075 – Adventure Series: Ceremony [Scotland 3/5]

Sarah Tacy [00:00:00]:
Hey there. Welcome. You are tuned in to the summer of adventure series here at Threshold Moments where I am sharing bits and pieces of what it means to call in to your life a little bit of adventure. As Mischa Schuler would say, there’s possibly adversity and venture that not everything will go exactly as planned. And how do we take those elements of clarity and confusion to help learn more of what brings us alive and who we are. I hope you enjoy this. And please know that this particular series comes out twice a week. So if you want to be notified within your podcast app, please subscribe by pressing the little plus button up in the right hand corner, and you will be notified when these little 20 to 30 minute episodes come out.

Sarah Tacy [00:00:55]:
Enjoy. And if it is fitting for this stage for you and your life, may you find adventure And in your adventures, big or small, may you find yourself. Hello. Welcome. I’m Sarah Tacy, and this is Threshold Moments, a podcast where guests and I share stories about the process of updating into truer versions of ourselves. The path is unknown, and the pull feels real. Together, we share our grief, laughter, love, and life saving tools. Join us.

Sarah Tacy [00:01:44]:
Hello, and welcome to Threshold Moments. In this sequence, I’m telling the story of my venture, my journey to Scotland, and I’m telling it in a 5 point sequence, preparation, beginning, middle, end, and integration. I think it’s an interesting way to look at a variety of things in our lives. How do you start a project? Do you move so fast and gung ho into it and you’re totally in the into it and in the middle, you drop off and completely forget that you started it. And at some point later, you remember again, so do middles disappear? Do you forget to prepare or even that something started and suddenly you’re like, wait, I’m in the middle of this journey or the middle of this project, or you do so much preparation and beginning, and you’re so I’ve said like a like a wedding that suddenly it’s the end and you’re like, wait, what happened? Was I even here for that? And so we can begin to look at what our patterns are with this 5 point sequence. And as we bring our attention to, Oh, I’m always dodging out at the end, or I fall asleep in the middle, or I’m super excited at this point, but not that point, we can start to have a little bit more choice. And especially if it’s a pattern. So what’s interesting for me is that in this 5 point sequence, it’s a little different than how it would be if I was an athlete.

Sarah Tacy [00:03:25]:
When I was an athlete, the beginnings and the ends were so exciting. In the middle of, I generally had really hard points during the season. And when I’m taking a course, it’s generally the middle that I get itchy and like, I’m ready to get out in the end. I’m just so excited. Wow, we did a thing and it’s over and now we get to integrate. But on this trip to Scotland, and another point of this being in threshold moments is to be able to relate it to your life. What does the middle look like to me? And I’m telling my journey of Scotland because I think that there were, there are things I took away that might be integral or useful in your own life. And maybe you just like a story.

Sarah Tacy [00:04:13]:
So I believe at the end of the last podcast, I mentioned this feeling of the entire beginning when I take a when I’m traveling, I have a hard time feeling like my soul has caught up with my body, especially when there are time zones and lack of sleep and new areas and orienting to something new. Areas and orienting to something new. I’m curious if there’s anything I can do to change that. And if you wanted to DM me on at Instagram, Tacy, with ideas of things that you do to really land as soon as you are where you are, I would be so interested. So at the end, I talked about falconry and I talked about the idea and the theme of the eye. And at this point, we have made our way through we were past blockness. We spent a night there. We’re another couple hour drive towards Inverness and off to the ferry to get to the Isle of Lewis.

Sarah Tacy [00:05:24]:
And I am so tired and this is where I would say the middle of the journey began. So again, there can be preparation beginning, middle, end within every part of the sequence. And we’re on the ferry and I’m a little grumpy and I separate myself from the group and try to get a little nap. And as I’m at the back of the ferry, I see the land becoming more and more distant. And I just have this inkling, this feeling. I wonder if my ancestors ever felt this way, they saw the land getting farther and farther away as they head West. And my west was going to bring me to the Isle of Lewis and did their west bring them all the way to what is now called the United States, to what previously may have been considered or is still considered by many turtle island. That feeling of leaving something somewhat known, although this was also new to me, but this going off and venturing to a land in which we are first surrounded by sea.

