My new book Hearthstories is released! Labor has been long but the birth exciting. Bringing a child, a creation, a longing into the world reminds us of the infinite possibilities of life. The writing of the book took nine years. I have been radically changed by the process and reminded every step of the labyrinthine journey to face into fears. The subtitle “A Modern Woman’s Quest for the Essential Self” reminds us that our lives are quests. I hope you are inspired to see the gift of your own life journeys; Our stories come out of the mystery which seeds our lives.
Hearthstories is spiritual memoir written seasonally and invites a conversation. I walked a path to deepen my life, my focus carried a longing to meet the divine feminine and reconnect my life to the cycles of nature. Many villages of women have mentored me. The process carried me to the island of Iona, to Ireland and Chartres Cathedral. Each step on the spiral invited me to a process. I also sought answers inside myself in the truth of meeting my intution, in listening to my body and in recovering the lost invocations of the sacred all around us.
Creativity gives us the opportunity to drop deeper into the darkness where we meet with the gold of our lives. The darkness is a place of incubation, but we are often afraid to go there. Winter is such a time when the light withdraws and we go indoors.
The following excerpt from Hearthstories is about the walk in the dark, about risking the journey and recovering the gifts of transformation. A wise writer named Emily Hanlon suggests that creativity challenges us to risk the fear and engage the dark where the unmanifested lies, if we don’t risk the journey we loss the chance to create.
What follows is writing from Year II, Winter II. Since winter is the dark time of the year I invite you into a journey into the darkness.
“ As the days grew shorter, I felt the darkness covering me like a blanket. My body felt the womb quality of the darkness, and I reminded myself that the dark held potential. I revisited my fears of depression in winter. I began turning on the lights of the Christmas tree around dusk.
While the dark descended one evening in December, I sat with the sparkle of the tree lights. My lamps were off, and I sat enjoying the magic of the lights and the dark. I picked up my journal and decided to head to bed. I walked to my bedroom in the dark; it was fun to feel my way along the hallway. As I settled into my bed, I recalled walking in the dark as a young mother.
It was the winter of 1973, and my son Matt was two months old. I stayed at home to care for our baby while Stephen ran the business we owned in Sonoma. Our shop closed at five; he returned home shortly thereafter. I’d prepare dinners, but we had agreed that I would have an hour to take a daily run. Our home was nestled in the quiet Lovall Valley, where the road curved in a large loop, a perfect place to walk. As the winter days grew short, and the sun dipped behind the hills, I considered giving up my evening outing. I loved running, but I had never run in the dark. The experience would be a new adventure.
The first few nights I found myself running in darkness, I felt afraid, so I carried a flashlight. Mostly I feared tripping and falling. While I knew the road well, I still had to breathe deeply and challenge myself. At first I walked and then ran slowly. Soon I learned to feel for the uphill grades, the bumps in the pavement. I gained confidence.
I began listening for the sounds of the night, including the goats, sheep, and turkeys who shared the valley with us. I especially loved the goats. I could hear the rustle of their movements as they made their way through the grasses. After running the first part of the loop, I’d start around the curve to the next half. I’d smell the eucalyptus tree where the road climbed slightly uphill. In time, I learned to smell my place on the road. It became a fascinating exercise, and eventually I gave up my flashlight. My progress felt exhilarating.
Once I became accustomed to the feeling of the dark, I sometimes lost all sense of my body except for my legs and the sound of my shoes on the pavement. Learning to run in the dark was an experience of trust and surrender.
As I looked back on those dark-time walks from the comfort of my bed, I realized they had given me a way to confront my fears of the mystery, the unknown. I felt re-inspired to walk in the dark.
And so I began—but not without reservations! I knew it was less safe to walk alone in the dark than it had been in 1973. The world had changed. I needed to factor in the reality, or at least the potential, of violence. It felt significant, though, that as a young woman I’d run the end of Lovall Valley Road. Now, years later, I walked the road at its beginning, in town. I wouldn’t let my fears stop me.
I stepped outside with my flashlight and headed up the road. Once I rounded the corner to Lovall Valley I walked on the soft earth of the vineyard land. A car approached, its lights shining in my eyes. The same headlights illuminated two young bucks on the left side of the road ahead. They waited to cross the road. When the car passed, I could hear them dance across the asphalt. The young deer seemed to invite surprise and mystery. I walked on, remembering the small rack of horns I’d found in Bartholomew Park last January. Each year the buck sheds his antlers, then regenerates them. I had considered the rack a gift at the time.
On my return home, I searched for the image of an antlered figure I had seen in Celtic mythology books. Cernunnos was a god of fertility and regeneration. His figure appeared on the silver cauldron called the Gunstrap Cauldron. I found him mentioned in Rekindling the Celtic Spirit, where Mara Freeman wrote, “He embodies the wisdom of deep communion with the wildness of the world.”
