the Henny Flynn podcast
A space to settle in and listen — and see where the episode takes you. This gentle, reflective podcast is an invitation into deeper self-awareness with profound self-compassion. Henny shares insights from her own life, alongside practices that help us connect with our inner wisdom, explore our relationship with change, and find a greater sense of flow.
There are no fixed answers offered here — just space to be with what’s true, and to grow from there. If you’re drawn to slowing down, listening in, and exploring what it means to live with greater authenticity, this podcast is for you.
Guided by psychology, mindfulness, therapeutic coaching, flow journaling, and everyday compassion, we explore ideas that help us step further into our inner worlds.
the Henny Flynn podcast
Comfort in the Darkness: Navigating the Dark Night of the Soul with Aisling Mustan (S16E3)
Tap to send me your reflections ♡
In this deeply heartfelt conversation, I’m joined by the wonderful Aisling Mustan (founder of the festivals: 'Exhale' and 'Good Grief') to explore the raw, tender terrain of what many call a 'dark night of the soul'.
Aisling shares vulnerably and powerfully about her own recent experience - how it unfolded, what it revealed and the practices that supported her through it.
We talk about the discomfort most of us try to avoid, and how, paradoxically, it’s often where our deepest wisdom resides. We explore:
- The difference between true comfort and distraction
- The courage it takes to sit with what feels unbearable
- The role of grief, burnout, and unmet desires in shaping our inner landscape
- How practices like journaling, walking, and simply being can anchor us through the darkest moments
This isn’t a conversation about fixing or solving.
As Aisling says, it’s about witnessing, honouring, and 'trusting the darkness' as part of 'life’s alchemical process'.
Whether you’re in your own 'dark night' or simply curious about how to meet life’s inevitable lows with more compassion, I hope this episode brings you comfort - and the reminder that you’re not alone.
If this resonates, I’d love to hear from you. And if you feel called, please share the episode with someone who might need it today. You can also connect here with Aisling: @exhalehub OR www.exhalehub.com/school
With love, always,
Henny
A final thought: If you're feeling challenged by your own Samhain - please do reach out and seek the support you need. We ALL need different help at different times in our lives and that may be from your GP, a therapist, a trusted friend or a supportive family member. Always listen deeply to your needs and care deeply for your Self by taking the action that will most support you.
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Today's conversation deals with some pretty big issues. Largely, we focus on the experience of going through Soane, a dark night of the soul. My special guest is Aisling Mustang, who shares vulnerably, rawly and powerfully her own experiences and what supports her. I invite you to settle in and listen to the wisdom of this wonderful woman. Welcome to the Henny Flynn podcast, the space for deepening self-awareness. With profound self-compassion. I'm Henny, I write, coach and speak about how exploring our inner world can transform how we experience our outer world, all founded on a bedrock of self-love. Settle in and listen and see where the episode takes you. Okay. So, ashley, first of all, because we've obviously been like dove straight into the conversation, but just to really properly welcome you and to say it's lovely to see you.
Speaker 1:I will meet you in that thigh, I have a feeling we've both, like, rushed through some parts of our day and this is a moment to settle yeah, yeah, definitely.
Speaker 2:Uh, it's really lovely to be here with you and I just so enjoy our chats. And, yeah, I I'm just really interested to see where this goes, because I'm such an over planner and I'm really trying to let go of that and I I'm trusting you know our conversations. They're always so interesting and so, uh, they go off on so many tangents that, um, I'm just really curious to see how that plays out on a podcast.
Speaker 1:I recognize, recognize the over planner, jean, I definitely have that too and I one of the things I think that doing the podcast has taught me is that there are times when I'll have an idea about something and it will just pour from from my fingertips and I'll I'll write almost I suppose it's almost a script for the episode. And then other times I'm just like, oh, something is like welling up from within me and and I just speak and trusting those moments. I mean that feels they both feel like flow in their own way, but the the just just listening within and allowing the words to come out feels like such a beautiful practice and I really love these kind of conversational episodes. So let's, yeah, let's just see where it goes. I think I am.
Speaker 1:I was saying to you just before I press record about there was a theme that I think might be interesting and it seemed to resonate with you, which is why I said let's just press record to capture it the theme of what brings us comfort. And for me, when I look at the work that you offer out into the world, I see that there is this essence of bringing others comfort, and it was inspired by someone who wrote to me about another podcast episode I talked about had really, like, sparked this thought within her about what brings me comfort and how comfort can so often get confused with distraction rather than deep, true comfort, and I I'd really love to begin there, actually, and just see what does that spark for you actually?
Speaker 2:I mean, it's a really interesting word for me because I actually have, I would say, a very acute awareness of other people's comfort and I have this sort of deep ability to if, when I kind of am in a room, I'll be able to figure out what is going to make everybody in this room 10% more comfortable, and that act is one that also makes me feel comfortable.
