Rowan - Mountain Ash Journal February 15th 2026 Well turns out I skipped Elder and I'm onto Rowan now instead. The corresponding dates are a bit fictional anyway. More of a modern revival concept than an ancient one it seems. The Celtic Ogham alphabet is an ancient one but the monthly correspondences I've realized are not so much. Does it matter even? Maybe some updates are needed when it comes to holy books/ancient texts but it's better if there's also consistency among scholars when it comes to those changes which is a bit lacking with the tree months ~ instead there is controversy. I've come across one book recently however - which is a bit of a memoir but also pretty grounded in describing the more traditional Celtic plant lore with scientific knowledge as well as cultural/symbolic/spiritual concepts written by someone who is actually Irish with connection to the land so it feels more valid to me. The book is called: to speak for the trees by Diana Beresford-Kroeger. According to her, Celtic folks believed that the faeries of Ireland were obsessed with Rowan berries often getting drunk on them and playing tricks on humans after dusk. Amulets were also crafted then from Rowan bark (or wood/twigs) as protection against evil and Rowan was somehow also used as a tool in exorcisms- to release spirits they say- what kind of spirits I wonder? I'm assuming evil because of the amulets... hmmmm Possession has always been an interesting and scary topic to me as well as the fear and power in the accusations made surrounding these invisible forces, for example in the case of the witch craze where 100 000 women were killed (also anyone who didn't fit the norm at the time, including children and some men). I went to this work shop on tending grief recently and this quote was shared that "all war is unmetabolized grief" and I think this is so true. When we notice ourselves taking sides, when we notice fear turning into division and power-over strategies, instead of trying to find common ground and understanding, this is when evil proliferates in my opinion. And what is evil exactly? In a philosophy class I took years ago at King's College-Western University it was theorized that evil is simply the lack of good. A bruise on an apple for example could be an "evil". Similarly, darkness was said to only exist due to the lack of light. It doesn't exist independent of light, it is intrinsically linked to the light through relationship. So in other words, evil only exists in relationship with or in contrast to all that is good in the world. I think this is true energetically as well. An energy block is not a separate entity that literally blocks energy but rather the lack of vibrancy. It is the dimming of our own light (life force) in a spiritual sense. "Evil" is merely a defect, one which can often be restored (but not always). We can turn the light on, we can turn up the love, we can share instead of hoard, we can work through conflict, we can repair. These qualities inter-are, we can't really have a world that is purely good or evil while continuing to exist in this dimension I don't think. There is a continuous re-balancing at play in the universe between opposite forces, like night and day. The sun cannot stay in one place - it is in constant motion, it rises and sets, just like the moon waxes and wanes and maybe good and "evil" do as well in some sense?! In all cases of opposition, it's more of a spectrum really.. a gradual transformation, always in the process of mutual consumption ( a TCM term). Life is always moving towards death (slowly but surely) and death is always moving towards life (I believe) which is easier to see with plant life when we contemplate the seasons. A plant slowly grows until it blossoms and decomposes and then in that rich and fertile ground, a seedling forms and bam, spring arrives and on and on. In Buddhist terms this awareness of constant transformation is known as the "great death". It's this profound moment of realization that there is no finite birth or death when it comes to consciousness but rather there is only the present moment we're in along that continuum. This is why I say happy-never-ending-moment birthday to folks for the past twenty years or so. There is something beautiful, yet also exhausting about the reality of ever-lasting life. Like our breath while in bodies, it just keeps on going with or without our conscious attention. Another line I heard recently that really stuck with me, a line shared in a workshop on power-struggles in relationship which I believe can be applied more broadly to the world at large and to this over arching relationship between opposites, it goes: "Relationship is a power struggle and the moment one of you wins, the relationship is over". A line to sit with for some time and let percolate. Being someone seasoned to the energetic world (involuntarily-meaning I don't have much control of the skillset), I've been privy to seeing energy for the last 25 years or so and I've never really seen a "bad" energy per say. I have seen people light up fully red, which is maybe just a clear visual representation of what can be clearly felt or sensed anyway which doesn't really scare me anymore than the anger itself does, it's just added information. I've never seen black or grey or anything scary really. I've also never seen silver or gold or white or brown... interestingly. I have however, felt pretty scared of ghosts at times. There is always this question - because I can’t see them, is it really a ghost I’m scared of that’s really out there or is it similar to my fear of death that I’ve spoken of before. Is it actually the fear itself arising in me that confuses me/frightens me, that I mistakenly believe is an external entity? Can it be like a projection which lends to this idea of giving my power away? I don’t know. To me, either way ~ if there are in fact ghosts, I'd bet they are just disembodied spirits that don't want to or can't for some reason move on to what I call the "otherworld" (the celtic version of heaven) which to me is a state of consciousness we move into post death which I imagine is a place of oneness where our souls persist. Maybe some disembodied souls are stuck here because they just can’t reach that place in themselves, like a lot of people can’t while they’re still alive... maybe they’ve never known love or this feeling of oneness, maybe they’re pissed off and attached to things or people here, maybe they’re malevolent like a lot of people here can be too. This is truly the main selfish reason why I oppose the death penalty (whatever the crime). I want to know where those people are, I want to be able to see them and to know that they’re not haunting me. AND I also want them to have the opportunity to change and grow, to transform. No one in my opinion is purely evil, but actions can be and all behaviour is subject to change on the regular. As we learn better ways of coping with our own pain and suffering, we learn to bring less suffering into the lives of others. That saying “hurt people, hurt people" is so true. I’ve been there in my own ways, I’ve done that. Haven’t we all. I can only really understand more than this through dreams I've had which felt more like visits with Amara (a dead friend) and also dream like spaces I sometimes accidentally slip into when I'm in deeply meditative states. Why are these places any less real than the material plane, I don't know. It's weird to me that we give so much more attention and credence to our waking state, maybe because it's linear and more consistent than our dream life- but truly we