July 23rd, 2025 Something I’ve been mulling over a lot lately is that capitalism has confused meaningful life purpose with work for me and I’m slowly untangling the two. Learning to accept myself regardless of societal expectations, to find some meaning outside the reigns of capitalism. I really want to de-condition myself from seeing anyone through this ableist lens. The crows couldn’t care less, the rivers still run free. Are the foxes lives any less valuable because they don’t have a salary? Does our sense of self have to hinge around these things?! In certain circles it definitely feels that way and I can’t blame anyone. I am just as brainwashed. Back to the topic of oak trees - I remember looking up the oak flower essence while I was painting this oak tree back in 2022 wondering if it was resonating with me for a reason. I often look up the essence of things when I feel drawn to them and I'm always left in awe of what I discover. I learned that oak essence supports us to deeply rest when we’ve worked ourselves to the bone, which inspired the sleeping bear hibernating beneath the tree. I thought a lot about how much so many of us need that deep rest but can’t have it because of what’s demanded of us to survive. With this in mind, I started painting a tree spirit (a dryad) inhabiting it, crying and dropping their acorns to the ground like they were tears. Isn’t all death just food for other life forms in the end which is also kind of the beginning? Which reminds me of this poem I love by Linda Hogan, it’s called “the way in”. “Sometimes the way to milk and honey is through the body. Sometimes the way in is a song. But there are three ways in the world: dangerous, wounding, and beauty. To enter stone, be water. To rise through hard earth, be plant desiring sunlight, believing in water. To enter fire, be dry. To enter life, be food.” In the period of time I was working on the oak painting in 2022 I also got stuck in a derecho (a straight line tornado). I was walking my friend Julie’s dog (house & pet sitting) catching up with my friend Dan and within a matter of minutes the sky turned almost completely black. Obviously we could sense a storm brewing so we quickly parted ways both heading for a home base. I was less than a minute from the house sit when it started pouring and thundering. I started running and as I was running lightning struck the tree right beside me, caught fire, snapped in half and fell blocking my path ahead. Power lines were down and I wasn’t sure if we would get electrocuted if we kept running by the puddles and power lines so we ran fast in the opposite direction now but there was no where to go really, no one familiar close by. Chairs were flying now, one backed right up into me. I felt like I was in the gravitron (a western fair ride in London where you are pushed to the wall sides by the force of gravity from the machine spinning if I remember correctly). Both me and another lady across the street also walking a dog found ourselves both pounding ferociously on strangers doors to save ourselves from being swept up like those huge trees were, pulled deep from the earth. Huge trees! An unbelievable sight. The whole neighbourhood with tons of trees ripped right out of the ground, tons of baby birds and nests littering the ground, power lines down, cars smashed, roofs caved in and the house a few houses up from me demolished, rendered unliveable. That oak tree painting also carried this grief for me of all those dead trees and baby birds I kept finding and feeling choked up about seeing. Their lives cut short and swept away so fast. There wasn’t enough time to honour their lives lost. To witness or behold.. .. So anyway, this guy opened the door finally after my pounding but he didn’t really want to let me in because he had a cat (I had a dog with me) and he also wasn’t wearing his dentures :/ lol never in my life did I think I would insist but I was like well either you let me in or I’m going to die so I just barged in anyway and closed the screen door behind us. We both stood there and watched with Star (the dog) but I don’t remember what we saw really. My memory fades here. What I do remember is this huge surge of energy fill me up with stress hormones and adrenaline. Was it partially the ions from being so close, so intimate with the lightning?. Was I part of the storm now? All I could think about was Amara. How that threat was inside of them and how much scarier that would be. Inescapable threats: one of the many ways we describe trauma. But I escaped. .. for now. It felt really unfair. Which reminds me, I think guilt should be included in the stages of grief. It has been for me with every loss which I know is just ego-centric maybe. That storm stretched me in a million ways - with more gratitude, more fear, more empathy, more disregulation, more pain, more joy, I could hear the birds singing more acutely as if for the first time, with more presence and then much less of it. I was hijacked by the adrenaline. It was a hard mix of things, a roller coaster, a whiplash of emotions, of oscillating between so many different states. Amazement, wonder, terror. “Let everything happen to you, beauty and terror. Just keep going, no feeling is final.” (Rainer Maria Rilke). I’ve been saying this line to myself for decades, even printed it on my skin (tattooed by amara). Originally as a reminder to keep going when I was plagued by years of sleep paralysis. It has proven to be a helpful reminder time and time again in so many different situations for me and many others I love. The morning after amara died about a month post derecho a barista pointed it out to me, saying it was a beautiful line, very elegant hand writing she said which felt like a celestial wink from Amara, and made me cry. We had a little moment, I acknowledged that I had just found out that morning my friend who had tattooed it died the night prior and she told me she lost both her parents young and welled up with tears too. Oh the moments we share with strangers. It’s sometimes easier and less convoluted that way. I also interestingly and conveniently had a first therapy apt that morning. A close friend was parked outside my driveway waiting to see signs of me awake to break the news to me. I only found out the next morning because that night June 29th, 2022 I was pulled into sleep by 8 pm. It was one of those days I felt like I was drugged on nothing and exhaustion just took over me. Prior to the tornado I had made the decision not to visit Amara. I’m still filled with heavy feelings about this that it’s hard for me to write about, to sit with, to let in the full reality I was swimming in at the time which I know pales in comparison to their dying. There was so much shaming about not being vaccinated and so much secrecy, I kept my feelings and fears close to my chest, of being further coerced, fears about how much the pain I was in might escalate to an unbearable point if I betrayed myself and then how could I be their caretaker. I genuinely considered killing myself often for the first 6 months or so. No one can really know unless you know intimately what it's like (relentless