This post is for all those of you who have been wondering how our relocation from Ireland to Wales has been going, in the midst of a global pandemic. It’s for all those of you (and thank you for asking) who have wondered why I’ve been so quiet recently, on social media, on this blog, on my newsletter – anywhere, really. And it’s for me too: a necessary way for a writer to process big events – by writing about them. There are several different stories here; it’s not a short post – but it’s a post above all about place and belonging. Because for me, that always is, and always has been, at the heart of all of my stories. And the lessons of place never end.
In which what begins well ends badly
It’s been a long time since I wrote a blog post, or a newsletter, or anything else very much. The reason for that, as subscribers to my newsletter, or followers of my (also very thin, recently) social media posts will know, is that since the beginning of February, we have been in the midst of a relocation from Ireland to Wales. It all began very well, with a firm offer for our house in Connemara, which enabled us to start looking for a house in Wales. It progressed even more beautifully, with the discovery of the perfect house there (much more of which below; that’s really the point of this post) and the acceptance of an offer on it.
Then things took a slightly more complex turn, and the ride became wilder and wilder. I can promise you all that attempting a complex international relocation in the midst of a rapidly developing global pandemic is Not a Good Thing. Not at all. I’ll spare you the gory details; there were many of them. Let’s just say that over the past month, we have been in full-on crisis management mode. I’m blessed (or sometimes cursed, depending on your perspective) to have a husband who once upon a time spent 26 years in the RAF flying fast jets, who has seen his fair share of operations, and who knows all too well how quickly it can all fall. As a consequence of what I initially imagined was just catastrophising, he escalated every aspect of the move over and over again during a two-week period, leaving behind a trail of slack-jawed solicitors and gibbering estate agents, until, eventually, we left Ireland and landed in Wales to complete the purchase of this new house just one day before the UK lockdown which would have prevented it, and which would have left us in homeless limbo for the duration.
We were very pleased with ourselves, and very grateful to the gods of small actually quite big things. We turned up, complete with four border collie dogs and a cat, at a house which had been empty and effectively abandoned for well over a year, about the workings of which we knew next to nothing, since the previous and determinedly absent owners hadn’t been exactly forthcoming. We turned up with sleeping bags, a bag of clothes each, our computers (thanks to everything there is which can be thanked for that) and the last remaining bits and pieces we’d managed to cram into our cars after our belongings had been taken away in Connemara for shipping to Wales. And then we made ready to camp out for a week until they arrived.
The house was beautiful but freezing, and the heating wasn’t exactly as it had been described. There was a quite new LPG gas boiler, but it turned out that it heated precisely three small rooms, two of them bedrooms, and the water for only one of two bathrooms. The rest of the house, the majority, was apparently serviced by an ancient boiler stove in the living room, the inner workings of which had been dismantled for reasons we can’t even begin to imagine. It took two days of systematic detective work and David’s ingenuity to collect the scattered bits, and piece together something which eventually, after a few profoundly uncomfortable days, provided heat.
But to return to the day of arrival. So far so good, we thought, breathing huge sighs of relief. Then, the next evening, Boris Johnson announced the lockdown. The following morning, our movers (a large international relocation company in whose hands we had imagined ourselves to be safe) told us that they were very sorry, but even though government advice allowed for the completion of moves in progress, they were shutting down their operations and wouldn’t be able to deliver our belongings to Wales after all. They would have to remain in storage in Uxbridge, near London, for as long as it took for the lockdown to be lifted.
I still can’t quite grasp the ethics of a company which would leave two people, not exactly in the first flush of youth, stranded for what is likely to be weeks if not months in an empty house without a stick of furniture or anything else very much, but that’s the corporate world for you. And, after the most stressful month of my life (and gosh, there have been some stressful times over the last almost six decades, but this trumped them all), there was now another crisis to solve.
Happily, the remote community in which we landed has a Facebook group, and after I posted a rather desperate plea for help on it, within literally two hours we had mattresses, desks, a piece of garden furniture for a sofa, and everything else we will need to camp out here – not exactly in comfort, but in possibility – for as long as it takes. We moved back here for community, and in spite of everything, and the fact that we knew no-one and no-one knew us, community showed up. For which we will always be grateful.
And I had a carload of useful things which had made their way over to the temporary bolthole I’d been occupying in Anglesey during what turned out to be a very brief time of house-hunting. A couple of lamps; necessary books for two or three months’ work ahead; cutlery and a very few pots and pans.
At first, I felt as if the world had ended. And haven’t we all felt some sense of that, each of us for our own reasons, as this situation has unfolded? An underlying arthritic condition flared up so that for several days I could hardly move; I was behind on necessary work deadlines; every live event I’d been booked for in the months ahead had been cancelled; income plummeted, and the lockdown meant that although we had landed here with little other than a very basic toolbox, there were very few possibilities for acquiring the things we imagined we needed to get to work on straightening out this lovely but sorely neglected, frayed-around-the-edges, old house.
In which many tides turn
And then, slowly, as they do, things shifted. They shifted because of this house, and because of this place. We slept our way out of utter exhaustion, and even though the temperatures were below freezing most days and spring has been late, I turned my face and my heart, as I always have done in difficult times, to this new land that I was now occupying. And to this beautiful old house. And, two weeks on from the day we landed here, I can tell you that the only thing in my heart now, in spite of being enmeshed in a liminal zone of ongoing uncertainty – as all of us are these days, in our different ways – is gratitude.
Always circling back
There’s a story about this house, this land, this place. Actually, there are several stories, and many synchronicities. The most curious of them is that I’ve circled (spiralled) back again, to a place which once I called home. Long before I landed in Connemara back in the 90s and called that home – a place to which I circled back three years ago, and from where I imagined that all my circling-back days had ended.
Nope. Along came another calling. There’s been some more circling back to do, and it all began in my teens, when Wales became a place of refuge for my mother and me from an increasingly troubled inner-city life. The area of Wales around the beautiful, historic market town of Machynlleth was the place we headed to on the rare occasions we could afford it, and after I left home for university my mother moved there full time. Shortly afterwards, she met and married my stepfather, native son of a small nearby farming village, for whom Welsh was not only a first language but his only functioning language; he was probably as close to a monoglot as Wales produced in those times. Arthur managed an enormous hillfarm, and for a very long time I spent university vacations and, later, snatched weekends and holidays, running around the hills with him as honorary second sheepdog, bundling sick lambs in the bottom cupboard of the solid-fuel Rayburn range, and feeding sweet-smelling hay to the cattle in the afternoons.
Although this area is dominated by sheep farming on an industrial scale, it was here that I first learned what it might mean to sit at night on a hillside unclouded by light pollution and gaze at the stars. Here where I first learned that the strange shrieking in the middle of the night was a vixen in heat. Here where I first dreamed of an old stone house in the hills – any hills – and uncovered a lifelong longing for wild places and clean air which has never left me and never will.
I don’t think I’ve ever understood how much this place meant to me for all those decades, and how much I loved it, until now.
So when – quite literally – the only possible house on the market in all of mid and north Wales – the only house which was affordable, of the right size, of the right character, in the right kind of location, and which had a wee bit of land – turned out to be a house in exactly that area which had been my old haunt many years ago now, I guess (given my history is always finding the necessary house for the times) I shouldn’t have been surprised. But I was, especially when I discovered that my stepfather, who had worked as a fencer before he turned to sheep farming, had actually fenced the eight acres of fields which go with this old house when he was a young man. And remembered it, and the former occupants, well.
