Nimue Brown's Blog, page 55

Thinking about balance

(Nimue)

Equinoxes always invite considerations of balance, what it means to us and where we are with it. Do you need more balance? Do you feel like you’re in stasis and need to shake your life up? Are some aspects of your life out of balance? Are you experiencing balance as harmony or as many forces pulling in different directions? Is balance a good thing for you?

I’m finding that I feel most balanced when there’s a lot going on. When there are many things pulling me happily in different directions, that works for me. I like having a mix of energies in my life, different flavours of things, different spaces to be in. I’m calmer and much more settled in myself when my life is more chaotic.

Conversely, in the times when life was narrow and predicable, I felt unstable. Emotionally I was far less balanced and I was not at peace with myself.

What works as balance for me may well look like mayhem from the outside. The ways of living that some people would no doubt find soothing and peaceful leave me fractious and uncomfortable.

Balance is a really personal thing. Your emotional centre of gravity won’t be the same as mine. The balance and poise of a heron is very different from the balance of a spider web. Some insects can balance on the surface of water and others are caught in it and likely to die if that happens. 

Understanding what kind of balances you need, and how that works for you can be really productive. Other people’s stories about what balance means might not be relevant to you at all. Grounding practices really only work if you know what makes you feel centred, and that might not be what works for everyone else. I’m better off singing or dancing if I need to reconnect with myself. Some people do better with water to centre themselves rather than thinking about ground. Some people are happiest and most comfortable with their heads in the clouds and that’s fine too.

Contemplating Responsibility

(Nimue)

I’ve never liked the approach that says we are 100% responsible for how we respond to things. It ignores what panic does to the body (fight, flight, freeze, fawn). It ignores what triggers do to the body (flashbacks, intrusive thought, panic). All too often it’s used as a get-out card for people who cause harm and refuse to take responsibility.

“I can’t be responsible for how you react to me,” isn’t a fair response when someone has told you that actions you are choosing are harmful. An obvious example would be insisting on touching someone who has problems with being touched on the grounds that it is normal behaviour for you and therefore shouldn’t be a problem. I’ve run into that one repeatedly.

I firmly believe that we all have responsibilities when it comes to how we treat each other. We have a duty not to cause harm through lack of care and attention. If someone tells us something is a problem to them and we blithely keep doing it, that makes us assholes.

This can of course be played the other way. Anything can be weaponised, which is why conversations about human behaviour need to be nuanced and not full of absolutes. There are a number of psychological conditions that leave people struggling to cope with negative feedback. At the gentler end there’s rejection sensitive dysphoria. That’s something to handle gently, because it can be very tough on sufferers. However, to function as a person, they still need to know what’s going on and what other people need. Handling difficult issues kindly makes a lot of odds.

Narcissism is another condition that makes criticism unbearable for the sufferer. Narcissists tend to deal with this pain by lashing back, blaming the person who has called them out, and reversing the situation. Try to explain to a narcissist why their behaviour isn’t ok and the odds are you’ll be accused of abusing them. This need to reverse everything so that they are always the injured party leads narcissists to gaslighting themselves and others – consciously or not. It’s a horrible condition and harms the sufferer at least as much as it does the people they mistreat.

Then there are the people who know perfectly well that what they’re doing isn’t ok, but they’d quite like to keep doing it. I expect there’s a technical term for that, but I don’t know what it is! These are people with low empathy, who actively enjoy hurting others or whose extreme selfishness dominates all their choices. While I can feel some compassion for people struggling with narcissism, this is a whole other level.

The green flag here is the idea of shared responsibility. No matter how messy things are, if people are actively trying to cooperate and trying to be accountable to each other then that’s a very good sign. Well meaning people can get into all kinds of messes. People working through their own traumas and issues can be challenging, but that urge to share responsibility and find collective ways through is a pretty good indicator that it’s worth trying. A person can be difficult without being deliberately harmful. A person can have limits on their own capacity for responsibility and can need help handling things. When we work together these are challenges that can be overcome.

What needs avoiding are situations where one person has all the power and another person bears all the responsibility.

Who are we writing for?

(David)

The question appeared somewhere last week and I’ve been letting my thoughts about it simmer gently on the back burner since then. This is my take.

I write what I love for people who love what I write.

