Essay: Aiseag | Return - on the hope of parenthood, of wrens and skylarks
I didn't expect this to be my next essay, but some things arrive unannounced and ask to be tended. Aiseag is the Gaelic word for a ferry boat—it also simply means ‘return.’
We step off the boat and onto the island, and for a moment it is as if nothing has changed. The same clunk of the Calmac ferry, the same black and pink granite rocks, the same sea and sky, the same particular quality of light that seems to exist nowhere else. The landscape is deeply familiar, yet strange; a place so entwined with my own childhood mythology it feels more imagined than real. Almost like time-travel, I feel like a visitor in my own memories. My daughter's hand in mine, small and warm, anchors me in the present as the past rushes up to meet me.
I feel uneasy in the role of a tourist, conscious that this is a place where people live, work and raise their children, shaped by stories that aren’t mine to tell. Each summer, this island endures ferry-loads of visitors seeking something—escape, pilgrimage, connection, artistic inspiration. I feel the dissonance. In returning here, it’s hard not to wonder if I’m nurturing a sense of connection, passing something on, or simply consuming it. Out in the bay, a cruise ship looms—an emblem of everything I want to resist: pollution, extraction, the machinery of capitalism drifting into sacred places. Still, I take quiet comfort in our way of being here: slowly, attentively, on foot and by bike. As we approach our home for the week, we meet a tiny Jenny-wren perched on the wall, tail up, peeking out from beneath the fuchsia hedgerow—as if the island had offered up a small benediction.
Later, we sit on the beach I had played on as a child, the same scent of rain on dry sand, the taste of salt on the wind. My daughter is making a sandcastle cake, decorated with sea pinks, silverweed yellows and dried seaweed. She is so wholly absorbed in the task, so alive in the moment, like a wee bird, that for a while I just watch her, letting a quiet, unexpected joy rise in me. And then, almost immediately, the guilt of it.
As we sit there, barefoot on white sand, looking out across the water to sailboats gliding calmly through the Sound of Iona, my phone lights up with images of the Freedom Flotilla sailing for Gaza—an act of extraordinary courage, solidarity and hope in the midst of of unimaginable devastation and catastrophic humanitarian conditions. Children just like her are being buried under bombs and rubble, starving to death. Mothers unable to feed their babies. The symmetry is unbearable. The good ship Madleen, carrying humanitarian aid and those risking everything for people under siege*; and here, sailboats and tender boats carrying holidaymakers with such quiet ease.L
How do we enjoy moments of peace in the conscious knowledge that others are living through such unimaginable terror? Is it possible to truly feel joy, knowing that so many are suffering? Is it not a failure of solidarity, a luxury I have no right to claim?
I look at my child and think about what I know now that I didn’t know then, when I was her. Now, perhaps, I know too much. I carry such grief and fear—for her future, for this earth, for all of us. The world is burning and breaking in ways both man-made and elemental. The insects are vanishing. The glaciers are melting. Beneath these symptoms runs a deeper wound: centuries of colonialism and capitalist extraction bringing destruction on a scale our hearts can hardly begin to fathom. Each crisis bleeds into the next—ecological collapse, displacement, inequality, rising authoritarianism, the digital consuming the real. Joanna Macy calls it the Great Unravelling: the slow, chaotic dismantling of the systems that once sustained life. And yet, here I am, in a place of almost unbearable beauty, with my precious wee family, so very alive. This strange dissonance lives in my body now—a kind of spiritual vertigo.
I first encountered Macy’s work years ago, when I was trying to make sense of the rising grief I felt for the state of the world. At that time, I didn’t fully embrace it; it seemed too steeped in a kind of wishful thinking and inward reflection that only the comfort of privilege affords. It seemed, to me, to soften the urgency for radical change, framing hope as a personal or spiritual journey. I have returned to her work recently, though, after a friend shared a podcast. Macy, now in her nineties, was speaking—clear, fierce and tender—and something in me shifted. Perhaps it's because I'm now a mother; perhaps it’s the sheer weight of these past years, the relentlessness of crisis layered upon crisis. This time, listening to her wise words felt like a lifeline, an anchor.
Macy's Active Hope is not something we have, but something we do—a practice, a discipline, of becoming present to reality, connecting with our deepest values and taking meaningful steps, no matter how small. It can begin in the smallest, most ordinary acts of presence—in moments where attention becomes a form of care.
On a day in between blustering rain showers, we cycle to the north end of the island wearing wetsuits under our raincoats, determined to enjoy the waves. At the end of the road we park our bikes, and make our way down through the croft to the beach. Underfoot is yellow bedstraw, purple milkwort, tiny eyebright, red clover, buttercups and daisies. Soaring above the flower-scattered machair, the skylarks are singing a fierce, fluttering song of affirming presence, notes that seem too loud for such small bodies, in a defiant declaration of life and protection. Soon, we reach the strand: the sea turning an intense turquoise green over white shell sand, beneath an ever-changing sky that stretches over toward Ardmeanach on Mull and beyond. Gentle waves crash over jagged black rocks flashed with yellow lichen and sea pinks. Further out, gannets dive like arrows into the ocean.