Speaker 2:It brings me enormous comfort and, you know, like there's nothing that makes me happier than putting a blanket over somebody or, you know, just helping them to feel more comfortable, and I think that you're right, I think that's an interesting thread and I, you know my mom is the same. She's really she is somebody who is very, very good, and has always been very good, at creating comfort. You know, I remember when the word hygge started being bandied around for the first time and we were like, mom, you've been doing this for like decades. You are literally hygge, um, and you know, I do think it is. So, yeah, I think comfort is a really big word for me. My challenge has been in allowing discomfort, and because I think that comfort is amazing and we need comfort, we need to be comforted by each other, we need to be able to hold each other when we're going through something really, really difficult. But actually all of the wisdom is in the discomfort and yeah this.
Speaker 1:I mean one of my favorite phrases, as I'm when I'm working with people, is comfort in the discomfort, and really that is the work. So just listening to you there say that the challenge has been sitting with the discomfort, I mean that speaks volumes to me. And also to wave a flag of awareness actually I hadn't really thought about it in those terms and I hadn't really thought about it in those terms. But that thing about being in a room and being able to sense into other people's levels of comfort emotionally sort of in terms of psychological safety, but physically like it's literally uncomfortable for me. If I see someone and they've got the cushion and it's kind of like only half supporting them, and I just I mean actually I mean I don't necessarily do it in a really lovely, generous way Is that better? And then it is so it is. I think it's to do with like having high empathy or literally feeling someone else's physical discomfort, yeah, but that thing about being able to sit with discomfort, I mean.
Speaker 2:I mean this is so live for me right now. As I kind of mentioned at the start, I've been going through a really, really hard time in my life. I've been going through a real dark night of the soul, a sort of extended dark night of the soul, and I'm very lucky that I have a foundation for that work. I've been working with Mary Kennedy in Ireland on the Celtic wheel for the last five years I think six years a bit longer in Ireland on the Celtic wheel for the last five years I think six years a bit longer and she really taught me about the wisdom of the darkness and going into the darkness and not fearing these dark nights of the soul and trusting them as a kind of alchemical, alchemical, alchemical process.
Speaker 2:And there have been these kind of multiple times in my life where I have had this deep, deep sense that that's what I need to do. And this time, yeah, this time these whispers came about four days ago and, you know, to give you a little bit of background, I was I'm burnt out. You know I'm burnt out. You know I'm burnt out, I'm tired, and I've been, I think, running in some ways running away from a very big thing for the last five years, which I can, I'm really happy to talk about. Um, I didn't know I was running from this thing. That was not, you know, I just thought I was doing really great things in the world. And then, you know, after on the back of doing exhale festival, which was huge in October, I went straight into creating the community almost immediately afterwards, and then I kind of crashed earlier this week and I realized, wow, I'm just so. I have neglected myself so badly, I've self-sacrificed so much over the last year. I don't have anything for me, I don't have anything left for me, and that was heartbreaking. It was actually really, really heartbreaking and I thought this is just burned out. It gets a little bit better every day. It takes me about a week to recover from it, and so it went on for about a week and then yesterday, the day yeah, yesterday I just plummeted. I spiraled really downwards and the night before I'd gone to bed with my partner and suddenly these two huge things. Because I'd slowed down, because I'd consciously started saying not now, not now, I'd say it out loud, you know, not now, not now, I'd say it out loud, you know, not now. Because I was, I've been in this kind of hyper creative way of being for the last five years where I'm constantly creating and constantly problem solving and these really big things, that my brain was totally stuck in that way of being a problem solving all the time, so in that kind of hyper masculine driving forward without any kind of healthy feminine underlying it.
Speaker 2:So I went out walking sorry, I'm jumping around a bit in the timeline here. Uh, I went out walking. I live in a beautiful valley, in Stroud, and I went out walking and I walked intentionally very slowly and for two hours and I sat and I just, and I, you know, my brain was just going, going, going, saying you could do this, you could do that, you could do this, and just consciously, instead of shutting it down and saying stop, I just was saying not yet, not yet. And a day of doing that really did sort of it did. It was like making an appointment with it. They were like OK, ok, we've said not yet enough, we get it right, we'll stop, we'll stop now, and then the next two days, yeah, the next couple of days after that was sort of a real slowing down, but I started to feel very depressed. I started to feel really down, very lost, very kind of, you know, a lot of very frightening, very, very intense emotions, of very frightening, very, very intense emotions.
Speaker 2:And then, kind of fourth day, went to bed with my partner and started and these two huge bombshells arrived in my consciousness, you know, as always at the most ridiculous time when you're trying to go to sleep in your knackered um. You know, it was 11 o'clock at night and I was lying awake till three o'clock going. Oh, wow, I have some really big feelings around these things and I hadn't even thought about this. Um, and then yesterday was very bad, you know, my partner was. I was messaging him, saying I'm in a really, really dark place like I'm I don't know where this is coming from and I just made a decision to stop everything, to put everything down, to not have any distractions, not have any comforts.
