening sacred space for the week that’s in it, with Brigid’s Day and Ireland’s first national holiday dedicated to a woman happening, this card fell out - Brigid of Ireland - popping out with a loving fierceness to remind me what’s what.

Of course!
🌀🌀🌀

Something is stirring🌀🌀🌀

It is early springtime in the global north, the daffodil and wild garlic buds are popping through, projects are seeding and everything is shifting once again. I keep forgetting how monumental every seasonal turn is. It’s day-into-night-into-day again, every damn time. And it feels so radically different. I feel so different.

It’s tempting to jump head first into growth now, to go hell for leather into the inspiration and fill my diary with after-school activities or numb out with Netflix (hands up!) and DIY.

The grand stretch in the evenings is calling us forward but let’s go slowly and gently. When I spurt forwards I inevitably leave parts of me behind that I will have to circle back to later. It’s also how I get locked into dysfunctional patterns. Instead, I’m tending to the slow completion of this cycle with plenty of ritualised stillness and darkness. Karen Drucker’s song echoes inside me “And I will only go as fast as the slowest part of me feels safe to go”.

Ritual is a key to marking time and unlocking quantum leaps. The more I honour linear time and the deeper I go in cyclical time, the higher I can soar.

I spent the weekend on a silent meditation retreat listening to the whispers on the edge of my awareness… and the call from my soul. It wasn’t easy to meet myself again and again for hours and hours on end but it’s one of those uncomfortable experiences that pays off in immeasurable ways, both now and down the line.

I wonder what would it be like for us to collectively pause cultural expectations every winter for 3 months, while we drop into the darkness and despair, alone but connected? We can trust that we will transform and then re-emerge on the far side. The seasons don’t get it wrong. The trees don’t get it wrong. Our ancestors on the land may not have been perfect but they left us wise maps of how to engage with this more-than-human experience.

Evolution is layered and ritualistic.
We root to rise.

Imbolc blessings 💫

Living on the north face of a mountain at 1000ft is still something I’m getting used to.

I’ve been away for a few days, celebrating urban joy with kin, and so much has happened on the mountain in a non-happening way… the light changed, a linear calendar flipped a page and stillness has descended. Like an undoing happened.

Winter Solstice is the resting place after Samhain, where we drop into deep listening. We are falling still and opening up to whispers on the edge of our awareness, filaments from the future sent by our soul.

As I sit here in my meditation cabin, I notice my impulse to move stemming from my capitalist programming, and choose to rest here in liminality a little longer. A robin hops in the door and gives a chirp and hops out again, surprised perhaps to find a human in stillness 🪶

I woke up to crisp beauty and majestic rawness today and it somehow makes sense. It feels like the land is deeply still but it is not spiralling inwards anymore… the momentum is fully undone. We sit here together in this in between space, the north face and me, and we listen.

We let liminality infuse us 🌀

or BIRTH BRINGING LIGHT
A wee message in @positivelifedublin magazine about when light seared me open at my son’s birth.

📷 Portrait photo by the fantastic Anna @matchboxpho to

-

This Winter Solstice I am reflecting on when light penetrated my life in the birth of my son, at home on the bedroom floor seven years ago.

My labour had been strong and intense and throughout it I felt expansive, receptive, a softening and a longing in my body to open up more. I felt like a lotus unfolding its petals as my cervix did its holy job. I was called to surrender into the unknown even when everything in my experience felt chaotic. IYKYK! 
Suddenly, the air in the room drastically changed and my orientation shifted towards a clear, focused fierceness. No more openness to everything, I had to deliver on my mission. I saw a spiral of light in the far corner of the ceiling swirl and gather, like it was building up potency and with a strong contraction, that spiral of light flashed down and seared through my body and my son was born.

Thinking of that now brings me embodied hope for the possibility of new beginnings on our planet. Life begins in the darkness and birth begins in chaos before the light can shine through and there's union.

Welcoming the return of the light, the imperceptible flickers of illumination as we let Samhain go and roll into the void of the void.

The obvious activity of Samhain is seductive, I can do grief and loss well, and with conviction. I love burning to the ground what’s no longer aligned and preparing the fallow soil.

