This is so beautiful, full of whim and wonder, a dreamy read for me — the soul connections, just gorgeous. Congratulations on the safe arrival of V. The weaving of intuitions wisdom, stunning. I must make this brief, I will be back — I am currently visiting my sister, we are about to dash out to visit her two daughters and their 4 children, another girl is due in August, so much excitement on this side of the globe as well. Remembering and forgetting. Fabulous. I feel warmth and light. Thank you. 🙏🌀💖
PS: I haven't read Hamnet, yet. Last evening my sister had the The Secret Garden on while we prepared a meal — a bit more magic. ⭐️
Thank you, Simone. I am so excited for you—another baby due in August! The new ones coming in are a gift—and they carry messages for us. I’d be curious weather you might get a poke from your mom about this one.
Sending you and your sister and her family much love and light!
Thank you Robin, no doubt they carry messages for us. Interesting you ask about my mother's energy — her energy is felt by the pregnant niece, as was with her first born who is now 2. I haven't asked mum for a direct message in meditation, but I will. Love gratefully received, thank you. 🙏💖
I love that your mom is with the family now, Simone. I hope you'll relay any messages she offers. I suspect there is one word above all--one that daughters and mothers and those who have mothers know in our hearts. The one that Agnes raged over: LOVE
Oh my goodness and Goddess, Robin ... I'm in complete awe of your penmanship, of the clarity, courage and exquisite tenderness with which you’ve written into mystery, memory ... and that fierce, deep feminine knowing that lives within your body. This post is ab-soul-utely brilliant and utterly beautiful ... I know, I know, I'm waxing lyrical but I just can't help myself.
As you know, I’ve already seen the film at the cinema and have read up to page 334 of "Hamnet" (a little more after we chatted earlier) and believe me when I say this ... what you're sharing here feels like a companion piece to Maggie's vision. The same shimmering attention to what women carry, what they sense, what they lose and what they somehow continue to create ... that quiet, steadfast work that Shakespeare so often left in the wings, but which his plays breathe with nonetheless.
And there's more, so much more! For your rich, insightful reflections on Agnes with her intuition, grief, embodied wisdom ... echo so beautifully through your own story: the miscarriage, the quiet foreknowledge, the recent safe arrival of sweet baby V ... the way love keeps re‑entering the room in new forms. Agnes listens to trees; you listen to the subtle tremors of the heart. She gathers herbs; you gather memories. She reads the world with her hands; you read it with your whole being.
Shakespeare wrote "Hamlet" tragedy out of his own unbearable loss; you've written something gentler, but just as brave ... a reminder that knowing and not‑knowing walk side by side, that "the readiness is all" and that love keeps making space for new life even when the past still hums.
Sending you and your precious, growing family every sweetness as you welcome little V into the world. Your words, your beautifully expressive spoken voice and your heart are a gift.
Let me end with wow ... just wow! Bravo, dear Robin, bravo! 🙏💖🎭📖🎥✨👏🎉
Thank you for your beautiful read, Deborah. The good news is, my daughter got to read the piece while I was there holding V. Bitter sweet and many tears. But a beautiful moment. And then she read your comment and we were both truly overcome!
I so appreciate you--your wisdom about holding on to the piece until the right moment was another knowing, I feel. The knowing of the writer, therapist, mother, and sensitive. So wise! 🤓🙏🏻💜
Aww, thank you so much Robin, for sharing how my response touched both you and your daughter. It feels especially meaningful in light of the tender movement unfolding between me and my own daughter at this time ... stirring that Hamlet‑like sense of "feeling too deeply" for words. May it be(e) so. 🙏💖🐝✨
Hello Robin, I left a long comment here; now it is gone. The heart remains. I loved this touching, meaningful post that underscores a gift that so many of us hide or that is misunderstood, not developed, shunned, or harmed. Exquisite story and movie. Beautifully written. Thank you.
