Nimue Brown's Blog, page 17

Healing and not healing

(Nimue)

I wrote recently about forgiveness, raising the issue of what happens when people refuse to try and heal. Of course not everything can be healed, and not everything should be. We don’t really heal some griefs – not in the sense of moving on from them. Some losses are too great to ever let go of. What we have to do with those is figure out how to carry them.

Not all physical problems can be healed. It’s important to be kind to ourselves, and to others about things that can’t be fixed. Too many people blame and shame those who are stuck with limited options, as though the only real problems are not trying hard enough, or making a fuss. I think this has a protective function – if you can believe that, then you can also believe there’s no way those things could happen to you. It’s an unkind illusion and best avoided.

Grief isn’t just a bereavement issue. Illness and injury can bring a lot of grief around the life lost, and the future that will not now be as we hoped. Loss of jobs, of homes, of communities and hopes also creates profound grief. The climate crisis will bring more of this, and we are in no way ready for it.

Grief can also be a part of what we’re left with after traumatic experiences and can actually be helpful. In that context. Both grief and rage will help you reassert your own boundaries and personhood.

The things we most need to work on healing are the ones that give us unhelpful coping mechanisms. Life wounds all of us, and healing is an ongoing issue for everyone. Finding ways to stay hopeful and able to keep trying is really important. Healing is how we protect ourselves from bitterness, apathy and belief in our own powerlessness. These are huge and complex topics that I will keep dipping into as I learn more.

We learn things that get us through specific situations but that are not good rules to live by. I learned to cry silently, and to pretend to be ok when I wasn’t (amongst other things). These were necessary skills for toxic situations. In spaces where I am safe and cared about, they make me difficult to deal with and deny me comfort that would otherwise be readily available. Those are out of date set of coping mechanisms that I have been working to change.

It isn’t always easy spotting a coping mechanism that no longer works for you. However, in terms of psychological healing, these are well worth looking for, as getting to grips with them helps us all move on. Supporting people when you see them struggling with these is also a good choice. From the outside, simply affirming that the other person is safe and welcome can help give them the space to dismantle limiting coping mechanisms.

Green autumns

(Nimue)

I remember when some years, the leaves were off the trees by the end of September, although that was unusual. In my twenties, when thinking about physical markers for the seasonal festivals, I noted that the leaves are pretty much always off the trees by the 31st October – at least in my part of the world.

It is early October, and most of the trees around me are still very green and all of them are leafy. The lime seeds have dropped, and there’s a nearby field maple that has started to turn, but otherwise there is a lot of green. It feels a bit odd. Clearly this is a result of climate chaos.

It’s hard to feel in synch with the seasons when the seasons are not behaving as you might expect them to. It’s been greener later into the year for a while now, but I’m still not fully used to it. First frosts are considerably later too, but the nuts and berries are here.

In recent days I’ve seen a huge number of plantain flowers, and I’m pretty sure that’s not been a dramatic presence at this time of year before. I’m not sure what’s changed there. More plantains? Later flowering? something else? The fungi are thriving and doing what I’d expect, but they are coming up in places where in previous years the undergrowth would have died back by now. There are still a lot of plants growing at the margins – not just the plantains.

This feels like an in-between time – a season that definitely isn’t fully autumn yet and also absolutely isn’t summer.

Time to howl

(Nimue)

Sometimes you have to howl, and rage against the state of the world. The things that humans do to each other in the name of ideas, is horrific. Religions, and countries are only real because we’ve agreed they are, and yet these become justifications for murder. Greed is the other driving force towards hideousness as companies and politicians go about destroying life on the planet for the sake of short term profits.

Sometimes howling is all you can do.

Most of us have very little power. We can protest. We can sign petitions and try to live in ways that limit the harm we’re doing. The systems we live in can make it very hard indeed to limit the harm, poverty can push people into unsustainable choices. How do you dismantle murderous capitalism while having no choice but to operate within it?

Howl.

It’s better to feel it, to make room for the rage and grief rather than sliding into numb apathy. When we cannot bear to feel it, when we no longer have the will to care then we are likely to become part of the problem. The temptation grows of thinking that it would all be fine if we could just get rid of those other people. (I tend to think of billionaires, although I would rather remove their wealth and power than see them killed. Mostly.) Suffering invites conflict all too easily.

Push someone beyond what they can bear, and they may strike back. Crush people until they have nothing left to lose and they are likely to choose violence. Threaten people, and they are likely to want to defend themselves. We have deep seated, long standing hostilities in this world, and turning that around would take heroic efforts. It’s not impossible, though. Nothing is impossible if enough people will it, and are willing to do the work, and that’s something to keep aiming for, no matter what happens.

