Hello. I am a bit of a lurker - though I did say hello a while ago. Your messages are all so interesting and wise that I often don't feel I have much to add.
I wanted to thank you for the posts about hagstones - I have quite a collection, but didn't know what they were. We live near the beach, and I often come across a few on a single visit.
@Aerwyna; thank you for the poem. I got shivers reading it because 'healing' was the word I turned up today.
Like many of you I have felt that the shift in things over this past year - and the birthing analogy resonates. We are on the cusp of a profound change, I think, and last year was about learning how to really take care of myself and those around me because I have a sense we're some way off a resolution.
I don't know if this is of interest to you, but I don't know anyone else who would appreciate this from my swim yesterday morning. I messed up the timing a bit so was at the beach before it was light but the water was quiet and so I thought I'd go for it. I noticed that the horizon opposite where the sun rises seemed lighter than anywhere else, almost as if it were sunset. But still dark, pretty much, and cloudy, so it felt like a secret as a I got in the water. A seagull flew in front of me and a voice I hear sometimes said 'I am not in nature, I am nature'. I can't quite describe what happened next except that I felt a something that was like an electric shock, coming from the full width of the horizon in front of me, across the waves and directly into my body. It was astonishing. Does any of this make any sense?
I don't know if it does, but I wanted to share it, particularly for those of you who are feeling wearisome. I suppose it reminded me how much power there is already around us, that we have access to when we least expect it.