05/01/2024
✨Wondering what to do with your one wild and precious life this year? ✨
For you, the woman who has young children, I know how hard it is to carve time for yourself, to acknowledge the guilt that creeps up into your chest as you crave a little time away, and the bravery it takes to do it anyway.
For you the woman whose children have flown the nest, left with a space, a remembering of who you once were, that vibrant, purposeful you, but as you look down at your body, a feeling of regret rises – where is she? But she calls to you from inside. She’s still there.
She’s still there the young woman who was carefree, driven, purposeful and single-minded. She’s still there the warrior, the adventurer, the one whose future is promising.
Whatever stage and situation of life you’re in there’s always a place for taking yourself off into the cave, for scraping in the dirt to find the answers to your questions, for feeling the joy of just not caring, as your wild hair and sun-kissed skin pays homage to the sunset, the sunrise, the star filled nights.
The Matriarch Adventure is, amongst other things, a mysterious journey into the wilderness of yourself. It has elements of everything from the mundane to the overwhelming, from barrenness to bounty, and from eerie silence to the deepest earthly rumble.
This adventure calls for curiosity.
It takes courage to step into the unknown, to walk into the mystery, but the mystery and the discomfort is part of the journey we need to travel to deepen our relationship with ourselves and each other. We live with uncertainty every day, and our efforts to control every element of our lives is oh so exhausting, but what if we turn that on its head.
What if we swap control for curiosity and uncertainty for mystery?
A totally different flavour for what we are embarking on. Look at fairy tales, myths, legends, where the heroes and heroines choose to step into the unknown, they leave everything that they know behind, they don’t know the direction in which they will travel, but they invariably meet people, animals, flowers, rivers, trees and mountains that teach them lessons, give them gifts and help them on their journey. There are also obstacles, discomforts, hardships, and difficult inner turmoil, but the difference is that they have to face these challenges head on. There’s no Instagram feed or latest Netflix season to distract, no 6pm glass of wine to take the edge off, no sinking into oblivion, unless of course they have been enchanted or drugged by an evil merchant, but there, of course, is the allegory! Even in fairy tales and myths, the initiate has to actually take action, there is always the option to do nothing, to continue as you have always done. But what if you really choose to push the boundaries, to take a leap of faith, to step out on a journey that is different to anything you have ever done before.
This is what The Matriarch Adventure was created for – an old fashioned adventure, a curiosity-filled mysterious way of travelling for women who have been caught up in a frenzy of being everything to everyone, whether that’s family, friends, at work, on social media. What about YOU! When did you last feed the protagonist of your own story with food for the soul?
To be sat around a fire with new friends swapping stories, watching smoke rise and sparks fly high into the night’s sky. Lying out underneath a blanket bejewelled by the milky way and watching the constellations move through the cloudless sky mapping the myths of Orion’s duel with Scorpio, one bright star definitively showing you where you are in the world as you spin on its axis. Then at midnight, waking, startled, to the guttural roar of baboons, a primordial sound that you somehow recognise. Then again at dawn, turning your face to the rising sun, feeling the prickling expectancy of a new day. Feasting around a stirred, everlasting pot of porridge, so simple, yet the tastiest porridge you’ve ever tasted. Jumping into rusted chariots and tracking the largest land mammals on the planet. Now this is starting to sound a bit like a mythical adventure, but honestly, it can be yours if you hear the call.
Adventure to far flung places is not the only way to make sense of things, but in my experience it certainly helps. I’ve been an expedition leader for over 20 years, so don’t worry, we have risk assessments in place, there are medical forms you’ll need to sign, and we carry a satellite phone and comprehensive first aid kits, but this is so YOU don’t have to worry about any of this, YOU just have to head out into the unknown and trust the process.
You don’t need to be fearless, you just need to be curious enough to test your mettle, to see what you’re made of and to rekindle the fire in your own heart. Invite the girl who wished to be a boy, the girl who threw stones and broke the ice beneath her feet, the girl who had dreams of faraway places and believed in magic and mystery, the girl who took the left fork in the road. We can make sense of all this in our everyday lives, we can ‘talk it through’, seek counselling, but we also have the tools ourselves to actively chip away at our own story, to step into uncertainty. In the heat of the underworld, or in this case, the desert, we can forge a new version of ourselves, gather the gifts and the insights we find or are given to us along the way and return with wisdom.
Or perhaps you just want to put your phone away, and enjoy the ride! 😊
So, this is an invitation 🧡
🐘 The Matriarch Adventure 4th – 13th October 2024 🐘
Please contact me if you would like to join ✨
