Nimue Brown's Blog, page 5

Checking In

Hello friends, Nimue here, sort of.

I’m using a dictation software thing on Keith’s phone because, well, let’s say the experiment in touch typing was not productive and I still can’t read or write using the screen at all.

I’m finding that if I’ve got very big print text, very good light and a magnifying glass, I can read one letter at a time and try to put the word back together but it’s kind of like being at primary school reading age: only with a bigger vocabulary and a lot more frustration. It’s all kind of improving, but very frustrating for me at the moment.

What I’m hoping I can do is work this way to at least get post more often. I’m still figuring this out. I’m not really invested in getting to grips with software for people who can’t see, because hopefully I’m not stuck here and I don’t need to invest that time but we’re just gonna have to wait and find out what happens, so a bit of improvising in the meantime.

It’s plausible for me just doing dictation, but it’s nothing like my usual writing practice and I’m finding that difficult. I’ve managed to create flash fiction by dictation, which was about as much as I could coherently hold in my brain in one go. So working on fiction like over 300 words dictation is going to be prohibitively difficult. I think I’d have to completely relearn how to write. It’s the same for any kind of blog post where I wanted to get into detail or depth in a way that required more being able to go over my own words and polish and reframe and rephrase.

So I guess with a post like this it doesn’t matter that it’s a bit raw and ready because it’s just about communicating what’s going on. However, there’s a lot of things I don’t really feel equipped to handle on these terms.

I am still out and about doing events where I can, honouring the bookings I already had. Obviously, I’m a bit stuck for promoting them because I can’t get online. This is very frustrating, as I probably mentioned, but I can’t check because I can’t see the previous text anyway!

It is what it is, as the progress I’ve got is steady and there has been quite a bit of it. I’m fairly hopeful the reading – perhaps with reading glasses to suit wherever the hell my eyes get to – is going to become feasible in the foreseeable future. In the meantime, it’s decidedly limiting. I might try and share some thoughts about what’s been happening in case anyone else finds it of interest, or of use. 

I miss hearing from people. I miss seeing people’s faces. I miss seeing people’s cats.

All of this challenging, and I’m not going to be good at getting back on comments, so please bear with me on this one. The only way I can get comments at the moment is to get Keith or James to read them to me. Then they would need to reply on my behalf and they’re having to do a lot of extra things to cover for me as it is, so I’m reluctant to put that extra work on them. Thank you for your patience while I fail at admin, but I will try and get back with more things as we go along. Hopefully, there’s a far side to this, and it’s not a terrible distance away and I will return to what passes for normal with me. 

In the meantime, I thank you for your patience and I look forward to being able to talk to you all again because I have missed you.

Thank you.

Nimue Updates

James offspring of Nimue here, writing on her behalf. She is recovering from what we think was sinusitis. Her sight is returning, but slowly. She will be at events she has been booked for, so if you were expecting to see her somewhere, that should be going ahead, however she might not see you. Do come up and say who you are!

She’s hopeful about her eyesight returning, but at the moment she can’t see much.

Nimue update

(Keith)

Nimue’s partner on her behalf, just adding a post to update you. Nimue has been ill for some days and is too light sensitive to use screens, hence no replies to comments or new posts. She is currently on the mend, and will be back online as soon as she is able, hopefully soon. Thank you for your patience.

Language, Candlemas and Imbolc

(Nimue)

A while ago I came to the conclusion that I didn’t feel comfortable using Irish names for Pagan festivals. I’m not Irish, I’m not in Ireland and I’m not practicing specifically Irish Paganism. Switching over to Welsh names raises all the same issues of not being Welsh, or in Wales. The Welsh tales have more influence on me and my landscape does feature in those stories, but even so it doesn’t feel right.

When I first came to Druidry, quite some years ago, the general feeling seemed to be that we should use ‘Celtic’ names for things. Over time I’ve seen a shift more towards the idea that if we aren’t engged with specific tradtions, we shouldn’t borrow their language. Modern Welsh and Irish are not what the ancient Celts spoke, and the very notion of ‘Celti’ is deeply flawed anyway.

I’m an English speaking Druid living in England. Back when there were Druids in the world, they would have been here too. Successions of invaidors mean we don’t have much of that left in the cultural mix.