Thank you Samhain for your colossal liberation🔥

And now we move into the intense disorientation of stillness. Of all the seasons, I tend to find Winter Solstice the hardest… being so far underground I can’t even feel gravity.

So this time round, I’m playing with being a wee bit gentler with my desires and softer with my mission and seeing where it brings me 🌀

Orienting around ice reweaves my days ❄️🦋🌀

I posted these clips to Stories last week but now that it is gone , I want to see the snow here ❄️🦋💨

This shapeshifting king came to grace my home yesterday… inviting me deeper into the underworld to shed more, trust more, be more magical ✨

And all while having a hoot with its golden paper counterpart.

Welcoming the stag. Thank you to the North 🙏🏻🦌🌀

This raw, wild land welcomed me into its heart recently… working with a business Decelerator programme on the Isle of Bute. We explored leadership and self development in service of all people and planet and how folks can activate their own agency for change, from within organisations.

A beautiful aspect was that everyone was asked not to identify themselves through their work and not to share your job until towards the end… it was exquisite. We were a cross pollination of folks from the business world, local community life on Bute, and human development, and we got to meet as human beings. The last time I did that was on the Camino in 2006 when it was just heart and body meeting heart and body, with no story.

In the emergence and human potential space, often the corporates are left out (and opt out) of the radical conversations that we need to be having. But there’s heart-centred changemaking ninjas working everywhere and all perspectives are required. Here on Bute we came together in a work/development context but without knowing what work we actually did.. it was fantastic. No masks!

I’m being called to the west of the English, Scottish and Welsh isles a lot these days… There’s an awakening in me of a connection to the land before time 🌀

Scottish Celtic culture is alive and I felt it weaving around us… through a recognition of island life under colonialism and the shared experience of a creative, revolutionary soul… back before the English invasions, before the Roman invasions. It sings in the rocks and the waters and through the voices and rituals.

I’ll be back.

🍎 Apple.:. Sacred potent symbol in myth and ritual of Samhain

symbol of
of the Otherworld

5 pointed star

Its colours white(flesh) + red(skin) + black(seeds) represent the 3 faces of the Goddess

⚫️Black Crone
⚪️White Maiden
🔻Red Mother

Final few places left for our Samhain in-person gathering + ritual ENTERING THE DARK FEMININE next Saturday 19th

when, in the balsamic dark phase of the Samhain moon, we will gather to reclaim the lost wisdom + gifts of dark feminine and prepare for the dark half of the cycle

….excited to lead this special witchy gathering with
🔻Dolores Whelan @C elticspirituality
??Lydia Campbell @Lydia.ie
(a tripe Goddess constellation😉)
together we are cooking up a very special day

We will be waiting for you ….

⚫️🔻⚪️ Link in bio

🖤Mx

Posted @wit hrepost • @mariken nedywisdom

The party to celebrate Halloween and have the craic with kids n fancy dress n all… before we really drop into Samhain on November 7th

Recently I spent time on the land in Devon, with its soft, gentle rolling hills and warm welcoming woodlands, the kind that hymns were written about. And through the contrast of gentle Devon landscape with my Wicklow homeland, with jagged peaks and harsh verticality, I learned more about my relationship with my home.  
I live on a mountain called Scarr, meaning Sharp Rock or Rocky Ridge, and it’s not soft and warm… in fact it can feel strong and challenging, and I often brace against it. I love it but it can feel strong and ruthless. Especially this time of year when the predictability of the forthcoming season is not yet settled… this in-betweenness stretches my comfort zone of familiarity.

But time away on softer land showed how much I am being held by my home already, how masculine and structured this mountain is and how if I relate to it wisely, I can surrender into my soft, juicy feminine because it will have my back.

Sometimes I want to drop into a welcoming wombspace and I carve out time, places and relationships and travels for that… but mostly I just want to feel that someone/something has my back while I go about this dance of life. And now I see that this mountain I call home, does. I hadn’t realised it… I don’t have to brace against it, rather I can lean against it and allow it be it, and me be me.

I sit and look out at paradise… held, safe, creative and loving with this rocky ridge at my back.

