“Just make it beautiful.”, I tell myself in the morning when I agonise over what to write next. When I’m stuck and unsure: paralysed.
“Just make it beautiful.”, I tell myself in the afternoon when I sit on the tram and obsess over all the things that are missing from my life.
“Just make it beautiful.”, I write on my skin in invisible ink, letting the mantra seep in.
With the first lighter days of the year, I find myself drawn to the beach to catch the sunrise. I attend a Reiki class one evening and dream of daisies that sprout out of my hair, out of my skin. I tie a red ribbon around a dry branch of a gorse bush and make a wish on Imbolc—the Celtic threshold between winter and spring, a quiet promise of renewal. The day belongs to Brigid, goddess of poetry, healing, and the forge. They say she walks the land on this night, leaving her blessings in the shape of early buds, of snowdrops and daffodils. I listen to Halcyon and On and On as I open the w…