I’ve been thinking about, and reading about festivals as the Anglo Saxons named them and celebrated them. We don’t really know how the Pagan Anglo Saxons did things, but between what we know of other Scandinavian peoples, and what we know of Christian Anglo Saxons, we do at least know that they honoured a similar wheel of the year to the current Druid version. This isn’t a wild conclusion as they were in the same landscape, affected by the same agricultural patterns.

At the start of February, Christian Anglo Saxons had a festival called Candlemas, which involved parading with and blessing candles. It turns out that the ‘mas’ bit doesn’t necessarily mean mass in the Catholic sense, but might well come from an older word that just means festival. This is how we get Loafmas – Lammas. Pick your word and stick ‘mas’ after it and off we go. So the peo[le I see online doing their birthdays as their name plus mas are getting it right!

I like Candlemas as a name. I know about as much of what people truly did in history for this festival as I do about Imbolc – which is to say not enough. I might try lighting a candle and seeing where that takes me. I’m going to be experimenting with festival language this year and will see how that goes. How we name things matter, as does our choice of language. My English is very Angle Saxon, it is not possible for me to be a ‘celtic’ Druid but perhaps I can do something that works better for me and doesn’t feel like I’m taking what isn’t mine.

It’s not even like ‘druid’ is the word that…. druids…. would have called themselves.

Blame and accountability

(Nimue)

Content warning for abuse and bullying mechanics.

Blame is often a dead end, and seldom achieves much. It can lead towards punishment. In cultures where blame is prevalent, people are unlikely to feel safe about owning mistakes, and may be safer and better off if they lie or try to shift blame onto others. That shuts down scope for solving issues and improving anything.

Accountability on the other hand, is all about owning mistakes and being able to sort things out. Cultures of accountability promote forgiveness and understanding, enable problem solving and are focused on getting better outcomes. Honest mistakes are recognised as such. It’s a much healthier and more effective way to function.

Blame is something that gets weaponised a lot in abusive contexts. If you are in an environment where blame is a major issue then you can be confident that this is a space where both dishonesty and bullying are likely. Blame is about having power over others, and avoiding accountability. If people who could not have been the cause of the problem are blamed and punished then this is an abusive situation.

Abusers will often set up situations where there is no way of getting things right, and then blame the victim for getting it wrong. This is often supported by further gaslighting so that the victim feels they didn’t understand what they were trying to do, forgot something important, weren’t careful enough and so forth. They can end up internalising the blame – which is the intended outcome. Victims who blame themselves don’t try to escape and don’t fight back. Bullies and abusers often tell victims that the victim is making them do it – incredibly abusive behaviour is often blamed on the recipients. Your body does not cause rape, your tears do not cause violence, your innocent mistakes do not cause verbal abuse – and yet many victims are persuaded that this is true. Some abusers will try to convince their victims that said victim is actually a bully. This is disorientating and can leave deep wounds.

If this gets in, then you can end up trying harder and harder to appease the abuser rather than realising you aren’t the problem. You can end up constantly second guessing yourself, anxious about everything you do, blaming yourself, hating yourself and consequently unable to take care of yourself in any way. This has been me, and recovery is taking a lot of work and support.

There is, I eventually realised, a very simple way of looking at this. Does being accountable work? If it does, then all is well and you’ve just got some problems to solve. If you are doing your best to be accountable then it cannot be all your fault. If you are trying to fix things and trying to be a better person, taking onboard criticism and caring about how you impact on others, then you are good. If you respond to problems by looking for someone else to blame, denying your own responsibility then at the very least you are part of the problem. You can change that any time by switching over to accountability. If problems never seem to be your fault and you always blame others then you need to step up and become more accountable.

We’re all going to encounter these situations. As Druids we can build healthy communities and safe spaces by promoting accountability. We can challenge situations where blame culture dominates. We can help each other be accountable and take responsibility where we should be doing that, and we can watch each other’s backs for situations where blame and scapegoating are occurring. Accountability is essential for learning and growth, and creates safer, healthier spaces. Working for that can be an everyday Druidry choice.

Blame culture can be all about fear rather than necessarily coming from a desire to abuse and control. However, it does no one any good, so working to dismantle that by helping each other feel more confident and secure in our flawed humanity is good work to be doing.

Dedication

(David)

As storms hammer our house, which sits on high ground with nothing between us and the Atlantic Ocean, I sit in my cosy study that is my sacred space where I live with my gods and guides. Each of these four has their own candle burning on their own altar here, and I dearly love sitting with them when the electric light is off and my study door closed.

