Nimue Brown's Blog, page 18

Without forgiveness

(Nimue)

Without forgiveness there’s no way to effectively move on with a situation. Sometimes that’s a very good idea – if someone has seriously hurt or harmed you, forgiveness probably isn’t the right response. Getting away from them can be a far better choice. However, when it comes to genuine mistakes, not letting them go causes its own problems.

If the focus remains on the mistake, that can leave no room for something restorative. Fixing things usually calls for second chances and the opportunity to do better. To do that, we have to recognise our own scope to learn and improve – which is a far better thing to focus on. Getting stuck in the mistake and feelings caused by a mistake can make a whole situation unnecessarily toxic.

The person who beats themselves up and makes the focus how terrible they’ve been can shut down criticism. It’s hard raising an issue with someone who is likely to do massive self-flagellation over it, in my experience. The person expressing a problem can start to feel like a bully if the person called out howls and screams in response. It’s an effective abuse strategy. Making the discomfort of being called out over something more important than whatever was wrong in the first place isn’t healthy.

Forgiveness and restorative action have to go together. That’s equally true when we’re dealing with ourselves. A mistake should feel forgivable when we’re trying to deal with it effectively. This is how we avoid being the person who has a meltdown over being told they are wrong. Focus on solutions, on fixing and restoring and you can be confident that you just made a mistake and it’ no big deal. That’s entirely forgivable. If you go the other way, doubling down on the mistake and pretending it’s fine, you’re on the path to being someone who deliberately causes harm in order to protect their own ego. That’s not something to willingly do to yourself.

Forgiving yourself can be hard if you’ve not been shown forgiveness. Being blamed unfairly can make it difficult to work out how not to carry blame and guilt forward. However, these are heavy things to carry. It is better to focus on learning and improving, than on guilt and shame. If you learn and do better, you are worthy of forgiveness regardless of how anyone else in the situation relates to you.

If someone has called you out on something, the odds are they just want it sorted out. They want restorative action and may well be able to tell you what that would require. If a situation cannot be fixed, it can always be learned from. That means not repeating it. If you seek forgiveness on the promise that you will do better next time, you have to follow through on that. People who refuse to change and repeatedly make the same ‘mistake’ are questionable as to how unintended their ‘mistake’ is.

If you are called out over something you were not responsible for, or have no means to fix then the call out itself is the problem. Blaming and scapegoating are difficult things to be on the receiving end of, and not internalising that experience is hard.

When we forgive ourselves, that can help shift the focus away from what went wrong and towards how we move forward. We all make mistakes, and those are vital for being able to learn and grow. Seeking perfection can just be a form of paralysis. Forgiving yourself so as to avoid having to even look at your mistakes is a bad choice, and one that harms the person doing it.

Cultivating Druidic Qualities

(Nimue)

For me, Druidry is primarily about what I embody in the world. It’s not about my specific beliefs – our ancestors honoured many deities, and no doubt practices were diverse. It’s not about doing specific rituals, or wearing the right robes or owning the right items. All of those things can be relevant and part of a specific path and have their place, but I don’t consider them defining of my spirituality. Religions, philosophies and spiritual paths only make sense if we integrate them into our daily lives. We have to live our truth if we want it to be real to us.

One way of approaching Druidry is to think about the qualities you consider in-line with the path. If we take inspiration from what we know about the Celtic peoples, what we know from the mediaeval tales, and what we learn directly, from the divine or from the natural world at assuming you sperate those two out, and you might not…) that can guide us. There’s a wealth of ideas to work with.

Who we are is what we do. We become what we aspire to. We are informed by what we most often think, by how we act and the environments we spend time in. Humans have an incredible capacity to grow and change, and we can do so deliberately. The person you set out to be is your most authentic self.

You can contemplate the qualities you associate with Druidry, and look for ways to make that part of your everyday life, and part of who you are. What do you find powerful? What inspires you? What do you admire? Do you need to be someone who spends more time outside, communing with the sky? Do you need to find more ways to actively practice compassion? Are you dismantling internalised capitalism? Do you wish to embody calm, or justice, or hope?

This is not a decision you can only make once. You can choose the qualities you embody day by day. You don’t have to be just the one thing. Over time you may wish to explore embodying different principles. There’s no wrong way of doing this, it’s simply about being deliberate, conscious of what you do, and seeking to live by your principles.

