Episode Five: One With the Ocean

September 8, 2024

Maura Conlon  00:06

Welcome, I’m putting on the tea. Just like my grandmother did in County Clare Ireland more than a century ago.

Maura Conlon  00:21

You’re listening to Original Belonging. I am your host Maura Conlon, born and raised in Los Angeles. I am passionate about the primal nature of our creativity, which allows us to reconnect with ourselves and with a sacred web of life. I hold a doctorate in depth psychology, and I’m the author of FBI Girl, a best selling memoir about my first 14 years a coming of age saga also adapted for stage, whether unfolding upon the page or the stage of your childhood playground. We all have life defining moments from our first 14 years. Stories that often get buried in our adult lives. Yet, these early visceral sometimes mystical experiences remain a treasure trove incubating our original wisdom. When remembered, the stories offered timeless inspiration, and resilience through thread, or our lives. 

Maura Conlon  01:46

Original Belonging is a six part narrative podcast series featuring stories and conversations where we return to and explore the vital landscape of our early years. In each episode, I go back in time to share my story, a hologram if you like depicting the agony and the ecstasy, and the wisdom learned and these poignant coming of age years. Let’s not dismiss the places that made us come alive when we were young. They hold a key as to how we can open our hearts and evolve into our truest potential. Such primal memories are not long ago and far away. No, they live inside of you. They’re right here. Listen, close. 

Maura Conlon  02:46

Episode Five. One with the ocean. Imagine sharing a love story about a place in the natural world that has called to you since childhood. Today on the episode, I will share about my intimate connection to the ocean. Knowing in my bones as a young girl that I belong to the sea. A reverence was handed down from my mother lines. You will also hear me in conversation with Dr. easkey Britton surfer artist, filmmaker and marine social scientist who lives in County Donegal, Ireland. She is making big waves guiding initiatives that connect human vitality with the health of our blue planet.

Easkey Britton  03:42

It’s such a potent mirror to who we are in the health of our own health as a society, it just mirrors that because quite literally, it holds all of who we are, you know, it’s it’s the ultimate kind of solvents. So everything that touches it, it’s it holds a, a trace of it and the good, the bad, the ugly, you know, all of our, all of our history, all of our memories, all of our bones, or blood or sweat or tears or waste, it’s like it’s still it’s all in the water and the water cycling through all life throughout all the time. And so it’s the ultimate also the ultimate force of connection because it’s moved through all of us and we all depend on it.

Maura Conlon  04:21

Before we dive into this conversation, here’s my love story for the sea

Maura Conlon  04:33

While the ocean for me literally takes my breath away. And I realized that so many things in life we can give words to but the ocean it’s beyond words that sounds of spaciousness. I just feel connected to the Divine there and I also feel connected to you For the feminine, there is something about the water that has often been associated with the feminine with the unconscious with the sense of depth. So there’s something both mythical and personal and very sensual that I feel at the ocean. I grew up with the ocean, knowing it was my mother’s place, because she was this bathing beauty in her youth back in New York. So this was my connection to my mother before she got married before she had five kids. It was the link to my grandparents 3000 miles away from where we were growing up near Los Angeles. So there was like that early introduction to the ocean. And of course, my mother would take us to the beach when we were kids.

Maura Conlon  06:03

But when I got to be 12, or 13, I was granted permission to ride my bike to the beach by myself, which was about four miles away. And that was the beginning of a whole nother chapter of my relationship with the ocean. It became my ocean now. And not just my mother’s ocean. Getting up from the towel, walking down to the water’s edge, listening to the sound of the crashing waves, and the birds flying ahead the seagulls we’ve been down, feeling the team goal of the saltwater on my feet, the temperature, which clues me into how fast or how slow I’ll wait in or dive in. And then there’s that first climb. With water. This covers my entire body. And I can smell the salt. It’s so beautiful to feel so weightless. As a young person. I learned the joy of body surfing, bobbing in the water waiting in the water waiting, watching the waves come determining which wave was the one to catch. And then lining my body up in such a way that as the curl of the wave approached, I knew exactly how to be positioned to ride it all the way into the shore. 

Maura Conlon  07:37

The ocean was so strong the undertow, sometimes it would take me down and I would I wouldn’t be doing somersaults. And my body just out of control going this way. And that with the waves crashing over me and I learned to hold my breath. My going into the ocean it was like connecting to some sort of primal energy, a wild energy that seemed normal. Oh, this is life. So there was that rhythm, that ebb and that flow. The cacophony, the symphony of it all that seemed intrinsic to who I was, as a human being. That I felt really no separation between myself and the ocean. I was wild like that ocean, I was raw, like that ocean. I had my internal rhythms like that ocean. So it was a sense of like seamless connection. I mean, almost as if there was no dualism, truly being one with nature. I always felt this dichotomy in my house because my father didn’t particularly like the ocean. But my mother lived for the ocean. I mean, she was raised on the ocean. So we always knew it was her place, her place to take us. I think all kids are curious about their parents like, oh, who were they before they had me. She grew up in New York and spent her childhood summers from age seven on the water in a wooden bungalow that my Nana purchased during the great depression for $250. 

Maura Conlon  09:28

And it had been a tent colony, just very community oriented. Lots of kids and adults cavorting and all of that. So I knew that was in my family legacy, which was very different from California where we grew up, just a different we were four miles from the beach, so it wasn’t like it was right there in our front yard the way it was for her. I started going to Breezy Point when I was a teenager and I would walk those beaches and say to myself, my mother walked here as a girl, my mother played in these waves as a young woman, my mother did bring us back to her Breezy Point, wonder lay on and show us where she was a beauty queen in 1947, or 1948, and showed us the different beach games that she played. And it was like peering into your parents past, I could feel her sense of awe and wonder, I could feel the lack of responsibility. Because here she was back home raising five kids, the youngest Sue has Down syndrome. It was a sensation of liberation and freedom that exists at the ocean.

