http://www.dancingwiththewild.com/

Dancing With the Wild, Kinvara (2025)

14/02/2025

The smile of someone who lives love and liberation! The smile of someone walking on her ancestral lands of Ireland, seeking healing as she plays her grandfather’s violin to the waters and the stones. The smile of sister sadada; a woman who the universe (and likely Brigid!) conspired to bring us together.

As someone committed to guiding the Irish diaspora on these lands, it is a honor to walk with sadada. She is sharing and teaching me so much in opening up to the liberation of letting love lead (for me it’s a practice of devotion and discipline!).

I am so delighted to put together this mutual aid for sister, as she continues her ancestral healing and seeking. All funds raised will of course go directly to her. Thanks for your support which can happen in ways other than funds if that’s not accessible to you right now. Sharing to your communities is also a wonderful way to build momentum. With love and gratitude ###

You can find a link to support her on my bio page.
💗💗💗

07/01/2025

Eat the trees

Make medicine with the trees

Dream with the trees.

An original mythical name of Ireland was Ierne which I have been told stems from an old Irish name of yew (iúr) and translates as Land of the Yew. Our early ancestors were known as forest people (before the English colonizers cut and stole most of our forests). Our first alphabet, the Ogham, is based on trees. Trees are a part of our DNA.

May you nourish this yearning for trees by eating a tree. HERE is a lovely recipe for pine shortbread shared by a participant in my Way of the Herbs course.

May you make medicine with a tree: elderberry syrup is so simple and so high in vitamins and minerals to vitalize your immune system.

To make elderberry syrup, simmer 3 TBSP of elderberries in 2 cups of water for 30 minutes (low simmer, not a boil). Allow to steep for another hour or two or overnight. Stain out the herbs and add 1/4 cup honey (local, raw) and 1/4 cup Irish whiskey (optional). Dosage: 1 TBSP per day as a preventative and up to 6 TBSP per day when acute symptoms are present. Store in the fridge for up to 6 months.

May you dream deep and long with a tree. Dream with their wisdom, remembering to root into the nourishment of the dark, slowing way way down, observing the moon, dancing with the wild winds.

Inspired by Sacred Warriores Brighid of Kildare whose temple, and later monastery, was nestled in a grove of oaks.

Today’s post on my Substack account, Dancing with the Wild. Would love to have you there as I’ll likely be less here.

12/12/2024

Hearth tending. The hearth is the heart of the home, a place of nourishment and connection, where the flame of illumination and connection ever burn. Where we create food for the body and are fed food for the spirit. The hearth ignites the fire within, the truest essence of our being, kept alight by the breath of our ancestors and the old ways being remembered. We come to the hearth to discover the sacred in the mundane, to practice ritual and to be still, to listen and to share.

Come back to the sacredness of the hearth as we remember we are hearth-tenders: priestess, midwife priestess, alchemist.

You are invited to journey with us: from the dark of Winter Solstice, guided by a Solstice candle lit at the hearth, through to Imbolc, where we tend to Brigid’s flame, protecting hearth, home and household. We will gather at our virtual and physical hearth each week to invoke the aspect of tending to the hearth, to find the simple and rich joy in nourishment for body and spirit, to create, to listen and to share.

Find more details in my bio. Select the link for Way of the Herbs and keep reading to find about Hearth-tending. 🖤

07/12/2024

Our Irish ancestors walked with death in a way that has dramatically changed in modernity. An understanding of how we as humans have honored death through the ages and how we have grieved, can offer wisdom for living, dying and grieving in these times.

Join us for a unique and reflective pilgrimage in the west of Ireland, held over the Samhain threshold, a time when the ancestors are close at hand and the lessons they carry for us are revealed in the land and sacred places. We will gather to deepeninto the wisdom and traditions that these people have honored through the mists of time. We will visit ancient neolithic sites of ceremony and burial. We will visit a workhouse, where people often went to die, in hopes of a proper burial. We will learn about waking traditions and banshees, keening practices, and herbs and trees that carry us through these threshold times of death and grief. We will ally an Irish goddess as a death guide for this time and beyond.

All the details via the connection from my bio.

05/11/2024

A candle lit for humanity, truth, inclusiveness
A candle lit for hope
A candle lit for the courage to stand for justice
A candle lit to illuminate a better way
A candle lit for fortitude

As this day (presidential election day in the USA) unfolds may we hold radical hope, deep rooted hope, nourished by the earth and each other, that all shall be well. You are invited to join me in lighting a candle with this spell. What words would you add?

27/08/2024

Of Stone and Bone: A Wisdom School to Reclaim the Sovereign Wild 🖤🖤🖤

My dear friend and fellow seeker, Alison and I are weaving participants from the Northern and Southern Hemispheres of planet Earth to deepen into the meaning of each season in the Irish Wisdom Tradition, with the Cailleach as our wisdom holder.