spend almost as much time there which is pretty wild.. I wonder sometimes if we lived in a more matriarchal world instead of patriarchal would we dismiss our dream states as much, would we pay attention to them more? to me our dream states are full of so much gold, so much unconscious material ripe for reckoning with and alchemizing into good growth. Courting our dreams is a rich and rewarding process we've long neglected (culturally speaking) in my books. For some of us though, our dream life is simply not something we have the privilege of ignoring or forgetting about. Back to the topic of dark forces, in the past and even on occasion now when I get into a bad head space, especially if my sleep becomes disturbed - I'll start having episodes of sleep paralysis which genuinely in my youth felt pretty other-worldly in a dark way and I've had several psychics confirm this even without having shared my fears with them. Some call them demons, entities, aliens, inter-dimensional beings, the loveless etc.... whatever you call them, they are frightening experiences and talking about them takes some power out of that fear. Call them what you will, it's hard to know when you can't see them. Although, I could see them in "hypnogogic" or 'hypnopompic" states. These are the liminal spaces we enter into upon falling asleep and or waking up. So technically when I'm in a sleep paralysis episode, I'm not hallucinating per say, unless dream states in general are considered hallucinations in which case, we all hallucinate every night. But anyway, in those spaces there were often menacing beings present. The scientific explanation is much more palatable though, which I prefer to rest in. Truly as I have aged and had decades worth of experiences with sleep paralysis - my lived experience gives way more credence to the scientific explanation rather than spiritual notions of dark forces. I now choose to believe that it’s truly just the fear itself that’s scary which becomes an external projection due to the altered state of consciousness. According to science some people (like me) wake up during the REM state when our bodies are naturally paralyzed as a self protective measure so we don't for example murder someone when we're dreaming or get out of bed and walk into traffic etc. Many things can disturb our sleep patterns like strong emotions, scary dream content, shift work and even just napping or being out of context. So what happens with sleep paralysis is you wake up but you are still paralyzed and its rather terrifying. Our amygdalas are naturally highly activated in an REM state - so, in this mode, you're completely conscious but you're in this weird limbo like space- a semi altered state of consciousness (hypnogogic/hypnopompic they call it) but you're lucid & your real surroundings are there: you can see your bed, your body, the room you're in but the amygdala activation creates a terrifying hallucination of some kind: a demon, an intense sense of pressure on your chest, something horrible happening to you and you can't move except maybe your pinky finger for a millisecond but it's an exhausting attempt. It's genuinely a very real Harry Potter moment. You know that scene with a bunch of Hogwarts students facing this mirror and a boggart, (meaning, an amortal, shape-shifting non-being) pops out of the mirror and instantly transforms into the students worst fear and they have to use the Riddikulus spell to transform it into something funny so it loses it's power/hold over them. Sleep paralysis is a real life example of pretty much this exact thing. The spell however is simply your state of mind which is a little bit harder to work with than a magical wand is. It’s fascinating to me that people over centuries all describe similar experiences, so to anyone who's lived it - the likelihood of dark forces kinda feels plausible.... Over the years thankfully though I've learned to be more identified with the witness of my experience in these states and it's been really transformational. If in the middle of the scary hallucination, you focus instead on your breath and just accept whatever is happening is simply out of your hands and the only thing you have any control over is your own way of relating to it, your own state of mind - you can actually completely transform the whole experience. Which is such a good life lesson isn’t it? Viktor Frankl once said "Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedom's- to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way." I have felt this sentiment so deeply over the past 5 years (and I haven't always chosen wisely in retrospect) but truly, how much of what goes on around us is really in our control? So much insanity is unfolding in the world at the moment and if I’m being honest a lot of those evils (like war, genocide, white supremacy, ice violence, transphobia, racism, all isms etc) are of course much scarier and much more consequential than my sleep paralysis states. Mindfulness for me though is a powerful tool always at our disposal for maintaining peace of mind even with the horrors of the world that continue to unfold despite our best attempts to do something about it. Back then, once I got the hang of the mindfulness thing the demonic hallucinations would cease to be and when they did, I would sink back into sleep but maintain consciousness and that's when things got really interesting because lucid dreaming became possible and this allowed me to do what I love to do most in dream states- to fly. Sometimes this was still dream like (other times it would get a little out of hand like roofs caving in when lucid but still afraid) . When I calmed down though and tapped into joy, I could fly and it truly felt so euphoric. I'd fly over beautiful water-scapes, fall infused tree tops from familiar places I had been in real life (like Cape Enrage in NB). I even crafted a piece of art about it called "Flying Dream" which you can see under the "prints" tab. In that dream I felt like I was just a spirit, flying with two other beings who felt like angels to me, namely because they were accompanied by the most beautiful music. Those lucid dreams haunted me in the best ways. I almost miss sleep paralysis now for the magic that ensued as a silver lining to decades worth of wrestling with what felt like dark forces, but was probably or hopefully just my own fear. My own i nner demons you could say. Anyway, I’m learning so much more about Rowans (Mountain Ash) behind the scenes but this is the rabbit hole I’ve stumbled into tonight contemplating things like amulets that protect us from evil forces and if there’s any real credence to that kinda thing... I’m pretty doubtful myself- though placebo is very real I suppose when it comes to quelling fear. I think from this point on in my tree studies however, I will maybe mention these superstitions as anecdotal because to me they are more so fear mongering and truly fear is a state of being there is enough of in the world. I don't want to perpetuate alarm when it's something in me and in others that's been dialed up lately. If anything I want to poke holes in fear, dress it up in funny costumes, I want to transform and debunk it in myself and in others too when I can. An intention to keep moving towards anyway.. So, instead of crediting rowan amulets as real protection, I thought I’d offer something more tangible, something that feels more powerful to me- which is our own state of mind- when it comes to darkness. Maybe I'll make a cross or an amulet out of rowan twigs but when I hold it I'll think of that Viktor Frankl quote, as a