Finding the loving gaze

Willow Blooms #009- can I make love always the place where I begin and end?!

It blows my mind that 37 people have subscribed to Willow Blooms since I started writing here two months ago. I don’t know if you’ll know this if you don’t have your own Substack writing page, but there is a stats tab where you can see how many people have read your posts. There is also a map showing the location of all your subscribers. I love looking opening up the stats tab and looking on the World map to see where you all live. Welcome!

In my last post I wrote about the idea that we hold the hands of seven generations, and that our actions have ripples that travel through these hands across the years. The map reminds me of the immediacy of our connectiveness. It reminds me that our words have ripples across the globe within this generation. I am not a paid writer, and none of my friends are paid writers, so many of them have never heard of Substack. For me, writing here is like being a mycelium (plural mycelia!), a part of the ecosystem below the surface of many people’s awareness, alive with interconnectedness. There is an entire article in that idea- I’ll plant it here for now, and will perhaps come back to it!

A seasonal shift

There is something humbling about holding hands in conversation with strangers around the world, each sharing words with each other, and nurturing our creativity. I cannot help but consider this in the context of the arrival of the British spring. Life is sprouting all around me. The birds are vocal, the days are suddenly perceptively lighter and longer, and the feeling of hope seems to emanate from the warming soil. Everything is telling me to get moving, everything is showing me the energy of new beginnings, everything is encouraging me in mine.

This reminds me that a few weeks ago a friend spoke of there being a thing that typically happens, or a feeling that arises, that makes her know that spring is here. Winter is a time for closing up, taking rest, staying in the cocoon, and to avoid the fate of snowdrops who poke their pretty heads out too soon, she was awaiting a sign she could trust to signal her safe release. At that point, during a week of gloriously unexpected but deceptive winter sunshine, she said it hadn’t happened yet. I haven’t checked in with her again, but I feel it’s happened. Spring has sprung and there is no stopping it. It brings a perceptible spring to my step.

This Wednesday 20th March, I went for an open water swim in a local quarry. When I booked my slot, the website thermometer showed 7.4. I had been away from the water for about a month, and when I’d last swum I think the thermometer hovered around mid 8 degrees. This was the coldest swim I have ever braved and I was horrified by the prospect of plunging into the 7s. Do you swim in open water? I ask because I realise how melodramatic it sounds to be fretting over a seemingly insignificant difference in temperature. It’s all relative, and the small changes in our body temperature can make a big difference to a relative beginner. I am not going to die from one degree difference, but hopefully you can see my point. At the colder end of the scale, every point of a degree seemingly makes an exponential difference to the feel of the water. The temperature of the air makes a big difference, chilling your face as you swim, and affecting how long it takes to warm once you get out. I am not a fan of the cold, and in other situations will do almost anything to avoid it! So Wednesday morning, anticipating discomfort, I almost didn’t get up when my alarm rang. I debated whether to text my friend and bail, fearful that my hard worn acclimatisation had been lost, or would prove insufficient, and whether to simply pack a flask of tea, a hot water bottle and multiple layers of clothes to minimise the suffering. My decision rested on the fact that I had said I would drive, and that really, my debating mind had not generated a single good excuse!

Getting up, the picture below is what I anticipated. Does it make you shiver to look at the mist? This is how I imagined swimming in 7.4 degree water to feel…

Picture 1 - Dread

As I registered in reception and collected my swim band, I glanced at the thermometer on the wall, already girding my loins! I did a double take, words tumbling out of my mouth before I could stop them- ‘it says 9.1!’, I exclaimed. After receiving confirmation that my eyes were not deceiving me, I squealed with delight, and practically skipped to the changing area. What a marvellous surprise. In the matter of just a few days, Mother Nature had warmed up the water just enough to tip it back into the 9s! I had swum all through the teens of cooling autumn and into the 9s and 8s of winter. Water temperatures I would never have dreamed of subjecting myself to this time last year, now a positive delight to behold. The long stretch on the noticeboard graph showing the monthly temperatures at their lowest, was now on its way up. I had made it through my first open water winter. A perspective shift made it seem as if I were about to plunge into the water in the picture below!

Picture 2 - Delight

Of course, the water wasn’t as warm as the idyllic picture. This photo was taken in the halcyon days of summer where the water is a cooling relief. Also, what you learn fast as an open water swimmer, is that the temperature readings are of the water surface. What lies beneath is untold, a mystery for the body to experience for itself. It still made me gasp when I walked briskly down the ramp into the water! It still made my face burn when I put it in the water. It still had the brilliant effect of slowing down my mind, shutting out almost everything but the next stroke pull of my arms. And by then I was in and the hardest part was done!

