Nimue Brown's Blog, page 32

Hills to climb

(Nimue)

I was about half way up Cam Peak at this point. It’s a hill in the landscape of my childhood, and I had not been up it in many years. I only got half way, my blood pressure being too low for the steeper climb behind me.

When I was a child, this hill was covered in bracken. That’s been cleared, and now this stunning array of bluebells shows up each spring. It’s the first time I’d seen it in person, even though I’ve been back in this area for about fourteen years. It shows how long plants can wait in the soil for the conditions that will let them flourish – these must have waited decades.

I wasn’t sure how far up the hill I’d be able to get, but to be able to get any distance up a hill is a tremendous victory for me. Years of low blood pressure have sorely limited my options. It turns out that getting enough good quality sleep is key to me having good blood pressure, although it’s also affected by heavy periods and hormonally charged night sweats, and anything else that costs me a lot of electrolytes. I’m managing it all a lot better than I used to.

Bluebells always make me think of my grandmother – who loved them dearly. I think about how she grieved in later life when she wasn’t strong enough to climb the hills and see them. I think about that every year when the bluebells appear, and what the loss of landscape does to a person. I thought I’d started down that path as well, and it’s been extraordinary finding a way back.

I’ve done a lot of physical healing in the last year. I’m stronger, I can play the violin again, I can walk a few miles on a good day and I can get up hills a bit. I am hopeful that further progress is possible, and maybe next year I’ll be able to get to the top of Cam Peak. I’ve got a number of goals about local places I want to be able to walk to more reliably, and it feels realistic to imagine that I’ll be able to do that.

I feel like I’ve been given a second chance at life. I’m not on a downward spiral into lost mobility, lost stamina, lost functionality. Healing is possible. Deep, peaceful, restful sleep is allowing me to recover. Not being stressed out of my mind all of the time is making good sleep possible. I’ve got muscles to build, and I have to work on my stamina, but that’s possible. I need to be careful around the things that mess me up, but I’m daring to imagine a future where those are occasional setbacks, not the defining features of my life.

Experiencing different realities

(Nimue)

We each experience the world in our own precise way. This is informed by our experiences and beliefs, our expectations, choices and behaviour. We get some say in that, and it is possible to radically change how you experience life, although it isn’t easy, and the more dramatically you want to change your perspective, the more work it takes.

This is especially relevant around spirituality. Two people in the same ritual will not experience that ritual in the same way. Shared experiences can mean radically different things to people. It’s important to have space for that and not to try and dictate how people ‘should’ feel or what their experiences are ‘supposed’ to mean.

It can be disorientating when someone else’s take on an experience is radically different from your own. It can leave you feeling that either you must be wrong, or they must be wrong. Life is often much more plural and complex than that. Much of the time it’s not too hard to manage having a different take on things, but sometimes it can become really problematic.

What do you do when someone else asserts that their version of reality is right, and yours is wrong? This happens a lot around spirituality. When it happens in the context of massive power imbalances, people can be forced to act as though they accept a reality that is not real for them. That’s a really psychologically damaging thing to experience. That kind of controlling can be done deliberately in the context of cults, and other abusive, manipulative situations.

At the same time it is of course possible to be wrong. We can all misunderstand things or not have a context for making sense of what we’re experiencing. Some of us jump at shadows. Sometimes being told that you’ve got it wrong is a helpful thing, if you can hear it. In safe and sane situations, there’s evidence to back up the right take, or explanations that make sense. In healthy situations, a challenge to your perceptions is likely to improve things for you, not distress you.

Being able to relate to a consensus reality is vital for our mental health and practical functionality. Being able to hold our own understandings of things is also vital. Healthy situations will let you have your own take on things to a fair degree, and unhealthy situations will tend to want to control your understanding and keep it in line with someone else’s view.