At the head and in the heart of these is the Morrigan, Great Queen, my Goddess. I live in peace with and gratitude for her choosing of me, with what she has done and continues to do in my life. I dedicate myself to her daily. I dedicate the remainder of this life of mine to her, and all of my next life, and the time between lives which I look forward to spending with her in the Irish Otherworld.

Remembering Dave James

(Nimue)

He was a magnificent bastard. I’m not going to try and write some kind of obituary for this remarkable man, who lived such an unusual life. He remains one of the most amazing people I’ve ever known, and unequivocally the most difficult and cantankerous person I’ve ever worked with. I would not be who I am today were it not for him, it is no exaggeration to say that he left his fingerprints on my soul. He departed this world recently, and peacefully, having lived long and fully. He didn’t do much peacefully, to be fair, and it’s hard to imagine him resting in peace. More likely he’s galivanting around in the afterlife making a lot of noise.

Dave taught me how to MC, and he taught me stagecraft. I’d performed a fair bit in public before I met him, but usually at the back of a group. He taught me how to stand centre stage and deal with an audience. The advice he shared with me while we were working together I have passed on to many people along the way. His legacy lives on in the singing and performance of people who never met him. He becomes an ancestor of tradition now, and that’s no small achievement.

Dave had a particular gift for getting people to do what they did not think they could do. When we went to visit him in 2023, he described to Keith what I shy and awkward creature I’d been when he first met me, and how he’d pushed me into being more than that. Keith laughed and said that I’d done something similar to him around performing. This was not a coincidence. I spent years watching Dave cajole and engineer people into doing things they did not think they could do. I’m a softer touch, but I continue that tradition.

I sang and played violin with him for some years. I’m pretty sure the photo comes from a gig where I was also playing. Dave was a regular at my folk club, and I was a regular at his. He performed as part of my mumming side. James used to call him ‘Grumpy Dave’ – there were a lot of Daves with guitars during my Redditch period, and James preferred titles to surnames. ‘Lock him in a room with Grumpy Dave singing’ was one of James’ Drunken Sailor verses.

The dead are not lost to us. Not while we remember them, and tell their stories and live out the things we learned from them. Those who are loved, live. Dave’s legacy lives on in all the people he encouraged and harassed into being more than they would otherwise have been. He could be an absolute sod to deal with – and never pretended otherwise. I am glad to have known him, and glad to be a person he helped shape.

The Credible Victims

(Nimue)

While the idea that we should listen to victims is a good one, the odds are high that you won’t always be clear about who the real victim is. In situations of longstanding abuse – be that bullying outside the home or domestic abuse – perpetrators will often claim that they are the real victim. So who do you decide to trust?

Long term abuse often includes gaslighting. Victims often hear about how it is all their fault and they are ‘making’ the other person do it. We are told that our mistakes and personal flaws are the source of the problem. We hear that we aren’t kind enough, or trying hard enough, or being understanding enough. It’s not unusual for the victim of abuse to feel like they are an awful person, and to be trying really hard to fix things. Abuse victims often end up anxious, riddled with self doubt, feeling guilty and responsible.

So when person A confidently announces ‘Person B has abused me,’ Person B might well respond by apologising for what an awful person they are and confirming that it is all their fault. Genuine victims often don’t present convincingly because of internalised guilt and damaged mental health. The more recent the abuse has been, the more likely it is that the victim won’t present well.

It’s not unusual for abusers to present themselves as sympathetic to their victim’s plight. They will tell you about how sad they feel for their victim – whose poor mental health and inability to cope with life will be blamed for their weird and neurotic behaviour. From the outside you see kindness and sympathy, and not the critically important detail that this person is the cause of the mental health problems. Presenting the victim as neurotic, unreasonable, melodramatic, or over-reacting all goes to make them seem less credible if they do dare to suggest they’ve been mistreated.

The person who can confidently tell you that they have been abused – or are being abused – is not always the victim. The person who is convinced they are an awful human being and that it is clearly all their fault is not necessarily the abuser.

The distress of abuse has an impact on a person’s life. It reduces functionality and ability to cope, is likely to mean a person makes less than ideal choices, and causes depression and anxiety. Victims suffer in all kinds of ways, not all of which may be visible. However, trauma leaves marks, and you can see the struggles if you care to look.