Love and belief

(Nimue)

In many ways, life is just intrinsically terrifying and must have been more so for the majority of our ancestors. There are so many things that can hurt and kill us, so few things that can reliably help us. And yet, humans have the capacity for hope and to see the best in things. Being miserable and terrified is seen as a kind of illness, not a perfectly reasonable response to experience and expectation. This fascinates me.

Over the last couple of years, I’ve learned a great deal about the transformative magic of feeling loved. It’s something I’d previously been missing. Feeling loved stimulates all the body chemistry that makes existence bearable. It creates resilience, and confidence and no matter what happens, there is that safe space to rely on.

I think this is an important part of what religions offer. The idea that something outside of you loves you, clearly has the capacity to be emotionally insulating, if you can invest in the idea. I’ve never been able to – and that’s a big part of why a deity orientated approach to Druidry doesn’t work for me.

I have no trouble accepting the idea of deities existing. I have never been able to imagine that any deity would be interested in me, and the idea of my being personally cared about by a deity has always seemed laughable. It’s an easy enough idea to accept when thinking about others, but not for me. But then, it’s hard to imagine feeling something it turns out that you’ve never really felt.

Love is something we can manifest in the world. No matter what you believe, you can choose to embody the shining benevolence of the universe. Life can be cold, harsh and mechanical if we choose to make it so. If we choose instead to bring warmth and care, to nurture and support each other, and manifest love in whatever way we can, then that makes a huge difference.

The love we feel for each other, for creatures, and the land, and anything else we care about, is love we get to feel. For most of my life, I thought that was all there was. Being loved in a way that enters in, and learning how to yield to that, has been so powerful for me. I start to understand what it might mean to encounter that in a spiritual context. I’m increasingly convinced that the experience of being loved – in whatever form that takes – is intrinsic to being able to thrive as a human.

New seasonal stories

(Nimue)

I’ve got a lot of projects on the move that I’m rather excited about, so there will be a few posts coming up with news in them over the next few weeks.

I’m going to be writing a novel where the structure is one chapter per month. I will be sharing it monthly, so people who get in for that can follow the story at the appropriate time of year – there will be thirteen chapters and the first one will be out in a few weeks. Join me on Patreon as a Little Fiction, Steampunk Druid, or Epic to be in on that.

Once it’s written I will be bringing it out into the world by other means. I like the way that using the monthly post structure is actually going to be relevant for the nature of the book. There will be a lot of seasonal content, including folk and Pagan seasonal activity. This is going to be a folk horror novel, but more on the spooky and gothic side, than graphic. None of the cats or children will be harmed in the tale. There is quite a bit of murder, and a lot of ghosts, and other strangeness.

I’ve got the story broadly planned out, and will be writing each chapter in the weeks before it goes out. This should be fine – I’ve enough experience of writing in structured ways to know I can deliver this tale month by month. It’s a nice feeling having that confidence in my own work at this point.

In the same time frame, I will also be writing a Druidic non-fiction book – more on that soon. Again, I’m confident about being able to do both as for some years now I’ve tended to have a fiction project and a non-fiction on the go at the same time. One of the great things about having multiple projects on the go is that if I get stuck with something, I can flip over to something else. It makes the writing process for any given book a bit slower, but that has advantages too. Time for reflection is always good.

Patreon support makes life a bit more viable for me. Income from writing is often sporadic, for one thing. I also give away a lot of work – not least the pieces I put together for this blog. Being funded makes it easier to give away blog content and books, to perform at community events and to support Pagan events as a speaker. Dropping a few pounds, or dollars in the hat each month really helps. So, a big thank you to the people who do that, and to everyone who buys my books, shares my posts and otherwise supports my work. It’s greatly appreciated.

Join Patreon at the Bards and Dreamers level, Steampunk Druid or Epic for my non-fic works in progress https://www.patreon.com/NimueB

Supporters who are Oolites get some otherwise unavailable content each month, advanced warning of things, and suchlike.

If you like what I do and want to make a on-off donation, those are also much appreciated, and I have a ko-fi page for those. https://ko-fi.com/O4O3AI4T/

Affirmations and mental health

(Nimue)

Our brains are prone to developing habits, and will run down familiar lines of thought with little prompting. This can mean that we get into the habit of fear and misery, because those are our most familiar tracks. This kind of information is often presented in a way that makes it sound like a personal failing, like you’ve chosen to think the wrong thoughts and just need to try harder. That’s not even slightly helpful.

If experience has taught you to be fearful, to expect the worst and not to dare to imagine good things, breaking out of that is really hard. You can’t do it if your circumstances are crushing you. Recognising when mental unwellness us caused by something external can be a good first step to taking back some control.