These are not easy things to judge. Perhaps the most useful question to ask is how able to function effectively you are. Being able to function effectively indicates having a healthy relationship with reality. Problems in functioning, difficulty making decisions and not being able to get the outcomes you expected can suggest that you might not have a good or useful understanding of what’s going on. If someone else is trying to impose a reality on you to control you, then the ways in which that impacts on your functionality can feel like you’re going mad, not like you’re being manipulated. It’s not easy to recognise this when it’s happening.

Wheel of the year poem

(Nimue)

Turning

Snow drops ice white emerging

The year turns, life comes again

Celandine in hopeful yellow

Growing new and bright again

Lambs in fields, newly delivered

The year turns, life comes again

Final frosts melt into water

Flowing now and free again.

Leafing trees their green unfurling

The year turns, life comes again

Catkins dancing, small birds calling

Nesting now, begin again.

Sweet the ducklings on the river

The year turns, life comes again

Feasts for otters, numbers dwindle

Fleeting life is lost again.

Dark the leaves of summer shading

The year turns, life comes again

Fox cubs wander, road side straying

Some survive to roam again.

Autumn shifts, red toned and freezing

The year turns, life comes again

Fall away to browns and fungi

Rotting down to live again.

Bare the trees, exposed the branches

The year turns, life comes again

Forming buds for next year’s growing

The wheel turns again, again.

This is another poem that’s come out of doing poetry classes with Adam Horovitz. The remit for this one was the use a repeating refrain.

Creating for fun and profit

(Nimue)

I’m a big fan of people doing creative things for fun. I firmly believe that everyone should have time and opportunity to be creative in any way that appeals to them. We should be able to do things for the joy of it and not in the hopes of developing some side hustle. We should have to feel that the only way to justify hobbies is the hope of turning them into paying gigs.

There is a huge difference between creating for fun and doing it professionally. Not least that when you’re doing something for fun, you can be relaxed about how it goes and what the results are. To sustain being professionally creative you do still need time for this, but it gets harder and more pressured. Having bills to pay can make it difficult to invest exploratory time in creating, and having to force your creativity so as to meet deadlines is hard.

Deadlines are inevitable. If they don’t come from other people, they will come from the need to pay bills. You can’t spend a year working on a single piece with no money coming in. You can’t try things to see what works when you’ve got to have something you can sell by the end of the month. That also means you can’t just work when you feel inspired or in the mood, you have to knuckle down and do it at times when you aren’t feeling it. Again, that can actually kill your creativity if you aren’t careful.

How much are you willing to compromise your vision, your values, what you do and how you do it for the sake of a paying gig? This soon becomes a question. Your passion project may not be marketable enough. There may be no one willing to pay you, or support you as you do it. Patreon helps, but to set up something like that you need to be well established, not starting out.

Plenty of people try working creatively only to discover that it’s a grind. There’s all the business side to deal with, and the issue of selling yourself, and selling what you make. Getting started is slow, not earning enough to live on is a common experience. Coming to hate what you once loved is a real risk. Selling your work can steal all of the joy from the process. Trying to be commercially viable can take all of the soul out of it.

I think a lot of people who haven’t tried it imagine that creative work is just swanning about being self indulgent, doing your hobby and having fun. Unless you have someone who is willing to fund you, or are independently wealthy, it doesn’t work like that. Getting creativity to pay takes a huge amount of sustained effort, and is no sort of easy option. I have no doubt that if more people knew what it was like, it would protect people from jumping into it when they aren’t equipped to deal with the harsh realities. It would also perhaps result in non-creative people being a bit more understanding about the ways in which this is also work.

Politics and mental health

(Nimue)

A lot of people in the UK are experiencing mental illness at the moment. Housing insecurity, job insecurity, the spiralling cost of everything, austerity, NHS waiting lists, climate crisis, genocide – there’s a lot to be depressed about and a lot that is stressing people into sickness. This disgusting shambles of a government has decided the answer is to blame people for getting ill and to put more pressure on them.

Tragically this is often the way of it where mental illness is concerned. We treat it as an individual failing, not something being caused. We fail to recognise the ways in which stress makes people bodily and mentally sick. We accuse ill people of making a fuss, and of being lazy, and then we punish them for not getting better.