Maura Conlon  10:47

When I was a teenager, visiting her childhood beach of Breezy Point, New York, came back with a photograph of myself with the water up to my ankles. And my mother took that photograph, and had it blown up to poster size, and included the text, don’t be afraid to get your feet wet. My mother was saying, Have no fear, go for what you want in life, don’t hold back. That was her message to me, was a real witnessing of my mother seeing me at the beach, and seeing my same appreciation of freedom that she also felt as a young woman. I would say that my mother had a challenging relationship to my father, he could be very quiet, but he could have mood swings as well. He probably had some sort of depression or PTSD from being in the war, I don’t know what. So she had her hands full, being married to a man who had a big heart, but just had a really hard time expressing his love or being there for her or refraining from oftentimes being very sarcastic towards her. And so I was witnessing that in a marriage, it can be tough. And the ocean just seemed to be a contrast to the sacrifices that were happening or could happen in a marriage. 

Maura Conlon  12:22

And with responsibility that my parents were facing, with the five of us. And of course, with my brother, Joe Jr. My mother would say, when I was younger, I had a great sense of wit, and joy and effervescence. I mean, like, oh, once upon a time, my mother was this other way. And I think when I saw myself in that poster that she had blown up for me, it felt like a transmission from her. Like, don’t let anyone pull you down. As if my mother was connecting me to a sense of my own possibility. She would speak in little wisdom codes like that. She loved my father and she actually loved being a mother. And that was her desire. But she saw something in me that she saw in her earlier self that she wanted to nourish. As a teenager, I was starting to feel like I had my own voice. I was writing poetry. In high school, I wrote all the poetry for our yearbook. I felt connected to some some sense of voice, a unique voice that that I had. 

Maura Conlon  13:44

And around this time, my father and I would get into arguments. He saw how competent I was getting with my voice. And he was very protective of me going out into the world. He was fearful of the world. He said it was a dark place, and bad things happen out there. Which being the FBI agent, yes, I would not be surprised to hear that from him. The more freedom I felt in my own life, the more he tried to convince me that I should be more and more careful. There were many times when I just wasn’t such a spate of tears that I would just get on my bike and ride to the beach. I didn’t know where else to go. But that was my release

Maura Conlon  14:42

and it took me years to realize that there was probably a carefree kid and him that long to ride to the beach with us, but he couldn’t. He just couldn’t. He was just burdened by his past and his responsibility with that eternal cigarette and hanging out of his mouth. So there was a sense of escape. And maybe I felt a little guilty. Oh, I can just get on my bike and go. And I always remember that moment when I would reach the top of the hill, probably panting a little bit. And seeing that the crust, the ocean out there, just the stretch of blue, and it felt as if the ocean was actually waiting for me to get there. I’m here, I’m always here, I’m just waiting for you, just right on down the hill now. So there was that sense of eternal presence, that it would just welcomed me with open arms. It’s wild, and yet it’s ever present. It courses through our veins there. It’s a homecoming. I’m wanting to give reverence to something that often gets taken for granted, when so much of our environment is at peril, including the oceans. You know, it’s like taking a second look that, yes, I have my personal story, I have my ancestral story. 

Maura Conlon  16:12

But it’s like learning to care for her presents in a deeper way. Surrendering, not looking at it as if it’s this beautiful thing out there, but allowing ourselves to actually go into the water, and be in the water and be with what lives in the water, kelp forests, the occasional seal pops up dolphins at sunset. And so there is a reverence for the beauty of the sea. There’s a call to activism as well. And since I’ve moved to my town, I’ve become involved in a local organization that is devoted to keeping the oceans protected, to keeping the ocean as a sea sanctuary as a marine protected area. They’re up and down the coast of California. But it takes people you know, activist who’s concerned citizens to create those environments. Whether it’s a river or mountains, or forests or the ocean, there’s a deeper relationship we can have with that as a living organism, and ask how can I more deeply know what’s going on with this ocean with this forest with this river? It what it’s asking us to form a deeper relationship and not just look at it as a word, the subject and that’s the object

Maura Conlon  17:48

the world might be going crazy. But out there in the sea, there is this order there is this animal way of being animal way of connection. It makes sense. Wait in catch the waves like there’s no rules, there’s no time. It just feels timeless. Being completely restored, renewed the saltwater just all over the body, I used to put sand in my towel and bring it home and put the sand in my bed because I wanted to feel like I was sleeping at the beach. I belonged. I belonged in the ocean. I felt as if I belonged to my family. And at the same time. We were a quiet family and a lot of emotion did not get expressed. My mother taught us to rise above emotion to keep that stiff upper lip to fight the challenges. And my father just repressed everything. And so that really bothered me as I was coming of age, because I was already writing in my journal. And I would look around sometimes and say why? Why is no one talking here. I could feel like submarines under the water, the tension of all that. I think my parents were trying to protect us. 

Maura Conlon  19:14

You know, like, let’s not be angry, let’s just you know, just keep keep calm and keep marching on. But I felt the emotion I felt the angst. I felt the hurt. I felt the longing for emotion to be expressed. There was that sense that voices were trapped inside the home. I mean, this is why I became a writer and write memoir, because I was trying to figure out what’s what’s hiding and all the silence. And I think the few times that my parents did raise their voices with one another. You know, my siblings came into my bedroom and we’re like, how do you hear Do you hear that? Do you hear that? Do you hear that? There’s like there’s Something’s happening out there. I felt sadness that that moment couldn’t happen more often because I felt that kind of argument was very healthy. And that’s how you resolve things is to get it out into the open

Maura Conlon  20:24

I started writing after my uncle father, John Conlan, was murdered when I was 13. And soon after that, I rode my bike up to the local five and dime and bought a spiral notebook. And that was the beginning of my journal writing. So I was probably going on 14 years old. I know when I started to write in my journal, my words would just flow out to me. I didn’t even have to think they would just come right out of my my pen, my hands onto the page. And I was little mystified. What, Where’s all this coming from? And it felt like oh, yeah, that’s, that’s like the primal energy of motion. It just is like coming on through me. It’s like water flowing on through. And it was carrying emotion with it. And I was seeing that expressed on the page. I mean, what joy to have that release? Yeah, it’s almost like the ocean provides a mirror for my soul. And then writing in the journal, those pages reflect the same thing.