tangible reminder that I get to choose my own way of relating to evil in this world. So much about the way we relate to things can really change our experience for the better even while still not having much control over dark forces. Which there is plenty of in plain sight, we don't have to conjure up ghosts or goblins, just turn on the news.. To quote the intelligence of this indigo quantum biofeedback system my ex operates to help people heal "trust in the power of your own light as natural containment and protection against penetrating energies". This is where the real magic lies in my opinion. This is not to say that we shouldn't still try to change things when we can, of course we should always, make those efforts, always and that doesn't have to look the same from person to person. We all have a role in the revolution. Also, somewhat related to the topic at hand, I keep this poster by Eric Ruin entitled “meanwhile” in my apartment and it reminds me of everything that’s still blooming here on Earth among the ruins. I'll also end this meandering with a poem that crossed my path recently. I've been spreading the sentiment around like little seeds here and there when I can.. a little reminder to hold both what's heavy and light in this world as we journey onward through the complexity. "The world is both burning and blooming You get the bad news and the sunrise in the same day You cry over the headlines, then you laugh at a baby wearing a hat shaped like a bear This is the dual citizenship of being alive Rage and reverence Grief and grace You are allowed to feel both. You are allowed to scream and still notice how good the soup is. You don't have to choose let it all in." ~ Karen Salmansohn

Saturday Jan 3rd, 2026 Full Moon in Cancer 5:03 am EST Capricorn, the sign always in opposition to a full moon in Cancer carries themes of stability, hard work, security and foundation. Capricorn is a sign that's in it for the long-haul - maybe more in terms of the tangible earthly reality, though Capricorn is also a sign of liminality . This is because - with Saturn as it's ruler it is a sign that can signify death, limits and endings etc. So Capricorn has this quality of being neither here nor there. . Symbollized by the sea-goat, It is of the land but it is also of the sea. It is in-between . It has this quality of being grounded yet also mystical and other-worldly. In death (from my vantage point) there is also ever-lasting life. Yes, there is the solidity of separation from our bodies but there is also an opening to a greater spiritual reality beyond death, aka the continuation of life. Death comes with loss and separation but it also comes with deeper connection to our truest selves, to our spiritual nature - to that aspect of us that moves through eternity and carries the wisdom of greater consciousness. In Buddhist circles there’s this idea of everyone having been a kind mother to us in a past life. This is more where the notion of Cancer as an archetype comes in. Cancer is about connection, it's about comfort and care, the nourishment of emotional intimacy, between a mother and child, between life and death and creation itself, between friends and even between strangers ~ where there can be familiarity on a soulful level. In buddhism, there is also this idea of the mother luminosity . To understand the mother luminosity, we first have to understand the child luminosity. Pema Chodron describes this relationship in her book "How we live is how we die". In this book, she shares with us that "a traditional way of describing the final dissolution of this life-consciousness dissolving into space- is in terms of the "child luminosity" meeting the "mother luminosity". The child luminosity is the experience of our minds' sky-like nature, with which we can familiarize ourselves through training. In the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, a teacher points out this nature to a student and gives the student instructions on how to cultivate and stabilize the experience of wide open, unfettered mind. These teachings and practices are all designed to develop confidence in the child luminosity. This is how Mingyur Rinpoche had spent many years of his life, and this is why he was so prepared to die. The mother luminosity- also known as the "ground luminosity"- is the ultimate nature of reality, which is no different from our own nature. It's the infinitely open space of awareness that encompasses everything and everyone. It's the basic goodness of the universe, imbued with compassion and wisdom. And what I find so inspiring is that people like you and me can always connect with it. Yet, although it's continually present, it is only fully and completely revealed to us at the end of the dissolution process- and only then if we can recognize it. When we've prepared ourselves well by training in the child luminosity, we will recognize our mother when she shows her face. Then, like a small child who has been with a babysitter all day, we will naturally run to our mother to become reunited with her. As it says in one of the prayers about the bardos that I often recite "May I be liberated, as naturally as a child running to it's mother's lap". The child luminosity can be compared to the space inside a vase and the mother luminosity to the larger space outside. Though the inner and outer spaces are separated by the vase and we can talk about them as if they're two different spaces, their essence is exactly the same. Both are simply space. When the vase breaks - analogous to death - the barrier between the two spaces disappears and they merge into one. When we use the term "luminosity" to talk about our mind's nature, we're not talking about something like ordinary light. Luminosity is the quality of our mind that is aware. It is that which knows. It's how we know what we're seeing and hearing and thinking and feeling, and it's how we have the potential to know our own true nature. Maybe it's more helpful to simply call it "open awareness" something we can practice and connect with. If we familiarize ourselves with the continuous flow of births and deaths, the continuous bardos that make up our life, we can gradually over time come to see that this awareness is the background of every experience. We can get to the point where open awareness accompanies us through every beginning and every ending, through every up and every down. It doesn't appear and disappear. It's there in all the transitions and gaps. It's a permanent feature of our mind's landscape. This may seem far off right now, but it's our birth right, an always beckoning possibility. " ~ Pema Chodron Sometimes this is how I see Cancer and Capricorn interacting, like feminine & masculine, like yin and yang. Both are contained within each other, there’s no way to separate either from the other really. Instead of relating to these archetypes as opposites, as Thich Nhat Hanh would say, rather they inter-are. Like the child and mother luminosity, they are inseparable and intimately tied together. The ocean contains the drop and the drop is still water, even when it dries up, it doesn't cease to exist, it just becomes something else. "The cloud becomes rain, becomes grass, becomes tea." ~ Brother Phap Dung ps. The quote in the image above "the less there was of me, the happier I got". Is a quote by Leonard Cohen which refers to the letting go of ego or small self/personality/our idealized self-image/ambition or any kind of narrative we attribute to our 'self' as a singular entity. This letting go naturally relieves us of a lot of our suffering. Apparently Leonard