Welcome To The Saltmarsh

Once upon a time I worked as a trauma-trained CBT therapist: charting individual mental health in a room with two chairs and a box of tissues (and, most likely, a generic image of beach pebbles). This way of working remains necessary and important for a great many people and situations (though perhaps without the pebbles).

But then, in 2020, I travelled to the Outer Hebrides as part of my storytelling apprenticeship. Where, unintentionally (at least, in the same accidental way of many old tales), I found myself locked down for the pandemic winter. It will take the rest of my life (and then some) to unpack the sea-chest of stories my time in that wild landscape gave me. What I can say is that through those storms, my entire healing mythology was radically restored. In that clarity, I also realised that Venice had been calling my heart ever since my first visit in 2012 (a story for another time), so as soon as it was safe to travel, I made this saltmarsh harbour my home.

Perhaps, like me, you’re curious to explore beyond the periphery of familiar maps. Perhaps, like me, you sense that some of those maps may no longer fully serve their purpose. Perhaps, like me, you feel the feather-ruffling call of waters more mysterious, timeless — a little more daunting, yes — and perhaps even wondrous.

I am convinced that within each of our stories is a sacred gift; inviting us onto a peregrination to find it — a journey that can take us into the restorative saltmarsh of our (healed) wounds. And while I’ve been privileged to help guide many others in that journey, it’s through my own peregrination that I’ve met this broken starlight most keenly. My own story has been my deepest medicine teacher, inspiring fellowship with other peregrini, and insisting I testify to the wonder found even — especially — in our darkest tales.

Here in Venice, a boatyard is called a squero. And I live next to one. Since moving here, then, I’ve worked on my craft. It is built with the seasoned wood of the old fireside tales; has a sail full of contemplative spirit; and a magpie’s nest atop the mast kitted out with the shiniest navigational tools from my previous life as a therapist.

The world’s greatest itinerant storyteller regularly reminds me to love God and love my neighbour. This is the true north that guides my compass.

In these night times, I feel most at home in the reedy waters between mythopoetic storytelling, psychology and theology; gazing at the dusky horizon where the secular and sacred meet.

I’m particularly inspired by these constellations:

Reimagining Care: trauma wise to its own medicine; calling time on capitalist and colonialist definitions of wellbeing; personal testimony to the limitations of professional beliefs; communal tending of grief, wonder and imagination; soul as a story beyond rational minds, lived in relationship with other humans, place and the wild, and forever restored in the divine.

Rewilding Christianity: living scripture; church hurt daring prodigal return; practical, embodied theology; new rituals and liturgy; devotional longing; the page turn between heresy and holy; reclaiming the Sabbath; the still utterly radical Jesus and his Christ gift.

Remembering Community: letting go the weight of familial and societal monomyths, and yielding to the rich ecosystems beneath; feasting tables set for strangers and exiles and the untold in between; trusting the wisdom of ancestors, seasons and more than human kin; remembering how to deeply witness and listen.

La Serenissima’s lagoon barena is a constant creative mentor, while the city encourages me to journey sustainably.