Ash Labyrinth

For about five years in my life I was fortunate enough to have an allotment and I put much time and energy into it; to nurture the soil and grow my own food. When my son left home I completely lost the impetus to go there. I felt that there was no point in growing food now that my most active years as a mother were over. 

In my mind my allotment also served as an outdoor studio where I could go, be alone, be with nature, draw, write, think, as well as dig, cultivate the soil, and grow vegetables, fruit and flowers.  I really loved my allotment and for me time spent there was often solitary but high quality. There was nothing I loved more than to go there and have a little fire, make some coffee, sit and enjoy the warmth of the flames, draw, write or just stare into space

After my son left home I could feel my ties to the land loosening, this made me very unhappy  I couldn't feel any of the joy I had previously experienced in tending my little plot of earth. I was experiencing empty nest syndrome and I was only 37.  

As my depression deepened my ability and desire to grow food diminished, but I would sometimes force myself to go to my allotment and I would make a fire and often stay till nightfall looking into the flames.

 Until only the embers were left.

I had been a single parent since the age of 18 and for much of that time had felt quite isolated.  I worked as a free-lance artist and gardener so my working days were often spent alone. Now the world was opening up to me, to anyone outside it must have seemed a very exciting time and a great position to be in - to still be young and to have a grown up son at University. My experience of it though was utter terror, shock, and grief, such was my devotion to my son and identification with my role as a mother. I felt extremely distressed, I felt like I was being thrown out of the nest and I wasn't ready.  

I knew, since my son was aged 12, that the day would come when he would leave home. I tried to prepare myself. But nothing prepared me for it, in the same way that nothing can really prepare you for giving birth for the first time. To me the experience was like going through a wall, an initiation into a completely new phase of life.

I had heard of "empty nest syndrome", but I had never really thought about it as a kind of depression, my only association with it was a crass idea of greying, balding couples having to face the state of their relationship once the kids had left. I could not conceive that I would experience this process quite so deeply as I did. 

It was around this time that I started to draw labyrinths. Simply because I discovered that if you drew a labyrinth and then traced the line with your fingertip you would immediately feel more grounded. I really needed this and so I spent time at home, sometimes alone, and sometimes with friends drawing very simple labyrinths, it was a grounding and consoling activity.

I was thinking about how I could find ways to re-connect to my allotment, which I was visiting with ever decreasing frequency. I needed to make drawings of labyrinths and thought that if I drew them in the earth how much more grounding this would be than drawing them on paper.

 But I could hardly see them.  

Then I realised that I could use the ash from my fires to draw the lines of the labyrinth.

I really enjoyed this process of sitting by the fire at night and in the mornings drawing my labyrinths.

I was becoming more engaged with my allotment again, so that one day I found I had the energy to build a nest.

My nest was very cosy,  and gradually became golden. Several young children came by and they got in and played. A young girl dropped a feather in the nest and I liked that.  

A feather from my bird who has flown away.