Category Archives: Grace

Beginnings, Creativity, Dreaming, Grace, Gratitude, Reflection, Ritual, Storytelling

2024 – My Year of Wild

‘Maybe the journey isn’t so much about becoming anything. Maybe it is about un-becoming everything that isn’t really you.’

Paul Coehlo

It started a couple of years ago and a deal made with the benevolent Universe that I would learn to Trust my intuition. It would be a journey to recognising and reconnecting with that calm, clear voice of authentic Me as separate from ego. But what a journey it has been! My Year of Trust in 2022 brought me dreams come true and an indelible lesson in how to balance what I can make happen and what I invite to let happen.

2023 has been My Year of Light and Love, the next steps on my growth journey. To find balance in how I love, but also to embrace the ‘who I am inside’ and finally allow her to be loved just as she is – Sunshine Reflected. Another incredible year of synergy and alignment and abundance, living my Dream Life. Choosing the way of love over fear always.

In this Love Lightly space, I found a muse with grace and wisdom beyond his years. He has a mind and heart wide open, paying close attention to each one of my details knowing how to take me to my very limits. He has actual depth and insight, resilient, and with a bite that keeps the world in check. So I have finally started writing the book I somehow knew was always in me. I am being pushed creatively and that is showing up in my art too.

At this time of reflection and setting intention for the coming year, some words are showing up in my journalling repeatedly….

If you have read any of my other writing, you will know that I have a firm belief in the energy that connects All that is. I have found that tapping into this energy at a cosmic level is what drives intuition and instinct. Overwhelmingly this energy is good and benevolent, in my experience. So part of my reflection time involves looking for guidance and wisdom from Nature and Universe:

The tree wisdom card I pulled from my oracle deck as I thought about my word for 2024 was the energy of Regeneration from Yew.

I used the wonderful energy of the recent full moon in Cancer on 26 December as a focus for this end of year reflection. The last full moon of 2023 brought an invitation to come back to our hearts as we prioritise nurturing ourselves to become the safe space we long for.

Venus is in Sagittarius at the moment until 23 January, with a clear energetic shift that inspires a celebratory approach to life, love and relationships, moving closer to authentic self. Sagittarius inspires us to recover our connection to our authentic, undomesticated self, to Natural Laws, and to our intuition, being drawn to freedom, authenticity and honesty. During the upcoming days, chances to recognise how freedom and connection aren’t mutually exclusive, discovering how to nurture both the need for intimacy and the desire for independent exploration of life.

A few months ago, I wrote about Reclaiming Wild, all about taking back the concepts of  Wild, Wildness and Wilderness as part of my Soul’s vocabulary – a way of expressing true nature-connectedness, a pattern of my Soul, my Soul Maker and the season I now find myself in living my Dream Life.

What a lovely concoction of Cosmic and Nature energy to feed mind and heart and set intention!

So, on the foundation of two previous words for the year, a journey back to authentic Me has begun. A reclaiming of Wild and Untamed Me, a fully reconnected back to Nature version of Me. Embracing my Wild Heart. Empowering a balanced sacred-feminine, divine-masculine essence of Me. So I am better able to live wholeheartedly and fulfill my Great Purpose.

Me empowered, rewilded, reclaiming my Wildness means pure space is open for empowering Other, empowering Wilderness. I hope by reclaiming my internal Wild, I will be more in tune with Nature. This spiritual rewilding enabling me to better serve the Conservation Collective I am part of. This Collective is all about the job of physical rewilding as a Nature-based Solution for the environmental and social ills of our time.

Rewilding. It is messy and real and imperfect. A bit like Nature really – wild, messy and full of imperfection but Nature knows how to embrace her magic. Understanding more deeply what it means to be human, to be beautifully imperfect, to be wonderfully lost at times. I am excited about embracing my magic and my happy wanderer ways in 2024 – My Year of Wild 🖤

Dreaming, Extraordinary Voices, Grace, Gratitude, Human Wildlife Coexistence, Joy, Nature, Reflection, Storytelling, Travel, Values, Wildlife Conservation

Reclaiming Wild

Wilderness

Have we forgotten
that wilderness is not a place,
but a pattern of soul
where every tree, every bird and beast
is a soul maker?

Have we forgotten
that wilderness is not a place
but a moving feast of stars,
footprints, scales and beginnings?

Since when
did we become afraid of the night
and that only the bright stars count?
or that our moon is not a moon
unless it is full?

