Nimue Brown's Blog, page 231

Bill Caddick

I first heard Bill Caddick live when I was 22, in a folk club in the Midlands. I had by that point already heard some of his songs. Later, when I was running said folk club, I went on to book him several times, and kicking around the Midlands, I’ve seen him at a fair few festivals. I never got through a set of his without crying.

It was of course the songs that had most reliably made me cry that were playing on continuous loop in my head after finding out that he’s died. Bill had been ill for a while, and it had seemed likely that he would not survive this. Still, no matter how forewarned or prepared you think you are, you’re never really prepared, and dealing with the loss of people who matter to you does not get easier with practice.

I hesitate to claim him as a friend – I was very fond of the man and I greatly admired his song writing. I haven’t the faintest idea what, if anything, he thought of me, and I’m untroubled by that. He was a remarkable person, the world was a better place for having him in it, and we are all that bit poorer for his passing. The reason I’ve never got through a set dry-eyed is that there’s something in his words that always pulls at my heart. An understanding of what it means to feel too keenly and love more than might be deemed reasonable, to be able to weep over dreams of unicorns.

I do consider his wife, Katherine Soutar to be a very good friend. I reviewed her collection of folk tale art here on the blog a while ago – https://druidlife.wordpress.com/2018/06/24/painting-the-tales-a-review/ while Tam Caddick – also a friend – has contributed to The Hopeless Vendetta https://hopelessvendetta.wordpress.com/2017/09/29/the-burn/ I’ve been thinking of both of them a great deal.

At times like this, there’s not much to be said that can help. Grief is something that does not always respond well to comfort.

So, here are the two songs of Bill’s that I used to sing. It will be a while before I can sing them again, because it won’t be easy to get through them without crying. I did manage to tell him once about how his work affected me, and he responded as though it was a put-down, but he had an odd sense of humour, and I think it was deflection, and I think he knew what I meant. I hope he did.

Here’s Bill singing John O’ Dreams

 

And here’s June Tabor singing Cloud Factory

 

 

You can support Katherine Soutar on Patreon – https://www.patreon.com/KatherineSoutar 

 

Depression and self esteem

For some years now I’ve watched a number of friends who suffer from depression hit burnout on a fairly regular basis. I used to burnout regularly too. Sometimes it’s easier to think about what’s going on when looking at someone else’s patterns rather than your own.

Exhaustion can cause depression and will always make it worse. Avoiding this is a process of self care in which you do the pretty obvious thing of dealing properly with your own needs on a day to day basis. However, for people with low self esteem, this doesn’t work in the same way. If you feel that your needs don’t matter, it’s really hard to put them first. If you feel that putting your own needs first would turn you into a terrible, selfish monster, then running yourself into the ground can feel like the responsible choice. In terms of your mental health, it might be less terrifying than trying to be nice to yourself.

People don’t develop poor self esteem all by themselves. I think most of us learn it, or at the very least get it reinforced. And then when you burn out and people tell you off for not taking proper care of yourself, that doesn’t help. I had a lot of rounds of well meaning people pointing out that I could hardly look after anyone else if I wasn’t in good shape, but for a long time that wasn’t something I could work with, only feel as another form of failure.

Low self esteem will keep you feeling like a failure. Feeling like a failure will make you anxious and depressed. You keep running as hard as you can, doing as much as you can and burning out and falling over, and the question to ask is why? Why does that seem like a good idea? It is a hard question to ask and the answers may be tough.

If you don’t feel entitled to exist, then you may spend your whole life trying to make up for being here. Trying to justify your existence, or do something good enough that you can feel entitled to be just like a real person. However, anxiety and depression and burnout won’t raise your self esteem. Not meeting your own basic needs actually adds to low self esteem and keeps you locked in cycles of burnout, effort and despair. These are hard cycles to break. If looking after yourself leads to anxiety about being awful in some way, it’s really hard to look after yourself.