Affirmations can be a toxic mess – if you’re trying to persuade yourself of things that aren’t true, they will hurt you. If you are using affirmations it is really important that they are true, and believable. My experience has been that more vigorously positive ones can actually push me towards panic, not away from it. Less ambitious affirmations can get more done. For example…

I am good enough. I can cope. I can get through this. I am capable.

I find these can help dial down panic and keep me focused on what I can do.

“I deserve to be happy,” is a good thing to repeat to yourself. There’s no point aspiring to constant happiness, but there should be room for some of it in your life.

It’s worth taking the time to write these for yourself, linking up three or four concepts that will help you, and that are easy to remember and repeat. In my own healing journey, I’ve been using  “I am loved, I am safe, I am welcome, I am home,” because that tackles a lot of issues for me. Otherwise the thing I most need to do for myself is affirm my own competence.

Affirmations are very powerful when we offer them to other people. It can take some delicate balancing, because if someone is hurting and your response suggests you think they shouldn’t be hurting, that does more harm than good. Affirming capability is supportive without negating the difficulties. Affirming that someone is loved and valued can help hold them through difficult times. “I believe in you,” is a really powerful thing to offer another person. Belief is a form of magic, and when we offer that to each other it can be highly effective.

We can change our minds about pretty much anything. It is as well to do that deliberately, and gently. Don’t push for dramatic shifts, take it one step at a time. I am good enough. I am worthy. I am allowed to make mistakes. I am growing. I am learning. I can change my life. I can change my thoughts and feel better about myself.

The King of Annwn

(Nimue, review)

In The King of Annwn, Sister Patience has done a number of remarkable things. She’s taken a lot of existing mythology – mostly but not entirely British – and woven it into a single, coherent narrative. That’s quite a feat all by itself, and has the effect of casting a number of familiar stories in interesting new lights. Anyone on the Druid path and interested in the mythology modern Druidry refers to will likely find this a fascinating read.

However, the book is considerably more than this. Sister Patience has brought these tales together in a particular way because she’s writing her own sacred text. I’ve thought for a long time that writing your own sacred text might be a very good idea. It’s not something I’ve managed (yet). It’s the first time I’ve seen someone really go for it, and this book very much affirms for me that it is a good thing to do.

The book is clearly expressed as personal gnosis. I have no idea how it might come across to someone not already familiar with the relevant stories. I don’t feel it’s written for anyone not already invested in these tales and the Godds within them. The writing often echoes the poetic styles of early texts, and mixes prose and poetry to good effect. It’s often dreamlike. I think it invites the reader to consider how they tell their versions of these stories, what they focus on, skip over, or interpret on their own terms.

If you are drawn to Gwyn ap Nudd, to Welsh and Irish mythology, and to encountering other people’s personal gnosis, then definitely check this book out. I found it to be a really rewarding read – coming to this as a person interested in the myths. It isn’t my version of these stories at all, but that was good. I don’t need anyone to reflect my takes back to me, while seeing someone else explore these tales on different terms has been educational and interesting. I ended up with valuable things to consider about my own interpretations.

You can pick up a pdf directly from the author’s website – https://sisterpatience.com/publications/the-king-of-annwn/

Building a relationship with the land

(Nimue)

It’s good to get to test theories! Since he’s been living with me, Keith has been drawn into some of my ways of doing things, which were unfamiliar to him at first. Recently, while we were planning a walk to look for toadstools, he shared some observations.

Particularly, that when you know a place through repeat walking, you really see how the seasons play out there. You notice all the changes.

Having walked some of the same places many times, for more than a year, he’s developed a sense of place and time that was not previously available to him.

Watching this process has been really interesting for me. I grew up in the area I live in, I’ve spent most of my life on the edge of the Cotswolds. Keith hasn’t lived in this landscape for long, and watching him build a real relationship with the area has confirmed for me many things that had thought were probably true.

Feeling connected to a landscape roots a person. It’s a source of stability. Repeat visiting and re-encountering are key to developing those feelings of connection. You have to encounter a place through the seasons to really understand it. There’s also something powerful about standing in a place and looking at other places you know, and having a sense of how the landscape connects.

The more time you spend doing this, the more internalised that sense of landscape becomes. Being in a landscape that is also inside you is a powerful thing.

Druidry and joy

(Nimue)

The more time I spend thinking about it, the more convinced I am that joy is key to everything. Our planet killing capitalism has us swinging back and forth between profound unhappiness, and the idea of happiness – usually in the form of things we can buy. Happiness is a passing emotion, like all other emotions. It comes and goes. Trying to be happy all the time doesn’t work, and pushes us into destructive consumption.