In which a house has a history
We have sat in this old house for two weeks now, with nothing between us and its old bones except a makeshift dining room table which David constructed out of a discovered length of leftover kitchen worktop in the hayloft, balanced on two rickety old garden benches. And we have developed a love for it which has taken us both by surprise – especially my funny husband, Welsh as they come in temperament if not accent (though from far enough south that it doesn’t really count as proper Wales up here), who has never really loved a house before in his life. The house loves us too. I’m sorry if that sounds fanciful. Once I lived in a house which refused us; I know how houses feel. This is a benign house. It stands strong, and true.
The house is surrounded by green fields, but don’t let that fool you into thinking I’ve gone soft. It sits up in the hills, just over a thousand feet high, looking over the Clywedog river valley in the Cambrian Mountains.
This old house began life around 1768 as a Methodist chapel, in an area of Wales which once was a hotbed of nonconformist Christianity. It was known as Capel-y-Graig – Rock Chapel – because it rests against a rock face down which (at what is now our back door) water from a natural spring (which also provides our water supply) flows. There was a chapel room, and a parlour where the pastor lived, and that was it. A century later, after the population outgrew the chapel, a new chapel was built and the house became a farmhouse, the home of a local family who occupied it for several generations. (It was extended twice to provide more functional accommodation.)
Five days into what we were still seeing as a traumatic experience, I discovered the motherlode, hidden in a cupboard which once would have housed hymn books. A set of documents about the house’s history which included pages of hand-written memories from the last native occupant, expressing such a love for the house and the land, and the haymaking and lambing, and all the community and craic (as well as the incredibly hard work) which went with being a small farmer in those days. And still does now.
Since then, we’ve walked fields which are currently occupied by the famer-next-door’s lambing ewes. We’ve discovered ancient hawthorn hedgerows, an equally ancient keyhole rowan tree (surely a gateway to the Otherworld there) and a sadly unrecoverable series of tiered vegetable and fruit gardens which have been completely let go by the past two or three sets of more temporary occupiers. Well, I think we have another vegetable garden in us; we’re not that old yet. Let the willow trees continue to grow in the delapidated polytunnel; we can construct another one.
At night, lying in a wonderfully comfortable mattress on the floor, I’m listening to the cries of tawny owls in the forest below, and the last stoppy-out ravens. In the morning, I wake to the sound of a woodpecker in the copse next to the house. The skies are dominated by red kites and buzzards. There are moles in the back field. So many new creatures to get to know; so many new stories of the land to uncover. I’ve never lived with red kites or tawny owls or moles before; I have no idea what they’ll have to tell me. What new stories of place, what new myths and archetypes, will emerge from our conversations?
Even more strangely, as a woman who has spent the past twenty years living on granite and ancient Lewissian gneiss, now I find myself occupying a land whose geology is mostly sandstone and mudstone. I’m reminded, not for the first time, of the much-loved books by Terry Pratchett in which he muses that it’s easy (for Granny Weatherwax, Nanny Ogg and many other witches) to be a witch on granite; it lends a certain grit, a necessary gravitas to the occupation. But to be a witch on chalk, one of his characters muses? No-one’s ever been a witch on chalk; surely it doesn’t have the necessary depth. Until along comes Tiffany Aching, who learns (the hard way) what it is to be a witch on chalk. And I find myself wondering – what would it be to be a witch on sandstone? How does that geology feel? What, exactly, is the nature of its magic?
There is so much to discover, as spring slowly brings the land alive, so that we’ll uncover its stories now with the stories of a new growing season, with the stories of a new year. And against that backdrop, what we first imagined to be privations fade away. We are luckier than we might ever have dreamed possible. So what if we don’t yet have a comfortable chair to curl up in, or our much-loved books, or the artwork which reflects the path of my soul’s journey through the decades, or the fly-tying equipment which David has had since he was knee-high to a grasshopper. What if all his fencing tools are locked in a warehouse in Uxbridge; there’ll be time enough for fencing when the lockdown is done. Three giant yew trees guard this house; what stories they’ll have to tell.
There are six new hens in a newly renovated old hen house, and three of them are laying.
And look, the spring is flowing fast again and singing by the back door and it’s time to listen, if not to the Voices of the Wells, then to the Voices of the Springs for a little while. It’s time to be quiet, now. It’s time to stop saying, and start listening again. It’s time to put some more fuel in the old boiler stove and by mid-afternoon perhaps the water will be hot enough for a bath. It’s time to fall, slowly but irrevocably, head-over-heels in love with the simplicity of an old stone house in the mountains. To be thankful that, against all odds, the delivery of paint made it here, and that I can spend the next little while painting myself into the walls, exploring every nook and cranny, uncovering all the perfections and flaws, and listening to its stories of love, laughter – and hard labour. And when the world has turned a little more, we’ll offer this house books and rugs; we’ll hang our paintings on its newly painted walls. My desk will arrive, and I’ll write my next book here: that long-imagined book on all of the ways in which we women might grow old. If I could have one wish, it would only be this: that in this increasingly perilous world, I might get to grow old here. This old house, I suspect, will have plenty to tell me about all of the ways in which that might be done gracefully, and with good heart.
What a heartfelt and heart-filling story, Sharon. Welcome back to these shores. You have found, or been found by, a magical space in which to grow old. This house and its land and landscape will nurture and nourish you. I look forward to reading the tales and lessons you will learn going forward. I never made it to Ireland to see you there, perhaps I shall see you in Wales at some point not far distant. Stay safe and blessings.
That would be lovely, Aurora. Waving at you there, down south a bit.
Welcome home , hope to visit you once the craziness is over, just musing over the first picture of your house , looking at afar it has similarities to your first house in Ireland . I look forward to stories of Sandstone witches much love
Karen
Sharon,
You words thrill me. Thank you.
We emigrated from our birthstae in CA to northern New Mexico, from sea level beach sand to high elevation adobe and volcanic basalt, now a decade ago. Each year here in the high desert mesa country I learn from this ancient land. I know too about a house that welcomes us, where we and our two pups will grow older together within her adobe walls, and under the hand logged vigas which support our roof.
I look forward to more of your stories as your settle in, as you learn more about your home, your spring and your wild lands.
Warmly, Pattymara
Beautiful New Mexico. A place which has also taught me much, in all-too-short but multiple visits.
Thanks, Karen. Will look forward to that.
Lovely to read these inspiring warm words & know that you are here nearby in mid wales…i have an old stone cottage above the hills of Carno…Pen~Y ~ Graig…house on the rock …its my refuge…retreat…my love…surrounded, informed, nurtured & nourished by nature…you are more than welcome to pop over for a cuppa when the restrictions for moving about are lifted
Wow! What an amazing journey you and David have had….I am totally amazed that you have come through your journey and now ready to love and learn from your new home in Wales. The landscape looks so beautiful and very like Ireland in places with the magical Scé……the hedge will protect you. Go n-eirí an t-ádh libh.
Thanks, Crea. So many ancient connections across the Irish Sea. In many ways, I don’t feel as if I’ve left.
Sharon, you have been in my thoughts – and grateful am I to hear you and David have begun your “rooting process”. How interesting of your home to test your mettle before allowing you to paint her.
