Hello, dear ones -

“My life has changed so much for the better and I keep trying to tell everyone I know about you… but I don’t really know how to describe it or say what you do… so I just tend up telling them they have to go see my witchy healer medicine person, Kate.”

Many of you who’ve worked with me have said things like this over the years.

Some of you reading this might remember hosting me in your house for a little get-together with those friends; so I could lead them through a guided meditation, talk some about an subtle body and energetic-based approach, and even offer a volunteer a little demo session. All to educate people on what an animist and ancestral approach to wellness might be able to offer them.

After all, these more holistic, more interdisciplinary healing arts are not new… but they’ve also been the sites of much wounding and rupture through industrialization, the witch trials of Europe, colonization and the oppression of indigenous language and culture.. and so on.

Being steeped in cultures and educational systems built around compartmentalization, linear processes, resources rather than relationships, and breaking things down into their most simple and discreet parts means our brains may actually be losing some of their wiring for complexity, interconnection, the cyclical nature of all life. We don’t even know what we’ve lost until we find it again. And then we have to unlearn some of the ways we perceive the world in order to be able to work with it.

So although there’s a huge “awakening” (if we want to call it that) in the western world in the direction of things like shamanism, energy healing, yoga, and many other “new age”/ “woo woo” things, there’s also a lack of frame of reference for it (and even an active mistrust or subtle contempt for it).

We don’t have elders guiding us and teaching us as we grow; so our brains don’t have the paths for the information to move around on; our culture doesn’t have a practices in place which make it normal. And the wounds we carry, sometimes on a genetic level, around the ruptures which led to us to losing access to the language of energy and the views of animism in the first place, mean we struggle to discern fact from fiction, integrity from flash because this approach lies in our wounded shadows.

Outside of our conscious mind, we respond to an animist and ancestral approach from our survival patterns ans social conditioning and we aren’t even aware we’re doing it. For many women, we react from our 'witch wound'. This can look like grasping, fear, acting like prey, spiritual superiority and overcompensation (because we actually fear we’re inferior), etc. For many guys, this can look like more walls going up, more contempt and dismissiveness or other moves to regain a sense of control and power.

And that’s before we even start with the work itself.

Which means, over the years I’ve found that even people who consider themselves open to this kind of approach still need fair bit of education and support before they can even enter into it.

And some people have been burned by practitioners who (best intentioned or not) weren’t in full integrity. And many don’t even know more is possible than modern, Western, mind-based adaptations of indigenous wisdom traditions so they're stuck feeling like maybe these don’t work.

It’s like suddenly our eyes are opening and we’re realizing there’s this whole world around us we didn’t even know about and it’s a little scary and overwhelming to know where to start or how to engage.

When I burned most of my business to the ground last year and took off on an ancestral pilgrimage, I stopped most of this education piece of my work. After all, this is often the more tiring part (though I do enjoy it)… and the part our culture has trained us to expect for free. When I’m in a place where I’m feeling resourced enough, I don’t mind that. It’s important, after all, that you all feel safe and the barriers to access be low enough that you can get the education you need to know where to start. But I haven’t been feeling as resourced for the last few years. Most of us haven’t, I suspect.

In the last year, I’ve been working in the background on creating better ways to offer these educational pieces I believe we need in order to engage with ancestral and animist approaches to wellness. There will be more coming on that most likely within the next few months and early next year, but for now, Wisdom Wednesday is that place where I’m offering this education, experience, and informal conversation (hopefully, a good place to either come yourself or invite your friends to come to realign ourselves with these approaches).

A few weeks ago, I was remembering how it felt when I gathered with a client and their friends, together in a living room, to have these informal, semi-programmed explorations and conversations. And I realized I missed that and needed to shift some things about Wisdom Wednesday from what I originally imagined it might be in order to become more like this.

So we won’t be in a cute cottage or cozy living room, we’ll still be on Zoom. But each Wisdom Wednesday will now start with a guided group attunement (because we all need regular nervous system support these days) and will then go into more informal Q&A/ conversation. They remain PWYC in an attempt to honor everyone’s resourcing. And I’m also committing to giving 50% of what comes in as exchange each month to a grassroots organization doing work either in environmental stewardship or indigenous rights so we can keep the resourcing flowing. Which organization it will be each month will be announced at the gathering.

Our next gathering is coming up in a few weeks. It would be lovely to see you there, and please, if you know people who are wanting to explore more of how a subtle body-based, animist and ancestral approach might shift things for them, send them along or make a pact to come together.

You can see the new write up about Wisdom Wednesdays here: https://www.wildsacredjourney.com/wisdom-wednesdays.

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with Love,

Kate

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P.S. To the new folks who joined us here recently, welcome. Feel free to hit reply and let me know what brought you here and where you're feeling burned out or the lack of aliveness most in your life right now.

P.P.S. If you have a group of friends or community and you’d like to host me giving a private version of Wisdom Wednesday to you and your people, let me know. I’d be happy to discuss doing it (most likely online at this moment, but I’m also open to doing it in person if timing and geography allow).