Does that sound corny? Possibly, but it’s true for me. I write for the joy of it. I’m too long in the tooth in terms of both age and book industry experience to be worrying if people might not like what I produce.

I don’t need money from book sales to eat and warm my house. My war pension covers that, not lavishly but sufficiently. Book sales give me pocket money which I use for, well, for buying books.

People who don’t like the books I write or the way I write them don’t need to read them. And I don’t need to care what they think.

Does this sound passive aggressive? Possibly, to some ears. I don’t feel it is but I have no control over how my words sound to those who might be offended by my views, language, grammar, or style.

People who would prefer me to write things their way instead of mine are welcome to write their own books. Again, not passive aggressive. Just saying honestly how I feel about this. Constructive critique is welcome in my world if I have invited it. Whether or not it suits my style, etc. I will still think upon it.

Slagging off me or my work is a pointless endeavour because it simply won’t penetrate my force field.

So, again, who is my audience?

People who love what I write. Love is all we need.

(Nimue)

I often have a few specific people in mind when I’m writing. I find it a helpful focus, and I reckon if I can think of three or four people who might like what I’m doing, there’s a decent chance a few other people will, too. I’m very much thinking about what the Pagan community might need someone to write about when I’m working on books. For blog posts, I’m either writing in response to the question ‘what do I know now that I did not know before’, writing in response to something someone else has written, or writing with a specific person in mind.

I write the things I could have done with in the past. My Druidry and Meditation book has in it the things I could have done with someone telling me when I first started exploring meditation. I’ve written nonbinary characters and polyamorous characters because I’ve needed more fiction with that kind of rep. I’m aware that the witchlit audience is often women in their middle and senior years who want to see themselves in the characters they read, so that’s informing some of what I’m working on at the moment.

I’ve never written for market trends. You can only be running to catch up when you do that. I’ve never tried to write for everyone. I don’t really think it’s possible, and that trying to do it tends to result in bland and generic things. The books that catch wide audiences were most often written with a specific audience in mind, and I think it’s better to go that way.

Like David, I’m very relaxed about the idea that my books aren’t for everyone. It makes me happy to know that there are people who like what I do. If one person likes something I’ve written, it was worth me having written it. And on a not-unrelated note, the anthology Pagan Planet, which I organised and edited, has sold over a thousand copies as of this month.

Acceptance and Community

(Nimue)

One of the most powerful gifts we can give each other is acceptance. When we don’t judge or hassle each other over difference or over anything harmless, we create more space. This is particularly an issue around disability, neurodiversity and sexual identity. It’s also relevant when thinking about how we make space for quieter and less socially confident people, how we handle anxiety and how we treat people who don’t have a lot of disposable income to throw at participating.

Inclusion builds communities. When we set out to accept each other and treat each other kindly, we allow more people to be in the room and to feel welcome and relaxed. Acceptance is such a basic thing for participation. Not having to hide who you are is a great comfort.

The flip side of this is that all too often we accept genuinely problematic behaviour from people with power. It’s not always men, but often it is. This includes inappropriate touching, talking over people, making unkind jokes at other people’s expense, expressing prejudice and demanding to constantly be the centre of attention. Where a person has money, status, influence and control we are often too willing to give them a free pass around behaviour that genuinely harms others. All too often, people are quick to defend the right to free speech of those who have power and not to recognise how that ‘free speech’ is silencing others.

When people talk about ‘cancel culture’ what they usually mean is that someone who had power has been denied a platform. What we don’t talk about enough is the way in which a lot of people are kept out of spaces in this way. I’ve been in too many rooms where I was the only female presenting person, the only queer one, the only pauper. I’ve seen how this works, and resisting it as the only ‘diverse’ person in the room is difficult through to impossible.

Put one loud sexist person in a space and women mostly won’t be there. By supporting the free speech of one problem person you can effectively silence or cancel a great many other people. But as these aren’t the people we’re most used to hearing from, that absence can be invisible. This is true around all kinds of difference. One person’s free speech can be a very clear message to another person that they aren’t welcome in the room.

