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." 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 with me here 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, 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 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 (and their continuation beyond 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) 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. 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 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. 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. .

Nov 1st 2024 When we move into the darkness, we don’t always know what we’ll encounter there and what we’ll do with it once we know what we’re working with. This Scorpio season and the new moon approaching might teach us how to both entangle and untangle, how to be re-shaped, transformed and made anew by the underworld journeys that we take even if we struggle sometimes to find trust or to have faith in the process. In the rawness of being in contact with our own inner landscapes, we find deep intimacy with ourselves and each other. Scorpio’s journey here is one of plunging into those depths and finding some gold there. It’s in taking what’s dark, messy, confusing and painful about the world and our own human experience and finding the beauty and meaning in all of it s o m e w h e r e, s o m e h o w. This season is helping us to find those quiet moments of being with the divine in all things, even in those things we find hard to look at ~ in ourselves, in each other and in the world at large, and instead, finding a way be with and hold the complexity, the full catastrophe of it all. We’ll never really see our own blind-spots clearly (I’m learning) if we don’t first allow ourselves to be exposed as the real, tender, fallible, human beings that we actually are. Sometimes the biggest secrets we have are the ones we unknowingly keep from ourselves. Getting to know them is a birthing process, one that can be deeply gutting, healing, transformative, intense and full of hope for what's next.

From as far back as I can remember I have been invested in the creative process because it offers me a safe space to explore my inner world. This is a place where I can contact, feel and express or release anything I need to, whether it’s a joy, a sadness, an anger or something taboo. Anything and everything that seems unacceptable out there in the “real” world, feels invited to the table through the creative process. It’s a place where everything in me can exist, be seen and felt. Putting these feelings, whether they are stagnant, stuck or free-flowing states out into the world in whatever way feels best provides a sacred type of container for feelings and impressions that are hard to articulate otherwise. Impossible to bring to the surface sometimes in a conscious way, they require an unconscious surrendering to the emotional world that lies within us which we are often expected to repress. Art in this way can function as a medium through which we liberate the parts of ourselves we hold prisoner. Because this sense of hiding or severing at one point in time was adaptive and purposeful it's worth honouring this aspect of ourselves as an ally since it has likely helped us to survive. However, without a tangible way to reprocess and transform our unresolved pain we remain cut off from vital life force and a deeper sense of joy, wholeness and peace that could be in our lives otherwise. By willingly moving through our pain with the creative process as our guide we become alchemists capable of transforming the deepest wells of darkness back into light. Art making can be used as a tool to explore and process our dreams, to re-frame our experiences in waking life, creating positive changes in our lives. Through the creative act we can begin to build new neural pathways and narratives about ourselves and the world we find ourselves in. We can connect with our higher selves and over time become more identified with the witness of our experience rather than being hijacked and over-identified with our pain bodies. In this space of curiosity and surrender we can embrace the power we all have to re-write and re-wire things, to start fresh and create a new story, one that is authentically ours rather than handed down through generations of recycled wounding.