A quick bonus episode with some thoughts around burnout and the holiday season and what we might consider in order to honor a more ancestral rhythm.

First conceived in late November, then recorded a week or so ago, the rhythm of bringing this episode to you demonstrates my own honoring of this rhythm. No rush. Everything in its time.

If you do want to join us in the virtual roundhouse for an experiential exploration and re-imagining of how our longer ago ancestors would have gathered for ceremony and story; as a way to keep themselves human, whole, connected, and alive at this time of longest night and the return of the sun… we’ll be gathering on Dec 20th (tomorrow from when this episode actually goes live). You can find more info or save your spot: https://www.wildsacredjourney.com/winter-solstice-in-the-roundhouse

Here’s to rest, the fruitful darkness, and the blessed return of the light.

With love,

Kate

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You can find Kate:

Website: www.wildsacredjourney.com

Email – kate@wildsacredjourney.com

Instagram: @wildsacredjourney_kp

“It is easy for me to imagine that the next great division of the world will be between people who wish to live as creatures and people who wish to live as machines.” - Wendell Berry

Tad Hargrave, one of our guests in today’s episode, likes to reference this quote. And seeing a need to call people back into their humanity, finding ways to help them go about their days with more goodness and beauty, is something at the heart of both of our work. We also both love stories and myths. In fact, we talked about those very things in episode 38.

Recently, he’s been teaming up with Kakisimow Iskwew (aka Natalie Pepin) - a Metis Cultural Educator who helps guide Indigenous people reclaiming their culture to connect with their living teachings around art, food, language and connection to spirit. And together, they’re offering deep spirals into the story ‘Briar Rose’ as a way of beginning to access indigenous cultural memory of Mother Europe.

I jumped at the chance to have them both gather with me here to spiral around some of the big, important questions many of us who want to live as creatures and want to do something about the ugliness which seems to be everywhere in the world today seem to be grappling with and wondering about.

Questions like:

• • What is culture? And if we’re ‘white’ or of European descent (particularly if we live in so-called ‘North America’), do we have ‘culture’?
  • How are we defining indigenous - as an identity or something else?
  • What does it mean that stories hold memory?
  • How do we navigate the hunger, the thirst, the grief and shame which seem to be in so many of us these days as we reach for something meaningful and nourishing? And if we find some deeper roots, and they feel like their ‘ours’, how do we go about honoring them in a good way?

• 
  

  Since we recorded the conversation, I attended a three-hour online version of their spiral into Briar Rose and the story is still resonating within me and moving me in ways that aren’t ready to be articulated yet; but are inviting me into deeper relationship, into protocol, with the story itself and the living culture it’s carrying.

  May this conversation be a way of growing more culture - may it offer you some soil, or perhaps the glimpse of some roots, an idea of where to dig to find something which invites you back into deeper humanity.

  And if you’re feeling the call, I highly recommend their work with Briar Rose. You can find more about it here: https://meetingmyancestors.com/briar-rose/

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  As always - if this conversation moves you in some way, please help share and pass it on to others you think might also be moved. This type of sharing helps feed these conversations and the work we’re up to in the world.

  Find Tad: https://tadhargrave.substack.com/

  Find Natalie/ Kakisimow Iskwew: https://meetingmyancestors.com/

  Find Kate: www.wildsacredjourney.com

  --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/kate-powell-wsjp/support

Back in late August, I sat down to have a flowing, juicy conversation with the wise, down-to-Earth Tamy Roloff (herbal tea seller, coach, midwife, mother and grandmother) around aliveness and aging; and more specifically the question: is it inevitable that we settle in to die with little excitement or joy for the future beyond retirement prospects?

Along the way, we also explore:

• spirituality;
• plants as friends;
• ancestral ways and animism;
• women’s life cycles and seasons;
• how being a woman is often framed as a negative thing and other ways we might be able see it;
• pain avoidance, mindset, and how that affects our ability to find pleasure and our own rhythms;
• community and living counter-culturally;
• travel and how it opens us to other ways of seeing ourselves and the world;
• possible benefits to loneliness;
• self-trust;

…and more.

Join us around the fire? You’re most welcome here.

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And if you've come for Tamy, I hope you'll stick around for more conversations exploring the question: in dehumanizing times, what might help us stay human and be more fully alive?

You can find Tamy:

Website: wholisticwomantea.com

Instagram: WholisticW

Facebook: Wholistic Woman

YouTube: WholisticWomanTea

You can find Kate:

Website: www.wildsacredjourney.com

Email – kate@wildsacredjourney.com

Instagram: @wildsacredjourney_kp