When the arrow misses ➵

And so, I flew across the world on that feeling. I've done it before. I'll definitely do it again. Only something was waiting on the other side that I hadn't considered this time, I was just shooting for the possibility..I wasn't to know the truth until it came in like rain..

Since we last caught up, I've been here there and everywhere it feels..I left my cosy nook of Canada at the end of January and flew to Sydney Australia, eventually making my way over to WA for the first time. This wasn't just a holiday, I had been hired for a job & flown there!

The seed had been planted and excitedly watered since Earth Daughter Festival in Golden, BC last Summer Solstice.. Fast forward 6 months and we had arrived in Dharug Country, NSW ~ @ Roots Festival.

It was the start of February. The snow of deep Winter still reflected in my body, in the cold yet cosy land I was leaving behind. Approaching the threshold of Imbolc ~ that tender, barely-there whisper of the year beginning to turn-as I flew for miles chasing the rising sun into the night, we crossed over ~ somewhere time didn't exist but newness was felt.

Stepping off the plane in the South, the golden Summer sun was already beginning its slow descent into harvest and the first blush of Autumn. Two seasons. Two hemispheres. Two truths held at once in the same body- &I'm no stranger.

From the rugged landscapes of -27C in Northern BC, to emerging within the sexiest gathering of women I have ever experienced ~ It was in the Hareem Tent that that realisation poured in, I found myself drizzling milk chocolate fountain onto my arm and licking it off inside a candlelit red and pink bedouin style tent where silver platters of endless tropical fruits, fabric and mirrors and altars in devotion to Womanhood lay in every corner. Women woven and folded into the cosy, comforting arms of one another laughing, chatting ~ sinking into the beautiful sounds of a DJ playing hypnotic downtempo beats-all whilst shapeshifting fire dancers unfurled their Kali-like arms through incense smoke in the name of, as Clarice Lispector puts it in The Book of Pleasures ~ the infinite delicacy of joy! ~ oh, that it was!

I had been hired to create a menu for an 'Elixir Bar'. To test-run the recipes and serve to the women here at the festival.. My task: four herbal-infused recipes, keeping things fresh and mood-based. (Girls' gotta have options based on her mood) and weaving in native plant species where I could, given I wasn't tasked with the sourcing, I predominantly went with plants I know well figuring that next time- I'll explore further.

The dusky lilac, Lavender & Butterfly Pea Flower infusion, with honeyed coconut mylk served up from an old school slushy machine and finished with a Rosemary sprig stirrer- this was my personal favourite ~ I named her, Flowering Visions. She was subtly sweet and tasted like a lavender sky at dusk, if you can imagine. The others featured blends of Hibiscus, Rose, Lemon Myrtle, Chia boba, Nettle, Raspberry leaf to name a few.. I'm proud to say they were a huge success. I felt immensely satisfied, and reassuringly, so did the woman who had believed in & brought me all the way here.

[Here is where I'd insert the photo of said creations]

Did I get a single photo? Nope. I was busy. Living the dream. Sipping Lavender elixir to soften my buzzing whilst sweating my little white-Canadian-winter butt off working long, yet fulfilling hours.

And then, as the nature of life goes ~ things changed. Not all at once.. It just began with a coolness that I hadn't felt there before. A few misread moments. A few expectations unnamed, unmet..

In November I wrote about Sagittarius and how when I found out I have Sagittarius as my rising sign in my chart, so much finally landed in what I'd recognised in myself for a long time without naming. I tend to navigate the world through faith. This felt sense of yes, this, now.

I don't really calculate the trajectory persé, do I question things? yes ~ but, I mostly feel the direction and I fly.. I figure things out as I move.. It has carried me this far, across oceans and mountains and 2 and a half years of walking the mythic landscape of my Welsh ancestors with an amazing group of people. I have trusted it immensely, more than anything really. It takes me places!

And, then something happens..things veer a little off kilter, leaving me wonder..

What if I can't always trust this feeling?

Out of what feels like nowhere, somewhere, something of a different shape, taste, feel, sound in the body begins to emerge within the closening of relationships, romantic & non. It's inescapable. When we spend every waking moment with another person something brushes up against something. The innate cycle of our ever changing emotions and sensations and pasts. The infinite and intimate landscape of another human being pressing gently, then less gently, against the infinite and intimate landscape of ours.

So how do we navigate this tension that creeps in, staying open and staying intact as we come into relationship desiring the roots of it to grow deeper and in tern -stronger ..?

Giving ourselves fully yet remaining rooted in who we are, in what we need, in the subtle rhythm of our own pulse beneath the whispers that say we are too much, or somehow not enough, for the person/or situation in front of us now that we've inevitably-somehow landed into the hands of.

My arrow seems to point towards a longing inside me, and yet the arrow can only ever point toward a possibility. This longing to journey deeper is what moves me toward that possibility, toward a truth ~ it cannot be the capital T Truth itself. That only reveals itself on arrival of the experience..In the days of moments that follow once you've aimed your shot..

What I'm trying to articulate is that through the experience of my latest trip to Australia, fully believing that I had hit a jackpot with aligned opportunity, what I have been working towards for a while.. there came a sudden trembling of the very instrument I use to navigate ~ my own felt sense of alignment. Of soul recognition. Of yes, trust this & go!

Someone once said to me: "your experience is always on time" 

~ meaning the experience you're having is the right one, so trust it.

It's been a particular kind of heartbreak this one. Not romantic. Something almost the same but different in its disorienting. I trusted my own reading of the situation so completely. I have been recognised. What I've been calling in is finally landing. And then the shape & outcome of it just completely shifted over the space of a couple of weeks.

We came undone.

Three women, three sets of needs and fears and longings colliding in the wilderness of Western Australia.

I'm slowly discovering the truths laced within what is ~ my experience is exactly on time, and I'm here to reap the bounty of it..it's uncomfortable and thats perfect.

Who knows where this is now leading.. for all of us. not just me. by just existing we shape the world..we shape one another..

What we are destined to experience in this life, we will. Regardless of how much faith or control we believe we have over the arrow's direction.

"Whatever is meant for you, there's nothing you can do to fuck it up. & whatever is not meant for you, there is nothing you can do to make it happen."

Thanks for reading. x