Hiraeth
And there, in the stars of my ancestors, a longing for nowhere and everywhere.
Hiraeth / n. (Welsh. heer-eye-th; with the “th” unvoiced) A spiritual longing for a home which maybe never was. Nostalgia for ancient places to which we cannot return. It is the echo of the lost places of our soul’s past and our grief for them. It is in the wind, and the rocks, and the waves. It is nowhere and it is everywhere. *
I had never worked this big before (1 ⅔ feet x 8 feet), or spent so much time on one piece (7 months). I chose to create an accordion book, which I didn’t know would turn into an artist book. Collage was the medium, using my own black and white mark-making sheets and colorful, decorative papers. I cut them in strips instead of squares, and even made petal shapes. I had been working vertically on banners, and then that flipped, and I wanted to work horizontally.
It was at the end of May 2025 when John and I traveled to Wales for a six-day walking excursion along the Pembrokeshire Coastal Path. It was a powerful experience for me—a remembering in my body, a whisper of belonging, an ancestral calling. My heritage is mostly English on my mother’s side, with a little bit of Welsh. The feeling of Wales, the feeling of being there and walking along its coast, stayed with me for many months afterward.
I wrote at the time, “I brought some of it back with me—in memories, music, imagination, and photos—so it lives with me here. Something happened, a pilgrimage to an ancestral land that was nourishing, alive, and familiar.”
The wide expanse along the coast was what I wanted to capture, wondering how I could express the breadth, the sensory mood, and the visuals embodied now in my imagination.
Walking in the landscape of
water and sea, stone and cliffs, air and sky,
along a well-trodden coastal footpath,
around majestic headlands and inland coves,
steep ascents and plunging descents,
spirits soaring.Cerdded yn nhirwedd
dŵr a môr, carreg a logwyni, aer a awyr,
ar hyd llwybr troed arfordirol trodden,
o amgylch pentiroedd mawreddog a cildraethau mewndirol,
esgyniadau serth a disgyniadau plymio,
calon yn esgyn. **
This is how the idea of creating a long accordion book came about. Beginning in late spring until mid-autumn 2025, I worked on it and through it, feeling both grounding and lifted, open and vulnerable, holding that wide, revealing expanse. And then I couldn’t hold it anymore. It was too much.
Another season was approaching and Wales was far away in my dreams with night descending, and the edge of the cliff now much too close. So I put it all away, folded the book, and tucked it under a pile.
“Everything slows and stills, everywhere. I listen to the crisp, cool air, witness the sky’s thick clouds, and sense the way of calm. There is something so deeply quieting about these days, these weeks. Released from the usual pace, and only the simplest of movements remain. I am sleepy, and an earthly realm surrounds me.”
This is what I felt in early winter, and the thought of finishing the Wales coast landscape book terrified me. I shared this with Sush, telling her that I felt the opposite of what I had made. All I wanted to do was curl up and sleep in the landscape instead, in the dark, nestled in the tall grass, looking at the stars and hearing the hush of the sea near me.
“So make the other side of the book exactly that!” she said. “It’s a different season now from when you were there. Your mood is winter now, not spring.”
And so I began again, buying a new stack of decorative papers to envision that landscape of a winter’s night, a place that could hold me as I am now. The rich colors of my imagination appeared in golden-flecked fields and swirling-silver stone; in a milky, stilled blue sea and the turquoise-purple skies.
And there, in the stars of my ancestors, a longing for nowhere and everywhere.
Hiraeth.
LouLou
* Image and definition shared by Substack author Jessica ☾ (https://substack.com/@ullsockan/note/c-137537376). The term “hiraeth” is a Welsh word for a deep longing or homesickness.
* * The Welsh language had so intrigued me, I wondered what it would look like (because I could couldn’t read it or speak it) and with the help of Google Translate, this is what I came up with. I had wanted to write these words on the collage landscape, but I think another piece is already forming with these words.
If you’re curious to what Welsh sounds like, check out this song on Apple Music: Hiraeth by Filkin’s Ensemble (or other music platforms)