Resources & Inspiration.
This…
Here is a space where you will find some humans and their offerings, all that I have and do find inspiring in every manner of shapes, forms, and languages. They are, as my title says: resources and inspiration.
Everything here, in the possibly sometimes unexpected constellation of what touches, helps, nourishes, holds, teaches and sustains my little life, is such a pleasure and privilege to bring together and make into a small though borderless country, on my website.
Here to honour, invite and to offer.
Now I greet you from the other side of sorrow and despair, with a love so vast and so shattered, it will reach you everywhere.
(Leonard Cohen)
“The most common form of despair
is not being who you are”
- Kierkegaard
Dear Kae,
I’m typing as my hand writing is apparently illegible !
This is a thank you.
Simple.
Gratitude for the way you offer yourself through your work, your craft and devotion to it. Often my heart says: thank you, to the poets and artists that work this way, giving us that receive you, pieces of ourselves in the process.
I don’t very often give concrete form to an actual note, trusting the gratitude flies around in the fields of mystery… but for you I make an exception. The last time I was moved to express a specific thank you, was to Mr. L. Cohen, without whom I wouldn’t be quite as I am… he has been my very good company since I was 13, and broken beyond vocabulary. He is in my blood and bones, and is instrumental in my deep understanding that we are all broken and whole, that it is through the broken that we are most human and most luminous. I sent him a video thank you in 2014, through YouTube, very in the moment, on a hard day. I never expected he’d actually receive it… but somehow it mattered to offer it up. He did see it, and sent me a note.
Maybe life is giving and receiving the best of what is true, to one another, as best we can, and the rivers of gratitude that flow from that, run through this beautiful and ravaged world… so we can both weep at the train station, and find peace in people’s faces.
Thank you being so exquisitely You. I mean who else could you be… but getting home is a pilgrimage. Our knees bleed from crawling and we learn to kiss those bloody knees, if we have enough courage and find some allies. We can’t do it on our own. I found some kin along the road, and your work is an ally.
Your work is a doorway, and like Leonard, you are devoted to craft, use what is most personal, whilst holding your own privacy lightly but clearly.
That’s it.
Salutations & love,
Caro (2022)
Some Helpful People, Places & Things
Joanna Watters - This Beautiful Work
Joanna: I can’t imagine life without the space of safety, love and longevity she holds for me, not to mention calling me out with a pitch perfect sense of timing.
She offers individual, couples and group work, in person in Devon, and online. She also offers several residential retreats each year, mostly in various lovely venues in Devon.
A Call To Dance
Sue Rickards: Dance & Movement Meditation
Welcome & invitation to meet and move with the one you are always with. Homecoming. Already here & already alright. Always were: Radical Simplicity: a practice in good company, inviting us to keep returning to this present moment over and over again, through movement & dance.
Sue’s teaching is a doorway to what is, to home ground, to less noise and more connection.
Cranio-Sacral Therapy
More than 3 decades ago, I’d just landed back in the UK after 8 years in Australia. Lost would be the word, and/or floundering. I was anchored into 12-step meetings, and people kept telling me: go to this, go to that. I went.
My first Cranio session: I got on the table and spent about 15 minutes thinking what is she doing? Her hand is under the base of my spine, and that’s about it, and nothing is happening… suddenly, and I do mean just like that, I sunk slowly to the seabed. I landed deep under the clearest water, and lay, breathing with ease, and I believe now, tasting for the very first time a place of rest.
When my therapist: it turned out she was a very experienced, loved and respected teacher and practitioner, brought me up to the surface and back, she said something like: well, your nervous system really liked that. I had no idea what she was talking about, but I nodded, and came back for more.
Cranio Sacral Therapy is highly skilled attunement to deep nervous system, and in my language, it is simply being found, received and welcomed. I have had many chapters of this work over the years since that first taste of something I didn’t even know I’d never had, or how essential being found in this way is.
There are many exceptional therapists offering this practice, and I share the link above because this training body offers treatment from a rich selection of experienced and heartful practitioners, and runs a teaching clinic where you can have the low cost treatment, either with the attention of 3 students and 1 tutor, giving you an extraordinary experience of being held in a cradle of attunement, or 1 student and 1 tutor.
People go to Cranio for almost every reason under the sun. It is powerful medicine. For me personally, it has always been about being found (in embodiment) where all the frozen, trapped and lonely experiences are tuned into directly, and very gently received and stayed with. It is never, ever too late to stay with something that had to manage alone, and being able to internalise that settles and softens the embodied clench that for many humans is so normal we don’t even know it.
Cath has integrated her deep experience of NVC (Non Violent Communication) with the use of Open Floor movement/dance meditation.
She offers retreats, individual bespoke sessions, organisational training packages, and all from the safety and kindness that is her inate home ground .
The Centre for Psychosexual Health
Polly McAfee & Cabby Laffy offer psychosexual psychotherapy that is truly inclusive. They are experienced, safe, welcoming and generous in their ethos.
They also offer training to practitioners and to organisations.
Beth is a space, an invitation, a doorway… a place to be welcomed, received, found, and stayed with.
Her generosity of service is human, humble & strong. Have a look at her website via this link and you will feel her… if there is a response in your nervous system, trust it 🙏
Tim Foskett
What can I say about Tim that conveys just how much he resources and inspires me?
He works particually (though certainly not exclusively) with gay men and queer folk, and has a deep belief in, and capacity to create theraputic spaces that are intimate and safe, that become healing nourishment for humans that are hungry for such experience.
He is understated in his way of working; deceptivly simple, not to be confused with anything less than fully relational.
At the time of writing this, I am a longstanding member of one of Tim’s groups for therapists of various persuasions. Not a supervision group, but a group for each one of us that is a thread in the weave, to work deeply with our own needs, edges, triggering of each-other, defenses falling away.
It is almost indescribable how group therapy of the keep it simple, keep it real kind, that is well held, can and does teach us who we are in the mirrors of each other human being.
Tim is a gem.
For me he has been part of the scaffolding that held me while I built my home address.
CEO, Alexandra Draycott
Alexandra has first-hand experience of egg freezing and all the emotions that go with it. 7 years ago, in the middle of a divorce, Alexandra froze her eggs aged 34. Whilst having eggs “on ice” offered emotional reassurance at the time, in the subsequent years she wondered why so little after care was provided. She was also wondering what might come next, and simply did not know where to start.
Egg Advisor was born out of this deeply personal experience. Since realising that there were hundreds of women out there who also felt unsure about pathways around Egg Freezing, Alexandra decided to use her 20 years' experience leading strategy and innovation initiatives to set up a business that might also help other people in a similar position. Alexandra is responsible for driving Egg Advisor's day to day strategy and operations.