Maura Conlon  21:46

So just as my mother, when I was a teenager, enlarge that photo of me at the beach and turned it into this poster with a text, don’t be afraid to get your feet wet. When she years later, when she was dying. She filled her own bedroom, with portraits of the ocean, Breezy Point, her childhood love lace, I mean, her place where she grew up as a child, right on the beach. This is after my father died. And so as I got older, I really became witness. Just as my mother witnessed me loving the ocean as a teenager, now I was really witnessing her as a dying woman, in her 70s fill her bedroom with what she loved the most. Towards the end of her life, my mother and I would go down to the beach, we would sit in the car and sit on a latte. And she would just look out to the horizon and the clouds and the seascape and talk about, oh, look at that color blue and look at that color, orange. And do you think people really revere the ocean. And I mean, she was like a child, in a way, I mean, that sense of wonder. So she spent her last year of life, both going to Breezy Point for her last visit there, and then spending time at our local Seal Beach. 

Maura Conlon  23:08

And she went until she could go no longer. What I’ve learned from my mother and learning this connection to the ocean is that in a way, even though we die, I feel that there really is no death, because the ocean is eternal. And by connecting into that eternal source in me, I feel like I become part of the ocean when I die. That may be where my ashes are scattered someday. Along with a few rose petals. I see my connection to the ocean really going into the timeless we come from the land, we come from the water. That’s where we all started. We didn’t start in factories or I rise condos. So this connection to the living, breathing, flowing, Earth is in our blood, our ancestors blood all the way back. And so to create space for that dreaming to happen or those conversations to occur. We normally don’t talk about those things, but what if we did?

Maura Conlon  24:40

After experiencing the loss of a long term relationship, I found a book at just the right time called ebb and flow, connect with the patterns and power of water. I was eager to return to that elemental place of healing, where I knew I would feel a live again. After decades of living so far away, author Easkey Britton PhD, writes of our watery entanglements. This revelatory image evokes ocean tides, as well as the liquid lifeforce coursing through the blood in our veins, how we are comprised of water, how water has a spiritual intelligence, reminding us that a healthy ocean is necessary to sustain all life on Earth. You know, I first heard about you when I joined the Irish writers center, and then I came across this woman who was teaching a course around this book called ebb and flow. And I tell you, I think for the past six months, it’s been either on my dining room table or by my bedside. So thank you for writing the book. I would love if you could talk a little bit about your connection to the land where you live, to your ancestral connection there, maybe to give us a sense of place that the place where you grew up.

Easkey Britton  26:19

Yeah, and it’s interesting, because it’s a lovely place to start there. It makes sense because it’s such a big theme, actually, within my book, ebb and flow is the importance and power of cultivating these personal place connections as a way to begin to restore that sense of, well, that sense of belonging, we know we’re going to be diving into. And that’s so true for me, it’s very much who I am now today is very much shaped by my my origin story by the sense of place that is so strongly shaped by my place of birth here in the northwest of Ireland, where I still call home in Donegal, where the you know, the sea and rock collide, it’s very elemental, very raw, very exposed, the full fury of North Atlantic storms, especially in winter time, but it’s also because of that, where we find some of the best serve, and where my father learned to surf on my mother. 

Easkey Britton  27:11

So I born two pioneering surfing parents, and that was my kind of introduction to the ocean was through this medium of surf, which is incredible vehicle or lens to experience, that part in that element of our planet, other than otherwise would feel especially in here in Ireland to otherwise would feel very intimidating or threatening or dangerous even. And it is in many ways. But for me, my introduction was one that was really playful and associated with just a fun, you know, and escapism and all of those things. So very much yeah, fear I who I am today is because of where I was born and what I was born into, and this lifelong connection with the ocean.

Maura Conlon  27:55

Wonderful. Can you speak a little bit about how your parents got involved with surfing and how they lay the groundwork for you to belong to a family that loves surfing. So how, how do they get involved with the sport?

Easkey Britton  28:10

My dad is nearly 70 And he’s been surfing since he was 12. So you know began surfing is back in the 60s in Ireland, but you mentioned ancestry. So the ancestral or intergenerational connections are really important. It’s something I read a lot about in my first book, saltwater in the blood, how I have this kind of blue heritage. So this inheritance of a sea connection through generations, going back to well to at least my grandparents, in particular, my grandmother, my dad’s mother, she’d never served but ran a hotel business here in Rossnowlagh Rossnowlagh Beach, called the sand House Hotel with my grandfather, but she was a real pioneer and kind of businesswoman or trailblazer in the area of Irish tourism. Also back in the 1960s. Ireland, we were still classed as one of the poorest nations and Euro tourism really wasn’t at all emerging. And then we that Irish American connection hadn’t really been established to the extent it has now in terms of its tourism value. But she was over in America in the States and in in California, in the 60s promoting tourism in Ireland, which in itself, I think is kind of remarkable. 

Easkey Britton  29:18

But she ended up in Malibu in California during the era of Beach Boys get to all of that and so surfing for the first time in Malibu in front of the hotel she was staying at and just made that link between seeing waves breaking there but seeing surfers ride them for the first time with the waves in front of her hotel at home and thinking to herself that oh maybe I could get my hands on some surfboards and bring them back to my beach for for tourists to try this thing surfing. I mean it’s a conversation I’d love to have there now but she since passed of just how did that all come about? But she did manage to get some of the first Malibu style surfboards. So these third kind of 10 foot long pop out boards that were around at the time, you didn’t exist in Ireland, of course. So even shipping them into Ireland would have been an adventure in itself. But she’s a mother, she was the mother of five boys, including my dad. 

