A Christmas Gift

The journey is over. Last night I had a deep sense of having arrived. Having wandered the woods for such a long time, learning and being uncertain, having made mistake after mistake, experience success and failure, loved, delighted, lost, been throw to the heights and then broken completely, having, on some night thought, I cannot go on, having thought on some days, I just want to die, I can't do this - having on some days gone, I am a luckiest person alive, I now have arrived here and here is where I have always meant to be. Not on top of the world, nor beneath it, not a place, nor a person, but myself. I have arrived to myself. And I now accept myself in its entirely and love myself completely. Without reservation, not through the eyes of another person, but through the person I have been and am now. It isn't as if there is no more change or growing to take place, but it is, for the first time, realising I am sufficient. I am utterly sufficient. This is enough.

This was a gift, another Christmas gift from the universe. Today, I was given my heart. It is everything which I believed it would be - and somethings which I did not expect. There are things still left to do - I do not know entirely what these are...

I look back on last year and think about where I was last year. It was so tough what some of us had to go through. It seems a lost year a bit. Fighting and hoping and praying for the best. And losing Jo. That has been so hard for all of us. And knowing she is working for us on the other side - it still does not help. But, oh Jo! And then finally facing down the dragons and saying I am not going. I have bad news for you. I am never going. Somewhere a new self was hatching. Night after night allowing doubt to overwhelm and go, I cannot, instead of yes, this is good, I can. And now, it is all, all different. 

I drove Ma and Pa to Nendrum yesterday with the boys and after that we went to Castle Espie. It was strange going there. Like returning to another life. Then I realised I had never stayed in a place for so long. Never. I had never been somewhere and stayed for any length of time. Now Northern Ireland, this strange chimerical place, riven by hatred and fear, but now so so different - it was my home. This is my home. Ireland is my home. I have returned. It called to me and I listened. I claim all its loughs and cairns, its hilltops and its bays, I claim its soft green fields and its strange many coloured skies. And it claims me. I belong and at the same time, I am free. My children are of this land and my story is now here. There is a fight and a truth to this place which I immediately identified with. A story which I instantly took to. Resistance is fertile here. It is this resistance which is the grit in the pearl. The pearl makers.

I don't know what the future holds, I do not. But it is what it is. The past has been so educational, there is no reason for the future to not be the same. I embrace life and for the first time see it in the clearly, not as a future of what I desire, but a future which is open and full of possibilities. I draw back from placing my imprint upon it, instead, now, after years and years of making plans and forcing my desire upon it, I say to it, here, use me. Make me the channel of your peace. I am here to be your instrument. And here is the paradox, instead of feeling like I am a hostage to fortune, I feel strangely liberated, like a leaf on a stream, carried to unknown adventures. I am Gilly the Goatskin, I am Thumbelina, I am Ishmael. I have always believed, but I understand it now, what it means when I say - There is only life, and I can only say yes or no to it. I give myself up to that realisation entirely and step into everything life has to offer.