Cohen said this to illustrate the benefits of many years of meditation. For a stretch of time a few years ago I decided to draw my body everyday representing how I was feeling as someone with an invisible disability. I was wanting to make the invisible visible. Most days this was representative of a lot of pain I was in and words that often reflected what I was carrying. But on this day I felt tapped into something larger than myself- linked to a much more expansive sense of self- to that larger fabric of reality which I know intimately as spirit and this Leonard Cohen quote was lingering with me at the time. It felt like the right image to accompany this little moon update. I was also painting and drawing willows a lot then and learning what their leaves and catkins looked like. Just a little reminder to myself I guess that I am and we all are both spirit and nature. Why was there a baby? I don't know, maybe you can't even really tell - it looks more like empty space - but the intention was there. I think I was grieving the possibility of being a mother in this lifetime which was something that used to feel really important to me, an experience - a role- an initiation I didn't feel like I could live with out. So maybe it's also representative of that part of me that's been letting go and also imagining and being with my grief in a tangible way, holding that sad part of me lovingly like a kind mother would. The experience of motherhood was something I wanted deeply but I recognize in myself now that it doesn't make sense for me personally living with chronic pain in the current zeitgeist we're in. My decision to not have children is full of so much love for those beings that could have been if only I had healed enough in time in the "right" way. Instead I tap into something larger to hold me, this grief and this love which fills me with peace and acceptance. In some buddhist circles, we learn that self-cherishing causes us to suffer (maybe it even causes all of our suffering). This "I" constantly needing so much attention, care, validation, respect etc. It's a stressful way to live. It's a bit of a relief to counter the importance of "I" with the reminder that I'm not that important in reality and instead to sink into how pleasant it is to just be with the mundane, to sink into not needing to be special, to be "somebody", to hit all the marks, or for others to perfectly attune to me/my needs. It's a lot to unlearn and let go of. Maybe an intention best spread out over lifetimes. Not to be solved in any one sitting that's for sure. In other words, I go to sangha because I suffer in these ways. I forget everyone's happiness matters just as much as mine does and that a lot of my struggles are largely due to my own frame of mind. I mistakenly blame others and get caught up in self-cherishing. Maybe this is why buddhism is a practice, something I keep coming back to, time and time again. It's sort of like being on and off the wagon. That's how I relate to it anyway. That's all.

Northern Red Oak November 19th, 2025, I've decided to treat these tree studies kind of like a choose your own adventure book. I might skip ahead a few months and then circle back next year to complete the ones I've skipped, so this writing and perpetual bday calendar creation process could be a few years in the making if I'm being honest with myself. The rabbit holes that I've been going down -here and privately- kind of reminds me of the process of poetic inquiry in a way- which is a creative writing practice where you start with a word or an idea, maybe a sentence, a topic- like the tree- but it's just a starting point or an inspiration that might lead somewhere completely different than where you started and that's ok ~ it's been healing for me just to follow the thread organically, that free-flow of thoughts and feelings. I find things in me find a way of getting ironed out or better organized when I let go of rigid writing structures. It's kind of the medicine I need right now (writing), the kind of healing where you don't have to pay an exorbitant fee or become dependent on anything external- just a prompt that just naturally leads to re-membering your own wisdom, how to heal naturally, to re-frame and transform internally. It feels also like a prolonged meditation of sorts, one that brings me to all sorts of places in myself & helps me look at things in different ways. Today's meandering might be a bit more factual though, exploring more what I'm learning about the tree itself- the northern red oak. The next tree I'll be diving into is Birch (skipping ahead a few months to catch up) after this last post on Oaks. The red oak is also known as Mitigomizh in Anishinaabemowin (Ojibwe), or in English - as Royal Oak, Druid's oak, Druid's tree, grey oak, red oak, or chêne rouge in French etc. The scientific name for the northern red oak is Querus Rubra Linnaeus and apparently Quercus may be derived from two Celtic words: quer meaning beautiful and cuez meaning tree. Rubra on the other hand just translates to red which is a reference actually to the fresh cut wood, rather than the leaves. In spring the leaves are a bit fuzzy and red tinted, they are green in the summer and may turn some version or orange, red or brown through the fall. Red oaks are a deciduous tree from the Beech family (Fagaceaa) ranging from the great lakes to st lawrence and Acadian forest regions. Oaks from my vantage point seem like the tree most revered by celtic folks. Maybe because they are mighty, sturdy trees, the most "exalted tree" they say in some books. This could also be because they have an extensive root-system anchoring deep into the earth, with branches reaching as far and as wide above the ground as the roots tend to grow under ground. They are salt and drought tolerant and grow well in most soils, as well as in part shade or sun. Well they tolerate the shade, they might germinate there but won’t grow very tall and may sadly die as saplings. Their bark, often grey-green has what some refer to as “ski trails”, aka flat and smooth bark down to the base of the tree. Other oaks don’t have this feature apparently so it’s a helpful to note for identification purposes. Oak wood is tough, strong, durable and pretty rot resistant. Their leaves are similar to scarlet oak or black oak and there is variation from leaf to leaf with the red oaks which makes them hard to identify sometimes. Side note: I think the trees I found are in fact northern red oaks but don't quote me on that as the apple trees have taught me I may be wrong and very much welcome anyone pointing that out. This is especially likely due to their ability to hybridize with other red oaks. So, who knows. In the book "trees of the Carolinian forest" northern red oaks are quoted as being potential taxonomic nightmares because they say even "many of the hybrids are fertile and can cross back to the parent species" making them even harder to identify. Northern red oak acorns (the tree's fruit) have flat caps and are pretty large in size. They are rich in tannins compared to white oak acorns so are not enjoyed very much by deer, wild turkeys, rabbits, raccoons or squirrels etc. except maybe when food is scarce. byron and I harvested some this year and it took many soaks over the stove to wash away the tannins/bitterness. He’s planning on turning them into flour to make cookies of course. It takes 2 years for Northern red oaks to produce their acorns. This is why you might see acorns of different sizes on the same tree because they are often in different stages of development. to be continued...