One of the things about mental illness is that you can’t recover while what’s made you sick is still happening to you. If you can’t pay your bills thanks to corporate greed, then no amount of therapy will fix that. If you are depressed because of constant pain and enormous waiting lists for treatment, therapy won’t solve anything. You can’t positive-thinking your way out of that.

We could have a political approach that prioritised quality of life for all, and that would radically improve the country’s mental health. Universal Basic Income, a living wage, no zero hour contracts, no price hikes from profiteering business, no shit in the rivers, no selling bombs that kill children… it’s all feasible, they just don’t want to.

We could take mental health seriously and provide real and meaningful support for people who are suffering – not put them on waiting lists for years and then offer little or nothing by way of help. We could improve access to green spaces – which is known to improve mental health. We could make sure everyone could afford decent food and time for exercise – other known mental health improvers that not everyone can benefit from at the moment. We could collectively decide that we want people to be well and happy.

I passionately hate the politics of cruelty and punishment. I hate this culture of misery that promotes suffering and attacks the most vulnerable amongst us. I hate the way politicians blame those who are sorely disadvantaged for things they have no real power over at all.

Living with compromised mental health is awful. Some years ago we had a Chief Medical Examiner’s report that identified work stress as a major source of difficulty, but that’s been ignored. There isn’t a health problem out there that isn’t made worse by stress. Poverty is incredibly stressful and absolutely unnecessary. This mental health crisis is a direct consequence of political choices and it is vital tha we don’t let them gaslight us into thinking otherwise.

Fantastic fiction

(Nimue, review)

I don’t read a great deal of fiction that sits at the high fantasy end. I am however really keen on queer fantasy fiction. This is in no small part because it’s always diverse in a whole array of ways. I’m pretty much done with post-Tolkien, and with things based on a whitewashed misunderstanding of mediaeval Europe, and I’m tired by ultimate battles between good and evil.

Queer fantasy tends to be a lot stronger when it comes to the fantasy side of the equation – identities, cultures, bodies, landscape and challenges are all more likely to be properly fantastical rather than a re-hash of something familiar. I picked up Claudie Arsenault’s novellas because they were being offered for review ahead of the second one coming out and I read each in a couple of sittings.

I love books that just throw you into the story and don’t over-explain the setting. The worldbuilding unfolds as the story progresses, and there’s a lot going on – this is a land with history, and issues, and we see it through the eyes of a rather unworldly main character who has a lot to figure out about emself (lots of pronouns in this story!). The world is intriguing and the characters are endearing. There’s plenty of action, and it all serves to move the story forward. I love all the details of this well thought through setting. On getting to the end, I wanted more.

The three main characters are thrown together, in no small part because of a sentient wagon that has opinions but no way to clearly articulate them. This is very much a story about something, or someone waking up in ways that are threatening, but also full of potential. I came away from the first book with the feeling that there’s a history here and that what people think happened is not going to turn out to be what really happened.

Book 2 sees the three main characters we met in book 1 hit the road, and acquire a new member of the team. This is a mobile queer-platonic household, which I greatly enjoyed. There’s warmth and some bed sharing, but the main character is asexual, and several of the others seem to be the same. I’m very much enjoying the camaraderie of the story, and the centring of relationships that are not romantic, and not ci-s-male-dominated. There are new adventures and challenges, a new culture to learn about and the fascinating landscape and history of the setting continue to unfold in an entirely pleasing way. There’s mild peril, and it doesn’t feel like the sort of story that is ever going to crash into something really awful.

These books a nice read – affirming more than cosy, I felt, because there are plenty of things to think about in terms of values, relationships between beings, and identity. Watching the main character begin to learn how to think better of emself is rather wonderful.

You definitely have to read these in order – this is essentially a large novel that’s coming out in sections. You will get to the end of the second one and not want to stop, which is awkward because you will have to wait. The next instalment comes out in the autumn and the front of the second book includes the dates for the rest of the story.

