Erraid a Paradise for Kids

Our story with a tiny island of Erraid on the west coast of Scotland www.erraid.com is unfolding.

We just spent a WONDERFUL week there . It was raw, cold, wet, wild, windy, calm, sunny, beautiful, magical all in the space of seven days. And it is still calling us to go there. It’s a longing for a simple life. For some elemental living. My husband Michael picked up a flyer someone gave him yesterday all about local shamanic weekend connecting to the earth, the land spirits, nature. He showed it to me and said “We are going on our own shamanic journey on Erraid, we won’t need workshops like this.”

The children loved the island. It contains all the elements for it to be a perfect kid’s paradise. There they can explore a wild freedom of living and although they will have to leave their friends they will make new friends with the seals, the cuckoo the other islanders and the many visitors who come. They can help milk the cow, feed the chickens, plant out the kale, run to the beach, visit Iona, climb the rocks, take boat trips. Having said I would never home-school (as I always thought that meant I would have to sit at a desk giving lessons as a teacher) I find the idea appealing of letting life iself be the teacher to my children. I am going to be researching un-schooling…

I had a dream about Erraid last night where I met woman who was like a powerful wizard with amazing energy that was in her bright colourful eyes, she told me she had lived on Erraid where she had learnt how to connect and become one with the land and she was talking about her experiences of calling in the nature forces, birds, wind, sun, rain, animals, plants… she described being in tune with them all so that whatever support she needed she could simple call the forces into being…

And on a very practical level, the reality is at the moment there is no space for us to be on Erraid long term. All we know is we are booked to go for two weeks Aug 31st, during which time we can hopefully extend until mid-Oct as long-term guests. But in order to stay longer than that we will need our own cottage and currently there isn’t one for us – they are full.

So we shall see.

Perhaps Erraid is a step to somewhere else, or just the break we need and maybe just to be there for a six week period will be enough…and perhaps things will change when we are there in the Autumn and it will unfold gracefully for us to be there longer. We really don’t know. And it is exciting that we can gift this magic island and the possibility of staying there longer to our children. Erraid seems to offer for me the very essence of what I feel it is to be a Joyful Parent.