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You Left. But You Didn’t Leave Everything.

This Easter weekend, my social media feeds were full of it.

Families at Mass. Easter Sunday tables. The smell of candles and lilies practically coming through the screen. And somewhere in the middle of all of it, I kept seeing the other posts too – the quieter ones. The women noting, without quite saying it, that they didn’t know what to do with themselves. That something felt off. That the day had a shape they no longer inhabited, and nothing had grown in its place yet.

For me personally, Easter these days is a lovely three-day weekend. Some time to slow down, to reconnect with myself, to remember what I actually think and feel when I’m not just moving through the week. And honestly, there’s never a bad time for a free day off work. But I’m aware that I have structures in place – practices, rhythms, ways of checking in with my inner life – that give me the kind of grounding that Easter provides for practising Christians. I’m not adrift during that weekend because I’ve built something to stand on. A lot of women haven’t had the chance to do that yet. And Easter, with all its weight and visibility, can make that absence feel very loud.

If that was you this weekend, this post is for you.

Leaving religion hasn't created so much of a spiritual vacuum that I can't appreciate my daffodils in the garden! (Which is what's in this picture!)

The vacuum nobody tells you about

Leaving a high-control religion (Catholicism, evangelical Christianity, any tradition that told you exactly what to believe and what happened if you didn’t) is often framed as a liberation. And in many ways, it is. You step away from the guilt, the authority, the rules that never quite fit. That part is real. (Also, rarely a bad time for REM!)

What doesn’t get talked about as much is what comes after.

The liturgical calendar that still lives in your body, even when you’re no longer observing it. The way Christmas and Easter arrive with a weight that has nothing to do with chocolate eggs or family dinners. The strange grief of sitting outside something that was, for a long time, the whole shape of the year.

Easter is a particularly pointed example. It’s not a minor feast. It’s the pivot of the entire Christian year: the death, the waiting, the rising. If you grew up inside that, it’s in you in a way that’s hard to articulate. And when you’re no longer inside it, the weekend can feel oddly hollow, even if you know, intellectually, that you left for good reasons.

And it’s not just Christianity. Nearly every religious tradition I’ve encountered has its equivalent: a moment in the year that carries the full weight of the community’s belief, that marks time in a way that’s impossible to ignore. Passover. Eid. Diwali. Vesak. These are not decorative occasions. They are the hinge points of the year for the people inside them, the moments when the community gathers, when something larger than the individual is acknowledged. When you’re no longer inside that community, those hinge points don’t disappear. They just become visible from the outside, which is a different and sometimes lonelier experience.

That hollowness is not a sign you made the wrong choice. It’s a sign that spirituality was never nothing to you, even inside a framework that may have done you harm.

You left the institution. You didn’t leave the hunger.

Here’s what I’ve come to believe after years of working with women navigating this particular terrain: the thing that draws people into religion in the first place is rarely the doctrine. It’s the ritual, the community, the sense of being held inside something larger than yourself. The marking of time. The acknowledgement that life is not just a series of tasks to be completed.

When you leave, you take the doctrine off. But you often don’t take the hunger off. The desire to mark the turning of the year. To tend to something. To have a practice that feels like it means something.

And that’s where a lot of women get stuck. Because what’s on offer, in the broad spiritual marketplace, on social media, in the wellness space, doesn’t quite fit either. It can feel too vague, too performative, too much like swapping one unexamined set of beliefs for another. Or it asks you to stop taking spiritual life seriously altogether, which also isn’t right.

Neither of those is the only option.

The neither/nor of it

I’m not here to sell you a replacement religion. I’m not here to tell you that Brigid, or paganism, or Irish mythology, or any other tradition is what you’ve been missing and you just didn’t know it yet. That’s not how this works, and anyone who tells you otherwise is not being straight with you.

What I am here to say is that the vacuum you felt this weekend, if you felt it, is worth paying attention to. Not because it means you should go back. But because it tells you something real about yourself: that your inner life matters to you, that you’re not quite ready to let it wither, and that you’re looking for something that takes you seriously.

That is a reasonable thing to be looking for. It exists. And it doesn’t require you to step into any ready-made container that someone else has built for you.

Where this goes

Over the next few weeks I’m going to be writing about exactly this: what it looks like to build a spiritual life after religion, how you work out what you actually believe (as opposed to what you were told to believe), and what figures like Brigid – who has survived and adapted across more than a thousand years of Irish history – might have to offer women who are doing this work.

If any of that is landing for you, the best thing to do is make sure you don’t miss what comes next.

And if you want to share this with someone who had a quiet Easter weekend and couldn’t quite explain why, please do. Sometimes the most useful thing is knowing someone else has noticed the same thing.

Or drop me a line or comment on the post!

Spiritual Burnout: What to Do When You’ve Given Too Much to Everyone Else


I’m off work right now. (And yes, I’ve written about spiritual burnout before, but bear with me, ok? I’m trying to focus on spiritual burnout recovery this time…)

Not on holiday. Not at a conference. Off work because I pushed too hard for too long and my body eventually made the decision my brain kept refusing to make. As an engineer, I’m trained to solve problems, keep things moving, be the person who figures it out. Turns out that’s a fantastic skill set right up until the point it isn’t.

And sitting here, with more quiet than I’m used to, I’ve been doing what I always do when something cracks open, I’ve been noticing the pattern. Where else does this show up? Where else am I the one holding the flame for everyone else while quietly letting my own go dark?

Here’s the thing. Right now, in my spiritual life, I don’t think I’m at crisis point. But I recognise the early signs. Spiritual burnout doesn’t always arrive as a dramatic collapse, sometimes it’s a slow, quiet drain that you only notice when you’re already running on empty. I know what this road looks like. And I’d rather write about it now, from the relatively sane vantage point of almost, than from the wreckage of having ignored it too long.

So this one is for anyone who recognises themselves in what I’m about to describe.

A tired woman rests her hands against her face in a moment of stillness — capturing the emotional weight that makes spiritual burnout recovery necessary.
A woman looking distressed, is she in spiritual burnout?

Signs of spiritual burnout

Over-giving in a spiritual community rarely announces itself. It creeps in through small, generous decisions that compound over time. Here are some signs worth sitting with honestly:

Your own altar has been neglected for weeks, but you’ve shown up for everyone else’s questions and crises.

You’ve started dreading notifications from people in your community. After conversations where you gave a lot, you feel vaguely resentful… and then guilty about the resentment.

Your own doubts and questions feel like something you can’t share with anyone, because you’re supposed to be the one who has it together.

You’ve stopped asking Brigid for anything. Prayer has become entirely outward-facing.

I know these signs because I know their cousins from work. The dread of the inbox. The resentment after a meeting where you gave everything and nobody asked how you were. The way your own needs quietly stop feeling legitimate because everyone else’s are so clearly urgent.

And then there’s the really subtle one, the one that makes this so hard to shift: your identity has quietly fused with being useful to others. Pulling back doesn’t feel like protecting yourself. It feels like losing yourself.