Sarah Tacy [00:06:40]:
And as I’m there and as I’m resting, I can hear the group giggling in the background and telling stories. And I just noticed my okayness with being a part of the group, but also drawing back when I need to fill myself with energy. And I’ll say that some people in the group later came up to say, oh, that’s really good medicine for me to see that it’s okay to separate from the group, to do self care and to come back in when it feels good. And we get to the Isle of Lewis and we pull up to this cottage that maybe has an acre between it and the ocean. And they’re just rolling hills and every house has sheep or goats or a horse or donkeys. So many sheep though. I assume there’s a tax break for having sheep on your property because just everyone had them and we all pick rooms and I get a room to myself, which is so lovely. It was possibly one of the rooms that didn’t, you know, did not look out towards the water, but just to have a space to sneak away was so nice.

Sarah Tacy [00:07:58]:
And another woman on this trip is an ocean goer. And in Celtic mythology, there’s something called a selkie. And a selkie is a mermaid who can turn human when she comes onto the land. And there are stories told of a selkie who comes onto the land and falls in love with a man and they get married, but he then hides her skin because without the selkie skin to go back on, she can’t go back into the water. And it’s this whole story about forgetting oneself, having children, going into this family life, but how part of herself keeps dying just to stay a part of this family unit. And at some point, perhaps it’s a child of hers or perhaps it’s her, she starts hearing the call from the ocean because she almost completely forgets that she was ever a selkie. And that call to the ocean reminds her of who she is, and she knows she has to find her skin again, and she knows she has to enter in order to survive and to live and to become herself. And so this woman who is also a body based woman was on this retreat.

Sarah Tacy [00:09:20]:
I’m just going to say also a selkie and the 2 of us, the water is freezing cold. It was just partially the whole point And the cliffs are high and the ocean is wild, but clear. And we walk down through the fields that are covered in goose poop and we make our way down to the Rocky beach. We find a little cove of sand and we make our way in. And this is where my soul finds my body. The freezing cold water, in the floating of my body and the taste of the salt and the sand under my feet in the company of another, in the view of nature, feeling one, feeling connected to myself, to the water, to this woman. I finally landed. At this point, my eye is also clearing up.

Sarah Tacy [00:10:29]:
No sunglasses. We take a long walk this time back up the dirt road. And soon, not quite yet, we also have a kitchen witch who starts making, you know, going to the local grocery store and making meals. And he would know if you’re used to being the one who is going out food shopping or making the meals or considering what everything everybody wants and needs to have those needs taken care of is just so grounding. And where I will jump to is that this is now about spring Equinox. And the whole point of this journey was to go back to ancestral lands on the spring Equinox. When I think of the Equinox equal sun, equal darkness, I think of it as a really great time to pause. It’s a threshold.

Sarah Tacy [00:11:28]:
I have a podcast on this before we start with new energy, before the energy starts surging, we put it towards projects. Pause. So we go to the clannish stones, some of the oldest standing stones in the world, 15 to 20 feet tall. There are 13 stones that make the circle. There’s 1 in the middle and there are some kind of emanating out in the four directions from the circle. All of us, as I spoke about how the clothing was part of the preparation and part of the drawing into the energetic field, we had a variety of wardrobes on from more practical coats to cloaks, to wool tartan skirts, to jewelry that brought us into the moment, to the practicality of scarfs and possibly hats and the sun is setting. And as we’ve been there, so many locals are saying, I can’t believe the weather. It generally rains every single day.

Sarah Tacy [00:12:46]:
I can’t believe we have sun. And this day there is sun. And I’ll say that the women leading the retreat had been saying prayers to the land and asking for possibility of clear skies. And on our way there, we kept lost. We We’re just so close. But this road that’s like, wow. Some of the roads were so narrow, but we’re like, this is really narrow. And it turns out to be that it goes from road to a walking path that is just, like, straight off the edge of a cliff.