At the moment I’m focused on trying to embody calm hopefulness, as I think that’s needed by the people around me. I want to be active about inspiring others. I’m thinking about those times when it is necessary to be fierce, to hold boundaries and refuse injustice, and how to do that. I’m still thinking about forgiveness, as well, and what that might do, and how and where to bring it. It’s good to keep asking ‘what am I bringing into the world?’ and to wonder what I could bring, and how to be more effective.

The magic of confidence

(Nimue)

Confident people try things. If they have enough confidence, then setbacks and mistakes do not leave them feeling so overwhelmed with failure that they quit. Of course there are times when quitting is a good idea, and we need to be realistic about our limits. However, looking around I see less than skilled people, not so wise people, not especially knowledgeable or effective people in places of power and influence. I see too many good people not confident enough in their own abilities.

Confidence tends to have more to do with privilege than anything else. Wealth is a massive factor. But then, it’s easier to take risks and make mistakes if you can afford to. When we measure the value of people by the money they have, we overlook potential, and the ways in which a lack of affluence make it hard to act effectively in the first place. We ignore the many ways in which worth has nothing to do with the ability to get paid.

Confidence is a spell we can cast upon each other. It’s a kind of everyday magic each of us has the power to put into the world. When we praise what’s good, and appreciate each other’s skills and actions, we help each other build confidence. Confident people are more able to act. In valuing each other, we can help make sure there is more in the world of the things we value. Praise and appreciation keeps people going when all else fails. This is very true of creative people. It’s often true of people who are studying, starting small business, raising children, providing care to others, volunteering, involved in activism…

There are so many vital human activities that we don’t reward economically. However, there are many ways of expressing value. When we do that, we’re making a difference. Little, everyday spells can look like saying ‘well done’ or ‘thank you.’ It doesn’t have to be dramatic to have an impact.

Self forgiveness

(Nimue)

I’ve spent most of my life feeling that forgiveness should come from the other person. That makes sense if you’ve knowingly wronged someone else for no good reason.  However, messing up can take many forms. We can hurt people by accident all too easily. We can be blamed for things that weren’t our fault. I don’t think anyone should have to carry that forever. There are people who use blame as a control tactic to keep others down. If you’ve been made to feel unforgiveable as part of an abuse process then forgiving yourself is an important part of healing.

Did you mean to cause harm? If you did, was there a reason? Was what you did necessary for some other reason? Apologising, explaining and trying to rebalance things can get a lot done. If you had to let someone down because of some other important commitment, for example, that doesn’t make you a terrible person. We can’t magically know what the consequences of our choices will be, even when we’re trying hard to get everything right.

No one should be blamed for genuine mistakes and accidents. Even if you can’t persuade the other person that you meant no harm, you can put this down on your own account. The important thing with mistakes is to learn from them and not repeat them. The person who declines to learn is, at some point, not making mistakes but is acting carelessly, and is therefore responsible for the ham they do.

The hardest of these to unpick is where you’ve been blamed or made responsible as a deliberate tactic to hurt and limit you. When the process is deliberate, it’s often also subtle and hard to spot. When nothing you do is ever good enough, that will grind you down. Being reacted to in disproportionate ways is a really nasty form of gaslighting. Having the other person behave as though you’ve been aggressive or unreasonable when you haven’t can damage your relationship with reality. Whether that comes from deliberate intentions to hurt, or someone acting out of their own trauma, it is a very damaging thing to experience.

It took me a long time to realise that a person reacting to me like I’d attacked them did not mean I’d done anything wrong. I spent years trying to get this right – speaking softly, avoiding accusation, avoiding anything that could be interpreted as blame, trying to stay calm – when I was in distress and needed that taking seriously. Inevitably at some point I’d crack under the strain, and that regularly took me into self-harming. Asking to be treated in ways that would allow me to function is not a form of attack. Being reacted to like it was persuaded me over time that I was something irrational, unreasonable, monstrous even.

For me, the process of self-forgiveness is a slow one. I’m not there yet, and I still have a lot of anxiety to unpick. I could not have tried harder, because there was no amount of trying that would have been good enough. In the last eighteen months I’ve been told that I’m easy to be around, that what I want makes sense and is easy to accommodate. Apparently I’m not unkind, or aggressive, or inconsiderate. When I’m allowed the things that I thought I needed all along, my mental health is pretty stable, and my physical health is better. Step by step I’ve learned to trust the evidence of my own body in all of this.