By whose command
were the animals
Through groping fingers,
One for each hand,
Reduced to the big and little five?

Have we forgotten
That every creature is within us
carried by tides
of earthly blood
and that we named them?

Have we forgotten
that wilderness is not a place,
but a season
and that we are in its
final hour?

Ian McCallum

It was a very cold August morning as we set off before sunup on our routine morning drive around the reserve. I grabbed my favourite merino wool blanket scarf at the last minute before the vehicle left base. It was only when we got back to camp I realised the scarf was gone. As the sun rose and the morning warmed up, we all slowly delayered. I had folded up the scarf and tucked in behind me on the seat but it must have slipped out as we negotiated the bumpy dirt tracks of the reserve. It had been a risk to take the scarf along, I knew it at the time.

Two days later, on another morning drive, this time in the middle of my wildlife track and sign test, we rounded a corner and there on the side of the road was my scarf! Not all in one piece though. I had a little help gathering up all the damp scraps of wool, dirt and vegetation encrusted and smelling distinctly wild. Back at base I laid them all out trying to put the wool scarf puzzle back together. Turned out only one small section was missing!

Hyena tracks were all around the scene of the scarf wreckage so the conclusion was that younger members of the reserve’s clan had found my scarf and had a good old play. Some of the holes in bits of scarf look very much like bite marks and the centre of the scarf was ripped by claws.

The pieces of my favourite scarf were carefully packed away as my year of adventure and wandering continued.

As I have settled into my homecoming these past months, I have found time to stitch the hyena-mauled scarf back together. It as been a soulful experience and given me pause to reflect and meditate on Wild, Wildness and Wilderness.

Recently, my mom reminded me about the incredibly inspiring words of Ian McCallum. I started this post with his poem, Wilderness. I can’t express just how much his words resonate with me. I have such a Wild Heart and consider myself a bit of Wildhearted Revolutionary.

In the world of biodiversity conservation, Rewilding has become the latest in a long line of buzz words. We associate this concept as a good thing – a nature-based solution for tackling the environmental and social ills of our time.

But Wild, Wildness and Wilderness are terms very often having negative connotations such inhospitable, lack of discipline or restraint, lack of sound reasoning, neglected or abandoned or a position of disfavour, badlands or wastes.

Today I reclaim Wild, Wildness and Wilderness as part of my Soul’s vocabulary – a way of expressing true nature-connectedness, a pattern of my Soul, my Soul Maker and the season I now find myself in living my Dream Life. I claim my Wildheartedness. I claim my Wildness. I claim back Wilderness for me and all my Soul Tribe.

Stitching my hyena-ripped scarf back together has become a symbol for me of my connection to Wild and Wilderness. My own metaphor for the journey I am on, connecting me to where I have been and where I am now.

A little bit of encouragement today to reclaim your Wildness 🖤

Find your peace in true Wilderness 🖤

Africa, Birth Place, Blessings, Extraordinary Voices, Family, Girl Empowerment, Grace, Gratitude, Ordinary Women, Reflection

August in Mzansi

August is Women’s Month here in South Africa and we have just celebrated National Women’s Day on 9 August.

Finding home again in this land of my birth, I have spent a little time reflecting on why the need for a day, a whole month even, to celebrate women. My bestie reckons every day should be women’s day and he is right. But then I do wonder if these ‘days’ provide a good time to pause and consider the theme of that ‘day’. For example, we acknowledge Lions on 10 August and Elephants on 12 August. Actually I love that these two species’ ‘days’ fall in Women’s Month. A chance to champion Matriarchs and Lionesses in all their wisdom and fierceness!

My ponderings this August have largely centred around my femininity and how I feel about being a woman in the world today. I realise this is an incredibly personal experience and I am only speaking for myself in what I am relating here.

My femininity is something I have never struggled with. I am innately feminine despite many interests perceived as more masculine in nature.

Feminism, on the other hand, is something I have struggled with over the years. I should not struggle with the concept of Feminism, right? With the definition as ‘the advocacy of women’s rights on the basis of gender equality’, what is there to struggle with?

I suppose part of it comes down to that human failing of taking things to extremes. Our quest as a species for equality and balance seems a constant challenge. So, where perhaps many others have been faced with toxic masculinity in their early life experience, I have come into contact more with toxic femininity labelled as feminism.

Not in my family, please understand. I have the most phenomenal of female role models amongst my relatives and I could not be more overwhelmed with gratitude to my mom, sister, grannies, great grannies, aunts and cousins for their love, support and ‘sisterhood’.

