I can’t sleep.

This full moon is so strong for me tonight.

I am thinking about initiation and rites of passage and I am grieving the fact that I feel so lost, so lacking in Elders to show me the way.

I was thinking about if I had ever been initiated or passed through a rite of passage.

But apart from the birth of my children (especially the ‘free’birth of my son, I could not find many instances.

And then this memory came back so strongly and clearly it took my breath away...

So...it’s rough, it’s unedited but:

I’m going to tell you a story. It's an easy story for me to write, because it’s true.

I am going to tell you something that happened to me in the summer of ‘95.

My father had been dead a month and I was in Spain with my Iraqi lover who lived in Barcelona.

We had left the city and gone by train to the nearby countryside, We were sleeping and making love under the stars and walking and talking during the day.

All in all, we were having a very intense time as he was a mad war traumatised genius and I was 23 and grieving deeply.

When he left to go back to Barcelona, to work for a few days, I was relieved.

The day after he left, I had a strange encounter with a 72 year old barrel of a man in a small allotment in a little village (a whole nother story send me a message if you’d like to hear it)

As I walked away from him. I told him I was going to the ‘campsite, to be with my boyfriend’ and he called after me, saying, ‘That's not the way to the campsite’

I ignored him, and was suddenly in a very dark mood. I walked past a car. And under that car. There was a dog who rushed out and bit me on the bum.

I started crying. And I also started bleeding,

I had my period.

I left the village and walked a winding path, up a hill.

I knew there was a chapel at the top and I wanted to sleep inside it that night.

It was a tiny chapel, inside there was basically a stone bench lining the walls to the left and the right, an alter at the top end and that was it.

I put my rucksack down on one of the stone benches, on top of newspapers that the villagers had put down so that they didn't get their clothes dirty.

As it was nearly dark, I made myself a bed behind the altar, there was literally only room for the length of my body behind the altar.

Torches and candles don’t figure very heavily in my memory,perhaps I had neither.

I found a heavy priests robe and used it to make my bed more comfortable and then I got into my sleeping bag, and cried myself to sleep.

It had been a long day

I was woken up by a scraping sound right next to my head.

I was instantly alert.

I lay there and listened. And then the noise came again.

And again

It sounded like a knife being slowly, repeatedly and methodically drawn down the stonework on the other side of the wall from my head.

I immediately thought that it must be a human. And I couldn't understand how they could possibly know where my head was.

I thought that someone, a man, (perhaps the old man from earlier) had followed me up the hill and was going to rape and kill me.

I realised I was dealing with a psychopath.

The only way out of the little chapel was the door at the front. But I couldn't move. I lay there and I listened to the scraping.

I was in utter terror.

After, I don't know how long, the sound stopped, but then there was a different sound, coming from the front of the chapel.

My mind was scrambling to work out what was happening.

It was very dark inside the chapel, but from where I was lying and because of the moon, I could make out a rectangle of light coming from a gap at the bottom of the chapel door and I could hear and see something coming in. Under this gap.

I saw wolves.

I saw pointed ears and muzzles with steamy breath coming out of them.

I lay there paralyzed. I was totally vulnerable. I didn't know what to do. I felt that if I even moved a centimetre I would lose my sense of hearing and I would be pounced upon.

I smelt of blood.

Of course they would come and attack me.

I could hear rustling as they walked

on the newspapers and then different noises as they found food in my rucksack.

I couldn't see a thing. I was lying still behind the the altar

I could smell my chocolate on their breath.

Then I sensed the creatures coming closer

Without thought, I leapt out of the sleeping bag and I found myself up and sitting on the stone bench.

It was cold.

I only had a T shirt on.

My whole body was thudding wildly. I flinched for the attack.

But nothing happened.

I sat there in the dark, in the silence.

One huge scared heart

And as nothing continued to happen.

Something began to change.

I lost my fear

I felt like I was among friends.

And what I did was I began to sing.

I sang every and any song I could remember.

I sang for hours and hours.

Joseph and his Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat, Guys and Dolls, I sang the South African National Anthem. I sang Summertime. I sang Feeling Groovy and I worked my way through the Beatles and Carole King.

I sang The Ugly Duckling, The Chattanooga ChooChoo, My Bonnie Lies over the Ocean. I sang nursery rhymes, Gregorian chants. 80’s pop songs and Christmas carols.

I just sang song after song after song.

And I realised that I was fully ready to die in this tiny chapel, if I had to.

Then after many hours, cold achey and tired.

I got back into my sleeping bag.

I hoped that maybe I would find a few wolves curled up there.

But there was nothing.

The next morning, early, I was woken up by 2 women entering the chapel with brooms

as they started cleaning, I got dressed quickly and put my sleeping bag in my rucksack

I walked out into bright sunlight and saw that the path was full of villagers snaking their way up to the chapel, led by the old man from the allotment.