pain). The medical coercion though. That kind of abuse reached far into me. Patterns have a way of continuing to show up in new ways until we break the curse somehow or maybe just change our mind-set, I don't know. I did not have the spoons or the money to seek the support I needed for all that it was bringing up for me at the time, nor did I have the money to buy a plane ticket to California and even when someone offered to help me with this I didn’t have the nest egg anymore to take two weeks unpaid off of work beyond the plane ticket cost. I had blown through my savings between jobs. After being fired for not getting a second vaccine even though I explained I had developed an undiagnosed illness after the first one and didn’t feel safe getting another one, it didn’t matter to my employers. There was no care or compensation for me, nothing tangible at least. I was thrown to the wolves also while adapting to a life of chronic pain which surged up and down with the stress of picking up random contract jobs here and there with my education rendered irrelevant. I felt insanely misunderstood. I was so angry and also grieving and extremely attachment tripped up being at such a distance from my friend who was dying, who didn’t have the capacity to answer my phone calls. I often thought they were angry with me when maybe the reality was I was the one who was that. Anger comes up sometimes when we really value something and that something is threatened. I really valued our connection which I tried to make salient. I’ve since realized that anger didn’t help keep our connection safe. It wasn’t helpful, in fact it was quite destructive. Dharma classes have taught me this time and time again but I am human and it still confuses me sometimes. Like how to honour and listen to anger but not water it, take it in as helpful information but not let it drive you or consume you. To witness and befriend instead of feeding it (like gasoline to fire). Our last phone conversation was the day before they found out they were terminal. It was devastating to me, their dying, the way they did at such a distance, experiencing it all mostly online with no felt connection but I also try hard to understand all the many valid reasons why that was the case for them, why they didn’t have the capacity for connecting in a real way. Like they were stressed the fuck out, trying so hard to survive and they needed less stress and no expectations from anyone. They were also maybe oscillating from freeze to fight or flight with little time back to feeling calm again and how critical calm was to their healing, an impossible feat really. They had so many appointments and meds to take and lots of sleeping in the end. Also they were freaking out in pain and that was all consuming. More than they could handle. I know when I’m overwhelmed and in tons of pain I genuinely just need to be alone in the dark. I try to immediately self-isolate. Putting myself in an understimulating environment, this actually makes the pain not persist for days or weeks, months or years at a time. But it's often not possible. Anyway, I wish I could go back to that time and not take it so personally that they wouldn’t call me back and I wish I could have easily shown up. I know I wouldn’t have come back if I had gotten there. It would have been too hard to leave and maybe it would have been too hard to stay. To make matters worse, in the throes of their dying they interpreted my reality as me abandoning them. This was the pinnacle of a nightmare for me. It was so far from the truth. This is something I’ve been learning a lot about lately though. Separating fact from fiction. What are the hard facts and then how are we interpreting those facts, attaching meaning to things that’s more about our wounds and our ego stories than it is about the truth. In reality I couldn’t visit them because I didn’t have the money, I didn’t have the health, there were REAL policies & barriers that would stop me from getting there along with my own trauma/trauma responses to being coerced and having a metaphorical gun held to my head, to have to do something to my body that felt wrong and unsafe. All of that had a real physiological impact on me that no one but me can really understand. It was a perfect storm and in a way the outside world felt like a direct reflection of my inner state. I was raging inside. There was a storm in me too, it had been brewing for some time and it was like all of that was pouring out of me. It also just brought up the reality after I survived the derecho that Amara was not going to and that I needed to try to get there somehow even in the face of all the odds stacked up against me. So I planned to go July 22nd 2022. Amara’s sister had graciously offered to pay for my plane ticket and my sister started fundraising for me to be able to afford taking the time off of work. I called and pleaded with my doctor to write me an exemption, but he wouldn’t, I called my MP, I made many phone calls and even in the face of death the policies remained. Nobody cared or everyone’s arms were tied with their own survival and continued pay cheque in mind. I wasn’t a human to them with a legitimate need or real feelings worth listening to or accommodating. But I was going to go anyway. I was hoping maybe I could pay for a fake passport when the fundraising money came in.. I had heard of other loved ones acquiring these for $300. But I was too late. Friends said I’d be able to get there. No one who was vaccinated I felt saw or understood the reality I was actually facing clearly, as if it was all nonsense like I hadn’t actually been fired, like the social consequences weren’t real. But they were. I felt very dismissed and unheard/unseen at times. Gas-lit really. The consequences were very real, heart achingly real to me. I really feared talking openly about any of this though because I had already felt a lot of pressure to get the first vaccine from a few loved ones and I wish I hadn’t listened to them. At the time I genuinely thought that I was in full body pain on and off because of a vaccine injury and to this day I still feel it played a role but it was inseparable from the coercion, my trauma and my bodies involuntary automatic reaction to abuse. I have since also heard countless others with Fibro mention vaccines in relation to their origin stories and it doesn’t surprise me. There are lots of theories but it’s prob a perfect storm for each of us in reality. Lots of conditions that had to ripen, all of which I didn’t understand at the time. Anyway after the derecho/tornado I had a really hard time down-regulating. My body & nervous system was amped up. It was like my baseline became a state of being extremely overwhelmed. I’d get home from work and lay under a blanket in the dark for hours just trying to calm my body into feeling safe again. I’d easily kick into fight or flight when the weather turned along with my pain. I couldn’t be around loud noises, my window of tolerance became quite small. It took me a few years to come back to a baseline of feeling safe again. I have had to retrain my brain to stop interpreting everything as an