Easkey Britton  30:14

So you can imagine when these things arrive back into the hotel, and they see them and get their hands on them. And they didn’t really understand what surfing was, for the first while they were in the water for maybe the first year or two just lying down on these boards, without wetsuits. So even water that’s, you know, ranges from eight degrees Celsius to the warmest to get this maybe 14. Yeah, and then they saw it wasn’t until they saw a traveling surfer. Standing up on the surfboard, they realized, Oh, this is yeah, this is how you do it. And then it evolved from there. So I grew up also with those stories of how, you know, the how it all began when it comes to surfing in the early pioneering stages of just trying to figure things out and experiment, I suppose.

Maura Conlon  31:02

So what about you as a young girl? And do you have early memories of you know, some of your first times going into the ocean, either as a swimmer or your first time surfing? Or just what did it feel like to immerse yourself in that cold Atlantic sea? With a surfboard? Or how did that start.

Easkey Britton  31:31

So I was first standing on a surfboard from the age of four, give or take, and I just always remember being in the sea. So I don’t remember a time like before surfing or before the ocean. And I don’t have my memory of my very first wave, because it’s just it’s been this ever present for us. But I do have a lot of memories of time with, with both my parents, but in particular, with, you know, being picked up from the local school in winter time. And you know, being in my school uniform and having to like wriggle out of it in the back of the car and get into my wetsuit as my mom drove me to the beat. So I could maximize that I kind of 30 minutes a day, like we had left in wintertime before it gets it gets dark really early here in winter. So I think it was super keen from an early age, that’s for sure. And no other kids in the school were doing it. So I was driven by this motivation to do it. For myself, because of how it made me feel rather than it being this thing I wanted to be a part of, because it was cool. Like, for years, it was the farthest thing from cool, it was just considered downright crazy. And you were just odd, you know?

Maura Conlon  32:36

You mentioned that you loved how it made you feel in your body. You know, for somebody who’s maybe never been on a board before? And maybe it’s beyond words, how did it make you feel in your body? How did it connect you to something exciting inside of yourself?

Easkey Britton  32:52

Well, I spent most of writing saltwater in the blood just trying to figure out just that, like how do you communicate the sensation of wave riding? And yeah, have a good go at it. But I think it’s we’re now in retrospect, I can see how it was so important to have that early, those early experiences of that level of kind of embodiment. You know, surfing is one of those practices or activities that takes you completely out of your head and you have to be fully present in your body, you can’t your mind can’t be anywhere else. Because you’re so in the moment. You know, with waves coming at you and it’s such a multi sensory experience, it whole really kind of effortlessly holds our attention in the now, which can be a tricky thing to do, especially in this day and age. So that in itself is very freeing. And then there’s just the whole sensory feeling of when you are, you know, ride a wave, or even the you know, the physics of that of this of wave energy and where it’s come from. And it’s travels so far through the ocean to meet you at this certain point. 

Easkey Britton  33:54

And then you have this these few seconds really that’s all a wave lasts before it crashes onto the shore. So you’re just riding the wave, but it’s sort of final, its final moments really. And it’s it’s also now I see it as a really, which is interesting, especially as a young person and a kid. It’s a very relational thing. You’re not just going there and catching a wave. And it’s like going out and playing with a football you having this interaction with this other lifeforce this other that’s moving through the earth and then moving through you and you have a moment where you’re actually really tapped into that. And so it’s really quite powerful and potent in that way and transformative. And then of course, there’s a really important aspect of it being about meeting the unknown and all this uncertainty, you’re in an environment that’s in total flux and constantly changing and as a human, you have no control over you have to surrender any notion of having any power over something like a wave or the ocean. 

Easkey Britton  34:51

So it’s a very different kind of energy that’s required this kind of trust in your body, but also that comes a trust that comes from I’m just building up time getting to know the ocean or your particular surf spot or place. So I realized now that that creates a really valuable intimacy, with a place with with water, that doesn’t ever leave you. And so yeah, there’s all these beautiful things that now we’re beginning to when I say we, as research scientists, I’m also a blue health researcher, which I know we probably talk about, looking at this whole emerging area of Ocean Therapy, in particular for mental health, and its benefits for a whole diverse range of people with a spectrum of issues, but especially young people. And so we’re just beginning to unpack the why of what I’ve always intuitively known and felt in my body of this power of water to make us feel whole will be one way I would describe it. And also that this, this theme of belonging is huge, I really firmly believe there’s this feeling of of coming. 

Easkey Britton  36:01

As a you know, as a human species on the planet, that connection with water is innate. And it’s what I really try to unpack with the book ebb and flow, of course, is this sense of almost homecoming or belonging that we feel in water, as well as it there’s the edge, of course of there being that risk and danger element, which can also be healing, so I can talk about that. But also, this being in the water, being immersed in it and allowing if we can soften and relax enough to allow ourselves to be held. That’s the closest we can get to being back in the womb to being held in the waters of our mother’s womb, which is probably when arguably when we maybe felt our most safe and secure. And I just find it fascinating that there is such similarities. I mean, there’s hardly any difference between amniotic fluid and sea water in terms of salinity and density. I think that’s no accident.

Maura Conlon  36:58

As you came of age, and this connection to the ocean, and how it made you feel, what qualities did it warm in you as a person out in the ocean, you have this connection? And then when you’re on land? How does that translate into like your coming of age years? Or any challenges you had? Or like? What was something about that connection to the ocean? That was sort of a reminder of belonging?