We’re used to power structures that have us accepting all kinds of things from people who are supposedly important. We’re used to seeing behaviour that alienates people who don’t have much power. Being alert to how this happens in spaces you are in can be incredibly uncomfortable. However, if as a Druid you are interested in working for justice, then this is an issue to take on. Seeing it is a big part of the work. Getting other people to see it isn’t easy, and challenging the idea that those with power should be free to hurt those who have less power is a massive task.

Healing lessons from a plant

(Nimue)

Last week I shared some things that came up for me after I rescued an abandoned house plant. I really wasn’t sure the plant could survive, given the terrible state it was in. About half of its leaves had shrived and died. All of its remaining leaves were in the process of shrivelling and dying. The poor thing had been exposed to more heat, cold and water than it could bear.

Put in a space that suits its needs, the plant has survived. It’s actually done more than that, it seems to be recovering. Areas of leaf that were brown and dead a week ago are turning green and coming back to life. It’s a slow process and for the first few days I didn’t really believe what I was seeing. I’ve never known a plant do anything like this before. Given how brown, dry and dead those leaves looked, this has defied all expectations.

There’s a message in here, about possibility beyond expectation. Not everything can be healed. Some of the leaves fell off, those aren’t coming back. Many of the dead ones show no signs of reviving. But, in the leaves where a little green remained, recovery is taking place. There’s more scope for hope here than I dared to think. I saw a lot of my own experiences reflected in how this plant had been treated, so I’m inclined to take personally this recovery process and gift of hope.

Sometimes things that appear to be dead, can be brought back with love and care and patience. This is a good lesson for me around my own healing processes and my capacity for faith and hope.

The thing is, this was my plant all along. I missed that bit out of the first story, an act of care in not drawing attention to the person whose lack of care had nearly killed a leafy being I have cared about for years. This peace lily was given to me by a friend many years ago. Apparently it wasn’t wanted where it was, and rather than giving it back to me, it was put outside in conditions that would shortly have killed it. It was lucky for both me and for the plant that I saw it in time and was able to rescue it. As an experience it hurt me deeply, because blatant lack of thought and care tends to do that.

Love, care, patience and kindness restores plants and people alike. We thrive when we’re safe and wanted and when our needs are understood and respected. It’s just as true for me as it is for the plant. It would be true for all of us, I think. And so my own healing journey parallels what has happened to this plant and in its recovery I feel hopeful that I see my own healing and rebuilding too.

Kitchen magic

(Nimue)

I used to spend a lot of time in the kitchen – I cooked meals from scratch, made bread, and pies, puddings, jams, chutneys and wine. Back in my twenties I wanted to make as much from raw ingredients as I possibly could.

Then boat life happened, and after that small space living meant there was nowhere to store that kind of creation. I got increasingly ill, and depressed and tired and that kitchen part of me slipped away. Kitchen work takes a lot of effort. This summer I’ve had the resources to start reclaiming that lost part of myself. I’ve done a little foraging, I’m learning how to make sourdough bread, and I’m exploring the possibilities of making puddings, jam and chutney in a pressure cooker.

I’ve missed this part of me. I like being the person who does this sort of thing. I like the feelings of connection it gives me to the landscape I’m in, being able to forage and eat from it just a little bit. I have a different relationship with my food when I can make more of it from scratch. It’s also better for me. Improved health opens the way to doing things that will improve my health. Of course the reverse was true for too long, that the more ill I became the harder it was to do things that would support my physical and mental health.

There is magic in the making of things. Cooking brings together love, inspiration, life, energy and need, and of course will and intent. Eating is one of the most fundamental and natural things we go in for, and is a key way in which our bodies interact with the rest of nature. Making food to share is such a fundamental part of human interactions too. Food is integral to community and is an important expression of mutual care. It’s a big part of all cultures, and an important form of cultural expression that keeps us in touch potentially with our ancestors of blood, place and tradition.

Contemplating attraction in Druidry

For me, the single most attractive quality a person can possess, is kindness. My philosophical views – which are a facet of my Druidry – very much shape how I respond to other people. The qualities I find appealing in others very much reflect what’s important to me as a Druid.

Wisdom is an attractive quality in a person, as is creativity and playfulness. I am drawn to people who like to think and reflect, and who live their lives in considered ways. I value honesty, integrity, emotional availability, self awareness, courage, curiosity and passion. Of course a person doesn’t have to be a Druid to either possess or value these qualities, but for me these are ways of being that very much align with Druidry.