My few visits to Wales were brief -although should you one day offer a retreat – count on me to be there! I send love and encouraging energy – stay well – you matter to me.
Ha! Testing our mettle, indeed! And look forward to meeting you again here. Sending hugs to Arizona.
Oh my…?
Its always lovely to read your writing . What a journey . I know from my own experience that all the troubles and mishaps along a journey , makes it more memorable and with the distance of time one can usually look back and say what an adventure ! Enjoy getting to know this new home and place and may you find a blessing .
Thank you for sharing it !
I could look back and say what an adventure, but I will never ever look back and laugh! It was all too big for that. But thank you …
At first it was heart stopping, then joyous, to read someone relating to land the same way I do. I myself moved about a month ago, and even if I just moved to the opposite side of a big lake that I’ve been living by and with for seven years, now I live with BIRCH and PINE just outside my door. And there’s a cat owl who sings every night, and a hedgerow. I’ve never known a hedgerow before. And amidst all the unpacking of boxes and dreadful shopping for beds and sofa, this is what I wonder about: what relations will we have, the owl and me, the majestic pine and the birches and the hedgerow and the forest beyond, all the mosses and lichens who live there, I wonder what they’ll show me? And spring is coming. What a blessing to get to know someone in its bloom.
I wish you joy in your explorations!
Thank you Therese, and wishing joy back at you. There’s nothing like a hedgerow …
This is a beautiful piece of writing of your Journey to this special place. Thank you.
Thanks, CaroleAnn. It’s been a while coming!
Wow. What an achievement. Well done. Wishing you much joy and magic in your new home.
I would love to hear owls ?
Thank you! And try this 🙂
https://www.british-birdsongs.uk/tawny-owl/
You have greatly blessed my day with your personal and intimate story of your new home, the place that you love and now loves you in return. To say you are an inspiration to me is understating it.
Stay well. Be blessed as you bless, greatly.
Ah, thank you. Weepy day all round 🙂
I am moved to tears by your words and feeling here. Welcome to Wales once again and I wish you well on the next phase. It’s always wonderful when the house breathes out and accepts you I feel. X
Thank you, Roz!
Sharon, grateful for your telling, Blessed Be your new nest and the community that surrounds you.
Thank you, Kim – and back to you.
Thank you, Sharon, for sharing your love for this old house and the land it lives on. Such a place can hold a whole life, opening a new portal of an old dream. As you settle, know how much this woman appreciates your stories and their wisdom. She is surely one among many.
Ah thank you. That means a lot, after the past few weeks when so many things have been hanging by (golden, in the end) threads!
What a beautiful story about how less is more and you my dear with the eyes to see it.
Thank you!
That was absolutely beautiful to read as I wake up laying in my bed. I love how you aquatinted yourself with the house and began to feel its history over the years. I look forward to reading more about your magical house and land!
I’m sure I won’t be able to help myself …
Lovely to hear your “ voice” again,Sharon,and what a magical homecoming as the spiral turns once more….I wish you hearts peace as you settle on and put your roots deep down into the sandstone.
Looking forward to your book on growing into age
Thanks, Lorna. It’s feeling a little rusty with disuse, but that’s a good thing. Been very much enjoying your own perceptions on the current times …
Thank you for sharing your journey with this, the sense of discovered love for the house and the place is palpable. I find it really encouraging and grounded, nourishing soul words and story. Hearing how you approach a new place gives me ideas too. I really loved hearing about the community welcome too, both the humans and the creatures and plants 🙂
Thanks, Catherine. Many discoverings ahead.
How wonderful to see your musings once again! Such strong stuff you two are made of to overcome such trials and tribulations in a relatively short time. You inspire hope. This pandemic has turned everyone’s life upside down. In the blink of an eye, we have all been challenged to stop, listen and rethink who we are on this beautiful earth.
Your photos are exquisite and speak of stories yet to come. Thank you for sharing and I wish you the happiest of surprises in the months to come.
MANY stories yet to come, I hope! And thank you.
Suddenly yesterday I went looking for you, wondering if I had slipped off your list, then today find your blog. Welcome to your home, may it look after you in all your endeavours, and you it. It sounds like a true home-coming for you, and the house. Am reading about ancient Egyptian magic at the moment and imagine there were many great witches there, possibly still are, rooted in sandstone.
Blessings.
Thank you! I’m delving deeply into that psychogeology, for sure.
Hi Sharon. I am so pleased that you were able to actually move in – and what a house you seem to have found. Enjoy it all and I look forward a great deal to hearing more about this land.
Thanks Lynne! And I suspect you will 🙂
I am drawn in by your fabulous gifts as a raconteuse always I feel as though I know you and you always leave me wanting to know more. I appreciate what I shall call your stunning poverty of spirit and that lovely surrender and reliance on the deepest reality of be-ing. The sense of possibility is contagious ~ thank you ~ and indeed, all birthing is a labor of love and dying to what was/is to make way for the new. David seems a veritable force of life ~ forging ahead with loving energy. May you both know the essential nature of the inner strength you possess and continue walking in this sacred manner as life and love draw you onward! I look forward to ‘reading’ more …. blessings on the gifts of this day Victoria
Thank you, Victoria. The road seems to go ever on and on, but I’m hoping it will stop here for a little while!
Was thoroughly warmed and moved when reading of your move into this beautiful old welcoming house and surrounding eight acres of inviting countryside. I can actually feel the connection you would have there.
It is ever amazing how we adjust to having less, if only for a shorter time period……how events evolve that bring connection and comfort.
It was wonderful to read your words again. I wish you every happiness in your lovely new/old home.
Thank you Veronica and yes, it’s a palpable lesson which I hope will continue, even when restrictions are eventually lifted.
I’ve been taking a slow journey through your book, The Enchanted Life. So many things you describe are points in my own midlife unfolding. “Yes! YES!!”, I shout silently. “That’s EXACTLY what I’ve done/thought/experienced!”
If Women Rose Rooted sits patiently on my nightstand waiting for its turn. Yes, I know it’s out of order but I found Enchanted first.
Both of those led me to your podcast and here, to the blog. Thank you for sharing the story of your Great Move. I completely understand the feeling of acceptance – or non-acceptance – of a house. I spent 25 years in one whose attitude toward me was one of grudging accommodation and sometimes outright disapproval. Fairly sure it was a reflection of my marriage at the time!
Here in the woods of Northern Michigan, (where I dearly wish we had a stone house!), we’re also tucked in watching and waiting for the circumstances to improve. Of course, we have all of our belongings and comforts around us but I kind of envy your camping experience and the lessons it’s bringing to you. I look forward to reading of them in the time ahead. Blessings to you and the owls.
(Here’s what I hear from my porch in the evenings:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cp2FEA1yU7A
Wonderful owl! And I hope you enjoy book 2. There’s not really a sequence I guess, except to me and my stories of home and belonging.
How enchanting this home and landscape sound! Having been born and living for 56 years within less than a 100km radius in rural Canada, your journey has seemed very different than mine…but perhaps that is only on the outside! The ultimate journey is perhaps how we come to know ourselves and fall in love with lives, wherever we are, as you have done so quickly in your new place. I’ve really needed to ground and find my roots, so for me, however much I sometimes have wanted to run away or escape, being in one place has served me well. I feel so drawn to the UK sometimes, I think because there is so much hiuman history there and maybe because that is my heritage, yet the wildness and large open spaces of Canada, the forests and natural history are causing me to feel more and more settled and at home here. But who knows? Your next book theme sounds great! I look forward to reading it!
