Equinox
It only took a plague...
This week marks four years since I was sent home to try to work on an ipad. Four years since schools closed (for the first time). Four years…
I am currently reading the wonderful Cacophony of Bone by Kerri ni Dochartaigh. It is a glorious, hopeful glimpse into her journal from 2020, which prompted me to reflect on my own experience of that time.
The thing that strikes me time after time is how grateful I felt, how I became starkly aware of all of the things in my life I had to feel grateful for. And how this came directly from the privileges of my life which so many others do not have. Privileges beyond the ones that might immediately spring to mind: the sheer luxuries of safety, of comfort; of space, of time.
My photos from this week four years ago show the last visit to a beach for some time; my kids as they began to love yoga (a love that endures); and the bright morning light. Spring Equinox 2020 was the first year we lit a fire to mark the day, something we have tried to do ever since.
Equinox is all about polarities, and polarities for me are all about the extent to which I can hold more than one thing at a time. Can I be grateful (oh so grateful) for what I have, while feeling deeply the inequalities that exist in the world? Can I realise my complicity in these horrors, while hoping to change things for the better? Can I feel joy and pleasure while grieving?
I wrote this short piece in the middle of the strictest of lockdowns, when I started to write again for myself, with the support and encouragement of the most amazing group of writers (something which has remained so important to me)…
On Connection
We have so little of each other, physically,
but we make it up, connecting.
At the sea, searching for seaweed
to feed the seeds. Swimming.
All the things we never said a torrent now.
Can we be kind to each other, after all?
We find we can. It is enough.
I am so far from where I thought I would be,
who I thought I would be.
I cradle armfuls of nettles and welcome their warmth.
❤️❤️❤️
Beautiful reflections! To hold the both/and is the art and the grace!