Like so many of us, I have dipped into The Book of Alchemy by Suleika Jaouad in search of ideas for developing sustainable creative practices for myself. I was quite taken with the idea of doing something for 100 days. That seemed difficult but doable. The question was what practice would be worth that kind of commitment and investment? After consideration, I decided to commit to writing down three things that I noticed during the day - just three and not the ten suggested in the book. I needed something I knew I could achieve and enjoy, and I hoped that it might help me develop my sense of curiosity and teach me to notice fine details of the world as I passed through. I set up a journal for my daily notes and dove in, calling my three points Significant Sightings, and tracking myself on a habit tracker. Almost immediately, I saw that the practice was achieving what I’d hoped, and more. Sometimes I included photos for fun. Noticing itself became fun. And after a week or two, I realised that each of my noticings, my significant sightings, could serve as writing prompts. They were story seeds.

Over these past 100 days I have come to see my writing practice as three-fold, a trifecta:

- writing Morning Pages to serve as a daily brain dump

- collecting Story Seeds to strengthen my observation skills

- responding to Writing Prompts to keep me showing up on the page, to keep words alive in me by writing the way a pianist practices their scales - I call it joy writing

Every day. Three tasks to keep me writing. Three small acts to remind me that I am a writer who writes.

Yesterday was Day 100. Most days I go beyond those three practices and write more, whether it is part of a bigger work or creating a piece for publication or sharing. But at the very least, I come home to myself constantly with these three practices. One hundred days is not enough, and I’m carrying on.

I am incredibly proud of myself for accepting the challenge and seeing it through, and letting myself fall in love with my writer self.

Consistency, routine, small daily steps. I am, at last, a happy writer!

Thank you to Lea Goode-Harris for creating the sigil that sits in the centre of my practice symbol, reminding me to claim my self as a writer.

If my writing interests you, please check my website, Ariadne’s Thread, where I do a deeper dive into my specific projects. At present I am researching and writing about the medieval pilgrim, St Birgitta of Sweden.

I started writing more and more. I started talking about writing. And reading about writing. And I tried to ignore (or heal) those really old voices that have always snarled at me when I’ve tried to make good on an old dream. It didn’t escape my notice that I was choosing to write about a woman who was exactly my age when she died. Seventy. The more I learned about St Birgitta and the medieval world she lived in, the more I questioned my place in the modern world. I have always felt like an outsider, like someone watching my life from just a little ways away, slightly disconnected, as though my real life was a few steps away, just slightly out of reach. I’m pretty sure I’m not the only person who feels that way in our crazy fast-paced, high-pressured world. This doesn’t mean I haven’t been happy or that I haven’t had a good life - because I am happy and I have had an amazing life. But in my heart of hearts, I will admit that I have thought of myself as a jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none as I have moved through life, juggling my many interests without feeling truly committed to any one path.

Until now.

Over the past year, I have learned to claim my Writer Self. And that is leading me to a writing life with a community that holds up mirrors for me so that I can see how substantial I am. It’s not about talent or greatness. Or a publishing contract. It’s simply about knowing myself and who I am in the world. I am a writer. My work in the world is to write. I don’t even have to be right all the time, so long as I am writing.

Writing tells me what I think, and that scares me because it won’t let me keep people happy, might not make them like me. Writing my truth takes me to the seat of my magic, my soul. How amazing is that? When we are being true to ourselves, we are free to be our true selves. Even me.

Ray Bradbury says: Not to write, for many of us, is to die. If that is true, then a writer who doesn’t write is letting life slip through her fingers and is slowly dying. But the converse is also true: A writer who writes is grasping life with both hands.

My promise to myself is simple: I will take myself and my writing seriously because that is how I will age creatively. It’s how I want to live the rest of my life.

The above is a digital collage I created to use as a wallpaper for my writing focus. If you look closely, you might even see the opening lines of my book-in-progress.

In the end I didn’t write much about it because I stumbled into what feels like the rest of my life. I’m afraid I can’t tease out the threads sufficiently to provide a step by step narrative, but I can sum it all up by simply saying I found myself. My authenticity. My creative spark. And everything changed.