emergency. Truly, I am still in the process of re-calibrating. I have so much empathy now when I notice others who are stuck in fight or flight. It’s really not a choice but becoming aware of it is the most helpful turning point. It has to become a choice otherwise you’ll stay stuck forever. It’s like that saying “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom” ~Viktor E Frankl. I absolutely cannot imagine what years of bombing and genocide does to a nervous system. After the storm I walked around the neighbourhood with a kid I knew and everyone was out, dozens or maybe hundreds of people sharing their accounts of what had happened, news reporters too. Mercury was also retrograde and cazimi (in the heart of he Sun) that day in gemini and it landed as such a mercurial infused moment. Also in my 4th house of home, family, foundation, ancestry, roots. And here there were all these trees ripped right from their roots, houses wrecked and my inner world following suit. Within the hour I also went to the market and it felt really surreal that I had just been almost swept up by a tornado but here I was buying some basil to gift to the neighbour who had begrudgingly saved my life. How to repay such a favour.. When the house sit was over and I was back home, I remember taking a shower and I kept replaying the whole scenario in my head over and over again and feeling like it was so crazy, it didn’t even feel real and I had this really cathartic full body cry fully letting in the reality that I had lived through something so terrifying and after so many other terrifying things that had already happened and were still happening but life just continues on like nothing ever happened. We attach meaning and stories to our experiences and it complicates things. There is what happened and then there is the interpretation of said events. What beliefs do the stories we water feed? Should I feed this false belief that we live in a safe or just world when we definitely do not? Should I recognize these warning signs, the threat I feel when Mother Nature is yelling at us for good reason? Should we really continue on like nothing is happening, like the pandemic wasn’t an opportunity to course correct and in my opinion we failed? Friends dying, so young. More and more of us getting sick from the stress of this culture we’re in, is this not a warning to heed? In the words of Johanna Hedva “how many of us have already met our doom and then had to get out of bed and go on? How many groups of people have had their world’s end?” The world continues on but what if we all stopped instead? What if we really changed our ways?! What about the medicine we’re missing when we soldier on? What might we hear if we stopped and really listened? If we responded appropriately to climate crisis…to genocide and greedy heartless systems that cause so much suffering world wide. Facing things is the potent tipping point we need, it’s how we respond appropriately to create real solid lasting change. “Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing," So says Arundhati Roy, but there are loud days too now. We can also hear her roaring, yelling, screaming, saying “if not now, then when?!." Picture below of the child I walked around the neighbourhood with after the Derecho holding some snails looking at the overturned earth, concrete and exposed tree roots.. May 21st, 2022 

July 20th, 2025 These journals are kind of like a time stamp in noticing what’s in bloom and what’s decaying. I’ve noticed lately st johns wort and milk weed are in bloom, monarch butterflies are busting out of their cocoons and lots of berries are ripe for the picking. Though service berries have somewhat dried up in the sun or have been completely picked over by birds in some places. Lots of black caps by the river, mulberries staining concrete and some blueberries are strangely beginning to ripen in New Brunswick. So here I am a little late with my first post about oaks. I’ve picked the northern red oak specifically (Chêne rouge), one that lives a few feet from the hawthorns also along woolner trail. There are also two of them I've been getting to know. They are both situated partially up the hill on the way to the hawthorns across from the river. I learned the other day that the word Druid means “oak knower”, deru meaning tree and weid meaning to see or to know. Which begs the question, what is it that the ancient celts knew about trees, this is a guiding question for me that I won't pretend to understand the full scope of yet. Anyhoo, as I approach this new oak tree I notice a curious resistance in myself, an attachment to the hawthorns and a reluctance to move on. How relatable and familiar this feels. Something that is intrinsic to all relationships. I can't help but get emotionally attached. But I am learning to find a place to hold both attachment and love and to not have to choose one relationship over another, whether friends, lovers, family, nature, material things. There is a place for everything, no one left behind. Even in death I carry and integrate the relationship forward in so many ways. How many past lives and loves from lifetimes ago I wonder continue to inform who we are today, beings who we most likely don't remember. Well, maybe in our dream scapes or in-between-states. The Oak is also known as royal oak, grey oak, wiisagi-mitigominzh (in ojibwe), querus rubra (the scientific name), druid oak or druids tree. They are a part of the beech family, a very sturdy tree with an extensive root system. In Celtic spirituality our energy systems are designed somewhat like the root and branch systems of trees. Not only are hawthorns seen as portals to the other world but oaks are too and I'm beginning to wonder if all trees may be due to a kinship they have with both heaven and earth in terms of how they reach far into the ground and also upwards into the sky, reaching for the heavens or to druid folks toawrds the otherworld. It's fascinating to me because all my life I've been drawing this system in my art, this root system and branching up towards the sky, towards what I called and understood as source, with this idea in mind. Little did I know this concept preceded me. Perhaps some part of me remembered intuitively or somatically from lifetimes ago. I will include an example below from many years ago. Also little did I know at that time I drew that, that most of my astrological birth chart is in Pisces (Rising, Moon, Mars and Venus) way too much water. I also find it fascinating when I meet folks who are say very dominated by fire who happen to also work with fire in some capacity like hide tanning or working with kids around camp fires etc. For example someone I'm currently dating who is very fire-y works around camp fires on the regular and smells of fire, like it's his personal fragrance. Someone brought it to my attention the other day that perhaps we unconsciously choose partners who help us balance each other out, kind of like shadow work. Perhaps I'm denying my own fire and being around others who are grounded in that energy help nourish and cultivate it more in me and vice versa. What a beautiful thing.

