The Soul-Fire Papers
“One of the most vital ways we sustain ourselves is by building communities of resistance, places where we know we are not alone.” bell hooks
In March 2022, I went on a writers’ retreat for activists. During the weekend, we were invited to write our response to a series of five short provocation questions, inviting us over the two days to ‘write ourselves from pain into power’ using the writer bel hooks as inspiration.
Here are my words. Here is what I wish to share with the world…
Q1. Who am I? Why am I here?
I am a little girl with stars in her eyes.
I am an inconvenient woman.
I walk my path along the sunny side of the street, yet meet the heartbreak of the world like a familiar bedfellow.
At the start, I was the nice girl, the quiet one, the shy one. After a time, I began to awaken into the curious girl, the adventuring one, the reflective one. I was becoming; gently unfolding into the mindful woman, the creative one, the soulful one. I was slowly, consciously unfolding myself into the world.
I hold within me a lifetime of stories: stories I’ve learned, stories I’ve lived, stories of those I’ve journeyed with, stories of the places I’ve been and become. These are the stories that have shaped my becoming. These are the stories whose wisdom has nourished my soul. These are the stories of my awakening, stories I believe hold the power to awaken others too.
I am ready to step into my voice. I am here to strengthen the fullness of my being. I understand why my voice has been patiently waiting for this time, waiting for me to arrive into my fuller sense of becoming, waiting for this moment as the time to begin to speak from my soul.
I am ready now to hold out the hand of this inconvenient woman to the quiet little girl and walk forward together into this beautiful, heartbreaking world.
Q2. What and where is the pain that drives you?
To answer this question well, I first need to tell you where my pleasure lies. Because the pain that drives me lives in the same place as the joy that fuels me…
One of the things I love the most in the world, that offers me endless joy is the little ones. The children.
I love the way they think; their curiosity so vivid, it can crack anything open with its wide-eyed wonder. I love the way they speak; words spilling off the tongue with such delicious abandon, yet each tiny utterance housing a deep, deep knowing. I love the way they move. They rarely walk. Heck, why walk when you can skip, spin, crawl, hop-scotch your way across life? I love the way they explore: tender and voracious fingers, toes, noses, tongues all meeting the world to help it come alive in meaning.
I suppose what I love most about children is the way they become into themselves. Like tiny ferns, they unfurl evermore as they’re nourished, for they are holding deep within themselves all of the endless possibilities of who they can become, and are growing and becoming as the world around them enables and allows.
It’s the little ones who help me to witness how simply life unfolds in all of its magnificence.
What I find so insanely beautiful is how this process is the exact same for every species on this planet. Sitting here writing this in the gardens of springtime holds resonance for this same simple rhythm of life becoming. All around me, the tightly clasped buds on the bare-branched trees hold within them radiant flourishing. We blossom into life just like the buds on the trees, the spawn in the ponds, the chicks in the nest, the bacteria in the soil, the fungi in the air.
It’s the same process wherever we look: Life becoming. The invitation is a simple one for us all as we grow in the world - to keep on unfurling and blossoming into our fullest state of being.
This. This is what I love most about the world - how unrelentingly beautiful life is when it’s enabled and allowed to simply become.
Which brings me to the bleeding heart of my pain.
What breaks my heart about the world is how so many people are actively – often consciously - preventing life from becoming. Actively stopping lives from fully unfolding. Or sometimes preventing life from even becoming in the first place.
When so many of our current actions as humans are getting in the way of life’s becoming, we know that something is out of balance. Just in the news this week:
Coral-reefs destroyed.
Ancient forests felled.
Children’s hospitals bombed.
Rivers polluted.
Cultures eroded.
Freedoms oppressed.
We’re enacting the reverse of life’s becoming in these processes of destruction, and it pains my soul to comprehend how we know we are doing this, yet many carry on regardless.
My heartache for the world lives in the exact same place as my love for the world: right in the depths of my soul. They share the same space because they are different branches of the same feeling, the delicate balance between life’s flourishing and life’s diminishing.
They live inside me as trembles, felt as little flickers within me grown out of my soul-fire.