There is medicine in contrast. I travelled away to look back and see what is truly here, what was and is holding me all along. The wisdom of polarity is weaving its way ♾️

Growing up I was taught there are 4 seasons a year, all of them outside me.
Then I began studying our native ways and dove into experiencing 8, inside me.
And now, since moving into the mountains I reckon there’s around 52 to begin with… me as simply one touch point in the continuum of seasonal life… moving within and without in a never ending exhale inhale dance 🌀

In person event Nov 19th, Chapel of Ease, Dublin 4 
Women coming together, in real life, in urban mysticism, to sit in circle and be in enchantment and longing together. At Samhain. How truly delicious.
 Reframing my relationship to darkness, from a shadow to be avoided into a deep dive I willingly embrace never fails to create magic in my life. So let’s come together and create some winter magic.  
I’m deeply honoured to host this event alongside two great Celtic wisdom carriers Mari Kennedy and Dolores Whelan, as we drop into the rich darkness of winter. Together.   We will prepare ourselves for an intentional journey through the dark half of the Celtic year, the time of Giamos from Samhain through to Bealtaine.  
As the darkness descends we will gather as our ancestors have done through the ages, spinning and reweaving new worlds with the threads of our collective wisdom.

Our day together will be dedicated to the sacred evolutionary work of learning to lead with the feminine, to remember our sovereign power and wisdom, to live from our sacred centre.  Saturday 19th November, The Chapel of Ease, Irishtown, Dublin 4  Tickets @marikennedywisdom

Living alone and solo parenting, sometimes when my boy goes to his other home my system deflates, slumping into the nothingness of being alone… my system drastically exhales not having to hold space for another human being for a minute. It needs to exhale fully in order to pause and inhale again.
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It can take work not to collapse, to stay resourced by my inner scaffolding, my practices and the immediate needs around me. And sometimes full collapse is also what’s needed… less so these days, I am grateful to say.
.
*A note of distinction and honour - solo or single parenting is utterly different to lone parenting. Lone parents are doing it alone, without another parent around, and they don’t get the space to let go on the regular. Sometimes ever. I don’t know how they do it. My weekly opportunities to regroup, rest, work, catch up on domestic life, clean the dusty corners and even have a personal life shore me up and resource me to be a fuller, stronger, more present mamma for when kiddo returns.
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Often I will take this mamma and lie on the Great Mamma and let her hold me… knowing that reparenting happens on many levels.
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We root to rise.
L🌳VE

Slow Friday, letting the week settle… pottering.
🌀
If I make one area look like how I want it to, it becomes a portal into beauty and functionality in all other realms.
🌀
I touch eternity through the mundane of the present moment. I transform my entire life by tending to this dusty corner right in front of me.
🌀
Folding this piece of laundry, leaning into this intimate conversation, oiling this squeaky door hinge is the pathway into infinity.
🌀
The circle becomes the spiral.
🌀
Dimensions reveal themselves.
🌀
Fractal living.
❄️

I’m working with a new paradigm company to support elevating consciousness through accessible, mainstream teachings. It’s got the proper businessy things like a support team, proper funding and an app. I’m being asked to bring wisdom from our Celtic culture (which is really pre-Celtic megalithic, neolithic and early Christian all souped in together) to a fresh, corporate, totally non-woo-woo global audience.
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I’m a baby, sitting on the shoulders of giants in our north western European culture, only 10 years steeped in the indigenous ways of our land which is nothing in the annals of time and the deep immersion required for growing beyond apprenticeship. I don’t even speak our native language. Born into a community of Indian mysticism and Protestant privilege, I was chanting Sanskrit before I could read, not learning Lúsaí.
.
But yet here I am… invited to record meditations and take a place in the web of our culture, within a global context. As humans, we each carry unique coding, maybe the cross-pollination of cultural soups in me are useful in exploring ancient-future indigenosity…. at least that is my prayer. I know I carry these ways in my bones and dance with the spirits of these lands constantly, through the landscape within and without. It would be an affront to the ancestors and descendants to play small and not show up or to say “Not me, not now, not like this.”
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So I said YES. After months of procrastinating, I took a ginormous plunge beyond my comfort zone and spent yesterday afternoon recording in @windmilllanepic tures with Tom from Windmill and Laurel from @mobleystreetproduc tions , holding my hand and being so kind and professional with my tender nerves.
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Thank you to the spirits of the south for spurring me on and nudging me out into this Bealtaine moment ☀️🔥🙏🏻

I love this prayer from the work of my great friend, soul sister and wisdom teacher @marikenn edywisdom

“May all beings find centre and stability in this time of uncertainty,
May all beings anchor in their sovereign centre,
May all beings flourish and blossom.”