I’ve made a lot of progress on this in recent years, but not by tackling it head on. I’ve done a lot of thinking about how to honour nature in my own body. If Druidry is honouring nature, then treating my mammal body the way I would any other mammal body is something I can get to grips with. Treating my fragility as nature manifesting, as the limitations of my physical self, and the natural realities of my existence has helped me cope with it better.

I’ve also learned that if I am complicit in something unethical, then I support and enable unethical behaviour. I need to model the ways of being that I want to see in the world. There are a number of lovely younger women in my life and I don’t want to show them how to trash yourself and burn out. I want to show them how to live well and take good care of themselves, and to do that, I have to embody it.

It is easier to think about how things impact on other people. If you have low self esteem, it may be easier to do things for other people than it is to do things for yourself. Setting a good example is also something you can do for the people around you. Living in the way you would like the people you care for to live, can be a way of breaking out of the awful cycles that low self esteem can otherwise create.

Crazywise

Last night I went to a showing of Crazywise – it’s a film about alternative approaches to mental health crisis. It will be of particular interest to Pagans because it does look a bit at how mental breakdown is handled in indigenous cultures around the world. The website for the film has a lot of good material on it – https://crazywisefilm.com/

There’s also a great deal of material on Phil Borges’ youtube channel – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9yq8Z0q-3XAjNKcRxOpAPA

One of the things I found really validating is that this film talks about the need for community solutions to mental health crisis. There’s a lot of reflection on the way people become isolated through mental illness and the way isolation enables mental illness. Further connections are made between our relationship with the world around us and our mental health. To be well, we need people, and we need the natural world.

I’d come to similar conclusions based on observation and experience. It’s something I can feel more confident about expressing now.

For me, Druidry is very much about relationship – relationships between people, relationships between people and everything else. I know I’m not alone in finding Druidry to be a way of navigating through my own issues and wounds. Over the years, doing the Druidry – prayer and meditation, ritual, walking, contemplation, and all the community aspects – has been key to my overcoming trauma and getting depression and anxiety under control. Having that framework in which to approach what’s going on in my head and body has really helped me.

Brigantia

A guest blog from Chris Mole

If pushed, I wouldn’t describe myself as a pagan – I’ve always fallen solidly into a sort of relaxed non-religious outlook, with a smattering of nature worship. My other half Limnaia, however, is a Loki-bothered Feri-inspired eclectic witch and Norse/Hellenic pagan, and the influence of all that tends to bleed over – which is why on the morning of November 12th, despite all of my non-religiousness, I poured out a glass of mead, placed it on a makeshift altar, and asked the goddess Brigantia for her help.

For those who don’t know me, I’m a comics writer, and for the last few years I’ve been working on a series called ‘Brigantia’, in which the titular goddess is thrust through time into the modern day. Ripped away from the tribe that originally worshiped her (the Brigantes), she feels somewhat adrift – she has far fewer worshipers in this time compared to the pre-Roman era when she was at the height of her powers, and that translates into her divine powers being somewhat curtailed. She’s lured to the present by Veteris, another of her pantheon, who has seen the destruction that humans will bring upon the world and decides that we don’t deserve protection. When Brigantia emerges, it becomes apparent that Veteris has been stoking fear in the population for centuries; turning humans against each other, feasting on their terror.

I recruited an artist friend, Melissa Trender, to draw the first issue of Brigantia’s story and she set to work on a creating a suitable version of the Goddess for our tale – a rendition that would be respectful of her, draw influence from the various carvings and historical records that we have of her, and would also be an empowering, inspirational image. Melissa produced an incredible design, and in that moment, Brigantia came to life – at least for me. My other half pointed out that despite neither of us being pagan, we’d managed to show the Goddess as she looks for those who worship her.

