Skip to main content

I Want to be a Wildfire Woman.

                                                         


I have just spent most of my weekend with Wildfire Women and my blood is still tingling.

 For the first time I 've been in a gathering in the UK at which I didn’t feel like the World’s Greatest Imposter. Nor did that Girl in The Bubble feeling overwhelm me. (I must assure you that I really was a girl when I named this feeling). And –bonus- I got to dance. Bit of a misnomer that – I just got up and made an arse of myself as has been my lifelong wont. And for the first time in far too long I did it without feeling anyone gave a damn. And its been far too long since I’ve done that.

I didn’t, at first, even get what Wildfire Women was all about; which I deftly translated into massive guilt which consumed me for the greater part of the first day.

It was true that all these other women appeared to have been on the bones of their arses; or been traumatised in their past; or battled illnesses both mental and physical and were radiant and strong and inspiring as they told their stories. And we paid them the homage they so richly deserved.

But I and my blackdog sat there feeling like the bad fairy at the  Christening. How could one even hint to these shiny, happy women that, goddammit, rising up from adversity  step by painful step does not guarantee all the gold at the rainbows end? 

Because, no matter how unlikely it may seem, there are those in the world who also conquer adversity, and then find themselves starting from scratch again not just once, nor twice; but to an extent that would make one agree with Lady Bracknell ‘seems like carelessness.’

The talk all around me was of reiki and massage and meditation, people traded information on that or were busy networking, and I was, as usual, observing everything from a distance, through the walls of my plastic bubble.

I almost didn’t go back the next day, but didn’t want to appear rude, so I did. And from the moment I stepped through the door I started fizzing: there was a different feeling in the air.  I began to get what Wildfire Women was all about.

It’s about women empowering other women.  It’s exactly what I’ve been tied up with most of my life.  It’s about supporting women who want to go round the hierarchical model rather than dressing in power suits and feeding their ulcers. It’s a female model where the life force is not overtaken by the work force. Where doing things at one’s own pace is recognised; where baby-steps are celebrated; time for oneself doesn’t make one unprofessional; and love and laughter is intrinsic, rather than operating on a different plane from the business model.

It’s about the way I’ve always worked: and it’s working as I’ve always dreamed it could.

And on Day 2 it went to work on me.

It was serendipitous that I found Wildfire Women in my town only a couple of days after I had written my last blog.  In it I was celebrating the inspirational women on my Tweetfeed, and had taken strength from them to stop lying about the reasons I’ve been so ill.  It’s not physical, it’s mental, and I’m going to own it.

But now, after this weekend? I plucked up courage and put my name down for classes at Gym.  Rather than creeping from machine to machine downstairs I came up into the light and interacted with Other People. And I really, really enjoyed feeling the endorphins come strolling on back after a longer vacation they’d ever taken before.  Only the braver ones, of course, but I reckon they’re all on the turn now.

So I grabbed the card too, of a magical Brazillian women who brought her troupe both to dance for us and with us – on Sunday morning. I’m pretty confidently looking forward to making the phone call that’ll include me in her one and a half hour sessions. Which will probably shred me at first: but which could also bring laughter and fun back into my life where it’s always been before.

And, instead of waiting to get better, I’ve accepted this’ll be as good as it gets: so I’ve decided to book myself in to do a thing in Hove Grown – the pre-Fringe, pre-pre Festival next year. I have no idea yet what I’m going to do: a kinda vague outline exists way in the back of the rags and patches of pre-now me which still survive.  But it doesn’t really matter. I’ll do it.

I listened to the wild women; I talked to many and heard their stories and at some point on Sunday I realised that the plastic bubble, like a child’s balloon, had floated away unnoticed, and I was back in the world. After more than two years of being away I’m stepping gingerly back...

At the moment Blackdog is shaking himself, and yawning and looking around him for a more comfortable perch.  He hasn’t actually found it yet, and keeps yapping in my ear that I’m a plonker  to think anything’s changed; that he’s the only one who has been with me through thick and thin;  that without him I’m nothing.

But me – well I’m still fizzing and bubbling for now. I can’t begin to describe all that this weekend was about, nor adequately describe the ideas of Thea and Cat who organised Sunday’s event. But any woman who want to connect to real life, make dreams into reality, share support, get vital information, or just ask questions,  go have a look at:- https://wildfirewomen.co.uk/.


Go get your mojo on ladies;  we’ve come a long way. Now let’s just go a little bit further.

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Don't Quote Me.......Failing our Children: Doesn't it Enrage You?

I subtitled a post "Don't quote me" a while back because I wanted to make it clear that what I was expressing was my own - vehement - opinion/idea which was not representative of any group or affiliation. Feel the need to to add this to the same category.     One afternoon, in 2016, I saw on my Youtube page that there was a televised debate between two American contenders for the presidency. Needing a break from the piece I was writing, and with the realisation that my outlook was becoming rather insular as I struggled to understand the Homeland I'd recently settled in, I poised my mouse and clicked. I can still remember the shock of that introduction to contemporary America; in fact I was in a state of shock for the rest of the afternoon. The spectacle of two grown - in fact elderly - people shouting, yelling, talking over each other, using personal abuse (and, dear gods, one actually stalking the other around the podium!) horrified me.  I was involved in a form of ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Victorian Women. Period.

  The first time I ever acted in an historical play we were coached in the ways of walking as women of yesteryear did. Which didn’t seem at all strange to me at the time: at convent boarding schools we had been taught to walk the nunly walk: which turned out to be exactly the same method. But sanctified. I didn’t really understand why women used to walk differently then, and neither did my mother; who told me that her mother had also instructed her that a woman’s footprints should always be in a straight line: — one foot directly in front the other, as we’d been taught on both stage and in convents.  Yet it was only about 6 months ago that I suddenly had a lightbulb moment: women walked in that way because they menstruated! This thought didn’t arrive out of the blue; I had, by then, been researching the history of menstruation for months. With the help of the Brighton Museum I’d been able to start my research back in the Palaeolithic. Since then, I had become aware that apart ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Our house was a very, very, very nice house.....

It started out as a late Victorian – or perhaps early Edwardian – family home. It steadily declined until such time as, with much fanfare, it had been stripped inside and turned into flats. The 'fanfare' was not not a figure of speech: there really was a fuss made – with coverage in the media which shows the lovely old place being officiated over by  local MP. Caroline Lucas. Our building was presented as part of an initiative to assimilate those on Benefits into the local community. The stigma of being banished to the further reaches of town to live in seething communities  in brick blocks would not attach to the lucky occupants of this building.  Its sympathetic conversion ( one or two original ceiling roses and some restrained ceiling mouldings have been left in place), while incorporating modern interior architecture, blends well to showcase apartments that would be the envy of many of those chasing accommodation in the private sector all over Brighton and Hov...
Post a Comment
Read more