New here? Begin with ✨Welcome Home to Sanctuary✨ — a gentle place to find your bearings and a sense of homecoming.
Sanctuary follows the Celtic calendar, with an ✨Invitation✨ at the start of the season and a mid-season ✨Pause✨—like this one—each offered as a gentle call to come home to yourself.
The Season of Returning to Yourself
Samhain marks the turning of the spiral — the place in the year where we begin again by returning inward. It’s a season of listening, gathering and noticing what is ready to come home.
Belonging begins with this kind of return — a coming home to the self that begins with remembering how to be.
The word belonging holds two small words: be and longing. It’s a feeling of wholeness and of being at home in yourself.
To belong is to return to what you long for — ease, steadiness, peace — whatever it is that makes you feel whole. It’s knowing you already belong — to your life, to the earth, and to yourself.
The Claddagh as Compass
There’s an ancient Irish symbol — the Claddagh ring — whose three parts tell a story: the crown for loyalty, the hands for friendship, the heart for love. Traditionally it speaks of relationships, but turned inward, it becomes something more: a compass for the journey home — and a reminder of the sacred relationship you hold with yourself.
What follows is a story, inspired by the Claddagh ring — one shaped by loss and the journey of finding my way back to myself. It unfolds through moments when no map could guide me, when wandering became a beginning, and when belonging returned through the quiet presence of the land and the Cailleach herself.
The Journey Without A Map
We all have moments when life unravels — when the familiar path disappears and we’re left navigating by instinct and uncertainty. These times don’t come with maps; they ask us to make our own, to feel our way through as if by compass, navigating the contours of not-knowing.
The story begins on a narrow road in Ireland. A few weeks before a trip to Ireland that my husband and I had planned for my milestone birthday, I lost my job of 25 years — an ending that felt too raw to name. The timing felt all wrong. I wanted to stay home, to gather myself, to feel like me again before beginning anything new. But life rarely waits for readiness.
Somewhere beneath the doubt was a quiet knowing: the only way through was to trust. Everything for the trip had been scouted, yet my enthusiasm had vanished. So I turned toward Ireland herself — her ancient ruggedness and her storied past.
Of all the places I’d marked on the map, one caught my breath the moment I saw its photograph: the Uragh Stone Circle (An Iúrach in Gaelic), an ancient ring of stones in County Kerry believed to be over 3,000 years old. Its name means place of the yew trees, and since yews are long-lived, they carry the symbolism of endurance and renewal.
Uragh lies on the Beara Peninsula, far less traveled than the Ring of Kerry or Dingle — quiet, wild, and weighted with myth. This landscape is home to Cailleach Bhéarra, the ancient presence of winter, stone, and time we met in this season’s Invitation.
They say she once walked these hills,
stones gathered in her apron,
her breath shaping the weather.
Perhaps she still lingers here —
in the wind that moves the heather,
in the mirror between the lakes —
a reminder that to endure is to change,
and to change is to remember.
I wanted to go there, to those hills, though I couldn’t explain why. The map didn’t show what the road would be like, and we’d been warned about narrow country lanes.
When we finally reached it, the road was exactly that — a winding, fragile ribbon of pavement crumbling into gravel, barely wide enough for one car, with pull-outs carved into the bends. My husband drove while I held the map. We spoke in short, steady sentences meant to reassure. Yet with each curve, the uncertainty deepened — and to make matters worse, we were riding with a GPS that had gone silent without cell service.
We kept stopping to check the map, to ask, is this it? The air smelled of rain and peat. Ferns and heather clung to the slopes. At times the road grew so rough it felt as though the world itself were narrowing in on us. Somehow I knew the only way through was to trust my sense of inner direction more than the map.
Finally, a small gate appeared beside the road, along with a place to park. A brook murmured by a small bridge, welcoming us with its gentle babble. We exhaled — we’re finally here.
We followed a gravel path speckled with chamomile and tufted grasses up the hill. The clouds thinned; the light shifted. And then — as if revealed rather than found — there it was: six ancient sentinels in a valley of green, the hills rising in layers of misted blue around a silver lake, with a waterfall whispering in the distance.
There was magic in the air — dew clinging to the tall grasses, light spilling across the valley in soft silver ribbons. The world felt suspended, as though we’d stepped through a veil into another time: only wind, water, stone, and sky.
The circle stood small against the vastness — five weathered stones encircling one tall pillar, each one etched with lichen and time. What rose in me then was exhilaration — the lift that comes after carrying uncertainty and being met, on the other side, by wonder.
It was as if I was remembering something I didn’t know I’d forgotten.
Standing within the circle, something in me softened — a quiet release of feelings I hadn’t known I was carrying. In their place, an invitation took root: Come home to yourself.
Here, I felt the Cailleach not as a force moving me forward, but as a witness — a steady presence holding the space where I could finally meet myself. A caim — a sanctuary woven from stone, weather and wind — gathering what had been scattered and carrying me back to my own center.
