Symbolically the shell is from the ocean and is linked to Venus (self love). It is the so-called medal at the end of the journey once the shore is met and one is able to baptise oneself in the salt water and become new once more—like a baby, and with unconditional love for self.
The way it ties together the network of support is that its image is used as way markers along the route, marking the way through landlocked villages and cities in the hopes of—in days or weeks or months time—the pilgrim will reach the end … which is also the beginning.
It is not only an inner and outer totem of the achievement of the completion of this particular pilgrimage, it also denotes an opening of the heart and a vessel from which to gather water to drink or anoint oneself. It is also used to ask for donations of food and money.
Sometimes building self kindness can be through random acts of kindness to others. Showing someone else the way can be a guide for self awareness and more adept self trust, self love and self guidance. The notion of offering a helping hand draws attention to the focus on the work I do with my hands and how that reflects on how to give—but not too much of myself so as to not become depleted—and, with the same open hand, to receive what I need from others.
The lines on the shell are known to represent the different routes taken by the pilgrims so, having this as a source, we can trace our different narratives with the outlook that there are many pathways to the same destination and the goal is in the experience itself. Being open and aware to the needs of others is the beginning of a journey home to self.
Questions to ask yourself:
How did I stay open and flexible to changes in the direction my day took?
What are the inner signals of courage I can pay more attention to?
How did I engage with and harmonise giving and receiving?
The end of one journey is always only the beginning of something else so there can never be any expectation of finality. Life is only what you can hold in the Scallop Shell.
On this pilgrimage, because I am walking to raise awareness for mental health and will be intentionally working with people who approach me for coaching, meditation, therapies etc, I will hang a donation box from my backpack with a QR code that pilgrims can scan to access my socials, the work I do and the cause I am walking for. This is aligned to the scallop shell which can also be used as a begging bowl and I am doing this as a way to break down my ego as I open myself to receiving donations from strangers like a nun.
You can follow, support and share my Walking for Mental Health fundraising campaign on BackaBuddy. All my socials can be found on LinkTree.
People often ask how I got from the 60-hour work week, shackled to a corporate desk in Investment Banking, to the fluidity and flexibility of a multi-faceted therapist, coach and guide.
In surrender, I reply … on my knees, with broken heart and shattered dreams. And not just the once.
For decades I did what I was meant to do to fit the societal construct of a productive adult contributing to a broken world. Nobody had versed me in the art of creative choices, the trust in intuition, and the capacity to follow my soul in life or in love.
We often think doing the work, the training, the emotional labour, means that we will be more resilient at times of challenge. But it’s often not true.
It is my role to guide you through the crises, that will ultimately bring growth and development, rather than numb you with more layers of bullshit just to temporarily help you ‘fit in’ with the essentially dysfunctional society in which you exist. Existential distress does not equate to mental disease; it means there is an inner tension pushing you through another birthing into a new way of existence. It is a calling to the you who needs to unravel in order to be rewoven.
Through the blend of modalities that I show up with in service to your wellbeing, there is an un-layering that occurs to reveal your values and roles, or bring you to a place of balance from where you can better develop those values in order to find belonging through authenticity rather than through merely adopting the values of those around you and ultimately adapting to a system that doesn’t resonate with your true need to find meaning.
It is important to find the core strength to stand out rather than fit in; to add rather than adapt; to live your own life rather than exist in others’. You don’t come into the world; you come out of it.
As a nomad on life’s landscapes I have developed the skills and wisdom to guide you to a deep exploration of who you are, what your gifts are and how to live your truth and purpose into the world with curiosity and compassion.
People call me courageous because of how I approach life. The word courage comes from cor meaning heart so, yes, this is a word I live into the world … one day at a time.
I blend my studies with my experience and I bring a deep wisdom, tempered with ignorance, into the world.
I invite you to explore your inner world like a true adventurer.
I am an energetic accumulation of my life force, my experiences, my research, my studies, my connections and my family tree; I am you in me and I am me in you.
I have been trying to find the seed to write as I have been reluctant/resistant to tell my stories and reveal all the mucky truths … still that fearful little girl inside not wanting to invite the wrath of volatile family members who offer nothing without conditions … so I have been trying to write everything apart from what is trying to be written.
