The Story behind Walk with Me

In the summer of 2019, I lost my mother very suddenly to sepsis. After years of fertility treatment, I was 3 months pregnant with what would have been her first grandchild. I was also engaged. Coming to terms with the fact that she would not see me (or my brothers) get married, or meet any of her grandchildren, was extremely tough. My partner had already started building her a shepherds hut in the garden where she had planned to retire to to be closer to us. I would sit in my bedroom, looking over at the foundations of the hut, feeling the weight of loss pin me down.

I knew I had to be strong for the person growing inside me so I started walking.

Mum was a very keen walker. The week before she died, she completed the final stretch of the Santiago de Compostela pilgrimage. She had been doing a stretch of it every year and had just reached the end. We will never know what caused mum to contract sepsis, but our guess is an aggravated walking blister on a foot that had been left vulnerable after a major burn on it 20 years before. There was so much around the act of walking.

Growing up we walked all the time: every weekend, every holiday. Holidays meant walking holidays. Cooking, eating, walking. This is what my family did. So it made sense just to walk. I felt connected to her. And it felt like I was doing something, making progress somehow by putting one foot in front of the other.

When I was grieving, I often experienced a sense of isolation. I wished that I belonged to a culture where grieving was more welcome or just more normal. I wanted to sing it out, dance it out, cry it out. I wanted to do this with other people. But instead, I cried at home with my partner and put on a brave face when outside. This felt like I was being dishonest and it felt like I had to force down my emotions. Even with people, like dear friends, who I know would feel at ease comforting me and holding my pain, it still felt like it was not really the done thing in the culture I lived within. It felt like I could succumb to tears once or twice in short bursts but beyond that, I should quickly pull myself together for the sake of everyone else. I have never been more aware of the old British term ‘stiff upper lip.’ It wasn’t my friends’ fault - they are wonderful and encourage me to be who I am. It is the pressures of a culture where we are taught to keep our emotions within and not bring too much attention to inconvenient truths... like death.

One of the most healing things I did, was curate my own grief ceremony. My partner and three female friends of mine (all mothers themselves), joined me to carry out the last walk that I did with my mum. We walked in silence. The silence was only broken when I wanted to share my feelings or tell them any details about that last walk. Back home I read aloud all my regrets (which I had previously written down on pieces of paper) e.g. Mum will never meet my baby, and then burnt them in the fire whilst all five of us cried openly. This was followed by poems/readings and the blessing of one of my mums brooches with female, maternal energy, that I now pin to me whenever I feel vulnerable. This experience was truly transformative.

The following summer I was commissioned by Paines Plough and Pentabus to make a short film on the theme ‘Come To Where I Am’. I chose to share my experience of walking out my grief and the film was called Walking With Mum. You can find it in the Meet the Artists section of the website.

I talked to many people about their experiences of grief, including with my brothers. I grieve very differently to them and this made me feel a sense of disconnect and further exacerbated that sense of isolation. I wanted to find the common theme, the point at which all grievers meet. It came to me when someone told me that they often cried in the car listening to music. I knew I did this too and the more I asked people, the more I realised how common this is. It is a safe space where you can make as much noise as you want with out judgement. You are moving, making progress, you are almost time travelling to the places the music takes you; the memories of the past and the fantasies about the future, the dreams that have been lost. It is a moment of freedom in which the grief can finally, safely, be released.

I wanted to recreate this feeling of release, this feeling of connection, this sense of journeying, but without the need for a car. This is where I had the idea to create an immersive, interactive audio piece which would combine an original musical score with rural walking. I had the idea use my experience of rituals in India, Ireland and West Africa that powerfully use music and self-expression to process emotions, to be a part of the audio piece, with an aim to confront the culture surrounding death in Britain. My aim was to transform the experience of grief.

I developed the script and audio through an interactive process, including running creative workshops for contrasting groups. I also walked local footpaths on the Herefordshire/Powys border to explore the internal worlds created by walking and listening via headphones, and how to shape these spaces with the hope to inspire formative contemplations on life and death.

Participants walked a marked route (some chose their own route) while listening to the audio piece through headphones. The piece combined sounds inspired by grief music from the previously mentioned cultures with a meditative dialogue. The carefully crafted soundscape aimed to safely cocoon listeners, while the narrative prompted them to recall their own story. The audio included cues for interaction with the walk, e.g. connecting to surroundings through touch or noticing physical impact. At the end the listeners were invited to record any feelings as audio. Some of the feedback may provide raw material for a further project, Footprints, a documentary theatre piece scheduled for 2024.

Olivia Preye, 2021