Stillness

I have begun 2021 by trying to cultivate the quality of stillness in my life. Stillness as the definition suggests brings silence, the absence of noise or disturbance, tranquillity, quietness and the absence of movement’.

Mine has been a life that has been defined by perpetual motion and constant engagement, I went to 17 different schools growing up and I can’t even tell you how many houses I’ve lived in, I honestly have no idea, stillness has been an elusive element to say the least. From the chaos of a gyspy childhood to the chaos of communal houses in my twenties to the chaos of family life in my thirties and forties, I can barely remember a day of absolute stillness that was not deliberately manufactured.

Now as I reach for stillness I am still in the midst of the motion, still a working mother. In order to find the stillness for my spiritual practice I must wake up at 5am. This gives me an hour and a half before the family wakes at 6.30am and the movement begins. I carve out this time for stillness knowing that countless other mothers around the world have done or are doing the same thing at the same time. A silent army of battle scarred women retreating from a society who insists on pulling us in the opposite direction to our true feminie nature, women with bodies and psyches that ebb and flow with the moon who are forced into rigid currents that pull us like riptides away from our true natures. On days when we want to dream, we are needed at work, on days when we want to create, we are lured away by obligations, on days when we want to work, we are distracted and pulled in a thousand directions. Until we have drifted so far away from ourselves that we don’t even know who we are anymore.

 When that happens the carving out of stillness begins in earnest. In the early hours of the morning, in the nature trails and walks squeezed in between the pick ups and drop offs and meetings and deadlines, a precious hour here or 30 minutes there, to wander along a trail or sit on a rock, to swim in the ocean, to feel a moment of stillness.

Because we know that only in those moments can we remember ourselves fully. To finally hear what our hearts are trying to say, ‘Oh this is what my heart wants.’ ‘This is the true source of my pain’ ‘This is what needs to change’ ‘This is who I really am’

I need this stillness like a fire needs oxygen. Without it my fire dwindles and begins to suffocate. The older I get the more urgent it becomes. As a young woman I was fuelled by other things; passion, hope, lust, excitement, as a new mother I had no choice but to follow the path of surrender, all my learning at that time came in the form of surrender, endless days of surrendering. But as peri-menopause reaches it last few months or years and the transition from mother to maga or crone is nearly complete, the need for stillness has become radical, fanatical and all consuming. Something I seek above all else. As my kundalini snakes up from my reproductive centres and comes to rest in my third eye all I want to do is sit with it and gaze within and discover myself all over again. And for this I need stillness.

2021, the year I create and honour stillness. The year I carve out retreats full of stillness for working, for mediation, for growing and exploring. The year I wake earlier or go to bed later so I can find daily moments of stillness, the year I seize moments in nature where I can let her stillness show me how to find my own.

From out of this stillness I hope to come to you renewed and transformed; on my courses, in my clinic and on a new creative journey with Karina Sharpe to bring you a new book, the daughter of Wildcraft, a recipe book full of wild plants and backyard medicine. My first retreat begins next week. A writing retreat for my new book, a time of stillness to honour the creative process. “So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.” (T. S. Eliot)