Oh, Robin! That's so beautiful. Hamnet, first the book, then the movie, impacted me enormously. I have a rich inner life I seldom speak of. I know things, and they happen. I see things, and they turn out to be true. Mostly, on these matters of wide-open intuition, I am carefully quiet. I have seen so many times how knowing can turn sideways, and how our knowing can be incomplete or symbolic in ways we haven't fully appreciated. When I was pregnant, I wanted a girl. That desire colored my intuition and I convinced myself of it's truth without any inquiry or silence. Just fed it. One day, when I was in meditation, sensing into the life of my baby, I heard: I'm not sure I want to come. I was stunned. That baby was already so loved. When I asked why, he said: Because I'm a boy. The sadness he felt made me cry. From then on, I assured him I loved him and that he was wanted. Now he's 28, and such a beautiful soul. One of the great lessons of my life has been to learn to accept my intuition without trying to use it to gain - to let go of manipulating it and just let it be.
Oh, Susan, this is such a beautiful teaching! That our “wanting” something to be a particular way (which comes from the ego, right?) can actually effectuate a negation of what wants to become. Another reason that “not knowing” — and letting things be as they will be — is a vital lesson.
I appreciate how, and why, you keep that inner life silent. For a long time, so have I. I do think the times, they are a-changing, though. Imho, that is part of the reason powers that be are pushing back so fiercely. They understand that what we really know, deep in our hearts, in our guts, is far more powerful than they can ever control. And the worst crime against man-ity (not humanity), in their world, is that they lose control (and to women, no less—but that’s a story you know well!).
This is why we have to begin to talk about these things. And we, the elders (hags, crones, or whatever—and not only wome) are the ones who have the power to speak out right now.
Have you seen Disclosure Day yet? I just saw it last night. Very impactful. I see threads. Thinking of braiding that into a follow-on piece somehow. Still noodling on it.
Thank you, I’m sure you are right. I’m more willing to speak about my inner life than I used to be. My mother was pathologized and hospitalized against her will, and that’s a pretty complilcated and difficult lesson. When I was a teenager I took a book out of the library about near-death experiences, and she warned me to put a paper bag cover on it so people couldn’t see what I was reading. Her story is far more complex than this topic, though, and that’s just one thread. I’m beginning to feel safer in this world - or more precicely, I’m realizing that there is no such thing as safety and it’s the wrong thing to want. Love to you for giving me courage.
I think you’re already pretty brave for writing what you do, but I understand this might be more complicated. It is always a question of discernment. And I understand—nothing is certain.
Oh Robin what an exquisite essay. I was lucky to see Hamnet in the theater on the big screen and of course I was trembling and weeping during Jessie Buckley's performance as Agnes Shakespeare. What can be worse than losing a child, especially for one so skilled in the sacred healing arts. We feel this mother's overwhelming grief and mourn for her loss, but then later, we're filled with hope again as she is finally able to alchemize her suffering into a transcendent moment where she is able to begin again. The blessings of that child's life are all brought back and restored in Agnes' consciousness, and we are able to see that every moment joined together with a child, a family member, a dear friend or a loved one--is infinitely precious and cannot be lost. Thank you for your brilliant clarity in taking on this incredible story--I've heard the book is quite amazing and have it on my "must-read" list.
Thank you, Jerry. Wasn’t Jessie Buckley’s portrayal of Agnes divine? The fierce love. The embodied grief. The transformation when she encounters Hamnet again in her husband’s on stage portrayal in Hamlet. Powerful.
If you loved the movie, as it sounds like you did, I believe you will like the book even more. Since I was lucky to encounter Hamnet on screen, on stage and in print, my original idea was to explain how each version of the story took on a different tone, a different take. And I started writing the essay that way.
But then, life had different ideas. I didn’t know when I began making notes for a post in December how it would evolve, morph, transform.