Yes, I’ve written a lot about how there is no one ‘proper’ way of belonging to place. Some are settlers; me, I’m a serial rooter. And I have continually swung between wanting those big open spaces and wanting the comfort of a little more history and community. It changes with age, for me, I think. Hence the new book …
This is so beautiful, Sharon, both the tale and the place. I must tell you that your book, If Women Rose Rooted, resonated so deeply with me, your writing about place and the land echoing my own feelings. A born Southerner, I moved, years ago, to a two room pre-Civil War log cabin on a pond surrounded by 40 acres of woods in what had been Cherokee land. The move was a last ditch effort to save a long marriage. While we were selling our house an hour away, I moved into the cabin and painted the upstairs loft with whitewash. My husband stayed in our house and I lived in the cabin for several months with 2 dogs and a horse. I had a rocking chair in front of the wood stove, a rocking chair on the porch, and a rickety table on the porch with two chairs, all found at yard sales. It was heaven! When we finally sold our house and my husband and our furniture moved into the cabin, I felt that we had defiled the place. We were there for a few years before the marriage finally broke and all of us had to leave that enchanted place. But the place had changed me and had lodged itself in my heart forever. (This all took place 30+ years ago, but still vividly lives in my psyche.) Thank you for writing so beautifully about your journey; I am loving all the parallels with mine. And thank you for the photographs; I am right there with you, loving every report!
Gosh, yes, sometimes places/houses are just for us, alone. I’ve had that experience too. I’m glad it still lives in you.
Wonderful to hear from you Sharon and the inspiring green shoots of a life being reborn in this time of spiritual revolution
. Speaking for many of us who adore your work, there are meadows and vales of discovery awaiting us all blessed with your friendship and wise counsel.
The good air of Wales promises a place of belonging and the great dreams of remembering. May all those good voices inhabit your vast and inspired creative life.
Ah, thank you. I’m never as creative as when there are place stories to tell. So hopefully once the exhaustion has fully worn off, there’ll be more.
Beautiful story of these times. I want more. Ha! I would love a book about the continued making of home in that house (with photos!), the connections made with the land and the creatures and the community there. Many blessings on your new home and any stories yet to come. May you ride this in between time out with much grace and magic and I hope soon a shipment of your things will arrive at your new door! I feel that we are learning in this strange experience how little we actually need to live wholly with the Earth.
Maybe not a book but a series of posts … and yes, I think you are quite right about the recognition of how little we need. That has already been a big learning for me. I always think I live simply, but really, not simply enough …
Such a beautiful heartwarming post.
I am originally from Wales and miss my homeland soo much.
Thank you for sharing your journey and writing your books in the beautiful heart and soul opening way that you do.
thank you x
Thank you, Michelle. It’s a beautiful land to call home. Full of heart and strength.
I’m thinking there is a whole book of story in those short weeks. Perhaps, someday… For now, Happy Homecoming.
Perhaps. Though I suspect much of it will make its way into the new book, ‘Hagitude’. And thank you!
Weeping at the beauty and simplicity of your story I cannot wait to start If Women Rose Rooted. It is eyeing me on my nightstand, waiting patiently for me to finish a short novel so that I may give it all the attention it so surely deserves. I long for my place in the rural countryside, but must for now find peace in my tiny city apartment where one must simply have eyes to see the handwork of Gaia. I do see and I’m grateful. Blessings to you and your husband as you root into your magical home and land.
That book has a life of its own now and a very strong eye :- I hope you enjoy it. And thank you.
Thank you for sharing your journey Sharon. I was wondering how you were going. Lovely that you have been through the ‘pivot’ – I feel such warmth in this house for you, a softness and a holding
I hope so; thank you. Though a little bit of toughness around the edges too, I hope!
Blessings in your new home, Sharon! So glad you made it there in time. The moves I’ve made where belongings took much longer to arrive than expected always turned out to be the most transformative.
Thanks, Laura. It’s just that little bit harder with age but I’m all for toughening up!
Congratulations Sharon! The birthing process of this next chapter wasn’t easy, but it is beautiful and perfect all the same! So nice to read your words and hear the latest news again. Blessings on your new home!
P.S. I love your table too!
P.S.S. I was so looking forward to meeting you in Iowa in a few weeks, but I guess I’ll have to wait a while longer. May you and yours be well through all of this.
Thank you, and yes, I was so looking forward to Prairiewoods.
Dear Sharon, tears flowing and palpable tendrils of grounding and connection growing as I read each word of your experiences. I felt the loss of your presence and now the deep gratitude that you’re back and with such a testimony to the humanness and also the enchantment of what has unfolded.
May your home continue to move you both and invite you tenderly into deeper relationship. Thank you for sharing and for birthing the tears I needed to shed xx
Yes, we’ve shed a few tears here over the past week as we’ve settled back into ourselves. A necessary thing. Sending warmth and blessings.
Completely transported another time another place another life to be embraced your writing does all of these.
Blessings
Louise
Thank you, Louise!
I’ve been waiting to read If Women Rose Rooted for months but it was never the right time and now to read this glorious yarn about your move which has hooked me in. Enjoy your life there and I will read on. Thank you.
In the context of many moves over the years which I wrote about in If Women Rose Rooted, and then The Enchanted Life, it looks like this one will form some background for nonfiction book no. 3! I hope you enjoy it.
Wow Sharon! I reckon that long wait to hear from you again was worth every minute….your writing is as enchanting as ever and leaves me feeling transported to some magical place as always! Welcome to Wales! I moved in late December and I cannot believe how lucky I am to be in this landscape and learning how to be within it. Good luck and good fortunes to you in your new home. I can’t wait to read more from you and how a witch on sandstone might evolve!
Well done for getting in just in time! And yes, the sandstone posts will undoubtedly come …
Dear Sharon – I could not believe my eyes just now – I’d only been wondering this very morning, what had happened to you and your move and, and, and … then your rather wonderful and very welcome letter popped into my Inbox. I’m really pleased to be a recipient of this gift you clearly were given at birth, which you now give to us – freely in this way, with accompanying pictures! I have a strong affinity with Wales despite not having lived there or with no obvious family connections. It’s visceral and if I say spiritual,I don’t mean it in any other sense than that I feel more alive and touched in my soul, when I’m there, in ways I am not, in England. That’s just how it is and does not need explaining. You and David have certainly been in the midst of IT – Wow – I take my hat off to you both. May things come to pass in the best of ways in being able to have all your homeful (my word) things delivered soon.
I was very moved by your letter and I see others too, like me, were in tears. Thank you for your humanity and that way you have of being able to use the eyes of your heart and your mind – and your gifts of knowledge, scholarship and imagination, hard earned but rooted in solid ground, whilst being light as air when you choose. Looking forward to hearing more and hope too, to be at some wonderful ‘gig’ of yours. Have you been in touch with Elementum?
Lots of love and lots more – Win
Thank you for sharing this beautiful, magical and sacred adventure with us..
Thank you so much, Win. I have a writing schedule as long as a ladder to the moon, but maybe someday I’ll contact Elementum.
What a wonderful introduction to your new home and place!