There are opposing voices in my head—one warning me the just be quiet because of the impact the truth has, and the other down on its knees begging for this truth to be told. Truth isn’t the same as facts. Truth is something deeper.
After an episode of coercive manipulation last year, I no longer feel the need to fawn or fight as I lean into what Anne Lamott says: “You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better”.
I can’t tell a powerful story if I’m afraid of hurting people—writing from a place of fear is never a good way to proceed. My first obligation as I forge ahead is to the truth of my story and that means not censoring myself.
Some stories need to be told, and while the telling may come with some fallout, my compulsion to share my own story is because it helps others feel less alone; those who need to be reminded that in a world of eight billion people, it is inevitable that there is going to be an awful lot of shared experience and, although we all have our unique interpretations of events, we are not unique in our struggles. We mostly just need help getting to the other side of them.
This is what my work is all about—not transcending anything but simply being my authentic dark and twisty self so that I can hold those parts of other wounded souls. I am not into false positivity; I am into real hard life stuff … the cracks and breaks that guide the way into the gifts that each one of us has.
My lifelong studies, self development and spiritual growth have led me to the gifts I was born with—not to tell people to let go of the past and leave the pain alone but to sit with them in their past and in their pain. It is only in going into the dark that one can one day come out into the light once more.
I have developed a mistrust of lawyers over the years. They have always been the people thrust on me by people of dubious character, with harmful intent. Used as the kryptonite for others to distract and overpower me, they have been the pawns in wars fought against me. I am not unscathed. So, when my son declared matter of factly in the car one day last year that he had registered to study BCom Law, the horror I felt bordered on outrage. I stammered. I had no words. Not this intelligent, kind, conscious young man! My thoughts whirled and my heart pounded. Brainwashed, I thought … sucked into the system, I gasped … poisoned by his private schooling and narcissistic parent. I am fortunate that words do often escape me. I am not often succinct, let alone silent, especially when indignant and stupefied. Yet here I was … silent … gaping and dumbfounded … and I was still. I was driving. It was a blessed saviour. Because I was wrong.
There is good and bad in everyone and there is good and bad in every profession. Not all lawyers should be vilified because of the bad people who hide behind them. And every profession with a bad rap needs another good person to step in and shift the perception. My great grandfather was a British Judge in Colonial India. The India I love where my paternal grandmother, Diana, was born and grew has a karmic hold on me. This karmic bond that made her an activist—and unwittingly caused me to rebel against the construct—has created an aspiration in my son to unwittingly go back to source.
I have spent many hours and healings pondering and deep diving into the possibility—however unlikely—that this ancestor of mine, caught in a paradigm of horrendous crimes against this land I long for, was one of the good guys. I have spent many hours and healings pondering and deep diving too into whether his Indian-born redhead fought the South African Apartheid because of the example of good she was shown or in reaction to the bad. Because some people don’t evolve into anything other than the kryptonite others require to become a superhero. And some people’s parents are that kryptonite.
Having spent so many years moulding myself to fit a system; to fit a society; to fit a community of people who value structures of control above all else, I remember with shameful distaste looking out from my cool marble double-volume Investment Banking office block at protests against capitalism taking place in the street below and feeling contempt and pity for these ragged unemployed mongrels with too much time on their hands. I felt they must envy me in my branded clothes with my Toni&Guy crafted hairstyles. How wrong I was. Anarchy is also a system with its own set of rules and dogma. Karma is the vehicle that can either transport you or run you down.
It took me years of accumulating and aspiring to a dysfunctional norm before falling from my wobbly pedestal in divorce and disillusion to begin finding those threads that brought me into a more harmonious weave with Diana’s legacy of simplicity, lightheartedness, gravitas, integrity, creativity, and strength to live outside of dysfunction which, in her day was a whole lot more difficult than in mine. I admire her with deep bows of gratitude as I see how my son too is following this thread, and weaving together the tapestry of activism and consciousness with the clear-headed pragmatism of a Virgo birth with Libra rising under a Sagittarius moon.
