MY STORY PLACE
This is my Place to celebrate making story though sharing my writing and visual art practises. My stories are all inspired by the three Places I know deeply and love dearly. Paris, Kyoto, Byron Bay and its hinterlands.
These places are already well know places. I believe this is because they each have metaphorical and archetypal meaning. I love to explore such things. For me discovering the intersections of things are where deeper beauty and unexpected joy is often encountered. I have found wisdoms are more likely to be found just beyond the centre and toward the edges of most places.
Here I explore what it is to journey. To become the heroine of your own narrative. An active participant of living rather than be a consumer of yet another experience or a mere tourist. How the outer journey is more likely a doorway to a profound inner journey.
If you are interested in such things this place is for you too.
My Story Place is where I try to articulate my personal journey toward wholeness in the hope of inspiring others. I will share what I’ve learnt about cultivating what I call the Ways of Love. I genuinely believe this is ‘The Great Work’ of this epoch. That the Wounded Healer is the right medicine for right now.
So come along and explore the archetypal feminine and masculine and what the divine marriage might be. Let’s embrace both the joys of Home and the wonder of Away. Explore the safety of the Here, and seduction of the There. And along the way find the pleasures of both the arts and the sciences. Learning to live with body and mind. Heart and soul. Maybe this how heavens are made on and of this earth.
Thank you for joining me on this quest.
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Paris
My Paris Story
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Byron Bay
True North
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Kyoto
Kokoro House
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Words
Heroines Journey
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Journey
Mindfulness
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Art
Visual Stories
Hello, I’m Bernadette!
My name Bernadette Geraghty tells the story of my heritage. That of a Celtic and catholic ancestry. I was born and raised on Bundjalung Country in Northern NSW Australia. My family of origin were farmers and my first experience of belonging was to that beautiful fertile land. Place, Belonging, and Longing for what has been lost are major themes in all my creative pursuits.
I make with words, photographs, clay, paint, textiles and ink. I particularly like to find the intersections between these different mediums.
In my everyday life I work as a mental health doctor and have been deeply influenced by Carl Jung and Marion Woodman’s work. I have a special interest in the developmental psychology of women. A larger concern is how patriarchy has repressed the Feminine and wounded the Masculine. In over forty years in this field I have witnessed a changing landscape where what we call mindfulness and becoming trauma informed mainstreamed. This changed a great deal for many of us.
My art making is about making my intellectual concerns visible. Putting what is on the inner into the outside world. I honour the sacred Feminine and create with a belief that this is part of restoring her Union with the divine Masculine. I think it is possible for the creative energy in each of us to transmute both our individual and the collective wounds. That beauty is in the actual act of creating. That authentic erotic connection is in the gifting of our creations.
That this has profound healing powers.
The wound is the golden point.
Once upon time
In the beginning I wrote a story about a woman whose heart ran away to Paris. She was called to travel there to find it. What unfolded for me after that was ten years solo travel to that beautiful city. A deep dive into The Heroines Journey. And an unexpected learning of EMBODIMENT though sensory awareness. This is after all a culture that embraces pleasure and pursues the joy of living. It was very healing for me as I recovered lost feelings of my body, found words to express my own wounding and grieved many accumulated losses.
A more recent calling came from Kyoto. Mr G and I have travelled to Japan for many years. During the pandemic I began writing story about a woman who shape-shifted and found herself living as a cat in Kyoto. I became obsessed with the city, staying for a month near the Philosophers Path. Not long after this we brought a small home there. Kyoto unexpectedly opened our hearts to embracing a very big adventure together. It has already brought a sense of ENLIVEMENT to our everyday life and relationship that we didn’t expect. And the shape shifting cat ….well Neko has fallen in love with a monk and is longing to experience all those pleasures of her imperfect female body again. She swears if she can shape shift back somehow she won’t take this for granted anymore.
In the end with all our travels there is the return. To Home. We return with the stories of what we experienced and reflect on has what changed for us as a result. On how the outer journey has transformed us in some way.
My Home, my True North is in the area around Byron Bay. My original birth place. Redolent in red soil and rainforests and crystal clear creeks. With vast blue sky and the greenest of hills falling into the sea. Here I was seeded and grew. Now I frequently return to this place for deep soul nourishment. For ENSOULMENT. My longing to return is ever present and intense. Here I love with my whole being and I feel the land loving me in return. Away from there I am always a little soul sick. It was this place that gifted me the realisation that being on country is the truest path for human healing. Something I certainly didn’t learn at medical school.
It was as I frequently journeyed from Here to There and back again I received the gift of a writing practise. A first big question and an introduction to my muse, Rose. Now I’m nearly Crone. So I’m writing something for you. For the future. I have a bold dream of birthing three small books. Love letters to three places that each form part of my story and are worthy of my devotion. There are also universal lessons to share learned from each place. It is like walking a mandala when you continually return. You became a more soulful traveller. A pilgrim. Learning though all the seasons. Walking always in love and with ever deeping presence and awareness.
This way when you return home you are renewed in a quintessential way. And bring a gift for others. So I invite to you to your own heroines journey. Maybe one day you will travel to one of my sacred places and even take a little inspirational book made by me as guide and companion. A divino lecto. I imagine it as fitting easily into your handbag. With a journal and pretty ink pen for your own writing. I hope you will go with big dreams and a dash of daring and be prepared to feel everything. And return with you own transformational story. I promise that’s when the mythical and mystical turns up.
Story is magical like that.
Follow me on Instagram
@my_paris_story
We offer KOKORO HOUSE our Kyoto home to artists and writers to rent for one month long creative retreats. Imagine a haven sitting high on Yoshida Hill overlooking Kyoto. Yoshida Shrine and the forest with Moan Cafe tucked within is right there beside you. This quiet area found behind the University is very close to both the Kamo River and the eastern mountains. It is also an easy bus or bike ride to the city centre. And a short walk to many temples and restaurants like Monk. Best of all you can walk the beautiful Philosophers Path every day with ease. Please contact me for further information if this interests you.
”I want to unfurl. To finally be that blossom. The one that pushed beyond the tightly closed fist of the bud. The one that persisted though the flowering and insists on being fat and fragrant and seen. Fiercely full of feeling. I want to be deeply scented and to be touched tenderly. To be slowly savoured. I want to know that my many flavours are tasted. I want to be held and danced till I am finally sung into being. I want to be a love song swelling and filling the forest until it is time for the dying. I want to be surrendering even as my petals are falling to the ground. Even as the decay begins.”
— BERNADETTE GERAGHTY. ROSETTES. A personal journal.