Brigid Opening
Certificate

I've been a quiet person my whole life. Not shy exactly — more careful. I learned young that saying the wrong thing could cost you something, so I became very good at staying small. Brigid had very little patience for that.

I started writing this month. Nothing structured — just honest words, often ugly, often surprising. I wrote letters I'll never send. I wrote what I actually thought about things I'd been diplomatically silent about for years. And somewhere in those pages, I found a voice I didn't know I still had.

The creative fire Brigid brings isn't about being an artist. It's about being honest. It's about making something — anything — that's genuinely yours rather than shaped to please or to be acceptable. I made a playlist this month for the first time in years. I danced to it alone in my kitchen at midnight. It was one of the best things I've done in a long time.

What I hadn't understood was the difference between creative output and creative expression. I produce work constantly, but I'd been doing it almost entirely for clients, for briefs, for other people's visions. My own creative voice had become very quiet under all of that. Brigid woke it back up — and she was not subtle about it.

I started a personal project this month with no goal, no client, no deadline. Just images I wanted to make because something in me needed to make them. They're strange and personal and I love them completely.

The shadow work in this month was hard but important. I realised I'd been using busyness as a way to avoid sitting with some things I'd been carrying for years. Brigid's forge doesn't let you skip that part. You have to go through it to come out the other side.

I feel lighter than I have in a long time. More myself. More willing to take up creative space without apologising for it.

There's something quietly ironic about knowing exactly how healing works, and still avoiding it in your own life. Brigid called me out on that very directly this month.

The shadow work in this chapter hit differently for me because I know the theory. I've guided other people through grief integration, inner child work, release practices. But doing it for myself — with Juanelle's voice in my ears and the sisters in the circle as witness — was completely different from knowing it academically.

I cried during the full moon ceremony. Properly. The kind of crying that reorganises something. I'd been carrying a version of myself I outgrew years ago, and I think this month I finally put her down with love instead of just abandoning her.

What surprised me most was how creative I became in the aftermath. It was like the clearing created space. I've been writing poetry for the first time in fifteen years. I don't know if it's any good. I don't think that's the point.