O Ireland

E194: Crows Writing Retreat in Ireland, "Ripples" preview

Fun & Focus

I’m presently in Gowran, County Kilkenny, with my beloved Crows. We are a sisterhood - eight women of different ages, from different countries and continents, who meet virtually each Tuesday, but get to meet again in person, living together, cooking together, writing together for the second time. Ever.

The Crows “found each other”¹ during Writing in Community (an Akimbo accountability writing program that started in June 2020) and have since become family. These women - some already published - are seriously talented. They study words, play gymnastics with sounds, explore technology, pour words out onto the page like “black ribbons - curves and stiff lines, slivers, splinters” (an excerpt from “The Writer” by Jackie Alcalde Marr²) . But more on the Crows later.

For now, I want to wallow in their company.

Each of us has brought along a project. Mine is a travel memoir … with a twist. [Working title Ripples …] tracks a journey through sixteen countries taken over nine months with three children all under the age of eight … and the various impacts this adventure has had on our family in the subsequent twenty years.

My intention during this precious week - while I have the physical company of my sisterhood - is to finalize edits and format of my second book and get it ready to publish. As I didn’t want to work on new content for this edition, I’m pulling a story from our visit to Cork in 2005!

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O, to die in Ireland.

There are holy places on this Earth.
And I feel—in my bones—that this is one of them.

Timoleague Friary stands at the point where the tiny Argideen River empties into the estuary at the southern end of Ireland in County Cork, the water that is almost the start of the Atlantic Ocean.

In the grey ruins of this ancient set of stones (first built in 1240) — in this sacred space — lies a cemetery. Here, where the water meets the sky, is where I may want to be buried.

A row of sentinel Celtic crosses stand in line as if in a funeral cortege waving their last goodbye. But in a wondrous way they also salute the meeting of the palest blue grey sea with the palest blue grey sky at the end of the horizon, like candles leading the way home.

And all around you the banks of tiny pink flowers³ struggle against the incessant wind to keep their foothold in the crumbling ruin, a reminder of the beauty within our struggle on earth till we find our final resting peace.

It is possibly one of the most peaceful places on earth.

Backstory: While on our yearlong adventure, we had the opportunity to buy spur-of-the-minute Ryan Air tickets to Cork, Ireland for the princely sum of … £5 (five GBP) each. We convinced my Dad to join us with promises of a Bed&Breakfast with fresh eggs, sausages and rich Irish butter on soda bread for breakfast and the opportunity to make some great memories with his grandchildren. We watched the trawlers come into the Ballycotton harbour in the east, rang the Shandon Church bells in Cork, visited the Jameson distillery, were enchanted with the colours of Kinsale, stood on the standing stones at the Drombeg Stone Circle and of course, kissed the Blarney Stone⁴.

But there was one place that stood out. In a unanimous family vote, everyone - aged four to seventy eight - agreed it was worthy of a return journey. So we got back in our little van, and returned to Timoleague for an alfresco dinner of crackers and cheese …

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Welcome to Tribe Tilt!

If you have recently joined, you have self-selected into this powerful, wonderful group. We believe we can make a difference to the people and places that are precious to us - that we have hope and agency within our own lives that ripples through to others.

Stay healthy. From there all else becomes possible. Treat your health as the precious resource it is.

See you again next week.
Karena

Dateline: Kilkenny, Ireland

Thanks to the Crows sisterhood (now gathering on Substack!)

Slipstream Thinking

,

Cindy Villanueva

,

Kathy Karn

,

Margaret O'Brien

,

Beverly D

, Joann Malone and Jackie Alcalde Marr.

Would you like to join our Tribe Tilt?

Other essays that discuss living and embracing life fully, crafting our live to appreciate time with our loved ones:

High Quality Connections: Three Circles, Three Learnings = Robust Social Support + Flow

The Gift of Time: Finding those Precious Pockets with your Parents

1. Writing in Community served over 300 established and want-to-be-writers. Little groups, each with animal names, formed to support each other. That is how we became a murder of Crows

2. What could better describe the beauty and art of writing than this phrase. “The Writer” by fellow Crow Jackie Alcalde Marr, published in California Writers Club in their “Best of the best 2024 Literary Review”

3. I’ve been searching for the correct name for this tiny flower. I’m told it is common Valerian
https://www.teagasc.ie/media/website/crops/horticulture/vegetables/Illustrated_Guide_to_Horticultural_Weeds_2020.pdf or https://www.wildflowersofireland.net/plant_detail.php?id_flower=295

4. More excerpts from our journey to Ireland next week.