Cailleach

This episode follows my journey as a young adult as I continue to explore and find niches to grow into.  I return to the US to study art therapy and develop my relationship with Mike when I graduate we also get married before moving to Ireland where I try to pioneer art therapy in different organisations. We decide to stay, settle and start a family. I explore the forces that influence our choices in these years and the moment we begin to resist where they have led us and how we set off with kids and a dog in a campervan for a year. 

This short meditation is about gathering in your own harvest of a day, a week, a month, a season or a year. It aims to help you notice, celebrate, appreciate or let go. As things come to fruition in your life, whatever form they take, what can be gleaned?

When harvest is in full swing, the practical skills are linked to its abundance. In this episode, I start with simple seed savings and preserving methods, and then share some of the creative crafts associated with autumn that I did with my children.

Jules begins her right of passage on her own, but when she joins the community of women, Rowan is witness to it all and hears a magical story.

This thread has focused on alternative structures and frameworks to bring about system change, in particular, regenerative systems. In this episode, I explore how a foundation in the basics of ecology and ecological intelligence can support this work.

Continuing through the lens of development to help identify needs that may remain at any stage of life, this episode explores young adulthood.  I focus on the impulse to both create and to seek out expression of others. The sound and stories of each generation come to life as they face the challenges of becoming adults. In addition, I explore the need for personal adornment and display, through examples in nature such as the little Bower bird and its collecting of bling to show off to prospective mates.

First fruits - time of harvest's beginings: for me, it helps to tune in to what our ancestors knew through the same patterns of seasonal activities on this land. I explore more about lughnasa and some of the wild celebrations that came about during the life or death harvest season when the community would know whether the crops would be enough to sustain them for another year.

Listen notes

As I grew into young adulthood in the late 1980s in Ireland, I found refuge from the prevailing social norms in the experimental space of Limerick Art College. My first two years drained my pockets and my self so much that I took a break to au pair in America, gaining new perspectives and a life companion. On return to Limerick, I started to get involved in environmental, but especially social change, encountering feminist activism as a volunteer in the Rape Crisis Centre.

Listen notes

I've been learning, collaborating, teaching and having fun with Hannah Mole of Earthcare since I met her while teaching Greenworks Permaculture courses more than 10 years ago. I appreciate her avoidance of dogma by continually questioning any bubble or worldview. At the same time, Hannah's actions in the world of Permaculture contribute to land and community regeneration in Ireland.

Listen notes

Drawing on the energies of first fruits celebrated at Lughnasa, this meditation seeks to help you nurture, appreciate and harvest anything that is fruitful in your life at any time of year.

Listen notes