The fertile void

Just over a year ago, in November 2020, I let go of my old business, The Introvert Library – and what a year it has been!

A few months later, in March 2021, I wrote:

“There is healing that needs to happen before I can progress to the next level. …

I’m aware that I want to talk more in my business about spirituality, about how we manage our energetic boundaries as empaths, about how we sensitive folk claim our power more fully. And I’m aware that I’m holding back from talking about these things because I’m scared.

Words and power are deeply connected.

I am increasingly realising that I am not tired all the time because I do not have enough energy, I am tired all of the time because I spend all of my energy repressing my power because I do not believe that my body is strong enough to hold it all.

That's the stuck energy that I suspect I am being called to heal next.

And so, here I am, showing up even though it feels scary, to say that something deep is shifting within me.

I’d love to be able to be able to package it up tidily with a neat little bow attached and tell you what this all means. Maybe that would make for an easier read for you. It would definitely make for an easier life for me.

But that is not what this place is.

This is the deep, dark place of unknowing. The fertile void. The place where we discover the width and breadth of our trust.

I do not know what is coming next. All I know is that something is coming.”

I am so grateful for those of you who have stuck with me through this period of unknowing, of healing, of experimenting.  It has been quite a journey!

I am finally ready to start talking about what is coming next.  But, before I do that, I want to fill in some of the gaps as to what has been going on for me for the last year.

The unravelling began with the realisation that I needed to let go of my Introvert Library branding.  There were several reasons for this decision, but perhaps the most important one was that I had been using the brand as something to hide behind. I could feel that I was being called to a much greater level of personal visibility than I had previously had the courage to implement.  I knew that it was time for me to start being fully myself online.

Then around the winter solstice, I realised that I was being called to the path of a hearth witch.  And this set of nearly a year of re-examining my faith.  I continue to be an active Quaker, but learning to bring in aspects of witchcraft into my life has supported me in developing a faith that is softer and more grounded and embodied than anything I have personally experienced before.

I have spent much of 2021, experimenting with offering a wide variety of group coaching experiences.  I was struggling to redefine the core of my work; but rather than following my previous pattern of trying to figure out the answers inside my head. I was instead trying to find answers by taking action.  It was honestly pretty messy and I have spent a lot of the year aware that I was probably confusing you all by making so many different kinds of offers.  It was a necessary messiness that in itself healed some significant elements of my own lingering self-doubt.  And I am deeply grateful that things are starting to feel a little clearer now!

In the spring of this year, we did a round of IVF that failed and left me completely devastated.  We’re hoping to try again soon but it has been more complicated than we hoped to get to a place where this will be possible.  And eight months later, there are parts of me that are still grieving for the fact that it didn’t work and I am learning to be ok with that.

Learning to be ok with all my emotions has in fact been one of the biggest themes of this whole journey.  I realised that I was running the belief that my heart was untrustworthy and dangerous.  Choosing to trust my heart anyway, even though its desires often seem wildly unrealistic, has been transformative.  I have finally allowed myself to dance.  I am in a place where I feel both lighter and more grounded, happier and more powerful than I ever have before.

I have always struggled to fit my work into a coherent narrative.  I am multi-passionate human being who tends to get bored as soon as I start to feel competent.  But from where I am standing right now, I can see three main strands to my work going forward.

Firstly, my membership community Wellspring: Energy Master for empaths, introverts and HSPs.  I love this little group of wonderful human beings and intend to continue to improve the resources that are available to this community and to welcome new members.

Secondly, I have been thinking a lot recently about what it means to have a divided will.  My work has always been hard to categorise, but a common thread has often been around exploring the tension that arises when one part of us (often conscious) wants one thing and another part (often unconscious) wants something different.  I know I’ve got deeper work to do in this area both with clients and in my own life.  If you know this is an issue for you, then feel free to message me because I may have some spaces for 1:1 coaching opening up soon.

And finally, there is an increasing part of my work that is going to be around voice and visibility.  At some point in the last year, I realised that I wanted to be the coach that quiet souls go to when they realise that they have something to say.  But that’s a thread of my work that I have not yet developed as fully as I would like to.

And I know that the first step I need to take on this journey is to become even braver with my own visibility.

And so this is my first official announcement that I am going to write a book.  I’m not sure when this is going to happen, I’m not quite ready to fully commit to it yet.  But I can feel it growing inside me, becoming ready to be birthed.  And as a first step to nurturing this seed, I am going to start sharing autobiographical snippets that may one day make it into this book that I can see starting to take shape.  These snippets won’t be shared on social media or in blog posts.  For now, they will only be shared with those who have signed up to receive my emails.  So, if you’ve not signed up yet, you can do so by filling out the form below!