In work, for me, it looked like staying late to fix things that weren’t mine to fix. Answering messages at 10pm. Saying yes to one more thing because I was the one who knew how to handle it. Sound familiar in a different context?

That’s why the practical advice often doesn’t stick. People know what to do. Doing it feels like a threat to who they are. But it’s essential if you’re going to recover from this spiritual burnout! (Talking to myself? Me? Never!(

So what can we actually do about spiritual burnout?

I have a list of practical steps for spiritual burnout recovery. Because of course I have.

Stop before you fix.

Before changing anything, spend a week just noticing where your spiritual energy goes. Not to judge it, not to overhaul it, just to see it clearly. Most people are genuinely shocked when they look. I was, when I finally sat down and looked at where my working hours were actually going. You can’t manage what you haven’t named yet.

Reclaim something that’s entirely yours.

One practice, however small, that you don’t share, don’t post, don’t discuss and don’t offer to anyone else. Not because it’s a secret, but because it’s sovereign. A single candle lit for yourself. Five minutes with Brigid that belong only to you. This sounds simple. For people whose entire practice has become communal, it’s one of the hardest things I’ll suggest.

One of the things I’ve done while off work is to stop performing recovery. No updates. No checking in with people. Just actually resting, which turns out to be completely different from talking about resting. Your spiritual practice deserves the same protection.

Learn the difference between witnessing and carrying.

You can be fully present for someone without taking their struggle into your own body. This is actually a skill, and it doesn’t come naturally — particularly for empathic people, which most of us in spiritual community are. Practically: after a conversation that cost you something, do a short physical reset. A walk, cold water on your face, stepping outside for a few minutes. It signals to your nervous system that what you held for them stays with them. It doesn’t follow you home.

I’ve had to learn this at work too — the difference between caring about a problem and owning a problem that isn’t mine. Spiritual over-giving works exactly the same way.

Let people sit with their own questions.

Over-givers tend to rush — to answer, to soothe, to solve. Next time someone brings you a spiritual question, try responding with “what does your gut tell you?” It honours their own wisdom. And it protects yours.

Renegotiate quietly, not dramatically.

You don’t need to make an announcement. Definitely, don’t owe anyone a declaration. You can simply respond a little slower. Be slightly less available. Say “I don’t have the energy for that today” without explanation or apology. People who genuinely care about you will adjust without drama. People who push back or don’t even notice? That’s information worth having.

I didn’t send a big email to work saying I was stepping back. My body made that decision for me in the end. I’d rather you make it for yourself, consciously, before it comes to that.

Ask Brigid for something.

Spiritual burnout recovery doesn’t have to be dramatic. Sometimes it starts with the smallest possible thing — bringing your own need to the flame instead of everyone else’s.

When did you last do that?

I know, it’s obvious…

Brigid is associated with generosity, with service, with the perpetual fire that never goes out. It’s easy, especially for those of us with a Catholic background, to absorb that as meaning we should be the same. Always available. Always giving. Never asking.

But Brigid isn’t just a resource you dispense to others. She’s in relationship with you. The forge isn’t only where you make things for other people. It’s where you go to be renewed yourself.

I’m sitting with that right now, in this quieter stretch of time I didn’t exactly choose but probably needed. Bringing my own tiredness to her rather than showing up with a list of things I want to do for everyone else. It feels strange. It also feels like exactly the right thing. And I know, reaching out to Brigid (or your deity of choice) to help with recovery from burnout of a spiritual nature seems a bit, well, strange. I get it. But just trust me on this.

If your prayer life has become entirely outward-facing, this is your invitation to change that. Bring something to her. Not something polished or spiritual-sounding. Something real. The exhaustion, the resentment, the quiet grief of having lost the thread of your own practice while tending everyone else’s.

She can work with that.

The smith has to tend their own fire first.

Now, I googled a lot before I wrote this, because I don’t want to send you down a bad path.

When the World Gets Loud: What a Grounded Practice Actually Does

I wrote last week about St. Patrick’s Day and my online experience. But it led me to think about women’s spiritual leadership and how being grounded actual leads me to being a better person and a better leader.

There’s a version of spiritual practice that looks beautiful on the outside. Candles, rituals, carefully arranged altars, the right words said at the right time. And there’s nothing wrong with any of that. But it’s not what I want to talk about today.

I want to talk about what practice looks like when you’re tired. Really tired. When you’re off work with exhaustion and you’ve still somehow spent the last 36 hours in heated online conversations about Irish identity, St. Patrick, and the gap between the Ireland that exists in diaspora memory and the one I actually live in.

Because that’s where practice gets tested. Not in the quiet moments. In the loud ones.

Women's Spiritual Leadership can often feel limited to flowers and candles, But that's not the case. Groundedness is far more important than pretty pictures.
Women’s Spiritual Leadership isn’t always flowers and candles

The Thing Nobody Tells You About Spiritual Work

When people come to Brigid — or to any serious spiritual path — they often come looking for peace. And peace is part of it. But what a genuinely grounded practice builds, over time, is something more useful than peace. It builds capacity.

Capacity to stay present when things are difficult. To know your own mind clearly enough that you don’t lose it in someone else’s argument. Capacity to feel the full weight of something – the frustration, the grief, the sheer weariness of trying to hold truth up against a wall of comfortable myth – and still find your way back to yourself afterwards.

That’s not magic. It’s the slow accumulation of showing up, over years, to something real.

What Brigid Actually Offers

Brigid is a deity of the threshold. Of the place between states: between winter and spring, between darkness and light, between what was and what is becoming. She holds contradiction without resolving it too quickly. Saint and goddess. Flame and well. The fire that transforms and the water that soothes.

Working with her, over time, teaches you to do the same. To hold complexity without collapsing it. Stay in difficult conversations without losing your centre. Know the difference between a boundary that needs holding and a battle that isn’t yours.

This week, I needed all of that. Knowing the real history of this island – not the postcard version, but the layered, complicated, sometimes painful truth of it – meant I could speak from solid ground rather than from reaction. The years spent learning, researching, sitting with the stories, walking this path – they weren’t just personally meaningful. They were practically useful. They meant I had something real to stand on.

Grounded People Lead Differently

I work with women who are navigating leadership — in their professions, in their communities, in their spiritual lives. And the ones who struggle most aren’t usually the ones who lack skill or intelligence or vision. They’re the ones who haven’t yet built the interior infrastructure to hold the weight of what they’re carrying.

They’re reactive when they want to be considered. Depleted when they need to be present. Performing certainty when what they actually need is genuine rootedness.

A Brigid-centred practice addresses that at the source. Not by making you invulnerable — that’s not the goal, and honestly it’s not possible. But by giving you somewhere real to return to. A flame that doesn’t go out just because the room gets difficult.

What This Looks Like in Practice

It’s not always ceremonial. Sometimes, it’s a candle lit in the morning before the day gets away from you. Occasionally, it’s returning to a piece of history or mythology that reminds you of who you actually are. Sometimes it’s the simple act of naming, quietly and clearly, what you know to be true, even when the noise around you is saying something different.