“The best-laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley.” Although sometimes all of life feels somewhat agley. We have 8 acres of hill land in North Herefordshire (moved here three years ago, we’ll die here with any luck. Although, corona, not yet please). Our house has one Victorian wall and the rest is of the 1970s, so has all the personality of a municipal car park (the planning officer’s report said that, whatever we had in mind to do to the place, it couldn’t make it any worse). The land is shallow topsoil on heavy clay on sandstone bedrock; no good for crops but the lambs do well. This used to be old woodland, mainly oak (the glorious oaks of Herefordshire are the reason we came back). There’s a winterbourne that winds through our tiny fields and spinney; her voice is part of the air, part of the land. Our first spring, I took mud made of the brook and the soil and painted my naked self, dug my toes into the turf, sang to the brook, laid on my belly in the cold water and on the scratchy earth, chewed grass, stopped thinking. Knitted to each other now, me and the land. For a brief span anyway. We’ll plant trees for the next ones. Blessings upon your home and you in it. From a sandstone witch with a light coating of mud.
Oh you do my heart good! (And your planning officer made me laugh.) Here’s to chewing grass.
What a beautiful story to read at bedtime here in the antipodes. My ancestors hail from those hills. I was planning to visit this June/July but that will have to wait, like your furniture ?
May your new home bring you both many years of warmth and happiness.
Much waiting, for now, for all kinds of things. And much pleasurable anticipation perhaps, too!
Sharon…we have convergent paths. I also moved back to Wales last autumn and am just outside of Aberystwyth, close to Machynlleth, as it happens. I can tell you that being a witch on sandstone is actually quite relaxing…far easier than chalk, and with a better off switch than granite. Dragon energy…that’s another story, but an enjoyable one, I find. Croeso nol. Bright blessings. .
Dragon energy! Oh my …
Wow sharon compared to alot of what’s been going on your situation sounds like a walk in the park!! (No pun intended) as we cant even do that now! But so glad it’s all come good and you can count your blessings x looks beautiful and am sure will inspire yet another wonderful book x keep safe and to everyone else I wish the same xxxx ps loved the owls song
Thank you, Jane.
Dear Sharon,
Yes, I had been wondering how it was going for you and if you had reached Wales! Thank you for this beautiful story of accepting, and making your new house sing!
Greetings to you from our little windy cove on the Sasanoa River in Maine.
Accepting; well, I haven’t been great at that in my life so far. Maybe it’s a lesson I needed to learn, finally. Thank you, and sending much warmth across the ocean to beautiful Maine.
Thank you Sharon. Such an initiation and such a beautiful place, and once upon a time fenced by your stepfather. Such depth. Such spiraling. Thank you for your sharing. It touched my very old soul. May you stay strong and well. Beanachtai…
Thanks, Cat. You too.
I have tears in my eyes, but they are the good kind … of relief that you are both doing well and have landed in such a magical and transformative place, of recognition of how your tale is a heightened version of the experience we are all going through in one way or another, and of a kind of vulnerability that your words have made me feel, at once joyful and heartbroken, grieving and full of hope. I am sending you all the comfort and calm that I can muster. I do hope the rest of your belongings arrive in the not-too-distant future so you might return some of the favor that the house has clearly shown you. And thank goodness for furry (and feathered!) friends – domestic and wild -who always help us sink more naturally and wildly into any place. Much love and best wishes.
Thank you, Jamie. It’s interesting to note the parallels in so many people’s journeys during these Trickster times. And the dogs, indeed, are both stressors in such a move but ultimately life-savers. I don’t know quite what I’d be without them.
Sharon, it was a joy to hear your ‘voice’ this morning, and to be reminded that the experience of place still fuels our stories. The next and the next…I’m trying to imagine my next book now about the mythology of giants… thank you for pointing my listening ear to the walls of the house, the critters, and the wind.
Giants, oh wonderful. Enjoy!
Welcome home Sharon and David.Sent
We are not too far away from you and, what seems such a short while ago but is actually almost two decades ago, we had our own adventurous move to Mid Wales.
My husband is not fanciful by nature but firmly believes our small holding chose us to save it, rather than the other way around. We loved it from the first moment we saw it and despite the huge challenges it has thrown at us, we feel it cares for us. These very old properties are organic and seem to have a life and will of their own.
I hope your new home brings you the contentment and pleasure that ours has given us.
I am an absolute mystic when it comes to places and houses. To me, they’re our biggest teachers. So glad your smallholding found the right humans to teach and share with!
Dear Sharon, my name is Rhianne, and my work is called Simply Enchanted Living, and I so appreciate your stand for enchantment in the world. This is a time when re-enchantment is so dearly needed. I am a wise woman (witch) that has lived in the sandstone of Sedona for 35 years, where juniper pine provide fresh air and the Oak Creek flows through giant Cottonwoods and Oak. The sandstone hills do crumble easily, and one becomes nimble when running the hills, as I did in my more youthful days. The description of your land, of returning “HOME”, of the magical gateways to other-realms, makes me so happy for you. I pray that your things will be released to you soon, and it will be like Christmas opening up the boxes of treasured possesions. I do hope our paths can cross, and we can share enchanted times. Should you ever wish to visit Sedona, you have a guide, and I know we can gather a group of women who would love to share and learn from you. Many, many blessings
Thanks, Rhianne – I know beautiful Sedona very well. In fact the only place where I’ve known sandstone is in Arizona & New Mexico, but it’s a long haul translating desert into the moist Welsh hills! Still, perhaps it’ll give me a start.
Congratulations on rising up & rerooting during this time of global upheaval! My husband & I live in Maine where he is a nature photographer & I write poems in response to his soul~stirring photos. I’m an expressive arts therapist by profession & took your Courting the World Soul course. So grateful for the way your voice lifts to the top amidst the chaos in today’s world.
Oh Sharon what a journey. I have to say I did worry the lockdown would affect your move – but the kindness of strangers, and your own and David’s efforts have given you a grand start to life in Wales. May your roots deepen there and the house enfold you as it tells you its secrets All good wishes to you, David, dogs and cat. Your writing inspires me and I too am learning in this strange time just how little I really need and how important nature and its rhythms are in my life. Love Cathy
Thank you, Cathy! Still hoping to see you in Ireland in October. In the meantime (when the world has turned another notch or two) if you’re ever in Wales …
Dear Sharon,
So relieved to read this tender story of your 2020 beginning! Thanks for the photos which exude so much feeling.
Several of your feelings and tasks are shared from my own relocation from Santa Fe, New Mexico to Vermont last summer (without pandemic). The few weeks with only sleeping bag and pillow, a favorite quilt, a few shared utensils, a camping chair, wandering the woodland to meet wild inhabitants…..and even painting walls before anything arrived. That deep feeling of gratitude, despite the travail, brings me to tears of joy for you….as it did for me several months ago. Seeing the blessing and following the call to continue becoming.
Lessons of what minimal really means still arise and shedding is an ongoing task. My home is smaller than any before, only what truly has meaning finds its place within. The rest say farewell. I let these remnants of my life decide whether they stay or be released. [Funny how when I look about now, it feels like a museum of my life.]
Spring is a standout time for extending our roots……and with few things to unpack inside, the land claims you for itself before all else. For me, winter’s end has me preparing to create my moon garden. Five miles from town, I rarely see people. And then yesterday, my daughter and grandchildren came to walk (6′ apart) and clean up the river’s edge.