Watching me fight annually to retain custody against a man—and the legal system he used for this unjust endeavour—also contributed to the shaping of my son into the young man who seeks this path of knowledge towards understanding of justice and its shadow side. Even the bad ones are in their way the greatest teachers. It’s as erroneous to discard the systems because of the people as it is to discard the people because of the systems. If a bad person hides in the jungle, it doesn’t make the jungle bad for shielding her. My reality is a construct of my own mind.
There is a saying that anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die. I cannot be harmed by a vengeful person imbibing poison she expects to kill me. I cannot find someone else’s inner peace. But I can find my own. I observe my inclination to lean in too far, too soon. To feel safe. I act first. Too terrified of a surprise attack, I walk straight into the wall … or a fist.
If life is suffering then my pain resides solely in my resistance to said suffering. Breathing into it and accepting its natural and necessary occurrence, I can breathe out the struggle and no longer feel the pain. Two weeks ago during a visit to a dentist in Chandigarh, I worked with this theory. Using only the breath and mindful awareness, I allowed the dentist to remove an old crown one day and fit a new one the next. With no anaesthetic, I used the experience to deconstruct my brain’s narrative that the nerve pain was dangerous or detrimental and I gave my brain the opportunity to cut through habituated patterns and see another reality and truth not based on past stories. This is how I learn to feel safe.
So this framework has filtered into other areas of life as I breathe through my reluctance to tap into the construct I discarded. I have befriended the pawn a recent perpetrator/victim (look out for another post on The Drama Triangle) has used to create her own smoke and mirrors drama and I have befriended my requirement to recruit a lawyer who will be as good and honest and trustworthy as I give her the credit and integrity to be. And I use these data points to shift my perspective of the karmic bond my son has to entering this field: to change the paradigm and to heal the ancestral line; to blend the yin and the yang, the creative and the pragmatic, the gentle and the bold.
I use my self-development as a glider and, from a place of eagle-eyed vision, I acknowledge the duality that guides the river of self knowing through the safety of foreign terrain as I place a Lawyer as one bank and a Sangoma as the other. This is the weft and weave that makes the tapestry come alive on the loom … the poise and pause of musical notes … the margins of the page.
There is no happiness without the transmutation of suffering and all superheroes have their nemesis. Without the kryptonite Superman would not have his superpowers; without challenge there is no Superhero. The systems and the shadows have shaped me too. So I befriend the jungle once more and know that I am safe there … and also not … but mostly I am.
“a dream there should be somewhere on earth, a place which no nation could claim as its own, where all human beings of good will who have a sincere aspiration, could live freely as citizens of the world and obey one single authority, that of the supreme truth; a place of peace, concord and harmony…” — The Mother … (had a dream)
A dream is a portal. So too is a nightmare. Chaos and order both are portals. Auroville was that dream. And Auroville is that portal.
When my son finished school he chose to go straight into his studies. I’ve claimed his gap year. Has we slipped dimensions. Cause. Effect. Unlawful Degree by Distinction. I extend my stay at the sublime 4 East Coast Home and book a flight to Delhi for the 8th of February and a flight to Dharamsala 3 days later. Movement can come incrementally. I am exploring options to stay till July… or August … or forever. Will either of us make it back. Is back even an option. Forward is also an anomaly.
Most people dream of a life that is a dream, an illusion. Some dream of a life grounded in reality, in humanity, in freedom and in truth. I’m settled and decide to stay that way. I’m well and happy and finding ways to recalibrate. I have my moments … but they are more like salt in a lake here than salt in a glass of water.
For me. The forest is the portal. Running is my vehicle. I am curious about a path but lack the courage to take it. Yet. I run through a spiderweb. That too is a portal. Superhero. I run. Step by step … no other way for now. Spiderverse awaits. I see a mongoose … My eyeballs search my brain; looking for the plural. I run some more. Everything… the good, the bad, the beauty and fear … comes in plurals.
