Tamsin Calidas is the Author of Sunday Times Bestseller “I am an Island” this fascinating memoir follows her life as she moves away from London and a career in media to renovate a dilapidated croft on a remote Island of the Hebrides.
The book is written in three “acts’ and is a gripping read about survival, it takes many sad turns but the references to nature are captivating and Tamsin’s strength of character is phenomenal. Up against constant challenges, she learnt to be versatile and adaptable in extreme conditions. For us she represents the true spirit of mermaid, with a deep connection to nature, a loving spirit, she lives off the land, swims in the sea and is blessed with a profound sense of wisdom, freedom of spirit and a passion for living an authentic life. Described by Vogue as “Groundbreaking – the memoir of the year” we were delighted to talk to Tamsin as she talks about about island living, primal instinct and her affinity with nature, the benefits of wild swimming and her philosophies on life.
Tamsin, you left behind your London lifestyle to renovate and live in a croft on a remote island of the Hebrides, it was an experience that presented many unforeseen challenges, what was it that made you stay despite facing prejudice and lack of support?
We knew our move would test us. We were prepared for this. We knew that coming into a small community our challenges would be amplified. Living on an island with such a small land mass, and a traditional patriarchal society, accentuated this. it had everything for and against it. We fell in love with the island and it was our home.
We integrated, we made friends, we offered and received helps in kind as is the way here. We applied for local work, volunteered. We were committed.
It’s a wonderful place with a great community. The capacity of love from some people opened my eyes. I write of this in my book ‘I am an Island’. A lot of it was good – the kindness, generosity, and larger than life experiences of joining such a tightly interwoven traditional life – I’ve learnt so much from this.
But it was not all easy. Land and territory is difficult. Change is difficult. Any shift to a status quo raises the stakes. It makes me think of the film Jean de Florette. Often there are much older land and family disputes that predate any new (unwitting) arrival. Territory matters.
Were you born incredibly resilient or is it a character trait that developed due to the circumstances you found yourself in?
I discovered resilience through necessity. Living each day so simply, and with so little, often it was a struggle. That simplicity was primitive and punishing at times, and yet it quietly offered its own gifts. It brought the earth, raw elements, the weather and sea all close to me. When you are surviving you learn to calibrate support differently. I found immense comfort in the wild nature around me.
We all inhabit a capacity of strength inside, often that is greater than we know or can anticipate. My childhood was difficult and so at heart, I have always trusted my instincts. Nature fine tunes this. It teaches you to listen more astutely, and to listen to your heart at its deepest level. I think this is the secret to resilience. It brings you closer to wilder instinctive self that is ancient and always there.
What was the most unexpected aspect in the experience of moving to the island that perhaps took you by surprise? Is there anything in particular you missed after the move?
I missed the deep trusts and love of long established friendships and family. It is easy to take this for granted. When you remove yourself from your own supports and connections, it can take time to rebuild this strong framework. This is accentuated if the territory you move to, is constructed on tightly interwoven families over generations. Kin is always stronger than friendship. It can be hard to find a way in.
You became a sheep farmer on the Island with no prior experience, were you researching and learning in advance? Did farming feel natural?
Crofting necessitates daily life working with livestock and the land. We had no prior experience, and yet this was not a barrier. It was a simply an invitation to learn new skills. We researched, helped others, invested in veterinary support and practical courses. But it is only hands on experience that can teach you what to do. Its important to consider that land and its different aspects of life and work offers us all an opportunity to reconnect with much older skills that are here for us all. It is interesting how the body can tap into these when it is brought closer to the soil and nature. It is part of our inheritance and often is intuitive. Farming felt utterly natural to me. I have a close affinity with animals and wildlife and this made it easier. It also led to some of the incredible experiences with wild birds and fauna, that I write about.
We are intrigued to know; did you grow up in the countryside? Did something pave the way in younger years that prepared you for such a remote and hardy lifestyle?
I grew up in rural Sussex. I loved the woods, hills, and seashore. I turned to nature even as a child. I had great freedom to explore this. I am not sure if it is simply our environment that shapes us to live a particular outdoors lifestyle. I think it comes from a deeper place, some natural or innate affinity. Our early imprints and experiences can also help to shape this. I have always connected with nature. But not as something separate. It is a deeply felt animism.