Speaker 2:And you know, I was just in my loft and I was moving around where I was sitting, but I was just sort of sitting and being and just really leaning in and and, and you know, obviously tears came and despair came and I wrote down all of the emotions that came with it.
Speaker 2:They were so big, you know, so so big, um, and I realized that for the last five years I went through kind of an early-ish menopause and so I was 40, I'm 45 now and I'm done I you know, I've been through it, and I realized that I had been so good at convincing myself that I didn't want children that I'd never allowed myself to grieve for the fact that actually I would have really liked to have children. I just didn't meet the right person at the right time. And that was heartbreaking. And it was actually when I was in bed reading a book and there was a woman had a baby in it, and I just started crying and I thought and my partner was beside me it's like we would have made really good parents like we would have been.
Speaker 2:You know I'm a really maternal person. I have multiple sort of. You know, I've always been able to love children as if they're my own. It's been, I think, one of my most amazing gifts that I was given by whoever puts us on the earth and people are always so, I guess, flabbergasted that I haven't had my own children. But the fact of the matter is that I wasn't ever in the right relationship to do it.
Speaker 2:When I was able to do it and by the time I met Ed, we didn't realize it, but it was too late, like it was already too late. So there was that and I was like, was like god, I've just never allowed myself to go there. And then I was kind of reflecting back on this crazy period of five years that I've had where I created Good Grief, you know, with Lucy and Liesl, and I created Exhale and Wild and Well, you know as well, all of these things were mothering. They were all I was putting, all of my love and all of my desire to grow, help people to grow my, you know, my, you know sort of giving people love, acceptance, comfort, guidance. And I realized, ah, that's why that and that's why I have this unhealthy relationship with it sometimes it becomes that kind of you know you're a mother.
Speaker 1:It tips you know into complete self-sacrifice and yeah, and I'm so curious that, in the sort of bit of time as I was kind of reflecting on our conversation because we didn't discuss what we were going to talk about we left it really open and fluid and that, of all the things that I have in my little memory, sort of box of things that I'd love to explore on the podcast that this topic should be the one that comes up so naturally when I think of this conversation with you and this.
Speaker 1:So something has arisen, and it is this deep, deep sense that, um, these powerful insights come to us at the time when we're able to cope, when we're able to look at them from different angles, when we're able to create enough space around it that they don't subsume us, even though it's obviously been incredibly hard for you. I also hear that you've employed the skills and the techniques that you have, you've looked in your toolbox and you've supported yourself in in whatever ways you've been able to, and, and so my overwhelming feelings I'm listening to you is wanting to honor everything that you've been feeling and to honor everything that you've done to hold the space for everything that you've been feeling. Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 2:Incredibly powerful listening to you it is, you know, when I reflected on it this morning. And you know, the wisdom comes when the wisdom is ready. You're right, and I don't think I could have it needed to come when it came. And the thing about really trusting the darkness and going into the darkness is that it freaks other people out it. You know, this is a. This piece of wisdom has been probably the most life-changing of any that I've ever found, which is trust your darkness, trust your soul, trust your soul's need to go through that tunnel. And you know I can't run from those feelings forever, or I can, but I'm just gonna. You know, I'll be repeatedly burning out. I'll be doing things for a lot, of, a lot of the wrong reasons a lot of the time.
Speaker 2:And it happened to me one another time in my life where I really went into the darkness like that, that what we call in the Celtic wheel, a Samhain moment. So you pronounce it differently here. I can never remember it, so I think you pronounce it um, and that was when I left an abusive relationship, um, midway through the Covid pandemic. And again I had two very amazing. My partner had two amazing children who I was very close to and who I had a very you know, I was their stepmom and, yeah, and when I left that relationship it was at the start of the second lockdown and I was living here on my own. So I was thrust into Samhain.
Speaker 2:Really, you know, I'd made this decision, I had done, you know, and I had the kind of I don't know if you know the mythology around the Kalyuk the witch, who is?
Speaker 2:She sort of is, she's an archetype, but she's the crone and she shakes you and says you can't live like this anymore and she kind of is, you know it's she governs the time between Samhain and Imbolc and then Bridget, the maiden, takes over and it's about birth and new beginnings. So the collier will shake you and the collier shook me very hard and I knew, you know, people were so worried about me here on my own going through this experience and I knew I was absolutely fine and I actually felt a sense of yeah, fear, uh, relief at being able to just go into it, because I just knew there was just going to be so much in here that is going to completely transform me If I honor us with the time and the space to just feel the really intense feelings, to go through it all and it was really intense, like I don't know if you've ever been around somebody who's come out of an abusive relationship. It's really you feel every single feeling and you're also replaying the entire relationship with the right lens on and it's exhausting.
Speaker 1:Actually, it's really tiring and you're re-seeing yourself through that lens as well, aren't you, of course? Yeah yeah.