Altruism is not necessarily grand gestures of generosity and service; altruism can be as simple as being happy and, in being happy, holding happiness for those around you. Sometimes the greatest gift you can give someone is a smile. Sometimes moving a fallen branch from the road or stopping to treat a fallen scooter driver. The paths are dry and sandy. I stoop to retrieve a shoe on the sandy red dust road. Croks it says—erroneously spelled brands come cheap here. I place it on the foot of the small boy who dropped it riding pillion with his mother. A hybrid Cinderella portal to that time way back of wedding sari buying and Nic back-to-back with me on the moped, shouting, “go fast over the next speed bump, Mum, so we can get more air!”
I pass a field of boys playing cricket, pausing to slip into the many memories of four, six and seven-year-old Nic on his Indian cricket tours; playing on the ghats in Varanasi, the town square in Darjeeling, parks and beaches in Goa. I remember the excitement at the IPL in Bangalore and how content he was joining in every cricket game we passed and jumping on the backs of motorbikes with my young colleagues in Auroville for daily cricket games. A part of me wishes he were here and I was studying law.
Space time glitches with precision. Looking for doorways … trying to draw them into my objective reality. Will I still be writing on the other side? For three consecutive days on my forest flings, the same ancient cyclist dismounts his equally ancient cycle at the exact location as I approach in the opposite direction; the same bare-chested Korean teenager runs past me at the exact same junction, and the silver moustached man in a saffron hoodie gives the same steely stare as I cross the new road lined with the remains of the trees. The Chainsaw Massacre was banned in the same era as the birth of Auroville; another thread tethered to inception.
When I recognise the anomaly, it stops happening. Am I through, I wonder. Are you still reading this?
Wild boar sandpits keep me moving forward. I run. The portal to a memory of reading of Ulysses’s wild boar scar on the morning I later encountered a wild boar trapped in a wire fence … human-made in conflict with nature. It is also my trail of crumbs to Penelope in waiting. I can’t stop. My sweat evaporates only when I’m in motion. I stop. Mosquitoes land in clusters on exposed flesh to suck my blood. My edges blur with the steam rising off my body and the mosquitoes drown. Sweating blood, words are like threads through blisters.
I pass the Youth Centre, aging and not yet wise. Perhaps I am straddling the time warp; gradually dissolving across the threshold. My toenails blacken and I run some more.
Feeling stuck in a Philip Pullman novel, I remain on the limen, crouching, my daemon beside me. An elephant. Too heavy to carry, this elephant guide crouches beside me, Diana on her back, my real mother and guide—both creature and human. Both. Because everything travels together. In tree pose, she joins the forest, passive activist; ever-present. Compassionately mothering me into the adult who knows who I am and who isn’t afraid to be the Bohemian she was.
As the sun snaps open its brazen eyes and seeks me out between the silences, leaves spray dew, christening my passage through this puzzling tunnel. I don’t look up, It smacks of ambush. I keep looking over my shoulder. Paranoid South African. It sounds like I am being followed. It takes me a couple of runs to figure out it’s the sound of the nylon running baggies I borrowed from Nic shloofing together between my thighs.
I encounter a herd of cows. They block the path; look docile. But I am wise. I back away, remembering the cow in Varanasi I got too friendly with that horn butted me in the solar plexus; left me breathless and unable to call for help. Some things are more scary than they seem.
Everywhere puppies are suckling. Calves too. The puppies stretch themselves to reach the mother’s teats. The calves contort. If humans had to suckle a cow, I wonder, would they still believe they need its milk. Cognitive dissonance. A herd of goats freely graze, stretching as they do to reach things partially inaccessible and I am taken to the Annapurna mountains of Nepal where the sock-eating goats stretch to reach trekkers’ laundry.
If the tree represents the forest, the road represents humanity. The trees will not get defeated because they are not at war. Holotropic breathwork masters. They know we aren’t yet able to breathe. We fight instead … and burn. False breath, false transformation. We fight because we fight the ignorance we neither desire to confront nor change. The opposite of caring isn’t not caring; the opposite of caring is caring too much. And like a heart breaking doesn’t destroy the heart but only opens it to more love, the trees collude with the elements and the creatures to ensure their seed spawn travel beyond this imagined utopia. The trees don’t fight back. They lift their roots like Ents and retreat to safe haven, a simple manifestation of a current incarnation in wait for the roads to crumble to dust. They trust we won’t last forever.
