Clare CrombieÆs Diary

June,1995

Last month I wrote about my exploration of the ôunbornö feminine. IÆm still exploring, with the help of books, therapy and all, and seem to be more preoccupied at the moment with the allowing old negativity to surface and die off.

IÆve been resisting writing the article for weeks now. So I decided to use a tool which works for me, that is, allowing myself to free-write. I started working this way last year (inspired by Natalie GoldbergÆs book ôWild Mindö) when I was working on a dissertation and found that gradually, through this process a theme began to emerge and material was generated. Part of my work to integrate parts of myself and to let be visible what is often kept hidden has been for me to allow those parts of what I write to have validity and be seen as well as the more ôformalö, ôheadyö, left brain writing. I call it writing from the heart.

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Feeling like lying low low low, part of me lying in wait, hoping the post will bring me a letter telling me that IÆve passed my final assessment and fearing that it wonÆt. Trying not to wait. Ha Ha! Trying NOT to WAIT !!! Was there ever an activity which involves so much negativity, fighting and resistance as trying not to wait. Waiting for my pass or fail. Will this egg hatch or not? Walking the tightrope of being and becoming. Aware of a bodysoul sensation of lurking shame, seems to dwell somewhere midchest, along with a vague feeling of unease and not feeling safe in myself.

This morning I finished reading Marion WoodmanÆs wonderful book ô Leaving My FatherÆs Houseö. Then I sat down to paint a picture with inks. In this picture a black bird with open beak appears to be sinking beneath a dualistic bright red orange (on one side) blue green(the other) sea. I imagine Him, (yes itÆs a him and maybe that capital letter H is not a slip as I thought at first) squawking as he goes, in his death agony. Hmmm. The words that come to mind are ôNegative animus dyingö, even though that sounds a bit heady, or clinical or something.

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This time last week I was travelling up to Scotland to participate in an Authentic Movement workshop and that is what I am having difficulty writing about. (IÆll tell you about my experience of the difference of being in the countryside of the Borders: cold cold air, slicing, bracing, challenging, not soft, lots of brilliant yellow gorse; the time warp - for a southerner - of being back in early spring again, seeing daffodils and bluebells still in flower. Shepherds purse and other hedgerow flowers in abundance, clean, washed looking skies with huge clouds changing all the time, silence, no cars, no mechanical sounds, tiny wobbly lambs). From this background I entered into the movement experience. This is now the third time IÆve been to the Borders for an Authentic Movement workshop (run twice by Kedzie Penfield and once by Tina Stromsted) and each time the experience throws up different personal and collective connections with the land which is the setting for the creation of the ôsafe placeö of the work shop.

This time, when travelling home I went into Tullie House Museum in Carlisle. There I had a brief conversation with the woman who sold me some cards and I ôfound myselfö asking her the meaning of the word ôreiverö, which I had noticed in many of the book titles on display in the shop. She told me that it was the name used to describe the marauding raiders who were active on both sides of the Border over a long period of time. Then she told me that it is thought to be the basis for the word ôbereavedö because of course, there were so many deaths as a result of the raiding, so much loss. (I wondered about the word grieving as well).

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ôAuthentic Movement is a deceptively simple form to describe: one person moves spontaneously with eyes closed while another witnesses. The form provides safety and opportunity for letting the body have its way, for letting the body be moved by inner prompting....... it can be used in individual pairing or as a group experienceö. (Ann Herbert Smith) Either way, when the designated movement time comes to an end and people are ready, movers speak first about their experience and are then offered witnessing if they want it. Witnesses have been giving their mover (or movers) full attention while staying aware of their own process in terms of thoughts, feelings, images or ôstoriesö about what they are seeing; or memories, impulses, sensations or strong associations with a movement fragment. In speaking out the witnessing, attention is paid to the form of words used so that what is conveyed to the mover is as free as possible of un-owned projections, judgments or interpretations. This process acknowledges the links between people and the commonality of experience, the moments of mysteriously conveyed images or stories, and yet honours difference as well......

The physical presence of the witnesses, usually sitting in a circle within which the movers move, and the ôrulesö of the form, help to create the safe place that Leston Havens talks of, even though he is not writing of Authentic Movement.

ôThe psychological safe place permits the individual to make spontaneous forceful gestures and, at the same time, represents a community that both allows the gestures and is valued for its own sake. It stands at the crossroads of society and solitude, at the intersection of those often divergent and equally necessary paths leading to ourselves and to what we need for ourselves...others. In this safe place...we can learn our inhibitions, false alliances, community- denying demands, and why we despair of anything better; and, still more important, experience these bits of (ourselves) within a deft association that provides tolerance and hope.ö (Leston Havens, A Safe Place).

For centuries the border country was not a safe place to be, the ôforceful gesturesö that were made involved as often as not, killing raping or stealing or all three. Perhaps, as I imagine the people of Rwanda, Bosnia and all the other ôreivingö places in the world feel, the ôreiversö and the bereaved despairing of anything better. Yet now there is peace in the borders. The evening after the workshop I watched a programme on T V about the ending of apartheid in South Africa. Peace can and does happen. During the last workshop some people in the group moved and made sounds which both they and their witnesses experienced as an expression of the grief of women at the loss of sons in war. The group spontaneously came up with images of war, and the destruction of the land and human life. Female bodies and voices responding to the inner and outer predatory voices and acts. Collective and personal experience was inextricably woven in intensely moving ways (in two senses of the word).

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This time, its harder to put into words what I experienced. It was a lot to do with the pain of really entering into my embodied experience, being ômatterö, (another discovery I made - while reading ôLeaving My Fathers Houseö - was that the word ômatterö is derived from ômaterö, i.e. ômotherö). I was aware of feeling a deathly split, dreamt of a man sick and on the path towards death who stayed with me all day in the way dreams can, and was there to meet me when I returned to my bedroom that night.

After one of the first movement episodes, (a form known as ôBreathing Circleö), I wrote this.

ôFor a moment I felt IÆd got it. I was moving without thought, suddenly I made sense. I found some arm movements that were nourishing and I gradually turned into a beastly beast growling rather softly but still feeling my claws and menace.

Unsoothable...... claws.........Unmanageable maws............ clutching at.......... straws........... finding the flaws

Writing this ôarticleö has helped me to re-find my trust that IÆm doing what I need to do. C.G. Jung introduced me to the idea of synchronicity, and I never cease to rejoice in its many manifestations and teachings.

Just minutes ago, as I typed the last correction to this diary, the post arrived bringing the news that this egg has hatched.........I have passed.....The weather seems to be joining in as well, as I worked this morning there was a violent thunderstorm and now I see nothing but blue skies from here and bright sunshine. I pass on to the next part of the journey.

Clare Crombie and Angelika Wienrich will be facilitating a weekend workshop called "Free Fall Writing".. an exploration in writing from the heart. August 12th and 13th, Venue London, UK. details from Clare +44(O)171 729 3810 or Angelika +44 (0)l7l 376 5865. Appropriate for anyone wishing to explore writing as a creative and therapeutic tool