Over time, these small acts of return build something. A kind of interior steadiness that shows up not just in ritual space, but in meetings, in difficult conversations, in the moments when you’re running on empty and still need to show up well.

That’s what I came back to this week, when the online world got loud and my body was already waving flags about rest. Not a complicated practice. Just the accumulated weight of years of genuine work, holding me up when I needed it most.

An Invitation

If you’re a woman in leadership – formal or informal, professional or spiritual – and you’re feeling the gap between who you’re being asked to be and who you actually are, I’d invite you to consider what it might mean to build that kind of interior foundation.

Not because Brigid is the only path. But because this island’s tradition offers something ancient, layered, and genuinely powerful for women who are ready to do real work. And because the difference between leading from exhaustion and leading from groundedness isn’t a matter of working harder. It’s a matter of going deeper.

If that resonates, you’re in the right place. Have a look around. And if you’d like to explore what this kind of work might look like for you personally, you can find me here.

When the Internet Wants You to Be a Different Kind of Irish

I’ve spent the last few days doing something I probably shouldn’t have, given that I’m currently off work with exhaustion. I’ve been online, trying to have conversations with Irish Americans about St. Patrick, about what Ireland actually is today, about the gap between the island their ancestors left and the one I live on now.

It’s been a rough 36 hours. (If you search for me over on Threads, you can probably retrace the whole thing!)

I don’t regret it. But I won’t pretend it didn’t cost me something.

(And yes, being off work is why this is here on Wednesday evening and not Monday morning like usual)

So Let’s Talk About Aul Paddy

I don’t write about him every year, cos I have better things to be doing, but here’s a post from 2022 talking about him as well.

There’s a particular kind of tiredness that comes not from the argument itself, but from the invisible labour underneath it: the constant recalibrating, the search for the right words, the hope that this time the point will land.

So here are a few things worth knowing about St. Patrick, since we’ve just been through another year of the myths doing the rounds.

A snippet from the RTE coverage of the St Patrick's Day in Dublin, which is all about being Irish in our many shapes and colours!
Screenshot from the RTE news coverage of the Dublin Paddy’s Day Parade, you can see it all here: https://www.rte.ie/player/series/rt%C3%A9-news-six-one/SI0000001474?epguid=IH10016318-26-0076

Patrick didn’t kill pagans. He himself considered his mission to Ireland a failure. The snakes weren’t pagans either, that’s a later invention. What Patrick did have, however, were excellent propagandists a few centuries after his death. If you want a genuinely gripping political read, look into the row between Armagh and Kildare in the 7th or 8th century about who would claim the supremacy of Ireland. Spoiler: Armagh and Patrick won that particular battle. Though it’s worth noting that Brigid did considerably more work in the succeeding centuries… but that’s a story for another day, and honestly, a subject close to my heart.

Paddy also wasn’t Irish…

What “Irish” Actually Means

This is where the conversations got harder.

“Irish” means born here, or living here for a considerable period of time, knowing the culture, the politics, the modern history. It means existing inside this place, not just carrying it in your blood memory.

Being Irish American means that somewhere along the line, you had an Irish ancestor. Chances are they were a poor peasant, heading to lands far away for survival. Good on them, the fact that you’re here and exist means it worked. It’s a remarkable story. But it doesn’t make you Irish.

And the Ireland many Irish Americans are so fiercely proud of? It’s a photograph of someone who used to live here. Beautiful. Sincere. Real in its own way. But not quite us anymore.

Here’s some of what modern Ireland actually looks like:

There are Black and brown Irish people. Here, living on this island, playing hurling, playing Gaelic, playing soccer, singing, dancing, serving as politicians, just being people. They’re as Irish as I am. One of them was Taoiseach a few years ago. There is no pure Irish bloodline: we’re a nation of mongrels, and always have been.

If you’re telling me you can trace your lineage to before Christianity arrived on these shores, I’d gently suggest you’ve been extremely misled. For many reasons, we are lucky on this island to trace lineage back to the Great Hunger. Prior to the 17th century, most of us don’t even have church records. But sure – you’re definitely a descendant of Niall of the Nine Hostages.

The Ireland We Actually Live In

Ireland sides with oppressed peoples. Saoirse don PhailistĂ­n. We recognise the behaviour: the British practiced it on us first, and we haven’t forgotten what that looks like.

The Irish language isn’t dead. It’s going through a revival, and thankfully so.

Our Head of State is our President, ár Uachtarán, currently Catherine Connolly (our third female president). Our Head of Government is the Taoiseach, Micheál MartĂ­n, the man you may have seen at the White House recently. ( You may have heard him being referred to as a Prime Minister, that’s a bad translation of an Irish word)

We voted in Marriage Equality. We repealed the 8th. We are not the Catholic island of your great-grandmother’s stories. We’ve changed, sometimes painfully, often beautifully.

Why This Is Personal

I found myself asking, somewhere in the middle of all this: why does it land so hard? Why does correcting a myth about a 5th century saint feel so exhausting?

I think it’s because identity isn’t abstract for me. It’s something I’ve spent years rooting myself in. Not the postcard version, but the real, complicated, sometimes painful story of this island. I’ve walked a spiritual path with Brigid long enough to understand that she herself holds that complexity. She is saint and goddess, fire and water, patron of poetry and of smithcraft, Of making things and of tending the flame. She doesn’t flatten into a simple story. Neither does Ireland.

That’s part of what learning about her has given me. Not just devotion, but groundedness. A sense of actually knowing where I come from – which makes it harder to stay silent when that story gets simplified, and harder still not to feel the weight of trying to hold the real version up against the wind.

Coming Back to Myself

I’m not writing this to criticise anyone. The love is real – I know that. But I’m also genuinely, medically tired. Which made the last few days both harder and, strangely, more clarifying.

Because when you don’t have the energy to perform patience, you fall back on what’s real. And what’s real for me is this path, this practice, this sense of being held by something older and steadier than any comment section. Brigid has been walked with through harder things than this. She’ll survive it too.

I came back to myself eventually, as I always do, by stepping away from the screen and back into something quieter. A candle. A few slow breaths. The ordinary, unglamorous work of remembering who I actually am, where I actually stand, what I actually know.

That’s the gift of a grounded practice. Not that it makes you invincible. Not that it stops the world from being exhausting. But that it gives you somewhere to return to when it is.

So if you’re Irish, or Irish-adjacent, or just someone who found themselves in an argument this week that cost more than it should have: I see you. Rest. Come back to yourself. The flame will keep.

Staying Rooted: Sustainable Women’s Spiritual Leadership

Sustainable leadership isn’t glamorous. It doesn’t always look like firelit rituals, profound revelations, or moments of soaring clarity. More often, it looks like rhythm, honesty, boundaries, and choosing steadiness over spectacle. For women in spiritual leadership, staying rooted is less about mastering a set of practices and more about learning how to live in a way that allows the work to continue without consuming the one who does it.