You are finely tuned with the rhythms of the seasons, the plants, the moon, tide and the creatures around you. It feels like you live a shamanist lifestyle would you agree?
We are all ancient beings. Nature is not something apart. It lives within us. We live often, in our heads rather than inhabiting our instinctive body. We deracinate ourselves from our true nature. This is not a rational cognitive decision. It is something that finds us, through immersion over time. You make decisions by how it makes your body feel at a deeper level, like an animal sensing a safe place to be. Your body quietens. It opens the eye of the heart.
When you feel this connection, this wilder aspect of ourselves, it is deeply humbling and liberating. Our separateness is annulled.
What are the most magical daily moments for you?
I love to swim at dawn. Waking, I always look to my window that is beside my bed. A low reef of sky, with the first flickering dawn arriving, is always enough to get me moving. I love to be in the water as that great ball of fire starts lifting over the horizon and the mountains. I have done this now for four years. There is a moment, before that happens – about twenty minutes before the sun rises or the moon sets – that something immense, universal happens. It is long before the chorus of birdlife, or the rustling of the trees. It happens before that. The sea flexes, and gathers its muscle. There is an incredible lifting and surging of the water, regardless of the lunar phase, although this is always most intense at the spring or neep tides. The lunar cycles have an immense impact on the texture of the water also. At the empty moon, the water is softer, more viscous, concentrated, gathered and compact and there is often a contained stillness, and an density of water, that is felt in an swirling uplift, like a bird’s wing’s lifting from below. It carries you and yet you are also less buoyant than at the full moon, which is more expansive, fast flowing and exhilarating. Swimming at the great tides, and at the times of day when a ‘crisis’ is felt in nature – the shattering of darkness or light with the great fire of the sun, or the light of the moon, is when this experience is truly inspirational. It teaches you that everything, daily, in nature, has to break down in order to renew. It gives you permission to reframe your own small life, against these bigger continuums and cycles and to re-evaluate your own place within it. That is always an unforgettable and humbling experience. You realise you are simply one breath in a bigger whole. It brings you closer to a much greater sentience and an appreciation for all things. It teaches gratitude and is an inspirational framework to live by. Like the sea, or the glittering universe, it is filled with an abundance that never tires or ends.
Seaweed is one of our key antioxidant ingredients and we love the benefits, do you use seaweed for diet or beauty purposes?
I cut seaweed fresh from the sea with a blade. I do this when I am in the water, at a rising tide. I only take seaweed that is still covered by water. It is fresher and more succulent this way. I use it as a natural source of iodine and minerals. It acts as a tonic, helps me to retain good immunity and inner warmth, and also helps with fatigue if I have a day that will ask more of me. It is a fantastic natural resource. I also only cut it at a waxing moon so from the start of the moon cycle. This helps to promote the vitality of the plant, when its sap is rising into its fronds. This is all part of natural biodiversity and is a gentle way to harvest.
Do you have any seaweed recipes to share?
I like to eat my seaweed simply. I dry some for daily on the go use. And I love to add to stews and soups. Sometimes I cut fresh and sprinkle over salads for a salty bite.
You look amazing, do you have a beauty routine or is wild daily swimming your tonic of youth?!
Thank you! I think the sea has helped me. When you swim daily, your ions are forged differently over time. Swimming daily at dawn, in all conditions and seasons, I can honestly say the cells in my body today are different to the ones that lived inside me four years ago!
Daily connection with the sea and the wilds has been transformative to my inner life. I live very simply. I choose to spend much of my day outside and close to nature. I rise with the sun and sleep when I am tired. I have close friendships but I prefer quality to quantity. I spend some each day in solitude. It helps to tap into stillness. It also draws you closer to others if you each have that space. I listen in to my body to ensure the contacts I make are authentic connections. We each have an inner pilot light or flame – it is important to share this with others who will draw close in love; and to lift their light also. I am conscious of what saps or nourishes my voice and energy. Most of all, I tune in. We all have a wilder instinct that lives inside. When we live in a way that nourishes this, life changes around us and from within.
Why do you think humans are so drawn to the ocean? What does sea swimming mean to you?