A man squats in a field; his morning constitution. He holds a newspaper—read and wipe. My sari-clad being makes it into the Hindu Bureau; I feel a sense of relief it’s only online. A dog shits on a speed bump—I share the sentiment. The bumps and dips in the roads, like the bumps and dips in life, build my resilience through the bruising and the pain. I learn to put pressure on the pedals when I ride the potholes so I don’t break my vagina.
The light rain has done nothing to settle the red dust. Everything steams. It’s humid. I crunch the dirt thrown up by motorcycles, cows and construction vehicles between my teeth.
I take refuge in the trees. I offer my love. I breathe. The trees breathe back. I sing with the birds. The temples sing in response. Life is a chant. I spiral in birdsong and shade. And from the villages beyond the trees, Bollywood blasts from a megaphone and my body moves in synch. I dance in chaos and move to flow … and back again. Both polarities can reside in harmony; a harmony borne only through the portal of conflict. Order leads to chaos and chaos will ultimately always make way to order. Harmony isn’t calm … harmony is about being able to move between it all and not get lost in the clinging onto just one aspect of the entire range. Order is safe but chaos brings change. Within everything is the seed of its destruction. Struggle always manifests new life, generates resilience.
Post a 4-day water fast (translation here is 4 days no water as opposed to the 4 days only water that it is) I choose an integrating walk in the forest. I see a runner in the distance. My competitive subconscious kicks in. I run to overtake him. Podium position. It feels simultaneously pointless and fun. I get my dopamine where I can. Not running away from anything. Running towards everything.
The head of a kid goat lies with a vacant stare on a roadside table, its severed body already butchered, more distressing than butchered trees. Trees grow back, goats don’t. Nearby, an old goat sits on its concrete block not wanting to move where the rope no longer tightens around its throat. The other side is tied to a tree, beneath its branches a shady patch of grass. It reminds me that I too feel like I am tied to the branches and pulling away despite it throttling me. At the end of my tether. How often do we tie ourselves to that which seems to bring comfort only to find we are strangled by our own knots?
It takes 2,979 hours to walk to Japan and 1,850 hours to walk to Bali. My journey stretches out like the thousands of steps and I feel such liberation in my diminished attachments and in not being missed. I won’t be returning as planned on 11 April. I won’t be walking to Japan or Bali but I will be flying to Kathmandu. They offer a 90 day visa and I’m thinking it would be a waste not to utilise all 90. My work is loved here; I feel I am too … both appreciated and received … but I must leave. Some aren’t ready to heal. The trees have spoken and I need to let the dead leaves drop so the new can grow; I need to expand my branches and drop aerial roots so I can expand outwards to provide more shade for those who need it.
The world that I am used to is gone and I am on the limen of finding the new. I buy a magnificent scarf emblazoned with golden dragonflies and when I reach my bedroom door, there is a dragon fly clinging to the string tied to the lock. It flies in after me.
Reminiscent of clearing my storage after four years; moving only what was absolutely essential into the house I built, so too have I cleared my inner storage containers and what I now put back in is what will stay and sustain and support.
I have become the woman who would have taken care of me as a child. And now I take care of the me I have become through the portal of travel.
Mercurial Gemini with a strong intellect and speed, I get myself so tied up in knots over labels and judgements; flummoxed by the dangerous new age bullshit of either being in my head OR in my body. My pilgrimage this past year has almost broken me; taken jackhammers to my psyche trying to understand where the unique intersection is between the paper doll, the shadow and the self; made me sick wasting energy justifying who and how I am … on blending two parts of myself that were never separate.
“Now, about that word authentic. It is related to the word author—and you can think of it as being the author of your own self.” — Marion Woodman
Being authentic and spiritual makes me the more real, not the less. It guides me on those internal spiralling pilgrimages down passages of grief and awakening. I touch into every part of me that is also a part of you and therefore a part of everyone and everything in the universe. I can’t hide or deny any aspect of myself. And so I write and I walk and I journey to the places most are afraid to go; places I am mostly also afraid to go.
