ABC Compass

The writing of My Year Without Matches was an enormous edge. Every morning as I sat at the laptop terror would sweep over me.  It was the fear of being exposed for who I really was, how I longed so much for connection with the wild that I was willing to let blood blisters form on my palms from making fire; that I gave up sleep to silently walk the fire trails at night; that I struggled so much with the internal voice of the critic that it would sometimes have me curled at the base of a tree paralysed as to what to do next.

It was the fear also that came with trying to put words to a language older than words. I rode the precarious edge with each chapter. When my stories were read by others I found that instead of falling off the edge, others stood alongside me. And life opened into a vast field of new possibilities for meaning, purpose and connection. 

Possibilities our culture so needs.

Gabrielle Roth, the founder of 5 Rhythms dance, said ‘Lean into your sharp places’. It’s the sharp places that are at our painful growth edge, the one so alluring and dangerous. 

Several Sundays ago, on ABC’s Compass program, titled 'The Rewilders' my personal story was told. The exposure feels like an edge yet again, yet a very different one from 10 years ago.

This time, it’s about exposing the fact that this passionate rewilder is facing the very real question of how to live this life with three kids, a mortgage, school routines and the like. Life is still sit spots and enlivening curiosity but it's also lunchboxes, playgroups, and family chore rosters. The relationship with my beloved is not now primarily about adventure and allurement but division of labour and teamwork. 

Perhaps this question speaks to your life too. It’s not so much a double life, as one deeply embedded in the sometimes excruciating enquiry of how to live the wild heart who wants to be radically changing the trajectory of culture, sleeping under the stars and singing longing to the moon whilst also being a mother living within the bounds of this economic and cultural system. What are the portals and doorways to live both simultaneously? They’re the ones I’m tracking at the moment. That’s the edge I’m on. And it feels painfully important. And too easy to feel like it’s too hard.

And so, with some trepidation, I invite you to look through the window into my world, with the trust that it mirrors and stirs some of your own enquiry.  

Wildly as always,

Claire