You can find out more on the author’s website – https://claudiearseneault.com/

May Day Romance

(Nimue)

There are a number of traditions associates with the first of May. Driving your cattle between two fires to protect them. Demanding workers’ rights. Gathering hawthorn flowers as an excuse to try and get in each other’s underwear. Dancing round a big pole that may or may not be a phallic emblem. May Queens. Jumping over fires.

Modern Paganism often associates this festival with love, passion and fertility. There’s a lot more going on and plenty to tap into if the amorous side doesn’t appeal to you. I’ve had very different experiences of this festival over the years and sometimes found it really difficult because of the sexy side.

We didn’t entirely plan it that way, but this is about the time that Keith and I started living together last year. For me it’s a happy association with the festival. It’s been a truly remarkable year, and even with the massive challenges we’ve faced, it has without a doubt been the happiest year of my life so far.

I’ve learned a lot about myself and about what I need to thrive. Over the year, we’ve learned a great deal about each other, and how to support and care for each other. We’ve built a life that is rich and joyful, and laid down a foundation for growing and flourishing together in the years to come.  This last year has taken me far beyond what I thought was possible.

I’m learning about love that is joyful, rather than laced through with pain. That’s made me less fearful, and so much happier. There’s such beauty in being able to embrace delight every day, and to be heart open, and feeling full rather than hollow. Love as something shared, and felt, rather than the experience of pouring from myself until I feel empty.

I’ve been writing about these experiences through the year. I’ve felt so much more investment in life, and so much soulful delight around everything that happens to me. There’s a new poetry collection on the way that explores this, and the experience of falling in love not only with a person, but with life itself.

Druidry and forgiveness

(Nimue)

Forgiveness is often held up as the spiritual thing to do. However, if you’ve read any broadly Celtic myths, you’ll know that it doesn’t feature heavily in those traditions. Where does that leave us as modern Druids?

While going on an epic revenge quest and dying tragically makes for a good story, it doesn’t make for a good life. What stories we have of the ancient Druids indicate that they were peacemakers in a culture that could be quite violent– at least some of the time. Forgiveness is often key to peace. However, the forgiveness that allows harm to continue isn’t a basis for real peace at all.

Sometimes we have to decide whether to forgive or stay angry. There isn’t a neat answer to this that will work in all situations.

Ask what it’s costing you to stay angry. Also ask what it would cost you not to stay angry. Protect your boundaries, and if the reasons to be angry continue, forgiveness is not an answer.

Ask what good forgiveness could do. What would it allow? Could you move forward in some meaningful way if you were able to forgive and put it behind you?

For me, it matters a great deal whether someone asks for forgiveness. If someone owns a mistake and apologises then normally I would want to forgive them and move on. Not so much if they keep doing the same things and apologising, beyond a certain points that’s just manipulative. The person who wants forgiving but has no intention of acting responsibly or sorting anything is someone I am unlikely to keep dealing with.

Often when people hurt us it isn’t deliberate, or about us. Accidental harm is something I will tend to forgive, along with bruises to pride and stuff that is unfortunate and uncomfortable. When it’s obvious that people were doing their best, or what they needed to do for their own wellbeing, I don’t usually take it personally.

We  all normally make exceptions for children and teens. But then, a person who is young, learning, dealing with wild bursts of hormones and so forth, needs the room to make mistakes and try again. I’ve also done a lot of forgiving around other people’s mental health issues in the past, but not always. Sometimes I’ve needed to act to protect myself.

Compassion is always a consideration, I think. That includes acknowledging what you can bear, and not seeking to martyr yourself in difficult situations. Declining to forgive can be a learning opportunity for someone who is not acting in a fair or responsible way. Forgiveness can, in some situations, turn into enabling. It’s not easy to call that, and these are seldom comfortable decisions to have to make.

There are no hard rules about when we should forgive, and for Druids there is no rule that we are supposed to always forgive. Sometimes it isn’t the answer. Some things are truly unforgiveable, and we’re seeing a lot of that on the world stage at the moment.