Hawthorns turned to apple trees ~ October 1st - Samhain 2025 So I went to visit the hawthorns the other day, thinking I would harvest some haws for chutney and lo and behold instead of hawthorn berries I found ...apples....lol I was shocked, humbled, embarrassed, but have landed on it being pretty funny and a good reminder to me that you don’t reaaaallllly know someone until you’ve been in relationship with them for 4 years, so they say for people. For trees, at least a year so you can see them through all of their seasons. Another thing I’ve been humbled by this year is that I thought I also knew service berry trees because I have been feasting on their berries for years. Usually with Amara, we would bring huge sheets to lay under various service berry and mulberry trees, Amara would climb up high and shake the trees and tons of berries would fall to the ground - truly a very efficient way to harvest. We made many pies and got kinda (prob legitimately) high on berries (more on that later perhaps) as we filled our containers & bellies. Amara would also use the fabric later to make berry stained patches to sell on etsy. It always amazed me people were all about them, they loved those berry stained patches. But anyway, I realized when my partner pointed out a young service berry tree to me in early spring that I truly had no idea what they looked like the rest of the year. How selfish have I been to only know a tree in a certain season when it has something to offer me, gah, also embarrassing. Another good lesson for me, which reminds me of “good boob, bad boob” theory. Who was it, maybe Melanie Klein who came up with this theory to illustrate a developmental phase we all hopefully move through. The idea is that when we’re babies we think when our mother is feeding us, she's the good mother (the good boob) and when she’s not providing us with what we need, she’s the bad mother (the bad boob). Obviously the theory is related to breast feeding but applies probably also to bottle fed babies and meeting needs in general I would imagine. How vulnerable we are as little ones, completely dependent usually on one or two people to sustain our lives (though hopefully a village). I just think of all the little babies who had to “cry it out” back when that was the norm, so many little ones deprived of the comfort and care of someone familiar close by. I re-member reading that not being met or attuned to in these ways for babies was described by Winnicott (in “good enough mother”) as if they were “going to pieces, falling forever, dying and dying and dying or losing all vestige of hope of the renewal of contacts”. I think for me, watching Amara die from a distance felt a little bit like this. I definitely felt like I was dying too and I think my nervous system mistakenly followed suit, agreeing and perceiving continuous threat when the danger in reality was “just” the psychic pain I was in. Anyway, back to the theory - at some point we realize the good mom/bad mom is actually the same mom whether she’s giving us what we want or not. As adults this can still be a thing sometimes as not all developmental stages are completed (or stable), but we’re more likely to call it demonizing or idealizing. As a coping mechanism in psychology it’s called splitting I believe and the opposite is prob integration. Some years before Amara died in 2018 I shared about “good boob, bad boob” theory with them (around solstice time) and it really helped them understand some tension they were experiencing with one of their close friends. I’ve seen so many people struggle in this way, with demonizing and idealizing. It’s very human and helpful to know about, not to pathologize, but to understand. Makes me think of this buddhist term - maitri - which “starts with cultivating a friendly, non-judgmental attitude towards yourself, acknowledging and embracing your imperfections” (Pema Chodron), which can then be extended to others as well, embracing them in their humanness and wholeness. Some say this "splitting" is a coping mechanism and others say it's just a very common human habit we all fall prey to sometimes. Thinking about all of this I’m also reminded of “tonglen” this practice of using breath and visualization to engage or embrace our suffering. It is kind of like “using what seems like poison as a medicine” (p.c). It goes something like this (in this context): “I breathe in for all of us who get stuck in these ways, who armour ourselves against “others” whom we mistakenly perceive as our enemies, ie bad or wrong or at fault in some way, who we feel hurt by. I breathe in the suffering we experience when we lose sight of each-others humanness, when we judge and condemn others in their wholeness, in their rawness and imperfect ways. I breathe in the pain of getting stuck in an ego or pain story related to some fault we perceive in another. I breathe out knowing there are millions of others getting stuck in the same way, exaggerating the faults of others and seeing only certain aspects of them. I breathe out compassion and understanding for our collective suffering. I breathe out care for the vulnerability and the grief in our emotional pain, for our tender hearts, for the fear and anger that clouds our vision.” This is the medicine and the counter balance to the inner demons of anger, illusion, fear, dishonesty, guilt and shame etc. In buddhism, there is also a practice which feels connected to me to "good boob, bad boob theory", maybe simply because I know about it, because it’s a human tendency we have to exaggerate the positive or negative qualities in others - the idea in buddhism is that when you catch yourself idealizing someone to remind yourself of their bad qualities and when you find yourself focusing on someone’s bad qualities to bring forth their good qualities and generally speaking to redirect attention to focusing on everyone's good qualities as a general resting place (but not to exaggerate them!). I say this and suck at it, I get stuck a lot but I also try to practice this a lot too. To dig a little deeper, there is the reality in life that when we are attached “we see people as a cause of our happiness or of our unhappiness but they are not in reality. It’s not a logical cause and effect. If it was, that person would always increase our joy or conversely our suffering. A person like that doesn’t exist. When we get attached we often develop unrealistic expectations of others and it causes us to suffer. When the person isn’t ‘causing’ our happiness, we get hurt, angry, disappointed and that’s attachment, not love. These delusions (contaminated views) disturb our inner peace. Attachment is a trap that causes a lot of inner pain, but attachment mixed with love is better than no love at all. With attachment there is exaggeration (of good or bad qualities). Whereas when we see others with a mind of love, we truly see others - we connect, we feel healthy and balanced. Anger and attachment on the other hand are obstacles to our love, to our happiness, peace of mind and to our authenticity.” These are notes taken in Sangha with others at AKBC in "guelph/london" ~ words by Kundin. For years before Amara got sick, I employed the aforementioned practice in our dynamic, especially when they were going through hard break ups, I would