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Brigid and Water: Healing, Wells, and What the Sea Teaches Us

Brigid water healing is not the first thing most people think of when they come to her. The forge, the flame, the sacred fire at Kildare – these are the images that tend to dominate. And they’re real. They matter. But they’re only half the picture.

Water runs through Brigid’s tradition just as deeply as fire does. Her wells are scattered across Ireland in their hundreds. Her healing aspect is documented across centuries of both pagan and Christian practice. And for those of us who work with her actively, the water side of her tends to show up at the moments when fire would be too much – when what’s needed is not a dramatic transformation but a slow, patient, consistent one.

A picture of me, standing in the sea enjoying life!
The husband did not enter the sea on this particular day, but he was thinking about it!

The wells

Ireland is covered in wells associated with Brigid. St Brigid’s Well in Liscannor, Co. Clare is one of the most significant – a living pilgrimage site with an extraordinary atmosphere, visited by people who are neither particularly pagan nor particularly Catholic but who recognise something there worth attending to. It’s not the only one. Almost every county has its own, and the folklore attached to them is rich and specific and worth exploring.

Wells in Irish tradition are liminal places – thresholds between the surface world and what lies beneath. They are associated with healing, with wishes, with the resolution of difficult things. Water rises from the earth, cold and clear, carrying something of the deep places with it. Brigid tends these places. She has done for a very long time.

If you have access to a well – Brigid’s or otherwise – visiting it with intention is one of the simplest and most grounded ways to connect with her water aspect. You don’t need a ritual. You don’t need to know the correct prayers. Showing up and paying attention is enough.

The sea

The sea is something else again. Brigid’s relationship with the sea and healing is less often discussed than her wells, but it’s there in the tradition and it’s there in practice.

Whenever I have something troubling my mind – a problem to chew over, something that won’t settle, a weight I’ve been carrying longer than I should – I go to the sea. Even on the roughest days, even when the weather is doing something dramatic and the waves are throwing themselves at the rocks, I find something there to help me. The wildness of it on difficult days. The gentleness of it on calmer ones. The salt air that gets into everything and clears it out.

What I’ve come to understand is that this is Brigid’s water aspect working in a way that fire simply can’t. Fire transforms fast and completely. Water works on you gradually, patiently, wearing away at what needs to shift until you fit the shape that was waiting for you. It’s slower. It’s often gentler. And it tends to go deeper.

Healing that doesn’t announce itself

One of the things I’ve noticed about Brigid’s water aspect is that it rarely announces itself. The healing doesn’t arrive in a flash. It accumulates – visit by visit, tide by tide, glass of water by glass of water. You look back after a few weeks and realise something has shifted, and you can’t point to a single moment when it happened.

This is different from the fire model of healing, which tends to be more immediate and more visible. Both are valid. Both are Brigid. But the water model is particularly well suited to the kinds of healing that need time – the long-standing patterns, the deep griefs, the things that have been with you so long you’ve started to think of them as permanent.

They’re not permanent. Water is patient. So is she.

Brigid as a bridge in troubled times

This quality – the capacity to hold you steadily while change happens gradually around and through you – is part of what makes Brigid such a useful figure in difficult periods. She doesn’t demand that you be transformed immediately. In my experience, she doesn’t require you to have it together before you come to her. She meets you where you are and works with what’s actually there.

That’s what the wells were for. That’s what the sea offers. And it’s available to you whether you’re in Ireland or not – water is water, and she finds you wherever it is.

Going deeper

If you want to understand Brigid’s healing aspect more fully – where it comes from in the tradition, how it’s documented in the historical sources, what the old texts actually say about her – the St Brigid of Ireland course at Brigid’s Forge School (€37) is a good place to start. Next week I’ll be writing about the lore courses specifically – the primary texts that mention her, and what they reveal.

Do you have a relationship with Brigid’s water aspect? A well you visit, a stretch of coast that feels significant, a river that settles something in you? I’d genuinely love to hear about it in the comments.

Brigid Beyond Imbolc: How to Connect With Her in Summer

Brigid in summer can feel like a contradiction. She is so strongly associated with Imbolc – with February 1st, with the first stirring of spring, with candles lit against the dark – that when the long days arrive and Imbolc feels months away in either direction, it’s easy to find yourself coasting.

I know this because I do it every year. April hits and my spiritual practice goes a bit quiet. I’m not abandoning anything, I’m just… less active about it. Less intentional. And then, at some point in early summer, something shifts.

