There is time between days that sometimes feels like years, far less several handfuls of hours.

 

Saturday morning was the first time I had an opportunity to connect in with where I was at after attending the opening ceremony for the Human Reunion just two days earlier. I had stayed only until lunchtime at Embercombe on the Thursday as I had to dive into my car and run like the wind to collect our son from school that afternoon. From communing and being held in sublime silence to roaring with glorious song, the turnaround in speed and energy was a shock to my system and my time to ponder and be with the power from the immensity of the morning’s gathering flew out of the window as I wound my way down the country lanes back to the school gates.

 

The elasticity of time, in shape and dimension, formed into two distinct worlds in the days that passed. But I had a calling to return to the foundations of conversations and internal dialogue born from the ceremony and, as sharply charged the need to step back into my mothering shoes immediately afterwards was, my curiosity remained gentling bubbling in my blood beneath the hub-bub.

 

My husband took the kids out on Saturday morning to do the weekly shop and I took the moment to return briefly to bed, to lie for a moment and see what was arising. I lay and quietly ventured in. Soon I became aware of my left and right sides shifting apart, with distance between the two growing. I began to fall into, then land and swiftly inhabit the space in between, in the middle. And my right and left continued to move apart, creating this wealth of opening. My mother, father and I, I knew. No longer the battle, their battle, I thought. I chose to stay and hold this in my awareness as I went about our day and in those that followed.

 

The glamorous life of family busy-ness; childcare, house-hunting, eating, cleaning and a somewhat tired and aching body, meant my next chance to connect in with this unfolding was not until the following weekend. We took a trip down to Cornwall, to the coast. Staying in a rented house with a darling of a comfy bed, on Saturday night I felt myself returning to the ceremony.

 

One of my favourite conversations on the day itself had been with a beautiful woman, who had flown down from Scotland to attend Embercombe. She had received sage advice from a friend in the days before, who told her to remember we are indigenous too. Yes! I thought and wanted to say, Yes, we are indeed ancient. Yet I was enjoying listening to her voice and her gravity and chose to revel in this instead. But it was a wonderful thought to ruminate on whilst we were lead from Centre Fire down to the Stone Circle to begin our morning’s prayer.

 

We are ancient. This I know. We know the ancient ones well. I feel the drum of their beat gurgling in my bones. And so, lying in bed on the Saturday evening, I listened in to our ancient friends that breathe the same life and stoke the same fires as we.

 

They took me on journeys. They took bones from my ribcage and lay them before me. They took my clavicle and gave it space beyond me. They took the right and left hemisphere’s of my brain and held these in their hands. They were confused by the electrical charge that burned from each.

 

They showed me their dwellings. I saw them made of clay and stone. Their voices were earthed from these. Heavy stone, moist crumbling clay. These too are the homes of our voices, so they told, so we know.

 

As sleep crept closer, I continued my listening and witnessing. Their bold, silent whispers wrapped in love. Expanding internal space was, is their intention. A growing of space.

 

It was a cell-fuelling visitation. I’ve been hanging out here more often since. I’m continuing to check in. And the frequent question that has been popping up in various forms and guises since our move from London earlier this year, “Who am I?” is hearing new responses.

 

At 44 years of age, I have felt in these last months more akin to a hormonal teenager. Shifting, forming, transforming into something new. But yet too my resistance to step from one place to another, to grow a little older, perhaps fuller, perhaps wiser. The question persists and my quest is to gather the answers without contrived judgement and misguidance.

 

Beyond the identity that I have forged so intently, I have seen the angry woman who has a story that she needs to hear.

 

Beyond all definitions, as shadows fall aside, I have basked in the beauty of my open pulsing heart.

 

And then ‘you are simply a sack of bones’ arose whilst swimming on Friday.

 

Bones seem to be a huge part of this unpeeling. They are part of my freeing.

 

And an insistent expansion of space.