Our story

I had a relatively high level of solitude in my childhood: for my sister and me, the skies, the tree saplings and the fairy folk were as much part of our daily life as our schoolmates were. We had the kind of grandmother who took us to find frogspawn in spring and blackberries in autumn. I was the child who taught her friends how to forage for beech-masts under the silver-barked beech tree at school. 

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Surrounded by books, I was a daydreamer, addicted to imaginary games. And then there were the stories. Arthurian legends, animal stories, Roman and Greek mythology, folklore from around the world: all have had a hypnotising effect on me since I was learning to talk. My devotion to Story was insatiable. 

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Then, when I reached adolescence, I lost my voice. Conversely, while my love of literature and my capacity to learn languages flared into being (I later gained a degree in French and Spanish), my ability to express myself aloud suffered a terrible blow, something which lasted for years, and the effects of which I still carry with me today. 

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As a result, my escapism into books and stories reached a new level; I was already writing poetry, short stories and the beginnings of several novels; at university I finished a novella.

 

In 2015, I found myself in South America and, at the end of a planned three-month trip, I was presented with an invitation to stay for longer. I was already head over heels in love with South America, and with travelling. Added to this, the death of a best friend a little more than two years before had given me a very different perspective on life and seizing it with both hands. So after a few days of agonising indecision, I deliberately missed my flight back to the UK… and the real adventure began: one of movement, extrovertism and uncertainty.

 

By this time I had an identity as a listener and a calming presence, I had even been running a weekly meditation group before leaving England… but was still incapable of giving voice to my own inner world.

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Four and a half years of perpetual movement ensued. During the months in which I returned to England, I all but fell into a job growing pond plants. Once the waterlily season was over, I would go straight back to South America, to those new landscapes, new cultures and cosmovisiones which had so captured my imagination.

There, in between planting trees, building geo-domes, treading mud for adobe houses, digging vegetable patches, propagating cacti, gathering the medicinal herbs of another continent… I also began to re-discover my voice.  I began to sing, first in private, then on request, and finally, with a little (no, a lot) of encouragement, in public, busking with other musicians in cafés, town squares and buses.

 

All this time, I had been compiling traditional myths and stories; wherever I went I would ask people for a local legend. In between, I was writing my own tales based on the extraordinary landscapes through which I was wandering, their flora and fauna and mythical inhabitants. There was just one problem. Everything I wrote was in English, yet I was surrounded by people who spoke Spanish. Once again my ability to express myself to others was cut short.

 

The solution to this came in two forms. First, the very daring idea of telling stories aloud in the old tradition. I who, not so long ago, could barely open my mouth to talk, become a real storyteller? Sometimes I think I had no choice: the enchantment of Story had had its grip on me since I was a child. The outcome was inevitable. Read more about my storytelling experience HERE. 

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The second solution took the form of two incredible women: Sofi Dunay, the translator of my writing, and Angie Castaño, its editor. These immensely creative, talented women have shown their enduring faith and support for HONEYWEAVERS since early 2019, and are part of the very fibre of this enterprise. Meet the Team here.

 

Then Covid happened. After four and a half years of nomadism, culminating in a storytelling tour around central-southern Peru with another storyteller, I found myself on a repatriation flight back to England… and back to a state of enforced stillness and enforced isolation. In spite of the global crisis, on a personal level it was the best thing that could have happened.

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The obligation to stay in one place… the isolation, the sense of invisibility, the quietness… these were exactly what I needed (but never would have chosen) in order to re-examine priorities. It was a new vision of what is important to me. It was a brutal demonstration of the directions my motivation takes (or doesn’t take) when there is no one to see the results. It was a stepping back to take stock of all that I have learned, and how to turn my dreams into something worth sharing. 

 

It is time for our imaginations to rise from the cocoon and begin the work of re-pollinating our world both from within and from without, until we have healed ourselves and the place we hold on this planet. Explore the WORLD OF THE HONEYWEAVERS

and the mythical voice of the Earth.