Anyway, we managed to raise the funds on Kickstarter to allow issue #1 of the story to become a reality, and put Brigantia out into the world. The reaction was overwhelming – a lot of people, pagan and non-pagan alike, identified with the story and enjoyed it. Several worshipers of Brigantia contacted us to tell us how happy they were at seeing their Goddess depicted in all her glory, which further reinforced my belief that we’d managed to tap into something special – that we’d almost become bards for Brigantia, sworn to spread stories of her.

That leads me to the reason for the offering of mead: on the morning of November 12th, I launched the Kickstarter campaign for issue #2 of Brigantia, and sought to ask the Goddess for her help with making it a reality. The story we want to tell is, I think, an important one: it’s about sacrifice and devotion, about compassion and friendship, about how the colour of your skin or the land of your birth doesn’t define the strength and power of your belief. It’s a story about facing down the fear that drives us apart and making the world a better place. And most of all, it’s a story about a Goddess who will fight for what she believes in, who will fight to protect humankind, and who asks only for your belief so that she can be our light in the darkness.

I hope she was listening to my halting, fumbling prayer – and I hope she enjoyed the mead.

Brigantia issue #2 is on Kickstarter now: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/538213076/brigantia-issue-2-comic

Animist Collaboration

When do we attribute intention, and when do we not? I was jolted into thinking about creative intention some years ago when I found a leaf that had been cut to be perfectly symmetrical. I didn’t manage to get it home in one piece to photograph it. I did however manage to get this leaf home, with its balance of color and cutting. So, for purposes of pondering, I am framing this piece as an animistic collaboration.

Composition – me.

Photograph – Tom Brown

Leaf- created by a local wych elm

Leaf cutting by a leaf cutter bee.

Dabchicks

Little grebes are easily overlooked. They’re small, brown and as likely to be under the water as on the surface. Unlike the larger and more dramatic great crested grebe, they have sleek heads. If you see one without knowing what it is and don’t look closely, you are most likely to assume it is some sort of small, brown, diving duck.

However, the little grebe, or dabchick, is a charming water bird, and watching them drop below the surface and waiting to see where they will pop up, is delightful. I’ve seen them doing this in open deep water on the larger canal near us, and I’ve seen them in the shallow pools of the canal very near us, where it’s too silted up for boats. Most recently, I saw a group of three foraging together, which inclines me to think that they bred locally this year.

One of the great blessings of the internet is that you can look up what you’ve seen to check it is what you thought it was. I’ve identified birds of prey by searching for the cries of different birds until I found the right one, for example. There’s an absolute wealth of information on the internet to help a person learn about the world.

For anyone in the UK who isn’t confident about identifying a little grebe, here’s a video. (not my video)

For anyone outside the UK, you may well have grebe species where you live, but you’ll need to look them up if you aren’t familiar with them.

After the triggering

People who suffer from post traumatic stress disorder (not all of whom will have a diagnosis because mental health resources are scarce) experience triggering. Triggering is a process that takes you back into experiences of trauma. It’s very hard, through to impossible to get the resurgence of memory under control. It can mean anything from hours of revisiting terrible memories, unable to stop the flow, through to re-experiencing the trauma as though you are back in that situation and reliving it.

People become traumatised when they experience terrible things – violence, cruelty, assault, psychological torment… and when that becomes normal. A person can experience a terrible one off thing and not take massive psychological damage if it doesn’t then become part of their sense of how the world works. However, if you spend time in a literal or metaphorical war zone, it becomes your reality, and at some level it’s hard to feel safe after that, and so easy to go back there.

Traumatised people respond dramatically to things other people may think are no big deal. This can make it very confusing to deal with from the outside, because from the outside, it doesn’t look like a reasonable pattern of cause and effect. This can lead to treating the trauma survivor as though they are a drama queen, or totally unreasonable, or being unfair.

I have on enough occasions dealt with people who weren’t going to walk on eggshells around me and who weren’t going to be careful about not triggering me and didn’t see why they should have to. This, for me, is now a deal-breaker in a relationship of any shape. If someone doesn’t value me enough to at least try not to trigger me, it’s not a place I can afford to stay.