Easkey Britton  37:29

You really brilliant question. Thanks, Maura. And it’s something again, in my first saltwater blood is my first book, which is more of a memoir. So really trying to look at that lifelong relationship with surfing in particular, those threshold moments, those crossover moments in life and how what role it played for me in my own kind of, I suppose, journey and personal development, and how that might translate beyond the individual collectively. But I can definitely see it, I think it’s played a key role for me in that transition. Around the time, the 12 1314 years of adolescence and puberty and huge changes and transformation happening. A couple of things that I suppose that surfing offered me was the oceans always changing, but it’s that constancy as well of knowing it’s always there, it’s ever present, it’s a place I can go to, to just be who I am, like free from any kind of judgment. 

Easkey Britton  38:27

So that feeling of being able to just show up fully as I am, whatever I’m feeling, and for that to be held, you know, not have to feel like I have to conform or be in a certain way. And in terms of that relationship with the ocean itself. That’s when my competitive surfing career was really beginning to also take off and I was competing from the age of 12, I was on the Irish surf team, which is remarkable, but it also meant I was in an adult world very, from a very young age. So I was competing in your the senior team from the age of 12. So we just in retrospect, you know, yeah, that has its own challenges. And there was a total lack of I mean, things have changed massively now, in so many positive ways around equality for women in surfing especially. 

Easkey Britton  39:15

But the time there was very little awareness around puberty, the changes in the female body menstrual cycle, you know, having my first period and surfing and traveling and all of that being mixed in and then this whole have been training to be a competitive athlete, treating the body in a very kind of mechanistic way, like as a as a machine and all about performance and productivity. And no acknowledgement, actually, that there’s this ebb and flow of my own energy. If I could tap into my menstrual cycle, it could actually offer me all these hidden powers rather than it being this thing I have to suppress or that was a nuisance at best or at worst, a disadvantage

Easkey Britton  40:00

So I kind of write about that a lot in my book. But I feel that what the ocean gave me through that period was also how it spilled over into my land based life. And I only realized that when I started to write saltwater in the blood, how closely married my more artistic expression and creative side was with my surfing and time being in the sea, which now I say it out loud. I mean, that seems obvious. My dad’s also an artist too. But when I was 13, I also through through my artwork, I expressed a lot of those emotional transitions I painted in watercolor. One particular moment comes to mind where I capture the energy I felt when caught by a wave. 

Easkey Britton  40:47

And I painted an ocean rising up in all its fury. embodied by this in a blue sea goddess, and she’s quite angry and intimidating looking. She has her mouth wide open in a roar. It’s a very kind of wild, cold seascape. Yeah, there’s a lot of kind of fury and energy in it that you know, for a 13 year old, I wasn’t even sure when I painted it at the time where it was coming from. But I can see now I was I was painting you know, what attracts me to these wild elements and winter storms. And it’s something about that freedom to, as I said, to give expression fully to ourselves to roar if we want to

Easkey Britton  41:31

make artwork is also heavily influenced by a mentor of mine, Pauline Buick, and incredible Irish artist who was such a great kind of guide in my life, and in those early years as well. And I did the painting with her in her studio. And she was also playing Clarissa Pinkola Estes, audio book of women who run with the wolves, and was telling me about how she was going to give a talk about how women that some women have a howl in them. Because for too long, they haven’t been able to fully express who they are. And so all of this was coming out in my painting. And so it felt like this message coming up from the deep unconscious, you know, like some kind of dream message, which I know in your work more, I mean, it’s unsurprising because water and the ocean are considered in young in psychology to be this really powerful, universal archetype of the unconscious. 

Easkey Britton  42:24

And of course, 13 was this age. For me, it’s when I was the rival of menarik, when my first bleed or period, so it was all around that time, of all of this kind of coming out. Was it came out because I was competing in a one part trying to, you know, having to suppress that energy that was coming through me and through my body, and then through my connection with the ocean, and then being able to express it through something like painting, being able to have that kind of release and expression. And the importance of there’s so much in that I suppose importance also of having good mentors. At a young age

Maura Conlon  43:07

I’m just curious, you know, Ireland, has this feminine goddess origin stories with the sacred wells being connection to the Goddess? And is that something that you grew up with? Or is this kind of explosion of your art, so to speak? Did that? Yeah. Was that informed from your culture? Or do you feel like it just, it was just your natural reaction to this connection to the land and the sea and the energy of your body there?

Easkey Britton  43:35

Oh, yeah, of course, it’s very instilled in us from early on in, in Ireland, still the power of mythology and how that’s so woven into place connection and a sort of ecological way of being and seeing the land. And in particular, water has very strong associations with the feminine neola rivers, if you go back to the Irish, like the root names in Irish, they all have, they’re all the names of goddesses, or female deities, and the same for our springs and holy wells that were Christianized but are all much older Of course. And so that yeah, that was ever present to the power and a lot of the a lot of those mythologies, like the message and meaning in them is now like the science is kind of now catching up and evidencing the truth of a lot of it of these ecological interconnections and our relationship with the more than human world.

Maura Conlon  44:36

Yeah, that’s such a powerful braid. I mean, between your ancestral connection to the land, your family connection to the origins of surf, you’re surfing at such a young age and that how your body feels and you know, feeling different from other people, perhaps because you have this deep love for the ocean. And then this art coming out. It just feels like such a holism a holistic way of just living is something that you got to really tap into at a pretty young age, even though maybe you wouldn’t call it that, but it feels like you really were living from a place that not every 13 or 14 year old was, was living from.

Easkey Britton  45:19

My mum’s a psychotherapist, my dad’s an artist, and they both had that love of the ocean through surfing. And then yes, so we’re living somewhere like yonder in the west coast of Ireland too. It’s so steeped in a lot of history and but also mythology and a lot of our expose our history to is still very evident in the landscape. You can, it’s visible, you can see it, it’s there. And you know, in the stone circles and in the place names and so it’s it’s is ever present, whether you choose to engage with it or not, and even writing, both my books was starting to appreciate more than portents of that connection with language when it comes to our connection with the earth. And that more as opposed to in particular, that more indigenous way of knowing or being our original way of also being with the Earth as a species and and so there’s certainly a sort of revival renaissance of sorts happening in Ireland right now in terms of that reconnection with language, the work of you’ve probably may have come across Mancha, Magon. 

