Artwork: Julia Lucey, Black Bear Moon
The doors to the world of the wild Self are few but precious. If you have a deep scar, that is a door. If you have an old, old story, that is a door. If you love the sky and the water so much you almost cannot bear it, that is a door. If you yearn for a deeper life, a full life, a sane life, that is a door ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes
I grew up in an unhappy home with a cruel mother. Long after I left, I found myself having a recurring nightmare in which I was trapped in a house with her. In this month’s travels between worlds I journey into the between and betwixt realm of symbol, imagination and myth to rescue the child who died way back when and explore what it might mean to mother myself through the mystical tale of a woman who turns into a bear.
Once, many thousands of years ago, there was a beach that was encased in a thick crust of ice. Bears freely roamed its glacial dunes, which gleamed a pale marine blue in the cold fire of a remote sun. Over time, the sun’s flames gradually became warmer until the ice was all but gone and the gods ordered the bears to leave. Only, one bear refused to go, since her child was playing in the waves, out of ear shot. Instead, she stood on her hind legs and roared. She would not leave. Would not go. Would not abandon her precious cub to the newly birthed ocean. Becoming impatient, the gods repeated their demand.
But the mother bear only narrowed the dark beads of her eyes and dug her paws into the bone-chilling melt as the gods laughed and promptly turned both bear and cub into a pair of large rocks.
Decades, years, aeons pass. The once new ocean is now archaic and prone to tempers. Beneath her pull and drag, unknown depths. A castle appears on the mountainous ridge beyond the cliffs and then a small town. The bear can be still be seen lumbering at the sub-perceptual speed of tectonic plates, shaking out her ruff and leaping in place. Artio often takes her daughter to play on the beach in the shadow of the rocks, always bringing with her a sprig of rosemary or bright yellow Helichrysum plucked from the dunes as an offering to the ocean. But on this day Artio is preoccupied and clean forgets.
Not one to be disrespected, the ocean is not amused. She watches mother and daughter climb the larger of the two bear-shaped rocks, searching for toe holes and calling to each other. Observes the child swing out a leg to straddle the bear’s rugged neck. Then, just as the mother is putting out a hand to guide her daughter, the ocean gathers up her briny skirts and with an almighty bellow that can be heard as far away as the castle, closes her mouth over the rock and, with a single roll of the tongue, knocks the child from the bear’s neck and swallows her whole.
The taste of iron and salt fills Artio’s mouth. Something small and smooth rolls inside a cheek and she spits out a tooth. Squinting through a sticky veil of red tears, she closes her still outstretched hand. Enfolds the empty air, holds the round pebble shape of her child’s smooth sole as if it’s still there.
A lone gull arrows the grey smear of sky as a single word forms inside Artio’s bloodied mouth. No. And again. No, no, no. The cry of her bowels, her bladder, her bones tears right through her. And, before Artio knows it, she’s pushing herself off the bear’s shaggy spine in pursuit of the smirking wave. Only her right leg won’t move where the ocean has left behind a parting gift and cruelly dislocated one of her hips.
Night drops like a curtain, smothering the beach in a darkness so dense, it cancels the stars. The black taffeta of the ocean’s voluminous skirts rustle and scrape against the shore, Artio’s child enclosed somewhere inside the salty amniotic sack of their folds. Her daughter now. High up on the rock, the cold blunts the pain in Artio’s hip. With great difficulty, she lowers herself inch by inch by inch down the bear’s rocky flank. On the beach, the tide is low. Artio crawls on all fours, falls face down in the ruffles of dark lace at the ocean’s edge.
The waves' dank breath mists her face and the ocean’s distant bass rolls over her and through her. Numb to the pain, to the cold, Artio is ready to go. Waits, prostrate on the coal black sand, for the ocean to carry her on the tail of its skirts all the way over to the other shore.
High overhead, the moon slips and slides through a thick felt of cloud. Beneath its fuzzy, hallucinatory glow, Artio’s cells silently and secretly knit themselves back together and, by morning, she finds she can walk.
But Artio’s new leg is not like her old one. It sits differently in the seat of its joint. Her right thigh is more trunk-like. The skin, blotched. Its calf, bulging, knotty. In the clear morning light, Artio sees a scar gleam like a thin thread of quartz all the way from her hip bone to the bump of her ankle. Meanwhile, her new leg’s movements are slow and lumbering, making Artio’s gait heavy and awkward. Every step hurts. Sends lightning bolts through each one of her nerves. But at least now she can put one foot in front of the other.
The ocean, the next day, is unusually calm. Whispering and humming to itself. Waves eddying, overlapping, gliding, fluttering. Dancing in perfectly synchronous trains. White in the sun. A different beast now.
Alone, except for the wheeling gulls far overhead, Artio pulls off her boots, and wades in, fully dressed, up to her waist. The waves buffet her shivering body as she plunges her head under. Rinses the blood from her hair and face. Dress ballooning, twisting, cocooning. Turning the waves crimson, Again and again, Artio surfaces and plunges, surfaces and plunges. Crying for her daughter in choking gulps of seawater. The shock of the cold, a balm to her bones. The ocean rocking her now. Taking with one hand and giving with the other. Holding Artio where she is unable to hold herself.
