Returning to Wonder: What a Month on a Small Island Taught Me About Uncertainty
This essay first appeared in print, in our debut issue, Follow Your Heart.
“My female lineage hails from the island. My mother was born there, her mother passed there. My own feminine energy has been nurtured by those lands, surrounded by the sea; wild, rooted, magic.”
Words & photography by Elizabeth J. Wilson
The term ‘thin place’ is defined as a location where the distance between the physical world and the spiritual realm collapses. In such a place, as the boundaries between the eternal and finite become porous, the noise of modernity melts away, and the true grandeur of life can reveal itself.
I was first made aware of the concept during the last month of my notice period at work, and it ignited the desire to return to the thin place I knew so well. I had been reminded, resolutely, that there existed a wonder beyond the mundane, a chance to brush against divinity. I was determined to feel again that closeness to the infinite. Perhaps only then would I find answers, ones that would allow me to navigate the coming uncertainty.
For uncertainty was afoot. I had decided to leave my job, and was preparing to end my relationship. Setting off in search of something greater, therefore, was not as simple or as romantic as it may sound. It coincided with leaving behind two pillars of stability perpetually sought within Western capitalist society; a job, and a relationship. Somewhere in the midst of obtaining such pillars, I found myself lost in a race for approval and belonging, surging toward the next milestone that would define my success and secure my place in the world.
But to what end?
My life was composed of artificial office lights, sedentary days, a routine that synchronised with everyone else’s social calendar. Secretly, my heart sought something other: a regulated nervous system, gentler days, natural light, intimate connections and just being. Perhaps to be able to obtain such things at all has become a privilege in the modern world. And yet, part of me rages against that very notion. Which led me to wonder: if one can devise a way out of such repressiveness, should one find it repressive, shouldn’t they? Even if only for a little while.
As my notice period drew to a close, I was faced multiple times with the question ‘What are you going to do next?’ I over-earnestly admitted to one colleague that the plan was a break. His response was to laugh in my face.
From then on, I was embarrassed to admit what felt like a pathetic truth: I was unhappy in a system that everyone else seemed content to be a part of. Instead, I chose to quietly fade from the life that was starting to feel like a cage, growing more distant with each day that passed. My relationship was shrinking me, and the white-collar world left me locked in a routine so rigid that one required permission in order to spend uninterrupted time in nature. Oh, how I missed nature. My soul sobbed for it.
I yearned for creative flow, dynamic days, and flexibility. Instead, I looked in the mirror and saw an empty vessel of inauthenticity. How long had it been since I had felt curious, or chased adventure? My heart was in active protest against what my life had become. Every day in that office, every day going to sleep wondering if my partner was right for me, anxious palpitations coursed in my chest. Numb I may have felt, but my heart still beat indignantly, each pulse an honest hammering home of the only way forward.
Indeed, beneath the fatigue, beneath the emptiness, through the void, I had been feeling a pull in my bones, a pull that has always lived in the deepest part of me: a pull from a thin place.
The familiar call was rich with childhood nostalgia; it sang of a place that felt more like home than where I’d lived for twenty four years. I heard it in the cry of the seagulls passing over the suburbs of my hometown, a truth that thrummed in my lifeblood: the only way back to myself, to the person I had been before I fell into a life of misalignment, was Jersey.
It is a place unadulterated, a short distance from the north coast of France: 45 square miles of rock, sweeping sand dunes, pebbled coves, towering cliffs, ancient monuments, white crescent bays, and heather carpeted headlands. But more than that, it’s a return to wonder. I spent my happiest childhood summers there, surrounded by dearest loved ones, countryside, simple days.
The island encapsulates the essence of slow living, long before it became a trend on the internet. It is somewhere small and yet wild, with shrieking seabirds, formidable castles, and tidal causeways. It is where natural beauty is so resplendent that you can feel life pulsating in every green leaf and pink wildflower, in the waves that shatter against the shorelines, and in the wind that whips sand across the beaches. My thin-place.