When it comes to physical attraction, what draws me most is the quality of a person’s presence – people who are engaged with what’s around them thinking and feeling keenly and actively present are particularly attractive. I’m more likely to be captivated by how someone moves than by their body shape. I’m not especially interested in the things a person has no control over – height, gender, eye colour, build – these things tell me nothing of who a person is. My notions of beauty have far more to do with how a person chooses to present themselves and the things they do have control over.

Further to that, I’m very aware of what I find beautiful in the rest of nature, and that’s really broad. I’ve come to relate to people much as I do to trees. I like unusual faces, people who are striking and very much themselves, rather than people who construct facades. I’d rather an expressive, furrowed brow than botox smoothness (different if you need it for medical reasons of course). We are shaped by the lives we live, and I like that about us.

Attraction is relevant in many – perhaps all – aspects of our lives. How we treat people is all too often informed by whether we find them attractive, regardless of what we’re actually doing with them. Humans aren’t reliably good at making rational decisions, we’re often swayed by our emotional responses. Those emotions are so easily coloured by what we feel when we look at another person. As Druids this might also impact us in terms of who we want to learn from and work with – whether we want someone glamorous to guide us, or if we’re looking for other qualities. Some Druids are really glamorous and some are not, and this may not be a good way to assess the value of what anyone has to teach.

Being more aware of all that, and more deliberate about how we respond to people is well worth a thought. There’s much to learn about yourself when contemplating what you find attractive and why that works for you, and that’s always worth investing time in, too.

Ancestors of tradition

(Nimue)

I find ancestors of tradition an interesting concept because these are the ancestors we get to choose. We claim them through our choices of traditions, and we identify with them on our own terms. Those can be really immediate relationships – as in the people who taught us things. It might, in Druidry, mean the names and known people involved in Druid revival. 

We can also think about this in broader terms. I don’t know the names of the people who were involved with radical politics in the past. There were many of them and most of them were not famous. The Chartists and Suffragettes, Diggers, Levellers, trades unionists, the people who fought for rights, votes, fair treatment and opportunities for all. These people are my ancestors of tradition, too. When we identify with movements, we can identify with the people involved even if we can’t name them.

Ancestors of tradition are people we look to for inspiration. These are the people we choose to emulate and in whom we see things to aspire to. This is a good process to deliberately enter into. Working out who to be, what to do and how to live is a constant work in progress. Looking to others for inspiration and a sense of what’s possible can really help.

With the UK in such an utter mess, I find my ancestors of radical tradition comforting. These are people who did what they could in challenging times. They endured and strived and many of them did not live to see the changes they had pushed for come to be real. Cultural shifts take time, and weight of numbers. They remind me that it is meaningful to try, to put my shoulder to the wheel and push for changes even if I do not live to see those changes occur.

Traditions are about long lines of people sharing values, skills and endeavours. Engaging with ancestors of tradition calls on us to recognise how our own lives are framed by a much bigger picture. Everything we do owes something to the people who went before us. The best we might do is pass on those threads of connection to others in the future. Connecting with our ancestors of tradition can be deeply grounding and roots us in the things that matter to us. It’s humbling too, in a good and healthy way to see your own life shaped by those who went before us. Honouring our ancestors is a good antidote to self-importance.

We will be ancestors ourselves. We are part of what those who follow us inherit. It’s interesting to think about what you’re passing on, and what small impact you might have on those who follow in your footsteps. Who will your descendents of tradition be, and what are you creating for them?

Genius Loci

(David)

Our family companion and my familiar, Blaze, left this life three weeks ago. We are still hurting, each in our own way. I remain hopeful that he will visit me, wherever he is now in the Otherworld.

On his final day with us, I spent the early morning sleeping and dreaming with him, sitting beside him on the sofa from 6 until 8. I held him and spoke soothingly to him from time to time, but mainly we slept and dreamed, and for a time we flew together over lands and sea and a vast forest, at the edge of which we landed and entered its cool green beauty.

I feel that forest will be where he will start his life in the Otherworld. It’s where I will look for him after he’s passed, in the first instance anyway. If I don’t find him there, it will at least be a beautiful place I can remember sharing with him on our flight together that day.

