Ritual prep isn’t just candles. Physio, food history, and old injuries all shape how I actually prepare my body for ritual work.
People picture ritual prep as candles and incense. Mine starts with a lot more physiotherapy than that.
The Toenail That Wouldn’t Quit
I’ve talked before about my 5yrs with an overachieving toenail – which turned out, when it was finally sorted, to actually be three toenails growing on the one nail. Genuinely. Three. It’s a great story at a dinner party. It was a lot less funny living through it.
Here’s the bit that surprises people: if you’d told me beforehand that my glute muscles had a significant role to play in walking, I’d have been surprised. Shocked might be the better word, actually. But there you go – five years of favouring that foot, hobbling really everywhere, and my glutes just stopped doing their job. My back and legs took the brunt of it instead. I had to relearn how to walk. Properly relearn it, the way you’d teach a child, cos my body had built a whole alternative system around not using the muscles it was supposed to use.
Almost 10yrs on from the first toenail removal, I still attend physio regularly, especially in times of stress. So when I say physical preparation matters to me before ritual, I don’t mean lighting a nice candle and having a cup of tea first. I mean I genuinely cannot stand for hours. I can’t kneel for hours either, or sit for hours, for that matter – any of it causes real pain. Whatever ritual I’m building has to work within that, not pretend it doesn’t exist.
Food, and the Other Injury Nobody Sees
This might not look like much, but to me it’s a feast!
The other physical piece is a history of disordered eating. When I say history, I mean I’ve done a lot of work on it, so most of the time I’m genuinely fine. But there are still things that trigger me, and they trigger me mightily, not mildly.
Food plays an important part of most ritual traditions – offerings, feasting, fasting, all of it. So if there’s something specific I want to do around food for a ritual, that’s a physical preparation question for me as much as a spiritual one. And fasting, which comes up a lot in ritual practice generally, rarely enters mine at all. There’s nothing wrong with fasting as a practice – it just doesn’t work with my history and my reality, and I’ve stopped pretending it should. If I’m doing something intense, what I actually need is plenty of water, not less food.
Shedding the Earthly Bounds
Most of the time, going into ritual for me means physically shedding things first. Jewellery off, yes, even my wedding ring. Bra off. No tight clothes. Everything loose, easy, comfortable…
With Samhain coming up, the physical preparation this time is bigger than just what I wear. I mentioned a few months back that I’d started decluttering – that’s continuing now, so that myself and my husband actually have a clean, clear physical space to hold our own ritual in, rather than trying to do meaningful work in the middle of everyday clutter. That matters more than people expect it to.
None of this is the version of “physical preparation” you’ll find in most ritual guides. But it’s mine, built around a body that has actual, permanent limits – and I’d rather work with those limits honestly than perform a version of ritual that ignores them and hope my body doesn’t notice.
I’ve written before about how long it took me to work out what a ritual even was – turns out I’d been doing them my whole life without the label, from Mass to my hair appointment to a candle lit for an intention. That part I got to eventually. What took me a lot longer, and cost me a lot more, was working out that a ritual needs a proper ending. As in – how do you actually open and close a ritual???
The Candle Was Easy
With a candle, this bit’s fairly straightforward. The ritual ends when the candle burns out, or you blow it out yourself. No grand ceremony required – the flame going out is the close, built right into the object. I didn’t have to think about it. It thought about it for me.
Even an electric candle will burn out eventually…
Then I Started Doing Something More Complicated
Not that anything ever happened to me. Nor did I ever faint in the middle of a factory floor, causing panic and mayhem among a bunch of hardbitten steelworkers, an extensive investigation into potential excessive CO2 levels, and some very embarrassing conversations with my manager about blood loss during periods. Nope, never happened…
But it did teach me to firmly open and close rituals.
Here’s roughly what actually went on, if it had happened, which it didn’t. Deep spiritual work, done properly, without a clear ending point – the kind of thing you sit with, that stirs something up, that you don’t just switch off and walk away from. And then straight back into ordinary life. Straight onto a factory floor, in this instance. No line drawn between “I am doing this work” and “I am now doing something else entirely.” The work doesn’t know the ritual’s meant to be over cos you never told it, formally, that it was over. It just keeps going. Quietly. Underneath everything else you’re doing. Until eventually your body makes the decision for you, in the least convenient location it can find, in front of the least convenient audience.