Female friendships are what I have found difficult over the years. Being part of a group of girls always seemed complicated with lots of mind games I was not cut out for. That stuff utterly perplexed me, still does. I wear my heart on my sleeve and so was totally out of my depth in this ‘mean girls’ world. As a result, most of my closest friends growing up were male.

What I am learning is that much of the negative experience around female friendships is born from trauma and disillusionment with society’s expectations of us as females. I think many of us have repeated, unconscious societal messages that pit us against one another instead of fostering kindness and compassion and embracing each other in our shared feminine experience. More recently, as I have started to delve into the concept of ‘Sisterhood’, I am beginning to realise the magic that lies here. The first time I was really intrigued by the Sisterhood concept was in reading The Awakened Woman: remembering & reigniting our sacred dreams by Dr Tererai Trent. I am currently working through the book again, this time as an audiobook which is read by the author. The beautiful African lilt of her voice makes experiencing this book an extra special experience. Dr Tererai has a whole section of her book talking through the power of female friendships and forming a sacred sisterhood.

Sisterhood
the feeling of kinship with and closeness to a group of women, an association, society, or community of women linked by a common interest

I have become aware that my strong bond with the females of my family is a form of Sisterhood. I have also become aware that I have stumbled into a Sisterhood of women in Conservation – our love of Wild truly connects us. I think to some extent it is that shared trauma and disillusionment with society’s expectations of us as females that I mentioned previously that connects us. I started trying to list the names of these phenomenal women I recognise as part of this Sisterhood. I lost count. Wow, what a privilege! How is this my life!? To be aligned with these ecowarriors, to know their names, to have shared the road, to have spent time fireside under starry African skies, to have belly laughed and ugly cried together in our shared Sisterhood is a beyond-words honour.

And on top of all this, I have my Anam Ċara (Soul-friend) Sisterhood….

“Anam Ċara is a Celtic phrase that loosely translates as “soul friend.” It describes a sacred relationship that is founded in connection, authenticity, trust and respect….. a Celtic philosophy….. that two souls that experience a unique and deeply personal connection will be stronger together than they are apart.”

So this month of August here in Mzansi, I am full of love and gratitude for all the amazing women in my life – my Sisterhood. I am thankful for what it means for me to be a woman in my world. It is safe and full of love and care unlike the female experience of so many other women in this world. I am also aware in appreciation for the wonderful men in my life and how they are just as much a part of this celebration as my Sisterhood. I see you all. I am because We are.

Africa, Birth Place, Extraordinary Voices, Grace, Gratitude, Mindfulness, New Year, Reflection, Storytelling

Sunshine Reflected

What follows is one of the hardest things I’ve been nudged to write and share so far.…

These are some of the lyrics from a song in the Disney movie Mulan – the 2020 live action version:

I am now
In a world where I
Have to hide my heart
And what I believe in
But somehow
I will show the world
What’s inside my heart
And be loved for who I am
Who is that girl I see
Staring straight back at me?
Why is my reflection
Someone I don’t know?
Must I pretend that I’m
Someone else for all time?
When will my reflection show
Who I am inside?

Matthew Wilder | David Joel Zippel

Heard this song again recently and these words floored me. Cathartic* tears flowed. With these tears a wave of freedom and relief washed over me. An absolute realisation that I am making progress on my life’s journey. I have never really had any sense of this growth before.

I think I am finally beginning to see my reflection showing who I am inside.

I know I strive for evolution, for development, for forward movement in my personal growth. I know I set big expectations for myself and the kind of person I want to Be. But it always seems an endless road, a winding, twisty track through seemingly impassable mountains and in a thick mist so I can never tell if I’m making headway (or heart-way, in my case).

So I repeat… I think I am finally beginning to see my reflection showing who I am inside.…

The ‘who I am inside’ is this Beautiful Soul.
She is Sunshine personified.
She is deeply connected to Nature, its rhythms and cycles.
She is highly intuitive.
She is a Creative.
She is neither ‘too much’ nor ‘not enough’.
She is kind, courageous and compassionate.
One of her gifts is creating a nurturing, empathic space where Loved Ones find safety and find soul solace.
Her Heart is Wild.
She comes alive in Mama Africa’s wild spaces where her Spirit wanders free but is never lost.
She is tenacious, feisty and fun to be with.
She is the Little Miss Sunshine her mother called her as a child.
She loves fiercely but lightly – a complete paradox.

