Welcome To All Saints Day

I love October 31 – it‘s the eve of my own birthday on November 1, but it’s also Halloween and I delight in its symbolism.

Traditionally, it was the day after the end of the Autumn harvest in the old celtic calendar when people got together to exorcise all the angst of the previous 12 months in a wild night of reverie and bonfires and feasting. It marked the ending of one great cycle and the beginning of another (in the pristine dawnlight of the Feast of Samhain or Celtic New Year the very next day) and I embrace the day wholeheartedly as my own personal New Year’s Eve.

But the next day is even better (of course, I would say that lol).

I was born at sunrise on November 1, which seems incredibly apt for someone who has always loved the light. Of course, Christianity long ago claimed the day as All Saints Day, symbolised in the flooding of all good and heavenly things into the world after the horrors of the old year – the darkness and regrets, the ghosts and ghouls – have been swept away. But whichever way you look at it, it’s a day that represents a brand new start blessed by the heavens.

Halloween might be over (at least in the southern hemisphere), but it was also a day in Celtic lore when the blessings of the community were counted – and when the bounty of the year was accounted for, before proceeding into the year ahead. And for me, 2013 has been a time of phenomenal work and creative harvest.

So many hard-fought and long-planned-for creative projects have come to fruition since my last birthday in 2012: I’ve released my first single, UnConquered Sun, and a video to go with it; I’ve completed a bronze portrait of the painter Nora Heysen, my first commission for a public gallery in Australia; and I was lucky enough to win the Lyrics Only Category of the UK Songwriting Contest twice in the one year. I’ve finally got my own studio – at North Head in Manly – and I’ve bought a house in a fairytale forest of a landscape on Scotland Island in an amazing community, where my son, who adores this wild plot of country in the middle of beautiful Pittwater, is free to be utterly and completely himself – and so am I.

There have been losses too – battles waged with those who have have not fully understood my artistic passion; falling trees and smashed sewage systems, close friends who have been diagnosed with serious illnesses, an unborn godchild lost, a dear friend moved away, a cracked rib (now nicely healed) and, perenially, far too many parking tickets.

All these aspects of light and shadow have come to pass since moving to this strange and irresistible place. Here, I have let go of the past, gathered my family and friends – and forged new friendships with remarkable people I’ve found like so many pieces of treasure; I have a new independence – as an artist, a mother and a woman – and I’m remembering my own uniqueness, my strength, my determination, my refusal to be crushed by setbacks or detours. I have learned to hold up my light. And in doing so, to look with wonder – and a new kind of fearlessness – at the extraordinary landscape of life in which we all must live.

I’ve learned it’s important to let go with the eyes of Halloween and welcome with the eyes of Samhain, of All Saints Day – that personal new year of light and love – that belongs to us all, regardless of when our birthdays fall.

Happy All Saints Day!!!