When a person doesn’t make sense, it can be hard to find empathy, or to work with them. It is easy to dismiss what seems illogical or out of all proportion.

After someone has been triggered, things can go one of two ways:

One: in the aftermath of the triggering they may learn that it was a reasonable response. They aren’t safe. They can’t trust the people around them. What looked ominous was indeed a real threat, and they were right to respond as they did. The normalising of the trauma continues. They learn that what they fear, is true.

Two: they learn that it was a mistake, and that the people around them care and want to fix things and keep them safe and help them feel better. The sense that traumatic experiences are normal and to be expected diminishes a little, and the world becomes a slightly better place.

The difference in these situations is the behaviour of the person who caused the triggering once it’s evident that there’s a problem. Do they add to it, or do they try to sort things out? Do they blame, shame, mock and belittle the victim, or do they encourage them and help them get back on their feet? Do they take careful note of the problem in the hopes they can make sure it never happens again, or do they call the victim a snowflake?

We have so much power over each other. So much potential for good and for harm. So often it comes down to whether we are willing and able to care about things that may at first make no sense to us.

 

It’s easy… for me

I think one of the big mistakes many people make – especially around radical life changes to be more sustainable, is that if it’s easy for them, it’s easy. How well resourced a person is to begin with makes a lot of odds. Resources like time, money, energy, skills, education, and health all make a lot of difference to how hard or easy something will be. Everything is harder when you are already struggling.

I find it easy living without a car. This is in no small part because I’ve never had a car. I am well enough that I can mostly get where I need to go on foot, and I don’t do things I can’t do without a car. For someone who has always had a car, doing without a car isn’t easy and requires a lot of changes in what you do, how you plan and how long things take. For someone who is ill or disabled, being without a car may be impossible.

Not having a car, I can’t drive to the farmer’s market to pick up a week’s supply of vegetables. I can’t park near my local loose goods store and drive all my plastic-free food home. The process of getting food home has made being plastic free difficult to say the least. I would also struggle to afford to buy all my food on these terms. I’ve cut back on plastic every way I can manage, I’ve questioned my food choices and I’ve given things up. I’m not as good as I want to be.

I feel strongly that we shouldn’t be blaming or shaming people whose lack of resources makes it hard for them to be green. It’s good to flag up ways of being green that save money or aren’t that hard, because if lots of people can engage a bit, that’s progress. It’s often the people with most resources who cause the most harm. Be that with buying things that will soon be thrown away, food waste, flying abroad, travelling by car, using a lot of water, buying products with a lot of air miles on them – it’s the things that cost the most that often also… cost the most.

It’s easy for me to give up flying. I’ve only done it a couple of times in my life. It’s easy to do without holidays when you can’t afford them. It’s easy not to support the environmentally damaging fashion industry when you can’t afford to buy new clothes that often and really have to make your clothing last.

But it’s hard avoiding palm oil on a small budget.

And when you’re tired, and sore and you work long hours and your home isn’t warm enough and everything is a struggle… you probably aren’t going to be able to grow organic veg on an allotment to make nutritious stews to feed your family.

If becoming green is easy, it’s probably because you have the resources that make it easy.

If becoming green is easy there’s a very real chance this is because you had far more than you needed to begin with. Cutting back from a place of excess isn’t so very difficult in practical terms, even if you do feel like you’re doing something heroic.

And if it is easy for you, please, please consider that it might not be easy for someone else.

Big fish, small pond

There are a lot of personal advantages to being a big fish in a small pond. It’s good for your self esteem, your feelings of worth, usefulness and recognition. It is of course rather challenging to come out of the small pond and suddenly find you are a pretty small fish in a much bigger pond.

Many people are very good at creating small spaces in which to be big fish. I see a lot of it around me where I live, and I see it in the Pagan community too. It’s not so difficult to be big in your local Pagan community. Of course often that means in the rest of your local community, you’re insignificant.

