Experience the healing power of stories
An invitation to dwell in a liminal space

Fragmented Pieces
A Collection of Soul Stories

Introduction
Feel Your Own Journey
When I was a little girl, I loved the time between times. That liminal space where the temporal and eternal dwell together. My ancestors were Celts, so this understanding flowed easily down centuries of generations to my parents and into my veins and soul.
As my adult years unfolded and I achieved what was expected of me, I began to call this liminal space “the messy place between Heaven and Earth.” I knew deep within that I had lost my easy childhood connection with the unseen, and some sort of creeping blindness had grown within me – rendering this now vaguely perceptible space uncomfortable. This blindness, however, was a necessary component of restoration. I’ve had to feel my way along paths that are unknown to me before the darkness could become light and the rough places smooth. And being blind in this space, I’ve needed a friend to guide me. A soul friend, one who understands both my humanity and my divinity. An Anam Cara, as my ancestors would say. The lover of my soul, even when I did not.
In this book, I share aspects of my journey in feeling my way toward reconnecting with my spirit, my soul. I use these words interchangeably. I hope my stories may encourage you to see the value of your own journey of reconnection through your senses and feelings, and the need to consciously choose to undertake one to allow wholeness to be restored in your life. In the West, we are living in an increasingly disconnected world – within ourselves and from each other. Cyberspace, and in particular the widespread use of social media, along with increasing dislocation from nature and commensurate loss of understanding of what the Earth can teach us, has distanced us. We are not designed to live and flourish in this soulless space, disconnected from our true selves and each other.
I love ancient wisdom, and even though much has been buried under the rise and rise of modern Western life, it is well worth undertaking an archaeological dig to seek it out. Ancient wisdom doesn’t see any separation between the body, mind, and spirit. I discovered Classical Five Element Chinese Medicine in my late twenties, and I have a wonderful library of books on this way of seeing and being. The energy medicine modalities I have since studied and trained in draw much of their understanding from Classical Five Element Chinese Medicine.
My tales unfold against the backdrop of the Five Elements – Earth, Metal, Water, Wood and Fire – although they don’t follow the Shen or Creation Cycle in order, nor the Ko or Overcoming Cycle; and my stories are not told chronologically either. This juxtaposition acknowledges that we don’t follow a prescriptive path to discovery – our journeys are our own. In due course, we may end up seeing a clear, cohesive order and make sense of the pieces of our journey – no matter in which way or order they came into our lives. In telling my stories, I don’t intend to draw parallels with or explain the Five Elements, but rather show how an aspect of one or more of the qualities found in each element manifested and connected me to my life at that time. However, at the end of each chapter I have offered a brief summary of the element’s qualities, the body organs they govern, and the issues they relate to. It is impossible to condense 5,000 years of understanding into a summary, but there are numerous books written about the Five Elements should you wish to enquire further.
Finally, I’ve intentionally underwritten this book. Our busy Western minds want to delve into and explain everything. We analyse and pull things apart to find out how they work, then find they don’t because we fail to comprehend that truth and beauty lie in the synergistic cohesiveness of the whole. I believe that in today’s world we should learn to feel our way along life’s paths. We feel with our hearts, not our heads, and it is from heart-space that we can learn to understand our spirit, our soul afresh, as we seek to reconnect with our humanity and divinity.
I hope my stories are both alluring and elusive, drawing you into a liminal sensory space where you feel your own journey. Where you value sentience and intuition, and respond to the imperative embedded deep within all of us to undertake such a journey of reconnection.
May Love guide you on your journey.
Geraldine