Tag: spiritual practice

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

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

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

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

The wells

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

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

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

The sea

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

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

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

Healing that doesn’t announce itself

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

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

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

Brigid as a bridge in troubled times

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

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

Going deeper

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

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

Brigid Beyond Imbolc: How to Connect With Her in Summer

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

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

The pull of the sea

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

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

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

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

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

Why fire doesn’t always suit summer

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

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

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

A note for those in wildfire regions

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

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

What summer practice with Brigid can look like

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

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

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

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

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

Going deeper with Brigid

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Where it actually began for me

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

It started with food.

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

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

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

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

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

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

What inner work actually is

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

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

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

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

What it looks like in practice

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

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

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

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

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

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

What it has to do with Brigid’s Path

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

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

Where this is going

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

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

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