Sensitive Earth Healing Arts

12/30/2024

꩜ a basket full of 2024

tending, moving, mothering. shedding & remembering. grief, joy, loss. a palette of velvet red hemlock bark, berry-stained fingers, and delicate fern moss.

09/23/2024

❈ “It has been said, with some truth, that our English summer is not here until the Elder is fully in flower, and that it ends when the berries are ripe.”
 — Maude Grieve, A Modern Herbal, 1931 

Sambucus nigra. Black elderberry. An equinox portal.

How many of my ancestors fingers were dyed purple as they carefully picked each berry from every dendritic stem?

How many marveled at the matte black of each fruit— a depth, a plump portal at hand? Especially since these dark berries, ripening at summer’s end, have long signified a descent into the darker half of the year.

Did they help grow the fire by blowing through a hollow elder branch? For the name Elder seems to derive from Æld, ‘fire’ in old English, connected to this use of the plant.

Did they too sit with the beauty of the deep indigo those black skins emit when first steeped in water boiled on the fire?

All of these remembrances echo like a dream in my bones, simply in this act of handling these berries to make them into syrup.  I remember that although the beloved Hawthorn served as the portal to the Otherworld for my Irish ancestors, the Elder served this role for my majority Germanic and English ancestry.

/// to dive deeper into Elder myth & history within northern european culture, read the latest missive in the Sensitive Earth sub/st@ck, featuring:

1. equinox portal of elder
2. Arthur Rackham’s Elder Mother Tree (1932), an illustration for Hans Christian Andersen’s retelling of this folk story
3. no filter fresh Elderberry steeped color magic
4. 170 pages of ancestral medical knowledge pertaining to Elder alone
5. dendritic umbel post-berries
6. Mother Elder by Hilary Jane Morgan, from The Golden Wonder Book for Children (1934)
7. a limited edition Elder potion coming your way night market in catskill on 10/4
8. lynx in bio to read

08/22/2024

when it rains, it fruits / touching mushrooms

08/22/2024

04/07/2024

⚷ yarrow & this chiron cazimi eclipse (19° aries)

Hardship leaves us with a suit of armor.  We crafted it to fight the battle.  But our innate wisdom reminded us — craft a key.  That way, you can unlock yourself from this armor when you need.

Often though, we never feel safe enough to leave the armor behind.  The years pass, and we forget about the key.

In comes the myth of Chiron — maverick, wise centaur of the healing arts.  He learned his gifts sitting beneath a Linden tree, which turned out to be his own mother who Cronus had transfigured.

Despite Chiron’s aptitude to heal others, when he was shot by one of Heracle’s poison-dipped arrows, the centaur could not mend his own wound.  His agony led him down a destined path to a new phase of wisdom:  he entered the underworld willingly, giving up his immortality.  He embraced darkness, and through doing so, he freed Prometheus, the bearer of light.

Chiron— symbolized in astrology by a key.  A key to unlock the wisdom garnered from the hardship.  The key in knowing “the wound is the place where the light enters you”, as Rumi writes.

The key of Chiron asks— how can your deepest hurts lead you towards an understanding of your wider potential?  By coming to terms with your hardship, you can rewrite each story as one that teaches and strengthens you, rather than leaving you a perpetual victim.

This key knowing fills your own being with such inner fortitude that you unlock your armor and let it go, as now you’re stronger without it.

The strength you’ve gained is different though.  It’s not tough, guarded, and hardened like your old armor.  You’ve become soft, receptive— like how a deer attunes to the subtleties of their surroundings to sense a potential threat.  This sensitivity is your protection.  You don’t need to raise your sword and lash out on the unknown.  To that questionable other — you listen with your full body.

This kind of sensitive strength:  it has a name.  Old English ġearwe, also meaning armor or “gear”, and the etymological root of the word yarrow.