Sin é
🙏🏻

This. All the way. Long. Luxuriating. Unapologetically slow. Receptive. Disruptive. Anarchic. Cosmic. Healing.

Thank you @for.the.wil d for the nudge and Robin’s Quill for the wisdom.

I went back and listened to an old episode from the We Can Do Hard Things podcast #wcdht with @alokvmenon … so many beauty bombs shared by this extraordinary artist, poet and comic… along with a decimation of what beauty can mean.

I loved this line, ‘Authenticity is not a destination, it’s an orientation.”

📷 The beautiful work of Lori Menna @cosmiccollage . Check them out 🌈🌕

High summer at the lake… ridiculous breathtaking beauty that never gets old.
I find myself clinging and wishing it stays like this, when my body is inhaling into the warmth and is not bracing against the cold.
But the wheel turns and I know change is constant and I will reorient towards a new autumn sensation someday soon.
📷 artist Orla Madden

The home was derelict for years and this renovation and transformation is my small way of bringing conscious decolonisation into the physical plane, through my heart, hands, words and wallet. It’s also my way of encouraging the deep feminine into Ireland’s homescape, diffusing fierce care as I go.

I literally tell the walls I love them. There’s been healing and ritual in the house.If I ever rent it I will ask folks what do they want from me, how can I be accountable to them, what security do they need to make it feel like home. I will try (and no doubt fail) to answer every rental query with a compassionate response. I won’t call it a ‘property market’ as that feels like a further commodification of our already traumatised, colonised land. And I have learned to hold my boundaries, edit plans and tell some folks to f*** off.

Mostly though, I have to be willing to thrive. This is the revolution.

When I bought it 9 months ago, I felt like I was on a risk, a whim and a prayer… although in reality I’d been prepping for years. It took 40 years to land into my own homeplace and feel the importance of having infrastructure for my life. So I went all in. I invested in my unknown future and maxxed out my time, money, capacity, creativity and focus. It was a blend of radical choices, privilege, trauma and ancestral calling that nudged me along.

For now, it’s celebration time…. here’s to big risks for big changes.

Here’s to Samhain sacrifices, Imbolc ideas, Bealtaine blossoming and Lughnasa loves.

Lughnasa is the time to harvest and celebrate. So often we focus on what’s not done yet, or finish one project and leapfrog into the next, missing the harvest and honouring phase.

#l ughnasadh trains our capitalistic mind to pause and honour what is here. To embed codes of abundance we pause and look around, acknowledging how far we’ve come. There is plenty of time for dreaming, creating and grafting my ass off… but now I celebrate.
Happy Lughnasa loves ❤️ 🍁🫶🏻

How I spend my minutes is how I spend my day is how I create my time is how I show up for life.
⭐️
When Daniel was born I read a blog called The Fly Lady and her key to happiness in life and home was this : a clean, shining sink.
⭐️
The idea being that how we are with the mundane in life is how we are with the macro, and how we are with the magnificent. I love this principle and have spent the last 10 years turning the tide on a lifetime of chaotic momentum. This work takes a decade, easily, and more…
⭐️
And on days where the planets are illuminating my dysfunctional patterns, when I’m ovulating, when I haven’t been disciplined in my practices, when I’m triggered, when I feel overwhelmed by work and I can’t think about home life, … when life does life in its glorious evolution and I cannot see the woods for the trees or the emerging moment for the Universal unfolding… on those days I need an instruction manual for how to live life.
⭐️
So I have this pinned on my fridge to help me remember how to move through the day. If these points get touched upon in a day, I know that life flows better for me than if not.
⭐️
It’s time for an edit to remove washing nappies 🙏🏻 and insert a reminder to Breathe and Move Body (always helpful!)
⭐️
What are your mundane domestic must-dos that help your life flow easefully?