I did not mean to be a monster. I was not intending to cause harm. Sometimes I was so distressed that I could not force myself into reassuring and untroubling shapes. These are not, I have decided, terms on which I need to hate and mistrust myself. I don’t have to second guess my every move and motive. I don’t have to be hypervigilant for fear of getting things terribly wrong.

Healing makes me a better person – there’s no two ways about it. Feeling better in myself, I am calmer. My not suffering  makes me easier to be around. Having what I need puts me in a much better position to function day by day. When I was riddled with anxiety, I wasn’t easy to deal with – not a monster, just someone who was struggling. My being happy is something that can lift others, and enables me to get more done.

Taking the tales seriously

(Nimue)

About this time last year I started asking myself some tentative questions about what would change if I took myself seriously. In the last few weeks, working on the current Hopeless, Maine kickstarter, I recognised that this was a project where I’d entirely failed to do that.

I’ve been working on Hopeless for easily sixteen years. I’ve written scripts, blogs, and novellas, I’ve done all the social media side and most of the marketing. I wrote songs and performance material, and organised performances. I’ve worked on page layouts, sourcing references, and colouring the pages. As we went along, Tom spent less time on the page art and left me to try and make it work at the colouring stage. I did a lot of work for Hopeless, Maine in a whole array of ways.

However, I spent most of that time centring the artwork as the main feature. Granted, people can respond quickly to art and it takes longer to get people engaged with stories. The Hopeless, Maine graphic novels are a story – told over six books (five in the Sloth Comics editions). It’s a story that matters to me, with themes of identity, and the use and abuse of power. The main character is so afraid of her own power that she seldom really uses it, not until the very end of the tale.  Learning how to be powerful and how to use your own power effectively is something I think people need stories about.

Right at the beginning of the project I wrote a novella which has languished in limbo for more than a decade because it wasn’t a priority. I’m delighted that Outland Entertainment are going to publish it, and that will be coming out in December. I’m looking at how to get my other Hopeless, Maine books out into the world. I’ve got stories to share, and they are strange, sometimes funny tales and I think people will enjoy them.

I spent a long time not taking myself as seriously as I could have done, on this and other projects. I wrote a story about a young woman who was afraid of her own power, and who thought that being powerful meant she must be some kind of monster. I did not consider myself powerful, but I certainly worried about being a monster. Some of this story rose unconsciously from things I wasn’t dealing with on my own account, I realise.

After the graphic novels, the story of the island continues, but in very different ways. From here it’s much more about community and people working together – in deeply weird circumstances – to do the best they can with what they’ve got. These days there are a number of people writing for the project, and a few people stepping up on the art side. I’ve been making spaces where anyone who wants to can easily join in, and there will be more of that. I started building a community around this project as soon as I got involved with it, and I shall keep that going, and offer space for anyone who wants to join in. We still sing the songs.

Sometimes the most important story to tell yourself is the one where the things that drag you down do not have all the power. The story where you act with both power and integrity. The story where your truth wins out over falsehoods and petty tyranny. That’s Salamandra’s story in the graphic novels. It’s my story too, because I wrote it.

You can find the current kickstarter over here – https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/hopelessmaine/hopeless-maine-1-3-sinners-a-graphic-novel-series

Autumn flowers

(Nimue)

Climate chaos means we’re seeing more flowers blooming at unexpected times. Even so, many summer flowers in the UK have always lingered into the autumn. On my local commons, a few of the scabious flowers are still around into the autumn, and that’s not a new thing. There’s always been the odd daisy or dandelion persisting late into the year.

There are two plants that flower around now that I am especially conscious of – ivy and cyclamen. Ivy flowers are a great source for bees and other insects, and the plants around me are humming with them. The flowers have an odd and distinctive smell – very much part of the odour of autumn for me.

While cyclamen may be best known as large pot plants, they also grow wild in the UK. The wild ones are much smaller, and tend to show up in sheltered spots under trees and hedges. They bring dashes of colour, and finding them always feels to me like discovering a little cache of treasure.

Our standard Pagan wheel of the year narrative has autumn down as harvest time. It’s all supposedly dying back out there, and falling away towards winter. Nature is complex, multifaceted and full of stories that do not match the ‘wheel of the year’ story.