The pull of the sea

It starts with an urge I’ve learned to pay attention to. I need to get to the coast.

Brigid in summer leads us to the sea - well she leads me there a lot! But this image of Tramore on a sunny summer's day shows why - the crowds, the balmy water, the blue sky - and it's almost on my doorstep!
The Irish seaside on a summer’s day

Not for a holiday. Not for a swim, necessarily, although if the weather is right I’ll take that too. Just to be near the water. To walk to the edge of it and let the sea do what the sea does. Wash my feet. Splash my face. Stand in the cold shallows and feel something settle that had been restless.

This year, with Ireland hitting 30 degrees – yes, you read that correctly, 30 degrees in Ireland – the urge arrived with extra urgency. And it delivered, as it always does.

What I’ve come to understand is that this is Brigid. Not Brigid of the forge and the flame, but Brigid of the wells, the rivers, the healing waters. The side of her that works slowly, patiently, wearing away at whatever needs to shift until it fits the shape she’s looking for.

Why fire doesn’t always suit summer

Brigid’s association with fire and water is something I’ve written about before. Fire transforms fast – it’s urgent, total, immediate. Water transforms slowly. It supports, encourages, and gradually reshapes. Both are Brigid. Both are useful. But they suit different moments.

In summer, particularly for those of us with more natural energy in the warmer months, the fire aspect can tip into overwhelm. There’s already heat, already momentum, already a lot happening. Adding more fire to that can be too much.

Water, on the other hand, meets you in the heat. It cools. Soothes. It holds you while it works. And Brigid’s water aspect is, in my experience, just as transformative as her fire – it just takes longer, and it tends to be gentler about it.

A note for those in wildfire regions

If you’re reading this from Australia, California, southern Europe, or anywhere that summer brings the threat of wildfire rather than an invitation to swim – I’d suggest working primarily with Brigid’s water aspect this time of year rather than her fire. Light candles carefully and with awareness. But let the wells, the rivers, the rain, and the sea be your primary points of connection with her until the season turns.

Brigid and the sea have a long relationship, and it doesn’t require living in Ireland to access it. Water is water. She finds you wherever it is.

What summer practice with Brigid can look like

You don’t need to overhaul anything. Small, consistent contact with the water aspect is enough. Some possibilities:

Seek out natural water where you can – the sea, a river, a lake, a well. St Brigid’s Well in Liscannor is one of the most significant, but every county in Ireland has its own, and if you’re not in Ireland, look for what’s local to you.

Bring intention to water in your daily life. The shower you take in the morning. The glass of water before you begin work. These aren’t just practical acts – they can be devotional ones, if you choose to treat them that way.

Let the season inform your pace. Summer is a good time for healing work, for the slower processes, for allowing things to be gently worn into a better shape rather than burned through quickly.

And if you feel that pull toward the coast – go. Trust it. In my experience, it’s rarely just a desire for a nice afternoon out.

Going deeper with Brigid

If the summer feels like a good time to learn more about her – who she actually is in the old texts, how she appears across Irish mythology, what the sources tell us that devotional practice alone can’t – the courses at Brigid’s Forge School are a good place to start.

The St Brigid of Ireland course (€37) is the accessible entry point, covering her historical and hagiographical legacy. And over the next couple of weeks I’ll be writing more about the lore courses specifically – the texts that mention her, what they say, and why it matters.

Have you felt that seasonal shift in your practice? Drop a comment below – I’d love to know how summer sits with you and Brigid.

I Didn’t Know I Was Starting. On Beginnings and What They Actually Look Like.

Starting a spiritual path rarely feels like starting. Most beginnings don’t announce themselves. They arrive quietly — dressed as curiosity, or restlessness, or a question you can’t quite put down.

Mine arrived when I was twenty-two, confused, and standing in an English Catholic church wondering why everything felt so different.

An image of a post staying "Start" in white writing on a red background, on a woodland path. But in real life, starting a spiritual path isn't always this clear!
Photo by Eilis Garvey on Unsplash

When I moved to England

I grew up Irish Catholic. And Irish Catholicism, if you didn’t grow up inside it, is its own specific thing — shaped by centuries of history that has no equivalent in the UK or the US. The relationship between the Irish and their faith is complicated in ways that are hard to explain briefly. It is threaded through with colonialism, with survival, with a particular fierce tenderness for certain figures and practices that don’t map neatly onto the universal Catholic church.

When I arrived in England at twenty-two, I walked into a Catholic church and didn’t quite recognise what I found. The texture was different. The cultural weight was different. The things that had meant something to me, growing up, didn’t carry the same charge here.