Sarah Tacy [00:13:18]:
And so we come straight to the edge of a cliff and have to back up this narrow pathway to get back to what I guess is a road. And we pass this man and we really can’t tell his mental state. Is he well, is he not well, he’s with a dog and a woman asks him for directions. So he points us in the direction of the standing stone. We make our way there. We walk up, we take pictures. And then the directions are these, let’s put our cameras away. Let’s be present.

Sarah Tacy [00:13:56]:
We’re going to begin our ceremony. And I imagine that the women leading the ceremony really Sarah 2 local men show up and there seem 2 local men show up and there seemed to be some others who are just standing outside of the stones. And one starts playing this long metal pipe. And it sounds like a didgeridoo. Our friend, Rachel, who was there, said it was not a didgeridoo. It was a pipe. And his buddy was playing the drums, just kind of like no specific beat, nothing that seemed like it was to a song or for purpose, just like banging a drum. And they start playing and non verbally, we begin to spread out amongst the stones.

Sarah Tacy [00:14:51]:
We choose stones to lean against. The sun is setting, we’re taking it in. And my friend, Janine looks over to me and think you want it down. And so we both get up and I just start swaying my body slowly to the sound of the didgeridoo or the pipe. And my friend Janine is going more like to the drum with a little bit of the didgeridoo sway. And my hand just starts picking up the beat of the drum on my thighs. And I just start to feel so in the moment. And some of the other women on the retreat are looking around like, was this planned? Are these people like, did, did they pay extra? Where are these people from? To paint a picture a little bit, the man playing the pipe looked like he was like 65, 70 with white curls popping out of his head in all directions.

Sarah Tacy [00:15:47]:
And the other man had like longer hair down to his shoulders, probably similar age. And then up from the hill comes the man with the dog who gave us the direction, the one who doesn’t seem like he’s from this realm. It’s hard to tell if he’s like stable or not, but he seems like he has a kind heart and he starts walking circles around the 13 stones. If you think of 13 stones and there are also 12 empty spots in between. You can think of like the 12 disciples, right? Or this feeling that there was too, was like there was this masculine energy of these men holding the space on the outside. They were on the outside of the circle and these stones. And then there was this feminine, like the space in between and the women holding space in between. And instead of just taking over, there was a sense of, Hey, let’s, let’s step back and see what happens.

Sarah Tacy [00:16:56]:
There is a sense of co creation. The dancing starts happening. And then the man with the drum passes it over to the man with the dog, passes the drum to the man with the dog, whom seems somewhat shy and unsure if he should make a sound. And the guy who had the drum comes back with a singing bowl and starts playing the singing bowl. I’m like, what is happening? And then he comes over to me and he offers me the singing bowl. So I take it and, you know, begin playing the singing bowl. The singing bowls can look a variety of ways. This is kind of like a copper singing bowl And you ding the outside, and then you take a metal stick around the top of the bowl, and it makes a more consistent vibration and sound.

Sarah Tacy [00:17:42]:
And I start going 1 by 1 offering people a sound bath, just clearing the energy from one side of their head to the other side, then down the front of their body and up the back. And I start singing a song about remembering who we are. You are remembering who you are. And on the other side, we are remembering who we are. And I go around one at a time. And then the man with the drum comes up to back and looks at me and just with this non verbal kind of nod is requesting a sound bath. And so I sing to him and bathe him with the sound bath. And then eventually I make my way to this man with a dog and kind of bow and offer it to him.

Sarah Tacy [00:18:30]:
And he stands up and I take a moment to center and he opens his eyes and he looks into my eyes and he says, return. And I almost sing the song returning, which the words are returning, returning, returning to the mother of us all. And I didn’t, I kept with the, we are remembering who we are, But it’s important because when he said that I paused like, who is this message for? Is he telling me to return, to return to who I am? Is he saying he’s returning? Why this word? When I finish the circle, people start bringing sacred objects into the middle to charge them. And then again, with no words, people begin to circle up in the center. And the man feeling did redo eventually, it’s like 90 minutes, then he’s like, he pauses because it looks like the women who are guiding our group are about to say something and nobody says anything. And he’s like, and that was a short version. We all start laughing a little bit, but eventually Lola says some closing remarks and we make our way out. We bow to the man with the dog.

