SAMHAIN//CALAN GAEAF - the threshold of winter
reflecting on what has been, what is needed + the power of gentle retreat//emergence
On repeat…
The 45-page ‘Seasons + Cycles’ workbook I recently brought together as a friend and guide to exploring our relationship to our inner and outer landscapes, to the more intuitive, wild and untamed parts of ourselves, is now available for download on my webshop.
A gathering of words and insights from far and wide. Writing and journal prompts for throughout the ancient Celtic wheel of the year, beginning at Samhain.
Sliding scale: £5-£15
Centring that which is marginalised and giving it voice does not bring further fringe dwelling existence but nurtures a right-in-the-guts sense of belonging and efficacy. In the right company. Together we can support each other to take up space. Together we guide the whole towards healing. Not as a labour of persuasion for those not willing to listen. But by the nature of us being witnessed in our true natures.
The clocks have fallen back. Evenings are long and mornings dusty with muted light. Samhain is upon us. Calan Gaeaf here in Wales is marked on November 1st as the first day of Winter. It is the end of one year and the beginning of the next in the Celtic, pagan and Brythonic-rooted wheel of the seasons.
Everything is born in and returns to the darkness.
This end of October is bringing with it endings and the seeds of new plans and dreams. The Arts Council Wales funding is coming to an end and a reflection and digestion (and admin wrap up) period has begun. I don’t think that I will fully understand what has happened for a while to come, and I bow to the rich power of this slower more receptive and reflective season to help sensemake all that has occurred. Like the body digesting and breaking down a rich meal, extracting nutrients, sustenance and letting pass through that which is no longer needed, this will happen naturally.
Yes, to be a touch puerile and crass, in amongst the poignant; this time of year is our time to poop out that which we are done with, and allow the nourishment of all that has been in the seasons that have passed, to feed our hearts, bodies and minds.
It is a mysterious magic, the seasonal ebb and flow of things, rooted in millennia of lives lived on these lands. The particularities of seasons, plants, the elements and people dwelling and working in close relationship to life and death in and on the earth.
Last night I ran a part-talk/part-workshop for On Your Face collective, as one of the artists in their ‘Queering Wales Connecting People' project. The title was Alchemical Nature: Neurodivergence and grounding creative practice in making colour with plants, earth and metals.
This was the first time since diagnosis in early 2023 that I have focused on sharing my experience (aside from dropping it here and there into INKLINGS) of living and working with ADHD and how I am now relating to this in my creative practice.
It was a real threshold moment, at a threshold time of year.
Unmasking and the dying back of fearful presentations of ‘professionalism’, in a group of fellow queer, neurodivergent creative folks made for a rich, deep dive.
Centring that which is marginalised and giving it voice does not bring further fringe dwelling existence but nurtures a right-in-the-guts sense of belonging and efficacy. In the right company. Together we can support each other to take up space. Together we guide the whole towards healing. Not as a labour of persuasion for those not willing to listen. But by the nature of us being in our true natures.
This is what I wrote in my notebook at 11.30pm when I was still buzzing from the experience.
The INKLING I am sensing at this time of the year, and that appears on my writing pages, and sparks in my body, is a longing to slow and digest. I long, and indeed need, to pause the heavy mental activity and make more with my hands. Less digital more elemental. Fewer miles covered more space making to see what emerges.
I haven’t been writing and sharing quite so much here these last few months. Words are still forming to describe and disseminate the learning and creative practice that has been happening. I am learning to trust the slower life of things that span longer periods of time.
Our work is a lifetime.
In preparation for last night’s talk, I was looking back over this last 10-15 years of practice (which has been a significant part of practice through 2024); the moving from city to seasonal living, much moving about and exploration and learning from artists, growers, organisers, activists, writers, land-workers, meditators and makers I have met along the way. At times it has felt scattered and unsettled, but there have always been common threads and curiosities. Always strong INKLINGS guiding, even when things were challenging.
What if our whole lives were pathways back to belonging, to healing the wounds that disconnected and uprooted us from this sense of ok-ness, care and connection in the world? What if, however uneven the ground was, however fearful we felt, however unskillfully we behaved, we were still worthy of grace and love?
I have been noticing a backlash from my inner mind gremlins these last couple of months. As I come to embrace and accept my neurodivergence and sensitivity and integrate this into the ‘final frontier’ of my professional practice, the more the inner critic has bitten back with ferociousness. It doesn't want to give up its seat at the head of the table of my inner voices. It wants to ultimately keep me safe and has done a really bloody good job of it (well, in its own crunchy way) these last few decades.
Could I actually be myself, not just with my nearest and dearest but where, when and how I earn a living and show up to share my gifts outside of the domestic holding?
Here I feel such intense gratitude and tender emotion for those who are living and working for queer, neurodivergence, disability/chronic health advocacy and all manner of inclusion work and resisting and healing systemic violence. Pioneering for a more caring, inclusive, joyful, just, accepting, accountable, powerful and creatively magnificent world. It makes for beautiful creative offerings, spaces and communities. It impacts and informs cultural and political shifts away from old paradigms of harm, power over and hyper-individualism, working with that which is naturally here, naturally human.
We need to learn to practice love such that care - for ourselves and others - is understood as political resistance and cultivating resilience.
adrienne maree brown - Pleasure Activism
To round up this Samhain INKLINGS I share with you some words from 2017. Over a 30-day project beginning at Samhain - that ended up stretching to a beautifully inconsistent 60 days - I wrote and shared things on the gram from the theme of The Outbreath of the Year.
Reading these words I am touched by this younger me and their sensitivity. I know how much they were holding and grappling with.
I wish for you, as we walk into winter, the sweet grace and celebration you deserve as the full human you are.
With care,
KJ
October 2017
Stepping out. The damp exhale of the world meets my skin. Here it sits, making the ivy shine, the fern slick, the nettle a dull sheen. Moistness clinging. Small stings subdued by the weight of it all.
The trace of the last corn harvest. Stubby shafts that lie across the land. They pop and break underfoot as I tramp on. I cannot see the opposite hedge nor any features beyond the borderline which we follow, my four-legged friend and I. He, sniffing scents with his curious snout. I with murky eye.
The lull of one foot in front of the other brings my frantic mind and wildly beating heart into sync with the plod.
Left
Right
Inhale
. two
. three
Exhale
. two
. three
. f o u r
. f i v e
After a time, all I am is the walking.
My world, this field.
By here
By now
Here we shamble.
Spider lines hang heavy with clear jewels between blade and stalk. That which cloaks this world in opaque slurs makes visible the routes of this industrious being.
My lungs mingle with the sky. Low slung, we are one.
⋒ g e n t l e a t t e n t i o n⋒
⋒ Words and conversations from others living from the cycles of heart, land and body.
⋒‘Unveiling Ourselves This Samhain and Beyond’ from the writer, edge-dweller, queering the cycle worker and splendid human.
⋒ Creative comrade conversations with Dr
and writing/creative as part of Black Nature in Residence Earth Sea Love podcast.⋒‘Unveiling Samhain’ from seer & spirit walker, shamanic practitioner, animist and teacher Samara Lewis.
⋒ An honest, moving and beautiful piece from illustrator
on quitting her day job. Choosing Liberation over Fear.
⋒ From the pen of
Olivera at Human Stuff.