The Fertile Void*

Finding myself in the space between...

I wake early, alone, in my strange new home, a Mongolian tent or ger on the outskirts of Ulaanbaatar, so far away from all I know, from my life as wife, mother, colleague. Here no one knows me, knows my family, my story. Here I am just me, as blank a slate as a new-born babe. I stretch slowly as the morning light filters through the roof and doorway, and sounds of the Shelter move around me, twelve gers filled with children brought here from the streets to be cared for. Many are traumatised from their experiences and it is for them that I am here.

But today is Saturday and I have no timetable, no one to see, no one who needs me. For a moment the emptiness of the day scares me. For so many years every moment has been filled, no time to think or just be me.

I dress simply and quickly – I have brought few possessions with me – sweep out my ger and then sit and breathe, letting the stillness and silence fill me. I pull out my notebook and pen and write, senses, impressions, questions, wonderings. After a while I move to sit on the step of my ger and plunge my hands into a plastic bowl of soapy water, sun on my face, scrubbing my few pieces of clothing and pegging them on a line to dry in the dusty heat. All is strange and new and so far from the structure, and strictures, of my ‘real’ life.

Later I feel a compulsion to move, to explore wider in this strange new world. I leave the compound and walk down muddy tracks, past dogs scavenging in piles of rubbish and children pulling plastic water containers in carts, cross the frenetically busy roads and stand at the bus stop in anxious anticipation. I join the throng of Mongolians to take the bus into the centre of Ulaanbaatar, nervous but exhilarated by the challenge of finding my way alone around this new city, where I can’t understand, or even read, the unfamiliar script and language. I stand and watch and listen. The noise of car horns, the bustling streets and rapidly beeping crossing signals are exciting and overwhelming. I feel so alive.

This remote place is where I met the Me that had been hidden for so long under decades of responsibilities and expectations. The Me who, many years ago, before family life absorbed me, sat on a clifftop, watching the waves crashing below and vowed she would make a difference in the world one day. The rebellious, wild version of Me that I had glimpsed over the years but that had been buried over and over again in what I saw as security and safety.

I knew then that I needed to hold onto that version of Me, to keep alive that part of myself that I found in the nothingness.

It was in the void that I found myself.

I spent two months living and working in Mongolia that year and, as the weeks went by, I gained confidence in the newly rediscovered version of Me. I immersed myself in the culture, history and language of Mongolia, made new friends, people from across the world who, like me, were living in this remote part of the world, far from all they knew, following a sense of adventure and exploration. In the wild open spaces of the Mongolian steppe, I rode horses and camels, climbed mountains and swam in lakes and in my work at the Shelter I found my passion for the souls of children and my voice to advocate for them.

Since then, back in the UK and my life as wife, mother and grandmother, I have tried hard to hold onto the wild, free, rebellious, compassionate, ‘change the world’ part of me that believes I can make a difference. From time to time, I go back to Mongolia and touch again that that place of nothingness that I now know holds the key to my soul but, as Mary Oliver expresses so well in her prose poem ‘I have decided’: ‘I have decided to find myself a home in the mountains…where one learns to live peacefully….of course, at the same time I mean to stay exactly where I am.’

This is my challenge. What about you?

I would love to hear your thoughts.

Miranda

*The fertile void is a concept from Gestalt Therapy, sometimes described as a state of not-knowing or emptiness.

Mary Oliver’s prose poem I have decided can be found in her collection A Thousand Mornings (2012).