Speaker 2:So I knew, I knew that that process was going to be one of the most important of my life and I knew that nobody else could go through it with me. I had really great friends who, if I was having or and my mom, if I was get really emotionally overloaded, if I was flooded, I could pick up the phone and say I'm really flooded right now. I just need, I just really need somebody to to hear me. Um, but mainly it was me, and I had a. I had made a five liter thing of slow gin the winter before and I was drinking it. I was allowed to have an egg cup of slow gin.
Speaker 2:If I felt really, really difficult, I was having, if I needed a little reward, I could have a roly and a little bit of slow gin and that was my. That you know those. And walking, walking every day. You know, I felt this whenever I'm in a dark place, I feel this intense connection to this land around me and it holds me when I, when I need it and it's done it this week again and I I forget these things. You know we are. It's so easy to forget that this process works, you know. And talking to my partner yesterday and saying, god, I just, I really hope I don't keep on spiraling and fear, you know, and that is the fear, because the darkness is terrifying yeah, because you don't become afraid of the fear itself yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So it has been an amazing process and I'm here kind of on the other side. You know feeling totally you know when. If you had to see me yesterday, I couldn't have done this yesterday.
Speaker 2:I was a mess, you know, it was really a. And here I today, I just feel calm and I feel it's like it is really like a storm, you know, and it's like coming through that storm and you do have. You have grown in wisdom and you have, but I couldn't have had that wisdom from everything going right or anything. You know, I it had to be Samhain moment and I think that that is part of what I want. To gift people with exhale is to really provide a space where they can go to those places with the support and the community around it, and I think that that is definitely and has always been a part of, and that's good grief, you know, know, you know, good grief, the work we've done.
Speaker 2:with good grief, I sort of yeah, it's really interesting when you use that word comfort, because it's kind of a two pronged thing. For me it's.
Speaker 1:it's really empowering people to go to those dark places, those difficult places, and also providing comfort at the same time and and and I think that phrase comfort in the discomfort as well there's something so for me, there's something so profound about being able to sit in a space where, where I feel absolutely, um, out of my depths, overwhelmed, wracked with doubts, flooded with fear, and then be able to create just that little bit of space around me that can hold all of that. Hold all of that without trying to judge it, shove it away, shut it down, change it in any way, but simply hold it. And that, for me, is what comfort in the discomfort can also be, can also mean, and it can mean those times when we are, you know, exploring, making a fundamental change in a belief system or a habit, a pattern that we have, and kind of noticing like, oh, this is really uncomfortable, and kind of being able to sort of laugh with ourselves through that. But I think it has meaning right in the depths of darkness too. Yeah, it's so interesting, as I'm listening to you Aisling, because I've just recorded this weekend's episode of the podcast, which means I think I'm going to have to put this one out straight afterwards, really, because the episode I've just recorded is an extract from my journal that I wrote when we were away in Vietnam over the winter, including a my darling girl letter, a letter from my wise self who writes to me when I most need her.
Speaker 1:And and it was because I'd woken up one morning completely flooded with doubt and fear and like self doubt, largely about my work. Actually, it was really really like. I mean, I really hammered myself with some of the thoughts I was having. And and the advice, the advice, the guidance, the wisdom is always turn toward it. Turn toward it, sit with it, go into the dark space, like whatever the, the kind of the visual or language is.
Speaker 1:And so I did and I've shared what poured out onto the pages of my journal and it's like it's incredibly vulnerable and it feels like such a beautiful example of a kind of microcosm of what you've just described, which is, you know, one of these like soul searing episodes. But they can also come to us in these, like these flashes as well, where we can just be floored by something and then having the tools to work through, like okay, so what's? What's my way? Nature, get out, walking, journaling, phoning a friend who's not going to try and fix us, you know, really accessing these tools that we have available to all of us, and then understanding that we have the capacity to hold space for what we are experiencing and that it will pass, but we don't try and force it to. Um, yeah, it just feels I'm. I'm curious about the, the fact that these two episodes seem to be sitting so closely together, particularly because there is so much going on in the world, yeah, and we're so influenced by the macro conditions yeah, I think that's a huge part of it.
Speaker 2:I really do. I think what happened to me this week is just a kind of a, like you say, a microclimate of of what's out there, what's happening out there. And yeah, we are going through a. You know, my great teacher mary always says we're going through a collective sound on the planet and actually we have to be able to meet us and we're not going to be able to meet us unless we can meet the Samhains in our own life. And you know, it's so easy to keep on running from them. And it's when you find the gap and you know, I know that's a great saying from Buddhism of finding the gap.