I love your story and the Hamnet parallels, Robin. So glad your new grandbaby is here and healthy. As for forgetting and remembering, I've found that journals often hold portents when we revisit them from a once distant future. A few months before my 20th birthday, I felt the presence of my daughter-to-be visit me one hot July night. She was a few years away from arriving, but I've never forgotten that moment. Your visitations ring true.
Oh, Robin, yet another way we connect. I’m glad my story resonates. And thank you for sharing yours!
So many journals—as Robert Moss suggests, it can be instructive to dip in to dates and entries at random. To discover in our own words, written at different moments, a dream library. Sometimes, without the dream.
Dear Robin, many congratulations on the arrival of the new love in your life 💗
Thank you for sharing the beginnings of her story so beautifully, embedded in the stories of women carrying babies, knowing birth and loss, living into the uncertainties of life, and cradled in the mental quickening of foretelling, wondering into becoming, welcoming the mystery coming alive. 🪽🙏
Beautiful Robin. Thank you. I know you are a wonderful grandmother who helps with a lot of remembering. This quote gave me goosebumps “The future remains a mystery. It requires our being prepared to meet whatever comes our way. And our willingness to love our way into it.” Thanks for helping us wonder into becoming! 🙏❤️💫
Oh, Jamie, I'm so glad you felt the wonder! And although this essay probes the mysteries of motherhood, I wonder if anyone who has a mother can't tap into the energies. To lean in to the willingness to meet whatever comes with readiness and heart.
And perhaps, especially, the poets among us. I'd love your thoughts, O poet!
I love this post. I haven't seen Hamnet or read the book, but the book is next on my list to read. I've heard nothing but great things, so I can't wait to have the time to read it. I am also a Shakespeare fan!
Congratulations on being a grandmother again! And in terms of knowing and not knowing, I wonder if this is more a feminine attribute. The kind of sixth sense that you describe seems very plausible to me.
Thank you, Beth. Can’t wait for your read on Hamnet. Such a beautiful story.
I have long been able to sense things like this. I don’t know whether it is a sixth sense or anything special, really, beyond tuning in and trusting what I receive. Perhaps—as in my post on creativity—we all have it and it is somehow lost in the way the world wants to condition us.
That’s my belief, anyway. My hope is to inspire more people to embrace their gifts, whatever they are, and nurture them with curiosity and discernment.
Beautiful, Robin. Hamnet really spoke to me. The supposed insights, history into the Bard and his family's life were fascinating. And re foretelling etc. it all must be there in our subconscious. Re Akashic records. I took a 10-wk Senoi dream workshop in Berkeley long ago, where we all told of one our dreams each week. My last was a visit to the Akashic records, and in it, it explained to me the question I'd been wanting the answer to, as yes, all was there in the records. I haven't thought about that for a while. Thanks for the nudge.
I so loved it, Jeanine. And to take in the film, stage play and book--in that order--over a very brief period! Quite magical. I'm glad it spoke to you, too.
I have also visited the Akashic records, although it's been awhile. It is a great "knowing" field, especially when a question seems to have no earthly solution. The vastness is so inconceivable for us in human form. I think of it as "Mind of God" or Higher Power or Spirit, or whatever one's preferred "name" for something that is beyond language or being.
I'm glad you got the nudge. I'd love to know your experience. I may take a gander again myself sometime.
I think the book said the most as I read it early on. I've always been a Shakespeare lover. And learning anything about his life interests me. The Akashic records dream was quite a mindblower. The other 9 wks, the dreams were not stunning (if memory serves) but that last week made up for it. I'm not sure they will ever 'come to me' again, but I am grateful for having had the experience, at least one time, when i was in need.
