A Visit to the Ancestors This Saint Patrick's Day

My family has listened to A Celtic Sojourn, a show on Boston’s GBH Radio, since I was a child. 

Because of the pandemic, my girls and I have been able to watch live streams of both their Christmas and St. Patrick’s Day concerts. These online events haven’t replaced big family gatherings or filled the gap left by my eleven year-old’s cancelled Irish dance performances, but those nights, all filled with music and dancing and poetry, glow a little brighter than all those other evenings spent on the couch over the last year. 

I love the way Celtic Sojourn host Brian O’Donovan describes this season: “It’s March, the ‘high-holidays’ for Irish culture around the world.”

This year, of course, the celebrations are all muted and permuted. 

I’m not chauffeuring my dancer to perform at corn beef and cabbage dinners all across the county, like I should be. Instead of heading to hear the local Irish-ish band, we’ll crank up the stereo, open the windows, and shiver as we raise a glass with friends on the back deck. 

And yet, bits of unexpected magic keep finding us, even without the parades and proper pours of Guinness.

Healing the Wounds of Another Year When March 17 Didn’t Happen

This morning, I had a session with a client who shares my love of Ireland. In fact, we both studied in Galway as juniors in college and missed each other by just one semester.

She originally hired me as her writing coach, copywriter, and online marketing consultant, but our relationship has shifted and grown. Now, I am her story healer, too. We begin each session with a simple question, “do you need the practical or the magical right now?”

(Actually, that is never a simple question, is it? The pragmatic “writing for work stuff” is always infused with the work of the soul, especially for healers, creative entrepreneurs, and transformation professionals who pour their hearts and souls into their work.)

Today, it was clear that she needed healing and support. She needed help detangling the knots of everyday life and this sense of being tossed from one crisis to another. Like so many, she was feeling the weight of this one year anniversary of The Great Pause. Perhaps there was a sense of mourning, of “I can’t believe we’re missing another Saint Paddy’s Day,” too.

A Whisper From the Ancestors

I called on my most trusted tarot cards - a deck that found me back in 1999 during my first year in Ireland. Following their lead, we were called to step out of the modern-day snares and endless b.s., away from the stress and the strain of keeping a business growing and a family happy in the midst of the long drawn out disruption.

We were called to visit her ancestors in a wild place just outside of Galway City. 

And so, I led her through a journey back to those rocky shores, back to the lands of her grandmother’s grandmothers. We were in search of a story, a message, a blessing.

With permission, I’ll share it with you here…

“You’re fine,” said a woman from deep in the past on a small patch of land in a place called Connemara where the Atlantic wind and waves never cease. 

That was all she had to say. And that was all this granddaughter of her heart needed to hear.

Returning from that journey across the miles and years, we talked through the layers of meaning in that simple phrase. We talked about the deep, deep blessing that this ancestral grandmother offered.

May You Have Fine Saint Patrick’s Day

We moderns have weaponized “fine” into shorthand for “not good enough.” If someone asks you how you have been and you say “fine,” that answer offers something between “absolutely terrible” and “you don’t really want to know.” 

“Fine” implies merely surviving in a world that declares you’re not really living if you’re not thriving.

What if we could liberate “fine” from all that judgement and disappointment and the sense that things should be better?

What if we remembered that fine wine, fine art, and finely-woven cloth are to be cherished and prized? 

What if we could hear the voice of the ancestors as they took in a deep breath of sunshine and salt air and sighed “‘Tis a fine day”?

There was a message, a blessing in this for my client, a woman who strives to care for all the people, the animals, and the details as she strives to care for herself, too.

There’s a message and a blessing here for all of us, I think.

Perhaps it’s the gift of perspective. (When we strip away all the 21st century stuff and focus instead on the people, the land, and the animals in our lives, wouldn’t life be the right kind of fine?)

Perhaps it’s the permission not to endlessly quest for the epic and the awesome. (Which isn’t sustainable anyway… we’re not meant to live in a constant state of peak experience and we really don’t want every day to be a holiday because that too would run thin.)

Perhaps it’s simply a blessing.

You’re a fine one. Have a fine day. Sure, if the sun rises, it will be fine tomorrow.

Let yourself be fine, just for a moment, and then see if you’d like to be fine for just a minute more. When you hold this sense of “fine” within yourself, might it become just a little easier to face the next crisis and embrace the next moment of ecstatic joy?

Can I help you unlock the stories and untangle the knots? During a Story Illumination Session we can follow the calls of the ancestors or wherever the energy wants to take us.

Want more stories of Ireland? Get a copy of The Sovereignty Knot today. Order  from your preferred bookseller or get a signed copy from me!

Tell the story that’s true to you, not just easy for the crowd

Yesterday, I had a chance to share my Story Triangle webinar (you can watch the recording here). During my morning preparation I expected to spend time perfecting the way I presented my storytelling e-course (we all need to sharpen our sales skills, right?). Instead, I ended up lavishing my attention on what seemed like an innocuous little story about St. Patrick and his teaching tool, the shamrock.

To tell the truth, I’d always felt a little disingenuous about this part of my class. I chose the story because I wanted to talk about the power of three. Trotting out the tale of Ireland’s patron saint helped me do that while highlighting my personal story as a student of Irish literature. Plus, just about everyone has a kindly association with March 17 and the wearing of the green and all that, right?

Well, not everyone.

Just this week, someone responded to a video I’d posted earlier this spring about What to do when content you loved writing doesn't get read. I recorded this commentary because I was bummed because some St. Paddy’s Day related content I’d created hadn’t gotten much attention. As a former “professional Irish person” I guess I felt like the world needed to heed (and tweet) my green-tinted writing advice.

After offering some kind, supportive thoughts about how important it is to be seen for our creative contributions, someone who goes by “Wonderfeel” had this to say:

I can't help but mention that St Patrick is someone who would have made the Westborough Baptist Church look mild-mannered. He was a fanatic who violently trounced Earth-based faiths in Ireland. He 'chased out the snakes'. Like most violent individuals he had a backstory that made his cruelty more understandable, but still he was a person who deeply injured the soul of Ireland. Maybe we could wait till April 13 and celebrate Seamus Heaney's birthday?

That was a wake up call I didn't know I needed

I don’t know who Wonderfeel is or whether they’ve followed me enough to know that my interest in Ireland has a lot more to do with Heaney’s poetry and triple goddesses than it does with the Christian trinity. Maybe it was just a coincidence. Perhaps the universe picked this person to remind me to tell stories that are important and true to who I am, not just those that seem most likely to appeal to a crowd.

No matter what, I’m deeply grateful.

Like my mysterious friend Wonderfeel, I don’t have a particularly warm view St. Patrick. I know that “salvation” happened as the result of a lot of devastation. There are many other examples of the power of three that I could have used that wouldn’t have made me feel like a fraud for telling the easy story rather than the story that was true to me.

What’s so important about one tiny story?

Would revising one minor example in an hourlong presentation have made much of a difference to the overall outcome - teaching therapists, coaches, and others in the transformation business about the relationships that help them tell stronger stories? Probably not.

But I strive for integrity and it’s my mission to align every story I tell with who I am and the interests of those I hope to reach. Telling a story that pulls me off that course is a disservice to my community, myself, and the Story Triangle I hold so dear.

You can watch the Story Triangle presentation now. (Try to check it out before midnight on Friday, June 3 because that’s when the special early action bonus expires for new You, Your Stories, and Your Audience enrollees.)