On the top of the highest mountain in the Yorkshire Dales today, it’s ice cold. Looking across to my favourite mountain, Ingleborough, I see white smoke folding over its summit. It gives me the sense of a sleeping dragon in his winter slumber.

Here on the summit of Whernside, the wisps of cloud drift over crystal grasses of green and silver.  As if in a dreamworld, a Raven flies in from the cloud, silhouetted against the white fog. It lands on the mountain edge and caws out across the valley again and again. It’s unusual for Ravens to be so close.

In time, the penny drops. The message of Raven in our Mystery School is story carrier. They are among the few animals known to return to their fellows and communicate information about their day.

There is a story I have been consumed with over the past few months that I’m bringing up to the light to release. I see my Raven encounter as a sign to share more today, accompanied by photos taken during my walk.

Inside the chrysalis

In the Mystery School this winter, we’ve been working with the idea of being inside a chrysalis. This is a soupy, gloopy stage where the old story of the caterpillar falls away, and the butterfly's form has yet to take shape. It is a messy, formless time. But amongst the chaos, a new story is emerging, even if we cannot yet see it clearly.

I’ve been shedding my old story for years, as we all do on the spiritual path, and still the layers keep revealing themselves. I imagine you know what that feels like? It seems to be constant.

These past few months, since our Full Moon gathering with the ancestors in December, I’ve stepped it up a notch or two. And at our New Moon Winter Solstice ceremony two weeks later, something opened within me, and what had been waiting deep inside could no longer be contained.

The story I am releasing is big and one that defines a part of me that definitely don’t want to carry.

For almost two decades now, my spiritual work has been to unravel the unhealthy work ethic that has been ingrained in me through upbringing, culture, and in the very cells of my body, in my DNA inherited from my ancestors. It’s been a long process.

For so many people, the spiritual work is to put themselves first, to recognise they need to look after themselves, and to stop living in constant response to others' demands and pressures. For me, it has been work, the belief that I must always be doing more, that I am not enough, and that I should feel guilty if I stop and take time out for myself.

The old story

I come from a long line of workers. Up both my maternal and paternal lines, there is a dominant story of poverty and hardship, which still impacts me daily now. I wrote a book about this, The Path to Forgotten Freedom: Healing Unresolved Ancestral Trauma, in which I share the story of my three-times-great-grandmother who fled Ireland during the Great Famine in the mid-nineteenth century. Uncovering her story had a profound impact on me and my life.

The story I am working on now is over here in England. Thomas Liversedge is my four-times great-grandfather. He was born at the end of the eighteenth century in Tadcaster, just outside York in North Yorkshire. He was the last generation born and raised in a rural community that lived from the land, before everything changed. His family lost their land, or rather I should say, had their land stolen from them, through the Enclosures. As a direct result their lives shifted into servitude, into the slums of Leeds, into something that looks uncomfortably close to slavery.

It has been heart-breaking, and honestly sickening, learning of his hardships and the brutality of his life: the way time became a unit of productivity, the way his humanity was measured by what could be extracted from him. That generation were heroes and heroines for what they endured and what they did to survive. Learning about the final years of his life has been stomach-wrenching, when he became too old and too unwell to work anymore, in a world that had no compassion for those who could no longer 'produce'.

It has felt so important to bring this story into the light. I learned about Thomas around fifteen years ago, and I did tell his story then, but I didn’t know all the details, and I wasn’t ready to hold what I now understand about what happened to him. It has taken time to bring it fully into the light. It is one of the threads that is finding its way into my next ancestral healing book, Severance.

The new story

Being in the chrysalis requires boldness to delve deep into places where we haven’t looked before. It asks us to look directly at what has shaped us, to acknowledge it, and to release what simply doesn’t fit our new story, the direction our soul wants us to step forward into.

My old story is bound up with my ancestors. For you, it may be something else entirely, yet the process remains the same. Right now, for the remainder of January, the energies are perfect for reflecting on and letting go of the things that are not working for us and keep getting in our way.

Then, it is time to put our focus into the new story.

Sunday 1st February is the first day of Spring and the ancient Celtic fire festival of Imbolc. It also coincides with a full moon. This excites me very much! This is a perfect moment to begin creating a new story.

And I am not speaking only about the story of ‘this year’, because that is where we often place our focus at Imbolc, on the year ahead, on what we want to do, and what we want to achieve.