Hi Robin,
This is so beautiful, full of whim and wonder, a dreamy read for me — the soul connections, just gorgeous. Congratulations on the safe arrival of V. The weaving of intuitions wisdom, stunning. I must make this brief, I will be back — I am currently visiting my sister, we are about to dash out to visit her two daughters and their 4 children, another girl is due in August, so much excitement on this side of the globe as well. Remembering and forgetting. Fabulous. I feel warmth and light. Thank you. 🙏🌀💖
PS: I haven't read Hamnet, yet. Last evening my sister had the The Secret Garden on while we prepared a meal — a bit more magic. ⭐️
Thank you, Simone. I am so excited for you—another baby due in August! The new ones coming in are a gift—and they carry messages for us. I’d be curious weather you might get a poke from your mom about this one.
Sending you and your sister and her family much love and light!
Thank you Robin, no doubt they carry messages for us. Interesting you ask about my mother's energy — her energy is felt by the pregnant niece, as was with her first born who is now 2. I haven't asked mum for a direct message in meditation, but I will. Love gratefully received, thank you. 🙏💖
I love that your mom is with the family now, Simone. I hope you'll relay any messages she offers. I suspect there is one word above all--one that daughters and mothers and those who have mothers know in our hearts. The one that Agnes raged over: LOVE
Oh my goodness and Goddess, Robin ... I'm in complete awe of your penmanship, of the clarity, courage and exquisite tenderness with which you’ve written into mystery, memory ... and that fierce, deep feminine knowing that lives within your body. This post is ab-soul-utely brilliant and utterly beautiful ... I know, I know, I'm waxing lyrical but I just can't help myself.
As you know, I’ve already seen the film at the cinema and have read up to page 334 of "Hamnet" (a little more after we chatted earlier) and believe me when I say this ... what you're sharing here feels like a companion piece to Maggie's vision. The same shimmering attention to what women carry, what they sense, what they lose and what they somehow continue to create ... that quiet, steadfast work that Shakespeare so often left in the wings, but which his plays breathe with nonetheless.
And there's more, so much more! For your rich, insightful reflections on Agnes with her intuition, grief, embodied wisdom ... echo so beautifully through your own story: the miscarriage, the quiet foreknowledge, the recent safe arrival of sweet baby V ... the way love keeps re‑entering the room in new forms. Agnes listens to trees; you listen to the subtle tremors of the heart. She gathers herbs; you gather memories. She reads the world with her hands; you read it with your whole being.
Shakespeare wrote "Hamlet" tragedy out of his own unbearable loss; you've written something gentler, but just as brave ... a reminder that knowing and not‑knowing walk side by side, that "the readiness is all" and that love keeps making space for new life even when the past still hums.
Sending you and your precious, growing family every sweetness as you welcome little V into the world. Your words, your beautifully expressive spoken voice and your heart are a gift.
Let me end with wow ... just wow! Bravo, dear Robin, bravo! 🙏💖🎭📖🎥✨👏🎉
Thank you for your beautiful read, Deborah. The good news is, my daughter got to read the piece while I was there holding V. Bitter sweet and many tears. But a beautiful moment. And then she read your comment and we were both truly overcome!
I so appreciate you--your wisdom about holding on to the piece until the right moment was another knowing, I feel. The knowing of the writer, therapist, mother, and sensitive. So wise! 🤓🙏🏻💜
Aww, thank you so much Robin, for sharing how my response touched both you and your daughter. It feels especially meaningful in light of the tender movement unfolding between me and my own daughter at this time ... stirring that Hamlet‑like sense of "feeling too deeply" for words. May it be(e) so. 🙏💖🐝✨
From one (queen) bee to another, Deborah: AMEN.
💙
Hello Robin, I left a long comment here; now it is gone. The heart remains. I loved this touching, meaningful post that underscores a gift that so many of us hide or that is misunderstood, not developed, shunned, or harmed. Exquisite story and movie. Beautifully written. Thank you.
So sorry it disappeared (always love what your share), but I feel your heart here, Prajna. It's so comforting to be part of a community that gets it.
Thank you.