sometimes even daily or weekly send them a list of all of the good qualities I saw in them that I love(d) and they really appreciated this. It’s hard to remember our own goodness when others are demonizing us (like ex partners can sometimes or anyone really). Amara and I were really close, like sisters or platonic partners at times and we brought up each others wounds as we often do with those we are closest to. So, I also spent periods of time dwelling on their negative qualities as I’m sure they did for me as well. We both had/have our own share of unresolved traumas and that shit can have you steeped in delusion sometimes, stuck in old ego-stories that in hindsight i think we all realize in moments aren’t really true at heart but they feel so all consuming sometimes. I will shamelessly admit, in the trauma of losing someone I loved and knew so well, at times, I got and still get tripped up in these ways, in exaggerating their good or bad qualities and I wonder how many other people do this too in their grieving, especially with complex grief when there are extra-ordinary circumstances. As a coping mechanism the idea is that when you are feeling or expressing bad things about someone (demonizing them) you are protecting the idealized version of that person from your feelings or it's a way of coping with emotional distress, with feelings that are contradictory or too complex/overwhelming. But it keeps us from living in reality with the complexity of how things really are and from being in relationship with the truth in others. As much as living in a black and white world might be easier, in reality everyone is complex, as is this wondrous world we live in - there is so much nuance running through all of it. Culturally speaking, the past 5 years have really shown us how divisive black and white thinking can be. It's never as simple as victim-villain, good or bad, this or that archetype. Also, as Byron Katie would say "reality is much kinder than the stories we tell about it". To be in reality, we have to hold complexity and truly, it was and still is hard for me to hold both the reality that I deeply loved this person, they were wonderful in so many ways, it was a relationship that meant so much to me while also holding my feelings of hurt by their distance/inability/unwillingness to respond in a real way to my bids for connection when they were sick as well as hurt by the blaming, shaming and accusing they dished out along the way in their dying. It brought up a lot of fear and distrust for me and the distance and the fact that it mostly all happened online didn't help. But these are the times we are living in. Ultimately, I know these “good” and “bad” qualities are subjective, interpretive, we all have them and dish them out and maybe it’s all a little fictional, fleeting or just lends to the fact that we are “whole” imperfect beings fumbling our way through this place or merely that we can’t please everyone all of the time (especially when we’re sick and dying). In retrospect, it was quite understandable, their unresponsiveness, but at the time it genuinely felt like nervous system torture to me. It feels very similar to watching a genocide play out in real time on the world stage. But the genocide is way worse, because every single person who is suffering/dying in Palestine is loved by so many. I simply cannot imagine, but I try to. It’s a whole other level of insanity what we're witnessing, and the powerlessness we all feel about it I know pales in comparison to the daily reality people are actually living through. I would imagine it was hard for Amara too to digest both the reality that I loved them so much and yet didn’t come to be with them in their dying when in the end they wanted me to. In hindsight, I'm sure this reality was a lot harder for them to sit with than it was for me and that’s a hard reality for me to sit with now but I do, a lot, as they did a lot, sat with so many uncomfortable truths. As we all do. Which reminds me of another buddhist story I love about this woman and the loss of her son. “Kisa Gautami was a young woman from a wealthy family who was happily married to an important merchant. When her only son was one-year-old, he fell ill and died suddenly. Kisa Gautami was struck with grief, she could not bare the death of her only child. Weeping and groaning, she took her dead baby in her arms and went from house to house begging all the people in the town for news of a way to bring her son back to life. Of course, nobody could help her but Kisa Gautami would not give up. Finally she came across a Buddhist who advised her to go and see the Buddha himself. When she carried the dead child to the Buddha and told him her sad story, he listened with patience and compassion, and then said to her, “Kisa Gautami, there is only one way to solve your problem. Go and find me four or five mustard seeds from any family in which there has never been a death.” Kisa Gautami was filled with hope, and set off straight away to find such a household. But very soon she discovered that every family she visited had experienced the death of one person or another. At last, she understood what the Buddha had wanted her to find out for herself — that suffering is a part of life, and death comes to us all. Once Kisa Guatami accepted the fact that death is inevitable, she could stop her grieving. She took the child’s body away and later returned to the Buddha to become one of his followers." ~ unknown/buddha This topic (the complexity I've named but maybe more precisely my own shame in falling prey to this habit of idealizing/demonizing sometimes) also reminds me of another teaching about the Second Arrow of Self-Blame. "In Buddhist teachings, the Buddha described two arrows. The first arrow is the natural experience that arises in this human animal that we are, for example: fear, aggression, greed, craving. The second arrow is self-aversion for the fact of the first arrow. We have the experience of being nasty, selfish or greedy, and we don’t like ourselves for that. That’s the second arrow. The Buddha says: “The first arrow hurts, why do we shoot the second arrow into us, ourselves?” And yet we do. He goes on to say: “In life, we cannot always control the first arrow; however, the second arrow is our reaction to the first. The second arrow is optional.” The first arrow arises from causes and conditions beyond our control. But when we learn to release the judgment and self-blame that we experience in response to the first arrow, the second arrow becomes completely avoidable. In order to be able to really bring compassion and friendliness to the first arrow, we must first understand that what is happening inside of us is a natural part of our survival conditioning. It is part of being human, and is really not our fault. Now, you might be thinking: Wait a minute! If I believe that it’s not my fault, how will I ever be accountable or responsible?" This is a translation by Tara Brach, she continues to elaborate ... The things that we most hate about ourselves are shaped by innumerable forces: They are conditioned by the primitive brain’s habits of aggression and craving, and amplified by genetic tendencies from past generations and the prevailing stories and mindset of our surrounding culture. We didn’t choose any of this. For instance, research is finding more and more that genetics affect a huge amount of our experience, right down to our “happiness quotient” and whether we are early or late risers. Other conditioning happens over the course of our life-experiences, whether we have been traumatized or abused or, perhaps, have suffered the less quantifiable kinds of deficits in attention, understanding, care and attunement from our care-givers. It’s very interesting to look at how the ways our parents or care-givers treated us are internalized and then that is how we end up treating ourselves." ~Tara Brach (Buddhist Psychologist) Here's a link of her talks for anyone interested:

