Hello Dear Ones,

I began writing this letter to you last Friday while on my way home from Pacific Northwest, USA — a rich and dramatic landscape rooted in old-growth forests and shaped by deep river gorges. A place that cradled my experience in a Coaching Immersion based on the Seven Elements created by Poet David Whyte and Craig Fleck — a curriculum that educated, enriched and encouraged all the reasons why relationship and artistry sit at the centre of my life and work.

The miraculous nature of relationship is that it is the doorway through which we experience everything from our relationship with our bodies, our relationship with pain and joy, our relationship with others, our relationship with our work and artistry, and our relationship with the unseen. My artistry — often expressed through poetry and song — is the way my relational nature makes sense of being here.

In recognising our relationship with everything, we awaken to the understanding that everything is connected. The Tao, like Tantra, tells that all life is relational; that the universe is a vast, complex and entangled web of living experience in which nothing, including us, lives in isolation.

However, when we attempt to isolate ourselves…

to shut the world out…

to go at it alone…

to compete or conquer…

to deny the endless invitations we are being offered to be here…

we suffer…

and right now, we are witnessing this suffering everywhere.

Relationship is the current through which all life flows and this immersion — curated for those who work with individuals, couples, groups, organisations and leaders — anchored how essential that relational remembering is for a meaningful life.

This immersion also reminded me of how community helps us to bring down our walls and find new ways forward.

Community is essential, restorative and permission-giving.

Community is how we bring our feminine and masculine natures back into balance.

Community is how we remember what we have forgotten.

For it is possible to lead from a foundation of community rather than a single and isolated point of view.

Community makes me think about your responses to the contemplations I have been sharing around ‘a woman’s search for meaning’ and how they echo the same longings that began to grow inside me as I approached my 40th birthday last year. Since responding to that longing I have radically reshaped the way I live, work and love. Turning 40 seemed to have changed everything and is continuing to do so.

When a woman crosses any threshold, like the threshold that is 40, her life calls for change.

Some women hear the call and confuse it with restlessness.

Some women hear the call and deny its inconvenient presence.

Some women hear the call, cross the threshold, and find themselves forever changed.

Personally, I sit in that last group of women and while the ‘search for meaning’ may be arriving for you at a different age than it did for me, I believe our longings are wise and arrive whenever we are ready to cross a new threshold.

Longings call us into our next maturation.

Longings speak to what is ending and what is ready to begin.

Longings when met, are the unseen milestones of a life that has been renewed by change.

At 40, I was longing to deepen into my feminine nature through an understanding of my ancestral lineage, a reconnection with ancestral guidance and to live from that place of insight with courage, discernment and creative knowing.

That longing led me on an ancestral pilgrimage to West Ireland

West Ireland rekindled my Celtic roots

and my Celtic roots inspired the creation of The Well

Join The Well

Doors close this Friday 28 August at 5pm AEST

The Well is a community space for women to come as they are, tend to what calls and deepen their connection with themselves through relationship with other women longing for the same thing.

I have been teaching, leading and facilitating groups of people for almost 20 years and the role I am being called into now is one of Stewardship.

I am being reminded of the transformative experience of community.

I am being called to become a resource rather than a ruler.

I am experimenting with what it feels like to sit alongside those who gather around The Well, rather than leading them.

It is a whole new world of learning and unlearning but one that I am committed to practicing, as not only did the guidance to do so come from my ancestors but our world is calling for it.

You and I are being called into new spaces of personal and professional leadership and I believe the answers of how to do that will be found in gathering with intentional community.

When you gather regularly with an intentional community, who share both similar and differing views, you are gifted the reflection of that group. That reflection holds the immense power of unlocking unconscious blocks that prevent you from living in the way you long to. The honest and conscious reflection of community gives you the insight and courage to move through what feels immoveable or impossible in order to fully inhabit the gift that is your life.

Join The Well

Doors close this Friday 28 August at 5pm AEST

In my last email, I reflected on the power of gathering in circle and that when we establish a regular rhythm of circle in our lives we begin to weave a web of connection, aliveness and meaning.

When I was introduced to Holy Wells in Ireland last year, that weaving began inside me.

Holy wells are the gathering place of women — a safe space for women to come together, pray, heal, dream and commune with the divine. In the Gaelic Irish tradition (a significant part of the Celtic Tradition) it is the women who are the wisdom keepers. Their role throughout history has been shaped by their feminine natures of embodied intuition, compassionate service and spiritual guidance. In the West of Ireland, women have not been confined to their domestic duties and instead have been celebrated as poets, leaders, medicine makers, druids, healers and warriors. If you go back and read old Celtic literature (myths, legends and folklore from Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Brittany, and other Celtic-speaking regions) what you will find is that women are often at the centre of the story — at the centre of the culture. Celtic Women are seen as the moral authority, the voice of the other world who's seeing influences and creates this world. Voices of the other world and guardians of the land, women were the seers. The ones who knew how to keep life and its cycles in balance and so their voices were listened to, respected and revered.

Regardless of whether you hold Celtic heritage or not, women of all cultures have been gathering in community since the beginning of time to protect and preserve what dominant culture has tried to make us forget.

My introduction to wells and their meaning, not only deepened my own sense of belonging but inspired me to create my own well that you and I could gather around monthly.

The Well began at the beginning of winter and already we have a group of wise, brave and beautifully spirited women who alongside me have been exploring themes such as Ritual, Embodiment and Rest.

When I created The Well I envisioned a reverent space that women could enter as they are and explore the possibility of who they long to be. A space where women could reclaim what felt right and true for them and in the process, remember the power of belonging to a community of women. The Well was a personal vision that we as a group have dreamed into being and the experience so far has been life-giving.

So if you, like us, have been hearing the call for change.

If you, like us, are hearing the call for deepening and maturation.

If you, like us, long to be in the world in a fuller and more meaningful way this is your invitation to join us at The Well and explore how that can be possible.

This is the first time we have opened doors to The Well publicly and we will only be doing so every few months to ensure a steady rhythm within the women of The Well.

Join The Well

Doors close this Friday 28 August at 5pm AEST

The Well is for you if you’re ready to live eye-to-eye, heart-to-heart, soul-to-soul with other women.

The Well is for you if you long for rhythm, rest and ritual.

The Well is for you if you’re ready to bring down your walls and receive the blessing that is your life.

If you are ready we’ll see you at The Well.

Love,

Alanna

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Women want to feel enough, just as they are.

They don’t want to be told or shown the way.

They want to enter honest, intimate and inspired spaces

that allow them to discover it for themselves.

Your response to my last email arrived with a huge resounding, yes!

Women are in search of meaning.

Women are longing for more depth as they age.

Women want to use what they have to participate in collective change.

Women want to receive the same support, love and tending that they have long offered to others.