Warmest regards,
Elizabeth
Thank you, Maryam.
Thanks, Elizabeth. I love the sound of that moon garden. Hope you’ll share in the membership program!
Thank you for sharing, I enjoyed every word you wrote. All the best with your new old house/home ????????
Thanks, Sophia! Hope you’re doing okay over there in Hong Kong …
In the midst of uncertainty and wild changes, I’m glad that your forever home opened its arms and gathered you both into its heart. It has waited patiently for you and must love the warmth, love, beauty and life that you have brought with you. With the promise of so much more to come. Poems, songs, art, stories, laughter and happiness. I feel sure that your lovely house is grateful that you found your way home.
Not as grateful as we are but we hope to make it happy too! And thank you.
Part of me has been unsettled ever since I heard Ireland would go into lockdown
remembering you would be arriving at your new house on Monday. Maybe just as well I didn’t think of what could happen with a lockdown in the UK.
I was so happy to find this post today, that I just sort of scanned it to find out if you are well. As (all) your writing deserves full attention I am now going to really read.
And I can’t help thinking that building a relationship with your new home in all it’s spaciousness and simplicity first, before making your mark on and in it is a profound way of getting to know the place where you hope to grow old.
Ah thanks, Cath. Hope you’re keeping safe too.
We have never met, but I found tears running down my face in response to such deep feelings and love . May you be very blessed in your new home.
Thank you so much! Teary times …
I was enchanted by your story – a true archetypal journey home to house and land that already love you and hold you in true homecoming. Possibly, if all your belongings had arrived right away, you would not have connected so deeply to a place that has clearly been awaiting your return. All blessings to you and your husband as you deepen your love and listening to this lovely, wise place. I look forward to your explorations of the witch spirits and dragon spirits that arise from the sandstone depths. Anne
You could well be right. I railed against the idea at first, of course. But I think that’s how it’ll work out. Thank you …
Sharon, I believe that the house wanted you to ‘know it’ as it first was when it was built – a chapel, simple an unadorned, filled with the mysteries of the world, with song and contemplation.
To have found the old papers is a miracle in itself. The house is speaking to you, just as the land always has. It wanted someone who understood it, who truly heard it. I can’t wait to read what you write from this beautiful sanctuary. Oh, a witch in soft soil: what a thing to experience…!
So glad you and David are safe and that his RAF training got you there just in time. Mission accomplished!
You’ve always said that the most important thing for you is being able to paint yourself into the walls of each new home – and the paint arrived! The furniture still being in Uxbridge is a blessing. How could you hear the house properly if it were cluttered with boxes and “stuff” everywhere, clamouring for your attention daily? You would be too distracted making a home. This way, you get to walk into the stillness of the place and experience it fully. You can hear it speak. I wouldn’t mind betting that, once your furniture does arrive, you’ll have a very different plan for living in the house.
I finished THE ENCHANTED LIFE a few days ago (I had d-r-a=g-g-e-d it out to the very last sentence!) and I’ve been recommending it to everyone to read during these times of deep uncertainty. Your words always resonate on such a very deep level. A heartfelt thank you!
Stay safe and warm and well. We NEED your voice more than ever!
I think you might be right, about the clutter and the plan. So glad you enjoyed the book. This house and I together will hopefully crack out a couple more!
You have my heart bursting with deep gratitude and love. From a 70ish American woman with Welsh ancestors…. now living in Iowa near to where my Welsh great grandfather settled. I moved here four years ago and discovered I had moved to his American stomping grounds.
When ever I’ve been in Wales (several times)I’ve felt I’m home. Today you’ve taken me home. And this morning, in the midst of these scary virus times, I feel safe.
My son and family live in Southport, England. I hope to meet you the next time I’m able to travel there.
Robyn….
I read that you live in Iowa and so do I! How amazing is that? I am in the Des Moines area. Where are you?
Thea I am in Des Moines! Let’s meet. My email is [email protected]
Thank you, Robyn. I was to be in Iowa for the first time ever at the end of this month. Alas, it wasn’t to be. I’m so glad a little home came your way.
My word for this week is EARTHED..as in being in the world but not of it, so reading your lovely piece renews my hope for all of us. We can settle and be settled. We can find home and be at home. We can continue to learn all sorts of wondrous mysteries if we but take the time. Living in the Midwestern US where nothing is older than a couple hundred years (and that’s a stretch), I can only imagine what stories you will learn about your chosen place. I can’t wait to hear more…
Finding home and a sense of belonging to place is at the core of everything I do. That’s because I’m still learning those lessons myself; it’s a lifelong thing. Oh – and your land is old. Old as an old thing. It knows all kinds of fine things and will have all kinds of fine stories, I suspect 🙂
I am so very glad to read this; I knew part of your saga of course, and ached in empathetic frustration.
But oh, I know that feeling of coming home, and of being welcomed by land (on which I built my own small cabin, led by the hand by the foret itself) and by an old hourse–both our farmhouse in the 70s, and the aging Victorian house I now occupy. We do paint ourselves into them, and thank them for their shelter. Thank all there is to thank for your welcome there!
I am indeed doing that, Kate!
A wonderful tale of a restless spirit I hope has now come home. Cwtch cwtch and looking forward to hearing the next episode. Love Rachael
Not at all a restless spirit. Just one constantly called to learn the lessons of place in spite of a longing to root. But this is it, I think! And thank you 🙂
That was a stunning read Sharon worth every minute of the wait. I am so sorry you had such a trying time. I do wish you had named the removal company! But the story that has unfolded. I love your house and David. There is nothing like a house that hugs you! This house is happy you and David have claimed her. Can’t wait for the book that will birthed here. Funny Women Who Rose Rooted is on route to me as we speak. Thank you.
Thank you! And I hope you enjoy the book. (It was Careline :-))
What an absolutely beautiful home Sharon! I look forward to reading more about your adventures in it (and hopefully a sooner rather than later arrival of your furnishings).
Much love from a still very snowed in Alberta, Canada
Genevieve
Well, today I started painting and was glad I didn’t have to move furniture. Always a blessing somewhere amidst the chaos!
Dear Sharon
We have never met but I have been following you from afar for awhile .
As an Irishwoman living in France i know a thing or two about being uprooted and rooted and rising from the roots.
I found this last episode of what you are living so profound and moving .
Words cannot explain experiences like this .
Thank you for sharing your tale.
I feel very moved .
Thanks, Dympna. Let’s hope for some slightly more functional profundity to come!
I enjoyed reading this so much, and the photos are wonderful.
What a magical, enchanting place to wake to, to walk, to breathe into… every day. Amazing Sharon. Congratulations!!
Thank you, lovely. See you here some day!
Beautiful, thank you, This time last year I had similar circumstances (minus pandemic) on moving to France 32 weeks pregnant and with a nearly-two-year-old. The moving company went into liquidation with all our stuff stuck in a warehouse in Southampton. It turns out even a tiny baby (or especially?) can sleep very happily in an unheated stone house on a borrowed double mattress on the floor, en-famille. One year on, the house is still embracing our every miss-step – and we haven’t yet got around to finding beds or more than our 2 saucepans… I’m not sure we need to. Good luck with everything. It sounds like a wonderful place.
Oh my heavens. Did you ever get it all back???