Easkey Britton  46:20

He’s doing a lot in and around the Irish language, and its connection to, to ecology and an ecological way of being with the land. And he’s also been, he goes around and collects all these stories of native Irish speakers before they’re lost, of course, and lots of really nuanced names for very specific places in and around water or the ocean. But it could be where you know, where a particular type of stream that makes a certain sound meets a bay with these kinds of rocks, you know, very detailed. So it speaks again, to that intimacy of place connection of knowing a place so well that you were able to observe, and notice all these details that have kind of been lost as well. And even things then when it comes to, again, back to the feminine. And there’s actually some old Irish terms for menstrual blood that are really celebratory. Even until very recently, you just wouldn’t just don’t talk about that. Right. But they were names i One was a blast square loo, which means like a bloom release, you know, like a really, you know, like a blossom, or antologia. Eric, the red luck suggesting you know that it was like a blessing rather than a curse.

Maura Conlon  47:34

I love how you also say how, how there’s no word for place or landscape or something like that in the Irish language? Because how can you name something that you’re a part of? Are there some Irish words that that are connected to place that you could share? If you have them at the tip of your tongue? It would be lovely to hear.

Easkey Britton  47:59

Yeah, oh, there’s so many. I mean, I think the Yeah, so we don’t have a specific word for landscape. I suppose that English and the English notion of the word of landscape or something to be admired or to be painted, or, you know, that’s separate from us, really, that word landscape doesn’t really instill a sense of deep innate that connection. So the closest we have is Ducasse in Irish or In Scots Gaelic as well, which really speaks to again, that like a more intimate place connection of how places shaped by us, and we are shaped by it. 

Easkey Britton  48:35

So that idea that were woven into and through the fabric of a place, and that is not static, like the sense of Ducasse is changing, it’s alive, which is a very common concept across indigenous cultures, of course. And then yeah, and then in our place names, there are so many that are within the Irish names that speak to the type of habitat or species that existed at the time that maybe is no longer there, or especially with water, the different types of water. So a lot of places were described depending on their relationship to these other entities or elements in in nature.

Maura Conlon  49:12

I was speaking with an Irish born young Indian scholar some years ago. And I said to her, you know, I think of Carl Jung had been born and raised in, say, rural Ireland. I don’t think that you know, depth psychology would ever have come about because it’s your seeped in it. So I’m really curious about that transition that you made, going from, you know, this early life to deciding to go for your doctorate and become a marine scientist in ecologist and what was the sort of the yearning with your wanting to go in that field?

Easkey Britton  49:57

I think yeah, there was a lot going on in my 20s case that was very much about any cross, you know, my academic work my surfing, although it wasn’t by home, I just seemed to be drawn to the edges of things. And that’s where I seem to be happiest hanging out, it was really testing the limits of who I who I was and finding these extreme ways of encountering them, either through big wave surfing or going into as far as I could go in terms of stretching my mind and academia by doing a PhD. But for me to make the motivation to do it was it’s always an all the work I do is born from that curiosity of wanting to better understand our human relationship with with the natural world, but especially water in the ocean, and understanding it I originally initially coming at it, I studied environmental science as an undergrad, driven by environmentalism and and looking very interested in marine conservation. 

Easkey Britton  50:55

Of course, I still am, although my perspective on it has definitely shifted and evolved over time. To see this, see it as a very, that human dimension is being really essential, that relational piece of the quality of our relationship with something like the ocean and nature, and it wouldn’t be enough to even to protect or restore an environment if we haven’t worked on also cultivating, being in right relationship with it. And having that sense of, I suppose responsibility and reciprocity, that again, so many, especially indigenous writers, and scholars would speak to like Robin wall Kimmerer, whose work I draw upon so much in that context, as well, you know, braiding sweetgrass, her book, and how much he speaks to that sense of the importance of reciprocity. 

Easkey Britton  51:43

And then through my scientific work, beginning to see that the evidence for that emerge, of course, off that there is this, it’s not a passive experience, when we go out into these places, it’s not just us being changed by them or healed by water, there’s the water also is responding to us. And we get the same when we go into woods and forests, like that incredible science emerging there and the wisdom of trees. They are also sensing us in return. And of course, you know, why, why wouldn’t they, you know, this knowledge is, is ancient, but has been dismissed for so long in western modern Western society. And that, so that was part of the motivation to also write ebb and flow was to challenge some of these dominant ways of viewing water blue health, seeing it through a purely kind of Western lens, and being excited by the science that was emerging, but feeling like there was this huge gap. It just not making the connection to this older wisdom that’s always been there.

Maura Conlon  52:51

Could you speak a little bit to how you make that transition from being that paradox of being a scientist, and then also bringing in this heart consciousness. And I would love to hear the balance between those two, because it really does feel like this connection of, well, traditional, masculine and feminine. How do you feel like that’s been valuable for you to do that, and for others who you work with?

Easkey Britton  53:19

Yeah, it’s definitely an interesting dance, to my training as an academic and as a scientist, and in that world of academia, is definitely much more of that masculine energy, and increasingly, so it does seem, unfortunately, within universities to be driven by this need for constant productivity. And it’s all outcomes and outputs based. There’s a counterbalance and hopefully, a change in your way of having greater spaces for collaboration and integration and knowledge exchange. But there’s a lot of work that needs to be done there. By and large, it’s it’s very driven world. And it can be quite relentless to the point where I was in academia, and I still am to a degree, but when I was full time, I felt I kind of caught myself going down the corridor, and one of the halls of the university was working as sort of feeling like, Oh, my God, I can actually sense or feel my body. If someone asked me now how I’m feeling. I’m not sure I know how to respond because I’m so in my head. And you’re trained that way of just a feeling this profound sense of disconnect. 

