This June, I found myself in Scotland—first in the solstice stillness of Findhorn, where the light lingers long over wind‑blown dunes and salt‑laden air, and later on the wind‑washed cliffs of Orkney, where land meets sea in quiet authority. These visits were part of what I’ve come to call my terminal lucidity tour—a season of reflective musing, where time doesn’t so much move forward as fold in on itself.
One morning, held by the hush of Findhorn’s dunes, I looked down at my belly. Distended. Not pregnant. Not unwell. Just full, in a way that felt more symbolic than physical. A tide‑pool of presence—a pause made flesh. Perhaps it’s part of the long hormonal shifting of perimenopause, this strange in‑between. A liminal space in the body, echoing the liminality I feel in spirit. It didn’t hurt, but it asked to be noticed.
I pulled a card from the Mystical Shaman Oracle—The Time Master, reversed. Its message came like a breath: “You are not running out of time.” A reminder that time isn’t a line to race along, but a spiral, a field, a rhythm that responds to presence. That past and future are unwound illusions. That what remains—what matters—is the now.
A few days later, I stood on Orkney’s shore—twenty‑four years after I once imagined I’d honeymoon here. But life had other plans—we went to see the Temple of the Sun at Teotihuacán in Mexico instead. Going to Mexico may have felt like the detour—but perhaps Orkney was always a form of destiny, simply waiting for its moment. And now, finally, I was here. Not in romance, but in resonance. In my own time.
I wandered into an exhibition by Orkney‑based artist Robinson RR. One series, titled News to Orkney, was composed of shoreline flotsam and jetsam—tangled plastic, rope fragments, driftwood—gathered on days when the world’s headlines were exploding elsewhere. As nations watched coronations or wars, the sea bore its own news. It made me wonder: what have I carried ashore, unknowingly? What remnants cling, even after we thought we let them go?
Back in the dunes of Findhorn, I touched a deeper memory—those first three days of my life when I was not met by my parents. And yet I stayed. Some part of me must have felt held by something larger—by the web of life itself—or I might not have. That imprint lives in me still—not as a wound, but as invitation. To pause. To wait. Not from fear, but from presence.
Lately, I’ve been sitting with a phrase from a program I’m part of: detours to destiny. It keeps circling in me. A knowing that perhaps the long way around isn’t wrong. That what we postpone or redirect might still be ours—or it might not. And in that, we’re opened to something else entirely. Something unexpected, but no less meant.
I’m not pregnant. And I’m not ill. But something is forming. I don’t know what shape it will take, or if I’ll want it when it comes. All I know is: it matters to stay with it now. To tend the small flame. To let time curl and stretch around me, like a tide.
Maybe this belly is a vessel. A tide‑pool of the unsaid. Not pregnant. But expecting.
A Call to Reflect
- What hopes or intentions have you carried quietly for years, tucked in your heart?
- What detours have led you not away, but toward something richer?
- Where in your life are you paused—not in fear, but in quiet expectancy?
Place a hand on your belly, your heart, your breath.
Let time spiral.
Allow the tide to whisper its stories.
Let yourself be expectant—without needing to know for what.