May 23rd, 2025 Hawthorn Journal I went to visit the hawthorns the other day with some offerings, including some water with hawthorn tincture in it from Amara which they had gifted me years ago to improve my circulation. Boise, Idaho, Versailles, 2013 it reads. I can kind of picture their dirty fingernails and their witchy crooked finger holding the bottle and handing it to me with this gentleness. Their giving always felt that way, kind and sweet and humble. It felt like a special thing to give the trees back a little bit of their own medicine. Amara never charged me anything for medicines. That was something about them I really appreciated and want to carry forward. They were a schemer with many dreams they were weaving and saving for but they were always very anti-capitalist at heart when it came to plant medicines. Something I want to include in the perpetual bday calendar I plan to create next year is to write on each page some of Amara’s good qualities and of course their birthday on Sept 11th. If you’re reading this and knew Amara please feel free to send me a sentence or two of what you loved best about them and their way in the world (natmoynagh@gmail.com). It’s a good practice (one I want to get better at) to focus on peoples good qualities. Of course we all have frustrating aspects too and it’s not to deny that but to water the good seeds in each other so those ones will grow stronger. It’s also kind of an apology to Amara to create this calendar for having been unskillful at times in our dynamic with my own pain. A hopeful repair from beyond the grave. Repair work is something they were really virgo text book good at at when they wanted to be. I’m also hoping cultivating a deeper relationship with the trees, to the land and engaging with loss through a creative practice/process will be healing and also strengthen my connection to Amara as well as to our shared ancestral roots. On my way to the hawthorns today I walked through a swampy area, climbed a hill and walked through some brambles and spider webs, trees creaking overhead. I was rushing to make it there to the hawthorns and back home again in time to make it to my doctors apt. As I was re-connecting with the man-made path I stumbled upon a morel mushroom which reminded me of Amara who loved them so. It was a little sad looking but I picked it anyway and carried it with me. The only morels I’ve found since their passing I have gifted to them as little treats on my altar. I get there eventually to the trees and more quickly than I want to I feed them the hawthorn tincture water, leave them the morel mushroom, some peanuts for the birds and a stone. As I’m speed walking home now this dragonfly speeds alongside me and stops as I slow down, lands and clings to my flowery pant leg, just staring straight at me, staying with me for minutes which feels like a lot longer. I can’t tell you how many times I feel like Amara is trading places with various little winged ones since they've passed. I wonder at the idea of spirits becoming consciousness after they die and becoming a part of everything. Maybe a part of Amara is legitimately in that dragonfly and can influence nature in some meaningful, synchronistic, magical way. Or maybe the dragonfly just mistook my flowery pants for a real plant. Who knows. The dragonfly as a symbol though is meaningful to me because when Amara was first sick I had a lot of really bad anticipation anxiety. Namely of them dying but I was also just viscerally letting the reality of death and dying in general come into my being in a way I had never really experienced before and it was flooding me with cortisol. Meanwhile I was also spinning out about the mysterious full body pain I was in. I later realized in reflection that it wasn't really death I was afraid of but rather loss and the sensation of fear itself that was visiting me. It was like this tap of stress hormones turned on in me and no matter what i did, I just couldn't turn it off. A mysterious thing that still plagues me sometimes. When this fear was erupting alongside the onset of fibro I was visiting my family in New Brunswick and I remember having a conversation with my dad and my step mom one night about death, melting down about my fears and the emotional pain I was in about Amara’s suffering. My step mom had lost a close friend not that long before this to cancer, she was empathizing with me in a helpful way and at one point she disappeared into her sewing room and came back with a pendent of a dragonfly. They proceeded to tell me about my uncle Terry’s experience after his wife had died. I guess he was mowing the lawn, just this mundane activity and out of nowhere he was all of a sudden surrounded by a swarm of dragonflies and he just felt so strongly that it was his wife Sue visiting him, assuring him she was alright. This comforted me and so did the pendant my step mom gave me which served as a tangible reminder to me that life continues on after death. That Amara, as their name denotes, would never really die. When Amara’s burial was coming up a year or so later and I knew that I couldn’t make it there, I sent that dragon fly pendant to be buried with them, along with some wild roses I had picked for them (which they had introduced me to) and these stories about my uncle and the dragonflies. In truth the things I sent didn’t arrive in time for the burial but a loved one of Amara's brought these things and left them at the burial site for me. Who knows if Amara influenced that dragonfly in some way to land on me, maybe it was just coincidence or maybe it was a little magical and meaningful, it definitely felt that way. Whether we make meaning out of things or things are simply meaningful, it doesn’t really matter to me. I appreciate the mystery, the meaningfulness of life wherever that comes from, the not really knowing and the feeling it evokes anyway. The story of the dragonfly "Once, in a little pond, in the muddy water under the lily pads, there lived a little water beetle in a community of water beetles. They lived a simple and comfortable life in the pond. Once in a while, sadness would come to the community when one of their fellow beetles would climb the stem of a lily pad and would never be seen again. They knew when this happened; their friend was dead, gone forever. Then, one day, one little water beetle felt an irresistible urge to climb up that stem. However, he was determined that he would not leave forever. He would come back and tell his friends what he had found at the top. When he reached the top and climbed out of the water onto the surface of the lily pad, he was so tired, and the sun felt so warm, that he decided he must take a nap. As he slept, his body changed and when he woke up, he had turned into a beautiful blue-tailed dragonfly with broad wings and a slender body designed for flying. So, fly he did! And, as he soared he saw the beauty of a whole new world and a far superior way of life to what he had never known existed. Then he remembered his beetle friends and how they were thinking by now he was dead. He wanted to go back to tell them, and explain to them that he was now more alive than he had ever been before. His life had been fulfilled rather than ended. But, his new body would not go down into the water. He could not get back to tell his friends the good news. Then he understood that their time would come, when they, too, would know what he now knew. So, he raised his wings and flew off into his joyous new life". ~Author Unknown.

