I did not set out to write again. I had hoped to live quietly.

Though it was not my intent, my life has been shaped so that I can more fully step into this call, a call that I have tried to refuse for years upon years. In no uncertain terms, I have been told that I can try to resist it, but the call will come and come again until I choose to answer it.

You can see this in the way that the previous posts here have said the same thing: here I am, but who am I? It matters not who I am, only that I have words to speak and perhaps someone will find them beautiful.

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It is a sad thing to feel that you have no fire inside. It is perhaps sadder still, to know that you do, but you cannot share it.

What do you do, then, with a fire that burns within your heart, threatening to consume you from the inside out because it can go no further than your throat? This is how I lived for a long time. It matters not why.

But things have changed now. Alliances, new and renewed, have once again brought me to this place where this fire that burns inside me threatens to consume me, but now perhaps I can open my mouth and breath fire like a serpent.

In the viriditas of Spring, the greening of the Earth, things planted long ago in its fertile dirt were woken by thunderstorm, taken root, cautiously blooming under the bright sun. And now, as we slowly turn towards Spring once more, it is with resonance and not cavalcade that I, too, cautiously bloom in this curated space.

I have become a solitary Priestess, both by choice and yet not. This is more or less how I have been living the last few years, but now it is official; the Empress in her anchorhold. Yes, there is loneliness here, but there has been my whole life. I have always been on the outside, unsure of how to integrate. I seek to transform loneliness into solitude, to open myself more to the blessings and the mysteries of the solitary way, of the natural world, of embodiment and presence in the every day minutiae of life.

My inspirations now are what they always have been: devotion, desire, discipline, the relentless drive of the Earth and Moon and Stars. The ambiguous dawn-light, beautiful but leading us towards death every day.

Living, historical, and divine Sisters from many traditions are my guideposts and inspirations: Eithne and Circe, anchoresses and Vestals, Brighid and Julian and Catherine, Kathleen Norris and Joan Chittister. I speak for no goddess and no tradition and no one, other than myself, and the tradition of my hearth.

Though not exactly as I chose it, I foresaw the ability to pursue this singular life through dream and divination and coincidence. Yes, it is not the same as my ancestral women, but this form of life will hopefully provide to me a glimpse of a spirit-led mystic way.

Think of this like the window of an anchorhold that looks out on the village. Think of this like an aperture between my cloister and your eyes. Think of this like a loose leaf that you find in the pages of a book in a quiet floor of the library. Perhaps my life may be an inspiration to you, not because I am an example, but because I have been given the words to express things that may speak to you in some way, and because I have been told to do so, and finally, finally, I am powerless to resist this call.

So here is my hearth-centred way of living; here is the comfort of the fire and of stories; of hospitality and abundance and green-spotted cloth. I am a householder, a mother, a priestess, lover and beloved. This hearth is my temple, my anchorhold, from which I share with you my life, my vocation. May I wear a crown of stars, and be filled with melody and fierceness.