Women want to be the leaders of their own lives.

What I have learnt in my 20+ years of teaching, guiding and facilitating groups of people is that women want to feel enough, just as they are. They don’t want to be told or shown the way. They want to enter honest, intimate and inspired spaces that allow them to discover it for themselves.

Women an innately wise and deep down, they know it.

So when women enter environments that reflect that knowing their physical, relational, emotional, mental and spiritual growth is immeasurable. Women are forces of nature; a living embodiment of all the old stories that long to be retold and remembered – retold and remembered in circle.

Gathering in circle around tables, ceremonies and fires is an age old tradition and while simple, is life-changing. Circles allow us to come as we are and experience the fullness within. Circles bring meaning, rhythm, connection healing and aliveness, and for many centuries is what our ancestors knew reconnected us with what is right, holy and true.

What circles require of us is…

trust

open-heartedness

deep listening

respect

and loyal commitment.

Circles reflect the cycles that women move through and when they are a regular presence in our lives, they offer a solid centre from which we can grow strong roots and wide arms. Sitting in circle remind us how to fully inhabit our own lives.

I don’t think women need more information, guidance or direction. I think women simply need each other. Women need each other in the same way our lungs need air and our hearts need a home. Together, women evolve.

I wonder if you have a regular circle in your life that allows you to tend to yourself psychically, relationally, emotionally, mentally and spiritually?

If not, I wonder if a circle is calling you?

Love,

Alanna

ps. If you haven’t yet listened to my podcast, The Ways of the Feminine and you’re curious about my new women’s community, The Well you can find out about both by signing up here.

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Women are longing for more.

Not more money.

Not more accolades.

Not more information or education.

But rather, more substance in where they stand.

More aliveness in their bodies.

More connection with spirit.

More freedom to be who they are.

Hello my friend.

It has been a cold, wet winter here in Tasmania. The kind that draws you indoors, moves time slowly and asks you to tend to old and familiar things.

This winter I have noticed a reoccurring theme emerging from the wise mouths of the women who are engaged in my relationship therapy and new women’s community, The Well.

That emerging theme is, a search for meaning.

Their search has opened something new inside me and invited new contemplations around how and where we find meaning, as women.

What I am hearing is…

Women are longing for more.

Not more money.

Not more accolades.

Not more information or education.

But rather, more substance in where they stand.

More aliveness in their bodies.

More connection with spirit.

More freedom to be who they are.

So many of us feel a lack of meaning because we live in a constant state of striving for the things that will never bring it.

What I have discovered in these recent and intimate conversations with women is that striving creates pressure, pressure creates distracted disconnection and disconnection leads to meaninglessness. It’s that meaninglessness – that lack of knowing how or where to engage with the things that bring them fully alive – that leaves so many women feeling alone and lonely in their search.

Women want to feel enough, just as they are. They don’t want to be told or shown the way. They want to enter honest, intimate and inspired spaces that allow them to discover it for themselves. I understand that this may not be the case for all women but I do believe it is the case for most. Perhaps it is the case for you, the one here reading and contemplating with me.

I have always paid keen attention to the way these patterns and cycles evolve a woman’s life and what I see is that they arrive around a coming of age, a moment in time, a rite of passage that calls for meaning beyond that which comes from our family, friends and career. A passage that calls when we least expect it but when we are most ready to enter it.

Perhaps it’s the passage of time.

Perhaps it’s the passage of wisdom.

Perhaps it’s the passage of maturation.

I cannot be sure, but what I am sure of is that when the search for meaning awakens in you it means that something is searching for you too.

My wintery contemplations tell that meaning comes from direct experience, soulful connection and the ritualisation of time. The question is then, how and where does a woman find that?

I wonder what this season has revealed in you?

I wonder if you have reached an age where striving to be someone or something other than who you are, has started to wear thin?

I wonder if something deeper and more meaningful is calling your name?

Love,

Alanna

ps. If you haven't yet listened to my podcast, The Ways of the Feminine and you're curious about my new women's community, The Well you can find out about both by signing up here.

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A few months ago, Bear and I took three very slow and romantic days away together to remember and rekindle the embers of our love.

We have been together for 14 years and in that time we have travelled the world, followed creative callings, invested deeply in spiritual growth, relocated interstate, made babies, lost babies and marvelled at the birth of three. We have supported each other through new studies, new careers and new businesses, become yoga and meditation teachers together, sold our lush and beloved rainforest block to buy a wide and sunny farm and throughout it all, have continued to work on ourselves.

In the last 14 years we have changed in immeasurable ways.

We are not the people we once were.

And there is no part of me that wishes we were.

In the past few years, I could feel a slow death occurring. Not one that I thought would end our relationship but one that I knew would change it. Then, over the last year — the year in which I turned 40 and everything seemed to change — I felt that death occur. Old parts broke away to unveil truer and more tender parts that now, long to live at the surface. New and unfamiliar conversations are emerging to occupy spaces where old words once lay. A truer language is taking form.

We have both changed and that individual change has called for a change in our relationship.

The whole experience has felt like plowing an old and beloved garden with the hope that its renewed soil and turned roots will better receive the sun.

Relationships do this.

They cycle and they cycle.

They are born and they die — sometimes temporarily and sometimes completely — and while that death can be painful and uncomfortable if we can accept that it is a natural part of relationship, death can mature and deepen our love in ways that nothing else can.

However, the reason so many of us resist death within a relationship is not because we’ve become complacent but because death requires change and change uproots uncertainty and for many uncertainty is terrifying.

In the process of death the masculine stands steady, clear and visionary allowing for the feminine to disappear and reappear returning each time, new and newly alive. This cycle is a natural one and is without doubt, what has continued to enliven our relationship over and over again — particularly during the last year.

All human beings inhabit masculine and feminine energy and in order for our relationship to be renewed we have needed to take turns embodying our beloved’s opposite as they moved through their wave of death. For us it has been a slow, tender and delicate process that has involved the composting of who we once were in order to fertilise the ground of who we are now becoming.

That few days we had away together marked the end of our last chapter (one built on security, support and surrender) and the beginning of a new (one built on dreams, courage and action).

We spent hours talking, listening, shedding, reconnecting and dreaming.

Perched above the Tasman sea and at the feet of ancient bushland, we nestled inside our friend’s converted bus to release our old chapter and breathe life into the new one emerging.

One that says, yes, we are parents.

Yes, we have responsibilities.

Yes, life is full of distraction and duty but we are and were first, lovers too.

Lovers and friends, is who we are.

Yes, there is more uncertainty around us now than what there was before — or perhaps we’re simply more aware of uncertainty’s constant presence — but what I am finding is that when we welcome the natural laws of uncertainty and death into our relationship, not only does our relationship mature but we both feel more alive because of it.