May 16th, 2025 Hawthorn Journal I’m back, biking down Woolner Trail again to visit the trees. I’m starting to see them more like I see people. Not in terms of anthropomorphizing but in terms of inherent value. Not value according to capitalism but value according to life, the sanctity of life and not interfering with it. I arrive at the benches where I usually lock up my bike but I’m overcome with grief. Grief about Palestine and the insane dehumanization that’s still unfolding there and feeling powerless about it, grief about Amara’s dreams unfulfilled, grief about not feeling “rooted” where I am, like the trees are. I re-call Amara (the one who is inspiring this journey, who I hope is also on some level joining me) before they got sick sharing with me that when they were looking for land/the right place to create a healing community, they arrived to this place they were inquiring about and just started bawling uncontrollably. This is why they called it the crying place. They just knew in their heart that it was the right place. There’s maybe more to the story but this is what I remember. I reflect on that a lot sometimes and how maybe some part of them or the land even had a sense of the challenges ahead. I also re-call talking to Amara (in the throws of living & dying with cancer) about place and belonging and how rupture from our roots can create sickness and returning to our place of birth or homeland can bring us deep healing. In that conversation they were encouraging me to watch the babushkas of chernobyl to illustrate this point, for anyone else interested. I found it really touching. The story/lived reality of those grannies reached far into me with my own complicated relationship to land and belonging which I know pales in comparison to the horrific experiences unfolding in the world rn and that have transpired through time immemorial. Revisiting these trees also brings me back to a time when I was living in Stratford briefly, visiting TJ Dolan Natural Area almost daily. I think this was one of the first times I felt a deeper kinship growing between me and the trees. The forest there became like a close friend to me when I wasn’t allowed to be in close contact with humans. I gravitated to the river instead, to the apple trees, the poplars, willows, maples, to the evergreens and the forget me nots that were blooming there right around the same time of year during the first wave of covid. Those flowers are forever etched into my heart now, as I was preparing to leave everything behind and return to my place of birth. It was a really strange, beautiful & challenging time without a solid place of my own to land for a stretch and it was also the most healing, full of lots of free time & CERB money. I felt held and steeped in flow and surrender. Also in only a few short months (given the time I needed to decompress) all of my food allergies went away. I had been battling a leaky gut and full body eczema for almost a decade exasperated by eggs & dairy and returning to my roots, spending time with family and feeling supported was apparently all I needed to heal at the time. This was part of the conversation with Amara which led to a viewing of the babushkas of chernobyl which I also regret bringing up in hindsight given the state they were in. It pains me to think of what Amara may have needed that we collectively didn’t show up with, that I wasn't able to show up for given the state I was in. I have deep regret about this and would do so many things differently now given the opportunity if I could. The finality of death really stings in this way, how do you do deep repair work with someone you love who is dead. Perhaps through prayers, spells, letters, therapy, enlisting a medium etc. there are ways. I'm still so grateful for that healing time in my own story, however short lived. In reality it was the silver lining to what was only the beginning of a lot of even more challenging times.. Choosing the path I did at the time offered me many corrective experiences though. I remember seeing 7 eagles along my journeys East, each time thinking they were good omens that I was on the right path and they were. They were signs that I was spending a lot more time in nature noticing and being present instead of treating my body like a machine as we are so often expected to do in our culture. I noticed on my bike ride down here and also last night driving home with my partner, watching the world go by that the grass is exceptionally green lately. Maybe it's the rain or maybe it's that I'm feeling more embodied lately, everything pops. I’m also reminded of this expansive state he spoke of later that evening that I notice myself tapping into now sitting here grounded to the earth post-cry, feeling like my body is merely an extension of my surroundings, like my feet are my feet but they’re not that separate from the ground. As I’m feeling this a pink energy emanates from my body, engulfs me somewhat. It comes and goes and then leaves and it’s nothing new to me. I think it’s funny when people think their energy is just one colour when it’s actually quite dynamic for everyone in reality on the daily. I’m grateful for this involuntary skill that I have somehow honed which reminds me I’m a human with a spirit that never dies. Same as the spirit that I see in the grass, in the water and rocks, through the streets, in my food & drinks, everywhere. Everything is alive and vibrant and so much more so in this season I find. It’s hard to tell sometimes where the energy is actually coming from, who it belongs to, it’s so interconnected with everything. You can kind of tell by proximity, but not always. It moves sometimes and follows its own path, expands and contracts, comes in and out of existence like my breath or maybe just my awareness, I don’t know exactly. Where does it come from and where does it go? I don’t often draw conclusions, I just notice what’s happening. That’s enough for me, not everything has to be monetized and or completely dissected in a linear, scientific way. It’s ok for there to be some mystery. It’s relieving actually, to not have to know everything. I am no god. Animism has always been undeniable to me though. I’m rooted in these relationships, to spirit and nature. We all are. Whether we are aware of it or not. Sometimes my ego wants to claim them (the energies) as my own, but they are not mine, these energies exist with or without me, maybe as I do, fleeting and impermanent. AND I still exist even if I am not seen by everyone, even if I shape-shift through lifetimes. So too do the energies I believe. Today I’m bringing with me some prayers and apologies to the hawthorns. One thing I’ve learned that I’ll hold onto about them is that they are known as sacred portals to the otherworld, to the faeries. They are also associated with and often appear on land shared with sacred springs and wells and are thought to be their guardians. And, we should not mess with them (the hawthorns) or the faeries might seek revenge on their behalf. Much misfortune has apparently befallen those who betray, violate or cut them down etc. So far, the faeries haven't messed with me for taking a few thorns home to place on my altar... Though I’m not sure I believe in fairies tbh but I do believe in the power of associations and the meaning we collectively attribute to these beings. I also hold space for the possibility of things I don’t understand being true even if I’ve never come across them myself. Who knows, I don't know them, but maybe other people sincerely do. There is also the belief that the Hawthorns can clear negative energy and through time have been planted near places where injury or death has occurred to help the land heal from the energetic imprint left behind. People also bring them the waters they’ve bathed the sick and dead with as prayer for their beloveds and to clear the energy. So today, I bring them my prayers for Amara’s continued healing on the other side, my apologies for not being there for them in their dying and prayers also for my own healing which sometimes in a way feels inseparable from theirs. I reflect on the fact that many of the conditions we develop are inherited, ancestral patterns that take time, maybe lifetimes to manifest and may take time, maybe lifetimes too to heal & transform and also, do they really belong to us as individuals I wonder. Just questions and curiosities with no solid conclusions yet. But who’s to say that the healing and transformation we need is or should be individual. The following are sentiments that stick with me witnessing Amara die, experiencing my own somatic "failings" and how I've re-framed my experience after reading and feeling mirrored by authors like Johanna Hedva ("How to tell when we will die") and Sophie Strand ("The body is a doorway"). I am left wondering and questioning, are these experiences of illness our failings or are they our bodies wise attempts to respond to a failing culture in protest and with hopes of course correcting. I stand with the latter myself. "The way out" by Alan