Upon returning to Jersey, my relief was visceral; dropped shoulders, an unclenched stomach, a heart that finally slowed after trying to outbeat itself daily for months. At first, it was surreal, like I had been underwater staring at the surface for a long time while my lungs bleated for air. On the island, I was above water, literally, and finally able to breathe as my senses absorbed their new surroundings.
Returning to where my heart was at home, however, did not see all my doubts and fears evaporate in the spring sunshine the minute I stepped off the plane; no, such concerns boarded the flight with me. And though spirituality talks a lot about letting go, as someone who struggles with control, I had always found detachment difficult, regardless of how much I wanted to yield to the unknown.
As days passed in Jersey though, things began to feel looser. People’s days there are often built around the ever-changing weather. Islanders carry swimsuits in their bags ‘just in case’, the sea never being more than a ten minute drive away. Slower rhythms and open landscapes reign, spontaneity and freedom flow. Consequently, I witnessed a world which ceded rigid schedules and perfect productivity, rebelling against the increasingly fanatic worship of optimisation. Instead of maximising my days, I embraced the spirit of the island and let the weeks unfold naturally, waking up to a day empty of plans and going to bed listing all the surprise joys it had borne.
Weeks consisted of laughing with fellow hikers on cliff paths, and striking up conversation with the baristas in the local coffee shop. I learned how to move my body again, stiffened from years at a desk, as I walked the tidal trails with a new energy imbued from the sea air and spring renewal washing over the island. Slow rituals: early rising, warm lemon water, morning sunlight out on the patio before checking my phone. Deep breathing, soles of the feet on the grass, or the sand. Going to Jersey felt like a decision made in complete harmony,evidenced by the synchronicities that began appearing– new creative opportunities; the inspiration to write again; my intuition louder and clearer than it had been in years; returning to my art, and watching it grow into something special.
Jersey is home to me on a level that feels, often, indescribable. My female lineage hails from the island. My mother was born there, her mother passed there. The spirits of the women in my family arrive and depart through the fabric of that small corner of the world, where physical and spiritual realms converge. My own feminine energy has been nurtured by those lands, surrounded by the sea; wild, rooted, magic. It is no strange thing, then, that upon leaving childhood behind and entering womanhood, my heart bade I return there, to learn what kind of woman I wanted to become.
Everyone who visits Jersey surely feels the alluring pull of the moon, sea, rocks. There is a rawness to this island, which is more than just a serene dream of beautiful parishes, tidal trails and seaside ambience.
There is something beneath all that, in the bedrock of those waters, something untamed, coursing through fields, across bays, through the trees, and the gorse. The island is a pulsepoint, a place where energy is so close to the surface, where spirit is renewed.
As days turned to weeks there, I became curious and excited and alive again, hopeful for what was to come while exceedingly grateful for what was. There are rare moments in life where you know that what you are doing is right for you; perhaps you cannot always articulate it to others. But learning to accept being misunderstood, embracing open-endedness, refusing to label or explain the desires and dreams that sometimes cannot be divulged but are known only in the deepest chambers of your beating heart, is empowerment.
Entrusting ourselves to something greater demands bravery. It means moving past the fear of material diminishment, even if potentially alienating ourselves from our friends, families, careers, as a consequence. Because maybe it does not make sense to leave behind what you know will grant you understanding and acceptance, to go somewhere smaller, without a job, without a partner, with no particular ‘purpose’ other than to exist outside of it all for a while.
But the heart doesn’t speak in tongues of logic. There are times in life when it simply asks us to be brave enough to trust it, releasing ourselves from our self-imposed constraints. I have learned that our socially acceptable identities may not be the real versions of us, and that being at the edge of a precipice, when everything that has defined you until now no longer serves you, may feel like dying.
Except it is not death.
It is rebirth.
Elizabeth J. Wilson is a UK-based writer and digital creator whose work focuses on nature, wellbeing, and the stories that connect people to place. Inspired by the island of Jersey's dramatic coastline and slower pace of life, her work celebrates the beauty and wisdom of the natural world.
She shares her photography and creative projects on Instagram at @lizz.visuals.
