MUSINGS FROM THE BELLY OF THE WHALE

I awoke in the early hours of the morning, the southern cross dotting the tiny patch of sky that’s visible from my bedroom window. The words were clear and loud within my mind. I’m still not sure if I had dreamed them, or if they came to me as I woke, in that liminal space where the muse resides and the wisdom of the ancestors awakens.

“The belly of the whale… Musings from the belly of the whale.”

Like Jack Sparrow’s compass, I immediately understood the direction.

I used to love writing. I found it a beautiful medium for creatively expressing all the things that were so difficult for me to speak out loud. In the written word I found my voice. Through story and poetry I could process and release the deepest parts of my experience, the pain and struggle, the joy and awe. When my first-born daughter died, I wrote poetry to honour both her and the enormous experience of grief, the love that no longer had a physical place to go.

And then, as a young mum, life became busy. There wasn’t time for writing anymore - at least, that’s what I believed, as I gave myself over in service to the humans that now depended upon me for their survival.

This morning, though, there was time. Almost 27 years later, there was time.

And with those words - “Musings from the belly of the whale” - I began to write.

The words themselves refer to a story I once was told. An old story, shaped by the land and sea of the Pacific Northwest. An inuit tale of Raven and Whale.

I retell my version of it here, with humble acknowledgement of the many who have told it before me.

Like many traditional and mythic stories, this one has worked me from the inside out, stirring an ancient knowing.

It is a story of necessary descent. Of being taken into the depths and discovering the very essence of life. It’s a story of initiation.

Martin Shaw says, “A really good storyteller activates bone memory - the remembering that doesn’t come from this life.” And good stories do the same. These are the stories that call us back to something wise. They remind us who we are underneath the noise.

This blog, Musings from the Belly of the Whale, is an offering from that place. It’s a place where I hope to share those kinds of stories. The ones that find you and crack you open. The ones that emerge from the mud like the bud of a lotus flower - opening slowly - one petal at a time.

Many of my own stories are written from inside the great mystery - that liminal space where I don’t yet know who I’m becoming. Where time stretches, ego softens, and I’m able to listen to the voice of my soul. There’s vulnerability here. And the kind of strength that only comes from surrender.

In the belly, things are unmade. Assumptions dissolve. Old ways of knowing dissipate. And if we are patient, if we can surrender to the rhythm of the Whale’s body - that slow, undulating movement of mystery - we begin to feel the deeper pulse of life moving us.

Traditional indigenous cultures the world over recognise the power of stories, sharing them as wise counsel and guidance - offering them in layers as the listener passes through the various thresholds of life. In our modern western culture we have forgotten the sacredness of such transitions and we are starving for the stories that do more than just entertain. 

We are yearning for stories that initiate. The ones that guide us through real descent. Those that offer the sacred pause in which we can be undone and rewoven. Stories that teach us how to be with life, and how to meet death. Not just personal stories, but ancestral ones. Stories that, when lived rather than merely told, can return us to the primal dance of something much larger than our human self.

This is not a blog of quick fixes or tidy truths. 

It is a series of my own musings - field notes if you will - from inside transformation. From the depths of my own continual and ever-expanding experience of being human.

Within these musings I find my own medicine, and I share them here in case you might find your own - in whichever way is right for you.

If you happen to find yourself in the belly of your own whale - somewhere between what was and what’s not yet become - being danced by the spirit of life itself - may these words meet the movement already stirring in your bones.