A Trip to Rwanda may seem like an odd choice for a story to include in The Wild Creative, and I did think long and hard about including it.
I’m mindful that at some point we are going to ‘run out of’ stories in The Women Who Run with the Wolves book and will begin to loop back through the pages.
Although, if I’m honest, I’m not too worried about that as I think we are different people every time we read the same story. We meet the characters, the themes, the messages as a different person, in a different place. The folktales and archetypes therefore teach us something different as the lens through which we re-read them will inevitably have changed.
And that is part of the beauty of the book – it’s timeless appeal.
No, the story A Trip to Rwanda may appear an odd choice mainly because it is not a folktale
There is no La Loba singing over the bones or Hekate or Baubo suggestively wiggling her hips, there is no Vasilissa or Baba Yaga with her house on chicken legs, riding in a pestle and mortar. There is no banished ugly duckling, burning fires or rebirths.
There is simply an anecdote told by Clarissa.
It is an anecdote from her childhood where she witnessed the belly laughter of her mother and her aunts and other female relatives, and later as they slept she snuck a magazine that they had been reading and discovered the story for herself.
This story was ‘the silliest story I had ever heard’, Clarissa tells us.
And it became a medicine that she held close and thought of in the hard tense times.
It is a story about expectations and containing and about modesty
It is a story about women’s bodies.
It is a story about belly laughter and female friendship and about the necessity of laughter.
And it is a story that felt timely in my own life.
It provided an antidote to the hearken I often feel at this time of year – in the northern hemisphere we are cycling back towards darker nights, and there is nothing that marks the depressingly quick passing of time quite like the start of a new school year.
A Trip to Rwanda was a reminder for me to look for the laughter in my own life
To mark these mindful pauses, to note the gifts of joy that are woven all around us, if only we choose to look.
✨I’ve discovered Colne, and Colne is the home to the largest paving slab
✨My cat surprised me mid run by running out of a bush and followed me home
✨My dad riding his bike like he’s 8 years old
✨The rainbow journal pages of a Moon Room Journal
✨Me successfully sneaking my 13 year old into Terminator 2, only to have him literally jump out of the chair in fright at the opening scene
✨And then there is the belly laughter of stories gathered through races and runs and adventures that I’ve had with a friend who can’t run at the moment. We’re reminded that no matter how hard they were, they have also in their own right brought us joy.
And each time I pause and notice and smile or laugh that wet laugh that makes noses run, I am reminded of another part of the book where Clarissa reminds us that all of ‘this is absolutely necessary’ and I tell myself to hold it all lightly.
Winter is perhaps my favourite time in The Wild Creative
I feel that as the nights draw in, we are granted permission to slow down and turn inward. And the next stories certainly will help us to do that.
In December, once again, there will be an invitation to practice The Omen Days.
But first in October as we gather, letting go of what has been and pushing the seeds deep into the earth and turning our attention to the things we
wish to plant and nurture, we will meet a story from Sharon Blackie’s book Wise Women; Beira – or the Cailleach, the elemental force that is the Queen of Winter.
If you’re not already a part of The Wild Creative . . .
And you feel draw to lean into fireside stories, folklore and dance with the archetypes and a little bit of magic, you can sign up here👇
And if you are already a member of The Wild Creative . . .
Put your metaphorical ‘big coat’ on (typical Yorkshire advice), you’re in for an exciting journey . . .
I’m really looking forward to seeing what emerges.