How do I walk through fog and darkness and still remember to dance?
I needed to walk into the dark alone to see what I might learn
How do I walk through fog and darkness and still remember to dance?
This was the question I took out onto the lands where I live two years ago today at dusk.
A threshold/medicine walk that I had planned, leaving home at dusk which took me into the dark of night as I progressed.
Because I had decided that I needed to walk into darkness alone to see what I might find.
This question and the invitation to walk into darkness had emerged through three weekly online gatherings, some connection practices and creative experiments with a crew of fellow humans.
The Autumn of 2022 had presented my family with very challenging news and I was heavy with grief and confusion.
And then in mid November my Dad had sudden heart failure and was on life-support in ICU in a London Hospital.
Things had gone very dark.
The deep grief and fear I had been carrying for years for the loss, destruction and love for our living Earth was now coming home, really close in my own little world (again)
And I found myself facing into this conundrum…
How to hold the grief, fear and pain that I experience around me - the darkness - along with the joy, beauty and awe of life - that is always there - to remember to dance with all that is
How to hold all that ?
Well, to add to the mystery - this 5 week journey that I was on in community with others, culminating in this medicine walk helped me to draw on intelligence, insight, support and courage that I didn’t know was possible.
After speaking my question out loud to the land over and over as I walked, I received things out on that walk, and sitting in the darkness, and listening to sounds in those dark woods that I can’t describe in words.
Or make sense of.
But I felt them.
I spoke frequently to my Dad through that night, through stars and stags and snowy ground, through tumbling, twigs and tears and hooting owls.
I told him that we were all good.
That he had nothing to worry about.
That he had served his family well.
The morning after the walk, the ICU phoned to say Dad was deteriorating, clearly on his way.
I drove to London and met my brother and we spent a few hours with Dad, holding him, talking to him, helping him leave this realm, witnessing his last breath - which I’ll never forget.
Accompanied by a dawn chorus of songbirds that I piped into the hospital room through my phone.
My dad loved birdsong and I’m sure he followed the birds on his way.
I’ve come to believe that if we are indeed entangled, relational beings, not separate atomised selves. Who live in a mysterious more than human world - part of a living biotic community of intelligent life…
Well, then making space in community with others, for connecting, learning, practicing, adapting and evolving is surely the way to grow the courage, resilience and creativity required to navigate both the dark and the dance of life.
And all that is coming down the line.
So today I’m remembering my Dad, the darkness, the deer and my fellow crew who journeyed with me on that 5 week winter adventure.
I am because of all of you.
And remembering that I’m still working with the insights and intelligence I received from those times - they are very much still alive - proper medicine.
Wishing you peace wherever you are.
Beautiful Dan, thank you for sharing. The mystics and poets all seem to believe we feel our joy only to the depth that we experience our sorrow, and I join them in that belief. I hear you, and stand with you today in your dark, deep-rooted grief and your feathered, high-flying wonder. 🌳🖤🦅✨