In the last 14 years, particularly after becoming parents 10 years ago, we have both changed and when people change their relationships need to change too. Without change — without the death of the old and the birth of the new — it is easy for our relationships to start to feel distant, hollow and suffocating rather than intimate, meaningful and enlivening.

For most of us, change is terrifying because death is terrifying.

But the reality is that the more we hold on…

the more we try to keep things ‘what they once were’…

the more we try control the outcome of everything…

the more we kill relationship’s innate longing to grow.

By not allowing ourselves to change, by not allowing an old chapter to die, by not allowing the other to truly see who we have become we deprive the relationship of the minerals needed for renewal — we deprive the relationship of new life.

The most loving, honest and courageous gift we can offer our relationship is to allow it to die so that something new, and often magnificent, can be born.

Other than adoring who this man is and how he makes me feel, what I cherish most about him is how willing he is to grow with me and how steady he stands in the ever-changing landscape of our relationship. To me, this is his most attractive quality — one that I would not be in any relationship without. I need growth in the same way my lungs needs air. Growth is essential for me.

With him I feel the masculine and feminine moving through us in way that renews our relationship and allows both of us to become who we are.

With him, I feel alive and inspired.

With him, I feel that anything is possible.

With him, I feel accepted to be as I am and that who I am is free to change whenever death calls for new life.

Below are 15 questions to gently guide a death and rebirth cycle in your relationship…

Love,

Alanna

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How wondrous 

and full of possibility 

we become 

when we descend 

into darkness 

only to realise

 it is an essential 

reorientation

in how 

to better welcome

the light 

of the sun.


Alanna Meredith

I hope the recent crossing of the Winter Solstice threshold opened an opportunity for you to get quiet, still and tender with the parts of yourself that aren’t always readily available – the hidden parts that long to be renewed. Winter solstice is a seasonal turning point that directs a seasonal change in us. As the southern hemisphere descends into the shortest and darkest day of the year, the descent becomes a living invitation for us to descend deep into ourselves and be born, anew.

At this exact time last year I was re-entering the world, anew.

After having just finished my ancestral pilgrimage in Ireland, I arrived home just in time for the winter solstice decent which enabled me to face, integrate and make sense of it all.

By winter’s end, I felt new and newly alive.

That pilgrimage awoke something vital in me. Something that has changed the way I begin my days, the way I receive inner guidance, the way I relate to the women in my family line, the way I work and the work I offer. Mostly importantly, pilgrimage transformed the way I relate to myself and the understanding of why my Soul is here… leading me to enrol in a Graduate Certificate with Dr. Sharon Blackie on Celtic Mythology and create a whole new body of work.

I am now on a new path…

unsure of its exact destination

but in deep trust of its calling

and clear on what action is needed now.

After almost two decades of being in conversation with you, what I hear more than anything is that women are longing for something deeper, more intimate and more enlivening. The longing is unquestionable and unwavering. The longing is deeply felt. The longing is shared by women.

Women are ready for change.

Women are ready for something deeper.

Women are ready to feel more alive.

In this new chapter of life I am longing for the same thing as you and so have created something rooted in my ancestry, created by my heart and shaped to meet the longing in us both.

I recently launched my podcast series, The Ways of the Feminine so that you could better understand your feminine nature by identifying where you might be in excess or depletion. I then made a personal invitation to those who listened to the podcast to join me at, The Well.

The Well, is my new offering.

The Well, is a dream that came through on pilgrimage and is now gathering life.

The Well is a community for women who long to live deeply, intimately and fully alive and for the past two months we have been gathering around a shared theme, daily practice, self enquiry and reflection, solitude rituals, goddess work and group sharing.

The Well is a dream coming to life!

This community feels so deeply aligned and the women who have joined The Well are reflecting the same sentiments, with one member recently sharing…

I absolutely loved focusing on one topic for a month, and having the support and guidance being delivered in small doses every week to stimulate contemplation ❤

The Well is giving me the opportunity to have a more intimate relationship with the women of this community (something I have been longing for) and them, the opportunity to become intimate with themselves. I am showing up differently in this space — more personally, more collaboratively, more femininely — than I have in any other space before. I feel enlivened by this community, the inner landscapes we’re exploring and the vision I’m holding for our future. The Well is only the beginning and I have last year’s winter descent to thank for germinating its seeds into new growth.

How wondrous and full of possibility we become when we descend into darkness only to realise it is an essential reorientation in how to better welcome, the light of the sun.

Perhaps you can join us around the The Well by answering one of the reflective questions from last month’s theme of Ritualising our Lives –

Are there any rituals that have been passed down through your family?

If so, what are they and how do you feel about them?

I invite you to share your answers below. I would love to learn about what rituals have been passed down, what they mean to you and if you are carrying them on.

Love,

Alanna

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I Have Known What it Feels Like

I have known
what it feels like
to have the ground beneath
crumble.
I have known 
the silent sting 
of loneliness
and the constant ache 
of grief.

I have known
the wild pains
of reckless 
misunderstanding.
I have known
the despairing exposure 
of tender ends
refusing to meet.

I have known
the way shame
erodes all sense 
of belonging.
I have known
the way expectation
distorts 
what is sees.

I have known
the weight of the world
on narrow shoulders
and have many times 
questioned
how essential it is
to really know 
the depth 
of the darkened sea.

Just as I have known
how to return 
to truth telling
how to catch 
the rhythm 
of my faithful breath
how to reach 
for what lives 
inside and everywhere
and how to discern 
with open hands 
and a wide, loving chest.

Experience 
is our only direct 
knowing
for everything else 
questions
if we truly belong.
We carry within us 
ancient tales 
of abstracted story
where pain turns wisdom
and medicine women 
tongue long 
and nectared song.

I am only true
when farewelling the moon
and rising to meet 
a new sun.
I am the one 
who both waits and becomes
the one 
who craves small silence
before the enormity 
of each day 
is done.

I am born 
of and for
the hand that gives 
all life
and can only love 
as deeply
as I allow my heart 
to grieve.

I am born 
of and for 
the hand that gives 
all life
and can only live 
as freely
as I allow 
the miracle of my body
to breathe.

Alanna Meredith

I wonder what you have known…

I wonder if you have known the same things as me…

We have all lived and we all hold wisdom… I humbly invite you to share yours with me (below).

Love,

Alanna

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I Take Myself Down To The Water

I take myself 
down 
to the water
to wash off
everything 
I have adopted
and remember
everything
I have forgotten.

I take myself
down
to the water
to wash off
all noise and suffocation
all weight and indignation
all memory tinged
with anguish 
which never allowed 
for the truthful tongue
of my body's language.

It is
in the water
bare-skinned and silent
on the edge of where 
moon meets sun
and the natural world stirs
I feel all woman
and all women
here, with me.