There are times when I welcome the intense heat of my soul-fire. It flares through a flicker, a spark, a flame dancing within me to the rhythm of the beauty of life. It’s the serenity on the top of a mountain; cradling a baby in my arms; silent snowfall; the nervous energy of a first encounter; a murmuration of starlings. In these moments, my soul-fire flames with a deep love for the world and its infinite moments of joy.
There are times when I suffer its burn. It’s an aching heat flaming inside me. It’s the felling of an ancient oak; an oil tanker spilling in the ocean; the injustice of our societies; the deep anxiety of a child; a forest dying.
Right now, my heartbreak for the world roars.
I no longer dampen the flames, but gaze at them - let them burn bright, for I realise that it is my heartbreak that forges the strength of my power. It is my heartbreak of all that stands in the way of life’s becoming that activates my radical compassion for the world. It is my heartbreak that drives me ever onwards in my work, as it shows me all that gets in the way of life-flourishing and helps me stand up for the voiceless through an unrelenting commitment to allowing and enabling life to happen.
Q3. ‘There is light in darkness, you just have to find it.’ bel hooks. When all seems lost, what can I hope for?
I truly believe in the goodness of people.
This may sound a ridiculously naïve statement to make when looking at the world around us: a world filled with endless stories of carelessness -of warfare, violence, pollution, destruction. These actions – and the darkness driving them – are so very raw, so very real and so deeply heart-breaking to witness.
When I see images of the Amazon burning, I feel pain. When I read stories of floods and droughts, I feel pain. When I see footage of people dumping pollution into rivers and oceans, I feel pain. When I hear of indigenous communities being oppressed, wisdom being persecuted, children suffering, species going extinct, I feel deep, sharp, horrifying pain.
The systemic problems that we face – these deep wounds that we can see across our societies – are all symptoms of chronic disconnection. We can see these symptoms across the world: Dramatic rises in mental ill-health as a result of disconnection from our emotional needs. Social divides tearing across our communities as a result of poor social equity and lack of social connection. A ravaging climate crisis affecting all living systems through a fundamental disconnection for many from seeing ourselves as part of the natural world.
We’re living in the most connected time in human history and yet we’re suffering from chronic disconnection. Why so? Because we’ve forgotten how to be human.
We’ve forgotten how to be with ourselves, how to connect to who we really our, to trust our gut, and cultivate our sense of inner wellbeing by making sense of what it means to be human.
We’ve forgotten how much we need each other, how our own flourishing only happens because of others around us. We’ve forgotten the value and necessity of nurturing social wellbeing by being active in and feeling valued by others and our communities.
We’ve forgotten how to keep our human activities in balance with all natural living ecosystems. We’ve forgotten that we are a part of nature, and that we cannot thrive unless the natural world around us is also thriving.
We’ve forgotten the simple wisdom of life’s becoming.
And yet…we all carry within us the capacity to remember.
Humans are hardwired to care. We have the innate capability to love ourselves, love one another and love the living world. It’s in our DNA. Literally. It’s what we’re designed to do: to be human and to connect. This simple, powerful process is how all life naturally unfolds when given the chance – each ecosystem strengthened through cultivating connections, each system allowing and enabling all other life around it to flourish.
We are born with this innate connection burning bright within our soul-fires, as we enter this world fully plugged into the natural rhythms of life’s logic. Yet as we grow into the dominant story of a mainstream world, so many of these ways of being and becoming are severed, to the point that many forget who they really are.
What gives me hope is knowing that the simplicity of how to be human lies within all of us. If we can remind ourselves of that wisdom, we can reconnect once again with the wisdom of life’s flourishing. I’ve seen it time and again with people awakening to a more authentic way of being, of doing, a healthier direction of travel towards a ‘new normal’. I’ve seen it in young and old. I’ve seen it in those I hold dear.
I’ve seen it and lived it in myself. I see it in all of us.
I see it in you too.
Q4. If I feel grounded in my power, I can… What can you do? What will you do? This is a call to action.
Around a year ago, I finally found my feet.