{keep reading about yarrow & chiron’s eclipse on my free sub-st@ck, 🔗 in bio}

02/02/2024

❈ mother in the belly 𓆙

mother by the moonlight
all engorged with
red, round, seed-filled potentialities
little could-be stories
wrapped in bright cloaks
to tempt a sn**ch
by berry-seeking feathered friends
who’d then release them
into deep, dark fecundity
of myceliating histories—
riddles
of mineral past
and recurring decay—
that conspire to create
a fungal, fleshy, bone-rich nest
where the mother
may once again hatch
to renew this story:

portal of a hawthorn altar
whose berried branches sing
with bell and prayer
whose roots cradle the holy virgin
the holy w***e
as she too is holding
a blessing
beneath the heavens
quickening
with a first quarter moon and jupiter
still shining
amidst midwinter depths

𓆙

i too have once fruited
and will decay
amidst tricks and trinkets
offered by hands and hopes
like this weathered statue
of the mother
shawled in blue
as she cradles
a life, new:
the sprout of spring
seeming to be
fragile yet buoyant,
up and unraveling—
a quickening kick
ever-in the womb

will you forgive me?
how will we grow?
might we remember
the way the wild rose
rises
again, and again?

12/15/2023

❈ my somatic desire at this time of year is perennially subterranean. it revealed itself in a third-person perspective dream that felt both ancestral and contemporary. i rendered it as a short story you can read now on my sub/stack, or in your inbox if you’re subscribed to my newsletter.

a beloved winter solstice practice that rhymes with this story: on that darkest night of the year, turn on no electric lights. witness no screens. only allow the light from candle, fire, and the half-moon, if need be.

(an apothecary gift for dreaming, in spirit of this inward season, is offered in the letter 💌)

pictured muse: a beloved hawthorn tree in our rondout community garden ❄️🩸

11/17/2023

❈ A bit of fresh root meets the tongue. Aromatic, pungent, uncannily familiar. But here it comes— the numbness.

This is a signature of Angelica root, as in herbalism’s doctrine of signatures, which posits that how a plant presents itself suggests its medicinal properties. And as the coveted angelicin compounds in this root meet my flesh, it tingles awake, yet my mouth is left feeling numbed.  I remember that aliveness and numbness exist on the same spectrum.

How have I been numbed to this world? How do my traumas, and my ancestors’ traumas, and my neighbors’ traumas, leave me feeling cold and empty in my body?  How has my heart been shielded? For every layer of numbness, we are less alive.  It leaves us dry and cracked earth, unable to receive the rain of experience, grief, messages, exchange.  We are porous beings, constantly giving and letting in as a means of life-making. What is numb cannot participate.

Angelica echoes in my dreams.  I’m teaching at a local forest preserve in Fall, burrowing into the rich, leaf-covered soil to plant live Angelica roots amidst the subterranean network of Catalpa, Maple, and mycelium.  I share with the class— “This plant is for those who want to pray, but can’t.”*

How does that sit in the body— to want to pray, while feeling unable to do so?  Heart-hardened.  Closed off.  Indeed, the numbness brought on with fresh Angelica on the tongue is a signature of antipathy:  wherever we’re closed, this plant opens up.

{continue reading to learn about angelica’s supportive medicine, planetary ruler, my first time meeting them, & ways to work with this herb on my free subst@ck}

*this angelica phrase has been channeled to me via teachers matt wood & sean donohue, sourced from herbalist jim mcdonald .craft

1) garden-grown angelica & me
2-3) angelica soul oil & materia medica now available in the apothecary
4) a plant message from my new deck, on sale now (20% off, no code needed)
5) thank you subst@ck for giving me more space to breathe than this lil box

🎵 the song version of the angelica poem pictured

10/27/2023

❈ can i be honest? yesterday, after posting my last reel, i became anxious. a slow, gradual buzzing— one bee carrying a basket of judgement at a time— until i was a swarm of palpitation and circling mind.

the main thought loop— i didn’t share enough. i didn’t go as deep as i wanted. there is a whole tapestry to weave around these two plant allies i mentioned, queen anne’s lace and mugwort. there’s a well of story and knowledge and synchronicity that when, i, as a human, talk to you, as a human— i so excitedly share. my eyes light up. my voice animates with spark. i’m swept away by the story of how these plant beings speak their ways through me.