There are all kinds of ways this can cause a person problems. An inflated sense of self worth can trip you up and invites massive embarrassment. The person who has to say ‘do you know who I am?’ is a fish out of the pond that validated them. Frustration at not being a big fish in the small pond can make people insecure, cranky and a problem to themselves and others. Being able to see the bigger pond in which you would be a small fish can do all the same things. Getting caught up in this does a person no good at all. The desire to be important often proves a barrier to getting anything worthwhile done, as well.

We weren’t designed to exist in a global community of billions. We evolved for small groups. Most of us see more people in a year than a mediaeval peasant would have seen in their entire life. We seem geared to deal with a larger network of a few hundred people at most. When we deal with other people in such numbers as these, it’s a very different experience.

In a community of a few hundred people, everyone knows everyone. No one is irrelevant. Any skill, or significant action will stand out and be noticed. Everyone can shine at their own thing. It’s unlikely anyone will cast such a long shadow that they cause a lot of other people to disappear.

In comparison, most of us will never be more than statistics, and most of us will disappear from history and memory when we die. Most of us will not have our centenaries acknowledged, or our legacies discussed.

For our own sanity, we all need small spaces where we can exist as people and feel valued. Alongside that, we all need to be able to deal with the issue that in the grand scheme of things, we don’t count for much.

It was Stroud Book Festival this weekend. I was doing venue work, not there as an author, but my being an author came up in a couple of conversations. “Should I have heard of you?” someone asked. I said, “no, I’m pretty niche.” And that, mostly, is the size of it.

Politics and adverts

Last week, an advert from the company Iceland was banned. In practice it’s a little bit more complicated because much of the content was created by Greenpeace, and apparently there are some nuances around ’banned’ when it comes to what’s allowed on the TV. It’s not allowed out (as far as I can make out) because Greenpeace are considered to be a political organisation and therefore any content that comes from them is deemed too political for screens and isn’t allowed.

Here’s the Clearcast statement regarding the advert.  – https://www.clearcast.co.uk/press/iceland-advert/ 

Not knowing the rules about adverts, I poked around. This is a useful bit of the government’s website for anyone who wants to look. No doubt somewhere there’s a detailed version written in difficult legal jargon, but this is at least the official gist of it. https://t.co/WwIc2Hy6iM

One of the things that becomes evident reading through, is that the status quo is fine, and change is political – or at least potentially political. Now, as I see things, there are huge political implications to the status quo, and this means business as usual gets to lobby anyone with a screen on a daily basis to persuade us that business as usual is just fine and dandy.

Greed, consumerism, waste, throw-away possessions, pollution, constant growth, capitalism, market economies – these are all part of business as usual. We are killing ourselves and the planet with business as usual, but because it’s normal, encouraging it isn’t considered political.

Take the car industry – with implications for road building, tax, air pollution, noise pollution, climate change, peak oil, road deaths, premature deaths from air pollution… these are all political issues. These are all issues that require governments to spend money. Many of them are issues that kill people. Transport is a big issue in terms of climate change. People with TVs are reminded on a daily basis of how good and desirable their cars are, because it’s business as usual and that’s fine, apparently. Car companies are not considered political, despite the massive political implications of car production.

Adverts for flights to exotic destinations are much the same. The fashion industry is a massive polluter, but apparently there are no political implications to showing adverts for clothes that help us wreck the planet. We can watch all the adverts we like for shampoos that are using palm oil and destroying habitats, but we can’t watch something that invites us to question this.

So much around us is set up to affirm that how we do things is fine, and change is suspect. We’re killing ourselves. We’re killing life on Earth. Business as usual is destructive, poisonous and unsustainable and we have to challenge the assumption that if something is normal, that’s a good thing. We need to radically change everything that humans do, which is a massive task. Doing it in the face of constant normalising and encouraging of all the most damaging things, makes it all that bit harder.

Here’s that Greenpeace/Iceland advert.