It is 
in the water
my ancestors
sound my name
Meredith.
Toned by Welsh undercurrent
and shaped by Irish song
they say, they say
Meredith
you are, you are 
the protector of the sea.

I take myself 
down 
to the water
to wash off
everything 
I have adopted
and remember
everything
I have forgotten.

O' dark
and ageless water
I remember
that I am you
and that when my flesh 
meets yours
we dissolve 
to become
the unseen and holy sea.

Alanna Meredith

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Life softens into something easeful and more meaningful when we allow ourselves to be vulnerable. There is a silent exhaustion in constantly holding back, hiding and avoiding the truth of who we are and that exhaustion leaves us feeling unseen, untouched and all alone.

Vulnerability is the brave practice of sharing our truth — our true thoughts, feelings, dreams and desires — regardless of the feedback. For vulnerability is the doorway to intimacy and intimacy is the current that enables love to grow.

If you long to change and mature your relationship with vulnerability in order to create more intimacy in your relationships, tune in to my latest episode on my new 5-part podcast series, The Ways of the Feminine.

In episode 2 — Vulnerability I discuss how a changed relationship with openness, surrender, softening, intimacy, mystery, death and the release of control can deepen your relationship with your own feminine nature and allow you to identify where you may be in excess or depletion.

Without vulnerability there is no intimacy and without intimacy true love remains a distant possibility — never fully known.

Listen Here

Love,

Alanna

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Our feminine nature is the part of us that we are being called to remember.

Hello my friend.

Today is the most powerful new moon of the year. With 10 planets in Aires (an extremely rare astrological event) the invitation is to become clear, intentional and unapologetic as you take courageous action toward what is calling you.

This is why I have chosen today to share my new calling, with you.

My work is being called in a new direction.

This year has brought with it an escalation of pain, suffering and dysfunction that I see many of us struggling to reckon with. Even if we aren’t consciously aware of it, the impact of what is unfolding globally is taking a great toll on us personally while also acting as a mirror to our own fragmented consciousness. Like you, I can see our beautiful world in crisis and feel called to take action in the best way I know how – returning human beings to the wisdom of their heart – so that together we can remember what is true and essential within, in order to better meet what is unfolding around us.

I see a world that has forgotten what makes us human.

A world that has forgotten what it causes us great harm, to forget.

A world wrestling with a tired and destructive masculine that is longing for us to remember and reclaim our wise, feminine nature.

To guide us in this remembering, I have created a private 5-part podcast series called The Ways of the Feminine. In this first episode on Embodiment I discuss how a changed relationship with your physical body, sensuality, sexuality, emotionality, instincts, intuition and natural bodily rhythms deepens your relationship with your feminine nature and allows you to identify where you may be in excess or depletion with it.

Listen to the Podcast

This discussion on embodiment is part of a private 5-part podcast series in which I will be exploring the essential need for a return to our feminine nature in order for us to heal, evolve and remember our belonging here. My hope is that your quiet, individual remembering will grow into collective consciousness and enable us as human beings to mature the way we are inhabiting our bodies, our lives and our world.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this first episode - enjoy!

Love,

Alanna

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Sometimes, I Feel So Insignificant 

Sometimes
I feel so insignificant.
So insignificant that the world
could just swallow me whole.

I invest endless hours
digging and discovering
facing and excavating
healing and serving
to upturn pearls of awe.
Only to return
to a room with no takers
no willing ears
no invested hands
no readied mouths 
or fellow wakers.

Sometimes
I feel so insignificant
not because I am unsure
or because inspiration has run dry
but because I don't know where to lay
this overflow of goodness
falling from the sky.
I don't know what to do
with the constant burning at my core
don't know how to find my way 
through overwhelmed competition
when my heart knows only
the way of collaborations door.

Sometimes
I feel so insignificant
like all my efforts and creations
all my dream-maker weaves
slip through unattentive fingers
adrift on unfamiliar seas.
My good work
erased by distraction
lost in confusion
bound by the discomfort
of anything and everything 
born of delusion.

Sometimes
I feel so insignificant
I can hear failure taunt
it's retched screech 
like quicksand
beckons me to abandon my will
and follow old haunts.
To give up the soul searching
to give up the urging core song
to follow temptation into the mundane
to live on one leg, face down
despite all its feeling wrong.

Then suddenly
the loyalty of morning sun
opens a new way in.
A warmed chorus
of familiar hymn
that sounds insignificance is a gift.
My body now recalling
vivid memories from innocence
wise lullabies that hum
that darkness is not the devil
but the fertility of magnificence.

Insignificance
is the first door of awakening
and beyond it
all doorways tell
this is how we right-size pain
this is how we harvest beauty
this is how we live in remembrance.
For Source works through us
in the maturation of our adolescence.

In this room 
I can now see
that I don't have to do it all.
I don't have to get it right
I don't need aloneness to drive out loneliness
I need set ablaze all my reaching
and let fire give me new sight.

I feel now
myself walking
back in the vastness
of the waking world
allowing deep waters
and wide peaks
to ease what has hardened
to hug life back into my bones
to hush my ached longing
to allow my true Self to be known.

I am held
by all that the world is still yet to tell.
Insignificance is the seat of wonder
the Soul's great inspiring well.
To feel small is a gift
to feel alone is truth
and to feel lost 
in the mystery of being alive
can only ever mean
that one is finally awake
that one, is fully here.

I wonder if I am alone in this feeling?

I wonder if at times, you feel insignificant too?

If so, share with me in the comments below.

Love,

Alanna

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My Favourite People

My favourite people 
are the ones 
who 
have experienced 
deep wounding 
and still find 
the capacity 
to be genuinely 
kind 
and compassionate 
with others.

It is easy
to become 
embittered 
and hardened.
It is easy
to become 
closed 
by pain. 

It takes 
humility 
and bravery
deep-seated 
trust 
to face 
what hurts
and choose
to work with it
in a way
that enables 
one
to keep 
their heart 
open. 

The ones 
who make 
that brave 
choice 
are the ones 
who I choose 
to keep close. 

For they 
are a stunning 
reminder 
of what 
is possible
within 
us all.

Love,
Alanna

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2025 stripped me of all knowing.

On one hand, I deepened into my Celtic ancestry in ways that have forever changed and enlivened me and on the other hand, I was emptied of all confidence and re-introduced to patterns I thought I had long outgrown.

2025 — Year of the Wood Snake was a year of cleansing, completion and radical change that this week, on Tuesday 17 February 2026 came full circle to mark a New Moon in Aquarius, Solar Eclipse and beginning of the Chinese New Year — Year of the Fire Horse. This extraordinarily rare and powerful moment in time is igniting nobility, passion, courage and leadership. We are being ushered into brand new territory and every cell in my body can feel it.