Sea swimming is oxygen. The water, the wildlife, the nature – all of it is breath. It inspires, invigorates and expands all that is possible in a moment, in a day, in a life. It gifts me a place of connection that flows into every aspect of my existence. I am so grateful for having been drawn to the sea, and listened to its calling. It changed my life. And it saved my life. For this I will be forever grateful. It is there waiting for all of us. Once you have immersed, you will never look back. It takes you into a deeper experience of humanity. And understanding our connection with the earth, and our interconnectedness with the wider universe. I truly believe this can only be experienced through direct experience to be glimpsed, and to start a journey of fostering a greater empathy and understanding.
How do you inspire others?
I think often simply doing what you love to your utmost ability communicates something real and special. It gives a power and raw truth to your voice and creative output. Living authentically, and simply is not always easy. There is often discomfort, yet this also means that you test your own boundaries and push yourself. I love wildlife; I love to immerse daily into the water and into testing conditions, year round. I like to journey with my heart, and to try to capture this in words, paint, poetry, photographic imagery and film. It is a simple vision and so possibly this is what touches others. It does not try to be anything other than itself. I think others value this, when you share a raw, lived and authentic experience.
Why should others head to the water? What are the benefits?
The benefits of cold water swimming is well documented. It helps ease stress and anxiety, optimises natural endorphin and opiate release, promotes neuromuscular resilience and vitality and also enhances all the natural organs in the body. Yet for me, these are add ons. The core benefit is that we come home, back to our deepest source. We came from the sea, and our body is made up of 99. plus % of water. It makes sense to attune to this deeper rhythm and cadence, and to feel the benefit of this in every aspect of our being. So often, we seek to define ourselves by a single layer or fragment – yet we are infinitely more complex and nuanced than this. The benefits are simple. You connect with yourself, your breath, the beat of your heart, the present moment and your full timeless being in a way that goes beyond any linear definition of time. It takes you right to the heart of a bigger experience of life – one in which we, and all things, are connected by a universal breath and sentience. I call this living fully, with conscious animism. When you connect to this, as a resonant lived experience, the smaller things in life all seem to fall into their right place. Life becomes simple again.
Tell us a little bit about your book?
My book “I an an Island” is a true story and memoir. It is written in three acts and tells the story of my moving out of London to a small Hebridean island to run a croft and to live closer to the land. It talks of the joys and losses involved and then of some harder years, when all you might usually fall back on in times of difficulty or crisis, suddenly shears away. It is a story of resilience, love and loss and inner transformation, that is set against an immense story of the power of the natural landscape and wilds to provide, when everything else has been stripped away.
How did it come about? What inspired you?
i needed to make sense of some very intense and challenging times I had experienced. Experiences that were still very raw and close to me. I’d been living right at the edge – in the natural landscape, and also internally. It is was this intensity of experience that formed the emotional energy of the book. I knew there was a story in there – I just had to try and access it. Translating this very deep experience of living in solitude, immersed in the natural world and the raw elements was the inspiration. It helped me to journey out of very difficult times, and to navigate loneliness, and my experience as a woman living alone at the margins. I wanted to try and communicate this in a visceral way so that the reader might journey with me – and also to experience the core human elements that this book explores, in a way that might touch them deeply. This was my starting point.
Experiencing the natural landscape, as a presence, was my inspiration. I wanted to share a deep atavistic connection to nature, and for the language to also be immersive. The landscape here is often harsh, and it made me realise how this journey was like a quest. The island was a metaphor for a bigger experience of humanity. It goes beyond a specificity of place to something more universal, and relevant to each of us. I wanted this book to speak to anyone who has ever felt alone, unheard or silenced. This book explores how love is always stronger than fear.
The natural wilds became my starting point and return. There is a beautiful phrase, in my end is my beginning, and sometimes it felt like this. It was the landscape that drew me originally to the island, yet I had no idea in those early years, what a source of immense comfort it would provide. It felt anathema initially because the conditions, especially out of season, are often harsh yet by immersing so deeply into it, during those tough beautiful years that I write about in my book I AM AN ISLAND, it also instilled and inspired an incredible strength and resilience. My true story is of connecting deeply to nature, and the earth, and finding a true belonging and kinship here.
This story is a song to the wilds. It is asks what can we rely on when all we rely on has fallen away. And how that gift of belonging lies inside us.
I am an Island is published by Penguin Books and available online and in all good book shops.