Fiction and research about Brigid, Irish deity, saint, and so much more
Category: Brigid
I know – having both saint and deity on the one blog is a bit difficult at times, but sure, herself is a liminal being anyway. Here’s where my musings on herself are gathered
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.
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.
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, 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
Brigid Myth 5: Links to bread
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!
I struggling with listening to my body. And I think this is something we all struggle with: listening to ourselves. Even when we desperately need rest!
Last week started by me being attacked by the shed in our garden. (Pic of similar shed below for entertainment purposes) I came into work and said the shed had jumped out at me and hit the car.
Everyone knew what I meant. Everyone realised I didn’t actually believe the shed had jumped at me. If ever a shed existed that is unlikely to jump anywhere, it’s the stereotypical Irish stone shed.
Very typical construction here
What was going on?
Apparently, either an ear infection, a sinus infection or a wonderful mixture of both. On finally heading to the doctor later, he decided the nuclear option was best and put me on antibiotics. And painkilling cream in case it was my jaw.
Why am I bothering telling you this?
Because I didn’t back into the shed, ahem, I mean, the shed didn’t attack me, completely unprovoked, because I was on top of my game. I was dizzy, tired, sick, and probably, in hindsight, shouldn’t have been driving.
Small details.
The key thing is, I’d been fighting something off for weeks. It wasn’t quite bad enough to take time off work, or, horror of horrors, actually go see the doctor. But it was bad enough to make my life miserable. If I’d been better versed in listening to myself, I might have picked up on just how bad I’d felt sooner.
But I didn’t. Because I have been well schooled in the art of not “listening to ourselves”.
Listening to ourselves in a world which doesn’t want us to
Y’see, if I had listened to myself, I might have realised that this thing wasn’t going away. It had been operating in my system and my system was kinda containing it, but not really defeating it.
And a cold/flu/ear infection/ sinus infection thing that’s lasting for a month? Probably needs something more than Vick’s Vaporub to fix it.
There’s a lot on. And I’m not saying this, because I think I’ve got it worse than anyone else. We’ve all got a lot on.
The modern world is not made for simplicity.
And that’s all before you take into account the shitshow that’s currently going down in numerous places across the world… (but, y’know, hard side-eye towards the US here)
It’s easier for the world at large if we don’t listen to ourselves. It’s easier for our families, our workplaces, everyone, if we just keep on keeping on.
And there’s times we have to do that New baby, audit in work, major project… whatever it is, there are times we actually do have to keep on keeping on. But not always.
And we fall into the trap. We cope, because we see no other way.
Listening to ourselves leads to failure, or dropping the ball on something.
Hard lessons
One of the strongest lessons I learned earlier in my career was when I was off work, sick, for 3 months. I came back and checked in with my boss on all the things that were deemed so important, so vital to the running of the business.
90% of them hadn’t been kept up while I was away. So, I took a radical step. I stopped doing them.
If they weren’t important enough for someone else to pick up, then why was I wasting my time? I immediately freed up almost 20hours a week.
HALF MY WORKING WEEK.
I had been running myself ragged working on reports, presentations, information… that nobody really needed.
I had most definitely not been listening to myself.
Now, mind you, I’m a slow learner. That wasn’t the first, or indeed, the last time I work myself sick. Last week was a minor example of it.
But we have to ask ourselves: when we don’t listen to ourselves, what good are we to our people?
Whether our people are family, friends, colleagues, dependents, whatever – what good are we?
That old thing about no one praising someone at their funeral for spending all that time in the office?
The Act of Radical Listening to Ourselves
I read Louis Hay‘s work on racial self care years ago. It’s a bit dated now, but there is some good stuff in there. First and foremost, she advocates listening to ourselves. Our bodies. Our souls.
And taking the time to rest and allow these messages to come through.
In a world where the powers that be appear to want us chaotic and confused, resting and knowing ourselves (those of us with the privilege to do so, of course) is radical.
It’s an expression of intent.
Or an invitation for care.
Rest.
Absorption and integration.
(And while we’re on the topic – yes, you can grab a limited spot on the upcoming Imbolc retreat to do just this, if you wish)
But in the meantime, think about how you can build in listening to yourself as a continual thing. How do you build in rest when it’s needed? How do you recognise you need rest? (Highly recommend not backing into the shed as a wake up call. Seriously!)
Is it meditation? Time away from everyone? Regular catch ups with close friends? How do you best build in that time?
Today I’m going to talk about decisions and consequences. I understand this is a break from the Imbolc related topics of the last few weeks, but it’s needed given some of the rhetoric showing on various social media over the weekend.
But first I’m going to talk about some decisions I made over the weekend and the consequences of those decisions.
Some background
I may have mentioned in my newsletter over the last few months, how I’ve had some changes in my digestive system. And how I’m (mostly) avoiding carbs for now.
This is not down to medical advice, this is down to me observing that most carbs appear to be causing me diarrhoea. Now, I don’t want advice for this, ok? I’m good with where I am and I have to admit that much advice out there on this topic can trigger my disordered eating problems. Please bear that in mind as we go through this.
So, spuds, chips, crisps, pasta, rice, wraps, bread… and it’s not gluten, either. Cos the gluten free stuff – even when I make the bread myself – causes the same effects. There’s no medical reason for this, my body has just said, no.
Thankfully, I am still able to eat chocolate, so the people around me are safe, but it does lead to certain choices.
Decisions and consequences
Which brings me to the weekend.
I love the food here, but the chips were a decision I should not have made…
See, I’d gone all day with no food. I’d had a coffee, so things were ok, but then our lodger reached out saying he’d not managed to have lunch and was getting a takeaway. (Hence the Lana pic above)
Now I love Lana’s food. It’s great. I’m sure any Asian person of any persuasion would look at the food and shudder at how un-authentic it is. I’m fairly certain it’s Asian food altered for Irish palates. And it bloody works.
