words by Jackie Stewart | images by Jason Smalley
Sometimes we find our Soul medicine in the most unexpected places and we can’t even guess what it will heal in our hearts.
I woke to a feeling of vulnerability and smallness, a trickling fear in my belly that I couldn’t quite place. I knew it would help to make space to allow it, to really feel it but I wasn’t quite ready for that. I needed to escape the feelings for just a little while. I needed sanctuary. I needed wool.
I needed sanctuary. I needed wool.
Soft gentle yarn, stroked between my fingers and held against my cheek. A 20 minute drive through hammering rains and whirling autumn leaves and I was back at the wool shop.
They showed me how to turn a heel here in the summer, perched on a stool with three generations of women sharing their stories while our needles clacked. Tales of school days and of leaving homelands and of wartime romance.
I’d soaked up their kindness as we sat in the circle, knitting in the round. I’d felt like a little girl again nurtured by these gentle elders. It was wonderful to be the learner, the one who doesn’t know, the one who receives, the one who gets it wrong and nobody minds. Oh I needed that then.
And today – unsure what I need but certain I’ll find it. I do – right at the back, high up on a shelf I see the perfect shade of green. I gasp a little and touch the ball. Softness, gentleness. That’s what I needed to give myself. That’s what I’ve not been giving myself. Every part of me says yes.
The rain lashes down, the leaves whirl up and my dear friend is willing to meet me on the windswept moors. So we walk and we talk and I cry and the wind blows us up the hill to the crest of the moor. A big sky above us, the world all around us and I tune into the feeling of emotion in my body, giving voice to my fears. My fear that I am too tiny, too vulnerable, too sensitive. I am fearful that I am not big enough for this world; that I don’t have it in me to do what I’m here for.
Cradling my belly I begin to rock the way you do when you’re nursing a baby. Side to side gentle and slow. My belly needs the soft comfort of my hand, warm and reassuring as I move with the winds.
Soothing and softening and gentle and slow, my hand feels soft like the lovely green wool.
My hand feels soft like the lovely green wool
It’s OK to be vulnerable, it’s OK to feel small. It’s OK not to have it in me to do what I’m here for. It’s all fine. It’s all perfect just as it is. Softening into acceptance, the pain begins to move and shrink small.
My body sighs with the relief of accepting what is.
So we whirl and we dance on the top of the moor, arms open wide to the elements around us.
Then windblown and battered and rained on and hailed on, we make our way back to the warmth of the car. And I head home with those precious balls of green wool. I welcome their softness, I soak up their gentleness. I cradle them close.
As my day unfolds the same image returns to me again and again. It’s the image I saw when I cradled my emotions on the windswept moor. It’s an embryo and I can’t shake the idea that I tapped into a cellular memory of being an embryo.
So I wonder what it was like to be embryo me. I think of the hopes and dreams wrapped up in my conception.
I grew up knowing I’d been conceived on prescription – my parents always told me how much I’d been wanted.
The doctor prescribed a new baby for my grieving parents, hearts torn apart by the death of their son. I was to be born as the salve for their grief, the child who would heal all the pain in their hearts.
The child to replace what could never be replaced.
Unravelling the story of my conception
And today as I unravel the green wool, I am unravelling the story of my conception. I wonder if embryo me absorbed all their grief and their wishes and hopes and if embryo me felt too tiny and too vulnerable. Not up to the job. Deep in my Soul this feels like a truth.
This feels like the resonant wound that all other fears and vulnerabilities and doubts have tapped into. I feel liberated and energised and oh so relieved. Now that I’ve unravelled it back to its source, the pain has been witnessed and honoured and a layer has been healed.
Curiosity leads me to check what stage of development the embryo I keep seeing is at.
8 weeks.
A shiver runs up my spine and picks up the hairs on the back of my neck.
Counting the weeks to my April birthday, I realise that 40 years ago today I was an 8 week old embryo.
And I wonder how much information an embryo can absorb.
And I wonder about the hopes and the dreams and the fears and expectations wrapped up in embryo you.
But my mind doesn’t need to know the answers. It’s enough to know that the emotion has moved through, the body wisdom has been honoured and I feel reborn. I begin to knit a new future.
We find Soul medicine in unexpected places.
Sometimes we find our Soul medicine in the most unexpected places and we can’t even guess what it will heal in our hearts. From wool shop to softness to moorland to wild winds to embryo and back again all in one day.
When we accept the emotions held in our bodies we find wisdom and healing and we unwrap the Soul gifts tied up in our pain.
So tune in to your body and listen to your heart. What is your Soul calling you to notice today?
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