If your inner life isn’t attuned to the standard take on the turning of the year, then look around you. You aren’t alone, and there will be other natural things that will seem resonant. This autumn I would like to be like an ivy plant, late blooming, nourishing others.

The Dark Breath of the Earth

(Nimue, review)

This is a sequel to Hurnungaz by Steven C. Davis – which I reviewed in this post. Best to read these books in order.

This is horror drawing on folklore that does not sit neatly in the ‘folk horror genre. This is a very dark take on Robin Hood. Trigger warnings for torture and sexual violence. As with the first book it’s not unbearably graphic, but by this stage you are more invested in the characters who suffer and die. Probably best not to read this if you are feeling especially delicate, unless you’re trying for catharsis!

Book two builds on the first tale in a number of ways. We get more back stories for the established characters and more sense of their motivations. There’s a lot of plotting and a of plotters – everyone has their own agenda, alliances form and falter, plans overlap and conflict. I like this a lot. We’re also seeing more characters developing agency and acting on their own behalf. Most especially a number of the women who had small and fairly passive roles in the first book, who in the second book get to act more on their own account, which again I really liked. The unfortunate downside is getting invested in characters who do not make it to the end of the book.

What makes these books truly unusual, and appeals to me most, is the plurality in them. This isn’t one simple narrative, it is many stories wound together, representing many different lives and intentions. There isn’t one Pagan God in the forest, there are multiple deities from different eras. There isn’t once source point for the horror, it’s not simple. I love the complexity.

Landscapes are complex, and hold within them long and messy histories of human occupation, conquest, violence and change. It bothers me greatly that standard folk horror tends to revolve around a single historical event, or a single idea. It’s not what you find on the ground. Steven C Davis’ Sherewode has deep and twisted roots, and there are no simple explanations for anything.

We are all landscapes

(Nimue)

Nothing lives without water. I’ve felt like a spring in a barren landscape, pouring out and pouring out under a relentless sky, with soil so parched that it never seems to change.

Surely in the desert, there are plants that grow whenever water appears? Perhaps they need more water than I can muster. Dig deeper, draw up more, give harder, pour and pour and hope.

All the water I can bring, and yet no flourishing, no life. Only a barren landscape under an uncaring sky.

Sometimes love looks like clouds, softening the day and bringing rain. It is easy to be a spring nourished by rainfall. The sky gives, the ground softens, and pouring is easy, giving from a place of always having more to give.

Sometimes love looks like planting and reforesting, like beaver dams that make lakes where life can flourish, managing the flow of water.

Love as an ecosystem, of living and sharing, giving and being replenished.

Love can have you set yourself up as a spring in a parched landscape. If the land is hard and dry enough, the water just runs off, taking precious topsoil with it. If there is a little softness, a little yield, then you can seep that love as water into everything, and watch life return.

I have been the arid land, and I have been the water. I have poured out and watched my wells run dry to no effect. I have felt myself nourished and restored, able to give with fewer limitations. I have seen dead plains inside me come alive with new growth and fecundity.

Inside each of us a landscape.  And in each of us the means to bring or deny rain to others. To offer the bounty of our fertile plains, running like rivers down into places of need. It is in each of use to refuse to give, the dam the flow jealously rather than making generous beaver-like constructions. We can dry ourselves out so thoroughly that no water or love may reach into us. Unlike the physical land, we can choose to soften, choose to welcome in the water, the love that others care enough to pour.

Healing is a choice, to some degree. We have the means to refuse it. The cost of that refusal goes beyond the personal and into every other inner landscape we dry out with our desiccated states. Every watercourse we suck dry. Every well we drink from without acknowledging the need for rain.

Tarot for Creatives

(Guest post from Mariëlle S. Smith)

My path has beckoned me from an early age, but it took me over three decades to not just accept the path I needed to travel this lifetime but to start celebrating it, to revel in the uniqueness that is my journey. Because it is one thing to acknowledge that your path isn’t quite like that of others. It’s
another thing altogether to then step onto that path and then learn how to enjoy being on it.

I know I’m not alone in this. It is one of the things many of my coaching clients struggle with, and I
have plenty of friends who find this a major challenge, too. Once I’d decided it was time to return to
my book Tarot for Creatives and write a second edition, I knew the this new, expanded edition
would have to include a card spread for those who keep doubting whether it’s worth it to stick to
their unbeaten path.