The leap up from 7.4 degrees was a concrete indicator that the season had turned, and a powerful story of hope. We will all come to the end of winter, and although we can only know what lies below the surface by experiencing it for ourselves, we will get through the darkness, and back to a lighter side of life. This sounds simple, but it isn’t always easy. The skin tingling chill as I got out reminded me that it would take time for the warmth of the sun to benefit the lower body of water. I’ve seen different reports on the internet of the official day of spring- but for me, the water was a reliable source.

20th March 2024, turning point of my winter into spring.

Is this where it all begins again?

Neither of the swimming photos in this article were taken in spring. One was taken on 30th November, on the cusp of winter, and the other on 4th June, the start of summer. Together they demonstrate seasonal extremes- perhaps also the contrasting darkness and light, dread and delight. Things that seem to be opposite, do not always exist separately, like yin and yang. Even in my delight, I knew the water was still cold, and I felt it. Rather, I experienced delight because it was so much better than I had expected. After months of watching and feeling the temperature slowly creep down and plateau, the sudden temperature rise signified something bigger. My delight was for the warming water, but also the passage of winter, and a transition into a new season, bringing all that it represents.

No matter how much we think we are in control of change in our lives, nature is in the background, quietly showing us up. For example, my mood often shifts at certain times of the day, the month, the year. These shifts are part of the natural rhythms of life, a consequence of real effects of fluctuating light, hormones, hunger, seasonal temperatures etc. These changes obviously don’t just affect people, and some gardeners swear by the natural rhythms of the moon, using these as guides for planting seeds. There is a difference between trying to control nature, and our indeed our natures, and relating to them mindfully. The more we attend to the seasonal changes, the more sense we can make of what can otherwise seem like random or unpredictable, and flow with them.

Spring is associated with a clear out, a spring clean, a lightening, so that there is space for new things to grow. I have noticed a shift within myself this week. I could write about this from many different perspectives, and I have started a companion piece to this one. In it I look in more depth at the nature of the lens through which we look at life, the impact of our attentional lens, and the shifts that can occur when we change our focus. I will share it soon, introducing more of my psychological knowledge and thinking in my articles. Maybe something that nudges a bit deeper, and perhaps a bit darker, whilst holding onto the light!

Maia Duerr

shared a post with a quote from bell hooks, that I needed to read this week…

I am certainly not equating the power of my writing with that of bell hooks, but I am taking inspiration from her words, and her invitation to be provocative.

love is always the place where I begin and end.

How things are spoken impacts on how well they are received, and whether they are heard. There are many writers like bell, to teach us how. I’ll be honest, when I see violence and suffering my writing does not always start from a place of love. I can start from a place of pain, which often moves to anger, and I have to write myself back from there. How to transform compassionate rage, to loving wisdom that can be received? It is a skill, or an alchemical process like purification, or condensation, that I have had to learn. That I am still learning. The warrior woman is often seen wielding the sword, but it is only in putting down the sword that the mind and body can soften and the pen can wield its full power.

I am not telling you not to fight, not to rage, as you need to do whatever your own life song calls to you to do. But as this winter turns to this spring, this is what I am being called to do. I know it is the season for me to nurture myself. Willow Blooms is my attempt to grow something beautiful in the places where the soil is warm and receptive. May we each scatter our seeds far and wide, trusting that some will germinate, and others will not, but in their composting, they fertilise the shoots of something else.

I have a vivid picture in my mind of a children’s story book I used to have. On the front cover was a ring of people standing on the earth, all holding hold hands. Inside were stories from around the world, brought together in one place. My Substack map is like the grown up version of that story book. I imagine that here too we hold hands with our likes and our notes, appreciating the quality of connection, not the quantity. We can be united in our love of the written word, and a desire to connect and create something more beautiful.

Hello to you all across the world!

What if we could all reach around the world with our words, lighting up all the spaces in that global map. Hello also to those in South and Central America, India, Russia, the entire African continent, the Middle East, Antarctica. I imagine our open arms including you, inviting them you, whether you are here or not! A childish impulse, perhaps, but it is through connection that we are best able to listen, to empathise, and to see that our choices have an impact on real people, on real creatures, on real flowers and areas of sea and land. These things we hear as stats, their targets, are full of life, not numbers.

The pen is mightier than the sword, so they say. For now, that is how I choose to throw my seeds out, knowing that through you, they will be scattered around the world. The rest is down to spring to do its thing!