So many women begin this path full of devotion and excitement. A spark that lights quickly. But over time, leadership asks for something deeper: a grounded pace, a long view, and a relationship with yourself that is spacious enough to hold the weight of others without collapsing under it. Staying rooted is how we turn spiritual leadership from a season into a life.

Now, this is not to say that once a leader, you have to stay in that role forever. Far from it! But keeping in touch with the core of yourself is important.

A green background with a darker tree showing roots going deep and a full head of leaves. It's screaming "staying rooted" to me!

The Pace of Longevity

Women are conditioned to confuse worth with availability. We’re taught to respond immediately, give generously, say yes instinctively, and apologise for having needs. But spiritual leadership with no edges will eventually drain even the most devoted among us. Staying rooted means refusing the cultural script that says leadership must be relentless. A sustainable pace is cyclical, not linear. Like breath, tide, or season.

Some days you give. Other days you retreat. Some seasons call for teaching, guiding, and holding. Others ask you to study, wander the land, sleep, or be silent. The work deepens when we allow ourselves to move with, rather than against, these natural rhythms. Simply put: you are not meant to be “on” all the time. Rooted leadership honours that truth.

Some of you may remember I have previously mentioned Anne Bishop’s fiction – not necessarily on the blog, but certainly in classes. In her Dark Jewels novels, a Queen (a magical practitioner and ruler of the highest rank – this is fantasy, ok?) loses empathy and connection when she neglects the time spent on the land. And that rings very true for me as well. It is as important as anything else!

Escaping the Good Woman Trap

The “good woman” archetype is the enemy of sustainable leadership. It whispers that good women always help, never disappoint, stay agreeable, and keep everyone comfortable. But spiritual leadership isn’t about being good. It’s about being true. The pressure to please pulls women out of alignment faster than any external demand ever could.

Staying rooted means asking real questions before saying yes:
Does this serve the work? Does it nourish me? Am I acting from devotion or from fear of disappointing someone?

Integrity is not measured by how much you give but by whether your giving comes from wholeness. A rooted woman does not serve from depletion. She refuses the idea that her exhaustion is proof of her dedication. She trusts that clarity is kinder than overextension, and boundaries are a blessing to everyone involved.

Devotion That Nourishes, Not Performs

There is a quiet danger in spiritual leadership: your public work can begin to replace your private practice. When you spend your days preparing rituals, holding space, answering questions, and supporting others, it’s easy to mistake that labour for devotion. But devotion that nourishes is not the kind that is witnessed. It is the practice that no one sees.

Light a candle in the morning.
Whisper a prayer while making tea.
Walk on the land.
Study an old text.
A moment of silence before sleep.

These small devotions feed the inner fire that leadership depends on. Performance sprints; devotion sustains. Staying rooted means tending your spiritual life not as content, but as nourishment: something alive, intimate, and yours alone.

Practices That Keep You Steady

Sustainability grows from the simple things done regularly. Brief check-ins with yourself can prevent overwhelm before it builds:

Where is my energy today?
What needs my presence?
Where do I deliver my “no”?
What needs to be released or rescheduled?

After sessions or gatherings, closing rituals keep the boundaries clean. Wash your hands slowly. Step outside for air. Touch the earth. Thank whatever held you. Tell your body, “Enough for now.” These small closures protect you from carrying what isn’t yours. Rooted leaders rest as intentionally as they work.

The Power of Community and Accountability

(Yes, we mentioned this last week as well. But it’s important!!)

Sustainable women’s spiritual leadership cannot happen in isolation. You need peers who see you clearly, mentors who aren’t dazzled by you, and community members who hold you accountable with kindness. Leadership becomes dangerous, to you and to others, when your only mirror is yourself.

Accountability is not punishment; it is protection.
It keeps your edges clean.
Prevents subtle inflation or quiet erosion.
Reminds you that you’re part of something larger than your own story.

Community is not a luxury. It is the scaffold that allows long-term leadership to stand.

Community can be a three-person whatsapp group mostly exchanging memes. Or a monthly accountability call as part of a virtual setting. It can be a cup of tea with a trusted friend. Or a wild night out with a trusted friend. You do you.

The Art of Healthy Withdrawal

Modern culture treats rest as a failure of discipline. Spiritual leadership — real, ethical leadership — recognises withdrawal as a necessary rhythm. There will be seasons when you teach less, share less, or step back to tend to what’s stirring inside you. This isn’t retreat from responsibility; it’s commitment to depth.

Stepping back prevents collapse.
It preserves clarity.
Stepping back keeps the path honest.

Withdrawal is not absence. It is cultivation.

Repair as a Form of Staying Rooted

No leader, no matter how ethical or experienced, avoids mistakes. What determines the longevity of your leadership is not perfection, but repair. Quick, clean repair prevents harm from taking root. It clears the relational field. It nourishes trust.

A sustainable leader apologises without self‑punishment, receives feedback without collapse, and adjusts with integrity. This kind of repair keeps you grounded. And keeps your community safe.

A Prayer for the Long Journey

If you intend to walk this path for years, let your choices reflect the length of your devotion. Stay rooted in what is real. Let your leadership be a hearth, not a wildfire. Something that warms steadily, gently, predictably, and without burning you out.

Brigid, you recognise the power of the liminal, but also the power of a strong boundary. Help me maintain my boundaries clearly. My pace kindly. Kindle my devotion as a long burning fire, not a flash in the pan. Help me find the community to hold me stead. Help me find the work that sustains and doesn’t deplete me.

This is sustainable women’s spiritual leadership.

This is how we stay rooted.

The Inner Work of Women’s Spiritual Leadership

Yes, we are continuing on this series of women’s spiritual leadership. This week, looking at the inner work involved. Look, some of the things I was seeing online and elsewhere around Imbolc have inspired this. And even if you don’t feel called to leadership,. let these articles inform your choice of leader! (previous posts are here, here, and here)

Navigating Power, Vulnerability, and Growth

There’s a part of leadership that nobody prepares you for: the way the role rearranges your inner world. On the outside, the tasks are clear enough. Hholding ritual, making decisions, guiding conversations, offering perspective. But inside, women’s spiritual leadership opens complicated doors.

Old patterns wake up. Tender places ask for attention. You discover that holding space for others requires you to hold deeper space for yourself: the kind that can feel both tender and fierce at the same time. Remember, Brigid is a firm proponent of the slap to the back of the head technique when we’re not listening! And she is particularly adept at highlighting when I’m not attending to the inner work. Spiritual leadership requires it. Trust me.

I used to think leadership was something I would “grow into,” like a coat that would eventually fit. Now I think of it more like a landscape I walk through daily, one that changes with the weather of my life and the seasons of my soul. Some days are clear and bright; everything feels simple. Other days are fogged with self‑doubt or pricked by old memories. Nothing is wrong when that happens. It’s just the terrain reminding me that inner work is not a separate practice from leadership. It is the heart of it.