My grief has had the not unexpected effect of opening my mind and heart even more than normal to the spiritual world. Exploring an entirely new-to-me practice of possible devotion to the spirit of this valley rather than simply talking with her and asking for protection each day when I’m getting in and out of the shower. I’m not a deity worshipper, but without searching for the practice I formed this gentle intention of offering devotion to her.

I hoped to learn her name. I’d told her like that, if she was willing to tell me. My instinct is that she was here for prehistoric people, before the valley was named by Anglo Saxons. So that’s a name I was hoping to learn, from prehistoric times.

Things remained quiet here, both in our home collectively and in my mind. The heat wave over Britain had a heavy effect on me, pressing me down and sapping my mental energy to nearly nil. I couldn’t find any energy to write anything at all, including for Druid Life. I was grieving and letting the grief work through me.

Until then, I accepted that this exhaustion is like any and every other symptom of ME that I’ve experienced over these 30-odd years, and I need to manage it the same way.

Oh!!! Then one morning I was visited by twenty or thirty sparrows having a party in the broad, shallow, clean birdbath outside my study window. In those moments I felt strongly that the spirit of this place was answering my question through them as they flew back and forth for the high wall to the bath, back and forth, fluttering and splashing and I felt laughing with glee. Five minutes of them performing, then my friend Gentlebreast the wood pigeon landed to paddle and drink while the sparrows darted in and out of the apple trees up in my grove. The visit filled me with peace.

Next day, I delighted in a new gladiolus that’s suddenly grown and flowered in a different flower bed outside my study window. The second tier up in our deep, high, strong retaining wall of three semi-circular, tiered beds that holds back the hillside from slipping into the back of our house. It’s deep lilac and stunning. We’ve had them in several colours before, including this lilac, but never on this level. It’s ten feet distant on the horizontal and four feet higher than what we’ve had before, so something must have moved a bulb from the existing patch to this new one. My best guess is one of the magpies who visit, and I’m taking it as a lovely encouragement from the spirit of this valley.

On Friday 1st September, I stood outside our back door looking across the valley and shaped my (winter’s coming) beard square in honour of the spirit. Not ceremoniously, which isn’t my style, but quietly and thoughtfully.

The spirit made herself known to me one day thirty years ago when I was in a dreadful condition, physically paralysed and mentally desperate. She filled my bedroom with her beautiful floral perfume and filled me with peace. Right then, that day, I thought of her as an angel. In the decades since, my knowledge and understanding of such beings having grown way beyond that it was back then, I have come to realise that she is the Genius Loci, or spirit of this place. I have communed with her via trees and plants and creatures here. In these weeks since Blaze passed, I’ve asked if she might reveal herself more openly to me, and there were signs that she might be willing to do that. I awaited her with respect.

Then, at the end of last week, she gave me her name. She is Lady.

Hunting the Egret

Hunting the Egret is a gothic novel set in a fictional village near the Severn. This is the landscape I grew up in, and the landscape I live in now. I wrote the first draft of this book more than twelve years ago, during a period when I wasn’t living in this landscape. It was first published by a house called Love You Divine – an erotica publisher. It is fair to say that the book has some sexual content. 

If I was writing the same story now, I’d no doubt do it differently. However, I try not to endlessly edit things. Past me had a slightly different voice and was writing from different experiences and feelings.This is a gothic novel and it goes to a lot of dark places, so, trigger warnings for all kinds of troubling things. It’s about as close as I get to writing romance fiction but it is on the bloody and deranged side.

I’ve slung this out into the world as a paperback through the medium of Amazon. People who support me as glass herons over on Patreon get a copy sent to them.

I’ve also put an ebook version up on ko-fi, and that’s a pay what you like arrangement. If you don’t have the disposable income to buy books right now, please just take a copy if you fancy it. Have a poke around in my ko-fi shop and have any ebooks you like. I’ve done abject poverty and not having money to spend on books. For me Project Gutenberg has been a sanity saver. This is why I put out free copies of my own work. 

If you’re in a position where you can afford to buy the ebook instead, that’s cool and you’re helping me give books to people who can’t do that. Gift economy is a beautiful thing. If patronage is your thing and you’d like to help me do more of this sort of thing, Patreon is a good way of doing that.