It is said, that the root of courage is change and that change is what we are designed for. Last year, everything felt like one long continuous unravelling of change. In fact, looking back over the last 9 years (which aligns perfectly with the last 9 year zodiac cycle) my entire life has felt like one great undoing.

I have felt karmic ties loosening.

Generational trauma healing.

Worn-out identities splintering.

Relational patterns evolving.

Ancestral wisdom emerging.

Old wounds reaching the surface to quicken my soul’s evolution in peculiar and miraculous ways.

9 years ago I entered the birth portal and was born, a mother. A mother who held natural instinct and yet a woman, who would soon be called to face her deepest and most painful wounds.

9 years of undoing, loosening, healing, splintering, evolving, emerging, surfacing and quickening all seemed to gather around my ancestral pilgrimage in Ireland in May/June last year and began to braid what once felt hard and immoveable into the soft promise of new life — life on the other side of 40.

This last and final part of my pilgrimage story has taken me many months to write and may very well be the most intimate and truth-telling of them all. I have felt compelled yet hesitant to write and share this last part, as my story illuminates the story of others and the story we have shared… so it is courage that is guiding me on here.

This is the story that travelled me back through my red thread, birth imprint and early conditioning that reaches one arm around my past and the other around my future to bring full attention into what my soul longs for now.

This is where my great undoing and humble remaking weave.

This is where the longings of my heart and my ancestors merge.

This is how I have been reminded of the way hardness in another can open a softness within us.

This is how I learnt about the inseparable bond between compassion and courage that taught me how to breathe fire through deep waters — a vow that birthed on the first day of my pilgrimage, carried me through its days and has now become one I intend to live by as a mother, woman and soul moving through time and space.

A soul whose chosen name is Alanna Meredith which in Welsh (a nod to part of my maternal ancestry) means Protector of the Sea.

Below the veil of this paywall is the truest and most personal part of this letter — the vulnerable and intimate experiences that I rarely share in full view. If you are a paid subscriber, journey on with me and if you’re curious and wanting to touch the truth of this letter, join as a paid member and read it all.

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The courage to dream. The courage to create. The courage not to temper my joy. The courage to be powerful and misunderstood. The courage to find creativity in discipline and freedom in forgiveness. The courage to be truly known.

The courage to dance with fallibility. The courage to speak a clear no and a full yes, when instinct calls. The courage to take my time. The courage to be still and quiet. The courage to own the gifts of my ancestral line. The courage to lay down what was never mine to hold and to name its rightful place. The courage to listen with generous ears and to etch into mind the holy shape of my sons faces.

The courage to rise early, eat slowly and hold the hand of my beloved. The courage to let go of what wants to die. The courage to be wrong without a need to be right. The courage to become worthy not perfect. The courage to honour that I am never the same. The courage to admit when I don’t know. The courage to prioritise pleasure and remain a responsible gardener of everything I have ever grown.

The courage to embody the virtue of my own name. The courage to be of humble and integral service. The courage to live in devotion to the unnamed mystery in the sky. The courage to accept reality as it is and remain soft-hearted in the presence of hardened-eyes.

The courage to believe in magic. The courage to work with the fire that has long burnt bright in my chest. The courage to identify first, as a Soul, and to let old identities rest. The courage to move with every changing moment while honouring what is constant and true within. The courage to be as I am, as I am. The courage to live in the same way that I swim.

Welcome 2026.
The Year of the Fire Horse.
The theme of courage is rising from 2025 ash.
Courage, now my fierce and faithful guide as I travel with the snake coiled in the bosom of my ready and willing breast.

Love,

Alanna

If you have been receiving and enjoying my writing for some time, I encourage you to become a paid subscriber. Your support means more than words can ever express and enables me to share with you more. Thank you for being here x

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Hello my friend,

Seven years ago, during a Kundalini Yoga Teacher Training, we were exploring our relational patterns through the subconscious layers of the mind and the body. An old pattern surfaced, and I asked my teacher… why do I always attract people who feel misunderstood, lonely or like they don’t belong?

She looked at me, eyes full of compassion, and asked…

What part of you feels misunderstood?

What part of you feels like it doesn’t belong?

What part of you feels lonely?

Her words changed everything.

Her questions sent me inward.

What I discovered was that my loneliness was not about a lack of friendship but about a lack of emotional and spiritual depth in my friendships and that lack was stemming from me holding back because, deep down, I believed I was “too deep, too serious, too intimate” for others – a wounded belief that I had carried since childhood. A belief that created distance and that distance, created loneliness.

When I finally turned toward that belief, everything shifted. I could now see how I was contributing to those dynamics of loneliness and so I worked to change it. My relationships became more intimate. My friendships became deeper. I stopped abandoning myself and my loneliness became a bridge to connection. I now choose to live with the door of my heart wide open and if the other person isn’t willing to go to those depths with me, I know it isn’t the relationship for me.

I no longer allow my wounded beliefs to create distance in my friendships, for those beliefs are my responsibility to resolve.

What I have learnt is that…

Loneliness is less about being with people and more about how you’re being when you’re with them. And intimacy, real intimacy with yourself, is the bridge between loneliness and belonging.

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Many of you have shared that you long for this too.

You want belonging.

You want emotional intimacy.

You want to feel seen and understood.

But loneliness keeps arising in your relationships.

This is exactly why I’ve created this 5-day Immersion, Meeting our Loneliness so that you can begin exploring that bridge and I have priced it at $44USD to make it accessible to everyone.

In this immersion you will explore 5 conscious ways you can begin changing your relationship with loneliness with…

• Daily, 1hr LIVE sessions with me for 5 days, starting Friday 28 November at 6.30am AEDT

• Teachings on the 5 sacred steps that lead us from loneliness to connection

• 5 workshops of conversation, contemplation and reflection alongside some embodiment practices

• Private online group for contemplative sessions, reflections and connection

• Reflective questions for personal contemplation and discovery

• Community connection with like-minded people, support and insights

• Replays available immediately so you can catch up whenever you like

• Access to the private group and replays for 2 weeks

Bookings close tomorrow at 9pm AEDT Tuesday 25 Nov.

A big welcome to everyone who has already joined!

Just as my teacher asked me, I am now asking you…

What part of you feels lonely?

How does that manifest in your relationships?

Are you ready and willing to explore those parts of yourself?

If the answer is yes, join me in Meeting our Loneliness.

Love,

Alanna

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We have to admit it

we have to fully commit

we have to practice surrendering

until our loneliness

becomes a door.

A door

that has long lived

only as an ache

a void

a dark and endless missing.

A door

that you

have worked tirelessly

to deny.

A door

that you

convinced yourself

was an unforgiving wall.

A door

that only when entered

opens wide and generous

into fields of ancient longing.