I have been here many times before. This scene is a kind of emotional refuge for me; a place in my mind I return to, shaped and augmented by old photographs—each image folding time in on itself and preserving moments of beauty no matter how much the world shifts around it.
This visit, I watch my child and her dad play in the waves, screeching with delight as the salt spray splashes their faces. In this moment, I don’t think my heart could possibly be more full. Later, I watch my daughter delight in the rockpools, singing to sea snails, anemones and limpets. Finding the perfect stone to fit in the palm of her hand—a dòirneag in Gaelic, a word we learned from a friend. I want to protect her joy, bottle it somehow, shield it from the heaviness I’ve come to carry. She knows nothing of war or famine, about species loss, of tipping points or planetary collapse. Not yet. Her world is still small, full of kindness and wonder. Maybe that’s what breaks me open: not even her innocence, but her presence. Her joy is unfiltered, curious, attentive to the world. It’s a kind of sacred attention. She’s not rushing through this place; she’s listening to it, moving through it with reverence. And I wonder if this, too, is a kind of hope: a reminder that her fierce love for the world begins in moments like this.
I feel such dread that one day I will have to tell her of the world’s sorrows. That one day, the edges will come into focus—the melting ice, the scorched forests and rising seas and poisoned rivers, the horrors of war, the stolen futures, the rage at injustice and the unbearable unnecessaryness of it all. Will I have given her the tools to bear it? Or just the memories of a beauty that once was? It feels like an impossible line we walk as parents—between protection and preparation, between softening the truth and letting it sharpen. But maybe what I can give her now is a deep well of love: for the earth and the sea, the birds and flowers and all the creatures. If she loves the world fiercely enough, maybe she’ll find her own way to fight for it.
On the road home, she greets a dragonfly, a large red damselfly, as if it were her friend. She has done this since before she could speak—a gentle acknowledgment of other living things. There’s something deeply natural in the way she moves through the world, a kinship that feels unlearned, intuitive. As she cycles her bike she keeps out of the way of ‘humans,’ not separate from nature but part of it. This intuitive sense of care and respect extends beyond the natural world. Here on the island, there’s a toy library on the beach, and she’s enchanted by it—choosing something, playing with it for a while, then joyfully returning it and picking another. It means she’s not always asking to buy things, and I don’t have to say ‘no’ so often. But more than that, it feels like a quiet rebalancing: delight without ownership, novelty without waste. The same reverence she shows the dragonfly she brings to the borrowed toys. The toy library becomes a microcosm for something much larger—the difference between stewardship and possession. She’s learning—without realising it—that joy can be found in simple acts of care and presence, rather than consumption or ownership.
Watching her, I understand that experiencing joy can be an act of resistance that illuminates what is precious, what matters, what is worth protecting. It stands as a kind of testimony: this beauty exists, this love is real, and this world is worth fighting for.
Embracing joy while others endure unimaginable terror is one of the deepest tensions of our humanity, yet it is not only possible—it is vital. This is not the hollow joy of denial—looking away to preserve personal comfort—but a fierce, rooted joy, a wellspring of resilience that sustains our capacity to care and to act. A radical openness that keeps us tender and awake. A humility that understands the limits of our knowing—born, as many of us are, into a coloniser, capitalist mindset that teaches separation, domination and numbness. To embrace joy in the midst of global suffering is not a failure of solidarity: it is to resist the dehumanisation that such systems depend on. It is to reclaim the fullness of our humanity.
The ability too to feel sorrow is a reflection of how deeply we care—but that caring is also what allows joy to rise. In a world convulsing with multiple crises, Active Hope calls us to be clear about what we hope for, and to actively participate in shaping a future worth fighting for. It is about choosing to face our global crises with courage and compassion, about returning to what matters most, about deepening our sense of aliveness and relationality. It’s about transforming despair into collective action, offering tools to face the moment we are living through while finding our role in what Macy calls The Great Turning: a global shift away from destructive industrial growth systems to more life-sustaining societies. Within Active Hope there is an abiding wisdom that can help us stay joyful and energised as we navigate the work ahead.
Parenthood, in this light, embodies a fierce and tender defiance: to bring children into an uncertain world, to teach them how to love while knowing the dangers they will inherit. It is to be both broken-hearted and open-hearted in the same breath.
To the birds. The wee Jenny wren, small but fierce, full of song and spirit, has long stood as a symbol of subtle power. She is a bird that stays close to the earth, grounded in quiet resilience. In a world so vast and overwhelming, the wren reminds us that the smallest acts of care—of noticing—still matter. Above us, the skylarks: rising straight into the sky, they carry a different kind of wisdom—the soaring voice of defiant and insistent joy. They are a symbol of lightness and possibility when the world feels unbearably heavy. They know only the ancient urgency of song, the need to rise a little higher, to let their voices carry as far as they can reach. Together, the wren and the skylark mirror something about hope itself: both rooted and rising, grounded in care, yet open to what is beautiful and possible.
*In the time of writing this, on Monday 9th June, the Madleen was illegally intercepted by Israeli forces. It is now our collective responsibilty to take urgent action and demand their safe and immediate release.