This logo was created for me by the incredible heart, mind and skill of Claire at @thealchemyofdesign many years ago and I feel like I’m only beginning to inhabit it now… forever growing into what’s possible.
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Claire’s work is breathtaking and otherworldly while being deeply practical and applicable. Check her out for worldclass digital artistry and website design @thealchemyofdesign ✨

This hand thrown, porcelain vessel found its way to me
✨
You should feel it… so smooth and nestles snuggly into the hand. I love porcelain.
✨

I’m in a three month journey of sacred imbibing and was thinking how nice it would be to have something beautiful to use solely for medicine.
✨
Collecting Daniel from a playdate we wandered into a healing centre that was disguised as a pottery house. A treasure trove of skill, heart and artistry. Heartistry.
✨
And then this chalice decided to say hello and hop into our home. Simple beauty.
🙏🏻

Co-creating retreats with @raycarbullido ahead of his return to these isles in September / October.

See you on the floor, mat, cushion… whatever your preferred portal is ✨✨✨

Shaking out the cobwebs and waking up my cabin for the summer - office, studio, tent, fairy fort, temple.

Happy Summer Solstice ☀️

I adore high summer energy, the fullness, the activity, the celebration… fecundity abounds.

And the balancing force of this time is to mind that we don’t burn out. Literally and metaphorically. Like Icarus, flying high and not listening to guidance, we can get scorched from doing too much.
☀️
Rest at this time of year is so important… every moment brings wisdom in its polarity.
☀️
I was in summer solstice ceremony on Saturday and spent the rest of the weekend in quiet reflection, integrating alone in the darkness. It may have been a bit odd to hibernate inside while the sun was blazing outside but it felt heavenly and luxurious. My mind was questioning but my body and soul knew what to do.
☀️
By doing this, I hopefully have let the transformation of the ceremony seep into my bones… I’m a bit of a one and done woman, moving slowly but milking a situation to its end. And then it integrates and passes. And now I can move on and ride high again this week.
☀️
Deep bow to Lugh, the sun god of these lands, illuminating shadows and searing my heart open more every day. I simply pray that I have the spaciousness and the internal infrastructure to stay open enough to really receive the heat 🔥

Good times 🤘🏻🤘🏻🤘🏻

This friend landed on my early morning windowsill, tapped on the glass while I was meditating, squawked at me a few times and flew away into the tree tops.
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Thank you Morrigan for your shape-shifting ways… reminding me to fight for life in all its glory and fullness. Take risks. Love bold. Shine bright.
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Often she’s symbolic of the death and depth of wintertime but I feel a death these days actually, as we enter Bealtaine … death alongside the call to action.
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☀️ What has to die so that I may blossom and flourish?
☀️ What risk will I take, to give my soul’s longing a chance at being formed?
☀️ What small parts of me will I kill with kindness so the big me can bravely step forwards in service of this land?
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Thank you great bird.

Springtime has arrived in the mountains and with it my birthday. We can’t believe we had a bbq in March… the earliest we’ve eaten outdoors for years, for sure.
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An evening of celebrations, connection and deliciousness.
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I particularly love the gothic table decor - Mum said it’s a reminder on my birthday of the fragility and beauty of this mortal coil. Epic, thanks Mum 💀💛
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YAY for 41… the end of crossing the threshold into the best decade yet.

Accessing portals deep within our physicality… travelling through the tangible to the intangible and onwards 🏹

Join us next weekend on Saturday March 26th to learn and train with @raycarbullid o

We’ll be gathering in a stunning space overlooking the sea in Greystones. Social connection, Equinox vibes and optimal wellbeing guaranteed ✨

More on Ray’s work as an artist, martial artist and wisdom teacher at www.RayCarbullido.com/about

Exploring evolution through the physical body with @raycarbullido at the Shambala Meditation Centre in London.

So good to be here, London… it’s been a while. Thanks for the welcome and see you again super soon 🙏🏻

We are one interconnected being. I am you. You are me.

Last year to mark the Summer Solstice I gathered with wonderful women from all over the country to create Womandala Na hEireann. Our awareness of our sisters all over the planet feels more acute than ever. My practice tells me that the outer is the inner… as above so below. As within so without. A hard medicine to let in.

Our beautiful bodies of all shapes and sizes wove together under the high summer sun in Wicklow land, honouring the fullness of our creation on the planet at this time.