It isn’t always easy to tell what’s going on. Not least because abusive people will lie to hide the truth about themselves. Abusers will groom people as supporters and gaslight victims into believing they are really to blame. It’s always worth considering who has actual power in the situation. Genuine victims tend to seek safety. Abusers pretending to be victims will be looking for ways to further silence and isolate their victims, or further punish them.

A lament for lost swans

(Nimue)

Every year, bewick swans nest in the Siberian tundra during the summer and then migrate to warmer parts of Europe for the winter. In the mid twentieth century, Slimbridge used to get something like six hundred swans come in for the winter. That must have been incredible to see. One older resident of Slimbridge described to me once how they would circle the church in great numbers as they arrived.

This year, eighty seven bewick swans have come to the Wildfowl and Wetland Trust’s site at Slimbridge. There were no cygnets with them. None. That has never happened before. Apparently unseasonal June snow on the nesting grounds is to blame. There are reports of four cygnets on the east coast. That’s a devastatingly small number. It’s an absolute tragedy, and a direct consequence of climate change. It is possible that the birds will recover in the next few years and that cygnets will return. It is also entirely possible that we’re seeing the beginning of the end for this wonderful swan species.

Going to see the swans in the winter has been part of my life since childhood. My sense of personal grief and loss here is hard to put into words. My rage that this natural wonder, this beauty is being torn from the world is immense. Meanwhile we keep investing money in AI – at a cost the planet truly cannot afford. What more must we lose before anyone takes this seriously?

We strip beauty from the world and replace it with blandness, ugliness and worthlessness.

If you would like to support the fantastic work the Wildfowl and Wetland Trust do, then start here – https://www.wwt.org.uk/

Hurt people hurt people

(Nimue)

Not everyone who acts abusively fully understands what they are doing. Sometimes controlling behaviour is learned and enacted uncritically. What we think is normal from our own upbringing can turn out to be toxic, and where that’s more subtle, or there’s ongoing cultural support for it, people often don’t recognise what they are doing. One of the most toxic thoughts available is that you have to do horrible things to other people for their own good.

It is however very important to note that abuse victims do not automatically turn into abusive people. Many people undertake to break out of both cultural and family norms in order to heal and do better. We do no have to be the products of our experiences. Nothing is inevitable here and we all have some freewill. If you’ve been messed up you’re going to struggle with some things and may make more mistakes than average, but if you’re trying hard to get things right then you are not going to be anything like someone who is deliberately abusive.

People seem to go one of two ways here – some of us respond to abuse by becoming anxious and trying very hard to get things right. That leaves a legacy of guilt, hypervigilance and over-responsibility while feeling insecure and doubting your self-worth. We may not be the easiest people to live with, and we’re often rubbish at boundaries, but we care and we do not want to hurt anyone.

The other response is to go the other way and not to be able to imagine you are responsible for anything much. That results in defensiveness, inability to take negative feedback, feelings of powerlessness and deep insecurity. Again there’s no reason a person is obliged to inflict this on others, not everyone who experiences this will act abusively. However for some people, this leads to the need to control others and to make other people responsible for everything. This tends to become abusive.

There are also people whose cruelty has nothing whatsoever to do with their experiences. That’s a whole other issue.

At any point, an abusive person has the power to change tack and not cause harm. However, the further down this road someone gets, the more incentive they have to keep doubling down on it. The more you’ve abused, the more reason you have to deny it – and for someone who finds criticism, unbearable, there’s a lot of reason not to even look. Even so, it is possible to look and to choose differently and it is never too late to start.

Narcissism is a terrible condition that results in huge cognitive dissonance and a loss of power over your own life. You can’t learn from your mistakes if you won’t own them, you can’t grow and you can’t have any truly close relationships with other people. If you see something painful about yourself in this post, please know that there are ways back and with courage, you can change everything.

For the rest of us, there are options around how we challenge and call people out. When we can be kinder and more tolerant, there’s scope to have people feel safer about dealing responsibly with their own mistakes. It won’t pull everyone out of this, but there is at least a chance it can make a difference. The more dug in someone is, the less hope there is of helping them, but anyone can change at any point in their lives.

People who are unaccountable are highly problematic and can be really toxic to anyone they have power over. Kindness includes being kind to yourself. If you are dealing with someone who is never wrong, that’s a huge red flag. If you feel anxious all the time because apparently you are always wrong, you may be a scapegoat. Talk to someone, get some support and don’t assume that you are the entire problem.