Oh, Robin! That's so beautiful. Hamnet, first the book, then the movie, impacted me enormously. I have a rich inner life I seldom speak of. I know things, and they happen. I see things, and they turn out to be true. Mostly, on these matters of wide-open intuition, I am carefully quiet. I have seen so many times how knowing can turn sideways, and how our knowing can be incomplete or symbolic in ways we haven't fully appreciated. When I was pregnant, I wanted a girl. That desire colored my intuition and I convinced myself of it's truth without any inquiry or silence. Just fed it. One day, when I was in meditation, sensing into the life of my baby, I heard: I'm not sure I want to come. I was stunned. That baby was already so loved. When I asked why, he said: Because I'm a boy. The sadness he felt made me cry. From then on, I assured him I loved him and that he was wanted. Now he's 28, and such a beautiful soul. One of the great lessons of my life has been to learn to accept my intuition without trying to use it to gain - to let go of manipulating it and just let it be.
Oh, Susan, this is such a beautiful teaching! That our “wanting” something to be a particular way (which comes from the ego, right?) can actually effectuate a negation of what wants to become. Another reason that “not knowing” — and letting things be as they will be — is a vital lesson.
I appreciate how, and why, you keep that inner life silent. For a long time, so have I. I do think the times, they are a-changing, though. Imho, that is part of the reason powers that be are pushing back so fiercely. They understand that what we really know, deep in our hearts, in our guts, is far more powerful than they can ever control. And the worst crime against man-ity (not humanity), in their world, is that they lose control (and to women, no less—but that’s a story you know well!).
This is why we have to begin to talk about these things. And we, the elders (hags, crones, or whatever—and not only wome) are the ones who have the power to speak out right now.
Have you seen Disclosure Day yet? I just saw it last night. Very impactful. I see threads. Thinking of braiding that into a follow-on piece somehow. Still noodling on it.
Thank you, I’m sure you are right. I’m more willing to speak about my inner life than I used to be. My mother was pathologized and hospitalized against her will, and that’s a pretty complilcated and difficult lesson. When I was a teenager I took a book out of the library about near-death experiences, and she warned me to put a paper bag cover on it so people couldn’t see what I was reading. Her story is far more complex than this topic, though, and that’s just one thread. I’m beginning to feel safer in this world - or more precicely, I’m realizing that there is no such thing as safety and it’s the wrong thing to want. Love to you for giving me courage.
I think you’re already pretty brave for writing what you do, but I understand this might be more complicated. It is always a question of discernment. And I understand—nothing is certain.
We’re here for each other.
I appreciate that so much. Thank you Robin.
Oh Robin what an exquisite essay. I was lucky to see Hamnet in the theater on the big screen and of course I was trembling and weeping during Jessie Buckley's performance as Agnes Shakespeare. What can be worse than losing a child, especially for one so skilled in the sacred healing arts. We feel this mother's overwhelming grief and mourn for her loss, but then later, we're filled with hope again as she is finally able to alchemize her suffering into a transcendent moment where she is able to begin again. The blessings of that child's life are all brought back and restored in Agnes' consciousness, and we are able to see that every moment joined together with a child, a family member, a dear friend or a loved one--is infinitely precious and cannot be lost. Thank you for your brilliant clarity in taking on this incredible story--I've heard the book is quite amazing and have it on my "must-read" list.
Thank you, Jerry. Wasn’t Jessie Buckley’s portrayal of Agnes divine? The fierce love. The embodied grief. The transformation when she encounters Hamnet again in her husband’s on stage portrayal in Hamlet. Powerful.
If you loved the movie, as it sounds like you did, I believe you will like the book even more. Since I was lucky to encounter Hamnet on screen, on stage and in print, my original idea was to explain how each version of the story took on a different tone, a different take. And I started writing the essay that way.
But then, life had different ideas. I didn’t know when I began making notes for a post in December how it would evolve, morph, transform.
Truly the embodiment of not knowing.
I love your story and the Hamnet parallels, Robin. So glad your new grandbaby is here and healthy. As for forgetting and remembering, I've found that journals often hold portents when we revisit them from a once distant future. A few months before my 20th birthday, I felt the presence of my daughter-to-be visit me one hot July night. She was a few years away from arriving, but I've never forgotten that moment. Your visitations ring true.