A green background allows various shades of green to reflect a hill, a path, some trees. A black female figure walks the land. This is the Inner Work of Women’s Spiritual Leadership

The Tension Between Humility and Self‑Erasure

Many women were raised to make ourselves small so that others could be comfortable. Then we step into leadership and try to reconcile confidence with care, visibility with gentleness, authority with humility. It can be easy to mistake self‑erasure for virtue. But humility is not the silence of your power; it is the clarity with which you use it. It’s standing in your centre without inflation or apology, refusing to dominate the room, but also refusing to abandon it. When we address the inner work of women’s spiritual leadership, we have to acknowledge this tension.

And ok – sometimes you need to dominate the room. And other times you need to abandon said room. But horses for courses, ok?

When that old impulse to shrink arrives, and for many of us, it does, I take it as a signal to slow down and check in:

Am I avoiding clarity because I fear I will be judged?

Am I softening my language so I won’t be called “too much”?

Leadership asks for honesty here. Sometimes the most ethical, generous thing you can do is to speak plainly and trust the strength of the space you’re holding.

For some of us, speaking plainly comes more easily than others, but it’s a skill worth cultivating.

Meeting the Old Stories with New Courage

Women’s spiritual leadership often collides with old narratives:

🔥the teacher who didn’t believe you,

🔥a priest who shamed your questions,

🔥the community that rewarded your helpfulness but punished your voice.

Those memories don’t always arrive as thoughts. Sometimes they show up as a squeezing in the chest, a need to over‑explain, a jitter under the skin that makes you rush when you could move slowly. The inner work of women’s spiritual leadership can escalate these feelings. It rarely reduces them.

When that happens, I don’t treat it as failure. I treat it as information. The body remembers what the mind tries to tidy away. I ask:

What age is this reaction?

Whose voice am I hearing?

What do I need now to meet this moment as the woman I am, not the girl I was?

Sometimes the answer is a breath and a glass of water. It can be cancelling a commitment and going to the land. Sometimes it is calling a trusted peer who will remind me of what is true. And occasionally, it’s arriving on a friend’s doorstep in floods of tears, begging for help.

Intuition and Discernment

Spiritual leadership invites intuition to sit at the table. But intuition is not infallible, and discernment is not the enemy of mystery. I often imagine these two as companions walking with me: intuition bringing the spark and the knowing, discernment asking the kind of questions that keep us honest. What else could be true? What do I know for sure? Is this mine or does it belong to the other person? Where is my edge here?

Women are often praised for intuition and not taught the discipline of discernment. The truth is we need both. Intuition opens doors we didn’t know existed. Discernment checks that we have the keys we need, the consent we require, and the capacity to walk through without doing harm.

Or, in the words of an ex-colleague of mine: just because it smells like shit, doesn’t mean it will promote growth.

Shadow Work as an Ethical Practice

Shadow is not a moral failing; it’s the part of us that prefers to be unseen. In leadership, shadow can look like subtle superiority (“I know best”), quiet resentment (“I give more than I receive”), or slippery avoidance (“If I’m kind enough, I won’t have to set the boundary”). The work isn’t to banish these impulses; it’s to notice them early and choose differently.

I think of shadow work as a daily hygiene: a quick scan for contractions in the body, a look for places where I’m seeking approval rather than truth, a willingness to say, “I was wrong,” while the moment is still fresh enough to repair. This is not self‑punishment. It’s devotion to clean leadership, the kind that leaves people more sovereign, not more dependent.

Of course, there is deeper shadow work I have done, am doing and will do in the future. That’s normal and human. But it’s also the daily check ins we so often forget. The inner work of women’s spiritual leadership very often forces more shadow work upon us, as we work through the old torments.

The Land, the Body, and the Gods

When the inner weather turns, I go outside if I can. I’m privileged to have a garden that allows this. The land has a way of re‑sizing my concerns and returning me to proportion. I walk until my breath finds me. Put my hand on a tree and listen. Make a drink and watch the steam. (Or I make a drink and appreciate the taste of the grapes in the wine…) Simple practices. Old practices. The body follows the land’s lead. The nervous system remembers what safety feels like when we move slowly and pay attention.

If you are a devotee of gods or saints, bring them into this, not as a task to perform, but as companionship. I don’t ask the divine to erase my humanity. I spent too long remembering that humanity! Instead, I ask for the courage to inhabit it with grace. Leadership doesn’t require us to be perfect. It asks us to be honest, to keep learning, and to return again and again to the practices that make us kind, clear, and steady.

The Inner Work of Women’s Spiritual Leadership: A Quiet Benediction

If you are a woman stepping into spiritual leadership, know this: the parts of you that tremble are not disqualifying. The tremble is evidence that you care. The path you’re walking is not about becoming untouchable; it’s about becoming trustworthy, which is a very different thing. Trustworthiness grows in the soil of felt reality, the days you tell the truth gently, repair quickly, and choose groundedness over performance.

Your inner landscape will keep changing as the seasons change. Let it. Let it teach you. Make you a leader who carries warmth without burning, clarity without cutting, and power without pretending you never doubted. That’s leadership people can breathe around. That’s leadership that heals.

Women’s Spiritual Leadership Ethics

How to Guide Others with Integrity and Care

If the last two pieces explored responsibility and visibility, this one turns inward, toward conscience. I appreciate that women’s spiritual leadership ethics is a mouthful. And not really that sexy. Not the lofty, abstract kind of post, but the everyday conscience that sits beside you when someone asks, “What should I do?”

Anyone who guides others, whether they’re a priest, celebrant, coach, elder, or simply the woman people turn to when everything is falling apart, eventually confronts the ethical weight of that question. Women’s spiritual leadership ethics live right at the heart of that moment.

I’ve never believed that ethics are a dusty set of rules. They’re a way of walking. They’re the shape integrity takes when things get complicated. So rather than a manual or a code, what follows is really a conversation. With yourself, with the people you support, and with the role you inhabit, intentionally or otherwise.

A green background, with the shape of a woman with her hair in a bun in black with a yellow tulip shaped flower in her torso and rays of green surrounding the flower. Women's spiritual leadership ethics come from within us!

This surprises no-one, right?

Ethical guidance always begins with consent, and not the soft, implied kind that arises because someone keeps talking and you’re the nearest steady presence. Consent in spiritual work means clarity: what are you actually doing together? Are you sharing a perspective, or offering direction? Are you teaching, or simply witnessing? Without this clarity, guidance can slip quietly into control, even when your tone is gentle and your intentions are good. Consent also includes the right to stop, to pause, and to protect your own boundaries. This is a crucial part of women’s spiritual leadership ethics, which refuses the old pattern of women giving endlessly until they are emptied.

Knowing Your Limits

Again, I preach this over and over. Don’t teach what you don’t know. One of the most ethical things a guide can do is recognise when something is outside their lane. There are moments when what a person truly needs belongs to a therapist, a doctor, a solicitor, or a crisis service, not to you. There are times when a question falls outside your tradition or your experience. Staying in your lane isn’t a lack of courage. It’s integrity. It keeps people safer than any impulse to be the one who knows everything ever could.

