A week ago a journey undertaken for me by my spiritual mentor, Jayne Johnson, led me to meditating on a distant island within a ruined clochán. To a vision of a ‘last nun’ bricked up within a corbel stone hut with the birds of the sea and an eagle, a raven, and an owl bringing her food and stories. Alone, but for the crashing of the tides, of the calling of the gulls. Her own breath.

The next time I set out to meditate on this island I found a part of myself resisting and instead wanting to root into my home, my garden, specifically to go to our raspberry patch, to taste a raspberry, to watch the insects. 

Then, the next time I tried to depart, I was posed the question of whether I could physically give up my home, my possessions, my comforts – regular meals, my running, my gym, to exist on gifts of food and stories in that far off place.

My answer was ‘no’ and as I spoke it I felt that place being shut off for me. A crash of thunder. A dark veil coming down. Access forbidden. My connection gone.

It left me feeling inferior to those who were able to make those sacrifices. To those proper monks and nuns. Then I heard another voice telling me it’s ok to ‘come home’ and recognised it as belonging to Old Mother Universe, Ceridwen.

There is a longstanding traditon of going far away, doing extreme things, to have spiritual experiences. The Desert Fathers. The peregrini. The anchoresses who bricked themselves up. Those who go to Peru to take ayahuasca or take to the Welsh mountains or Devonian moors for wilderness fasts.

It’s not something I’ve felt the need to do or feel that it would be psychologically safe for me to do as an autistic person prone to anxiety attacks and melt downs who already exists too close to the edge of madness. 

A little like Alice I’m able to imagine a thousand impossible things before breakfast. My challenge has not been accessing non-ordinary experiences but discerning what comes from my own mind and what comes from the Gods. 

For that I need to be rooted in the land where I live, in my routine of devotional practices to my Gods, my creativity, regular meals, exercise. 

I find when I break with this I don’t get divine madness – just insanity. 

Prior to covid I did travel a little mainly to visit sites in the Welsh myths or places associated with my patron God, Gwyn, such as Glastonbury Tor and Cadair Idris. This resulted in some insights and inspiration but 99% of my awen comes from having a regular prayer, meditation and journeywork practice and from simply slogging away at my keyboard in an old fashioned writerly way.

A good many of my answers to prayers and the visionary nuggets at the core of my best poems and stories and the novels I am working on have come when I’m out running or walking locally or in the early hours in bed at home. 

For me becoming a nun of Annwn has been a homecoming not a going away.

Home from conservation and ecology work that took place on a combination of local nature reserves, wastewater treatment works and residential properties but also took me as far away as Manchester, Cheshire, and the Wirral.

Home to my room, my monastic cell, in the house I live in with my parents, which I have only moved away from twice since we moved there when I was four.

Home to our garden where I tend and grow wild and cultivated plants and herbs.

Home to my body and to learning about what with proper nourishment it can do. How far it can run, what weights it can lift, what shapes it can bend into.

Home to a life of devotional creativity centred on my relationship with Gwyn.

There’s a place for going away but also a greater need for coming home. For accepting ourselves as ourselves, for knowing not only our extremes but our limits.