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.
💥You left. But you didn't leave it all behind
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I've been thinking about something I kept seeing on social media over Easter weekend. (Because what else would I be doing on a three day weekend when I'm off work with stress only stressing myself more...) Amongst all the religious photos and family tables, there were quieter posts too. Women who didn't quite know what to do with themselves. Who felt something off about the weekend without being able to name it. Who were, in some sense, watching a celebration they used to belong to from the outside. I know that feeling. I also know that it doesn't mean you made the wrong choice in leaving. I wrote about it this week: about the vacuum that nobody warns you about when you walk away from a high-control religion, about why Easter (and Eid, and Passover, and Diwali, and every other hinge point in the religious calendar) can feel so strange once you're no longer inside it, and about what that hollow feeling is actually telling you. Hint: it's not telling you to go back. ​Read the full post here​ At the bottom of the post there's a short form for anyone who wants to stay close to this conversation as it develops. Over the coming weeks I'll be writing about what it actually looks like to build something to stand on when the old structure is gone, how you work out what you believe, where Brigid comes into it, and what a spiritual life that is genuinely yours might look like. If that's the conversation you've been waiting for, the form is there. It takes thirty seconds and it'll make sure you don't miss what comes next. As always, thank you for being here. BrÃd libh Órlagh Check out the links below: ​Brigid's Forge School​ ​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.
I want to tell you something about how this all began for me. I moved to England at twenty-two. I grew up Irish Catholic — properly Irish Catholic, which is its own very specific thing, shaped by history and survival and a particular fierce relationship with certain figures and practices that don't translate neatly anywhere else. When I walked into a Catholic church in England, I didn't quite recognise what I found. Same name. Different texture. The things that had meant something to me...
I want to be honest with you about something. The path I walked was not the most efficient one. It was not guided, not structured, and not supported in any meaningful sense. It was just me, stubbornly putting one foot in front of the other, refusing to give up on finding something that actually fit. That stubbornness is core to who I am. It makes me very good at some things and very difficult at others. It also meant that when there was no clear way forward, I made one anyway — slowly,...
People sometimes ask me what my spiritual practice actually looks like, day to day. They expect something elaborate. They're usually surprised. Sacred showers. That's where I start. There's nothing mystical about the act itself — it's hot water, soap, and about eight minutes before the day gets going. But I've learned to use that time deliberately. To arrive in the day rather than collapse into it. To set something like an intention before everything else starts demanding my attention. I...