Healing Aloneness

We came back on Monday from a beautiful weekend at possibly the best festival in the country, Off Grid in Somerset. Every year, we go along with my sister and her family to this blissful, heart-centred, small and special festival, and every year it fills me with hope for the future we're creating as a worldwide community. After a few hours of being on the magically decorated site, you begin to feel your edges soften and your heart open. Everyone smiles. People talk to one another. There are loads of crafts activities for adults and kids, amazing talks and learning opportunities on everything from transition towns to building a strawbale house to bees. Home-spun music, loads of dancing, local cider, fires and musicians and gypsy caravans and costumes and a huge - VAST - feeling of belonging. Beautiful, kind-hearted and aware people abound and this weekend we got to hang around with 500 of them, plus some of the leading thinkers who are shaping the world for the better.

On Saturday morning, when the sun made a very welcome appearance, my sister, brother-in-law, R and I were lounging on cushions drinking chai in a gorgeous outdoor cafe. Nearby, my nieces played with friends they'd made and got down to the serious business of trading some of the eclectic wares they'd been making over the summer. The cafe also sold crystals and they were all along the edges, giving the place an ethereal kind of feel. They had shelves of books you could peruse at your leisure. I picked a few, some old favourites I knew would help me shift into that different time and space, and a box of Crystal cards. These beautiflly illustrated cards showed the different crystals and their properties and are used for divination. So, lazily, I spread them out upside down before me and ran my hand over them as I thought of a question to ask....'what support does my son need?'

And the answer?

Anhydrite - Healing Aloneness

When we fear abandonment, Anhydrite reminds us that we are not alone, are connected and embraced in the heart of the divine. (Oh... Wow... Incredible moment.)

For me, and motherhood, I got pink tourmaline - connecting to the heart and nurturing. For R, for fatherhood, he drew lapis lazuli - coming back to centre.

Now to make a little family altar with our sacred crystals.