I don’t know that it would be accurate to say that my Self was ever lost, but since adolescence (a long, long time ago!) I have been distanced from the one thing - writing - that defines me, or would have defined me if I had let it. Yes, something happened. Something made me feel that I was only good at wordsmithing, but not good at thinking, which is, of course, a precursor to writing. I have spent a lifetime loving words but fearing expression.

At the age of 70, it was time for a change. I was ready to change.

Publicly I went very quiet for more than a year while I carefully worked to discern the direction I want to go at this point in my life. First and foremost, I have been embracing my writerly soul, finding my voice, my passion, and a new depth of authenticity. Learning to say what I think. Privately, I have been writing more than I have ever done, in a variety of genres and forms. You will see that I have changed the tagline on my website to My Writing Pilgrimage which feels significant and absolutely spot-on.

Second, I have been diving into the life and times of the medieval woman I first encountered nearly a decade ago, St Birgitta of Sweden. Although I’ve been interested in her for a long time, my relationship to her has felt increasingly personal over this past year, and my extensive research is developing into a book. I will use my website and its blog to discuss my research and her pilgrimage, but I want to use this Substack space to write about my own pilgrimage, my journey into a writing life, where I can give a warmer and more personal “dispatch from the road” about my writing - not just about a specific writing project but about my process where I can share my discoveries and writings as I explore voices, genres, and forms. I am changing the name from Ageing Creatively to Following the Thread to illustrate that this is what is happening as I follow Ariadne’s thread through the labyrinth of life.

The posts here and on Ariadne’s Thread will be separate and distinct, and I hope that you will consider subscribing to both. I know that many of you followed me on Substack because you thought I’d be writing about the ageing process. I’ve changed the game plan because as I started to write about ageing creatively, my process took on a life of its own. Instead of writing about ageing creatively, I embraced it and let it lead me on what feels like the most important and exciting adventure of my life. As I say on my website: Who knew that being in my 70’s could be so fun?

I hope you’ll stay with me here!

Read more about St Birgitta on Ariadne’s Thread: A writer’s pilgrimage

I am less than two weeks away from my 70th birthday. As my gift to myself, with the support of those around me, I am stepping into my Writerly Soul. Hey world! I’m a writer - and I’m about to show you my true colours! In 100 words, this is who I am and who I want to be in the world:

Kimberly Saward is a writer and pilgrim living near the Thames Estuary in England. An American expat who is enjoying the freedom that being 70 affords, she is old enough to trust her own voice and young enough to try new adventures. Holding a PhD in psychology, she brings her heart to her work. A labyrinth researcher and self-professed techno geek, Kimberly is now indulging her lifelong interest in medieval studies - she is fascinated by medieval holy women who call to her from across the centuries, inviting her on sacred journeys to explore their lives.

It takes commitment and energy to be a writer. I have created and comitted to a three-fold daily practice in addition to journaling: 1) I write. Something. Anything. I show up on the page, every single day. 2) I learn. Sometimes I’m researching my stories; sometimes I’m checking out writing software or new pens. I think of research as my rabbit-hole-of-the-day. 3) I read - hungrily and happily.

My writing is my priority. Can there be a better life? Suddenly I wish I was about to turn 30 instead of 70 as I claim all the deliciousness of the things I still want to do.

This is not what I thought turning 70 would feel like.

I’ve fed my inner geek by looking at writing software and note-taking apps, and have danced with my inner scholar as I’ve studied research organisation systems. I’ve also taken deep dives into the lives of several medieval women and felt the stirrings of plot and story as I’ve listened for their voices. I feel alive as a researcher, a writer, and a woman. I can’t wait to get up every morning.

I’ve called this substack Ageing Creatively because I wanted to explore the surreal experience of turning 70 and looking down the road into old age. I am alive and active, vital, but no one lives forever and it’s time for me to do those things that really matter to me. I’ve chosen to write. My decades-long fascination with nuns and medieval women suddenly wants my attention. My full attention! There’s a story here.

