So beautiful Layla thank you. I found your words incredibly evocative and so magical as you are embraced by the dark. I also loved your reflections about the earth and the female body/form. How I long to explore those sacred places in Ireland! I love a lot of what John o’Donohue has to say about the earth and our bodies and the relationship between us (though it is less specific to the feminine) in his Elements book. However it makes total sense to me that we are one with Mother Earth and we can be absorbed by her womb spaces xx
I haven't actually read his Elements book Lyndsay - I MUST. Thank you for this nudge. And there is always a bed here for you in Wicklow if you make it over to explore... Some day we will organise an in person Substack meet up I'm sure :-) x
Stunning piece and oh how i long to be embraced in the womb of the motherland.. i have lived abroad since 2007 and it’s only leaving ireland and connecting to indigenous culture in australia that i learned of my own own sacred ancestry, ancient mythology and the rich feminine energy of the land that birthed me.. now i can’t wait to go back every year and explore her through a different lens, love on her, listen to her and get to know her in a whole new way again, she longs for us to come back to her bosom and be nursed by her strength & sustenance oh how i love her so much.. can’t wait to get that book focal na mban when i am home for christmas and go to bru na bóinn for solstice will be so special 💚🤍🧡 and i also felt scared for you out walking in the dark how sad that we have to feel this way in the safety of mother natures embrace xx
A missus, thanks for this share. I think it definitely took me the 8 years living abroad and then a return to really feel that connection. I remember so clearly the draw and yearning I felt when I was in Berlin, the delight when I made it home... So special to go to brú no bóinn when you are home xoxoxoxoxox
This is so beautiful Layla, I listened to your voice over of it and it was like listening to poetry. I have felt such a pull to explore more of England and Ireland and really understand my own roots in both places, more so than anywhere else in the world even though I also crave some warmth and exotic lands to discover!! I love the idea of the womb lands… it truly does feel like a thread between my own body and the land. Very excited for your conversation with Jessie, I studied with her a few years ago and she was a hugely impactful person in my matrescence journey, can’t wait to listen and also to read her book. Thank you for this wonderful piece. Xx
Thanks so much for this Lauren, yes, I feel that local pull too, rather than the exotic far off lands (although sun would be so nice on my skin too!). How amazing you studied with Jessie, she's awesome! Her book is wonderful, and I'm so excited about our chat tonight... sitting here about to make some notes for the conversation - I think we could talk for DAYS! hope you can join us, say hi!
I live in Saffron Walden. There's a turf maze opposite my house. Apparently if you stand in the middle it increases your chances of fertility. I walked round it at the end of both my pregnancies to try and get labour going.
Hi Claire, thanks for sharing this - I'm imagining all these other kinds of maps we could draw of the landscape with stories like these... I'm also picturing what connection with place you walked into your own children's DNA with those late pregnancy maze-walks xxx
I'm not sure but there's definitely connection. A shaman comes each year to do ceremony there with a group. I always seem to be there when he comes. There's something going on.
Love this piece Layla, so many juicy questions to mull over. It’s also sent me down an internet search rabbit hole of Welsh words they definitely didn’t teach us at GCSE! There’s an equivalent phrase in Welsh for the womb - ‘yng nghrombil y ddaear’, literally in the stomach of the earth.
I’ve been getting up at 6:30 to write recently, so keen to try for 6am to write as part of a group. I grew up by the sea but now live inland and I struggle to connect with the land around me. Its cycles and seasons feel too slow, while I feel more tidal. I think the nearest landscape to us that I connect with is the high moorland - it feels like an inland sea. There’s also a village near where we live called Maiden Law and I feel like there must be a story there.
That’s so interesting there’s a similar word in Welsh. The words I quoted were from a book the speaker compiled from speaking to natives in the Gaeltacht - he says there’s so much more to discover, and also he’s not the person to do it really!
Would love to have you join us in the dark, how have you been finding the 6:30 risings?
It is interesting how we feel more or less connection to different landscapes. I have always been drawn to the sea but living near woodland now I have fallen in love with it, but there are other parts of Ireland I do not connect to so much …
I’ve been waking earlier and earlier this year - I feel like I’m standing in the shallows of perimenopause and the way my sleep is changing is linked to that. Trying to embrace the early starts and the quiet time before my kids wake.
My favourite Welsh phrase (totally unrelated to womb spaces, sorry) is “Mae hi'n bwrw hen wragedd a ffyn” - it’s raining old ladies with sticks, rather than the English equivalent of raining cats and dogs.
I'm waking so much earlier too ! And stupidly / strangely I hadn't connected it with perimenopause until you mention it here! Interesting... standing in the shallows of it, such a good way of putting it. Raining old ladies with sticks is fabulous!!!
"An island whose landscape is filled with womb-spaces, imagine it." THIS. I went to Manchán's talk with my husband, and he was really taken by the idea of passage 'tombs' as womb-spaces to be fertilised by the sun. I had come across it before, and once you know this, there is no unseeing it! There is so much more I want to say, but I need to let this trickle through. Layla, thank you for pulling together those threads in the dark.