If someone comes to me looking for Brigid as a link to Maman Brigitte? I’m steering clear of that. There may be a link, but I haven’t experienced it and my experience with voudoun is zero. So I’m not going there.

Power, Transparency, and the Quiet Responsibilities of Leadership

Even when you don’t intend to hold power, people may place it in your hands simply because you listen well or speak clearly. That’s part of the nature of spiritual leadership. One of the gentlest antidotes to unconscious power is transparency. When you make your process visible, and by that I mean: how you make decisions, what informs your perspective, what your boundaries are around time, availability, confidentiality, and money. Once you make your process visible, you invite trust instead of projection. Transparency keeps the ground steady under both of you, and it’s a core principle within ethical women’s spiritual leadership, where clarity replaces authority for authority’s sake.

I try to present myself online as I do in real life. It’s not always possible. I mean, very few people have seen me mid-tummy bug for example. But I try to keep it real. And I also try to let people know what they’re getting into when they start working with me. Because I know I’m not for everyone. No one is.

Keeping Stories Sacred

If someone offers you their truth – the raw, vulnerable, complicated version – it is not material for content or conversation elsewhere. Honouring privacy is one of the deepest spiritual acts in any leadership role. If you’re unsure whether you can share a story, then you can’t. When people know their story will not be used to polish your persona or fuel your next online post, they can soften, breathe, and do the work they came to do.

And even when I do share stories, they’re anonymised. I try to keep it at the level of “I’m talking to many women who…” rather than “here’s a story that happened to a follower of mine”. I hope the difference there is obvious.

Navigating Money Without Shame or Manipulation

Money and spirituality tend to make people twitchy, but ethics demand we address them honestly. And this is an area I struggle with.

Some things belong in the realm of gift: the quick blessing, the small kindness, the simple moment of support. But they are also voluntary. Not required. People might demand all they like, but no matter what leadership position you are in, you owe nobody anything!

Other work requires actual labour, skill, and emotional energy, and that work deserves to be paid for. There is nothing unethical about charging fairly for the work you have trained for. What matters is clarity and the refusal to use fear, urgency, or spiritual scarcity as sales tactics. In women’s spiritual leadership ethics, coercion has no home. And that goes both ways, from leader and practitioner or client.

Supporting Sovereignty, Not Dependency

If someone cannot make a decision without you, something is off. Ethical guidance strengthens a person’s own discernment rather than replacing it with yours. You may offer insight, name what you see, or open doors they hadn’t considered. But ultimately, the work is to help them hear their own wisdom. And, most importantly, to step back far enough that they can trust it. A guide who celebrates when someone no longer needs them is a guide who understands the heart of the work.

You don’t control other people’s lives and sometimes – it’s time to cut the chord. Gently, sometimes, but firmly.

Repairing Harm With Humility

Even with the best intentions, harm sometimes happens. A poorly timed question, a misunderstood suggestion, a ritual that opens more than someone can integrate… It’s part of the territory. Ethics doesn’t promise perfection; it promises repair. Repair means listening without defensiveness, apologising with clarity, and taking responsibility for your part. If we expect those we guide to grow, then we must model what real accountability looks like.

We can all cause harm. We all do, just by living. When you know better, do better, remember? Women’s spiritual leadership ethics demand more than the traditional male model. It’s important to consider this. We’re not looking to recreate, we’re looking to do better.

And sometimes there’s harm you can’t heal. Learn from it. Be humble. Do better next time.

Tending Your Own Practice

This comes down the list, but it’s probably one of the most important topics to consider. Fill your own cup before you pour from empty.

One of the quiet dangers of guiding others is neglecting your own spiritual life. It is far too easy to become the mentor who never returns to their own well. But exhaustion, isolation, and disconnection erode ethics faster than anything else. A spiritual leader who doesn’t nurture their own practice becomes brittle. Make space to study, to pray, to reflect, to be a beginner again. Ethics rests on honesty, and honesty is impossible without a living, breathing spiritual life beneath it.

Self-care is community care.

The Need for Community

And following on from that…

No one leads ethically in isolation. Community challenges us, steadies us, and keeps us from drifting into our own unchecked authority. Whether your work is rooted in a lineage or built from your lived experience, you need peers who are not impressed by you. Community keeps the edges of our ethics sharp and reminds us that leadership is not about perfection.

It is about service.

The Quiet Test

In the end, it all comes back to something simple: after an interaction, can you sit quietly with yourself? Can you meet your own eyes without the small wince that says you crossed a line? If the answer is yes, good. If there’s a stone in your stomach, look again.

Ethics is not a declaration. It is the daily choice to be clean with your power, generous with your care, and honest about your limits. Guiding others is beautiful work, and it is serious work. May we carry it with humility. May we leave people more sovereign than we found them. And may our footprints mark a path that feels safe for those who follow.

Women’s Spiritual Leadership Ethics

I said earlier that we’re not looking to re-form the traditional male model of spiritual leadership. I meant it. We’re not holding ourselves to those standards.

We’re doing better. That means community first. It means clarity, transparency, accountability. Being able to look at ourselves in the mirror. Being aware when the Overton window is shifting – and correcting it when necessary.

This is about being the leaders we needed earlier in our lives, and developing into the leaders we’re going to need going forward. Doing the work, bit by bit.

Visibility in Spiritual Leadership

Last week, I wrote about spiritual leadership in the modern world: the responsibilities, the boundaries, the need to hold knowledge with care. But there’s another piece to this that deserves its own space: what happens when people begin to see you as a spiritual leader, whether you intended it or not. When you become visible.

Visibility is one of those things that arrives quietly. You don’t have to declare yourself anything. You don’t need a title or a platform. Sometimes visibility begins the first time someone asks you for guidance, or when people start coming to you with their questions, their fears, or their excitement about the path. With one conversation, one ritual, one piece of advice — suddenly you’re “someone who knows things.” And from that moment on, your path looks different.

And while visibility can be a blessing, it isn’t always comfortable.

An orange background with a black figure in the middle with a yellowish 5 pointed star in the middle with rays of yellow coming from behind. Written above the figure is "The Burdena nd Blessing of Being Seen: Visibility in Spiritual Leadership"

Being Seen Isn’t Simple

People often imagine visibility in a spiritual context as something warm and affirming. A sign that your work is valued. And sometimes it is. But it can also come with scrutiny you never asked for. People will make assumptions about who you are, what you believe, what you represent, and what you should be doing. You might find yourself carrying the weight of expectations you didn’t sign up for, simply because others have formed an idea of you that doesn’t match the full reality.

The strange thing about visibility is that people often see the version of you they need in that moment. Sometimes that’s comforting; sometimes it’s overwhelming. But rarely is it neutral.

When People Try to Claim You

Once you’re visible, even in a small way, people can begin to form attachment: some healthy, some less so. Someone might decide they’re your closest student despite you never agreeing to teach. Someone else may expect constant access to your time or energy because you answered a single question online. Others may subtly pressure you to take them under your wing, guide them personally, or carry emotional weight that isn’t yours to hold.