The trouble with books

(Nimue)

I’ve always been an avid reader, and I read widely. At the same time I have spent my whole life struggling to find books I want to read. Going into big bookshops depresses the hell out of me – all those front tables with celebrity ghost written content and TV tie ins are not for me, not at all.

I’m a fussy reader. I’ve just put one novella down because I couldn’t get on with the author’s voice, and a second because I couldn’t engage with the characters. Every so often I find an author I can get really excited about – Sylvia Moreno Garcia and Natasha Pulley in recent years.  Finding a novel I really like is a thing of joy. Reading something that passably works for me is often as good as it gets, which is frustrating.

I read a lot of non-fiction, and around that I have a much easier time telling what I’m going to like. However, I want to read fiction about half the time.

Part of what I’m struggling with is how narrow things can be within speculative fiction and how depressing things set in the ‘real world’ are – and how unreal those things often are too. I don’t have any interest in dystopian fiction. I don’t mind the odd YA novel, but on the whole they aren’t what I’m looking for. I’ve found gems in the witchlit category, and I read classics sometimes. I’ll occasionally read romance, crime and thriller novels but generally I find they aren’t my thing. I like gothic work, and I like the kind of horror that makes me feel at home (Clive Barker).

The authors I like most tend not to fit into neat genre boxes, and tend to be some distance from the straight white socially Christian guy who went to Oxbridge model.

I want to be surprised, and enchanted. I am open to being comforted and challenged. I like queer, Pagan and non-binary rep, and authors who know what they’re talking about and who will take me somewhere I haven’t been before. I like diversity, I want to see the world from unfamiliar angles, with characters who make sense and have depth. I want character driven stories. Who should I be reading?

And if you’re thinking ‘me!’ then please, please get in the comments.

Matters of responsibility

(Nimue)

Content warning for abuse.

One of the things I’m working on in myself at the moment is the issue of responsibility. I’m undertaking to change what I consider myself responsible for and this should enable me to dial down anxiety as well.

There are a number of ways a person can end up with problems around responsibility. That includes being made responsible for things you have no power over, being obliged to shoulder more than your fair share of responsibility, and being expected to magically get everything right. It can be an issue in both domestic abuse, and toxic workplaces where responsibility without power can feature heavily. It can also come about as a consequence of dealing with people who cannot manage their own boundaries or who refuse to be accountable.

For me, experience led to a kind of hypervigilance, trying to see problems before they happen and head them off. This isn’t an unusual state to end up in. It’s exhausting and makes it very hard to relax or drop guard if you’re constantly watching out for the next problem in the desperate hope of averting disaster. In normal and healthy situations you can just deal with problems if they arise and figure it out with whoever else is involved. If you don’t have that, then you can end up really struggling with responsibility.

The worst examples involve making victims responsible for the way in which they are being abused. Some abusers will be explicit that the victim is ’making them do it’ – by making them angry, or ‘failing’ in some other way. People who are subjected to a lot of that can end up with really distorted sense of what they are really responsible for, and it takes a lot of unpicking.

We do have responsibility for how we impact on each other. In interactions between functioning adults, that should be balanced and fair, and not result in high levels of anxiety. If one person has to carry too much of the load, that takes a toll.

So I’m learning to better recognise what I’m not responsible for. It’s tricky around other people’s responses to me, because I tend to feel it’s my job to make everyone happy all of the time. That’s something else to unlearn. I’m working on holding boundaries that allow me to feel comfortable, and not to accept responsibility when all I can do with that is feel compromised or ignore my own needs and feelings. I’m learning to make more balanced decisions about how my needs and feelings fit in with what other people want. Or don’t.

Healing is a process, and re-learning takes time. I can only do this because I have the space and the support to examine my own responses. Having permission to say no, is really helpful. In recent weeks, having active encouragement to declare myself not responsible for some things, has really helped me. Situations I would have felt obliged to sort out in the past I am considering not my problem. If things go wrong because I didn’t step in to sort it out, maybe that’s ok. Maybe that will give other people opportunities to learn some new things about handling responsibility.