Sarah Tacy [00:19:58]:
And we get back to the car and one of the guides finds out that their dog has passed back home during the ceremony. Actually, it did not pass, was hit by a car and we’ll have to make a decision on her beloved’s life. And for me, it, at some point felt wildly clear that the message to return was for this dog returning to the mother of us all. And this is somebody else’s journey that I just don’t feel like it’s mine to say much on. So what I will say for anybody here who is a space holder, a Sarah, That what happened this night, I don’t know if I shared it in a way that it’s obvious what happened this night was one of the most beautiful and profound examples of what can happen when you set the intention for a field. You set the intention of why you’re Sarah. And then you let go and you open yourself to co creation. And sometimes miracles that are beyond what we could have set up, support systems that are beyond what we could have imagined, hardships that possibly are beyond what we are ready for, or thought we were ready for, or could have anticipated show up.

Sarah Tacy [00:21:29]:
And when we’re in flow, everything seems to feel a bit more divinely guided. And I know with the hardships, that one can be hard to swallow and I’ll just leave it there as a possibility. I’ll say one other thing, maybe 2 other things that I loved about this middle section. There was a time when we first got to the land where we had all brought something from our homeland, from the place that we were currently living. And we walked through a literal gate and we would say the lineage of the women that we come from. And we went in by age to honor lived experiences or length of time on earth. And then we offered our gifts to the earth and we gave gratitude for allowing us to be there or for having us there. We made offerings and then made humble requests.

Sarah Tacy [00:22:54]:
And as we were doing this, apparently there was a work crew at the house next door, just up the hill and they were observing it all. And later talked to one of the women was just like, it was so beautiful. It looked so magical. And we were just like, there’s a circle of witches out there. And it was speaking about like getting time, making time to land. This was a really beautiful way to land, to recognize where we live in current time, current lifetime, and going back to the place of ancestors and where we’re visiting and to begin to connect them and to have gratitude and to have clear requests. We did one other ceremony during this part of the day and there were so many things that came forth. And I will just say some of the lessons which were around the loops that we get on.

Sarah Tacy [00:24:01]:
It may be a mental loop. It may be a story we tell ourselves. I had this story of like, Oh, it’s been so good. So it’s going to be so bad. It’s going to get so hard. And a friend said like, I’m not going to go in that loop. Are you going to go on that loop? Janine Yoder, who is on this podcast, Are you going to go in that loop? I’m not going to go in that loop. You can if you want to.

Sarah Tacy [00:24:20]:
I’m not going to go in that loop. And just recognizing in these moments that sometimes we have more choice than we think we do. Some things we do simply because they’re familiar and we assume them to be reality, but perhaps they’re not. Having this recognition that so often as women, we can feel unseen, unappreciated, and also without boundaries. And as we leaned into the earth and more conversations with nature, this thing of, we can give to the earth the same medicine that we’re hoping for ourselves. We can give to mother earth that appreciation. And as we do that, there’s a reciprocity. There is a gift in it for us.

Sarah Tacy [00:25:08]:
One other thing that I wanted to add was that when we were at the standing stones, my friend was taking pictures and she said, is there anything I could do differently? Do you like this photo? And I was like, you know, it’s just my face. I was feeling, you know, tired and self conscious about looking old. And it didn’t seem like there would be much that could be fixed about this. And she called me Haggard. And later when I asked her about it, she’s like, I couldn’t have made up that name. I didn’t say that. You said it first. And I just remember being like, Oh my God, that is my fear.

Sarah Tacy [00:25:52]:
I’m so afraid of appearing haggard, even though it would be an accurate reflection of how I was feeling inside. And later I looked it up upon my return. So this could also be integration, but it’s the idea of looking exhausted and unwell, especially from fatigue, worry, or suffering. And so I was having this feeling throughout the trip of really looking haggard, but something else that was interesting is that the second definition of it is a hawk. We had just been to the falconry, a hawk that is caught for training as a wild adult of more than 12 months. So if you get some, the hawk that was wild and then you catch it and you train it, it would be a haggard, which would have to do again, going back to vision and hunting and prey. So as I was going through a second ceremony, I started to have this recognition of how aware I am of the suffering of some of my ancestors. And there is also so much beauty and strength and courage that I know of them.