Back on the beach, Artio shrugs off her wet clothes and stretches out on the sand. A new order of pain shoots through her hip and Artio jerks upright, gasping for air. She cannot, will not leave her daughter to dissolve in the void.
For days, weeks, months, Artio wanders the silvery thread of shoreline, drinking from the mouths of rivers, prising soft molluscs from their shells with the rinds of her nails, which have grown long and yellow, spearing trout with sticks and grilling them on fires made from drift. After her meals, Artio feeds scraps to the herring gulls that follow her along the shore.
Over time, Artio’s back becomes broader, her spine longer. Although heavy, her step is now dexterous, determined, strangely graceful. Swarthy clumps of muscle mushroom along her shoulders, bloom down her thighs, explode from her calves. Damp curls of hair trail from her armpits, twist in thick vines down her thighs. A long plait the colour of Autumn leaves and decorated with shells, slaps at her back. Her face shines with a hyphae-like down, the dark strands on her chin the most brittle.
The days pass and the sun becomes hotter, the cliffs redder, the shore windier, turning Artio’ skin a lustrous dark cherry. The nights, too, are red. They pulse, bloody and womb-like in the fires Artio makes to ward off the dark.
She stares into the flames, holds the image of her daughter before her, until her eye lids droop and she can see her child riding off on the back of the bear in the flickering white flower at their centre.
On one particularly hot night, when the wind is so dry, it seems like the ocean is breathing out fire, Artio senses a body curl up beside her. Feels the sharp dig of a foot in her spine. A soft hand rest on her waist. Smells her daughter’s musty apple breath. Hears the little whistling noises she makes in her sleep. Drifts off to the susurrations of the night’s static. Sleeps long and deep.
It is still dark when Artio wakes to a cold space at her back. The wind blasts sand in her face, smacks the toothless gap in her mouth as the gods reach down from the darkness and snuff the remnants of Artio’s fire out. Her girl nowhere to be seen, Artio staggers to her feet. Feels the old ache down her right leg.
Artio’s howls fill the night, wrenches apart her joints, re-arranges her bones. Rips through her throat, tearing at the air with its terrible claws. Tongue hanging down from the side of her mouth, Artio bends to scoop a log from the fireside. Raises it over her head, as if it were no heavier than the razor shell she’d earlier tossed to the sand after devouring its contents. With a ferocious roar, she hurls the log into the waves, watches it wildly spin, the needle of a de-magnetised compass, pointing everywhere and nowhere, until it is sucked under, gone.
But Artio is not done. Is hungry for more. Would devour the ocean, the night, stars, if she could. Would take all of it inside her. Suck out every last morsel. Break her teeth on its bones. Incisors bared, Artio tears open her thin dress. Flings herself face down into the black pit of the dead fire. Pours armfuls of ash over her head, smears it down the matted hair furring her body, until all that’s visible is a red mouth and two sulphurous eyes burning through the dark, the luminous contrails of a dying star, as Artio leaps on all fours into the water.
Voluptuous, animal, ursine. On her way to save her daughter.
If you enjoyed this tale, do heart, comment & share.
Dreaming Awake Winter pause
It brings me so much joy to write Dreaming Awake each month and share these dispatches with you. But as we enter the dreamtime of Winter, I’ll be taking a short pause from December through to February to stoke the creative fire of an exciting book project, which I’m developing very much with you, dear reader, in mind.
If you’d like to support my work as an independent writer & academic while I pursue this new research direction, you can become a paid subscriber for £3.50/monthly or £35/annually.
I’ll return with the regular Dreaming Awake dispatches on the first Friday of March and will very much look forward to connecting with you again in the Spring. With much love & gratitude, Rachel.
Upcoming Events
Winter depth writing workshop, online, 15/12, 6-8pm, London time
Explore the seasons of your self experience with writing & imagination through the symbolism of Winter
Join a Winter depth writing workshop to reflect on the cycles of your self-experience through the symbolism of Winter and the season’s associations with a time of dormancy and darkness where life appears to go underground and we’re invited to cultivate the inner light of imagination and dreams.
Re-Wild Yourself: Women’s Yoga & Journaling Retreat - Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire, 20/03 - 22/03, 2026
Free your mind on the page & the mat
Yoga and journaling both play a big part in how I keep myself grounded so, I’m delighted to be teaming up with friend and expert yoga teacher Donna Southwell for a women’s yoga and journaling retreat in the heart of the West Yorkshire moors - famous for inspiring the wildness of the Brontë sisters and the much-loved landscape where I’m based. The retreat will be a chance to press pause on the busyness of life and re-wild yourself through yoga and journaling suitable for all levels. It will take place at the stunning, newly restored, Lumb Bank, a writers’ centre and former home of Ted Hughes.
Subscribe to rachelnewsome.co.uk to stay up to date about future courses & workshops
‘Dreaming Awake’ is primarily where I ‘explain by doing’ - as the Dodo said to Alice - through sharing my writing. The best way to stay up to date about depth writing courses, workshops & retreats grounded in Jungian psychology & cognitive neuroscience is to subscribe directly to my website newsletter ~ rachelnewsome.co.uk
First time here, and I love your story telling. I can somehow feel the beautiful words ignite a tiny flame in my heart! It's rather marvellous. Thank you.✨️
Exquisite.