Just before Christmas I read Ordinary Devotion by Kristen Holt-Browning — it is the book I wish I had written. It’s a novel built on a solid foundation of research into medieval studies. It explores a subject that intrigues me, medieval anchoresses, and looks into the matter of authenticity in scholarship. By turning to the genre of historical fiction, the author gave herself scope for imagination without necessarily sacrificing historical accuracy. Why had I never thought of that? My sister had certainly suggested that my modern walking pilgrimages contain elements of fiction as I imagine the people in whose footsteps I walk. I guess we have to find our own paths at our own pace.

So, here I am looking 70 square in the face and feeling an absolute urgency to tell my stories with honesty and historic accuracy. I had assumed that if I ever wrote about any of the medieval women who fascinate me, they would need to be dry documentaries and I wasn’t sure I had the stomach for that. Guess what? They don’t. In the past two and a half weeks I have woven a mental outline of a story that explores medieval pilgrimage across Europe. On some imaginal level, I have felt both my interest and my perspective shifting back and forth between that of scholar and that of personal relationship to my characters. My own experiences, though vastly different in time, culture and setting, are the tools that will let me illustrate medieval life to myself and possibly others.

It feels, to be honest, completely daunting. I go to bed at night feeling excited about characters and plots, then wake in the night feeling completely overwhelmed and discouraged. By morning I seem to have found one more piece of the puzzle ready to slot into place. Is this the way writing works? Because I’ve never considered myself a fiction writer, I’m in new territory. I’m told that there are plotters and pantsers in the writing world. Clearly I’m a pantser - I write as I go, by the seat of my pants. I’ve been relieved to learn that there are enough of us who write that way to warrant our own category!

Twenty years ago I felt daunted by the task of writing a doctoral dissertation - and then I did it. I know how it works: you take one step at a time. You write one word, one paragraph, and then another and then another. I did it then; maybe I can do it again. I can but try.

Here’s the plan: I’m taking an energetic step into a new-to-me world. There are no promises of success but I’m going to tell my own story here alongside the historic fiction I’m creating. I’ll introduce you to my characters and show you their worlds as they grow in my imagination. And I’ll tell you what it feels like to be throwing myself into a new writing life instead of retiring quietly into a sunset.

I am an essayist. I recognise my writerly soul, but I struggle to come to terms with my inner writer and her imagination. For as long as I remember I have known myself as a writer but have held back and bound myself up with imagined critiques and uncomfortable projections. I remember climbing a neighbor’s sycamore tree when I was a young girl, carrying my pink notebook and a pen up into the shelter of the leafy branches, longing to write - but I also remember feeling blocked, afraid even then to actually share the detailed stories of my imaginings. I have since spent more than 50 years covering my tracks and hiding behind safety nets.

Lately I have been praying to find myself as a writer, to be able to write with courage and heart and to reclaim the joy of writing. I long to be a writer who writes, and to not be afraid of my words. I want the courage to let myself be seen. And I want to write a novel.

So here I am, getting very close to my 70th birthday and becoming increasingly aware that that the clock is ticking. I don’t want to waste any more time. On Christmas Eve I received a tiny packet in the mail from a dear soul-sister, containing a small gift from a recent trip to Santiago de Compostela. The little red bag stopped me in my tracks and I literally heard words in my head: it starts in Corticela!

Last week I wrote an essay about Mary’s Annunciation for an online group that means a lot to me. And on Christmas Eve, I heard my own angel speak: It starts in Corticela.

I immediately wrote what little I knew, a memory from 2019 when I walked the Camino Ingles with my long-time friend and pilgrim companion, Lisa.

We arrived in Santiago with a mix of emotions and intentions. We had visited as tourists ten years before, but we were not really knowledgeable about what to expect or do once our Camino, our walk from Ferrol to Santiago was complete. To be honest, we had walked as innocents- experienced with pilgrimage but not with the Camino specifically. We had collected our stamps and prayed in the churches that were open along the way, but we were not really prepared for the culture, the language, or the customs. Sometimes I wonder if that isn’t really the best way. Our opinions were not formed beforehand.

As we approached Santiago, we received a mesage from a friend that prayers were needed, and candles requested. Urgently. In the cathedral, or at least in Santiago.