Gordon also finds a way into my heart and logical brain when it comes to the power I do have to shift things when it comes to fibro specifically but the book lacks a critical lens to me on ableism and the social constructs that breed illness in the first place. I will not throw the baby out with the bath water however when it comes to the individual power I do have to shift things for myself amidst the many factors of influence remaining outside of my control. Neither the internal or external factors should be denied in my opinion. Both matter tremendously. At heart and in reality, I think our disorders and dis-eases are deeply cultural, contextual and inseparable from the social constructs and histories we are embedded in, that we come from. Much like my legs are grounded by gravity and my lungs are filled with air by the trees. Like Thich Nhat Hanh often explains when it comes to inter-being, the flowers don’t exist independently from the water, sun or dirt etc. In his words "Interbeing is the understanding that nothing exists separately from anything else. We are all interconnected. By taking care of another person, you take care of yourself. By taking care of yourself, you take care of the other person". Not that I have excelled at this through life but I aim to get better at it with time. Sophie Strand also shares a similar sentiment reflecting on illness and it's connection to care for & connection to the land, Sophie concludes poetically in a recent post that deeply resonated with me " All of us, whether we know it or not, are made up of otherness. We are threaded through with unknowability. We are more like constellations, a few stars flung against empty space, pretending at a shape." In her book "The body is a doorway" she breaks this concept down more succinctly & specifically in relation to illness, explaining that "we treat illness and trauma like an individual failing that can be solved by cleaning up our behaviour, our diets, our spiritual hygiene. But most of us are not polluted with personal shortcoming but rather are caught within webs of systemic oppression and inequities that well preceded our births. Yet once we are sick or traumatized, it becomes our sole responsibility- financially, practically, and emotionally- to solve how our bodies have "kept" the score of a game we never even knew we were playing. The idea of individual responsibility for the aftereffects of systemic dysfunction is called "healthism" and is rampant in everything from new age rhetoric to more standard medical paradigms. Physical and psychological health as atomized within western ideas of individuality become possessions. They are objects to be owned, hoarded, stolen, defended. If you lose them, then it must be your fault. If they become tainted by violence or illness, you must strive to purify them." In reality, like Sophie has shared there are so many conditions contributing to our experiences and yet when we get sick we are often treated as the problem and the one responsible for causing it or fixing it but these experiences are so much bigger than us and the solutions are too. I’m quite confident that the World Health Organization would agree as well when it comes to inequity and the social determinants of health “which include the conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work and age, as well as the broader economic , social and political systems that shape daily life” (quote by AI, do I need to credit a robot idk)... Anyhoo, we are linked to and interwoven with so much more than we can name or see. We have these bodies on loan and yet we are so much more than they can hold. I know Amara’s life and their death continues to have deep impact, it reverberates and touches everyone who’s ever crossed their path in so many ways. In innumerable, immeasurable, unnameable and unknowable ways. So, I bring my prayers for healing inter-generational trauma, for all of those I love, for all Palestinians and Jewish folks, for all of that untraceable and incomprehensible pain that we can’t really know unless we’ve lived it ourselves, unless it’s our own life and legacy. I pray for the healing of all divides and returning to those rooted places and practices, where no one is uprooted or displaced. Where life is sacred and not interfered with. Where we can just be rooted and feel safe, with nothing to prove. I think in the past these prayers were tied to the trees on red ribbons but we are moving away from those times because who knows where the ribbons end up. It's bad for the earth. It’s better I think to have these prayers remain in our hearts, shared with the trees, aired with surrender to some higher power whether to the trees, buddha, christ, mohammed, the rocks and or rivers, whomever. Write them some place on some sticks or stones, let them be felt and wash away eventually. We are always witnessed by some being bigger than us, even if it's "just" nature. Anyhoo, I’ve been up on the hill with the hawthorns for a while now writing and feeling this out and I notice a bird I haven’t yet identified and I’m pretty sure it’s a northern shrike, I’m so amazed. Ugh it fills me with this strange satisfaction I can’t name but it’s there. No no, lol I was wrong, it was someone else, more black from the back with a curious crown kind of like a cardinals, I will try to figure it out later. I turn on my Merlin app to help me investigate. (Future me: maybe a tufted titmouse). Do Northern shrikes even live around here? Questions for my father (who’s a birder), byron or the books. (Future self: uncommon resident here, so if I do ever see one it will be a treat). I'm humbled by my foolish propensity to jump to conclusions, something to watch out for.. Last time I was here I identified with my "seek" app that the dicots are lilacs and they have since bloomed, the scent is intoxicating, I could smell them from the river bank. It’s a gorgeous sunny day now. My sadness has passed and I’m just filled with longing for the steadiness of the trees that they hold and offer so effortlessly. Such teachers to me. I know their consciousness is different than mine but I want to know what it’s like to be a tree, what is their experience of life... I close my eyes and try to drift my sense of self to imagine what it must feel like to be these hawthorns. How can we know?! I think of science/empirical evidence and how there’s no tangible proof for so many lived-experiences that get dismissed even when they are very real. I think of all the things that are true that we can’t prove and how biased the western world is (and the consequences of that) with what gets validated as true above other ways of knowing, of feeling and seeing and sensing. Who's experience is seen, validated and cared about and who's is dismissed and why. .. It’s genuinely difficult to understand experiences other than our own, I know this intimately so I bolster the emotional boundaries I can conjure up when necessary and hold some understanding for the micro aggressions and blatant discrimination I experience at times, knowing that I have also been guilty of it. Sometimes we can’t know until we know in our own way. Karma is a bitch and I am living proof of that in my experience of chronic pain. I spent decades not believing my mother until the stress in my own life (none of which was my fault, or was hers) spilled over into the same affliction. I don’t believe in a god in the anthropomorphic sense but I do know that spirit is as real to me as the grass, as real as the sky and the trees are. I used to feel quite closeted about sharing any of this openly but more and more after so much gas lighting by the medical industrial complex, I refuse to deny my own experience of reality. Take it or leave it, my give-a-shit cells have died. Although clearly I am going on about it for a reason, because I have felt unheard/unseen at times. With the trees, there’s no fixing or solving, no judgments, no undercurrent, nothing to field, just being human. I'm grateful for that. It’s just me and the ground, the birds, the air, the sunlight, the open sky. I say that and I know they’re not solely here for me, they have their own lives to live and I’m just grateful for the companionship, for co-existing in the same place. It’s peaceful. I also hold at the same time and know from experience that nature can be quite violent and unpredictable. The tornadoes, floods, hurricanes and wild fires that have been blazing through the land lately reminds me that just like us these imbalances don’t happen in a vacuum. These violent states are a direct response to the impact we’re having as humans and I want to do better. We need to do better. I want this self study of the trees to become part of that in some way, to honour the earth, to benefit the causes that Amara held so dear to their heart. I want their life & death, these trees, the myths and pagan practices to re-shape me this year. So mote it be. Thank you for listening to my thoughts and feelings, for witnessing my experience and for coming with me on this journey. I really appreciate it.

