The world of Scottish island mum has been set of fire and there would appear to be two causes. The first being the publication of a piece on the Isle of Eigg on Waverly Fitzgerald's website Living in Season. This has set fire to my analytics as the page views button has exploded. The second fire is firmly located in my inbox as literally hundreds of emails have come in following my blog post yesterday about belonging to the storm.
So what do I do about these fires? I leave them alone and go off for a long hike with the boys and let my mind mull them over in the hope that my world is not reduced to ashes on my return. I still have many messages to reply to but my inbox appears in tact and, rest assured, I will respond to all your messages.
The concept of belonging is rather haunting me at the moment and I think I have some company with this. My daughter has a very scientific response stating that we are born by ourselves and we die by ourselves. If my mind could work like that I would find life a little easier. This particular haunting episode has been triggered by my 30 rewilding challenge which has struck at the heart of who I am and where I belong. In connecting so profoundly with the natural world every day for the past nine days the mind does tend to wander. I kind of work on a theory that if I fill my mind up with creative and engaging projects it won't have time to wander. The 30 minutes plus each day spent outside is allowing for a fair bit of wandering and this brought us to the blog post yesterday. If my feet are still rooted in the middle of the storm it would appear I now have company and lots of it! You are most welcome to join me but the focus must be the storm and not our place in it. I think it was my subconscious mind working on me reminding me that I am a tiny part of the world and that, ultimately, I do not belong anywhere. Whether it is the image of the stranded boat in the storm or the gypsy dancing, they both send out the same message. I am better when I keep moving. This doesn't have to be a physical experience and it is fair to say that my mind has quite mastered the concept of movement. Life moves us all along and as my children are getting older they are moving. I have never been of a view that my children belong to me; they belong to themselves. Your messages have been engaging and, at times, a little troubling but they do reveal that the concept of belonging is a challenge for many of us. Perhaps knowing that is enough.
I remember the feeling of finally passing a pesky A level that allowed me to go to university to train as a teacher. That sense of achievement has remained with me my whole life. Achievement is a personal thing and manifests itself in so many different ways. It is true that I have achieved most of what I wanted to achieve in life and feel very blessed. At this time in my life I don't expect achievement to follow me around anymore so when it comes it seems to mean more. A few years ago I read the book Slow Time by Waverly Fitzgerald and it fundamentally changed my relationship with time. This is a profound change that has lasting consequences and Waverly became my life guru. I read her careful and insightful writing and always know that a serious period of reflection will follow. She makes me stop and think and I will always be grateful to her. So to have a piece of my writing published on her site brought back those feelings of achievement that we learn to leave behind. Of course, I hope that I will have other pieces of writing published in the future in different places but let me be very clear. This is it for me - it won't get any better than this and so I have bottled this feeling and put it in the larder. Every so often I will get it out and undo the lid and have a peek in......
Scottish island mum does not always move very well or very far but today was different. Today I walked to Kings Cross point on the island and that is quite a distance. Sitting here I can feel my body completely objecting but I don't care because it was worth it. We are so lucky to live on this beautiful island and so I captured as much as I could in photos. I update my flickr account quite often so I will add todays photos on as soon as possible.
But I want to end with something that I am even more thrilled about. My old school friend, David, is on the team for One soul many hearts. He is our very brilliant photographer. Today one of his photographs has been published on the BBC weather website and this is very well deserved. David has a very important job and is always very busy. I tell him often how wonderful his photographs are and I truly believe he, not only see things that others don't necessary see, but he also knows how to capture it for the rest of us to enjoy. A real gift and I couldn't be more thrilled for him. It has been a day for achievements......
Until tomorrow. xx
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