The queue at the Pilgrim Office was off-putting so we wandered up in the direction of the cathedral, not sure where to go or how to find a suitable place to light candles and pray. We found calm in a tourist office near the cathedral. When we explained what we were looking for and the gravity of our errand, we were pointed towards a side entrance to the cathedral and told how to find the Corticela chapel inside. Going there let us bypass the crush of the crowds and the noise and chaos of the ongoing construction in the main part of the cathedral. In the chapel, we found empty benches and quiet solemnity. We could light candles, we could pray, we could sit together in silence. We marked the end of our pilgrimage not with a certificate, but with an arrival.

What is it about these medieval churches that catch my heart? Why do they feel so familiar? Every fibre of my being relaxed when I sat my tired body on the bench. Not in the great cathedral, but in the small chapel that had once been its own entity, a story I will tell in due course.

The story I am beginning to write starts there.

But underneath those obvious changes, two things always weave below the surface of Thanksgiving: tradition and thankfulness. When I wake up on Thanksgiving morning, I can sense other families stirring, sense that others are beginning to prepare their feasts, whatever they will be eating. While I might be alone in my kitchen I always feel like I am cooking in community that day.

We cooked a mini-feast this year. It was just the two of us, but we wanted the day to be as cosy and meaningful as we could make it - and I didn’t want to be exhausted at the end of the day. We have much to be thankful for this year - we have just passed an important anniversary; last year at this time we were in America where my husband was recovering from a medical emergency and had just been discharged from hospital following major surgery and two weeks in intensive care. We all knew how lucky he was to have survived.

Oddly, he started craving peach juice. That is something we don’t have in the UK and he admitted he had never tasted it, but he knew he wanted it. Our older grandchildren went out on the hunt - peach juice isn’t easy to find, even in America. When they came home with a bottle of chilled juice, it was as good as he had imagined. So we sent those grandchildren out for more. And more.

As she prepared our family’s traditional pigs-in-blankets for breakfast on Thanksgiving morning, my daughter purloined some of the peach juice and made spontaneous bellinis - a stroke of brilliance and fun that will forever be a symbol of the miracle of life that we experienced in 2023.

Peach juice is even harder to source in England - on Wednesday we traipsed through five different supermarkets in search of anything remotely peachy. We did - finally - find some. But my personal miracle of the day was looking down at the black boots that I was wearing over my jeggings. I hadn’t been able to wear them - or any shoe with a heel - in more than three years. I had injured my knee so severely that walking at all was difficult for many many months and painful for even longer, and I haven’t been able to wear shoes with any heel at all. I had opted for prayer, patience and gentle exercise rather than the injections or knee replacement that I was offered. Wearing my boots and dashing through shops this week felt like another miracle, the miracle of mobility. That moment of noticing my boots and feeling my own vitality will be with me forever. Sometimes it is the little things that touch us most deeply and remind us of how much we have to be thankful for.

We lit a fire on Thanksgiving to warm the house, cooked a chicken and a few Anglicized sides using British ingredients, and drank peach Bellinis. Our hearts were full.

Once again, I’ve published this on my website in order to ensure that it stays visible. I’m writing these stories as part of a larger project - I want to leave a legacy. As I get older and watch family and friends come and go, through birth and death, I find myself wanting to collect the stories of the people who shaped me and whose influence lives on in my children, grandchidren and their children. Our ancestors don’t desert the ones they love just because they’ve died. I believe they stay involved and become our holy helpers as we continue our mortal journeys. Come meet my father, Arden L Jensen…

I posted Rowena on Ariadne’s Thread earlier today, wanting to publish this particular piece on my longstanding website first - but I can also feel a quiet nudging from my feisty mother to push ahead with my exploration of Substack as well, to try something new. I’m still figuring it out, but my writerly soul is blossoming in the positivity and enthusiasm of discovering a warm welcome from this community of Creatives.

Come meet my mother, Rowena.

My pleas for sparkles have always been answered with miracles, large or small… and sometimes it is the little things that are the most uplifting. Perhaps that is because they are the most believable, or maybe it is because they let me feel that I really am in conversation with something bigger than myself. No thunderclaps or parting of seas, just quiet conversation.

Yesterday’s sparkles started with an unexpected divination. Every morning I do a two card spread with the Spacious Tarot and then pull a single card from my Womanrunes. The message was clear: No matter how dark the night, the sun always rises - the worst of the storm is over, there are still good things to come. And as if speaking directly to my middle of the night anxieties about claiming my own writerly soul, the rune message was the Egg, the rune of naming. Words of power. An assurance that I will be heard in unexpected places, in unexected ways.