A door

that your heart

has been faithfully shaping

from the threads

of your belonging.

Alanna Meredith

Thank you for your brave admissions and commitments to loneliness. My heart has felt every single response.

When I asked here and on instagram how you respond to feelings of loneliness…

• 40% of you said, that you avoid loneliness by avoiding feeling your inner world.

• 35% of you said, that you try to fill the void by becoming attached or dependant on others.

• 15% of you said, that you deny it by keeping busy.

• 10% of you said, that you try to escape the discomfort by numbing it with external gratification.

With one particularly beautiful response saying…

This really resonates with me. I understand this feeling well & yearn for the sense of belonging you describe, Alanna. I’m building a bridge - Ella

You can see in these brave admissions, all the ways in which we humans try to avoid meeting our loneliness and how that avoidance only creates more loneliness.

This exploration – born out of my own deep wintering, ancestral remembering, 40th crossing and life-long relationship with loneliness – has felt so meaningful that it is personally transforming what once felt like a missing in my own life into a doorway of collective creation.

Everything - our pain, our joy, our longing - is a doorway.

Not for a special few, but for us all.

Last time I asked, how is it that we can be a world more connected than ever before and yet be the loneliest we have been?

We are evolving as human beings – human beings who shape our world – and my belief is that the longings of the heart, like loneliness, are doorways towards our evolution not statements of our brokenness. We are being called to remember what is most important and one of the most important human experiences is feeling connected to ourselves, others and life. We are by nature, relational beings. Connection is how we remember our belonging. Connection is essential on our evolution.

In my first email I invited you to start crossing the bridge of loneliness by admitting it.

Then, I invited you to commit to that admission by recognising the ways in which you avoid or deny your loneliness.

Now, I am inviting you to enter the doorway of your loneliness by surrendering to it.

When you admit something, you become honest.

When you commit to something, you become willing.

When you surrender to something, you become changed.

Change occurs in the fertile ground of your surrendering.

I’ve been so touched by this conversation that I’ve decided to create a space for you to come and meet your loneliness in way that brings your honesty, willingness and surrender to meet your heart’s longing.

You are not alone in your loneliness.

Most of us reading this are feeling it too.

But just reading this doesn’t create change.

You have to bring your head, heart and hands together.

Your willingness to meet your loneliness determines whether it becomes an invitation for healing and growth or remains a pattern of pain and disconnection. In so many ways, loneliness is a choice. A choice that begins with you. For loneliness has more to do with how far you are from yourself, rather than how far you are from others.

Join me for a 5-Day Immersion of Meeting our Loneliness

In this immersion we will explore 5 conscious ways we can begin meeting, understanding and changing our relationship with loneliness.

I introduced the first three in my last email - Self Enquiry (Svadhyaya), Self Expression (Satya) and Seeking Community (Sangha). The fourth is Self Practice (Sadhana) which has a lot more to do with how we live, rather than how we practice. Sadhana teaches us how to become aware of our patterns and then consciously transform them through our body, our relationships and throughout our entire life. Sadhana teaches us how to truly listen.

The fifth and final step, will surprise most of you but in my own journey of transforming loneliness into ecstatic states of connection and intimacy, it has been essential and is now a practice that I am devoted to for life. A practice that brings all five steps full circle. A practice that brings you out of victimhood and reminds you that you are a creator.

I invite you to soften into the wisdom of your body and ask yourself…

am I able to admit my loneliness?

am I willing to commit to my loneliness?

am I ready to surrender into my loneliness?

If the answer is yes, join me in Meeting our Loneliness.

Love,

Alanna

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Hello my friend,

The response to my last email about loneliness was one of the biggest I have ever received. Responses came in via email, text message, voice notes, social media, in my therapy sessions and face-to-face with over 85% of you saying… yes, I experience loneliness in my life and relationships.

The volume of this response has both floored and moved me.

How is it that we can be in a world that is more connected than ever before and yet be the loneliest we have been?

Here are some of the brave and vulnerable admissions I received…

Thank you for talking about this! Reading your email made me cry. I feel lonely when I try to share something really important with my family and they just disregard or misunderstand me. It really hurts and makes me feel so alone. I feel like they just don’t see me.

While I am a lot older, the loneliness can be as simple as not being seen due to age.. and I have a friend that I really wish could see me but she is too self distracted and so I feel lonely at times when I’m with her!

Like you, Alanna, I get very bored talking about surface level things. I long for deep connection and conversation with my friends but often find myself having the opposite! When I feel like I can’t talk to my friends about deeper level things, I feel lonely.

Loneliness shows up for me in my female friendships. It’s likely my old patterns playing out but female relationships have always been really tricky for me… but the truth is, I long to have them.

I feel lonely in my marriage. We are good team mates and operate well together but there is no emotional or spiritual connection. I crave that!

You can see in these brave and vulnerable admissions that loneliness arises everywhere. Loneliness is our shared human response to not feeling seen and feeling seen, is what our hearts long for.

What would happen if we made a commitment to our feelings of loneliness rather than denying them?

Our commitment to feeling loneliness determines whether it becomes an invitation for healing and growth or remains a pattern of pain and disconnection.

As you can see in these responses, most of the time, loneliness doesn’t arise due to a lack of people around us but due to lack of connection with those people. Deep and truthful connection is what we are born seeking and gives our lives meaning.

In my last email I invited you to start crossing the bridge of loneliness by admitting it.

Now I am inviting you to commit to that admission.

You see, once you have spoken the truth about how you feel you cannot ‘un-know’ it, just as you cannot change what you’re not willing to commit to. The quality of your health, life, love, work and relationships is based entirely on how committed you are to them.

If loneliness has been a part of yourself that you have by denying, avoiding or escaping perhaps this is your invitation to commit relating to loneliness in a new way – a way that unfolds a bridge toward truer and deeper connection.

Those first steps of commitment might look like…

Self Enquiry (Svadhyaya)

Understanding what you feel lonely about and what your heart longs for is the first admission. An admission to self. This requires your absolute honesty and humility, as self enquiry leads us to understand where we feel far from ourselves (our patterns of separation) and what brings us alive (what makes us feel whole).

Self Expression (Satya)

Using the insights gained through self enquiry, we need to be become honest, vulnerable and authentic in our expressions about what we long for, in order to receive it. People cannot truly see us if we don’t make ourselves visible to them and people cannot get close to us, if we aren’t open to them.

Seeking Community (Sangha)

The insight found in self enquiry and self expression will inform the kind of community, the kind of people you want connect with. Like-minded communities create shared meaning, belonging and purpose. We weren’t made do this alone. We were made to be in community. If the community you’re seeking doesn’t exist, let your loneliness be your invitation to create it.