i’ve always found the superficial frustrating. maddening. isn’t there always a question? one more layer to peel back? could i be perceived as lacking depth, or knowledge, or even sympathy for posting at this time?

i fear that as long as i am fitting myself into this form of media— the “reeling in” of quick, digestible visuals; these boxes strewn with algorithmic advertisements, where we’re sorting out what’s viable from a heap of broken— i cannot fully show up. i— as in, the depth of who i am and what i am here to share. because, in truth, i need the full exhale. i want to completely settle into what i share, invite you in, explore all the crevices— can we go there?

this is as much as a realization as it is an intention, and an invitation. truthfully, i am sitting on a heap of drafts of writing. long form. mostly written in my notes app on my phone as my baby sleeps on my body. completing these thought dives, and sharing them, is what i want to do. and i would love for you to join me: on my newsletter, which will soon move to subst@ck.

many of you already receive my newsletter, which i finally revived a couple months ago. i will bring you all along to the next platform. and if you’d like to join, sign up at the newsletter lynx 🔗 for now.

i’ve been loving subst@ck and am over there , if you want to follow and see what i’m reading! i’m just getting started, so i’d also love to know, what are some of your favorite newsletters?

📷 2017 total solar eclipse, hanging with queen anne

10/13/2023

❈ my album, of beast and bone, is birthed today — friday the 13th 🐈‍⬛ on

may you find some reflection time to tune in and listen. a driving question for the album— If amidst the bones of ruin, we embrace our inner beasts, can we transmute our panic into a force that liberates us?

come celebrate with me and pick up a CD & some apothecary offerings at witch’s market tonight!

thank you all who supported this vision into reality ✨

producers andrew wolfson &
mastered by

album cover photo by
makeup by

09/19/2023

❈ This song emerged from my obsession with the “beasts” of our society. I traced the roots of the Christian “devil” back to the great god Pan, and more inclusively, the archetypal ‘horned god’ that arises in cultures world-world.  
 
Pan was the epitome of the feral— the relentless wild life-force out of which humanity sprung. So to tame and refine humans away from their animal nature, Pan became the antithesis of ‘the civil’ and was pronounced dead: banned to be idolized inside the walls of the city. It came to be that any civil person in the presence of Pan, or hearing his song, entered a terrorized state of ‘panikos’, or panic, as the human body tried to remember its feral roots but the civilized mind barred it from doing so. 
 
It was Halloween, and I was dressed as “my ancestor”: a Pennsylvania Dutch mennonite woman in traditional bonnet and dress. Embodying this character, I imagined a story in which, in the throes of depression, I began to question the traditional norms of my religious and societal structure, so “I asked their devil for the truth.” She calls in Pan, and this song followed suit. A few months later, I recorded the song in the Berkshires with Michael Lesko () and he worked to produce it.

09/06/2023

❈ did you get to watch the video for my song ‘tsuga’ depicting the transmutation dance between hemlock, wooly adelgid, and reishi?  
  
the honor for this dance all started with my bone-deep love for eastern hemlocks— one of the most prominent trees in the southwestern pennsylvania forests i grew up in. (it’s even our state tree 🥲)  
  
this oil is an offering to connect you more deeply with the safe-haven of hemlock, crafted with needles gathered from a protected old-growth stand in my homelands.   
  
🌲 hemlock soul ✨  
  
with only oak, maple, and beech, the sunlight streams through, bright and effervescent. but here we go deeper into the wood, where feathery hemlocks grow. their shade provides shelter and space for roots to fractal wide. these trees provide an understory where the light dims, beckoning something mysterious.  
  
in this way, hemlock encourages us to not look up and out, but to reflect inward, to confront the mystery within. they open their soft, fern-like branches in an embrace that encourages somatic safety. they create sanctuary. and with this ally, we feel comfortable to go to the edge of our comfort zone. we know and trust that their presence will provide wings if we fall.   
  
take time, oil your body from temple to toe. what has been pushed aside? what tendrils stretch out from your body towards other beings and things, and how can you tend to them? what immensity exists, breathing, here?