I agree Annette, it feels like there is so much to trickle through. I’ve heard of the idea of the light penetrating / the fertilising by the sun, but something about these throbbing dark wombs that really got me listening this time! As always, love to hear more of your thoughts as they filter through x
So beautiful Layla thank you. I found your words incredibly evocative and so magical as you are embraced by the dark. I also loved your reflections about the earth and the female body/form. How I long to explore those sacred places in Ireland! I love a lot of what John o’Donohue has to say about the earth and our bodies and the relationship between us (though it is less specific to the feminine) in his Elements book. However it makes total sense to me that we are one with Mother Earth and we can be absorbed by her womb spaces xx
I haven't actually read his Elements book Lyndsay - I MUST. Thank you for this nudge. And there is always a bed here for you in Wicklow if you make it over to explore... Some day we will organise an in person Substack meet up I'm sure :-) x
Stunning piece and oh how i long to be embraced in the womb of the motherland.. i have lived abroad since 2007 and it’s only leaving ireland and connecting to indigenous culture in australia that i learned of my own own sacred ancestry, ancient mythology and the rich feminine energy of the land that birthed me.. now i can’t wait to go back every year and explore her through a different lens, love on her, listen to her and get to know her in a whole new way again, she longs for us to come back to her bosom and be nursed by her strength & sustenance oh how i love her so much.. can’t wait to get that book focal na mban when i am home for christmas and go to bru na bóinn for solstice will be so special 💚🤍🧡 and i also felt scared for you out walking in the dark how sad that we have to feel this way in the safety of mother natures embrace xx
A missus, thanks for this share. I think it definitely took me the 8 years living abroad and then a return to really feel that connection. I remember so clearly the draw and yearning I felt when I was in Berlin, the delight when I made it home... So special to go to brú no bóinn when you are home xoxoxoxoxox
Stunning, fecund, gestating words. I listened and was enthralled
Thank you so much Clare, that means so much x
This is so beautiful Layla, I listened to your voice over of it and it was like listening to poetry. I have felt such a pull to explore more of England and Ireland and really understand my own roots in both places, more so than anywhere else in the world even though I also crave some warmth and exotic lands to discover!! I love the idea of the womb lands… it truly does feel like a thread between my own body and the land. Very excited for your conversation with Jessie, I studied with her a few years ago and she was a hugely impactful person in my matrescence journey, can’t wait to listen and also to read her book. Thank you for this wonderful piece. Xx
Thanks so much for this Lauren, yes, I feel that local pull too, rather than the exotic far off lands (although sun would be so nice on my skin too!). How amazing you studied with Jessie, she's awesome! Her book is wonderful, and I'm so excited about our chat tonight... sitting here about to make some notes for the conversation - I think we could talk for DAYS! hope you can join us, say hi!
I live in Saffron Walden. There's a turf maze opposite my house. Apparently if you stand in the middle it increases your chances of fertility. I walked round it at the end of both my pregnancies to try and get labour going.
Hi Claire, thanks for sharing this - I'm imagining all these other kinds of maps we could draw of the landscape with stories like these... I'm also picturing what connection with place you walked into your own children's DNA with those late pregnancy maze-walks xxx
I'm not sure but there's definitely connection. A shaman comes each year to do ceremony there with a group. I always seem to be there when he comes. There's something going on.
so interesting...!
Love this piece Layla, so many juicy questions to mull over. It’s also sent me down an internet search rabbit hole of Welsh words they definitely didn’t teach us at GCSE! There’s an equivalent phrase in Welsh for the womb - ‘yng nghrombil y ddaear’, literally in the stomach of the earth.
I’ve been getting up at 6:30 to write recently, so keen to try for 6am to write as part of a group. I grew up by the sea but now live inland and I struggle to connect with the land around me. Its cycles and seasons feel too slow, while I feel more tidal. I think the nearest landscape to us that I connect with is the high moorland - it feels like an inland sea. There’s also a village near where we live called Maiden Law and I feel like there must be a story there.
That’s so interesting there’s a similar word in Welsh. The words I quoted were from a book the speaker compiled from speaking to natives in the Gaeltacht - he says there’s so much more to discover, and also he’s not the person to do it really!
Would love to have you join us in the dark, how have you been finding the 6:30 risings?
It is interesting how we feel more or less connection to different landscapes. I have always been drawn to the sea but living near woodland now I have fallen in love with it, but there are other parts of Ireland I do not connect to so much …
I’ve been waking earlier and earlier this year - I feel like I’m standing in the shallows of perimenopause and the way my sleep is changing is linked to that. Trying to embrace the early starts and the quiet time before my kids wake.
My favourite Welsh phrase (totally unrelated to womb spaces, sorry) is “Mae hi'n bwrw hen wragedd a ffyn” - it’s raining old ladies with sticks, rather than the English equivalent of raining cats and dogs.
I'm waking so much earlier too ! And stupidly / strangely I hadn't connected it with perimenopause until you mention it here! Interesting... standing in the shallows of it, such a good way of putting it. Raining old ladies with sticks is fabulous!!!
"An island whose landscape is filled with womb-spaces, imagine it." THIS. I went to Manchán's talk with my husband, and he was really taken by the idea of passage 'tombs' as womb-spaces to be fertilised by the sun. I had come across it before, and once you know this, there is no unseeing it! There is so much more I want to say, but I need to let this trickle through. Layla, thank you for pulling together those threads in the dark.
I agree Annette, it feels like there is so much to trickle through. I’ve heard of the idea of the light penetrating / the fertilising by the sun, but something about these throbbing dark wombs that really got me listening this time! As always, love to hear more of your thoughts as they filter through x