From here, the path of transforming loneliness into connection deepens and in my next email I will share more on that but for now…I invite you to soften into the wisdom of your body and ask yourself…

in what moments do I feel lonely?

with who do I hold back or hide?

where in my life do I long to feel more seen and connected?

how do I relate to my feelings of loneliness?

Let this be an invitation to relate to your loneliness in a new way.

A way that grows inner connection rather than inner disconnection.

A way that bridges a connection between you and what your heart longs for.

A way paved by your commitment.

I encourage you to keep sharing your thoughts and feelings on loneliness with me.

Leaving a comment below creates shared meaning between us all.

Learning a comment below starts paving that commitment.

Love,

Alanna

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Hello my friend.

How is your heart?

Mine has been untethering in the contemplative landscape of my own solitude. I have been, what the author Katherine May calls, wintering. A practice that I have been maturing since moving south 7 years ago. Upon returning home from my pilgrimage in June I could feel my heart tugging to retreat and so, let myself descend deeper into winter than I ever have before. Then, just as the promise of spring arrived with all her buds, birds and song I crossed the threshold that is 40.

The remnants of my ancestral Pilgrimage through Ireland, the rich decent of my winter summoning and the vital rewilding of my 40th crossing have me standing at a new threshold – one that I have not met or created from ever before. A rebirth is occurring and it is my daily practice of the last 23 years that I have to thank for teaching me this art of allowing myself to disappear and reappear, whenever my heart calls.

This threshold of 40 feels like a simultaneous falling away of old responsibilities, roles, relationships and a rising of new powers, insights and longings. I am being invited me to ask old questions in truer ways and to follow my instincts without pause. I have always paused for contemplation at the turning of each age and this year – the year in which I turned 40 and the season in which a powerful double eclipse seemed to reshape us all – I’ve been contemplating what will matter to me most when I’m on my death bed and allowing that to direct my present moment.

Revisiting the essence of my childhood and bowing at the feet of my ancestors, I have been asking myself…

What matters to me most?

Who was I as a child?

What is it that my heart wants to devote itself to?

How do I best use what I have been given to serve?

With whom, do I wish to spend my precious days?

What brings me alive?

From these contemplations themes of emotional intimacy, spiritual freedom, creative courage, compassionate living, meaningful relationship and an unwavering devotion to mystery arose and in between — connecting where I have come from and where I can feel myself now going — is the sacred bridge of loneliness.

Loneliness emerges when you are disconnected from your truth. When you feel far from yourself, others and life. Loneliness is a sacred nudge to pay attention to all the ways in which you aren’t showing up authentically in your own life. I could feel this theme emerging in a relationship before I left for Ireland, then under the guidance of my ancestors I unravelled it’s many layers and now, I am bringing this theme of loneliness to you.

Most of us, would never want to admit that we feel lonely.

Some of us are too proud.

Some of us feel too afraid.

Some of us are simply unaware of what that great hollow feeling inside of us, is. Regardless of the reason, most of us have a tendency to isolate ourselves further than fully inhabit the vulnerability of that admission.

But the truth is, loneliness is a sacred bridge to connection and by not admitting it we create more suffering for ourselves, more distance in our relationships and more meaningless action in our lives. Loneliness is often the result of an inability to communicate how you really feel and who you really are. For you cannot be seen by another if you don’t make yourself visible to them.

I experience loneliness too. Not due to a lack of loving friends or family but due to lack of those willing to really connect on the level of the heart, the soul and the unnamed mystery that lives within us all… and I know that I am not the only one. When I look out into the world, I see a world engulfed in this same loneliness.

I hear it in my therapy rooms.

I feel it in my family and friends.

I see it in my community.

I am witnessing it drive division through our world.

Loneliness is a feeling that I have lived with since I was a child. Even though as a 2/4 Projector (Hermit/Opportunist Seer) I get my energy from solitude and for the most part, have an ease in connecting with people… what truly brings me alive is rich, deep and meaningful relationship. My relationships, both seen and unseen, live at the centre of my life and within them I yearn for intimacy and when I don’t feel it, I experience loneliness.

Looking back at my childhood, I was always wanting to talk about the things most people did not – death, sex, pain, power, nature, impermanence, grief, beauty, love, mystery, awe, God and magic – and often found myself pushing through conversations that felt shallow and vapid. Over the last few decades, I have slowly found my people and with them I don’t discuss the weather. We share in rich conversation, we practice showing each other who we are, we encourage an openness in one another and we cultivate intimacy through vulnerability. We offer each other the gift of being seen and that exchange sustains a connection that makes both of us feel alive… something I know many of you long for too.

As a poet, teacher and therapist – an observer of life – I have come to understand that we yearn to be seen more than we yearn to be loved and that our deepest loneliness doesn’t arise from not having relationship but rather having relationship in which we live far, far apart.

We all know the experience of sitting side-by-side but feeling worlds apart.

We all know the experience of trying to share something true and tender with someone consumed by their own distraction and rigidity.

We all know that experience of holding back the great sea of feeling that lives within us due to the fear it will be too much for the other.

We all know the experience of constantly questioning how much of ourselves we should really show and so, we show nothing.

Perhaps, like me, you feel a longing for more emotional intimacy, spiritual freedom, creative courage, compassionate living, meaningful relationship and connection with mystery but aren’t sure where to begin.

If my path and practice have taught me anything it’s that the surest way to begin transforming loneliness is to become brave enough, vulnerable enough and humble enough to admit, that you are.

You have to say the words.

You have to feel it’s ache.

You have to admit your loneliness in order to meet the bridge.

From that admission, the bridge begins to unfold.

Love,

Alanna

For those waiting for the final part of my pilgrimage journey, it is coming soon, but for now this is what is in my heart and what my heart wants to share with yours….

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There is a Part of You That Doesn't Need Healing

Deep deep down

far far in

there is a part of you

that doesn’t need healing.

A part of you 

that is constant and true. 

A part of you

that is seamless and whole.

Deep deep down

far far in

there is a part of you 

that longs to be heard

so that your life

can become an expression

of it’s wild and brilliant song.

Listen.

On the path of healing, we can often feel as though we have to climb mountains.

Mountains, before we can ever fully embody our own wholeness.

Mountains, before we can even touch our own truth.

Mountains, before we can ever taste our own freedom.

These mountains are an illusion… an illusion that leads you, to you.

Wholeness is available to you any time you can get still enough and quiet enough to remember.

In that place, every part of you is welcome.

In that place, there is an awareness that is seamless and whole.

In that place, there is a wise and loving presence that is you.

I wrote this piece of poetry to remind you of that and have also recorded a meditation for you to enter this still and quiet place of remembering. If you would like to join the meditation, you can subscribe below.

Love,

Alanna

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But what do I do with all this pain?
How do I speak of the ache?
How do I continue living in the safety of my own home 
while witnessing the home of innocence crumble?