So I started asking questions. Not questions about my faith exactly — not yet. Questions about the Irish version. About where it had come from. About what was Catholic and what was older than Catholic and what was somewhere in between.

That was the beginning. I didn’t know it at the time.

What starting a spiritual path actually looks like

They rarely announce themselves. They rarely feel significant in the moment. Most often they feel like curiosity, or restlessness, or a mild dissatisfaction with the explanations available. They feel like a question that keeps returning even after you’ve set it aside.

My beginning was a young woman in an English city trying to understand why the religion she’d grown up with felt different here. That question led me to Irish mythology. Irish mythology led me to the older layers under the Catholic surface. The older layers led me to Brigid.

None of it was planned. All of it was necessary.

On starting something you can’t yet see the shape of

If you’re at the beginning of something — if you’re in that curious, restless, not-quite-satisfied place — I want to offer you something.

You don’t need to know where you’re going. You don’t need to have the whole path mapped before you take the first step. In fact, the most important beginnings I’ve witnessed, in myself and in the women I work with, tend to start from exactly the place you’re in: somewhere between what you’ve left and what hasn’t yet become clear.

Brigid is a threshold figure. She has been for a very long time. She meets people at the beginning of things — at Imbolc, the first stirring of spring, when the light is starting to change but winter isn’t quite done. I can assure you, she doesn’t ask you to arrive fully formed. She asks you to show up.

The Guided Path founding cohort has just begun. The self-paced programme is there for whenever you’re ready. And if you’re not ready for either yet — that’s fine too. Stay on the list. Ask your questions. The path will still be here.

[Find out more ]

Something landed here? Drop a comment below. I’d love to know what your beginning looked like — or what it’s looking like right now.

The Self-Guided Path: Why Walking It Alone Is Harder — and Sometimes the Only Option

A self-guided spiritual path is harder than anyone tells you. There’s no map, no one ahead of you on the same road, and no way of knowing whether what you’re doing is working until it does — or doesn’t.

I know this because I walked one for years. And there’s a particular kind of stubbornness that made me do it that way.

A sign saying "HELP YOUR SELF", with "self" kinda falling apart. A self-guided spiritual path isn't easy, but I admit, it was the way for me and I won't condemn it!
Photo by Ava Sol on Unsplash

Nobody was showing the way

When I started this work in earnest, there wasn’t the infrastructure there is now. No programmes built for women like me. No communities I could find that made space for the particular in-between I inhabited — neither fully pagan nor fully Catholic, neither leaving everything behind nor returning to what I’d left.

So I did what stubborn people do. I went looking for what I needed and put it together myself. Research, a lot of it. Books, many of them. Meditation practices I found and lost and found again. Journalling that went nowhere for months before it started going somewhere. Connections with Brigid that built slowly, inconsistently, and often in ways I didn’t recognise until later.

It worked, eventually. It took much longer than it needed to. And there were long stretches where I had no idea if I was going in the right direction, because there was no one to ask.

The advantage of the self-guided spiritual path

Here’s the thing about walking it alone: you build something that is completely yours. There’s no teacher’s framework subtly shaping your conclusions. No community’s consensus pulling you toward what’s acceptable. Every piece of it was found, tested, and chosen by you, because it was the only option.

That has genuine value. It produces a kind of confidence that’s hard to acquire any other way — not certainty, but the ability to trust your own discernment, because you’ve been exercising it without a safety net.

I don’t regret the path I walked. But I do know it was harder than it needed to be.

What I’d have wanted

I’d have wanted something structured. Not structured in the sense of telling me what to believe — but structured in the sense of giving me a map of the territory, a set of tools to work with, and the knowledge that other women were working with the same questions even if their answers were different.

That’s what the self-paced option of First Steps on Brigid’s Path is. All six sessions, the workbooks, the guided meditations — without the live calls or the group. You move at your own pace, in your own time, following a path that has been laid out clearly.

It’s the thing I wished existed when I was doing this the hard way.

If the group programme isn’t right for you — if you need the flexibility of doing this in your own time, on your own terms — the self-paced option is there.

[Find out more ]

Something landed here? Drop a comment or reply to my emails. I read everything.

How Knowing Your Spiritual Path Changes Everything — Including Where You Work

Spirituality in everyday life looks nothing like what most people imagine. It’s not a Sunday morning practice or a shelf with meaningful objects on it — or at least, it’s not only those things.