May 4th, 2025 Hawthorn Journal I stopped by Woolner Trail again today to visit the Hawthorns and was able to identify that they're most likely dotted hawthorns. The thorns I collected were 7 cm long, they have grey twigs and leaves that appear to be the right shape (widest near the top, tapering at the base, toothed with lots of veins etc). I'll have to wait to see the dotted berries appear come fall. Belonging to the Rose family (Rosaceae) hawthorn shares with us sustenance and healing medicines for the heart and for digestion. Known for their beautiful stinky five petalled flowers, long sharp thorns in which the northern shrike impales its prey (to save for a later date or maybe to impress a mate).. and their berries called haws. Loved by many birds (cedar waxwings, fox sparrows, wood ducks, ruffed grouse, robins) rodents, foxes, skunks, grey squirrels, cotton tails, black bears and deer etc. As heart medicine Hawthorn symbolizes courage, cleansing (a tonic) and protection. It demonstrates these attributes by way of its thorns grown in self- defence, by its thickets providing shelter/protection for winged ones and for its ability to improve circulation, heart health and digestion. The haws are high in antioxidants & pectin, making for nice jams (blended with other fruits), wine and pemmican (mixed with dried meat like moose, caribou, deer or beef) a traditional Indigenous food. Also, they make good chutney which I want to experiment with and gift away this fall. As something life long to reflect on and improve upon when I think of hawthorn I think of love and learning to decipher the difference between genuine love and attachment. The flower and the thorn will always be a good reminder to me of how to love without attachment. The kind of love that bears witness, appreciates but doesn’t grasp or strive to possess. The kind of love that doesn’t take things personally. That allows and holds very gently, palm open, free to come and go as one pleases. This monk (Tenzin Palmo Jetsunma) I think describes it best:

April 23rd 2025 On the way to revisit my new sit spot across from the River and beneath the Hawthorn trees (there are actually two of them side by side or maybe just one that kind of looks like two) I get off my bike in favour of a slower pace and I notice what else is in bloom: bloodroot (not quite unfurled), ramps & trout lilies (just popping through), star magnolia (in full bloom). This is something Amara and their moon calendars taught me over the years, to slow down and notice the inter-connectivity of what’s in bloom, who is coming out of hibernation, who’s migrating through, what’s simultaneously being celebrated, how does this all connect to my own mood, the current moon phase (last quarter rn in Pisces with the back drop of Taurus season beginning) and what’s passing through us all. I think of the flu that’s hit both my own house and the kids I also tend to as “work” these days (which I prefer to call just life) and how my sister said this morning this seems to always be the case around this time of year right after so many easter dinners have been consumed... kinda gross and good to remember and reminds me this is part of why I’m diving into the tree lore, because of all it will lead me to, namely my pagan roots as I don’t really celebrate the Christian holidays except for in a very light hearted consumerist way which feels completely devoid of meaning. Anyhow this is just the lead up to that period of time the Celts dedicated to the Hawthorn. Philip Carr-Gomm describes this journey of re-connecting to our pagan roots for those of us who identify that way, as "shedding or attempting to shed the collective trance of consumerism following a movement towards the real, the now, this is the redemption of our repressed, collective, pre-Christian history". He goes on to say in this course I'm taking "Ancestral Lore and Nature Spirituality; Modern Druidry and the ancestral traditions of the British Isles, Ireland, and Brittany" that many of the problems we face in this day and age "stem from a sense of alienation, a sense of separation from nature and from our fellow humanity. And as a result, we’re capable of causing tremendous suffering both to each other and to the planet. So what is the cure? Well, I think many of us sense that the cure is to return, to follow that ancestral line, as it were, back to a spirituality that can feed us in our core so that we no longer feel alone, so that we feel connected with the past, connected with the future as well. The future of humanity and the future generations at one with the earth and her creatures." This really resonates with me personally, I feel this disconnection and I know it is part of a long lineage of suffering and causing others to suffer, especially when it comes to colonialism and how that is alive and well today. So, I am priming myself for how to think and feel my way through studying these trees as I would imagine my ancestors did. I think of how interconnected we are through breath, how dependent we are on each other to live, how we kind of use them in so many ways now (for housing, for paper, for "things"). How we don't honour them as we should. I am reminded of the story of Sovereignty and how to be in right relation with these beings. Like how do they want to live their own lives?! I say this as a hypocrite, as someone who might have a hard time giving up books, bonfires and t.p. But I wonder how I can start to at least honour them more by consuming them less, by knowing their names and sitting quietly under them contemplating this more and more over time. In the myth of Sovereignty, Sharon Blackie shares with us as an analogy (albeit one steeped in a binary) of a sacred marriage between the feminine and masculine principle related to reverence for the land, she explains that: "women want Sovereignty- to take up their ancient role of the moral and spiritual authority of the land. In our native myths and stories, Sovereignty represents the creative, regenerative, life-giving feminine principle, when it is balanced by the good masculine- when the goddess of the land enters into a sacred marriage with the true king of the people- then the land is fertile and the people safe from harm. In this story, then, Gawain, representing the masculine principle, doesn't need to resort to domination