Easkey Britton  54:24

And here I was working in the area of nature connection. And we were getting so burned to hide. Luckily, what kept me and held me together was still obviously having a water to go to as a reset. And I couldn’t imagine that if you didn’t have that, but ultimately it was it kind of came to a head and it’s actually just before the pandemic. As I opened up more and more to that more feminine way of being I was doing training at the time with red school, and the founders of Red School, Alexandra Pope and Shani Hugo Wurlitzer there, and they said they were looking at feminine leadership through the lens of the menstrual cycle as this sort of intelligent system in our bodies, that if as a way to honor our inner ebb and flow and our energies and show up in the world in a completely different way, by bringing awareness to that, you know, cyclical flow of our own energy and how it responds to natural cycles, and planetary cycles and all knowledge now I can see that would have been well known to our ancestors, and here in Ireland, as evidenced in our stone circles and alignments with all these important phases of the year. 

Easkey Britton  55:37

But that there is that intelligence in our bodies and as, as women or people with menstrual cycles, it’s inbuilt. You know, we have that maybe slight advantage in that way, very physiologically, go through it and can’t ignore it. But that was a revelation to me, and that their way of working just I just saw how incompatible it was with the system I was in which was energetically speaking, was sucking their creative energy. So I actually decided to leave at a time when you know, everything is so career driven, I was very successful. academically speaking, I have gone through several postdoctoral research positions. And the expectation is then that you continue and you get a permanent tenure ship as a lecturer and so on. This was before I went into my writing, before I’d written any of my books, and there was just this pain of not doing it, of not taking that leap and, and exiting was was greater than the pain it took to stay. So I decided to leave. And it was amazing. I mean, I left with nothing lined up, it was definitely a big leap. 

Easkey Britton  56:45

But again, looking back at my surf history, that’s it, that’s not an uncommon thing for me to do. I would just, you know, step off into the unknown and trust that, if it feels right, then something’s going to come up, to support me to take the next step. But also, because I made this incredible position, in my life of privilege, as well, I totally acknowledge that. But creatively speaking out just it opened up a whole world of creativity, then analyzed meatspace, to be able to integrate, and not dismiss the academic or my training as a scientist, but find ways to integrate that and find my own voice. So it just, it just then led to the birth of these books, and a different way of working with in a more sort of action oriented way, working now at a grassroots level with these mental health charities who are tapping into the healing powers of water in different ways and helping them capture some of that impact and evidence.

Maura Conlon  57:44

Love to hear more about that work, like what are you witnessing in that field of mental health and Ocean Therapy? What transformations do you see happening with people? And how do you find hope in that, you know, in terms of more unfolding of the same? Yeah, it’s

Easkey Britton  58:03

just this really challenging roll off having to bear witness right now, because of the scale of what’s happening. It’s at a planetary level. And it’s so hard, I can’t not be affected by it. Because it’s altering everything when it comes to the fabric of our humanity, who we’re becoming, and then the whole future of Earth itself off the health of the planet. And I think for me, writing about water, in particular, I feel is just wonderful. It’s such a potent mirror to who we are in the health of our own health as a society, it just mirrors that, because quite literally, it holds all of who we are, you know, it’s it’s the ultimate kind of solvents. So everything that touches it, it’s it holds a trace of it, the good, the bad, the ugly, you know, all of our, all of our history, all of our memories, all of our bones, or blood, or sweat, or tears or waste, it’s like it’s still it’s all in the water, and the water cycling through all life throughout all time. 

Easkey Britton  59:03

And so it’s the ultimate, also the ultimate force of connection, because it’s moved through all of us, and we all depend on it. It affects all of us. But it’s also a way to begin to look at how do we restore these last connections. And of course, it’s about healing our relationship with nature with earth with water. But in doing that, we’re we’re also restoring, we’re coming back home to ourselves and our bodies, but also with each other is so essential. So I think that there’s so much heartache in all of that. But there’s also the beauty in in water as well. It gives us permission to feel that heartache, the grief, the loss, and that comes up again and again in this work in the context of Ocean Therapy. It being very profound when it comes to trauma, helping us make that shift again, that returned back into our bodies because we’ve experienced extreme trauma, we dissociate and because it’s such a multi sensory experience that helps with that journey. 

Easkey Britton  1:00:00

And then you know, we know a lot from a lot of the signs around it as well how it can soothe the nervous system and just help downregulate. So that we can start to feel again, even when it comes to our healing journey individually and collectively, I think water has a tremendous role to play. And just the importance of yet feeling those emotions that are also not valued in our society that are really important right now, which is the acknowledgement of this tremendous grief and pain, the suffering and the loss. And then the heartache for me, I think writing ebb and flow, there were so there’s so many stories that are just horrifying, that are also where something is life giving and sacred as water then becomes weaponized in these horrendous ways. And we’re seeing that play out in real time, where water should be this vital life force.

Easkey Britton  1:01:01

It’s huge. And I spoke about, I suppose the bearing witness role as well, which I’ve learned about from surfing, but also from my relationship with my mother, who would have always been the person on land, Whitten, like watching me surf. And in a way that would felt like a really supportive role, especially when I was in those big days of, you know, surfing, 20, or 30 foot waves in some of these big wave spots off the coast of Ireland. In the middle of winter, my promo there, now that I’m a mother, I don’t know how she did, she’s able to bear witness. But feeling that kind of the power when you know, somebody is bearing witness, like actually holding that space where they’re anchored and tethered to something solid, while you’re in this unfathomable unknowing world, it’s really actually important, I think, to feel that kind of sense of connection to something solid, that somebody’s holding that for you, then allows you to kind of expand and open up a bit more to your own potential. So I feel like actually, that was a critical role in in my big wave surfing, was having my mother and just bearing witness. And so of course, now we’re being called upon so many different ways to bear witness, and they’re actually beginning to understand the power of that.