Most of the time, it isn’t malicious. It’s simply human longing. But longing can become entitlement, and entitlement can become a problem. Part of spiritual leadership is remembering that you belong to yourself first. Your practice, your time, your energy… These are not communal property just because you’ve been helpful or visible.

You Become a Mirror

Here’s the unexpected part: visibility means becoming a mirror for other people. Their reactions often have very little to do with you and far more to do with their own wounds, hopes, insecurities, or unresolved stories.

Some people will admire you instantly because you embody something they want for themselves. Others may feel defensive because you remind them of something they’re avoiding. And some will project every authority figure they have ever struggled with onto you, without realising they’re doing it.

This isn’t a sign that you’re doing anything wrong. It’s simply part of the terrain. And knowing that can make the road much gentler.

Why Grounding Matters More Than Ever

Visibility requires a certain steadiness. You need the ability not to inflate when someone praises you, and not to crumble when someone criticises or misunderstands you. Emotional grounding becomes the anchor that keeps you from drifting into ego or collapse. It’s what helps you sift through the feedback and recognise which parts are projections and which parts offer something genuinely useful.

Without grounding, visibility can swallow you whole. With grounding, it becomes something you can carry with dignity and clarity.

The Beautiful Better Side of Visibility

I just couldn’t with the “beautiful”. It’s not in me. Because this is work. But still…

It’s not all hard edges. Visibility also brings moments of great beauty. Someone might share how your words helped them through a difficult time. Someone else may feel less alone because you voiced something they’ve always felt but never had language for. You might find yourself connecting with people who share your values, your devotion, or your connection to the land and the divine.

Those moments make the weight worth it. They remind you that visibility isn’t just burden, it can also be a blessing, a thread connecting you to others in ways you might never have expected.

You Don’t Need to Be Perfect

One of the biggest myths about spiritual leadership is that you must be flawless: endlessly wise, endlessly calm, endlessly sure. But that’s not how humans work, and it’s certainly not how spiritual paths work.

You don’t need perfection. What you need is honesty. Honesty about your limits. Honesty about what you’re still learning. Honesty about your boundaries, your energy, and the fact that you’re as human as anyone else.

Invisibility hides our imperfections. Visibility simply makes them easier to see, and easier to accept, if we let it.

Staying Whole While Being Seen

If last week’s piece was about the responsibilities of spiritual leadership, this one is about what happens inside you when people begin to look to you for guidance. To lead sustainably, you need to stay whole. Staying whole means not letting projections reshape you. It means returning to your own practices, your own gods, your own grounding, again and again.

Being seen is part of the work. Sometimes the hardest part.

But staying yourself, even while being seen?

That’s the heart of spiritual leadership.

Spiritual Leadership

I’ve been on threads a lot over the last few weeks. Yes, it’s still Meta, but it’s better than X. (In my opinion, obvs!)

And yes, I have written about this before. But there’s a different slant on it this time. Because, sometimes, in warning people about potential dangers, concerns or potholes on their path, we’re denounced with “gatekeeping”, “blocking”, or “hiding information”. In my opinion, yes, there are folk who gatekeep knowledge. Usually with good reason. But I want to talk about some of the responsibilities inherent in being a spiritual leader in the modern world.

Spiritual leadership isn't just pretty pictures. Although this one is lovely. A figure standing in a valley, with a multicoloured night sky above them, going from orange on the left, pink in the middle and blue on the right.

What Spiritual Leadership Actually Means Today

At its core, spiritual leadership isn’t about titles or followers but about service, presence, and accountability. It means showing up with integrity, Listening more than you speak. Possibly most importantly, acknowledging the limits of your own knowledge.

In older Irish traditions, leaders weren’t chosen because they demanded authority – they were recognised because they lived in a way the community trusted. The bean feasa rarely if ever chose their own title.

The same remains true now: leadership is earned through action, not assumed through aesthetics or self-branding. As in, judge the leader by their actions, not their words.

And remember, it’s easy to show a persona on social media. It’s not so easy to get your hands dirty in the real world.

The Responsibilities of Holding Knowledge

One of the deepest responsibilities in spiritual leadership is knowing when knowledge should be shared. And when it requires grounding, maturity, or support. Some practices stir unresolved trauma; others raise energy people aren’t ready to channel; others belong to lineages or traditions that require preparation. Sharing everything instantly, without context, isn’t generosity. It’s carelessness. Responsible leaders offer information at the right time, in the right setting, with the right structure.

This is particularly true with closed practices. Practitioners have the right to maintain control over traditional practices. Not to mention – point on when someone isn’t following traditional ways. I see a lot of people, every single fucking year saying Brigid is so gentle, and calm, and quiet. This is not held true by either saint or deity original texts. At all. And so, I challenge it.

And I’m usually challenged saying I don’t know what I’m talking about.

The thing is, I do know what I’m talking about on this. While Brigid can be extremely calm and supportive, she is the transformative fire. The healing ocean.

She’s not a delicate flower.

When Warnings Get Misinterpreted

Part of modern spiritual leadership is accepting that sometimes people will misunderstand you. When you say “not yet,” some will hear “never.” When you explain the need for foundation, some will accuse you of controlling the path. This is less about your intent, and more about the listener’s insecurities, expectations, or impatience. Digital platforms reward speed over depth, certainty over nuance. And warnings rarely survive that environment intact.

Everyone wants to know everything now, all at once. And some see this caution to wait, to learn, as blocking and gatekeeping. No more than a 4-yr old playing with fire, there are some things spiritually that will burn you. And frankly, a sensible leader will point this out.

Not every learner wants to listen, and that then causes more work for the spiritual leader. Usually cleaning up the mess.

Think I’m joking? I’m really not. If you’re not capable of cleaning up your own mess, someone else has to. And while that’s acceptable for a 4-yr old, it’s not for an adult.

Why Not Everything Should Be Freely Distributed

Every tradition includes knowledge that must be handled with care, and spiritual leadership means understanding that not all information belongs on the open internet. Some practices require initiation; some require safety structures; some require a relationship with land, deity, or community. Sharing everything freely isn’t transparency. It’s removing the protective container that allows deep work to unfold safely.

I’m asked sometimes why some courses and workshops are so tightly controlled in numbers. It’s so I can take care of the people involved and I won’t get overwhelmed by the number of things happening at once. I know my limits when it comes to virtual and in-person energy management. And to be honest, the virtual stuff is harder for me to manage. It’s much easier for me to manage energy in person.

I hold virtual events to be more accessible. But they take more out of me, they cost me more in time, energy, etc and therefore they will be charged at a higher cost.

I won’t extend myself beyond what I’m capable of. And I won’t deliver information or teachings that I’m not comfortable delivering.

Boundaries as Sacred Responsibility

This is a bit of a continuation. Healthy boundaries are essential to sustainable spiritual leadership, even if they disappoint people. Leaders cannot be endlessly available, constantly accessible, or permanently open. Boundaries ensure that the leader’s own energy, wellbeing, and practice remain intact. They ensure that the community receives considered, grounded guidance rather than exhaustion-frayed scraps of attention. A leader with no boundaries can’t lead for long.

