I'm dedicated to helping women in particular develop their spiritual path in life. I'm focused heavily on Brigid in Ireland, although not all my followers are! I teach, speak, coach and mentor people to help them along their own individual path, based on what lore we have, but also allowing for each individual path to develop as it needs to.
I'm excellent at suppressing my emotions (not a compliment)
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I'm great at suppressing emotions. Like, truly excellent. And the problem with that is - they come back to haunt me. Usually at the most inconvenient time, like in the middle of an important ritual. Or worse - I get a feeling and I don't know if it's mine or not. To be able to engage with it appropriately, because I don't know how that emotion feels in my body. Like, what does excitement actually feel like? Well, in my case, it can be butterflies in the tummy, or a shortness of breath, or a speedy heartrate… So I consider emotions really important when preparing for ritual. Both examining myself for what emotions might come up - doing a ritual to have a chat with a dead grandparent (coming up in a few weeks) brings up emotions, trust me! - but also looking at making sure I have a reasonably clear slate when it comes to my emotional state coming up to the ritual. It's part of my cleansing work before a major ritual, to try and clear out any emotional baggage I have hanging around me. To enter the ritual as prepared as I can be. Because, if you are doing deep work in a ritual, then there are things, beings, even yourself at times. That will use your emotions against you. And no one wants that. It's messy, especially if you've been suppressing and not dealing with emotions for years. But trust me when I say it is deeply worth it. And it prevents you from having a full on nervous breakdown while having your first conversation with your Nana after her death. Not that anyone would ever do that…. I'm not sure who was more worried, me or her!! Bríd libh Órlagh Check out the links below: Website |
Hi, I'm Orlagh, of Brigid's Forge
I'm dedicated to helping women in particular develop their spiritual path in life. I'm focused heavily on Brigid in Ireland, although not all my followers are! I teach, speak, coach and mentor people to help them along their own individual path, based on what lore we have, but also allowing for each individual path to develop as it needs to.
Content warning: this one goes into disordered eating and food restriction in some detail. Skip if you need to. I mentioned in last week's newsletter about fainting on the steelworks floor - never a good idea. But over the course of about 4 years, I started fainting more and more often. My heart rate dropped and my blood pressure was lower than recommended. I was also a size 18 (UK sizes - adjust for whatever system you use!!). But it took a doctor telling me I most likely had an eating...
Have you any idea of the panic you can cause a bunch of hardened steelworkers by fainting on the factory floor? Especially when you're a woman. Half of them are afraid to even touch you, convinced something seriously wrong has happened - when actually it was just me being careless with my own energy. Honestly, the conversations I had after that one. When I finally came to, the estimates from my colleagues at the time ranged from hours to days. I'd guess it was seconds at most in reality (for...
I did the maths on this earlier in the week and it stopped me in my tracks a bit: I build "new starts" into my mental calendar roughly six times a year. September. Samhain. January. Imbolc. Easter. The start of school holidays. Being the child of two teachers, and married to a third, the school year is baked into my DNA at this stage - it doesn't matter that I haven't sat an exam in decades, my whole nervous system still thinks September is when things properly begin. I've been sitting with...