some care for you, in the wake of the election


Dear ones -

I just wanted to drop you a note in the wake of the US election and the heightened emotions and stress many people are feeling right now.

A reminder:

What you are feeling is ok, and probably a healthy response. To respond as if under threat when you are under threat is good. It's not sustainable. Nor does it do much to create a new world. But for now, feel the feels. Breathe. Hydrate. Get out into Nature. Gather and grieve together. Touch solid things like trees. Gently pet your own chest in a downward motion.

Another reminder:

How we do the thing is as important as doing the thing. Talking about Love when you're in a place of fear or judgement lands as dissonance, not alignment. The Universe responds to our energy. Dissonance will only beget more confusion. Effective change starts with our own alignment. Are we ready and able to embody the world we're wanting to build? If we want peace and abolition, how are we showing up in our conflicts? If we want compassion, how are we bringing that to bear in as many moments as we can?

A song:

I listened to this one yesterday and it might feel good for you, too, in this moment: Help in Hard Times by Carrie Newcomer.

video preview

Finally, a bonus podcast episode:

Last weekend I made a hat. I took a pile of wool fibers and turned them into something functional and beautiful for my head.

And since then, how wool fulls and felts has been popping to mind as a metaphor for relationship and community building. So, in the wake of the US elections, I felt drawn to share some of these musings and go a little deeper into why I believe these ancestral skills practices, alongside more animist and ancestral wisdom and healing traditions, make for a potent store house for our individual and collective humanity.

So which relationships make up the threads in the fabric of you?

Which do you not feel so full without?

Which frictions and differences are actually serving to make you stronger and more resilient? Which are too much and risk tearing or damaging the cloth of you? Which are not enough to encourage the bonding needed for us all to become?

Where can you turn to be reminded of your humanity? How are you passing humanity down to the ones who will come after?

I’d love to hear.
(And you can always watch the episode on Spotify or YouTube, if you want to see the hat)

Here’s to being stronger together. Here’s to staying human and staying alive.

With love,

Kate

2923 Pine Spring Rd, Falls Church, VA 22042
Unsubscribe · Preferences

Hi! I'm Kate - an intuitive, medicine woman, and guide for embodied Presence

Are you a compassion warrior, culture worker, and rebel who cares deeply about humanity; who's tired of doing all the “right things” and still getting what you’re trying to avoid; and who feels trapped between burning it all down or dying but would rather be wildly, and sacredly alive? I'm an animist and ancestral wisdom guide; ceremonialist, and empath. And I love guiding other humans who want to use their burnout and purpose anxiety as a jumping-off point to journey into their shadows and the shadows of modern society in order to de-armor their hearts; remember a deeper, wilder sense of belonging to the world; and reclaim the rich and sacred spark of their aliveness. This newsletter contains wisdom nuggets, podcast episodes, and invitations to paid and free offerings from my business. All in support of remembering a more animist and land-based culture; holding firm to our humanity in a dehumanizing world; and living with compassion, vulnerability, and reverence.

Read more from Hi! I'm Kate - an intuitive, medicine woman, and guide for embodied Presence
Header Image

Hello, dear ones - Summer is ripening in my corner of the world right now, though it's been a strange one. Some days, unseasonably cool. Others, unseasonably hot. Drought, then a week of steady rain. The Earth seems to be mirroring back to us just how much we've lost the middle way. How much it's become normal for us to swing between extremes. To think only of destinations and speed up or zone out the journey between. I have some travel coming up in July and August and I was debating between...

Hello, dear ones - Happy Bealtainn (on the Gregorian calendar and in the Northern Hemisphere) and Full Moon in Scorpio (in the Tropical zodiac). Many of our ancient ancestors seem to have recognized two main seasons - summer and winter. The light half of the year and the dark half. Their understandings of what this means precisely would have varied based on how the seasons showed up for them on the lands where they lived. But in the far north Gaelic world, they marked these transitions not on...

Header Image

Hello, dear ones - I've been trying to get this email to you all week and stuff just keeps popping up. Some weeks are putting-out-fire weeks. Some years are putting-out-fire years. Many times our instincts, as humans, seem to tell us that when a challenge pops up, it's an obstacle. We drop everything we're doing and head in a different direction. Even in much of the spiritual and wellness world there's this rhetoric that "when something's right, it flows." That's a machine-based view of the...