This time we’re widening the lens. We are looking at what 'best' looks like for our lives, at the dream we want to live into, and at the best of who we can be.

We’re asking: How good can it get?

With this day being our threshold, between Imbolc and the three weeks that follow, we will be working more with this in the Mystery School.

We will be setting intentions that help us move forward, and move toward the life that we truly deep down know we are here to live, and the person we are here to become, once we strip away conditioning, expectations, obligations, and the voices that tell us what is possible and what is not.

Our Interstellar Nomad friend

Before the Winter Solstice, I spoke a lot about the approach of Interstellar Object 3I/ATLAS. At that time, I was bouncing off the walls with excitement for the energies I felt it was bringing.

Yet for these past three weeks, my focus has been on bringing the old story up into the light for releasing. It’s been difficult to be fully present with both energies at once, holding the terrible hardships of my ancestors as I write their story while also feeling that ecstatic current moving in the background. I know that energy is there for me on the other side of Imbolc, and I trust it will return to the forefront, yet right now, my work has been the releasing.

One thing that has been said about 3I/ATLAS is that its arrival will make spiritual work easier, that things that have been hard to release before will begin to shift, and I can feel something of that on the horizon. I can feel how envisioning the best life can be will become more available, and I can feel the growing trust that it is genuinely possible to get there.

Whenever I do ancestor work, I am reminded how incredibly lucky we are. In their eyes, the twenty-first century would look like utopia. I know it doesn’t always feel like that for us, and I know life can be tough, But even so, we have free healthcare, warm homes, food in supermarkets and a welfare system. And we’re not living under the brutalities our ancestors endured. Every morning over the past few weeks, as I cook my bacon and eggs for breakfast, I have felt this wave of real gratitude in my body.

This year, it is said, will be turbulent, and we can probably already feel it gathering. If we pay attention to the news, it’s frightening, and the world makes less and less sense. Yet, in truth, it hasn’t made sense for a long time. It’s just that the craziness is ramping up.

And still, alongside all of that, something very special is emerging.

This is what I have been waiting for, what I have been working for, what I can feel on the edge of the horizon. I have never been so optimistic or held so much hope for the future because of what I believe 3I/ATLAS is bringing.

And if I am wrong, then I have still been gifted a few months of hope, and I am happy with that, too.

So, over the next few weeks, as we approach Imbolc, we will keep moving through this chrysalis phase of releasing the old story, while beginning to hold awareness of what is emerging. You don’t need words for what is emerging yet. At this stage, it may even be better not to try to lock it down into words. It is enough to feel it, to sense it, to begin noticing what the future feels like, and to ask, again and again:

How good can it get?

Coming up this Imbolc

Here at The Way of the Buzzard, we have a few dates for you to save in your diary to work with these Imbolc energies.

Imbolc taster series

Starting on Monday, 26th January, we have a free Imbolc taster series available to everyone. There will be three emails on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday to gear you up, culminating in a 1-hour free taster Imbolc gathering on Zoom at 7pm.

Everyone on our email list will be included, and there is no need to register.

You will learn all about Imbolc, the transformational energies of this first day of spring and full moon, and how to work with them.

Our Ignite the Spark At Home Retreat

Then, if you would like to go deeper with us, we would love for you to join us at our upcoming At Home Retreat on Sunday, 1st February, or via the replay ready the next day.

We’ll beam directly into your living room, but this isn’t a day tied to the screen – far from it. In fact, it is created to give you space away from the screen, connect with your land, and hear the messages nature has for you.

If you can’t join us on the day, or can only make the morning, you can work easily through the replay as it’s broken into three digestible parts.

This retreat has been designed to support you to connect with your own land, your own place, your own patch of earth, and to focus on you, your vision, your dream.

There will be activities to help you dream big for your future.

Right now, Jason is filming an incredible nature connection film up in Kielder Forest, especially for this retreat. If you’ve seen his Earthlight films before, you will know what I mean when I say that these films do something to the soul. Over four days, he’ll gather the story from the land, to bring that message into this work, and to support us in stepping toward the future we are here to create.

Coming together

There is something incredibly powerful about coming together to work with the energies at the turning point in the wheel of the year.

This Imbolc feels especially important to connect together. So, whether you choose to join us for our free taster evening, or the full day, or both, we are really looking forward to this time together, dreaming big.