Refuge in Reality

late January check-in and an hour-long rest practice

“We are all deep in a hell each moment of which is a miracle.”

―Emil Cioran

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So much beautiful stuff has already been written about the concept of wintering. You already know we’re meant to drop the Self into the container of ancestral entanglement. To grow substantial, soft and rest. January into February are the months to nurture delicate, beautiful things. To bow down to cold earth and spill thanks and praise poems to the swirling cells of elders in the dark soil. No one wants to be seen- we do the groundwork of sitting tight and listening to develop a foothold for the coming spring. 

Attempting to write a sober version of what inhabiting the spectrum of January feels like in 2024 means naming a grief, an accompanying blackness, that churns and tugs on the soul of everything. 

This winter a defeated stuckness has enforced a slowness in me that at times has felt immobilising. Like so many of us- I’ve become an apprentice to chaos- peering into the abyss through my phone screen at the worst violence I’ve ever seen enacted by Apartheid Israeli and US governments.

In tandem with this paralysis, Dublin life feels epic and tribal in overwhelming ways I can never remember feeling. The singular resonance of the genocide of the Palestinian people has struck our most intimate cultural nerve. The umbras of our collective psyche reveal years of oppression, the ravages of starvation, displacement, dispossession. Our fierce, proactive solidarity signifies a long-awaited falling away from performative goodboyism on the international stage. 

As Irish women, this solidarity (and accompanying expression of holy rage) is a mythopoetic ownership of who we are. The historical durability of our power has been suppressed or at least strictly controlled for generations.

Paul Klee: The Eagle

Watching the unrolling of inherited histories of trauma play out on the world stage affords painful clarity in the fog of genocide. Laying claim to our bloodlines has never felt more pertinent. We're made of patterns that reproduce in different octaves or expressions throughout many lifetimes. An impersonal, repetitive force of violence moves through each of us in some form unless it’s felt, held and heard. 

When I’ve been in despair this winter, I’ve noticed myself lapse into old, unhelpful chains of behaviour including:

• withdrawn, silent cynicism

• clawing at the silences and assertions of others with arrogant indignation

• judging, guilting and shaming myself for not doing enough

• judging, guilting and shaming people I look ‘up’ to for not doing enough

• a total loss of focus and self-esteem in writing and speaking up

• relapse into dysfunctional relational dynamics (namely avoidance and invulnerability)

Maybe it’s the unbreathable nightmare of what we’re witnessing in Gaza. Maybe it’s a touch of seasonal depression. Either way, I know it’s not all about me.

view across north Co. Wexford on a recent walk up Tara Hill, Gorey

I am owning and owned by my ancestry so thoroughly this winter I feel as though I’ve come undone. 

Coupled with the fact that Irish women have always been pushed into the margins by a ruthless culture of silence and shaming is a newfound awareness (and ownership) of a brutal, occupying energy in my French bloodline. Descriptions of my Anglo-Norman forebear’s invasion of my home county Wexford in the 12th century match the worst horror stories of modern war reporting. Stories of the time include enslavement, refugee crises and deliberate devastation inflicted on my other lineages- a population of unsuspecting and unprepared Gaels. 

This honest awareness of a creolised inheritance of vanquishing and victimhood, power and oppression leaves me with no choice but to sit with the privileges accrued by my line and the cost they’ve come at. At this crossroads of stuckness I’ve barely been able to budge. But I cannot do nothing. 

“Follow it down until you see it in the mystery of its own specificity and strength”

―Annie Dillard

I’m following my elders and progeny all the way down in persistent bewilderment. Examining how I’m perpetuating and disrupting supremacy means sitting tight in muddy discomfort, brooking ambiguity, and fighting simplistic narratives and absolutism like my future depends on it.

And - in the interest of moving cyclically as Imbolc stirs below us- excessive solitude and navel-gazing will no longer suffice. The only thing that makes sense anymore is being together. My gut knows that this reality is the refuge. Real conversations, real-life work that generates true, measurable progress can redeem these freezing, grief-laden days. Solidarity at my kitchen table, on the streets, up mountains, on the dancefloor. Through the portal of my practice, I spend time with my ancestors.

Ancestral healing lives somewhere between leaving behind what needs to decay and intending things to be exquisite for the ones to come. There are proud, powerful people behind and in front of every face I meet. The mosaic of diversity in my classroom and at pro-Palestinian vigils gives me a glimpse of what the majesty of a productive, interdependent reformation of our world could look like. 

The beauty of unearthing and making room in our hearts for cruelty, rage, and bitterness is that it affords bigger and more far-reaching generosity and compassion than we ever knew possible. I can feel it as I reach for you through these words, obsessively polishing my sentences to try to relay my overwhelming gratitude to you for sticking with me in my silence this winter. Your presence has kept me going.

ó mo chroí buíoch

Cathy

JANUARY ROUND UP

some of the bits and pieces that have inspired my work this month:

Taking concrete action to email, phone picket, and march and hold vigil for the people of Gaza.

Exercising discernment and care in how I spend my money by boycotting companies that support the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestine.

Finding Refuge podcast where Tara Brach shared the line ‘Reality is the only refuge’

Tolka- an Irish literary journal of formally promiscuous non-fiction where I found translations of Romaninan nihilist philosopher E.M. Cioran, translated gorgeously by Patrick James Errington.

Poem by Siobhán de Paor- a force of nature and linguistic inheritance. 

The framework I use for ancestral lineage healing is guided by Daniel Foor in his book Ancestral Medicine.

White guilt, karmic humiliation, and visceral, cringe-under-a-blanket-level satire series in The Curse with Emma Stone.

YOGA NIDRA PRACTICE

An hour-long, radical rest to nurture reality. Begins with a lying down Breathwork practice. Yoga nidra starts at 6.45min.