Joy is a way of being, not a passing emotional state. It’s about having a relationship with the world that allows us to appreciate what’s beautiful and feel grateful for what’s good. It gives us room for happiness without demanding that we suppress our other feelings. Joyfulness is a philosophical position, a considered belief, and one we can cultivate no matter what our circumstances.

To be joyful, we need to be comfortable in who we are. Integrity, authenticity, and honour are important underpinnings for this. Being able to respect ourselves and value ourselves really helps. Being alert to the wonders of the natural world, to everyday magic, small beauties and blessings opens us up to joy.

Conversely, when we’re focused on competition, consumption, and those advertised promises of happiness that never deliver, we are cutting ourselves off from joy. When you’re always hankering after more, bigger, faster, shinier, newer… when you feel you have to compare yourselves to others, then you cultivate dissatisfaction and misery. It’s no way to live.

Religions exist largely to help us live well – although how that’s understood varies a great deal. Studying Druidry and following the Druid path offers us a great deal in terms of learning how to be joyful. I have tended to come at this from an angle of trying to see how to fix things, how to heal and change. I’ve realised lately that I need to focus more on the joy aspect, and on what we move towards, as well as what we’re moving away from.

I’ve learned an astonishing amount about joy in the last eighteen months or so. I’ve been startled by my own capacity for it, and by how easy it can be to open into it – in the right circumstances. How we create more joy for each other is an ongoing consideration. I think the invitation to joy was there all along, intrinsic in the Druid path, and a natural consequence of making Druidry part of your life. As I’m coming to understand this more, I should have more to share.

Joy is how we heal – ourselves, each other and our relationship with the planet. Joy is the answer, and in Druidry we can find the tools we need for more joyful living.

Dealing with a trauma legacy

(Nimue)

When people have experienced trauma, they can have flashbacks that drop them into feeling like they are back in those previous experiences. When the trauma is complex, the flashback is more into an emotional state. It can be very hard to tell that this is happening when you are in it, you simply re-experience feelings you had during a traumatic period. It can make it very difficult to handle what’s going on.

If you are on the outside of this, dealing with someone whose responses seem disproportionate, this is really hard. I flagged this in the recent post on self forgiveness, and David raised this issue in the comments. If someone is traumatised, they may react like you are attacking them, which is horrible to deal with if that wasn’t your intent. In the short term, the only way to meet that is with gentleness, kindness, and patience, which is not easy at all.

Whether you’re dealing with your own trauma legacy or someone else’s, there’s not much you can do while it’s all kicking off. The time to do the work is after the triggering, when it’s all still fresh in your mind, but not as pressing. When you have the brain space to act, it is vitally important to do so. This is the window of opportunity to figure out what just happened, to identify the triggers, and to check about how safe you really are right now.

The way out of a trauma legacy is to build a sense of the present strong enough to overrule what’s in the past. You can’t do that until you are actually in a safe place. If you have had a triggering incident involving someone else, spending time on it afterwards is really important. This  stops the past from damaging your current relationships. It means being able to flag up what the triggers were – which helps the people around you not accidentally set you off. It helps them recognise what they weren’t to blame for, so it is restorative that way. From there you can start to figure out better things to try to move forward.

I’ve learned a lot about this in the last few years. Recovery is more feasible with support and care. It is possible for two people with trauma triggers that interact to work through that and come out ahead. Communication is key. If you let panic take over and don’t question it, you can end up blaming someone innocent for problems that only ever existed in your own head. Nothing good comes of this.

Dealing with a trauma legacy – yours or someone else’s – is not easy. These issues are made of pain and fear, rooted in the most appalling experiences. However, we have to deal with it. Those of us who have been traumatised have a responsibility – to ourselves and to those who want to be close to us – not to let the shit we’ve been subjected to keep hurting anyone. The person you have most obligation to protect from the ongoing harm a trauma legacy can cause, is yourself. You do not deserve to keep suffering.

Trying not to deal with it can cause a lot of harm to the people around you. By this means, trauma can be handed on. There’s that old saying to the effect that hurt people hurt people. However, if you’re taking responsibility for your healing and recovery then other things start to happen. Healing people heal people. As we get to grips with our own issues we become able to help others with their struggles. Our healing lifts and cheers the people who care for us. Healing old wounds is not a selfish choice, it’s the best thing we can do.

Being traumatised often includes an aspect of being persuaded that we deserved it, and that can make it really hard to move on. If we don’t want to deserve our pain, then I think we have some obligation not to let that wounding wound others in turn.

As ever, kindness is a big part of the answer. Dealing with trauma calls for being kind to yourself, and building relationships founded on kindness. Recognising how your pain hurts others is itself painful, but getting to grips with that makes real change possible.