Slightly Chilled. The name of a guest house I pass on my walk to find real coffee. Nescafe signs send me away. Coconut time. I walk to the river and put my feet in the coolness. Vegetable Garden House is Super Chilled—the family, the garden setting, the beautiful young travellers I meet over delectable Sri Lankan breakfast dishes and weird Sri Lanka coffee.
I wake before the three alarms I have set. It’s 1h40. I am dressed in full hiking gear when I climb into bed at 8pm. My fast-pack is loaded with every warm item of clothing I brought with me, including the pink shawl (the Diana I take on every pilgrimage), a kikoi, extra socks, an entire change of clothing and merino wool gloves. Geared up with head torch and rain jacket, I emerge from my room to the sight of a woman also kitted out for the climb. Her name is Cami, she’s from Paris and it’s her 32nd birthday. It’s hard to imagine I’m twenty years her senior. I feel 35 again, meeting young travellers on their first round of adventure. I get the sense I am being appraised with a measure of curiosity; they are not sure which bracket to place me in as I am the age of the mothers who are in the process of making home and being normal.
Walking this path often means walking alone. And alone isn’t about being without people but without the capacity to articulate my sense of self. Relationships fail for me because I attach to an ideal based on what the world wants from me rather than what I myself want for me; I attach to the illusion of what it promises despite knowing that intentions are generally to ‘fix’ my rabid self reliance in order to make others feel less conflicted and more comfortable with their own erroneous attachments.
Most hikers in Cape Town know the Newlands Forest 400 steps. Add another 5,100, throw in a gazillion tons of concrete, hundreds of neon lights, tea stalls, sweet stalls, Buddha statues, snack bars and innumerable walkers from as old as ancient and as young as infant. It’s a lot to take in. I have the intention to do two nights in a row up SriPada. I am delusional.
Like the star at the top of the Christmas tree, the cluster of neon lights marks the end point of the climb, where the foot of Buddha is believed to have dented the top of the hill. I am initially captivated by the continuous row of lumens lighting up the path until I recognise the reality and the altogether fabulous absurdity of it all. A monk ties a white string around my wrist with blessings for the journey and, similarly to the Camino de Santiago scallop shell, I am branded a pilgrim and given kudos for my commitment.
I navigate new pathways and pave new neurological networks. Like the silk of the spider’s web or moth’s cocoon, the white pilgrims threads create initiation networks, a semi-permanent anchor on the railings. I lay paths that others may follow, not because I know my way but so others may know it’s okay to not know. There are no solid lines on this map. Only hyphenated. A dot-to-dot puzzle. This is my Sadhana.
People sleep where they sit. A young girl walks holding her mother’s hand; sleepwalking. A man walks barefoot; it’s his 15th time to the Peak. “Is that a spiritual thing?” asks my walking companion. “No, my boots got too heavy”, he replies, focused fully as he places each footfall tentatively on the gnarled concrete. But I feel differently. That kind of pain can only be a spiritual experience. People carry babies and toddlers, people sing to encourage each other, and the elderly use the railings to replace worn out knees. Babies cry; some adults too. It’s an endless river in flow, night after night after night. The same yet always different.
Everything in life is pilgrimage. Nothing we do or say or love is unique. Yet, in pursuit of being individual … special … we try to carve our own way and, in doing so, fail to recognise the struggle, the value, the pull, of all the millions that came before. And without proper ritual to honour the trajectory of sameness, we ultimately get lost.
I lie awake on the second night in the shadow of SriPada imagining the thousands more trudging to the peak, and I know that as weird and whacky a pilgrimage it is, I am bound to do it again … many times. People who judge me for my atypical free-spirited escapades also follow me vicariously; afraid to step into the groundlessness of the abyss … smothering themselves instead in the illusion of hoarding for something that never comes. A guru tells me that I’m on the right path when fewer and fewer people understand me.
I travel solo so I can disappear into a framework of existence that doesn’t require justification or proof of my being. I travel solo to untether myself from these insidious and relentless chains curtailing my capacity to simply be. I travel solo so I can re-understand myself.
WELL WORTH BEING 