I especially love their crispy roast duck with plum sauce. Which comes with chips, steamed rice, brown rice, noodles, spicy chips or egg friend rice. Now, I’ve been avoiding their chips for the last few months, cos again – extreme diarrhoea. It’s not normally worth it.
But last night – oh my gods, I was starving. And I could feel those chips crunching in my mouth. So I said, fuck it and ordered the chips.
Decisions and consequences people.
It took about 30mins after eating before my stomach started complaining, and I spent the next 4 hours or so heading in and out to the toilet. To say it was less than comfortable is an understatement.
Why am I telling you this?
Well, a) to remind myself that making this particular decision was still probably worth the consequences. But also b) because of the rhetoric I’ve seen on social media all weekend about US people “calling down” goddesses in general and war-goddesses in particular.
Why am I writing about this?
Well because there appears to be an essential disconnect here in those who are just coming to the knowledge that goddesses exist and the consequences of poorly thought out decisions they might make.
I’ve have said over and over again that building relationships is the way to go with the Irish pantheon in particular. From speaking to other practitioners dealing with other pantheons at the weekend, it appears like most spiritual beings prefer some relationship before you ask them for a big, massive favour.
And then comes the accusations of gatekeeping.
It appears that warning potential practitioners or newcomers that there might be consequences to their decision to call on a goddess of war is gatekeeping that goddess.
It wasn’t what anyone was saying, but hey ho. Here we go.
I see it over and over again
People coming from a (mostly) bloodless religion like Christianity (in the present day: I’m well aware of the bloody history of the Catholic Church and probably most of the other churches under the umbrella of Christianity. Just cos Ireland wasn’t converted by the sword doesn’t mean I’m unaware of it happening elsewhere) aren’t used to consequences spiritually speaking and practically speaking for decisions they make.
Don’t believe me?
How many Christians have made God a promise in a time of crisis and then forgotten about it?
“I’ll never do X again, if only Y happens”
Ring any bells?
In my experience, the Christian God doesn’t take that personal a role in His followers’ lives. It’s a safe enough religion in that respect.
That’s not the case with most of the pagan deities. Maybe it’s because there are fewer pagans in the world than Christians. A quick google search tells me there are about 3,000,000 pagans in the world, spread out over thousands of deities, but there are somewhere between 2,300,000 and 2,600,000 Christians in the world, all looking to one God.
But either way, a pagan goddess will not let you away with that shit. They expect you to keep your word or deal with the consequences of your decisions.
Yes, your decisions have consequences
This is something white women in the US in particular appear to be waking up to. Renee Good’s murder appears to have woken up the white woman community in ways the deaths of Keith Porter and others (check out this map here) did not. Better late than never, definitely. And we’re not diving into racism here, cos, y’know, I only have so much energy.
But there appears to be this attitude of entitlement. That once someone hears the name of a deity, they can just “call them down” to fix the mess. And pointing out that this decision might have consequences beyond our current understanding is treated as gatekeeping.
It’s genuinely not.
It’s trying to help people.
The amount of people who think they’re entitled to help from Irish deities because they have a great, great, grandparent from Ireland, but know nothing about us, our history, our geography, our politics, our social issues, our people… it’s concerning.
And the fact that so many people are willing to put themselves out to try and save these newcomers to the non-Christian spiritual world? It’s amazing.
But it’s not fucking gatekeeping.
I mean, is it gatekeeping to keep a child from putting their hands in the fire?
So, what can you do if you are just starting out?
Well, first off, read up on the deity you’re looking at. Preferably from native sources. That means, if it’s an Irish deity you’re thinking about, read from an Irish author. Not someone who moved here 6months ago and claims to know everything! Fuck’s sake, I’ve been living here most of my life, and I don’t know everything.
I spent over a decade in England and I wouldn’t claim to know everything about them either. (Although I know enough… and I did marry one…)
Pray. It’s an under-used form of spiritual work.
And put some practical work into this mess, as well as spiritual work.
Gotta be honest, I’m not sure why the Morrigan would be overly interested in the US, but she might help some of her followers there. Brigid? Maybe, she travels a fair bit, but again, don’t expect an easy right of it.
Practical work?
Yeah, practical work.
I know protesting isn’t for everyone. It’s definitely not for me – I can’t handle the crowds. But here’s some stuff I’d be looking into if I were in the US right now:
Financial support. Money is needed. Bail, medicines, fuel, food…
Childcare
Administration
Organisation
Clean up
Call or email your elected representatives
Educate yourself and in particular in the US, look at the Black and Native educators out there. If I can find them from Ireland, you can find them as well.
Offer save havens for those returning from protests or going to protests.
Be a witness
I’m sure I’ve forgotten loads of stuff here and y’know, you can google as well as I can. Not everyone is built to be a front line warrior and not all of us have to be. Supply lines, support staff, all these people are important as well.
Back to decisions and consequences
No matter what decisions you make, there will be consequences.
If you choose to get involved physically and in person, you may be isolated, attacked, injured, jailed.
If you choose to support on the supply lines side, you may get your name on a list, or get highlighted in your community.
Fascism loves to keep records remember. And they start with one community, then move onto the next. The first concentration camp in Germany in the 1930’s was Dachau, founded in 1933, and was aimed at political prisoners, Roma, and Jehovah’s Witnesses. The first Jewish prisoners arrived in 1938.
So, let’s try and learn from history.
And choose which consequences are worth it and which aren’t.
Because this bullshit isn’t going away and we all have to made decisions.
(And yes, for those who may be worried, my digestive system is grand today again!)