It was a beginning I had not expected and a return I had longed for without knowing it.
The Echo of What We Exhile
Standing in the stone circle, I felt the weather shift — that subtle change in wind and light as though the Cailleach herself had drawn nearer. The mist curled around the stones like breath. It felt as if the land was holding everything I had carried.
Belonging, I realized then, was a presence — like the Cailleach — patient, steady, and waiting for me to turn back towards it. The land seemed to understand what I was only beginning to: that falling apart and beginning again grow from the same root.
Many of us live in quiet exile from ourselves — what I’ve come to think of as banishment. It happens in small ways: when our dreams are dismissed; when grief asks more of us than the world allows; when we adapt to survive and forget to return to who we are.
In Irish lore, the banshee is said to foretell loss, her wail a warning. But I’ve come to hear her differently — not as an omen, but as the echo of what we’ve exiled. Perhaps haunting is simply remembering— grief wanting to be heard, the truths we silence, dreams wanting to live again. It lingers. It waits — like the banshee in the mist — asking softly to be reclaimed.
In the circle, the stones stood steady, yet everything around them moved — wind, water, sky, thought, emotion. And I understood: belonging had always been within me waiting for my return.
Reclaiming What Still Belongs
There are many tellings of the Claddagh’s origin — and some, sadly, are woven through stories of captivity and freedom. I want to acknowledge this truth, and the hard-earned freedom within those tales, as I begin to weave my own retelling.
To me, the Claddagh has always been a compass for the journey home — a reminder of the sacred relationship you hold with yourself. I felt this long before I had words for it. In my twenties, I bought a Claddagh ring for myself — a small act of defiance against tradition, since it’s meant to be given as a gift. I wanted to see it on my own hand each day, a quiet reminder that love begins within — that I could be loyal to myself, offer myself friendship, and learn to love the person I was becoming.
In this way, the Claddagh’s three symbols — the crown, the hands, and the heart — became not only promises offered to others, but a promise I made to myself. A compass pointing inward. And so I wonder: in what ways might the Claddagh help you reclaim these parts of yourself?
Crown | Loyalty
The crown reminds you to be loyal to yourself — to remember your agency, step back into authorship, and stand in your truth even when it trembles.
• Where are you being called to take responsibility for what’s yours?
• What truth is waiting for you to name it?
Hands | Friendship
The hands remind you to stay kind — to offer yourself friendship, to hold what is tender without trying to fix it.
• What would it look like to be on your own side?
• How might you extend kindness to yourself today?
Heart | Love
The heart reminds you to tend what makes you alive — to rest, nourish, forgive, or delight.
• What helps you feel most alive?
• What in you needs gentleness right now?
The Path Home
Maybe the old adage is true: not all who wander are lost. By stepping into a different landscape with curiosity and wonder — I found a way home. Getting lost was exactly what I needed to find myself again.
Wandering, I learned, isn’t the absence of direction but the openness that allows us to begin again. It’s the spiral path of awareness — noticing where we drift and gently returning.
This season, see if you can notice the parts of yourself that you’ve banished — any thoughts, feelings, dreams, hopes, fears and ask yourself what is quietly longing to return:
• What parts of me have I banished that are ready to come home?
• Where might I reclaim my own loyalty, friendship and love — beginning today?
The Claddagh, like the circle, is a reminder of wholeness. Reclaiming yourself is the slow, honest work of returning — again and again — and remembering you already belong.
🌙✨Sanctuary is a reader-supported publication. By subscribing, you’ll receive seasonal reflections rooted in Celtic wisdom and story, guiding you home to yourself, season by season.
If you’re longing to move beyond reflection and into lived practice, my paid subscription ✨Linger✨ offers a guided journey for carrying the season’s wisdom into everyday life.
On the Bookshelf
Mark Nepo’s reflections on the journey of returning to oneself were a steady companion to this piece:
Mark Nepo, The One Life We’re Given: Finding the Wisdom That Waits In Your Heart. (Atria Publishing, 2016)
On the Record Player
Songs that wove themselves into this writing — opening doors, stirring memory, softening the edges:
Bonny Portmore – Loreena McKennitt A lament for a felled yew — an echo of Uragh and its ancient trees.
Linger - The Cranberries The ache of unfinished emotion — a modern banshee where love, memory, and loss intertwine.
Here With Me - Dido The ache of unfinished emotion — a modern banshee where love, memory, and loss intertwine.
🌙✨If something here has kindled a small lantern for you, you’re warmly invited to share its light with others who may be finding their own way home.🌙✨
HI Kim, I came to your Substack through Michelle. And I am so glad I did! Ireland is such a magical place (I have visited 3 times and hope for more). Your journey as described seemed spiritual and affirming. I am happy for you! We have much in common—the 3 songs you mentioned are favorites,, and I have Mark Nepo’s Book of Awakening on my nightstand. Let’s keep in touch! ~Beth
Thank you for this nostalgic, ancient, sensory experience. I was transported into deep roots and spiraling symbolism in your storytelling.