Yes we did. Months on. The strange thing – or perhaps just a very human and obvious thing – was that we weren’t as pleased to see anything as we thought we would be. By then life had truly moved on and we were at peace ‘camping’ inside with our little girls. I was thrilled to see the table my grandmother had made pastry on and a pot of wooden spoons that also belonged to her. But we’re learning a lot from the boxes that still remain unopened!
Fascinating! We don’t expect it to happen, but we’ve been talking about how we’d feel if we lost that stuff forever. It’s surprising how little of it we’d mourn, but we would mourn that little quite significantly. I look forward to the possibility of finding out how it feels to learn from boxes that are here but remain unopened!
I love your house and your collie dog and your bravery and that there was energyfor another circling to a new and supportive community. Thank you
Fionn is one of four. But always seems to manage to be in the way of the camera! And thank you too.
I just upgraded my subscription to The Mythic Life to Gold Membership last night and so I was so thrilled to see your post about your move to Wales. I was wondering if you did move. Thank you so much for this story of your challenging and transforming move to Wales. Your stories are so enchanting and was so drawn to you the first time I heard you, I think it was in that Dreamwork Summit. I spent 3 months in Ireland and Iona in 2018 for my sabbath time just immersing myself in Celtic realities. I missed tuning in to your sessions because I was in the Philippines for a month shortly after I enrolled in The Mythic Life. I am just catching up and in a way Covid-19 is gifting me with this being on lock-down in Chicago. More blessings to you and David and family.
Thank you, and hope you enjoy the Gold stories!
Sharon …..I wish you and David all the best…I am one year into my own journey to this high desert country…this morning the scent of sage was overpowering and while the memory of lilacs from my old place is a sweet memory, sage cuts to the deep center of change and I sleep with the window open even though it is still very cold. Again blessings on this next chapter.
Susa, thank you. Hope to meet you again somewhere and hear about that transition …
Wonderful Sharon. I really enjoyed reading this so much. So inspiring, touching and grounding too.
It’s beautiful to witness something of how you meet and travel (and move house) in uncertain times.
I had just started to look for a home of my own before the lockdown and now will need to wait until the situation changes/shifts and perhaps longer. Who knows… but I am in this time being able to understand more deeply the importance of my own home for me… and your sharings somehow feel resonant.
I pray that your new home continues to unfold blessing upon blessing and beautiful stories for you x
Thank you. And wishing you clarity in your own search for home, when it’s possible again.
Thank You Sharon for providing us a look into the part of your journey. Your new home is lovely and I know you will have many wonderful conversations with your new friends, on your land, and all the souls, who have lived in your home.
You have made my heart feel revived with the words of your new place. Thank You!
Thank you and oh good! The old rowan is beginning to get used to my chatter already, I think.
I’ve been looking forward to this email! Your last email discussed “staying put”. That was before the pandemic. Interesting how that email made such a strong impact for me.
I was so looking forward to meeting you in person in Cedar Rapids in Iowa. It is not to be. It was sad when they made the announcement that you would be presenting digitally. Looking forward to it but won’t be the same.
Beautiful new home…looking forward to the stories it will weave.
See you virtually in May.
Hi Donna – yes, very bad timing; two workshops in the US cancelled. I will indeed be doing something online; maybe one day I’ll make it to beautiful Prairiewoods in person.
Thank you for this sharing some of your deep relationship with this new/old house and place. It occurred to me some time ago that the concept of home-ownership disguises that the fact that homes own us for a while not the other way around. We come and go and they (for the most part) remain. We share in them for a time. They don’t belong to us, we belong to them. I find a feeling of peace and beauty in the temporality of this awareness.
Yes, and doesn’t that feel especially so with an old house. So much to teach all the new humans!
Thank you Sharon, for the words, images, beautiful photos of my ancestral land I have been lucky to briefly visit once. For following the call, for the spiralling of your story and telling others about it so those of us who are granted a handful of decades or more can learn to recognize where we are in earthly life. For your courage and sticking it out, seeing it through, to begin again in one sense and continue in the other. Thank you for your writing and the magnificent imagery you conjure! Blessings on your home
Thank you, Jen. I’ve always been open to new beginnings but I’m very much hoping this is the beginning of an ending!
Oh, this makes me homesick for a land I’ve never known but remember somewhere deep in my genes.
Thank you Sharon for sharing your journey to your new place , I feel particularly moved by the way you “cope” with the vulnerability this situation has triggered.
I hear and feel this vulnerability opening the possibility to engage immediately in a full bond with your house and land and to be receptive to their welcoming.
This gives me courage to trust my own vulnerability when planned things are falling apart, invites me to ground myself more and more in the land where I live and whom I love.Thank you from the heart .
The pictures are beautiful…
There have only really been maybe three times in my life where there’s been such a strong breaking open, and sense of being completely in the hands of something that is not-me, and it has always led to something very fine. So I’m hopeful. And yes, the land is the only thing that ever fully holds us in the end. I hope you find it so.
In my (not entirely mis-spent!) youth, back in the mid-70s, I studied English Literature at Aberystwyth University. For a girl from a big city, it was quite a wrench at first, but the power of that incredible landscape quickly seeped into my soul and engendered a profound sense of ‘hiraeth’ for the rest of my life. I wish you both the very best there, and I look forward to your book on growing old.
Thank you, Patricia. A fine university!
Sharon, thank you for this story. Wow! I am so glad you are getting settled into your new land and house and place. The photos are lovely. What a wonderful and soul-filling spot to live. <3
Hi Sharon, I just sent you an email this morning before I discovered your latest blog. And then I just fell down the exquisite rabbit hole that is not only your writing but also your deep Inner knowing of how to drop into silence and listening and appreciation for the spirit within all things. The spirit of this new hone and the land is waiting for you to carry its messages forth to a needing wanting world.
I look forward to Hagitude and it’ makes me laugh. But I mostly look forward to hearing more about how shelter in place is more about the place and less about the stuff we put in it.
I wish I could come visit you here too as I did in the first days of the Irish home.
I must admit I also read 90% of everyone’s comments. To your blog too, because I just didn’t want to let the feeling of nature coming alive go. You’ve made my day. Xxx
Hi Sharon,
Thank you so much for your heart-touching rendering of such an adventure. I discovered “If women rose rooted” while staying in Glastonbury a few weeks ago with my little family for a month and brought back with me from England a deep connection to Somerset and a wish to work with you, both online and at a workshop if possible.
We arrived in the Ardèche, the wild part of France where we live now, the night before the French lockdown. And we are day after day feeling how blessed we are to be able to spend it here, in this medieval village nestled in green mountains where rivers and streams flow and the sense of community still means something.
I completely relate to what you say of geological connection to the place. I grew up in the white stones of Provence and even though I love this place, I never belonged there. My heart-even as a child- knew it needed flowing waters to burst with life and counted the days when we would go on holidays to the Ardèche. Well, now we live here, and I’m always surprised at the “oldness” of the connection I feel with this volcanic and ancient part of France. It has not completely forgotten its celtic heritage, it remains rooted in some traditions and legends (not so many of them unfortunately) and in the fact that there are some local folk who know how to heal fire (fire-stopper we call them in French?) and I often wondered if this was due to the volcanic nature of the rocks and the deep love of the people for their land.
It is funny, but during our mythical stay in Glastonbury, we didn’t have time to travel to Wales, and decided all together that this would be another family trip… So until then, take care and enjoy the wonders of this beautiful place.