Well, Dear Child
you feet it.
You use the privilege 
of your safe seat
to feel your pain
and once
you have allowed your body
to truly feel it
you transmute that pain
into an engine.

An engine
that brings your heart and mind
to see with one eye.
An engine
that is inspired
to make rightful choice.
An engine
that is devoted
to growing compassion in the world.

With that engine running
you will start to see
that every small thing counts
every nuance becomes a thread
everything accumulates into something —
for we are nothing
but all the stories
we have ever been told.

With that engine running
every time you speak the truth
every time you make a decision with your heart
every time you take action from your own humanity
you inspire the same humanity
in another.

You do this
for every child
who was not gifted the same privilege.
For every child
who lost their home to hatred.
For every child
who was taught to fear their neighbour.
For every child 
who after a lifetime
of hearing stories coloured in divide
did not hesitate 
to take the life of another
when the moment arrived.

We are all responsible
but our responsibility
must be powered by a different engine.
We have to use our privilege 
to feel deeply
to see clearly
to understand beyond logic or reason
so that we can dissolve, evolve and hand carve
something new and kind
something for those who cannot freely 
do it for themselves.

Something 
that enables us to understand
that all the small moments
becomes stories
stories that become beliefs
beliefs that drive action
from the suppressed and oppressed 
parts of who we are.

Start with feeling, Dear Child
start with your heart
start by accepting that it can all be true
and the collective story
the story of our human existence
will slowly
but surely 
change.

Love,

Alanna

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I am now home after having journeyed through England, Ireland and Wales.

Once the power of the women’s pilgrimage through Connemara, Ireland began I decided to give myself to it fully. I wrote in the early mornings and late evenings so that I could remember it all, hold each piece near and share with you in hindsight; a place from which sense can be made from confusion, wisdom can be drawn from hardship and wonder can be drunk like fine wine.

Since returning home, I have been inward.

On sabbatical.

Deep in the waters of my own winter.

Integrating it all.

Contemplating how to share what was a truly life-changing experience.

When I write, I write honestly. However this time I have really been sitting with how honest I want to be. How much I want to share. This experience felt different to most. Normally, I would not share details about my relationship with another person publicly but the truth is we learn so much about who we are through our relationship, that I can not share my truth without sharing the truth of my experience.

Prior to, during and since pilgrimage relationship is where my most meaningful challenges, insights and breakthroughs have occurred and so on the back of the New Moon in Leo, the peak of the Lion’s Gate Portal and the cusp of a Full Moon in Aquarius, I am ready to share.

Following is the journey of my pilgrimage through Connemara, Ireland.

The Holy Well

When I last wrote to you it was the first morning of pilgrimage, after having arrived in Connemara the previous afternoon. As soon as I arrived in Clifden — the small town upon which we all descended from our individual corners of the earth — the euphoric and excruciating nature of my journey began.

On that morning when I last wrote to you, I was sitting in the promise of what was to come and so took my newly formed prayer, my faithful body and visited my first holy well in Ireland.

Holy wells are the gathering place of women — a safe space for women to come together, pray, heal, dream and commune with the divine. In the Gaelic Irish tradition, which is a significant part of the Celtic Tradition, it is the women who are the wisdom keepers. Their role throughout history has been shaped by their feminine natures of embodied intuition, compassionate service and spiritual guidance. In the west of Ireland, women have been gathering at holy wells for centuries with some records tracing back as far as the medieval periods. For it is them, the women, who are believed to connect with other worlds and unseen realms and whose spirit I could feel living in the landscape, singing on the wind and kneeling beside me as I prayed.

In Connemara, women have not been confined to their domestic duties and instead have been celebrated as poets, leaders, medicine makers, druids, healers and warriors. If you go back and read old Celtic literature (myths, legends and folklore from Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Brittany, and other Celtic-speaking regions) what you will find is that women are often at the center of the story — at the center of the culture. Celtic Women are seen as the moral authority, the voice of the other world whose seeing influences and creates this world. Voices of the other world and guardians of the land, women were the seers. The ones who knew how to keep life and its cycles in balance and so their voices were listened to, respected and revered.

For me, having grown up in a world shaped and coloured by patriarchal and religious views that not only implied women were less than but that they were also not to be trusted these discoveries while on pilgrimage made me feel empowered, honoured and wanting to own even more of my Celtic roots that reign from Ireland, Scotland and Wales. These discoveries also made me contemplate even more deeply the ways in which those patriarchal and religious views have influenced me and how I see myself as a woman.

Being on that land that both my maternal and paternal ancestors are from stoked old and new flames of remembering. Old and new flames of belonging. Old and new flames of becoming. I feel honoured to be a Celtic Woman and enlivened by the connection I am growing with my ancestors.

I would not say I am a religious person but since a very young as I have always been drawn to what is holy, natural, ritualistic, mystical and true. In particularly, the ways in which time and faith have influenced how we see women and how women see themselves.

Personally I come from a long line of resourceful, deep thinking, spirited and creative women who as I grow older seem to occupy more and more of my skin. Theirs wounds and their wisdom now exist as a living invitation for me to embody and evolve through this lifetime.

Journeying to Connemara was a dream I have held for the last decade and my arrival was a mix of beautiful and confronting things; things that I am ready to share now and things that may need more time to form words.

Things, that either way, I know were intended for me.

Compassion and Courage

What I believe in and practice more than anything else, is compassion, because compassion is the medicine for our human condition and the bridge between body and spirit.

Compassion doesn’t mean that you need to agree but it does require that you are willing to listen, contemplate and reflect back your understanding of another’s experience. Compassion keeps us from becoming rigid, hardened and righteous. Compassion allows us to remain open and capable of change.

However, in order to be compassionate you need to do the inner work required for compassion requires a level of maturity that enables you to see from Soul rather than the individualistic nature of the ego, which only sees itself. Compassion teaches you how to truly see another and through that seeing, see yourself and everyone as part of the whole.

When compassion is present we feel safe, seen, open and connected.

When compassion is absent we feel protective, unheard, closed and competitive.

In my preparation for pilgrimage, I did not even consider that compassion would be absent in our group leader but shockingly and fortuitously it was and so as a pilgrim, I had to make a decision;

• become a victim of compassion’s absence and spend my time wishing that things were different

or

• see it as an invitation to dig deep down into myself and find the compassionate part that could see the absence as a blessing, as life working for me, as spirit offering exactly what I had been asking for which was ‘to be brought to my knees’.

I chose the invitation to dig and brought to my knees I was…

Below the veil of this paywall is the truest and most powerful part of this letter — the vulnerable and intimate experiences that I rarely share in full view. If you are a paid subscriber, journey with me and if you’re curious and wanting to touch the truth of this letter, join as a paid member and experience it all.

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