The book won’t be out until next year – although those who back the book on Kickstarter will get it six months before anyone else will – but I want to share that spread with you here so you can settle, once and for all, whether or not the unique path you’re on right now is the one you want to be on.
If you don’t own a tarot deck, that’s all right! You can use whichever deck speaks to you.

What path am I currently on?Why am I on this path?What empowering belief(s) do I have about this path?What limiting belief(s) do I have about this path?What does the beaten path offer me that my current path doesn’t?What does my current path offer me that the beaten path doesn’t?What’s the most likely outcome if I get off my current path to join the crowd?What’s the most likely outcome if I stay on my own path?

The expanded anniversary edition of Tarot for Creatives will also include seventy-eight mini spreads
based on each card in the tarot. To stick with the topic, I’m sharing the mini spread that goes with
the Hierophant.
For this exercise, you will need an actual tarot deck.

The Hierophant
Swimming against the current?
Shuffle your deck and locate the Hierophant.
The card that ended up directly below the Hierophant as you were shuffling shows you why it can be hard for you to go against tradition in your creative practice. The card that ended up above the Hierophant shows you how to keep paving your own creative path anyway.

I hope these two card spreads will help you on your path. If you could use a little more, check out my ‘I am free to choose my own path’ guided visualisation. It’ll help you clear your path from the negative energy of anyone who’s ever tried to influence you and your direction in life.
Here’s to enjoying our journeys to the fullest!

Mariëlle S. Smith is a creative mindset coach who helps fellow creatives on their path to fulfilling
their soul’s calling using a combination of life coaching, Akashic Records readings, cartomancy, and
Reiki.

She has published fourteen books for writers and other creatives, including the 52 Weeks of Writing
Author Journal and Planner and Tarot for Creatives, and is one of the co-hosts of the Diving into
Writing podcast.

Mariëlle is currently working on the expanded anniversary edition of Tarot for Creatives. The two
card spreads she’s sharing in this guest post will both be featured in the new book, which is now
running on Kickstarter.

You can find Mariëlle and her work here on Substack and on her website, Instagram, Facebook, and
YouTube.

Avoiding depression

(Nimue)

I’ve recently learned a great deal about how to avoid becoming depressed. There’s a lot that we can do to support each other, so I wanted to share what I’ve learned.

Firstly it is essential to have space for whatever you are feeling. Allowing room for ‘negative’ emotions is important when they come up. Anger, fear, pain, grief, and all things of that ilk need space too. Trying not to feel them is likely to damage your mental health. Not being allowed room to feel them is harmful. When dealing with people who are suffering, don’t rush in to encourage them not to express their feelings.

Don’t try and fix people. Most depression is caused by experiences – stress, trauma, threat, powerlessness and so forth. The first port of call should not be encouraging people to toughen up in face of their struggles. If there is a way of fixing the problem causing the pain, focus on fixing it. If there isn’t a way of fixing it, don’t pressure a person to act like it’s all ok, pretend to be fine, or anything else that negates their very real reasons for distress.

If a person has time to let their feelings run, they will deal with them. If acceptance is necessary – as with the stages we go through around bereavement – it’s better to get there naturally than to try and force it. People who are allowed time to process their grief do better than people who are not allowed whatever time they need. We all move at different speeds.

I go numb when there’s no room for what I’m feeling. I slide into apathy when the despair is overwhelming. Attempts to ‘fix’ me add to that – an additional burden of pressure, expectation and a clear message that the only problem anyone else cares about is that I’m making a fuss. Having the support to express my feelings means I feel validated and reassured, and that keeps me in a healthier headspace. It is much better and more effective to howl about something than it is to go numb in face of it.

Resilience does not come from toughing things out and not making a fuss. I’ve done plenty of that. It can be an effective way of making people around you more comfortable, and sometimes that’s the right choice, but not aways. Resilience comes in part from having room for real and authentic responses, and figuring out how to keep moving while being able to be real. Pretending to be ok, and forcing yourself to suppress your feelings comes at a high cost, and is likely to throw you into deeper despair.

Telling people to try harder and make less fuss when they are hurting adds to their emotional burden. It might make them seem less problematic, but it hasn’t helped them, just shut them down at a time when they needed space for their feelings. Meet the distress with acceptance and support, and the whole process is easier and better. This is something we can do for each other, and in so doing, we an protect and support each other’s mental health no matter what we’re facing. When things are painful, not being on your own with them is of itself helpful and makes the distress easier to bear.