Speaker 2:It's hard to find the gap in this modern world. You know, I almost felt when I was out walking and going through, when I commit myself to these sound moments, I don't have children, which ironically is, you know, makes means that I can do them, because if you have young children, you don't, you can't have sound moment. You know you're always on if you're. You know there are so many people in the world who don't have the financial. You know they have to be working, they can't, they don't have the space to have. So I think that in a way it is a gift, it's an honor to be able to have the space to go into these periods that I have, where, you know, people find it really, they find it weird. You know, I think a lot of people think that means that's bad. You know, we haven't seen her for three days. We haven't heard from her for three days. She's very quiet. Like you know, we do have this societal belief that that's bad, that equals bad. Somebody's in trouble if they've gone quiet.
Speaker 1:And the labelling that comes from that.
Speaker 1:But yeah, I mean, we are conditioned to want to feel good and it makes us feel bad if other people feel bad.
Speaker 1:So when those around us can't hold space for our own you know for what we're feeling and it makes them feel bad, then we tend to distract ourselves and turn toward what they're feeling, and so you get this kind of ricochet of like um, and so then we once more deny what we're feeling because I was making you feel bad, so I'll, I'll, I'll, g myself up and distract myself, and I think that sort of comes back again to this sort of comfort versus distraction that often what comfort can look like is really distracting ourselves from what we're experiencing rather than holding ourselves tenderly yeah, I do wonder if you've found that the people who are able to hold you in these moments, if they're people who've also gone to the darkness and I think that you know there's that like my mom is very good at doing it, because I have we have learned together about going into the darkness, you know, and she has seen me go through this process a number of times.
Speaker 2:She trusts us, she trusts that I know.
Speaker 1:Oh, do you know? That was the word that I just had. So she and she trusts you.
Speaker 2:And she's been through it herself in the last few years, you know, so I can. I think you have to choose your people very wisely when you're going, and you know, and a sound moment can be a choice. It can be something that you know, like for me it was leaving a relationship, it could be leaving a job, it could be selling a house. Sound moments can also come at you. You know, it can be a death, it can be a health diagnosis. It can be a death. It can be a health diagnosis. It can be somebody breaking up with you, it could be a financial loss. You know the the wisdom applies to all of these situations, but I think it is really important to choose your people, to choose somebody. I think, when you're first starting to experiment with it because it is an experiment, you know, and it is it's such a natural thing, though, when you really like, you're saying like when you're first starting to experiment with it, because it is an experiment, you know, and it is. It's such a natural thing, though, when you really like, you're saying like, when you really commit to it, and you're like okay, this is what I'm doing and it's the great, you know.
Speaker 2:Auden poem. You know, stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone. That is really what he's describing. You know that he's going into that darkness. But you do sort of need to choose your people and I think initially you need to choose somebody who is not afraid of us, who's, you know, not afraid of seeing you, really what looked like falling apart and but I, you know a, I'm here as the poster child for it. I was falling apart yesterday and today I am. I feel, you know, I feel taller and wiser.
Speaker 1:I feel there's something here about the way that we pathologize emotion and you know I'm as I'm listening to you and I'm sure as others are listening. You know, as I'm listening to you and I'm sure as others are listening, I'm flicking through the Rolodex of memories in my own life of times when I have not known how to accommodate these Sowan moments and just poured myself into work. That's always been my drug of choice, or alcohol, that's been another one as well. Lots of things, um, and you know, sort of poured myself into something in order to distract myself. And I have those memories of where I really began to learn and understand what I was able to accommodate, what I was able to hold space for within myself, without, without sort of freaking out, you know, without kind of like thinking, oh, my god, I literally am losing myself.
Speaker 1:And um, and I know, I know that there have been times in my life, if I'd gone to my GP, I'd have been probably given antidepressants to take myself off to bed, because that was legitimate, you could, you could go to bed if you weren't very well, and so then I'd started getting ill, because your body will respond to what's going on in your own head, um, and then learning learning that I was actually able to ride these experiences and I think what you're you know, listening to your point around choosing your people wisely the most important thing is someone who isn't going to try and fix you and is also going to stand beside you. So if you do need to reach out, if you do need that extra you know loving pair of hands, that that they are there for you takes a huge amount of courage. I think it does allow us to go through that it really does.
Speaker 2:And you have to meet the victim. That is the other thing that I'd say, that it is in, it is in the moment where you have really met the most vulnerable, most in pain part of you that something switches, that something changes and you yeah, that was another great thing that Mari taught me was you can't do this without meeting the victim and you have to do it. You're a victim, you know the victim in you.
Speaker 2:You have to meet that and you have to meet it with compassion and openness. And it is so funny the minute that you do that and you have to meet it with compassion, um, and openness, and it is so funny the minute that you do that. And every time I've kind of gone through one of these periods when I really really meet the victim and I mean really like I'm there, it's like why me, the this is awful, like all the things we're told that we're not supposed to say you know really, um, it's after that that something clicks, because that you know it's, for for many of us we were things like, things happened to us and we were never able to be seen or heard. You know, and I do think that I hear people say a lot. I heard a friend say it the other day. I don't like this part of me.