Once a spiritual path is genuinely yours, it stops being a compartment. It becomes the framework everything else runs on.

This image shows a wine glass with what I think is pomegranate juice and what I think is a pomegranate. Y'see spirituality in everyday life doesn't have to be complicated. In fact, I'd say it absolutely can't be complicated!
Photo by Birgith Roosipuu on Unsplash

The job I had to leave

A few years ago, I was working for a defence organisation. Good money. Interesting technical challenges. Perfectly reasonable colleagues.

And I couldn’t stay.

It wasn’t a dramatic realisation. It crept up on me — a low-level discomfort that I kept trying to reason away. This is just work. Everyone makes compromises. You’re not personally doing anything wrong.

But the discomfort didn’t go. Because once you’ve done the inner work — once you actually know what your values are and what you’re willing to stand on — it becomes very difficult to unknow it. My values are rooted in care, in healing, in the kind of work that adds something to the world rather than removing from it. Defence work, however well-intentioned, didn’t fit. I knew it. My path knew it.

So I left.

What spirituality in everyday life actually does

It doesn’t just give you something to do on feast days. It gives you a framework for the whole of your life — a way of making decisions that is genuinely yours rather than borrowed from an institution or a culture or someone else’s expectations.

For me, that shows up in obvious ways and in subtle ones. I choose employers carefully, with values alignment as a genuine criterion. My mornings begin with what I think of as a sacred shower — not because there’s anything mystical about hot water and soap, but because I’ve learned to use that time intentionally, to arrive in the day rather than just stumble into it. I touch the earth regularly — literally, feet on grass, hands in soil — because grounding is not a metaphor for me, it’s a practice. And yes, I ask Brigid for help with technical issues at work. She’s a goddess of the forge and of craft. She’s interested. She helps.

None of this looks like spirituality from the outside. That’s the point.

A real spiritual path is lived, not performed

The difference between a spiritual practice you perform and a spiritual path you live is exactly this — the lived path shapes the ordinary things. The work you take on. The boundaries you hold. The way you start your day. The people you allow close.

It took me years to build something like this. The Guided Path is designed to give you a structured, supported start — six months of live calls, workbooks, community, and Brigid as your guide — so you don’t have to find your way alone the way I did.

The founding cohort starts in two weeks. This is the last post before we begin.

If you’ve been considering it, now is the time.

[Find out more about The Guided Path]

Leaving Fundamentalist Christianity: Do This Before Anything Else

Many people leaving fundamentalist Christianity don’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. They want to keep what mattered without walking back into something that controlled and restricted them. I’ve been in that conversation a lot lately — and I always come back to the same piece of advice..

Someone was sharing about leaving fundamentalist Christianity — the specific, particular grief of it. Wanting to keep what mattered. Not wanting to walk back into something that controlled and restricted you. The thread was full of people who recognised that exact tension, because it’s one of the most common experiences I encounter in this space.

I jumped in. Because I’ve walked this path. And because I think there’s one thing that matters more than anything else when you’re standing in that particular gap.

Yeah ok a railroad doesn't link to leavinga fundamentalist Christianity spiritual path, but this image of leaves on a railroad that splitting in two different directions speak to me. House in the background, various trees and shrubs around the railway... It's not too regularly used, but still important.
Photo by Nicole Moore on Unsplash

Leaving fundamentalist Christianity: what nobody tells you

When you leave a high-control religion, you don’t just leave a set of beliefs. You leave a community, a calendar, a language, a way of making sense of the world. The structure was suffocating — but it was still structure. And the absence of it can feel enormous.

A lot of people respond to that absence by reaching outward. They try things. They pick up practices, attend workshops, follow teachers. Some of it helps. A lot of it doesn’t, because they’re still operating from a template that belongs to someone else.

Here’s what I said in that Threads conversation, and I meant every word of it.

Get to know yourself first

Before you commit to anything — any tradition, any teacher, any practice — take the time to know yourself. Not the version of yourself that was acceptable to the institution you left. The actual you.

Start small if you need to. What’s your favourite colour? What music makes you feel like yourself? What time of day do you come alive? These aren’t trivial questions. They’re the beginning of a much more important conversation.

Then go deeper. What are your values — the ones that were actually operating in you, not the ones you were taught to perform? What do you believe about the world, about other people, about what makes a life well-lived? What are you willing to stand on, even when it’s uncomfortable?

This is the work that changes everything. Not because it gives you all the answers, but because it gives you a foundation to stand on when you start looking for them. For anyone leaving fundamentalist Christianity, this is especially true — the version of yourself that the institution knew may be very different from the one waiting underneath.