The Cailleach, the veiled one of myth and mystery, of the Celtic wisdom traditions, will be our guide as we participate, remember and embody the rhythms of the season and the power and magic we share with the Elements. We will weave in magic and possibility as we tend to the land who is an embodiment of the Cailleach. We will work with native European and Irish herbs and practice ritual together for each of the holy turnings of the year. We will remember who we are before patriarchy, capitalism and white supremacy: when the wisdom and life of the elder was honored as sacred. We will listen to myth and story of the Irish Wisdom Tradition and receive from these stories a compass to guide our path forward, hand in hand with elder.

Are you feeling the song of the stones in your bones? Are you ready to reclaim your sovereign wild? Join us!

03/08/2024

I love meandering through graveyards and wax touched by the love and tending of this sweet resting place.

You’re invited to meander with us as we cross through the threshold into the season of Lughnasa and gather to discuss Harvest as Death with Lugh’s beloved foster mother Tailtiu as our guide. A deep and powerful story from the Mythic era of Irish mythology, stories of the gods and goddesses of the Tuatha de Danaan. We gather at our online hearth on Sunday. Join us!

If the land of Ireland herself is beckoning, we have one spot left in our Death Reverence pilgrimage in October.

Find all the details via my bio and the links there 🖤

26/07/2024

Nature might be perfect. Humans are not. Although rose reminds us to soften into our imperfections and those of others.

May we remember

perfection is illusion,

fascism is not.

I thought I was going to share more here on my thoughts and ruminations. Instead I will encourage you all to share your thoughts and ruminations with each other: to honor that the likely candidate for POTUS isn’t perfect and that I don’t love all of her policies. May we talk about together, how perfection is a tenet of white supremacy and maybe we can let some of it go in order to protect our rights, work ever toward liberation for all and to be responsible in tending to the Earth. Let’s talk about these things in our communities, with our family. May we accept less than perfect (within and without).

Excerpted from today’s Substack post.

23/06/2024

My dear friend, adventurer of the realms, lover of the mystery and magic of this land, voice of Sheela na gig Jack Roberts journeyed into the next realm this week. He was a part of the Secret Garden shop in Kinvara, pictured here and who is revering his death by remaining dark all week. Turning all the lights off in shops as a funeral entourage passes is still a practice here in rural Ireland. And closing the shop (during peak tourist season), keeping it dark, is a beautiful honoring of the man, of life, of death.

A year ago the ancestors whispered very loudly to me to offer a pilgrimage in Ireland on death reverence. Little did I know then that two wonderful men who have shaped me in my connection to this land, in my remembering, listening, knowing, loving, would move into the ancestral realm and guide me on from there.

With life, death.

RIP Jack Roberts

If you are feeling the call to explore death reverence pilgrimaging on this land, we just had a spot open.

27/05/2024

With all the violence and heartbreak in the world, with all the beauty and blossoming in nature, I ever dance with dualities.

My life as a herbalist brings me back into rhythms with nature. She has witnessed so much: these glorious blossoms of hawthorn were harvested on a green road in Ireland. Green roads were a scheme of the famine- road building where a road wasn’t needed. Physically grueling work for starving people to earn a pittance and be given a watery soup with little nourishment.

Today, people are starving, doing backbreaking, de-moralizing work for a morsel.

Today my heart breaks and hawthorn blooming so abundantly on this green road soothes my heart (and will be used to co-create medicines for community). I thank my ancestors who built this road and the hawthorn for her hope.

Also in my harvest basket is glorious elderflower.

Free Palestine. Stop the genocide.

04/05/2024

May bush in my garden. Last night we gathered around a blooming hawthorn bough and decorated it with yellow followers (dandelion, primrose, buttercups), shells, hag stones and our own wishes for the blossoming. The May bush is a lovely old Irish tradition… what a gift it is to keep these practices alive! It’s not too late to make your own. Although remember the fairies don’t like us to bring hawthorn sticks/ boughs into the house. 🌸💗

02/05/2024

“I wash my face in water, that had neither rain nor run,
And I dried it on a towel that was never woven or spun.”
-an old Irish saying referring to the tradition of washing your face with Bealtaine dew, heavy on the grass in my rewilding garden.

Remember the entry into the season of summer, known as Bealtaine, is a threshold through the Gregorian calendar day of 1 May and the astrological cross quarter date of 5 May.

Wash your face with this liminal aspect of uisce, blessed by the rising sun.

Dancing With the Wild

14/02/2025

07/01/2025

12/12/2024

07/12/2024

05/11/2024

27/08/2024

03/08/2024

26/07/2024

23/06/2024

27/05/2024

04/05/2024

02/05/2024

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