Speaker 2:I don't like it when I feel like this, I don't like it. You know I don't. I just I know I'm not, I know I'm not supposed to be the victim and we're sort of. I think we've been told that a lot in society now is that you know that women need to be less victim-like. We need to be less victim-like and we need to be less victim like and we need to be strong and empowered and, you know, brave and courageous. But actually, if you are really genuinely going to go through a transformative process, then you cannot go on that journey without meeting the victim and in in um in parts work, we would talk about exiled parts, so parts of us that we have shunned um maybe you know, either because we don't like how they make us feel or they don't.
Speaker 1:We don't like other parts of us don't like how they make them feel, um, or because we want to keep them safe, potentially. But we can exile these parts of us, um, and really what we're always looking to do is to to make, to bring all of the parts in so that we feel whole again. But I heard, um, I was talking to someone recently and they shared about some training that they'd been on, where someone had come and spoken, and I am absolutely certain that they were talking from their heart, they were intending this to be useful and valuable in some way, but they talked about naming the sort of shadow part of themselves, you know, the part, the, the kind of or the kind of inner critic. I think would have been their sort of language, naming the inner critic. And and it was, oh, moaning mini, let's corner that, yeah.
Speaker 1:And and it was this and then sort of saying, like, right out, you go moaning mini, shunning this part of them, and actually it like, as I was listening, like a little bit of my heart broke because I just thought where is Minnie, like where is she now?
Speaker 1:Just sort of wandering around, you know, trying to do the thing that she believes she's here to do Keeping this person safe by letting them know all the things that they're doing wrong. You know that she believes that's her job. So exiling her doesn't stop that. It just means that she feels even more separate from from this person and, yeah, it kind of it. It did sort of break my heart a bit because and listening to you when you said about like, turning to the victim the victim is, I recognize, is a, is a word from, from the methodology, the kind of the landscape that you you're inhabiting, but turning towards them with, like, absolute compassion and kindness and listening deeply to what it is that is really hurting them, yeah, and then you can bring comfort. Yeah, then you can help to heal the burden, the wound, whatever you know, whatever language we want to use here yeah and this is.
Speaker 2:You know, I know that there are different types of depression, but the vast majority of people are suffering from a kind of depression that is not a, that we're not able to go to the darkness that we're kind of skirting on the outside of it and hovering, hovering over it.
Speaker 2:So that, you know, I had depression multiple times in my life and I can see in retrospect now that the reason I got depressed is because I wasn't able to trust this process that I was, I was hovering on the outside of it and I was hovering there for as long as it took for me to realize what was going on, you know, which was long periods of time sometimes. And I do, you know, I, I do know that there are different aspects of depression and different types of depression, but I do think, for the majority of people who have depressive episodes in their lives, it is about this inability to really really go to these dark parts of ourselves and come through the tunnel. You kind of get stuck in the middle of it, you get stuck in the darkest part of it and you can't go backwards and you can't go forwards, and that's depression, you know. It is that having that faith, that trust which our ancestors understood on such a deep level that if you keep on moving towards the darkness, you get to the other side. You know you get to the light at the other side, but that is frightening. It's frightening because you don't know how long the tunnel is, you don't know how dark it is in the middle. All of these things are unknowns and it isn't. You know, I didn't know yesterday how long this was going to take. I mean, I was amazed this morning. I was, you know, like what. That is just, and that is crazy. Um, it has taken me long, much, much longer. You know period of time it's taken me, you know, once like six to nine weeks, which is hard, really hard on you.
Speaker 2:One thing I would say about it it's about knowing and we come back to that word comfort again. It's about knowing how to soothe yourself as well and knowing when to step back, because this is deep work. You know it's deep work. It's, it's, it is. We all are able to do it. I, you know I don't think I'm in any way special. I think this is actually very inherent. You know it's deep inside us, this knowledge of how to do this, but you need to find the things that will help to soothe you, whether that's like binge watching a comedy on Netflix or walking in the woods or writing in your journal, having a shower. I always I mean during these times I would be having like four or five showers a day, you know, just to. It's a very calming. It.
Speaker 2:It's about being able to go through, go into these very dark places, go through this very intense dark night of the soul process and keep your nervous system regulated at the same time. And that looks really different for everybody. Um, yeah, there are kind of the three prongs I would say is you, you're the only one on the journey? Like it's the heroine's journey? Right, it's a journey inside. Uh, you do need to be able to regulate your nervous system and you need your phone of friends. Like you need your people who and it's a small, it's usually a small number of people, even maybe just one um who's there to help you articulate what's going on, to help you, to co-regulate with you. When you're having a real like moment and they come, like I have been, I usually sit on the floor when I'm having one of those and I'll just kind of almost kind of like grip onto the floor and just be like, yeah, this is big, this is, this is a big one, like contractions, I guess, emotional contraction.
