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Metamorphosis (detail)


The slide show that follows is a collection of quotes and poems I have collected over the years. Some I have stuck up on my noticeboard to read when I have once again felt lost, detached or alienated from a deeper sense of self, or am once again following someone else's path or someone else's bidding. Although the journey may be hard at times, we have everything inside ourselves, we were never detached from our own deepest knowing, we are not separate from our true self.  We are not 'wrong'. We truly are spirit in flesh.


You darkness from which I come,
I love you more than all the fires
that fence out the world,
for the fire makes a circle
for everyone
so that no one sees you anymore.
But darkness holds it all:
the shape and the flame,
the animal and myself,
how it holds them,
all powers, all sight —

and it is possible: its great strength
is breaking into my body.
I have faith in the night.

Rainer Maria Rilke (translated by David Whyte)

meaning of depression, crying woman, crying man

Quotes and Notes

“The depressive process is a natural part of life, but some people’s lives are more difficult than others. People facing intense difficulties in their lives need to follow the depressive process more often, more consciously, or more deeply than others. This does not mean they are by naturally depressive personalities or 'prone' to depression. Like sleeping and dreaming, the depressive process is an important part of the creative process, helping us to access inner sources, strength imagination and insight."
- Peter Wilberg -

When you are removed from the depths of your being, when you are living a life according to someone else's drum, the response can be to become depressed. But this depression is not only the response, it is also the solution. It will take you back down to your darkness, your interiority, your True Self.  It took me a long time to truly live this. Every time I felt a little low, I would recoil from it: 'Why am I like this? What am I doing wrong?' But I realised that even my desire to sit quietly in front of the fire on a rainy day, was a 'depressive' response. Allowing myself to follow it inevitably brought me back out the other side refreshed, renewed and in touch with something fundamental and solid within . I never found that solidity when I was racing around trying to avoid feeling depressed. I also reasoned that the more one has had one's inner self denied in childhood, the more one must grant oneself these times as an adult. I stopped fighting a process that is as natural to our lives as a sneeze - it is the response and the solution.

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