Why the Close Matters as Much as the Open
So here’s the thing I didn’t understand at the start, and genuinely wish someone had told me plainly: opening a ritual is the easy part. You light the candle, you say the words, you know you’ve started something. Closing it is where people get lazy, cos it feels like the interesting bit is already over and you’re just tidying up. It isn’t tidying up. It’s the bit that tells your body, your mind, whatever you want to call the part of you doing the work, that it’s allowed to stop now.
A firm close doesn’t need to be complicated. It needs to be clear. Blow out the candle and say so, out loud if you can manage it, even just to yourself – “this is ended.” Close a book if you opened one. Stand up if you were sitting. Change your physical position, cos the body remembers position as much as it remembers anything. The specifics matter less than the fact that there’s a specific, deliberate, unmissable moment where the ritual stops and ordinary life starts again.
I don’t always get this right, even now. But I’ve never had another CO2 investigation over it, so I’ll take that as progress.
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.
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 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.
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.
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 Phailistín. 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 Martín, 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.
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.
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 groundingbecomes 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.
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.
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.
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?
Rest is a common enough theme for me at this time of year. This year though, I’m feeling a pull towards more. More rest? Certainly. But a different kind.
Even the weather agrees. Yesterday, it lashed down all day. Ag stealladh báistí you might say.
Today? Well look below.
Yes this is what I woke up to this morning. Well this is a couple of hours after I woke up cos a pic at 7am would just show black…
It’s not that I was planning on a massively active day today, or anything. But when the weather agrees with my own inner feelings, my gut… sometimes it’s ok to listen.
Privilege
Yes, it is most certainly a privilege to talk about rest right now.
Iran. Ukraine. Yemen. Gaza. Sudan. And so many others. (Yes that line is copied directly from my threads post yesterday!)
The people in those places, and many places in the US, I’m not forgetting ye, can’t afford to rest right now. They have a fight to wage. And they’ve been waging it – for years in some cases.
So, when I say I’m recognising my privilege, I mean it.
When I’m talking about rest for me right now, I’m talking about the space before stepping back in. The stillness in allowing flow, rather than forcing issues.
I’m thinking about space that comes before the action.
So what rest do I mean?
The earth is still resting for the year. Oh, we can see the signs of growth, the small green shoots coming up, the signs of life returning after the stillness of the winter.
(Although “stillness of winter” isn’t too accurate in Ireland!!)
And if, like me, you have been resting over the winter and are now looking to do something, you might be thinking “more rest????”
Fair. But listen to me a while.
For those of us not currently in an active war zone (ahem… “active” and “warzone” are open to interpretation here, side eyes to a certain Turtle Island government) we can take time, regroup, and then be ready to step in.
It might not be an option for you in your whole life, but maybe there are parts of your life that you can use this time for rest. Maybe you need to think about areas where it’s just not the time to be pushing right now.
There are areas of my life where pushing, chasing, forcing issues – it’s just not the right time.
It’s still time for planning, preparing the ground, resting.
Examples?
I want several things to happen this year in work. But now isn’t the time to chase them.
a promotion for a team member
knowing what my bonus and merit increase is
what are the plans for the business in the coming 2-3 years
I already have an idea about timelines for all of these and while I might want to know, right now, right this second, there’s no point in forcing this issue.
But areas I can move forward on:
my personal activities in work
gathering evidence to support my promotion activities
taking the next logical steps for the current ways the business is going
It’s amazing how, no matter how many different businesses I work in, I see the same patterns for the year…
It works in my personal life as well. I can’t force us buying a house. But I can make the daily steps that will lead to that at some point in the future.
I can take a rest from relentlessly pushing forward on my spiritual path, but still take the time to assimilate and bed in the learnings and changes so far.
It’s ok for an activity or a time to not look productive.
Rest as an act of rebellion
Again – this is privilege.
But rest, time spend not being productive can be an act of rebellion in a world that demands productivity at all times.
Time spent assimilating and re-grouping before the next round of activity is not laziness, not evil. It’s essential.
And it’s a lot easier for the various “bodies” (government, societal, religious, political, etc) to control us when we don’t give ourselves time.
Our minds and bodies need time to rest. Need time to not be productive. Not be a willing cog in the machine.
As women, we carry a lot. (It’s multiplied by Black women, women under oppression, women in war zones… intersectionality, remember???) And sometimes, even a single deep breath can feel like an immense act.
I get it.
But think about where in your life you can rest right now. Where do you need time for assimilation?
