august tides
harvesting grief
hello hello,
we are here on the cusp of august. i can’t believe autumn already beckons.
my days begin looking around in awe at the land, at the wild abundance of fruits, flowers, seeds, first grains - there is so much life here. and so many plants around me coming to fruition in their life cycles, plants that have been in deep relationship with our peoples for so so long. plants that supported our ancestors as food, as medicine, as friends, as wisdom keepers, as neighbors in ecosystems of home. so many plants offering the same here today, for you and me and us. there is such deep gratitude in bones for these beings, these lives growing up alongside my own here in this place.
in the lineages of my ancestors, the threshold of August is a celebration of the first harvests. a time for celebrating and giving thanks for the bounty; for offering deep gratitude to the land; and participating in practices of interconnection with friends and neighbors for interdependent community survival & thriving. and like many folk traditions & cultural lifeways, these are themes that feel relevant today. these lifeways are not only something for the past - they hold great potential to aid us as we meet this present moment.
so much that is wrong with the world and specifically the US stems from disconnection to land, a lack of awe for the green ones and their supportive relationship, and beliefs about making it alone versus making it together. so yes, i celebrate Lughnasadh. yes yes these things are important to me, and important for us, even now. so much of the folk traditions of our ancestral lineages that we may have been severed from due to empire, colonialism, white supremacy are in fact the antidotes to these poisons.
this year, this August here on n america, there is so much bounty. but not all abundance is good.
not all abundance is worth celebrating. and so this year, this lughnasadh, my first feelings are grief. heartache. rage. so many people have been killed by ICE in July alone; so many more detained, abused, deported. Lorenzo, Johan, so many more names i might never know or hear spoken aloud. Over 500 people were murdered this year alone, and there are even more deaths in detainment camps. and then even more by non ICE police violence. and thats only the ones we know about here in this country specifically - not even accounting for all the deaths happening at our govt’s hands worldwide.
the scale is staggering.
and when i face the truth of this present moment, the grief is staggering too.
so as we celebrate the berries, singing and making offerings to the land in gratitude, as we gather together to celebrate community (embracing the we, not the I), in whatever way makes sense for our context - we also grieve. we also organize. we also the weight of violence that is happening and we do so together. we feel it so that we can do something about it. we feel it so it lights (or relights, if we are frozen) the fire of justice in our hearts. we feel it so that it can fuel us in our work towards challenging a violent state. there is so much to challenge right now, so much violence in abundance.
the state planted seeds of this over 250 years ago and we are here again, reaping what was sown.
it is long past time for a new harvest. it is long past time for us on a mass scale to plant, tend and help grow something new. something loving. something just. something that the Indigenous peoples of these lands knew all about, until settlers came. it is time to return to those wisdoms, that leadership, so that justice and healing can flourish on these lands.
These are my prayers this Lughnasadh. this year. that we will live to see justice flourish in these soils. that we will see collective liberation in our lifetimes.
May it be so.
Sending lots of care,
rowan
Writing from Rachel Corrie
This has to stop.
I think it is a good idea for us all to drop everything and devote our lives to making this stop. I don’t think it’s an extremist thing to do anymore.
I still really want to dance around to Pat Benatar and have boyfriends and make comics for my coworkers. But I also want this to stop. Disbelief and horror is what I feel. Disappointment.
I am disappointed that this is the base reality of our world and that we, in fact, participate in it.
This is not at all what I asked for when I came into this world. This is not at all what the people here asked for when they came into this world. This is not the world you and Dad wanted me to come into when you decided to have me. This is not what I meant when I looked at Capital Lake and said: “This is the wide world and I’m coming to it.”
I did not mean that I was coming into a world where I could live a comfortable life and possibly, with no effort at all, exist in complete unawareness of my participation in genocide.
read the rest of her writings from her time in Gaza before her death here.
The Season Ahead
ATTUNE COMMUNITY OPENS SOON!
early registration for The Attune Community will open in August! This is a yearlong cohort for land devotion & ancestral reconnection for folks of Irish, Scottish and Welsh descent. Let the plants of your ancestors and intentional land devotion be the foundation of your year to come.
This year there are two tracks for participation - the online only cohort, and another that includes two in person retreats in Western MA to deepen the online work we do together. Spaces are limited for in person work together.
Learn more and sign up for the waitlist below.
Circling the Well: a Samhain season retreat
Join us this Samhain for an in-person retreat with fellow settlers of european descent who care about justice, lineage tending and returning to devotional relationships with the land.
We gather together to remember ourselves as part of the land and our ancestral peoples. Reweaving severed culture, plant kin relationships, and connection to our own bodies, we root down so that we may play our part in unspelling empire.
Circling the Well takes place Oct 30 - Nov 1, 2026, in W Massachusetts. It is a full residential retreat with food & accomodations. Space is limited to 11 folks for intimacy. Hop on the waitlist below to hear when early registration opens this August.
work with me & stay connected
Hi, I’m rowan.
I’m a faciltator, herbalist, folklorist, writer, researcher and somatic bodyworker. I run two tiny businesses for queer healing, cultural reconnection & collective transformation.
of hawthorn and yew is the cauldron of my antiracist culture work. I facilitate classes & longer programs on politicized ancestral reconnection, Celtic Isles diasporic work, and reweaving anticolonial cultural herbalisms on n america. together we connect to our european-descended ancestors, reweave culture lost from assimiliation into whiteness, and embody our values more deeply. I offer 1:1 mentorship for folks ready to deepen in this work.
wild aliveness apothecary is the heart of my healing arts practice. seeking queercare? I see clients 1:1 as well as offer small group programs on herbalism, writing & somatics. gather in queer space, connect with plants, self, and community, and be held.
Learn more: wild aliveness apothecary + of hawthorn and yew.
email to connect: ofhawthornandyew@protonmail.com
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thank you, thank you for your continued support! it means the world to me.