Why this matters for your spiritual path

A spiritual path that isn’t built on genuine self-knowledge tends to become another version of what you left. Different content, same dynamic — looking to something external to tell you who you are and what you should believe.

A spiritual path built on genuine self-knowledge is something else entirely. It grows with you. It holds you. It can absorb uncertainty without collapsing.

That’s what I’ve been building at Brigid’s Forge for years, and it’s what The Guided Path is designed to support — a structured, supported six months of doing exactly this work, with Brigid as a guide and a small group of women beside you.

The founding cohort starts in two weeks. There are still places available.

If any of this is resonating, I’d love to talk. You can find out more and get in touch at the link below — or just reply to any of my emails. I read everything.

Find out more about The Guided Path

Drop a comment below if something here landed for you. I read everything, and I don’t share what people tell me.

Is The Guided Path Right for You? An Honest Answer.

I thought being a pagan Catholic meant I was alone. I was wrong. The community just hadn’t been built yet. So I built it.

I know when people see a post like this, they expect a hard sell. I hope ye know better that this point here! The Guided Path is specific. It’s not for everyone. Here’s why. (And yes, we’ve been leading up to this over the last 1, 2, 3, 4 weeks)

When I was a teenager, I wore clothes that didn’t fit me.

Not metaphorically – literally. Tight, restrictive things I had squeezed myself into because that was what was expected. I beat myself up when nothing in the shops came in my size. I contorted myself to meet a standard that was never built with my body in mind, and I called the resulting discomfort my own fault.

My spiritual life looked exactly the same way.

Conforming to rules that chafed. Squeezing myself into other people’s expectations. Outsourcing every spiritual choice to thousands of years of patriarchy and then wondering why nothing felt like mine.

These days, I know which clothes suit me. I know which shops will have something in my size that feels good. I stick to them without guilt or apology. My spiritual path works the same way. I walk it on my own terms. Every choice is mine. I still work with Mother Mary, Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, and Saint Brigid – figures who matter to me – but the institution that first introduced them to me? That part I left behind.

Me looking directly into the camera. I can do this now, from the work I've done on the Guided Path. I couldn't always!
Me, smiling directly at the camera

The Guided Path exists for women who are ready to do the same.

What it actually is

The Guided Path is a six-month group program. Twelve live calls, six workbooks, a small group of women on the same road, and email access to me throughout. It draws on the figure of Brigid – saint, goddess, keeper of the flame – as a guide and a grounding point, but it doesn’t ask you to adopt any particular label or belief system.

Each month focuses on one step: your core beliefs, reconciling your past, joy, the marks of a poet, the path forward, and finally your cauldron – what you’re carrying, what you’re transforming, what you’ll leave behind.

The work happens in the calls, in the workbooks, and in the space between sessions. It requires genuine engagement. It is not a course you consume passively and forget.

Who it’s for

It’s for you if you’ve left a high-control religion – Catholicism, evangelical Christianity, or any other tradition that told you exactly what to believe – and still feel something unresolved about your spiritual life.

It’s for you if you’re done with the patchwork quilt phase. Done reaching for whatever glitters. Ready to build something rooted in your own history, your own values, your own honest questions.

It’s for you if you want to do this alongside other women making the same journey, rather than entirely alone. The group is capped at fifteen. Large enough for real community, small enough that everyone is known.

It’s for you if you’re willing to look at yourself honestly – the way I described last week – and sit with what you find.

Who it isn’t for

It isn’t for you if you want someone to hand you a new set of beliefs to replace the old ones. That’s not what this is. I’m not founding a new religion here!

It isn’t for you if you’re not ready to engage between sessions. The calls are valuable, but the real work happens in your own time.

It isn’t for you if you’re looking for certainty. This program will not give you certainty. It will give you clarity, which is different and more durable.

It isn’t for you if individual coaching depth is what you need. The one-to-one program may be a better fit, and I’m happy to talk through which is right for you.

The honest bit about cost

The full programme is €2,497. The founding cohort rate is €1,997. A payment plan is available, cost should not be the thing that prevents the right woman from walking this path, so if the investment is a barrier, get in touch and we’ll work something out.

There are payment options available as always. The Guided Path is as accessible as I can make it.

What happens next

If any of the last five weeks of posts have felt like they were written for you — if the vacuum after leaving resonated, if the patchwork quilt landed somewhere familiar, if the Holyhead story made you smile, if the inner work post sat with you for longer than you expected – then the next step is simple.

