13/02/2026
When I reflect back on the fact, that one year into solo parenting twins and a toddler, I decided to up sticks and move to a tiny island in Orkney, where North Sea meets Atlantic Ocean.
Somewhere, that for me felt like the very ends of the Earth, and on the loneliest days or the heaviest of days: the edge of the known universe.
This tiny little speck of an island was a meditation in life for me.
Life stripped back, bare, laid out for all to see (except there was no one else to see it, no one else to share it with - not fully, not like having a partner to share in the adventure - just me and my children three and our rabbit too.
My children living a beautiful life and myself - the observer, the space maker, the healer of wounds, and the unpicker of trauma responses - stitched into the fabric of our tiny family.
Drenched in sky and sea,
Blasted by winds that blew through my very being, leaving a weathered soul
I broke like the crashing waves, here at the edge of the earth,
so
many
times.
As the simplicity of life, deconstructed the walls I had built to survive so many pains carried through life,
With every crashing down, of all the distractions that glossed over the cracks in my broken shell,
I discovered patterns I'd created to protect my growing heart all those years ago
Patterns and distractions and coping mechanisms, which once served me, had become my prison unti I became a motherand instead of seeking deepest joyswith partners and wholesome love I only sought painfilled messy connections: familiar pain, that allowed me to walk paths I'd walked before and knew so well.
Until the boundary of motherhood and ending the unconciousness to protect my babes became a lesson i needed to infuse into every action and reaction of life.
And with every setting sun on that tiny isle,
I shed layer upon layer
Revealing truth upon truth
About who
I truly am
And what I truly deserve
And that previously: in protecting myself
I had become my own worst enemy
Trying to heal those who did not want to be healed
Trying to build love based on honesty with those who lied to themselves
And as the nights of my second winter in Papay
blew wild
And the days hung in golden light,
below lilac skies,
Above turquoise seas
Battered by wind after relentless wind,
I stopped running from myself,
With silence and solitude etched into my soul, I fled back home from my 16 month meditation, ready to face the world, and whichever community we found ourselves in, with renewed strength, and deep firm love filled boundaries.
My babies deserved a life drenced in calm, and love and hope and possibility and new beginnings and strong, wholesome foundations, and so did I, so I dug up my own foundations :laid in pain and rebuilt.
Knowing the beauty and peace I was worthy of, the same joy and peace i inherently knew my babies three were worthy of.
And I stepped back into the clutter of society, wrapped in a bubble of love and tranquility, a survivor of inherited traumas, that were shed- of my own doing, left where they were found,
And i have strived to live a life of awe and wonderment, amid the chaos of this human experience ever since.
I think we are doing pretty splendidly: riding the waves of human shenanigans, from our sfe and sacred sanctuary of home and learning and unlearning and moving forward drenched in the full spectrum of what it is to be an infinite soul living a human life β€οΈ β€οΈ β€οΈ
To keep trying, to keep choosing whole love and peace and finding joy, even when life unravels.
Oh this little island... It helped me find myself and for that journey and just how hard it was, I am ever so grateful β€οΈ β€οΈ β€οΈ
Jenniflower Milor
By jenniflower
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