An abundance of abundance and beyond.

Buddhafield festival has been and gone. It was a pretty beautiful process.

There is something about arriving in an empty field and 3 and half weeks later, after building a mini community for 3000 people enjoy for 5 days, leaving an empty field.

I felt much more involved and apart of the Buddhafield community this time as I know more people and I had an actual role. I was jointly co-ordinating the decor team. Responsibility that usually scares me but it felt that I had been given an opportunity that I couldn't pass up and trying to keep hold of what I had learnt on retreat about fearlessness. I tried my best.

There were envitable meltdowns. The usual 'I'm not good enough' drones, battles of creative wills and my own personal attacks on a creative part of myself that I don't quite trust or fully understand. But I was so proud of myself for creating something that I never thought I would be capable of creating.

And I'm so proud of the team that came to help. The decor at this years festival was amazing, beautifully detailed and bringing to life more of the natural beauty of the site.

So this being that I created. The Abundance tree. The theme of the festival this year was that of Abundance and I had an idea over Christmas of something that people could write on little tags saying what they were feeling grateful for that day. So I created a tree out of willow.

Initially I was so scared about this beast of an idea that I had conjured up and had to put into action. I had no clue of how I wanted to look, what it might turn out like but with enough support and confidence from other people I got a grip of m yself and got into.

Willow is a beautiful material and weaving a beautiful action. In and out and what I really enjoyed about doing the sculpture was the how organically it grew from nothing. Thank you Claire for initiating the freedom of the weave as I was thinking far too formally about it!

Two of the best days that I have had over the last two months have been days were I have got up at sunrise and got to bed at sunset. One of these days was for the Solstice whilst I was helping to set up the cafe at Glastonbury, it was a fairly physical day but I felt I had a clarity that I hadn't felt before. The other of these days was at the festival when I got up really early and meditatively wove the trunk of the tree before breakfast and continued to put all my love and energy into it for the rest of the day.

The finished tree had everything of myself in it. It was a tree. It was woven. It had edible flowers and herbs growing out from its base, its branches were taken from the trees on site - the idea of life and death in one place. Two of my friends added lovely little details to it; dragonflies, caterpillars and charms. And Tara sat at it's base. It was my representation of nature and my representation of my creativity, my inspiration and it was a beautiful process.

And now the tree sits on a retreat site, I d on't know how it looks. I had to let go of my attachment to it, it might be burnt in a ritual or it might be brought back to me with stories to tell.

I have my own stories to write and as I sit here struggling with negativity I am trying to remember that fearlessness I felt when I put myself out there, the positivity I felt over the festival itself, the warrior in me poked her head up and I must let her rise again. I must let myself be and not let myself be bought down.