Go to the link below. Read the full programme page. And if it feels like the right fit, fill in the form and I’ll be in touch within two working days.

No hard sell. No script. Just a conversation about whether this is the right path for you, right now.

Reserve your place — or get in touch to talk it through

And if you’re not quite ready yet – that’s fine too. Stay on the list. Keep reading. The path will still be here when you are.

What Does It Actually Mean to “Do the Inner Work”?

I used to roll my eyes at ‘do the inner work.’ Then I had no choice but to actually do it. New post.

I used to roll my eyes at the phrase “inner work.”

It sounded like something people said on Instagram when they wanted to seem deep without having to be specific. Do the work. Go inward. Heal yourself. What did any of that actually mean on a Tuesday morning when you had a job and a family and a pile of laundry and no idea where to start?

I didn’t believe in it. Not really. Not until I had no choice but to start doing it.

Where it actually began for me

The Dagda turning up in a Travel Lodge in Holyhead – which I wrote about last week – didn’t change my life overnight. I want to be honest about that. It was a significant moment, but significance and transformation are not the same thing. The transformation took years. And it started somewhere I didn’t expect.

It started with food.

I came of age in the late 90s/early 00s, when the cultural message to women about their bodies was as narrow and brutal as it has ever been. Thin was not just desirable, it was moral. It was discipline. It was worth. As an adult, I have never been smaller than a size 14. Getting to a size 14 took twelve months of a very low calorie diet. If you know, you know. Eating normally, I’m usually over a size 20.

For years, I spent enormous amounts of time and energy fighting that. Hating that. Treating my body as a problem to be solved rather than a home to be lived in.

The inner work, the real inner work, was learning to look at that honestly. Not to fix it, not to override it with willpower, but to understand what was actually driving it. What I was really hungry for. What I was trying to control when I controlled my eating, and what I was punishing myself for when I didn’t.

That required journalling. It required meditation. It required learning: about diet culture, about the history of how women’s bodies have been policed, about what I had absorbed without knowing I was absorbing it. Most of all, it required me to look at myself full on, no deviations, and see who was actually looking back.

Not the socially acceptable version of me. The real one.

A picture of my hands, one on top of the other. These hands did the inner work.
These hands did the work. (Yes, they’re my hands!)

What inner work actually is

It is not a quick process. It is not a weekend retreat or a course or a set of affirmations you say in the mirror. Those things can be useful starting points, but they are not the work itself.

Inner work is the sustained, honest practice of asking yourself hard questions and sitting with the answers even when they’re uncomfortable. It’s noticing the patterns – in your behaviour, your relationships, your relationship with your own body and mind – and being willing to trace them back to where they started. It’s recognising what is a conscious choice and what is an old wound operating on autopilot.

For me, it looked like this: I could be smaller than I am now. I know that. The inner work means I also know what it would cost me, what it would require me to go back to, and why I’m choosing not to. That is a conscious choice rather than a failure. The difference between those two things – conscious choice versus unconscious self-punishment – is enormous. Getting there took years of genuine inner work.

It also, eventually, led me back to spirituality. Because once you start asking honest questions about who you are and what you value, the spiritual questions follow. They’re not separate.

What it looks like in practice

Every woman’s version of this will be different. But in my experience it tends to involve some combination of the following.

Journalling: not as a diary, but as a tool for thinking. Writing without editing yourself, letting what’s actually there come to the surface.

Meditation: not as relaxation, but as a way of sitting with yourself long enough to notice what’s actually going on underneath the noise.

Learning: reading, listening, seeking out perspectives that challenge what you’ve always assumed to be true about yourself and the world.

Community: doing this work alongside other women who are doing the same thing, so that you’re not alone with what surfaces.

None of these are new. None of them are complicated. What makes them inner work rather than just activities is the intention behind them – the willingness to look honestly at what comes up rather than managing it or performing it.

What it has to do with Brigid’s Path

The reason I named this program Brigid’s Path is precisely this. Brigid – as poet, as healer, as keeper of the flame – is a figure associated with the kind of illumination that comes from sustained honest attention. The three marks of a poet in the old Irish tradition are not about writing verse. They are about knowing: knowing what illuminates, knowing how to discern, knowing how to speak from your own centre.

That is inner work. It has a long lineage. You are not starting from nothing.

Where this is going

Next week is the final post in this series, and it’s the most direct one. I want to talk specifically about The Guided Path – what it is, who it’s built for, and whether it might be the right next step for you.