Speaker 1:Well, it's like you are birthing something. I mean that's I'm I'm mindful of using that term, but it is about releasing something, and not something that is good or something that is bad. It's simply the act of release, because the constraint, the tightness, is what causes pain and the softening, the releasing, is what brings ease and comfort. Um, I think there's something really important in here as well, and I love, I love those three points that you've just made, and and the middle one, the one around you know, understanding what it is that's going to help you regulate your system. That's why we do the practices, that's why we meditate, maybe every day, maybe every few days, maybe once a once a week, whatever it is, but we build the muscle. It's why we journal, even if we haven't really got much to say.
Speaker 1:We take ourselves out into nature, you know, even though it might um you know, we're just sort of feeling all right, you know, but we take ourselves out and we allow ourselves a moment to notice what's going on, Because it's those practices that then enable us to be able to get that stuff out of our toolkit when we are ready. That stuff out of our toolkit when we are ready. I remember once with Anton, my husband it was in our old house, so it's got to be six or seven years ago, I think having just this flood of so much of what we're talking about, this kind of the existential crises of who am I and really like really struggling, really not knowing quite how to hold it, what to do with it, just just feeling utterly lost. And then I went down into the kitchen and I just stood in the doorway and I looked at him and he looked at me and it was obvious like I was about to say something like really like massive. And he looked at me and then I went, I have the tools and I know how to use them.
Speaker 1:And then I turned around, took myself upstairs and I was like, right, I lit a candle, I burnt some Palo Santo, I ran a bath, I journaled, I listened to some soothing music and my system came back into regulation. But it needed, the kind of it needed like eye contact for me to like to go like oh, hang on, I do know how to do this and that I remember that moment so vividly because it was like, right. This is why, this is why I need to keep using these compassion based practices, whatever they might look like, you know, know for people who really, you know, love yoga, you know for them, or kijong I never know how to say that um, or tai chi, or whatever the things might be. That's why these practices are so vital, because then they're there.
Speaker 2:They're there when we our grasp on things maybe feels a little bit more tenuous. Yeah, because you are, you know, you're talking about something that feels like death, you know, and this is very intense for us. It is a death in a way, because when you go through these kind of transformative moments, a part of you is dying, a part of you is transforming and won't be the same afterwards. And I, you know, I think, the tool, you know, having your toolkit, knowing what's in your toolkit, I sort of have two toolkits. I have one, that's my regular toolkit, which is when I have energy and I'm I'm, you know, I have, I'm not exhausted. And I, which is when I have energy and I'm, you know I have, I'm not exhausted, and I'm like, yeah, amazing, I'm going to do a one hour breathwork session, I'm going to do a vinyasa, I'll do all these things.
Speaker 2:The reality is, when I'm going through one of these moments, one of these Samhain episodes, it's about what I can do and, for me, walking is the one thing I can do. No matter what, like, no matter how tired I am, no matter what the weather is, no matter any of that, I will be able to get out and I will be able to walk, and I'm incredibly grateful to live in a place where I have amazing walking from my doorstep but apart from that it's showers and you know it is the things that are accessible because you are not going to have huge motivation to be able to journaling. I always journal, you can tell. I mean, I really hate to think you know when I die what people are going to think of me, because every single journal I've got has been written during some absolutely like oh my god clusterfuck moment in my life laughing, because I've often had the thought of, oh my god, so what if my son actually reads what I wrote?
Speaker 1:yeah, but you know that's part of the discomfort, isn't it? Because it's well, I'm still holding space for the woman that I was, who wrote. I'm pointing over my shoulder all my life, yeah, yeah, the woman you know who wrote those things and who felt those things, and I am choosing, really actively, choosing to hold her with compassion and with love and without judgment, and I am trusting that I can be trusted to have done that for myself and therefore I am trusting that someone else opening my journal doesn't then fall into a pity spiral for me. Do you see? Do you see what I mean? Does that make sense?
Speaker 2:yeah, yeah, absolutely, because yeah, no, it makes complete sense to me. These are not journals that you're writing to show people what your inner workings were, you know. They're not journals that are there to record your life. Really, you know and I realized that a while ago you know that actually it's OK if I don't write in a journal for a year.
Speaker 2:I obviously don't need to. Like you know, I don't have anything that I need to work out on the page and when I do, I know I know there is not one part of me that doesn't reach for the pen or for my keypad or whatever. However, I decide to write on that day. I just know, and that's how I knew this time is I want to write and I can only walk. There is something going on here, like it's there's something wanting to.
Speaker 1:I, I think that's really really beautiful, actually, this, um, the realization that we don't necessarily know that something is afoot until we observe what our body is leading us toward. You know this kind of like the wisdom of the body that says just need to get outside. It's like okay, okay, so what is going on here? And and this brings me back to what I, what I wrote in my journal, actually, um, in the, the letter, um from my wise self to to me, in fact, can I find it?
