Brigitte

Soon after picking up Jody Day’s book ‘Living The Life Unexpected’, I found myself making a sudden note in pencil on the opening pages, to capture a felt insight I’d just had as I was reading.

I made the statement, as if to remind myself of what I was doing here -

Reclaiming my feminine power.
It’s through these losses that I’m finding my feminine essence.

The poem below was written a few months later, October 2022, in one of Bindi Shah’s ‘Write to Heal’ workshops.

And just last week, I visited the touring exhibition ‘Feared and Revered, feminine power through the ages’ where the image for this piece was taken.

Overwhelmed with cbnc heartbreak, and, never before had I felt such a sense of the feminine. The grief of being childless has opened me up to a precious, newly felt identity, and one that had eluded me all my life, until now.

I may not be a mother of a child, but I know and feel myself as a woman.

All, of the losses.

Having to let go, of everything
A death -
Of unmet dreams
Of layers of identity

Watching, as it all slipped through my fingers like water
Standing here, now
Exposed.
Alone, sacred, sad

Stil, silent
Distant and wanting

Its as though life has simply not wanted to include me

Softening…as it all comes up to be heard and seen,
layer upon layer

Releasing and shedding, what’s no longer me
Opening, expanding, deepening, growing

Listening to the unfolding of it all
and the season’s of all the losses

Me as - a woman

Uncloaked and naked,
but woman none the less

Resting into this, my safe haven of self now

Could it be, that this is where my life has always been…?