Being blunt about it, a leader with no boundaries will burn themselves out. Usually, quickly. That’s whether being physically available for consults, or spiritually available for teaching. Some teaching requires a lot more energy form the teacher, and the student should be grateful when a teacher realises they should wait before teaching it. It’s safety, it’s consideration, it’s common sense.

Leadership Without Ego

Ego has no place in genuine spiritual leadership. True leaders make space, not empires. They guide without demanding devotion. They stay rooted in humility, continuing to learn, listen, evolve, and question. And they don’t seek to create dependency but to foster sovereignty. The role isn’t about being elevated above others; it’s about being in right relationship with the work, the community, the land, and the divine.

Now look, we’re all human. We all have egos. That’s not what I’m talking about. But a spiritual leader should be able to put that ego aside and do what’s best for the community. And sometimes, that means taking a step back and letting someone else lead. Or even, taking a step back and letting someone continue on their path without the leader.

Sometimes, it means letting a student make a small mistake now, to prevent a larger mistake later.

And sometimes, it means realising we’re not the right person to help this student and leaving them go.

A Call to Discernment

As you navigate your own path, consider what spiritual leadership looks like in practice. Not the titles or branding, but the behaviour. Look for people who share responsibly, who act with integrity, and who don’t flinch from offering uncomfortable truth when needed. And if you’re stepping into leadership yourself, remember that your words carry weight. Your guidance matters. Your boundaries matter. And your discernment, more than anything, shapes the path you help build.

Brigid myths

A picture of the mural in Drogheda, with one half showing a green cloaked nun and the other a red haired goddess. Brigid myths might have you believing one or the other, but really - at this point - there's no concrete evidence.
The mural by Belfast-based artist Friz in Drogheda, celebrating both saint and goddess

It was Imbolc this weekend past (well depending on when you celebrate it) and wow, were the Brigid Myths flying. So, I thought I’d settle a few bits and bobs here. And, as always with Brigid, there’s a lot of fuzziness and liminality at play.

Brigid Myth 1: She’s only a goddess that the Christians stole

I’m gonna be honest here, I struggle with this one. Because stealing old celebrations and overplanting them with new Christian ones was a definite feature of the early Church. Just check out Gregory the Great. As far as the thinking went, it made it easier for people to convert if they didn’t have to change where they worshipped and if there was a fine building there anyway, why bother knocking it down and rebuilding. The early Church was a great proponent of the re-use/ re-cycle methodology of spreading the faith.

In his more recent episode, Finn Dwyer of the Irish History podcast explored the possibility that St. Brigid was a real woman, as opposed to a mythical figure. I’ll leave his episode below for you to find out his final conclusion.

Brigid Myth 2: She’s only a saint that the neopagans stole

I mean, ok, there’s a bit more evidence for this thought process. There are, after all, only 4 bits of pre-Christian lore (all recorded well after Christianity came to these isles) on Brigid the goddess. (You can check out my very brief intro to these four bits of lore, for free, here)

We have, in fact, far more writings about the saint than we do the goddess. But that doesn’t mean she didn’t exist. There are suggestions that it is possible Brigid was brought to the shores of Ireland by… of all things… a group of Brigantes in north-east England. (Well, modern day north-east England. I don’t think England existed at the time as an entity)

I know it seems terrible, but even a stopped clock is right twice a day, and occasionally, something good comes out of England. (My husband would be another example…)

Brigid Myth 3: She’s meek and loving and mild

Sweet holy fuck no. Look I’m sorry. But the swearing is necessary. There’s a reason I called this place the Forge and not the Soft, Cushy, Temperate Place.

Brigid is hot. Fiery. Have a temper. Even in the hagiographies of the saints they couldn’t hide this. This has to be one of the worst Brigid myths out there. And it’s lulling people into a false sense of security. No. Just fucking no.

I mean she can be. But it’s more in the way of a tough doctor who has been through some shit and can be soft when they make a big effort and someone really, really needs it. Just stop with this one.

Brigid Myth 4: Goddess of hearth and home

Look, I get it. It’s an off shoot of the “meek and mild” bollox. It’s not true. We don’t have anything linking her to hearth and home.

As a goddess, she is a Poet (Old Irish sense of lawyer, creative writer, academic), Smith, and Healer. Gonna be honest – all of these have until the very recent past been male dominated professions. Yes there is a sense she may have been a woman-physician, as a physician that caters to women. But it’s still a tough gig. And none of the above professions lend themselves to a domestic goddess. (Pun not really intended there)

I get the idea of being linked to fire. I get it. But it’s not in the lore.

I don’t know where in the name of Jesus this came from. We have no real links between Brigid and bread. Dairy – butter in particular – oh yes. Oodles of links in fact. Domesticated animals? Absolutely, goddess and saint.

But bread???

Not really.

If you want to bake bread as part of your Imbolc celebrations, more power to you. The Irish consider bread an essential utensil in the whole “moving the butter to the mouth” process. There’s nothing better than a loaf fresh from the oven, dripping in fresh butter.

But there’s nothing linking Brigid to bread directly.

Brigid Myth 6: There’s no need to pronounce the B in Imbolc

Ok, not technically a Brigid myth as such. But definitely linked to my rising blood pressure this weekend. For this one, I even did an insta video on the topic.

(And if you’re not following me over on Instagram, sure you can drop that at the same time)

But there is most definitely a B to be pronounced in Imbolc. It is not “Immolc”.

Brigid Myth 7: There is One True Day to celebrate Imbolc.

Again, this is more Imbolc than Brigid, but sure, feck it, the two are intertwined in modern times.

There are a number of says and times to celebrate Imbolc. I most often celebrate on 31st January. Because it’s the eve of St. Brigid’s Day (1st February). Other people choose “astrological Imbolc”, the midpoint between solstice and equinox (this year, that’s today, 3rd Feb). Still others link their festivities to Candlemas, 2nd Feb.

And, if I’m being really honest, since Ireland recently got a bank holiday for the occasion, if there’s a big ritual or group event I’m doing, it’s going to be on that bank holiday weekend.

While in the modern world, we like to think of dates being right, correct and accurate, it’s not always the case. I know people who celebrate Samhain from dark moon to dark moon, since they view it as a season, not a single night. I kinda do the same with Imbolc, but it’s most of January and some of February.

Most of the traditions in Ireland happen around the 31st January. Check out Duchas for more on that. But remember, your spiritual path has to fit your life. What you do in private is up to you and no one else.

Don’t be calling things traditional that aren’t though.

Finally…

We had all the usual shite about Brigid being associated with this crystal and that colour. We had the arguments over 3-pronged vs 4-pronged cross. All the usual stuff. I’ve given up engaging with it at this point. Although I will be trying to do a video showing how I do the 3-pronged cross. Cos, yeah – it’s the 3rd February and I’ve not made my crosses yet this year!

I hope this helps. Please share it where you think it might do some good!