So grateful to my fantabulous soul sister Deb Davis and Sinead O’Loughlin for seeding this and bringing Womandala to life.

We are one interconnected being. I am you. You are me.

Last year to mark the Summer Solstice I gathAlthough parts of me are lingering in the still alchemy of Solstice, Imbolc is beckoning. This Winter Solstice has been a beautiful one full of light, love and magic… and Brigid knows there’s lots more to come.
🌱
Our Celtic wheel of time keeps turning and my journey is not linear so some pieces of my life can remain deep underground in solstice stillness, if they wish to… while I consciously go and follow the whispers of Imbolc.
🔥
I know from experience that time and ritual moves everything in its own way once I keep showing up. Go gently with yourself, my sweet soul, go gently.
🌱
Brigid’s call is strong. It usually is 💪🏻🏹🔥 I love her, I love her fire and I love the energy of this time.
🔥
My Brat Bríd is laid out tonight being infused with Brigid’s energy as she passes by each home bringing fiery arrows of intentions and blessings for the year ahead. I use this cloth throughout the year as a healing talisman, and cut pieces off for friends who need support and resource. A piece will go in my bra for important meetings and travels.
🌱
Brigid’s blessings loves 🔥 Brigid ABÚ 🔥ered with wonderful women from all over the country to create Womandala Na hEireann. Our awareness of our sisters all over the planet feels more acute than ever. My practice tells me that the outer is the inner… as above so below. As within so without. A hard medicine to let in.

Our beautiful bodies of all shapes and sizes wove together under the high summer sun in Wicklow land, honouring the fullness of our creation on the planet at this time.

So grateful to my fantabulous soul sister Deb Davis and Sinead O’Loughlin for seeding this and bringing Womandala to life.

I’m so grateful to be living in heaven on earth at Lough Dan.

📸 Thank you brother @rmulhall 1 for the perspective, it’s so good to have you here while you’re here.

I’m so grateful to be living in heaven on earth at Lough Dan.

📸 Thank you brother @rmulhall 1 for the perspective, it’s so good to have you here while you’re here.

May the magic of this stillpoint illuminate blessings in your life.

Thank you @lynn_karma_yog a for the nourishing solstice sound bath to welcome in the light.

📸 @emilylan etv for helping midwife my cosmic light on the human plane

We can do hard things and welcome the rewards of going deep.

We root to rise. 💛🔥✨🔥✨🔥💛

THE HARD THING ABOUT SAMHAIN

Grounding. Loving. Releasing.
The bowels of Samhaintime claw me downwards
Furling into the underworld
To the ancestors whispering through the veil.

Terrified of 'What Ifs" and "If Onlys"
I cling with broken fingernails to my year past,
Longing to bypass the discomfort of transition
And leap into the year ahead, unconscious.

But the time to pause is now.
To witness, allow, grieve.
To stay in the chaos of the unknown
And allow this cycle's lessons to land.

If I can just allow my tears have their way with me
And trust in the unprovoked emergence of life,
I know that one dawn soon I will sense again
The stirs of creativity rumbling.

For now the message is to simply trust.
Flippantly said, given the hard thing about trusting.
But resting into my backbone I feel a fierce truth confirming -
That I can indeed do hard things.

Was Autumn always this gold or were my glasses the wrong tint?
(Swipe right for vid)
✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨

Happy Samhain… the gift of honouring loss and letting go of what’s no longer working for us.
🔥
I don’t know about you but I’m finding things are beginning to feel super busy and that if I’m not careful, the wheels might come off. It’s as though the force of September-back-to-schoolness, together with emergence from lockdown, has picked up momentum and now it’s in danger of running away with itself.
🌈
But then just in time, NOvember arrives and helps me say ‘No’ to adding more things to my diary.
🔥
And Samhain arrives to teach us purging, releasing, letting go and bringing us into intimate connection with death.
🌈
So what needs to die?
What needs to be said ‘No’ to?
What needs to be let go of SO THAT space can be made for new life to enter in?
🔥
The land doesn’t care how I feel about disappointment or fomo… it simply lets things die when they need to die.
🌈
And shows me that rainbows rise during storms.
.

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