Elena
Thank you for sharing this story, Sharon. Your words and outlook help to slow my breathing. My family just moved house, to Kansas, and are living in our own interesting dynamics. Your story is a reminder to be here now, just as it is. I’m listening to the birds call and sending much heart your way. Thank you.
Beautiful. I teared up. I was close to that part of Wales eleven months ago and yearn to return. To touch the land again. And yet…and yet. I am spending more time walking the land right out my back door. With the calm that has come with less traffic, less activity, the bird songs are lush. The colors of spring on vibrant display. The Earth’s breath is expanding and I take it into my lungs each chance I get. And thank you for sharing both the struggle and the shift. Your words touch my heart.
Aww, what a heart-warming sharing, thank you Sharon. Welcome Home!
I’ve been a keen listener to, and reader of, your work these last years, and nearly signed up for one of your courses last year… and now find that you’ve moved to a place only miles from our home in Llanidloes! How exciting! I’ve found that everyone here has a ‘story’ of how they arrived… it seems you are no exception! If there’s anything I can help with, do let me know – I’m trying to think whether we have any furniture that might be useful…
You are such a gift. Thank you.
Finding myself living with my Aged Mother, in between housing … playing at Gypsy when the virus struck … thoughts of where MY place might be after this, flooding my mind.
It brings me peace to read your story. I am strengthened and fortified to find a place to belong by your words.
I take the opportunity of this gift of time to draw wisdom from my Mother and contemplate where to put my roots – her stories of her Irish grandmother reading tea leaves and covering mirrors when there was lightning, here in Melbourne Australia circa 1937, drawing me closer to my Celtic self; intensifying my recent quest to find belonging in a place where I have always felt longing for another. Where will I feel rooted?
Thank you for your words. Our stories continue and become richer with each new day.
Maurni
My Irish great-aunt did those things too, in the north-east of England in the 60s. I hope you find your rootings.
Hello Sharon, inside all your trials for the move is the blessing of being brought into a welcoming community! And what a beautiful place to ‘camp out’ while the house reveals itself to you.
I was thinking of Terry Pratchett’s witches just before you mentioned them, too, and how the land affects, nurtures different aspects in us.
Your home looks delightful, and I look with a little bit of nostalgic longing at the photos… a long time ago I spent lovely summer holidays in that area.
And I totally understand your comment about whether a house is accepting. I’ve lived in many, and they all have personalities and temperaments!
May your time in that once-chapel be filled with love and joy and peace.
Thank you. Pratchett was a writer with more depth than is often assigned to him, wasn’t he.
Oh my gosh Sharon, my heart goes out to you and your husband. What a time to make a major move!
Wales holds a special place in my heart; my father was born in the Valleys and we lived for almost 8 years in Pembrokeshire during the 90s. In more recent times, we have spent time in mid-Wales and have decided that is where we want to move to spend our retirement.
I hope you come to see this time as a time of opportunity, a time to get to know your new home and to settle in without distractions from the outside world.
Thank you!!! But we have landed in a magical place, for which we’re most grateful. Yes, it’s a remarkable part of the world.
I have always believed that houses find you, not the other way around. Your ruby red slippers have landed you unto another magical place and adventure. Let the writing begin. Let the stories be told.
From the good witch of the Pacific North West.
Thank you!!! Ruby slippers, red shoes … two sides of the same archetype.
At last I am reading this all the way through and very glad to know that you have landed in spring quite safely after all. Having taken a few crazy leaps with consequences myself I understand the way in which it makes us pull together and manage things we wouldn’t dream of by choice (at least consciously). Grow well and settle. Love xxx
Indeed, you are the mistress of that 🙂 Thank you, and look forward to catching up in person again once we can move … Love x
I’ve been following you for a few years now and you continue to be intrepid and inspirational. Wishing you light and love in your new neighborhood. From the recent weeks of pandemic I’ll share with you the messages I ‘ve gotten from the cosmic wise ones … STOP MOVING; DO NOTHING; WAIT; LISTEN. Blessings are all around you as spring comes to Wales.
Sharon, I too have a life of geographic circling and a strong sense of hearth and home. I am seeing the pattern of a Longing for and Appreciation of HOME as an overarching theme of my life. My husband and I are in our early 70’s and our relocation to our current home on the New Mexico / CO border has many similar elements to your story ( including an old Land Title abstract several inches thick and yellowed with age.) I must also add that unwelcome displacements from homes I have loved have taught me the value of the Inner Home and Hearth. That also will take me into my cronedom. Your story has inspired me to write my own history of locations and homes as a way of appreciating even more these lovely woven and repeating patterns. Thank You, Lynette
How lovely. And what a gorgeous place to be calling home now! In another life I hope to find myself in New Mexico, close to that border 🙂
Another offering of gratitude, among so many, for your beautiful and heartfelt post. Have returned to it 3 times…. with tea. It changed the trajectory of my week after reading it the first time. Beauty heals.
Terry Pratchett’s books were mentioned in the comments and was hoping someone could point me towards a good place to get introduced. Your website is gorgeous and have spent more time and tea enjoying the offerings . I feel like I have found my tribe. New membership on the way.
Thank you Sharon
Hi Kat – the first book in the ‘Witches’ series is ‘Equal Rites’, followed in order by ‘Wyrd Sisters’, ‘Witches Abroad’, ‘Lords and Ladies’, ‘Maskerade’, ‘Carpe Jugulum’, and then the series of Tiffany Aching books beginning with ‘Wee Free Men’.
Sharon, I’ve been saving your email for when I could really take the time to read about your latest adventure. Sigh. In spite of all the difficulties you encountered, I am in awe and more than a wee bit jealous of your latest move. Moving for me has never been easy. It’s not being afraid to leave but rather finding the right place to go to. I desperately need to leave the city and find a new home in Nature. I dream about moving to Scotland or Ireland, both places that I love. Your new home and the land that it’s on took my breath away. Wishing you many years of happiness in your corner of Paradise in Wales. Thank you for sharing the journey with us.
Thank you, Barbara. I’ve always been in awe of the way precisely the right places offer themselves up for whatever I need to learn in them. Mostly positive lessons, but not all. Perhaps because I really do see place as my greatest teacher, it presents itself accordingly. Hope you find your place out of the city soon.
Thank you for this beautiful story I saved it for Easter Sunday to read while my bread was baking It filled me up as the bread will too! Looking forward to the next book and more of these inbetween stories.
Croeso!
I enjoyed reading about your move. Moving house has to be one of the most stressful things to do, I should know I’ve done it over a dozen times. My last move, was to a little cottage high on the North Wales hills, and I hope to live out the rest of my life here too.
What amazing timing for you – 1 day before lock down! Your souls obviously belong there…. As they say, home is where the heart is and your heart sounds at home already – the little touches, when they do arrive will be the icing on the cake.
I love the look of your stove – bread will do just nicely in that. There’s nothing more homely than the smell of bread.
Lovely. Well done, both of you! I sometimes pass that way going to Mach (although not as often as I’d like.) I’d love to drop in and say hello next time I do. Good luck with the next months and – as imagine you’ve thought more than a few times – hurray that it’s May and not November… With love from the orchardlands of Devon. Tom
Tom, you are always welcome here. Spare bed included! And wells and remarkable trees to tell stories to. We’ll look forward to it.