If you don’t want to miss it, make sure you’re on the list.

Something from this post landing somewhere tender? You can drop a comment below or reply to any of my emails. I read everything, and I don’t share what people tell me.

Brigid: The Irish Saint and Goddess Who Makes Sense After You’ve Left the Church

Why did I end up working with Brigid, Irish saint, goddess, on my spiritual path? Well you might ask.

It was a Travel Lodge in Holyhead. Two in the morning. I was waiting for the night ferry back to Ireland after a women’s empowerment weekend, sitting on the edge of a bed that had seen better days, crying my eyes out and asking for guidance from anything that might be listening.

What arrived was not what I expected.

The Dagda 0 father figure of the Tuatha Dé Danann, one of the old Irish gods – turned up. Not dramatically. Not with thunder or visions. His first suggestion, after I’d poured out everything I was carrying, was to drink some water. By the time the night was over, he had one more piece of advice: go and look into his daughter.

His daughter is Brigid.

Brigid is probably not who you think she is

If you grew up Catholic in Ireland, you know Saint Brigid. February 1st. The cross made of rushes. The secondary patron saint, the one who wasn’t Patrick. Maybe a school named after her, or a church, or a prayer you learned and forgot. (Indeed, and a GAA club either!)

What most of us weren’t taught is that Saint Brigid possibly/ probably absorbed an older figure: a goddess of the same name, part of the Tuatha Dé Danann, the pre-Christian Irish pantheon. A goddess of poetry, smithcraft, and healing. Protector of the vulnerable. Keeper of the sacred flame at Kildare, which burned for centuries and was tended by women.

Listen, a spiritual path away from organised religion doesn't have to start with Brigid Irish saint & goddess. But like this candle in the picture - it doens't hurt either...
I know, I often use a candle to start people off with Brigid. But there’s reasons!!

The two figures of Brigid, saint and goddess, are so deeply entwined on the spiritual paths they walk that scholars still debate where one ends and the other begins. For our purposes, that ambiguity is not a problem. It’s actually the point.

Why she works for women like us (saint or goddess)

Women like us – ex-Catholic, ex-evangelical, ex-whatever-it-was, still spiritual, not sure where to go next – tend to have a complicated relationship with religious figures. We’ve spent years being told what to believe about them. The last thing most of us want is another authority telling us who to pray to and why.

Brigid doesn’t work like that. She never really did.

Brigid sits at a threshold: between Christianity and what came before it, between the institutional and the personal, between the historical record and lived experience. Most certainly, she doesn’t require you to become pagan to approach her. She doesn’t require you to abandon whatever remnants of your Catholic upbringing still feel meaningful. She has been navigating that in-between space for over a thousand years.

Unusually, she is also a figure who has belonged specifically to women for most of her history. The flame at Kildare was tended by women. The traditions around her in Irish folk culture were carried by women. Her feast day, Imbolc, marks the first stirring of spring: a threshold moment, a beginning, which is exactly where a lot of us find ourselves.

What she’s not

She is not a replacement religion. Approaching Brigid doesn’t mean you’re signing up for paganism, or Irish polytheism, or any other label you’re not ready to take on. Brigid, Irish saint and goddess know better than to try to force anyone on a spiritual path that’s not right for them.

She is not going to fix everything. No single figure, practice, or tradition does that.

She is not exclusively Irish either – though her roots are deep in this land, and if you have Irish ancestry, that connection is worth exploring. She has travelled all over the world with Irish emigrants, and as I’ve mentioned before, there’s a chance she might have originated with our neighbours to the East.

What she is, in my experience, is a reliable point of entry. A figure grounded enough in history to withstand scrutiny, flexible enough in tradition to meet you where you actually are, and specific enough to give you something real to work with rather than a vague spiritual fog.

How to start with Brigid, saint or goddess, on a spiritual path

You don’t need to do anything dramatic. You don’t need to build an altar or declare a belief or join anything.

Start with curiosity. Read about her: both the saint and the goddess, and the places where they overlap. Notice what resonates and what doesn’t. Light a candle on February 1st if it appeals to you. Look into the history of Kildare. Find out which stories about her have been told in your own family’s county, because there will be some. (And if your family doesn’t come from Ireland, check out the other posts in the blog to get you started!)

Most of all, stay honest with yourself about what you’re actually drawn to versus what you think you should be drawn to. Brigid has been around long enough not to need your performance. She just needs your attention.

Your spiritual path may align with or veer away from Brigid, either the saint of the goddess. That’s ok. She won’t mind at all.

