I have been sharing a little more widely my work with the Great Council of Grandmothers. Sometimes people ask me how I came to work with them. So, if you’re sitting comfortably, here is a story.
Once upon a time, I fell in love with a yurt. It was an orange-painted, felt-lined Mongolian yurt . . . on Ebay.
When I won the auction, I was so overexcited, I couldn’t sleep. Buying the yurt was a leap of faith towards a future that included healing, and holding sacred space. It was also incredibly ill-thought out. We had nowhere to put the yurt up or store it, we had no vehicle of any kind, and I had done zero research on whether a felt-lined Mongolian yurt would stand up to the challenges of a British climate. I am still apologising to my long-suffering husband for throwing him practical challenges that he hadn’t quite signed up for.
After two days of being so ungrounded that I couldn’t function properly as a mother, and had to go to a friend’s house for safe harbour, I had the sense that I was being looked after. And called. Some indigenous grandmothers wanted me to work with them. “You will sit at our feet and learn” they said. I didn’t know what this meant at the time. Would I need to travel to a far off tribe to find them?
Some months after this, I put the yurt up at a camp, to hold a space for the women’s lodge, and a woman appeared offering a meditation called, “Casting the Grandmothers’ Net of Light.” I went to the session, where we lay down while she drummed and invited us to visualise a great net covering and penetrating the whole earth, made by points of light which willingly joined together to hold the earth through a time of huge transition. I felt a great warmth in my womb – a sense of healing and enlivening; of power.
I looked up the website of GrandmothersSpeak and was stunned by the immediacy of the message I read there.
“Earth has suffered too long from an excess of yang and insufficient yin,” the Grandmothers declare. “The present imbalance of energy of Earth has placed all life in danger. It is time to return to balance, and for this women must lead. Women must be empowered. This is why we have come.”
I also discovered that Seersha O’Sullivan, who led the Net of Light session at Sacred Arts Camp, was a senior teacher at Shamanka College of Shamanic Studies for women, in Dorset. The yurt had opened a space for me to find my calling, and my teacher. I signed up and began a two year training in the shamanic healing arts. I also read Sharon McErlane’s book, A Call to Power, The Grandmothers Speak, and called up Sharon to receive, (via Skype!) the ‘Empowerment’ – a transmission that’s given person to person.
What’s wonderful about the work is the way it is benefits us and the world at the same time. The Grandmothers are all about effortlessness. They do not want us to stress and strain to make stuff happen. Enough of that already. They want us to become nourished, steady and strong, connected to one another, and filled up with power from the Source. In that state we feel good ourselves, and we have something wonderful to offer the world. Steadiness, balance, restfulness, holding, loving compassion are so very much needed at this time of intense change and chaos. If we fill ourselves up with these qualities, they naturally spill out into the world.
Now, I have agreed to be the ‘Oxford Beacon’ for the Grandmothers Network. I hold a space once a month for people to come together to explore the Grandmothers’ message and to practise visualisations and meditations. We always hold the ‘Net of Light’, and, if anyone would like to receive the ‘Empowerment’ I offer it, within a little ceremony.
Our next meeting is on Wednesday 13th July, at my home, from 1pm – 2.30pm. Please get in touch if you’d like to know more. Later in the Summer, I hope to offer a day for the Grandmothers at our yurt, which now has a home on a farm in West Oxfordshire (how that came to be is another magical story!). Then the circle will be complete.