and control over the woman who represents the land. He has compassion, courtesy and honour enough to allow Lady Ragnelle to make her own choices and follow her own path; he feels no need to impose his choices upon her. The story shows the feminine principle of Sovereignty being honoured; it also shows the 'good masculine' in practice. The 'good masculine' is essential to the functioning of a healthy, balanced world. In decrying the repression of the feminine in our culture, it can be all too easy not only to blame men for the mess the world is in, but to set ourselves against them. Men- our brothers, fathers, lovers, friends- are not always the enemy and to think of them as such would be like placing ourselves against half of nature, half of our own souls. Men too have cultural expectations foisted upon them, and, increasingly, they are speaking up about all of the ways in which Western rationalism has distorted their image of themselves." She goes on to share a bit about the grief of men and how intense the suicide rates are, perhaps a refusal to live up to the ideal standards society holds them to. As much as I would prefer that Sharon not draw such rigid lines between the masculine and feminine qualities of humans or nature, I also see myself in the ways she describes the feminine being out of balance as well as the masculine qualities gone awry with some folks in my life (of all gender expressions). Sharon does speak a bit to breaking down the binary and seeing things as more complex than that but I long to see old myths that do as well and perhaps this can be a quest on my journey this year, to find those myths or to create them myself for future generations. Back to the Hawthorns, I notice they have fresh green buds forming now. The birds I hear surrounding us today are: chickadees, grackles, a red bellied woodpecker, robins, blue jays, killdeer, an osprey, song sparrows, red wing black birds, a hermit thrush and I also see a few turkey vultures in flight hanging over the river prob looking for dead things which I am sure there is more of in plain sight with all the snow melting. In fact, there is no snow left here, but still some a few hours north of us. I also notice the plants growing beneath and around the hawthorns: bedstraw, goldenrods (dead ones), some kind of dicot I can’t quite identify. There are a few buckthorns and oak trees close by. The sun is warming the evergreens and a lovely scent hits me and fills me with gratitude for being here with this slow pace and feeling in good company with everything around me. I leave some peanuts behind for the chickadees in hopes they’ll remember me, I flick a tiny spider off my arm and pack up after quickly searching myself for ticks. One almost hitched a ride home with me last time...

Hawthorn. Miinensagaawanzh. Huathe. Les Aubépines.

December 1st, 2024 Leading up to the Sag new moon (on Sunday) I want you to think about what’s true, meaning in accordance with what’s factual, what’s based in reality “the world or the state of things as they actually are as opposed to an idealistic or notional idea of them”. There is power and freedom in separating fact from fiction, in separating what happens from what and how we think and feel about it, from how we interpret things. When we look at things as they factually are from this larger perspective we align ourselves more accurately with the truth of who we really are- we become more like open sky, expansive ocean, beautiful rolling hills that stretch on forever rather than as separate selves stuck in this or that notion. The Sag archetype knows how to occupy this open space, this sense of freedom, this expansiveness of self. We can pay homage to this moon through watering the seeds of truth in ourselves, by stepping out of our comfort zones and our subjective experiences. We can search beyond ourselves for deeper truth, for greater meaning and soul satisfying goals to achieve. It’s worth noting that this moon also has some tension and bound up in that tension is a lot of energy we can put to good use with Saturn as our guide. Saturn teaches us how to hold all of this fire responsibly, with wisdom and maturity. Not to dampen it but to sustain it, to contain it and to keep it going through the winter months. How do we tend to our fires, to our inspiration, to our creative juices, to our muses, to our joy? Sag season is not about order and structure as Saturn tends to be. Sag season brings us into chaos, into change and instability, into mutable energy. We’re entering that season now where the darkness begins to take over the light and It’s important to honour that, to adapt and to allow change to happen. It’s happening anyway. But Saturn in Pisces is also asking us to find some structure in that somehow. With mercury also retrograde in Sag we’re reviewing some things, redoing some things maybe, integrating s l o w l y. I have noticed over the years when we slow down intentionally less seems to go awry.

November 15th, 2024 Change and stability don’t always go hand in hand, but in today’s weather perhaps they can. With a Taurus Moon we want comfort and stability but with Uranus by her side there’s also something changing, some disruption we might feel, some un-ease or maybe the seeds of a revolution being planted. Some part of us can feel it, taste it, touch it, smell it in the air. My hope is this moon signals a change for something beneficial, to break up the stagnancy that sometimes accompanies what’s solid, stubborn and stuck in its ways. Today is Venus’ day. Love, beauty and connection are sentiments worth wrapping ourselves in, in all of the ways we can. We need the collective protection, nourishment and strength of power to create new systems of change, of care and abundance in our communities. The kind of abundance that grows from trees and yet is not made into money. With this moon we can stand under her like she’s pouring down the milk we need, to carry us forward through all of these changes, the good, the bad and the horrific ugly ones that don’t seem to be changing. With Pluto moving into Aquarius soon, on November 19th (just for the next 20 year or so!), there’s a lot of big movement afoot. Changes are coming, ones we can’t see clearly yeT but they are there and they will begin to take root, to search upward for the light and someday bear fruit. .