Sarah Tacy [00:27:09]:
And for some of the women in the line, there was so much that had to be suppressed to survive. And I just kept thinking about like the great grandmothers and the great, great grandmothers and their story. And I think about the variety of things I hold in my body. And under that, as I began to allow myself to have fun and laugh more, I realized that some of the haggard energy is the holding on to the suffering, is the focus on the loop of the suffering. And that sometimes the fatigue too, is where my brain is going, where my emotions are going, and to allow myself to open up to more play that there is joyful, vibrant, glowing energy available that can be seen through my skin, that can be seen through my eyes. There was a moment as I was really feeling into my energy and my desire to have more energy that I questioned everything I was doing, including this podcast. And it’ll be interesting to see as I keep tuning into where my energy goes. And I wanna say both like, is it helpful to those around me? But more so if I were just to focus on, does it bring me joy? Am I on the right path? The amount of time I put into things, knowing I have a family, knowing that nature is outside waiting for me, starting to really look over where my energy goes and why I do the things that we do.

Sarah Tacy [00:28:59]:
And could there be pauses in the podcast world that’s like you must produce every week? Otherwise, the numbers will drop, people will stop listening. There are so many options out there. Consistency is the key. And as I was in this land, I began just wondering, Oh, I wonder this summer, am I going to want to pause instead of tripling the work ahead of time to make sure that I have enough to cover the summer and going into September. The other thing that became very apparent was the danger of the witches. And as I watched this group, and as I watched Lola and Ginny in particular do their work and work with these women in the group, I began to see how women no longer wanted to stay in their boxes. They no longer wanted to people please and stay safe. And the more powerful they felt in themselves and the more sure they felt of their inner compass, the less they were likely to stay in relationships that were untrue, stay in work positions that were out of alignment.

Sarah Tacy [00:30:14]:
And so the idea of a witch, one who might heal with herbs or through song or through food or through energy or through nature is also one who is asking you to get crystal clear on who you are and to not back down from it, but which is one who is not going to be afraid of power structures and really not adhere to them. If the true power structure is within each person. This whole trip unfolded in such a magical way because there was structure and because there was space and because there was deep listening. There were so many more aspects of this trip that were set up that we did not do Because we kept listening. If people were tired, we would slow down. I think I’ll do the last one on the ending, because it talks to this point a bit of not rushing some of the last things and some of the fun things that came up because we didn’t rush them. We’ll do the end and then the integration. So again, thank you for these, for joining for these little 5 point sequences.

Sarah Tacy [00:31:29]:
This was the middle. This was the point of the masculine and the feminine of the planning and the releasing of the plans of the co creation of the holding of the suffering while also being open to the energy of the joy, that element of being seen, allowing one to see one’s haggard state, as well as knowing that it is not forever or isolated. I’m so curious what you got from this episode. Again, if you want to reach out on Instagram and shoot me a message, I’d love to hear from you. Blessings upon your middles. I’ll just end also with a, may I, may I have the courage to softly lay a plan, to have some structure, to have some stability and the faith and the curiosity to be fluid within those plans, to be open to the miracles and to see the things that present themselves as miracles, and to be willing to open ourselves up as well to support that we may need along the way. Thank you for tuning in. It’s been such a pleasure.

Sarah Tacy [00:32:56]:
If you’re looking for added support, I’m offering a program that’s totally free called 21 days of untapped support. It’s pretty awesome. It’s very easy. It’s very helpful. You can find it at Sarah. And if you love this episode, please subscribe and like. Apparently, it’s wildly useful. So we could just explore what happens when you scroll down to the bottom.

Sarah Tacy [00:33:23]:
Subscribe, rate, maybe say a a thing or 2. If you’re not feeling it, don’t do it. It’s totally fine. I look forward to gathering with you again. Thank you so much.