Once we were up and about, Jeff and I went for a morning walk in our local woods - being out in nature always serves up delights, doesn’t it? November finally opened to herself with a bit of sunshine to interrupt our recent spate of endless grey skies and we crunched our way through giant not-yet-mulchy golden leaves, picking out the biggest ones as we searched for mushrooms in amongst the trees. It was a quiet Monday morning - only a few people were out, most of them with dogs. No birdsong (I wondered if a sparrowhawk had just gone through and sent the usual chatterers into hiding?), no human conversations. For my part, I felt physically strong and I was loving the fact that my knees no longer hurt - they were so bad for so long, but consistent gentle exercise and a careful diet have let me heal. That is an ongoing miracle.

Amongst the joys of nature we discovered signs of human wit and whimsy. Those matter right now! Throughout the woods the local council has worked to balance conservation with invitation and has installed a series of carvings on stumps left sitting by the sides of the path - a fox, an owl, various mushrooms - clues to the natural life of the forest that might not be seen on daylight rambles.

The wise barn owl sported a message that went straight to my heart. After my sleepless night filled with existential angst and a lot of tossing and turning, here was Our Lady reminding me that she is, indeed everywhere! Never before have I ever seen an owl wearing a Miraculous Medallion! What a sparkle!

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Personal life aside, just navigating the collective chaos has been almost too much. On Wednesday I signalled the need for creativity and I wrote. As the day wore on, I was both horrified and inspired by what I saw on my social media feeds, including substack. We are trying to be honest, and we know we face serious challenges.

But I saw something hopeful. I saw people reaching out. I saw connection. I saw hearts. I saw kinship. This will get us through. None of us need to be alone and it is up to each of us to check on each other. I read a Substack post by Perdita Finn, a friend and mentor. She shared her daily prayer and I made it mine: Gather my kin close, my blood kin, my soul kin, my fur kin, my odd kin. Gather my kin close. Gather my kin close.

Another friend posted an image that I can’t share here because we don’t know the original source, but it reminded me that I’m grieving. Grief is hard and familar; it comes in many colours and it is terribly subversive. I grieved for my daughter when she died, and I’ve grieved for others. In time I let that grief change me, transform me. This will happen now, too. I will find find a way to describe it and I will plot my course forward. No one can do everything but we all can do something.

I spent my day looking through photos of the art work I made while grieving, and I read through quotes I collected. I reminded myself of craftivism projects I’ve participated in. As the day wore on, I felt life in my belly; our creative sparks will connect us with our kin.

I’m not the only one who spent the day on the sofa. If you haven’t done it yet, you’re going to need to do it at some point, to calm the clamor. We need to listen, to hear our souls, the earth, our ancestors.

In the night, my mother visited me in a dream, something that doesn’t happen often anymore. I am listening.

Today is an uncomfortable day. An election result I don’t like and can’t understand. I’d like to say I don’t know what to do with myself, but actually I do. Show up. Be brave. Be creative. Even when it’s hard. So today I am taking this step onto the Substack playground and inviting you to join me there.

Here’s the deal: as I’ve revived my old website and blog, I have realised that I come alive when I write, even when the writing is stressful. When I’m not writing (which is all too often), a part of me goes to sleep and I drift away. Today I’m committing to putting my head above the parapet by learning to share myself more openly. For me that means I need to relax a little, be a little less controlling and obsessive, and maybe learn to let go and play with my own words.

I know from my sewing days that the creative process is messy. Threads strewn everywhere, piles of fabric to choose from, odd post-it notes for sketches and calculations… the mess itself gives rise to new ideas. I’ve spent my life longing for one-pointed attention, but it’s simply not who I am. I want to write about foghorns and pilgrimage and other cool or curious or scratchy things that catch my interest in this wild world. I am giving myself permission to be imperfect and even wrong, so long as I show up.

How often can you expect me here? No promises, but hopefully often, at least weekly. I’ll be turning 70 in a few months - as an ageing creative, I have no time to waste!

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