Where this is going

Next week I want to talk about what the actual inner work looks like – not the aesthetic of spirituality, but the practice of it. What it means to sit with uncomfortable questions, and why that is worth doing.

If you don’t want to miss it, make sure you’re on the list.

Have a question about Brigid, or something from this post that’s sitting with you? Drop it in the comments or reply to any of my emails. I read everything.

Why “Just Be Spiritual” Doesn’t Cut It After a Religious Upbringing

If you read last week’s post, you’ll know I’ve been thinking about the vacuum that opens up when you leave a high-control religion. The hollowness that certain weekends – Easter, Christmas, the hinge points of the year – can make suddenly visible.

This week I want to talk about what a lot of women do next. And why it often doesn’t work.

The obvious answer that isn’t really an answer

When you leave organised religion, the most common advice you’ll encounter – spoken or unspoken – is some version of: just be spiritual. Take what resonates. Leave what doesn’t. Build your own thing.

On the surface, that sounds reasonable. Liberating, even. After years of being told exactly what to believe and what happened if you didn’t, following what feels right sounds like freedom.

The problem is that “follow what feels right” is not actually a framework. It’s an absence of one. For women who have spent years inside a highly structured belief system, that absence doesn’t feel like freedom. It feels like standing in a very large room with no furniture and no map.

The patchwork quilt problem

What tends to happen – and I say this from personal experience as much as from observation – is a kind of spiritual magpie phase. A crystal here. A tarot deck there. Some yoga philosophy, some sage smudging, a dash of Norse mythology, a moon ritual from a wellness influencer. Each piece picked up because it glittered, because it felt like something, because it seemed to offer an answer.

None of those things are wrong in themselves. But assembled without intention or grounding, without any real understanding of where they come from or what they mean within their own traditions, they become a patchwork quilt without a plan. It doesn’t keep you warm. It just gets heavier.

A magpie with a thought bubble saying "Mmmm... Must have shiny things..." Still being spiritual but not religious after leaving a church can lead to magpie like tendencies...

There’s also something worth naming honestly: much of what gets marketed as “spirituality” in the wellness space involves taking practices from living traditions – Indigenous, Hindu, African, East Asian – stripping them of their -context, and selling them to Western women as self-care. That isn’t spiritual freedom. Cultural appropriation dressed up in linen and good lighting is still cultural appropriation. Women who go down this road tend to feel, eventually, just as hollow as before – and now there’s a vague guilt attached to it too.

What actually helped me

When I stopped reaching outward and started looking closer to home, something shifted.

Not immediately. Not dramatically either. But what grounded me, what gave me something solid to stand on, was a combination of things that had nothing exotic about them at all.

Connecting with my ancestors. Not in a performative or mystical sense, but in the straightforward sense of asking: who were the people I come from? What did they value? How did they endure? What did they carry, and what did they pass on to me whether I wanted it or not?

Getting honest about my ethics and values. Not the ones I’d inherited, not the ones I’d been told I should have, but the ones actually operating in me – the things I couldn’t compromise on, the lines I wouldn’t cross, the things that made me feel most like myself.

Working from that grounded state outward was the final piece. Rather than assembling a spiritual life from whatever was available, I started from what I knew to be true about myself and built from there.

That process led me to Brigid. Not because someone told me she was what I needed. When I looked honestly at who I was and where I came from, she was already there – as saint, as goddess, as a figure woven into Irish culture across more than a thousand years. She didn’t require me to borrow from anyone else’s tradition. She was already mine to explore.

Structure isn’t the enemy

Here’s what took me longest to accept: the problem was never structure itself. The problem was being inside a structure someone else had built, one I had no hand in shaping and that never quite fit.

Building your own spiritual life doesn’t mean having no structure. It means building one that is genuinely yours: rooted in your own history, your own values, your own honest questions. That takes longer than picking up a crystal. It requires sitting with uncomfortable things. But it produces something that actually holds.

This is the work I do with the women I work with. It’s what the coming weeks of posts are going to be about.

Where this is going

Next week I want to introduce you properly to Brigid, not as a requirement, not as a new belief system to step into, but as a figure worth knowing. She has been part of Irish women’s lives for a very long time and might have something to offer you, depending on where you are and what you’re looking for.

If you don’t want to miss it, make sure you’re on the list.

And if last week’s post is still sitting with you – or if the patchwork quilt image landed somewhere uncomfortable – I’d genuinely love to hear about it. You can reply to any of my emails or drop a comment below.