14.02

Be your own soul friend today

IMG_8220

Last summer I went to Santa Fe to take a workshop with the very magical Gail Larsen. At the end of it, she invited us to write love letters to each of the people we had shared the workshop with, and to prompt us she played a song which captured the essence of that person. It was a beautiful exercise. When it came to my turn, instead of playing a song, she played a spoken word piece by John O’Donohue, reading aloud a passage from his breathtaking book Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom.

The coincidence didn’t escape me. Just a few weeks before I had discovered the same book by chance when researching my own book Freedom Seeker. In Anam Cara I found a paragraph that was almost word-for-word the same as something Mr K had written in an early love letter many years before, although he had never even heard of Anam Cara. It made my spine tingle.

In Celtic wisdom ‘anam cara’ means ‘soul friend’. It reflects the idea that our souls need love like our bodies need air, and this love can awaken new dimensions of ourselves. According to John O’Donohue in his beautiful book of the same name, an anam cara recognizes the real you without any pretence or disguise. Theirs is a deep spiritual friendship unaffected by geographical distance or time. Your anam cara understands you in a way that makes you feel you belong together, with your destinies intertwined. If you have an anam cara, take good care of that person, as they are precious indeed.

And whether or not you have an anam cara right now, I invite you to be your own. You have to practice self-love on an epic scale to feel truly free. You have to counter the negative voices in your head and hold your own hand through it all. In the end your free self is your greatest ally and truest friend, so treat them well.

This week I challenge you to do something kind for yourself, and be your own anam cara.

Much love

Beth

GET OUR NEWS LETTER