Maura Conlon  1:02:18

It’s profound what you just said, thank you. I just feel that so strongly as well, that sense of how the ocean will hold the paradox of us the grief and the joy and witness a cutting edge moment. And perhaps we’re all yearning for that witness right now.

Easkey Britton  1:02:38

Yeah, grief is the perseverance of love. And I feel like so for the ocean when I’m doing this work, because I love it so much. And yet seeing how much it’s suffering and how much is at stake how much you’ve already lost and had like, some days, you just want to curl up in a ball on the floor. And you just wonder why hope is there. But also that to that actually allow myself to let that end feel that love that, you know, enormous kind of grief. Because if it’s reminds me that that’s the size of you know, of my love of the perseverance of love. And so I’m really holding on to that right now, too. And I’m just, you know, witnessing such a level of loss of life of human life and all the world’s conflicts.

Maura Conlon  1:03:25

Yes, yes. That grief being so important to our reclaiming our original belonging again. I’m curious if you would like to share about any projects that you’re doing now, or anything that we should we should know about as you continue to stretch the canvas and find those edges. What your current yearnings are or callings or what’s on your Horizon?

Easkey Britton  1:03:55

Yeah, it’s a good question. Because I’m in this again, I find them fascinating places to be when you look back and find those like crossover moments, as I call them, but it’s very much being in this liminal space, isn’t it? I think we’re collectively as a species, we’re in it. Huge change. But I’m at this period of my life of having recently become a new mom to twins. That’s a very liminal space to be in. So everything is in flux and changing. But also this real sense of the cyclical nature of life coming back around to reconnecting, profound and actually unexpected way I hadn’t given it so much thought that it would reconnect me so strongly with my own sense of childhood, and my own experience of my inner child being reawakened through having my own children, or I think perhaps for anyone that’s able to move more into that role of caregiving for another person being placed whatever it may be, I think, what I’m realizing now is that the power or importance of creating more and cultivating more of those ecologies of care. 

Easkey Britton  1:05:02

You know, I’m an ecologist of heart. So that’s how I like to see it. But, you know, in recognizing through my surfing experience, especially of how were these ecological beings, yes, we’re like, We’re social beings, and we need other humans, but we’re also ecological beings. And we, we are so much more than the sum of our parts. We need all of the interactions with all of life around us on this living planet, with the intangible with the mystical and mythical. Yeah, and I’m seeing the that now play out for obviously, through my kids, or there’s, you know, so young, but that importance of having that open, childlike mindset? How do we remember that? To hang out with kids more, and play more. But that innate curiosity and wonder for life that they have, and then the importance of early on instilling that sense of of care, that we’re in relationship and have these connections with all of life around us, to just gently bringing awareness to that. But they it’s, it’s, you can see how it’s natural in us to sense that. And when we first come into the world, so yes, looking at ways to restore that

Maura Conlon  1:06:17

we need, we need 10 million of you. I just wonder if you would just maybe we could just, and by just you’re sharing the uniqueness of your name.

Easkey Britton  1:06:31

Oh, absolutely. I love I love it. So the name Easkey Definitely not a common name, although I think there’s a few more Easkeys around. So it is as a story in itself is beautiful, and actually woven it into into my books as well, because it’s, it’s a lovely way to tie up on a lot of the threads of what we’ve been speaking about, I think more. So easkey comes from the Irish word for fish is. But it’s also it’s a place name on the west coast of Ireland. So there’s a village called a ski, but it’s it’s a famous surf break. And one of my dad’s favorite waves, so he named me after a wave essentially. And where this wave breaks is a river that comes out that’s a really important Salmon River. So hence the name Easkey. I suppose early sort of settlers there would have depended on the salmon and given it that that’s probably how it got its name. But tied to, I suppose the salmon and the river. 

Easkey Britton  1:07:26

And all of that is the very well known myth or legend in Ireland call the salmon of knowledge on Bradshaw and faster. And so it speaks to, I suppose all of these things, in my name, speak to a time when we had again, that that real, that closer connection to place where we were observing the interaction of all these things of the salmon and the river and the water, because we were more dependent on them when we still are now but we’ve maybe not as aware of. And so the salmon of knowledge speaks to all of these interdependencies between the health of the salmon, the health of the river and our health and the salmon analogies. The story goes there’s this sacred whale or spring in the sea. 

Easkey Britton  1:08:14

And in the in this world, and there are these salmon swimming but they run the sacred well, are these nine Hazel trees. So here’s the Hazel trees are said to contain the wisdom of the world. And when the Hazel’s fall into the spring, the salmon eat them. And then they carry this wisdom or knowledge of the world into the world. Because of the patterns of salmon. They migrate from their spawning rivers out into the ocean, and then return then maybe several years later back to their their birth waters. And so there’s this wonderful I suppose it’s an wonderful narrative that speaks to those ecological connections between the health of a forest and a river and the salmon and the importance of these knowledge exchanges and the wisdom that other species hold for us.

Maura Conlon  1:09:24

That was Easkey Britton, PhD, author of ebb and flow, connect with the patterns and power of water, saltwater in the blood and 50 things to do by the sea.

Maura Conlon  1:09:52

Thank you so much for listening to Original Belonging. I’m your host, Maura Conlon. Please subscribe rate and recommend with love wherever you listen to podcasts. And to find out more about each episode, please delve into the show notes. To learn more about how you can engage with the world of stories within you. Please find me online at originalbelonging.com and on Instagram @originalbelonging. This production was co created by award winning media midwife, Ahri Golden. You can find a link to her work in the show notes and on her website, ahrigolden.com That’s ahrigoldn.com. 

Maura Conlon  1:11:02

Join us next time as Original Belonging continues.