March the sixteenth twenty twenty. (At first I typed sisteenth, reminding me for another moment of my three “blood sisters”, and billions of global sisters and brothers on this precarious, puzzling and precious Earth).

A beautiful sunny morning in Sutherland. Each of the clouds in the sky its own shape, yet travelling along on the massive air currents that patrol our atmosphere. Influenced by the other clouds and ultimately coming from the same source.

Enough of wispy words just now. Time for homewords. Working at home. Playing at home. Waiting at home. Retreating home. Confined to home. At home with ourselves.

What are we going to do? What do I want to do today? What do I have to do today? What must and mustn’t I do, this seven -day, these fourteen days of quarantine, this lock-down?

As it said on the 2018 UK postage stamp my friend Di put on a “welcome to your new home” card:

And that is what I have been doing (not panicking) all the long winter, before Covid-19 reared its prickly head in Europe

Instead I’ve hunkered down with my go-to winter priorities, which in my case were, and remain:

nourishing well – self and others (whatever that means);

taking my medicine (ditto); and

movement meditation, which has involved reflective walking, Earthful gardening; heartful dance; kindful connection; healing touch, and imaginative journeying with the Muse.

Join me over the next few weeks and months, as I post writing activities that you can try at home.

And perhaps we can share online.

Please be patient with me and with yourself – this isn’t about literary excellence, it’s about caring for that tender, worried, exhuberant, creative, hopeful, shy, and ultimately joyful, child within me and you.

As David Whyte says in a loved poem:

start with the first
thing
close in,
the step
you don’t want to take.

Start with
the ground
you know,
the pale ground
beneath your feet,
your own
way to begin

from
River Flow: New & Selected Poems
Many Rivers Press

My intent is to post, on this website, a ‘writing our way whole‘ activity each spring week, starting on the Vernal Equinox* this Friday.

Higgledy piggledy, amateurishly, haphazard, unstructured … not a course, but a companioned journey for which the only map is my own inner compass.

Influenced by yours, as we share this Earth.

I invite you to follow this blog, which you can do “silently” as an email follower, to get reminders and links to free resources, week on week.

Please join me at home, and may we all write our way whole, at home with who we are.

*In the UK the Vernal Equinox is “the first day of spring”, and this year falls on 20 March 2020.*