Full Moon in Aquarius.
Less Me, More We! Red Rebel Collective Circles, Family & Kin healing, No TV! Plant Aunt, Community Gardens, Lavender Fields. Nature Writing Workshops. Two Rivers Summer School.
Dearest Readers,
I hope this post finds you enjoying some cute, connected, IN REAL LIFE summer moments of your own.
However small, however gentle, howeverever slow…
I’ll kick off with this adorable bunny, that brings my heart all kinds of joy in remembering we get to share a world with creatures like this.
Also here is a Snail’s delightful reminder that your own pace is holy…
Some really gorgeous discussions have been emerging in our Red Rebel Collective circle space about how to keep the circle going beyond our allocated funded sessions as an ongoing community resource.
How shared facilitation and leadership might work between us to take the weight off one individual hosting the circles, when we’re all doing so much labour personally, professionally and in our communities already.
We spoke about the struggle to be held anywhere and also feeling the need to lean into support and receiving sometimes and just how much wisdom could be shared, from each person at a different stage and cycle of their life holding the space.
I am excited to see how this unfolds and am really grateful of this space and these amazing women coming together…
Some healing highlights from a big trip home to the south west to see fam & kin:
I took my Mother out to Lydiard park and we spied these gorgeous horses…
We sat under a tree and had ice cream and sorbet, and experienced the most peace we have ever shared together in our lives.
It was beautiful.
We are not sure now if it has been a series of strokes that are causing her current health difficulties, but the fight and investigation for the right support and care continues, along with trying to get to the bottom of my own post-Covid left lung health challenges and my sisters ongoing kidney issues and surgery, we are merely doing the best we can with what capacity we have…
We ended up inside this old church together, where I joked to my friend that I always do something Queer and camp for God, because deep down I know she loves me ;) whatever the hell I am!
It was epic to re-connect with my cousins and uncle’s on this trip, and though my ideas for a return to Matri-focal society did not go down as well as I’d hoped at the dinner table, I know grandma Jo would have loved seeing us together like this, making an effort to connect across all our perspectives, differences and foibles…
It was really wonderful to see the different generations together and I pushed for a walk, because I think nature always gets us out of ourselves and into right relationship with each other.
Here we can see wider our place in things and our responsibilities to one another and the world around us, how precious and fleeting it all is and that it is care that is the key ingredient to our flourishing.
There is much I could say about the struggle and pain of being a mixed-heritage family in the UK and the fall out of us not being able to learn and grieve collectively the true history of colonisation and patriarchal dominance and it’s impact down the bloodlines.
How marred by war, displacement, racism, domestic violence and addiction families are and the impact this has had on us relationally.
Where connection to place, land, language, culture, practices and community has been severed and ripped out at the root.
The ache is phenomenal, as is the growing trust that the we can find our way back into balance, that we can restore, repair and regenerate with new growth what has been torn apart, separated and polarised.
I want to share here that a friend recently recommended to me to attend Al-anon for people who have been affected by someone else’s drinking and alcoholism in their family.
I found it a really amazing, accessible low cost community space, for those working through issues around enmeshment and boundary setting as a result of growing up around addiction and domestic violence.
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Don’t be afraid to reach out for support if you need it, you’re not alone.
Speaking of sweet soft moss, shout out to one of my absolute fav Cancer kin, Piper, who smashed their recent solo & group gig in an all trans punk band:
Yes to pouring our big feelings about violence to femmes into music and art!
Are we not just so much more beautiful when we shine in constellations across a shared sky!?
Ok so readers, I really think you are going to love this band we saw recently and it’s not just because my badass guitar teacher Claire is a member, it’s because they’re really freakin’ cool and encouraging time away from screens for dancing and real life connection, so like many a disgruntled guest upon entering my living room, meet NO TV. Enjoy! :
So in the absence of access to a garden (the hunt continues), I have progressed from a bonafide Cactus Killer to a Proud Plant Aunt.
Essentially I can now consistently tend to and keep something alive indoors, as long as it has other sources of support and nourishment.
Tell me plants don’t heal and teach us about healthy interdependence and relying on larger ecosystems of support rather than trying to do everything by yourself and drowning!
Maybe I will get some ideas at these upcoming community garden days:
Or from my unbelievable new compadre and Spanish teacher Fran, who showed me his secret garden project at the site of an old Catholic church no less..
This was our first summer of actually catching the Lavender season at Castle Farm! And I can’t recommend this magical place enough.
Please check out the brilliant Ian Finch of Walk Wild UK’s new podcast episode, on a coast to coast journey on foot through Glen Affric in Scotland.
Along the way he meets some of the people working to understand and protect these special places.
It also explores themes of grief and our place amongst the natural cycles of nature.
Highly recommend!
It left me feeling super excited for my own ancestral trip to my grandfather’s birthplace in Scotland later in the year:
There are some brilliant developments and stirrings on my upcoming Nature Writing Workshops for the Wildwood Trust and I am really excited to see how this much gentler next chapter, of facilitating and writing in new spaces unfurls…
I am also super excited to be joining the amazing Two Rivers Summer School this August.
Two Rivers summer school brings together two rivers of wisdom: ancestral constellations and the four directions, or shields of knowing.
Over five days, participants are invited into practices that cultivate deeper listening to the more-than-human world and ancestral field.
Together we will explore how these practices support emergent ethics and repair, with each other, land and the collective soul.
At the heart of the programme is The Way of Council — a practice of gathering in dialogue to hear a multiplicity of perspectives. This will sit alongside opportunities for personal enquiry and space to listen collectively through questions asked of the land and the systemic field on behalf of future generations and present-day conditions.
The gathering is based in The Quadrangle’s beautiful Forest Garden.
What are you growing into this cycle?
What outdated inherited patterns are you releasing and composting?
How are you learning to trust and follow your gentle breeze nature?
With Love.
xo Kali.