Written October 13th, 2025 On the precipice of Scorpio season I’m reminded of how much loss can shape us, impact & transform us. When I was 5 and lost the majority of my family to distance moving from the east coast to the great lakes region, one night, maybe the night we arrived there was a terrifying thunderstorm, one I had never seen the likes of before and I remember cuddling up with my mom and sister on my aunts pull out couch comforting myself with this story that as long as I had them I’d be okay. As time went on, they both moved on with their own lives and distance become a familiar theme in my life. That original story was no longer something I could hold onto as something that would anchor me here. In its place there was this realization that we don’t “have” people in our lives, rather we are in relationship with people and those relationships can persist through various distances. But it is a choice, a two way street and not an obligation. Later in life through break ups and feeling triggered around this old feeling of loss and feeling left behind , there was another deeper realization~that adults can’t be abandoned. As David Richo would say, as adults we experience reliability when it is offered to us. We can trust in the safe base of ourselves and in others too when comfort, care and co-regulation is willingly engaged in by people. Truthfully as kids, we should have the right to receive care in these ways but in reality for most folks this hasn't been the case and it isn't really anyone's fault. We just don't have the cultural setup we need to make this possible for most. Raising kids is stressful and systemic injustice/capitalism/colonialism gets in the way of being able to offer kids the kind of care and security they deserve most of the time. People are busy working, parents have their own unresolved traumas and a lot of folks just don't know how to be responsive -attuned & attentive- unconditionally loving parents or support systems. How lucky for those who have the privilege to offer their kids this kind of perfection. What a rare blessing it is. As a young adult and even now It has become my responsibility to re-parent myself and also to understand the very real & valid reasons why people have to leave sometimes. Other people’s needs and choices aren’t usually saying anything personal about me or my worthiness or anyone else's. The universe is truly impersonal and our patterns often have more to say about our own way of categorizing things, our own conditioning and all of that is subject to change. We can change our perspective anytime we want to. Having moved cities again recently and being at a distance from most folks I love, I have to craft new anchors for myself, new stories, ones that hold more weight and continuity in these times. Ones that comfort me and keep me company. Ones like, "nature is always enough" or "growth doesn't happen inside of comfort zones" or "there are good people to connect with everywhere I go". or "it's healing to move, to adapt & transform in new places". or "love is letting go". The one story that has always been true to me though, one that I believe persists through lifetimes that I know can hold us through the dark times we’re collectively moving through and the ones we’re facing ahead of us is that nothing or no one but ourselves can separate us from our own souls. Even in death our connection to spirit remains. Even as a trauma response, the pathway back is ours to claim. Through all the mis-perceptions that weave their way into some “truths” out there in these times, there are other ones seamlessly woven through that are eternal and trust-worthy in deep and profound ways.

July - September 2025 I’m back at it with my tree studies, a little/a lot delayed due to spending some time out East visiting family/friends/community and then moving cities. Technically the period of time for oaks is June 10th to July 7th so here I am, staying true to my snails pace, not racing but just honouring my capacity without deadlines. I notice my attachment to the hawthorns and how it’s hard to start focusing on getting to know this new tree. It’s like flexing a muscle for me, letting go of attachment, opening up to the newness of getting to know a different being. Like any relationship it takes work and I can’t help but carry some emotion about beings I get to know well. When I think of getting to know a new being, whether human or otherwise this counselling teacher comes to mind who shared her orientation to doing the dishes in a class I attended many moons ago. She said it's not that "I have to do the dishes" it's that “I get to do the dishes” and this simple line transformed how I felt about doing the dishes forever. I strangely love doing the dishes now. It was a class on mindfulness and she was sharing with us how much the mundane can become deeply nourishing & rewarding when we are embodied and present in our ways of relating to what we're doing/experiencing. Being alive is a privilege, getting to do the dishes, getting to know these trees. A deep and rewarding privilege that I don't want to take for granted. To explain it a little differently, according to Thich Nhat Hanh "there are two ways to do the dishes. The first is to wash the dishes in order to have clean dishes and the second way is to wash the dishes in order to wash the dishes. If while washing the dishes, we think only of the cup of tea that awaits us, thus hurrying to get the dishes out of the way as if they were a nuisance, then we are not "washing the dishes to wash the dishes." What's more, we are not alive during the time we are washing the dishes. In fact we are completely incapable of realizing the miracle of life while standing at the sink. If we can't wash the dishes, the chances are we won't be able to drink our tea either. While drinking the cup of tea, we will only be thinking of other things, barely aware of the cup in our hands. Thus we are sucked away into the future- and we are incapable of actually living one minute of life." ~TNH So anyway, I’ve picked the northern red oak specifically, one that lives a few feet from the hawthorns along the woolner trail. I noticed this particular tree has some blemishes/a dis-ease of some kind. Perhaps a bug interaction or an affliction of some kind. I don't really know, I’m not an arborist but I'm curious and I can relate. I've had several different viruses the past few months and I've been reflecting on how porous some of us are to everything we come into contact with, how we are all so impacted by other organisms we share our bodies with involuntarily. I've been