A slightly absurd statement to make, as obviously I’ve always known they were down there, but I’ve only really recently properly inhabited them, really stood myself into them and felt grounded.
For a large part of my life, I’ve been walking on tiptoes, never quite putting my whole weight down when I walked in the world - physically and metaphorically.
In a literal sense, my gait has never been super strong, and I’ve often referred to myself as Bambi-esque. There has been as much uncertainty in my walk as there has been in my voice. Yet the more I’ve deepened into my work in the world, and the more I’ve journeyed into my inner-landscape of becoming, the more I’ve allowed and enabled life within me to flourish and as a result, the more solid I’ve become. I’ve walked myself out of that little girl with stars in her eyes into the woman I am now becoming.
And then, one morning last April whilst standing brushing my teeth, my feet finally felt the floor beneath them. For a fleeting moment I had arrived fully into my body, a solid form with both feet firmly on the ground and a strength rippling up my spine that I’d never experienced before.
It was a fleeting moment, yet it was profound, as I knew it was a flicker of what it really felt like to step fully into myself.
Over the following months I continued to allow and enable my body to deepen into itself and for myself to become more authentic and more honest in who and how I was living. The more I did this, the firmer my feet became on the floor, the stronger my voice became in the air and the more and more solid I became in myself.
I began to recognise the graceful truth of being grounded in my power. By bringing who I was deep within me together with how I was living in the world and what I was doing through my work, I found myself finally becoming who I have been long waiting to be. I was finally becoming whole.
My goodness, it felt good. To stand with both of my feet on the ground and feel strongly rooted to the earth beneath me gave me such a sense of groundedness through the feeling of being held. Having core strength allowed me to straighten my spine and elevate my poise, which in turn allowed my voice to have more space to emerge. And the more my authentic voice emerged, the stronger I felt in my soul, which stokes the fires of my continual being and becoming.
And so the journey grows and so I continue to become as I strengthen in my work and my becoming. I have finally found my feet. I have finally found my voice. I am finally stepping into my power.
Q5. ‘What we cannot imagine cannot come into being.’ bel hooks. What are you bringing into being?
I am straight away reminded of Charles Eisenstein’s invitation into ‘the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible’. For me, this encapsulates so much of where I’m headed and so much of what I’m helping to re-birth into the world.
My energy comes through knowing, sharing-in and connecting to the endless peoples out there cocreating this ‘more beautiful world’. The stories are still not mainstream or told anywhere near enough, but it doesn’t mean they aren’t happening – they are happening everywhere.
Across the world, people are stepping into the space of ‘what if’ to allow healthier futures to be imagined. Each and every one of these visionaries – every one of us - is taking the steps towards that horizon, laying the foundations for another possibility for the future: a future in which people and planet thrive together.
I feel the strength of this imagination space because it’s real. A contradictory sentence in essence, but what I mean is that I’m already half living in this more beautiful world. It’s a place that comes alive when you inhabit its values – values of compassion, kindness, care, mutuality, respect, gratitude, grace. It’s a world that gives the more you give, and grows the more you grow. It’s like those magic-art paintings that come to life when you water them.
I have learned how to water both myself and the world I’m growing into. Through something so simple, so timeless and so vitalising as living relationally: with myself, with others and with the more than human world. And nurturing all three of these elements in my life constantly.
My life and my work are focused around three principles: self-care, people-care and earth-care. It’s that simple: an invitation for people to practice ‘conscious care’ of themselves, others and the wider world to co-create a thriving future for us all. This is an invitation to allow and enable all aspects of life to be restored and rebalanced to a healthier state. It’s a bit like gardening, if you like, as it’s a process of cultivating the conditions for healthy growth. It’s simple because much of the work is simply allowing people to grow, to unfold and to follow the deep rhythm of life becoming.
This is what I’m bringing to the world. This is what fuels my fire. This is what helps me to burn ever more brightly.
The Soul-Fire Papers are a selection of short provocation pieces written during a writing retreat at Selgars Mill, Devon in March 2022, hosted by Write-on Changemakers. To find details of their next retreat, visit: www.writeonchangemakers.com