Dear Friends,

Most of you follow me on Substack and/or know me personally, so you probably already have a sense of my current interest and the work I have been concentrating on recently. It is three-fold:

• My Writing Journey
• Pilgrimage
• Medieval Studies, focusing on the life of St Birgitta of Sweden and her 14th century pilgrimage along the camino

While the term Ariadne’s Thread is most closely associated with the labyrinth symbol, I believe deeply that the labyrinth is more than just a design. In my life, it serves as both an archetypal symbol and a metaphor to help me to understand my experience.

I have have been writing as Ariadne’s Thread for well over 20 years now, since 2002 when I published Ariadne’s Thread: Legends of the Labyrinth, a small booklet on labyrinth traditions and practices, and then I followed that with my PhD dissertation in 2003, Ariadne’s Thread: The Transformative Potential of Labyrinth Walking. I started this website and blog a few years later, in 2007, and have used it to document my work and my pilgrimages ever since.

Publicly I have gone very quiet for the past year while I carefully navigated my path in order to discern the direction I want to go at this point in my life. First and foremost, I have been embracing my writerly soul, finding my voice, my passion, and a new depth of authenticity. Privately, I have been writing more than I have ever done, in a variety of genres and forms. You will see that I have changed the tagline on my site to My Writing Pilgrimage which feels significant and absolutely spot on.

Second, I have been diving into the life and times of the medieval woman I first encountered nearly a decade ago, St Birgitta of Sweden. Although I’ve been interested in her for a long time, my relationship to her has felt increasingly personal over this past year, and my extensive research is developing into a book. I will use this website and blog to discuss my research, but I’ll be giving a chattier “dispatch from the road” on my Substack which I am renaming Following the Thread. The posts will be separate and distinct, and I hope that you will consider subscribing to both.

I can’t tell you how excited I am and how good it feels to be moving forward and starting to share this unexpected passion. I had no idea my 70’s would be so interesting!