Seeking Feminine Solace Over the Seas!!!

“This older woman needed an escape, some joy, some adventure and to find some life again and so she, (me!!!), finally escaped the long Melbourne Lockdown to go overseas.” 

When? in May and June this year, 2022.

LONDON CALLING

The next day I set off from Durnamuck and drive to Inverness airport, an hour and a half away.  A lovely regional airport, it doesn’t have the dramas of every other airport in the country that morning.  Being the beginning of the school holidays and because of the associated post covid travel delays, staff shortages and other dramas, many airports are cancelling flights and sending people away.  However, there is one exception, the radio broadcaster in the car tells me, for my destination, Inverness airport.  Hooray!!!!!

  I say goodbye to my trusty Volkswagen golf, leave many of my winter op shopped clothes with the Avis Car Rental lady attendant for return to the local op shop and enjoy a coffee at the gate.  Of course, I meet another couple, this time English people, who have escaped England to live on Harris, an Outer Hebrides Island.  Like Australia, many  people have left the UK cities and used the covid pandemic as an opportunity to live in beautiful rural locations, and you can’t get more rural than Harris.  I am fascinated at their story and delight in how excited and fulfilled they are with their new lifestyle.  Am I tempted…..you bet I am.

I don’t arrive in London until nearly 6pm.  Once you get to cities, any city, everything takes so long.  I wait for bags, trains, more trains, and more trains but eventually find my lodgings in Paddington, London.  I have an arrangement to meet my nephew’s new wife for dinner, he’s out of town on business.  Completely wrecked, I can’t make our prearranged location as I  just can’t face another train.  Thoughtful and kind as my niece-in-law is, she agrees to meet me at the end of my street, a hotel area with many restaurants close to Paddington station.  Dinner is delightful and rejuvenating and I am blessed by my young friends advanced IT  skills as  I have a tricky digital challenge. 

I have to complete a digital pass to reenter Australia.  We entertain the entire tiny restaurant with our antics trying to complete this online procedure which is highly complex.  How good old, luddite, me would be expected to achieve this task on my own when an IT expert has trouble I don’t know. The English diners are amused by the Australian peculiarities when explained to them, although they are familiar with our red tape and excessiveness with bureaucratic rules having followed our covid story.  We do get it done; however, it takes well over an hour.  I am grateful for the help and confident I am prepared for my flight home the next day.  It’s time to fly home.

FEMININE EMPOWERMENT – THE EXHIBITION TO SURPASS ALL HOPES AND DREAMS

On my last day in London, I attend the British museum and the Feminine Empowerment Exhibition.  What a coincidence to be in London for this exhibition, given I have spent my entire trip seeking out sites, objects and experiences that explore feminine power.  In attending, I get to see the original objects that I have only read about and seen in photographs.  I see the epitaph called The Queen of the Night, with my favorite goddess depicted in clay, Inanna the Sumerian sky goddess.  Another favorite is Lilith, and this one is hanging from the ceiling. 

Only Lilith would find such a unique way to present herself.  There’s also a Sheela na gig, commandingly forthright in her expression and another favorite Quan Yin….Goddess of compassion and the bringer of a soft heart.  I feel being at this exhibition is such a fitting end to my trip.  For me to be here in London, basking in such feminine  power has given my trip a special conclusion.  It really sums up everything I have been exploring  for six weeks.  If I had ever questioned the need for feminine power to re establish a balance so sadly lacking in this world, and in myself post covid, any doubts have been extinguished.

  And if I ever doubted that there is a natural synchronicity in life, an order that remains unexplainable but absolutely undeniable, then this trip has given me every confidence to go on believing. There is meaning, and order in this universe and I am sure of the magic that surrounds it all and am happily content that this is all unknowable, unfathomable.  I don’t need to understand why such serendipitous events come together……I just need to experience them, surrender to their power and trust. And so, I arrive to board my very full Singapore airlines flight, departing a crazy and chaotic Heathrow airport.

 I only just make it onto the plane, thanks to that ridiculous Australian digital pass requiring hours of tweaking and battling.  I am concerned that some Australians don’t make it onto the plane, such is the chaos associated with this boarding requirement (only for those bound for Australia mind you!).  I will reluctantly return to my neurotically anxious and bureaucratic country but refueled by the experiences I so needed from other cultures and landscapes.  I am filled up now and reminded, that the freedom to travel and experience other countries literally keeps the soul flowing and expanding and for me, that need, that passion will never stop.  I must keep travelling!

Lessons of a Desperate Traveller

I waited three years to travel, three long and painful years.  My healing needs were clear to me, and it was leaving Australia that I needed.

 I also knew that the feminine side of myself, and the feminine energy required for any kind of restorative recovery, could be found on any quest, any attempt to break free from familiarity and the limitations of the ordinary.

 Travel as an adventure is the great wake up call.

Travel slices you open and challenges any sense of comfort and perceived sense of safety. 

You walk on the edge and on that edge, you know you are alive.  When travel is combined with a seeking soul like mine, and that soul takes a journey to meet its destiny, magic happens. 

I once did not trust my feminine self, and I did not know my own feminine nature.  But my growth over decades, has all been about discovering this lost part of myself. 

I refound my feminine soul on this journey, as I have on many other journeys around the world.

However, this journey placed the natural world, and particularly mother earth, at the centre.

I had anticipated Scotland would be an immersion in nature. And it was a deep dive into landscape, into the colours of mountains of seas, and meeting this alongside its animals and plants.

Ultimately, the animal in me wanted connection, to meet that lifeforce, to feel my own heartbeat, including its fears, joys and wonder.  As I write this story, back in Melbourne on my computer, I still feel a yearning for Scotland.  Returning is a no brainer.

I will go back.  I will taste that Scottish rain again, I will feed from that palette of muted shades of sky, sea, pasture and mountain.  And my feminine soul, she will wait, and remember.   She has the deepest of knowledge.  She is my very best, my most authentic, my wisest self.

Healing power……….the feminine has it in spades.