recovery of something lost

be and you shall find

“By silent ways I will receive stories that don’t look like words but feral tracks in the snow; a thread of ebony hair knotted around a branch; smoky candles dripping, dripping in the sodden January wood.”

So I wrote in January, so I still believe in August. Yet the “silent ways” feel hard to come by and I haven’t received the stories I hoped for.

Most of the year I’ve clung to writing Fireside Ghosts with a panic I mistook for passion. I want to write but something is missing. I’ve lost whatever it is that connects me to that quiet, unearthly place where stories live. And a part of me resists the silence and stillness I need to get there.

Therefore, my goal for the rest of the year isn’t words on a page but the recovery of something lost: the path to the moonless corrie where perfumed night drapes like a cloak over the quiet pools and grasses, and ghosts rise like mist from the bones of the land.

I will not write another word of Fireside Ghosts this year.

Instead, I will dilly-dally over fairy flowers, linger in the fairy woods, slowly sip my fairy coffee (normal coffee drank in the spray of a mystical waterfall):

I will find glimmers in the trembling step of a butterfly on my fingertips and in the tail of an adder slinking through the grass to its lair. I’ll read Gaelic books, sing Gaelic songs. I’ll bask like a glaistig on the rocky loch shore until there’s a reason to go home, pour silence into the reverberating caves hollowed out by chaos.

When the moon is in hiding I’ll bathe by day in the waters she touched at night:

Perhaps you are seeking something that’s been lost, too? An important story to write. The link to your creative core. Or simply the calm, quiet belief that life always works out. But perhaps, like me, your cup is empty. You’re craving a silent place of shadows to know yourself in but for some reason you’re afraid to sit still.

I spent 10 years writing a novel that never saw the light of day. I couldn’t let go for fear of the silence that would follow. I deprived myself of gentle moments of nothingness. I didn’t know how to sit still, to let go of goals and word counts. The joy of writing completely drained away.

I don’t want to experience debilitating burnout again. Not when there is another choice to be made. Even though it would satisfy my ego to finish Fireside Ghosts this year, I am circling back to January’s silent ways.

Sometimes to recover what’s missing you need to let go. Embrace silence. Be still. Not as fodder for a book, but to reach that silent place in your soul where the well always overflows

p.s. Selkie Grove is one year old! When I started I didn’t expect these letters to reach many people, I simply wanted a place to write the secretive, moonlit words nestled in my soul. Yet here I am a year later, still writing and with a handful of kind souls even paying to read my words. I am beyond grateful to all of you. Thank you for supporting these letters — may they help you find the wild, dusky, fae places within your own soul.