This time of year leads naturally to the question of what kind of ancestor will I be? What will be my legacy?

This autumn more than others, I’ve really felt the presence of the ancestors. It’s fitting that I would, this time of year. My Celtic ancestors would have celebrated Samhain, the ‘day-of-the-dead’ (popularised as Halloween), as autumnal leaves fell and dark descended for the winter.

It is often said that the four day solo wilderness fast that is known as Vision Quest is the ultimate act of surrender. Certainly the times that I have chosen to sit on the earth in this way have required me to let go in a very real way… as my physical energy diminishes, as the hours creep by under beating sun or driving rain. It’s surrender in a very visceral, unromantic way. There’s no other way through the eye of this particular needle.

However, while Vision Quest has strengthened my muscle of yielding, in the last few months something has required more surrender of me than even this ceremony - motherhood.

For someone whose life’s passion and deepest enquiry is about how to guide people through an initiatory stage of life, I sit writing on another very particular kind of threshold, one that I didn’t imagine I would experience in this life. Motherhood.

An evening with neighbours, flatmates and friends to discuss climate emergency provided Claire Dunn, with a set of guiding principles for resilience in the face of crisis.

I wake at first light and blink my eyes open. It’s too quick for the dream images. They turn on their heels and scurry back down the ladder before I can catch them. I walk upstairs and switch the kettle on. From the crack in the window…

How does one set intentions for the new year? Intentions that are a genuine movement of the heart rather than a ‘self-improvement’ decision? Instead of mind maps or mandalas, this new year I took the question out to the wilds for a day, and let the mysteries of nature and psyche shake it loose...

Have you ever had an encounter in nature that felt numinous; a direct communication to you from beyond the ordinary? Have you ever walked into the physical reality of a night dream you once had? What is your relationship how symbol and sign show up in your life?…

About ten years I found Soulcraft by Bill Plotkin in my letterbox. Opening to the first chapter I felt relief flood my system as he described with exactness the impulse I was feeling to dive deeply into the mysteries of soul and wild nature. Rather than a pathology, this is a vital phase of...