This began as something else, something bigger but it morphed and transformed and somehow became smaller, more accessible, more tangible … it became ME. Because transformation is where I’m at right now. It’s a whirlwind that picked me up in 2006 and said “Here it begins”. And it began, and since then, it’s been whirling and changing and I with it until I am more than a sum of my parts, until I have become something other. I am now the diamond to the carbon I was… changed beyond recognition, the vast unbearable pressures of six years making me stronger and more brilliant than I could ever have dreamed, yet of the same foundation.

In six years, I have journeyed to a place beyond fear. I have walked, willingly and blindfolded, into each and every circle of hell. We have explored the insides of each other and it has stripped me bare, until I have only one fear remaining: a fear of not doing it, a fear of restlessly remaining, a fear of BEING LESS. And now fear has gone, faith remains. Faith in myself, faith in something bigger than myself, faith in destiny, in work, in passion and in my right to want more.

It won’t be easy, I know. I’ll fall down and land with bloody gritted knees, I will awaken to days that overwhelm my heart with grey, there will be days where I will need armour to fight my way into the world. I have FAITH I will pull myself back up. I have FAITH that light will come and I have FAITH that life will fight to help me carve my place in it. And I will do these things because I know the alternative is to not do these things, to stand by and let them go and that is worse.

I’m an unlikely candidate for this. So was Joan of Arc. But still, destiny brings us to these places where the only choice is DO or DO NOT. Which would you choose? Joan of Arc had God, and I have a dragon that lives under my skin, breathing smoke that leaves tangible stories upon my skin which fade on waking and a lingering sense of possibility.

You don’t look at me and see truth. You look at me and see me with a veneer of your own perception, which is invariably less. I am exceptional and demand a life that meets me on my own terms. That doesn’t mean perfect. I am not and never have been. I have flaws, spaces in me which leave openings for others to join on. I know who you are and where you fit.

I am a warrior of sorts. I was born small and fierce, a hybrid of two ancient nations; a child of pirates and cliff dwellers. I am of sea and earth. Both answer a yearning that is deep within me, and they tether me to my destiny with intense physicality. I am a child of adventure and exploration, of justice and mercy. I am a child of all who came before me, and mother of all that will come after. I am not a gentle woman, I do not soothe and gentle. I am a woman in all the brutality of birth, fighting for life, for beginnings, for potential. Birth is beginnings, potential, possibility. For birth is where we are, where I am: poised on the cusp of something that will change everything.