trying to unpack the stigma and the anxiety that has amplified in me since having lived through a pandemic where I sincerely worried a lot about accidentally killing innocent people by the sharing of these invisible germs. I find this poem really helpful in de-conditioning this fear response around the fact that there is so much we can't control with the things we catch and may pass on to others inadvertently. "Life is porous, the whole world leaks. There’s no such thing as a perfect seal. It all gets out, it all gets in; Everything leaks into every thing. So that every thing can heal. What a terrible, sad neurosis Is the fear of this osmosis. " ~ Michael Leunig Of course, it's not that simple in reality because of capitalism, able-ism and this deep pervasive cultural fear we have of death, disease and suffering. The trees can teach us a lot in the ways they live and break down, sharing their bodies with other organisms without the human way of over-thinking it. Although maybe they take things in and mull them over in their own way, perhaps in ways that are more embodied and less individualistic. Which brings me back to the question: What is the consciousness of a tree? Philosophically, "consciousness refers to the subjective awareness of one's own existence, sensations, thoughts, and surroundings." But what about our own human biases?! What if awareness comes in other forms for trees, not from the brain or nervous system but rather from their spirits? What if science isn't sophisticated enough to measure this field of awareness yet. What if there's a nervous system we can't detect, what if there are other ways of knowing we can't yet imagine. In the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson, a philosopher, abolitionist and transcendentalist "Science does not know it's debt to imagination". Often these concepts begin as ideas in our own minds before we investigate and eventually find the external proof that confirms our imaginings or put another way, our theories. Thomas Nagel, author of "What is it like to be a bat?" insists that "an organism has conscious mental states if and only if there is something that it is like to be that organism- something it is like for the organism." To broaden this scope of studying and wondering about consciousness, in his words "There are facts beyond the reach of human concepts". It's also quite political when you think about it. What are the ramifications of realizing the other than human world is conscious, maybe not just like us but in other meaningful and maybe even more adaptive/evolved ways. Do we deny them the same rights we grant ourselves because we draw a line between what it's like to be "them" and what it's like to be "us". From my vantage point, what happens when we draw this line is that we objectify them as things to use for our purposes above their right to determine the course of their own lives. Given our extreme interdependence with trees, can we really separate ourselves to such a degree? I think it's quite delusional. Though maybe they know better than me. I have to question my own biased lens here, because i think at heart their way in the world is so incredibly evolved that in reality they have far surpassed this ego-y way of thinking and being that we as humans are so stuck in, needing to see ourselves as superior, above, better than- the ones to decide who is conscious and who is not with our own language and limited understandings. All I can do is surrender and live in awe of their ways, trying to be open to learning from their experiences, wondering and imagining what it might be like for them in ways we can't possibly understand because we operate so differently.. I once heard a medium try to describe what it might be like for someone dis-embodied (dead) to try to explain to us mortals what the other-world/after life is like and he likened it to trying to explain to a cockroach what it's like to be human. There just isn't a way to translate our experience to them because we are so different and I would imagine it's similar between humans and trees. We just can't comprehend it. To tie this all together, I just started reading this book by Starhawk “the pagan book of living and dying” which feels timely in a multitude of ways. So much about it feels synchronistic to me right now, which always feels like a little nudge from spirit that I’m on the right path, when something I randomly pick up or feel drawn to brings together so many themes I’ve been mulling over/contending with. Starhawk shares that “To Pagans, as to indigenous cultures world wide, nature is sacred- that is, from nature we draw our inspiration, our teachings, and our deepest sense of connection. Nature has an inherent value that supersedes human convenience of profit, and the balance of nature cannot be ethically sacrificed to human ends. Our Goddesses and Gods are immanent: embodied in the living processes of nature and human culture. Or perhaps we might more accurately say that our deities are themselves embodiments of the complex interrelationships and cycles of the natural world. Today scientists such as James Lovelock propose what they call “the Gaia Hypothesis”- the theory that the earth functions like a living, self-regulating organism. This theory is not news to pagans (or to any other indigenous culture on the planet). We see the earth as a living being, and all of life as interconnected. The networks of microscopic fungi that inhabit the roots of the great redwoods feed those giants. The great forests of the West Coast create the rains that fall inland. The pollution of a small stream in the Rockies eventually flows into the ocean and then circles the globe. To Pagans, all life is imbued with consciousness and all living beings are constantly communicating. The consciousness of a tree may be different from yours or mine; indeed, unless it is a very large and old tree, it may be less the consciousness of “this individual seedling oak” and more the consciousness of “oakness”- a group or collective sense of being. But awareness, presence is still there-in a tree, even in a rock or a mountain. When birds sing and dogs bark, we can hear their communication. Although trees communicate less perceptibly- perhaps chemically or energetically, certainly in ways that are harder to define- we can train our ears to hear and learn ways to speak back. Indeed, Pagans know that conversation is not only possible but necessary and desirable. We see human beings as part of nature, with our own tasks to perform and role to play in the balance. We need to talk to trees for our own health and connection and wellbeing; and trees likewise need and want to talk to us, just as they need to communicate with insects, birds, mycorrhizal fungi, and soil bacteria. Humans are not the pinnacle and ultimate justification for the universe, nor are we doomed to be a blight on the planet, inevitably destroying what we touch. The terrible imbalances of present-day culture are an anomaly in the million-year human heritage, and we have both the capability and the moral responsibility to bring our way of life back into balance. Only by understanding the cycles of birth, growth, death, and rebirth can that balance be achieved. “ ~ Starhawk

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.