Speaker 1:She says something like it is this tension that drew me to you. I want you to listen to me, my love, because I was feeling all of the tension but had got and that's with all of my skill, all of my experience, all of my education in this stuff. I was lying in bed thinking, oh shit, I feel like shit, like that was all I could sort of think, like and I'm in a really beautiful place in the world and my son's in the, in the hotel sort of bedroom next door, and like why am I feeling like this, this is, this is shit. I'm so sorry for all the swearing, but oh god.
Speaker 2:I could have gone.
Speaker 1:I could have gone a lot worse and and and then shit, this letter, this, this love letter, kind of welled up in me and it was just like right, grab, get the book, get the pen, like see what is being said. So she spoke through what my body was telling me and and I think that's such a lovely bit of wisdom there Aisling, that you know, if we find ourselves binge watching Netflix, maybe drinking an extra glass or two or more of wine than we might ordinarily do, um, you know, working much longer hours than really is quite necessary, you know, really paying attention to that stuff, because that can also be such a marker that something is calling to us and it could be an invitation to turn inward and to sit in the darkness, as you, as you say, or to sit inside ourselves and see what is asking for our attention yeah, beautifully put.
Speaker 2:That's exactly what it is. It's an and it's up to you. You know you might not be ready for it right now, might be a year, it might be two years, but it will happen and it's really. It is this great power really that we have, that's available to all of us, is to consciously choose it and consciously, you know, and I don't know how conscious it is at the time, it feels more conscious afterwards.
Speaker 1:No, I mean, when I think of my own experiences, they've often sort of blindsided me. But what has been conscious has been the turning toward it that has become the conscious part. Um, so the experience arises. This is my, my experience of rises. And then it's been how do I choose to tend to this?
Speaker 2:yeah, that is it. Yeah, definitely, and it's. I just love it. I think it's the most beautiful thing. And when we have this context for it, in nature as well, all around us, you know, when we see that the trees are never, you know, we look at them in winter and we think, oh god, everything's so dead, it's so barren, it's so gray and it's not, you know, like it's. There's so much going on under the surface. Yeah, and we have to. We hear this phrase a lot, but we have to root down, to rise up, and reaching down as those sour that is where you're in those sound times in your life is rooting down into the darkness. And you know, our ancestors did know, they knew they. You know everything starts in the darkness and it is.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think if it was one piece of wisdom that I could give to everybody, that would be it beautiful, beautiful Ashley, I can't believe we've been talking, yeah, an hour and I know you need to, you need to to go, so I um just to say thank you. Thank you so much for bringing this, for bringing yourself. I know everybody else can't see you, but you are literally glowing this warmth and this light inside you and it feels really, really powerful to be sitting with you and to be listening to something that is so raw and so near.
Speaker 2:I think it was meant to be. Oh, you're very welcome. I think I was meant to be here with you today. I had no idea that this was coming. I had no idea that you know. I think that you and I were meant to talk about it today and I hope that there is maybe somebody who listens to this, who is going through one of these moments in their lives and and finds comfort in it and trust. I think, as women, we are holders of the darkness, you know very often, and it is our greatest power yeah so thank you, it's been wonderful oh yeah, beautiful.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much, ashley, yeah not at all, thank you.
Speaker 2:I'm gonna, yeah, just be still, have a quick chat now with a quick meeting now, and just just be gentle and still and enjoy that, because that it's the calm after the storm, it's the calm seas, and it feels so good because you really do think at the time, oh, I'm never not going to feel normal again, um, but yeah, I'm really going to enjoy the stillness and my brain has stopped trying to problem solve all the time. It's so interesting, such an interesting part of it.
Speaker 1:So that's the sinking into the body coming out of the, the, the brain, sort of the head, trying to resolve everything and also just to sort of link us all the way back to what we where we first started, this concept of comfort, that this idea of allowing yourself these, you know this, this meeting that you need to have now, and then this conscious time of tending to yourself in a easeful, gentle, generous way. That feels like deep comfort to me that feels like deep comfort to me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, for sure, I uh and I hope you have a. Really you go off now and do something super comfortable for yourself.
Speaker 1:I am gonna go and, um, do some yoga. Actually, I'm going to a yoga class, so that feels like a really beautiful thing to be doing after this conversation yeah, nice, enjoy.
Speaker 2:And yeah, it's been gorgeous chatting to you. As always, henny, I love us, I love our chat. They're so, just yeah, so deep, so soulful and so full of love and I just, yeah, I love.
Speaker 1:You're amazing, you're absolutely okay, I'll end it on that. Yeah, let's end it on that always, always head on a high.
Speaker 1:So Aisling and I were obviously laughing at the end and it really was the most glorious conversation. It felt like we went into some very deep places and, as I've listened back before sharing it, my feeling really is that if you are facing into your own experience of sewing or however you might like to term it and you feel you need some guidance, some support, some help, then do reach out. Reach out to whoever your people are, or reach out to your GP, reach out to whoever you instinctively know is going to best support you. And hopefully you have found some comfort in what Aisling has shared and, as ever, I would love to hear your reflections and I send you a hug and a wave.