About me
A few random facts
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Tea is up there as one of the most important things in the world to me, second only to my family.
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I am not concise. And I’m not trying to be anymore. I’m here for those people who still like to read and write long form.
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I am the most highly strung easy going person you’ll ever meet 😂.
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I understand animals more than people unless they’re animal people and then we’re usually deep kindred spirits.
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I’m fourteen years sober which may explain the tea.
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I worked in the music industry and toured as a bassist in a punk band when I was younger and had energy and a banjo player and singer in an american folk duo when I was older and had none.
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I gave it up to settle down and sleep more then I had my daughter who didn’t sleep longer than two hours until she was three.
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I used to think I was tough and hardy turns out I’m just about as sensitive as they come.
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Motherhood revealed my true nature to me in a brutal way.
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And I wouldn’t change a thing. It changed me and my life for the better.
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I took off my masks and found I’m sometimes a little bit less ‘nice’ but often a whole lot more happy.
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I’m a little bit obsessed with our wilder human heritage and infuse life with as much of our ancestral ways as I can including unschooling our daughter.
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I find the modern world and modern life bewildering.
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I married the boy in a hardcore band I fell in love with when I was twenty two.
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I had a religious experience and found Jesus which it turns out is about as trendy as it gets right now - I had no idea and it wasn’t something I planned for the algorithm.
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My husband referred to me as ‘a bit of a fundamentalist’ about technology once and it’s not a lie. I have a Nokia, no TV and my five year old doesn’t use screens and never has (though at five she now occasionally watches a video of the Grand National 😂 not something I planned). Giving up TV was one of the best things I ever did and I now love the evenings after a lifetime of hating them.
A short history
I spent a long time struggling to exist in the world. I had every mental health thing going. My childhood and early teens were less than ideal but after being rescued by my teachers (see Matilda for my story) and then again by my husband (genuine knight in shining armour) I managed to find my home, my people but I couldn’t find my place, couldn’t find peace.
I was still struggling. Just 24, one year sober, trying (and constantly failing) to have some semblance of ‘control’ over my emotions.
I tried it all.
AA (helped a bit then got a bit culty), therapy (opened all the boxes, nowhere to put the stuff), women’s circles (hugely helpful but still no idea what to do with all the stuff), menstrual cycle awareness (life saving, literally), yoga (probably the most helpful thing of all alongside nature) and yoga nidra (essential for life).
I quit the music industry to teach yoga full-time, toured with music, hosted wild woman retreats, hosted mountain biking and yoga retreats, trained in Well Woman Yoga therapy, discovered menstrual cycle awareness and yoga nidra, spent most of my time in the woods, hiked and wrote (a lot).
I slowed down, found community, met my stuff and developed what I thought was a chronic health condition. I was better than I had been in a long time but I was far from ok. I was still holding too much inside. Still trying to be someone I wasn’t (without even realising it), still choosing numbing over feeling at every turn.
Then 2021. Covid, the birth of my daughter and a year without sleep (which became three) cracked me open profoundly. It wasn’t at all pretty. But it was inevitable. You can only hold on for so long.
It felt as though it changed my nervous system completely but in fact it simply changed my relationship with the nervous system I’d always had. I discovered and finally accepted that I was more sensitive than I’d ever acknowledged. I finally understood myself.
And that understanding changed the course of my mothering and of my life.
I suddenly felt I had to stop offering my women’s work but I had no idea what was next but I jumped anyway.
And I began to weave my way home to who I was before I lost myself.
And the net appeared.
As I found my way back to animals.
I said yes to learning how to take care of alpacas and so began the best years of my mental health to date. I still wasn’t sleeping but I was content. Happy. Eating. Safe. The safest I’d ever felt.
It astounded me. It confused medical professionals. After my experience(s) I should be in a bad way. But I was thriving.
Outdoors, with animals, working with my whole body and mind with my daughter on my back.
I learned a gentle, respectful handling style called CameliDynamics and it gave me language for my own experience of life. Suddenly I could communicate my emotional needs with my husband and understand my experience, so similar to that of this nervy prey species.
I found my way home.
I then began spinning as a way of processing the many, many alpaca fleeces we produced every year but continued as a way of processing my mind and emotions.
Spinning, knitting, felting and rug making became the place my hands went to in the quiet moments.
Turning pasture and water into yarn. Actual magic.
Shifting anxiety and rumination into peace and creation. Serious magic.
And so these days when I've not got fibre in my hands you can find me out in the fields with my daughter tending to our little fibre herd of alpacas and llamas and thanking God for helping us find our way home.
Carly x