Oh, Robin, yet another way we connect. I’m glad my story resonates. And thank you for sharing yours!
So many journals—as Robert Moss suggests, it can be instructive to dip in to dates and entries at random. To discover in our own words, written at different moments, a dream library. Sometimes, without the dream.
Or is that what all of life is anyway?
Dear Robin, many congratulations on the arrival of the new love in your life 💗
Thank you for sharing the beginnings of her story so beautifully, embedded in the stories of women carrying babies, knowing birth and loss, living into the uncertainties of life, and cradled in the mental quickening of foretelling, wondering into becoming, welcoming the mystery coming alive. 🪽🙏
Thank you, Veronika. A sacred process, isn’t it, this whole life thing?
absolutely! And a new sacred being arriving in your own family is (or should be) always a miracle to be held in awe and wonder and love.
It is that. No question about it.
Beautiful Robin. Thank you. I know you are a wonderful grandmother who helps with a lot of remembering. This quote gave me goosebumps “The future remains a mystery. It requires our being prepared to meet whatever comes our way. And our willingness to love our way into it.” Thanks for helping us wonder into becoming! 🙏❤️💫
Oh, Jamie, I'm so glad you felt the wonder! And although this essay probes the mysteries of motherhood, I wonder if anyone who has a mother can't tap into the energies. To lean in to the willingness to meet whatever comes with readiness and heart.
And perhaps, especially, the poets among us. I'd love your thoughts, O poet!
Hi Robin,
I love this post. I haven't seen Hamnet or read the book, but the book is next on my list to read. I've heard nothing but great things, so I can't wait to have the time to read it. I am also a Shakespeare fan!
Congratulations on being a grandmother again! And in terms of knowing and not knowing, I wonder if this is more a feminine attribute. The kind of sixth sense that you describe seems very plausible to me.
Thank you for this.
Thank you, Beth. Can’t wait for your read on Hamnet. Such a beautiful story.
I have long been able to sense things like this. I don’t know whether it is a sixth sense or anything special, really, beyond tuning in and trusting what I receive. Perhaps—as in my post on creativity—we all have it and it is somehow lost in the way the world wants to condition us.
That’s my belief, anyway. My hope is to inspire more people to embrace their gifts, whatever they are, and nurture them with curiosity and discernment.
A refresher on Who Gets to Be Creative? https://remembertheworld.substack.com/p/who-gets-to-be-creative
Beautiful, Robin. Hamnet really spoke to me. The supposed insights, history into the Bard and his family's life were fascinating. And re foretelling etc. it all must be there in our subconscious. Re Akashic records. I took a 10-wk Senoi dream workshop in Berkeley long ago, where we all told of one our dreams each week. My last was a visit to the Akashic records, and in it, it explained to me the question I'd been wanting the answer to, as yes, all was there in the records. I haven't thought about that for a while. Thanks for the nudge.
I so loved it, Jeanine. And to take in the film, stage play and book--in that order--over a very brief period! Quite magical. I'm glad it spoke to you, too.
I have also visited the Akashic records, although it's been awhile. It is a great "knowing" field, especially when a question seems to have no earthly solution. The vastness is so inconceivable for us in human form. I think of it as "Mind of God" or Higher Power or Spirit, or whatever one's preferred "name" for something that is beyond language or being.
I'm glad you got the nudge. I'd love to know your experience. I may take a gander again myself sometime.
I think the book said the most as I read it early on. I've always been a Shakespeare lover. And learning anything about his life interests me. The Akashic records dream was quite a mindblower. The other 9 wks, the dreams were not stunning (if memory serves) but that last week made up for it. I'm not sure they will ever 'come to me' again, but I am grateful for having had the experience, at least one time, when i was in need.
I’m so glad, Jeanine! 💜