Her shadow side is sensitive and struggles with equanimity. She has absorbed false messages over the years of “too much emotionally”, “emotional rollercoaster” “too smart”, “high maintenance”, “too independent”, “too needy” and “unlovable drama queen”. At the same time she has also received the message of “not enough” in many ways. In her fear of rejection she will cling on for dear life, singular in her focus to prove she is worthy of love and acceptance. She will twist and contort herself to be who she thinks she should be based on the perceived expectations of others. So counter-productive, this leads to overwhelm for both her as well as the object of her love.

My growth journey is seeking balance. To take the best parts of the paradox of loving fiercely while also learning to love lightly. This can only happen in authenticity. In giving myself permission to be the ‘who I am inside’.

So how has this realisation of progress on this journey come about?

A year ago I set out on an adventure to return to my homeland. For a short time or more permanently, I had no idea. I just knew it was time to come home. On the plane journey back to South Africa, I made a deal with the Universe that I would remain open to any and all possibility. That I would Trust in the Universe to guide this homecoming. That I would allow ‘who I am inside’ to show up and connect me to this next chapter.

I have already shared in previous blog posts from 2022 what eventuated from this year of Trust as I showed up openly and authentically in this time of homecoming. In the course of the year, I made so many incredible connections. Beautiful Souls who I have been privileged to meet and spend time with – my anam ċara (soul-friends). In showing up as ‘who I am inside’, I have had this Sunshine side of myself reflected back at me in countless human encounters. These encounters may have been mere moments or the start of lifelong friendship, even reconnection from past life. My heart is so full of gratitude for these genuine connections, especially my besties who have really challenged me in recent weeks to lean into some of my imbalances with kindness and compassion. Thankful for the pure space opened up in the Spirit of Ubuntu. And now also grateful for how I have been able to see myself reflected in this pure space of genuine connection.

‘Who I am inside’ has been quietly showing up along the way even when I thought I had locked her away safe behind the walls of ego. She shows up in my writing more often than my ego would like, I think 😊 In building up the courage to write this piece, I went back and read through previous posts. A few stand out to me now as being quite inspired considering when they were originally written. Linking to them here to add a little more context to this very raw and honest post about the ‘who I am inside’.

Candy-striped Sneakers

Period Poverty

The Conservationist

Wild October

My Charmed Life

2023 is my year of Light and Love, the next steps on my growth journey. To find balance in how I love, but also to embrace the ‘who I am inside’ and finally allow her to Be Loved Just As She Is.

Finding the courage to write and share this has been such an act of vulnerability as well as a renewed commitment to that deal with the Universe – remaining open to any and all possibility.

Do I think I have found my way through the mist to the top of the mountain? No way! But I do know with absolutely certainty that I am on the right track and I will stay true to my path.

I am putting this part of my Story out there in the hope it finds its intended audience. I truly believe my growth journey of trying to make sense of my place in the world is not unique. It is part of the human experience. We are all on our own quest for love and belonging. I sincerely hope these words come across your path if you need them. Please share this post with anyone you sense may need to read these words.

May you find hope, encouragement, inspiration and a peace of spirit for your own journey. May you realise that your ‘who I am inside’ is precious and beautiful and if you let that version of you see the light of day, ‘who I am inside’ will be reflected back at you in all their glory. Pure Love. Just Love.

This is what our sad world needs so desperately – Pure Love. Just Love. 🖤

*I love the word ‘cathartic’. It has the same Ancient Greek origin as my given name – Cathryn – relating to ‘pure’ and ‘clean’. I also love how the meaning in our modern use is connected to emotional release. As a Cancerian (sun, moon and rising sign!) and an Enneagram Type Four I am extremely emotionally driven. This part of my character continues to prove my greatest strength but also my biggest weakness (and growth area). Love 💖& Light ✨

Grace, Gratitude, Joy, Nature, Reflection, Storytelling

Love Grows Here

February 14… Love Grows Here

…in vulnerability

…in genuine connection

…in letting go of ego

…in kindness

…in honest words always

…in shared free spirit

…in self-awareness

…in sanctuary

…in sweet affection

…in holding space open for one another

…in loving lightly

…in Nature’s nurturing energy

…in our Wild Hearts

…in finding Home in each other

It is the soul language of Anam Ċara

Evermore…. Fire & Rain

It is a poem. A poem about Loving Lightly. With his permission, we are sharing a little of how this connection is playing out for us 🖤