Sacred Links Between Grief & Pleasure with Kalah Hill

Hello, dear ones. I’m coming to you with the first guest podcast in a new series all about grief and grief tending and what it can look and feel like when we apply a spiritual lens.

This four-part series will explore grief tending through pleasure, astrology, plant magic, and working with crystals. One of the many gifts I’ve received from my work with grief and death is learning how much wisdom and healing can be found in walking with my grief more intentionally. I’ve learned that grief is not an isolated emotion to be relegated to the loss of a beloved. Grief is ever present and has so much to teach us. As my work shifts deeper into rites of passage around death and reclaiming magical practices I’ve been severed from, I continue to learn more and more from my ability to be with and tend to my grief and how connected grief is to so many other topics, like pleasure, ancestral work, and reclaiming a personal magical practice. 

This first episode with Kalah Hill is so, so rich. I embarked on the Maiden to Mother Teacher Training hosted by Sarah Durham Wilson and many others over the last year, and Kalah was one of the facilitators during the training. When I say this training rocked my world, it’s truly an understatement. It’s also the inspiration for my upcoming retreat I mention in this episode. But for today, I want to focus on the work I experienced with Kalah and how it opened my eyes to the deep connections between grief and pleasure. 

Freedom Doula and Pleasure activist Kalah Hill is the founder of In Pleasure We Trust. Through her many years as a student of trust, Kalah regenerates space with her clients with care and sweet rootedness. Kalah evokes permission for sovereignty within the landscape of our social interdependency. In her work, Kalah unravels the illusions of systemic oppression that create communities of conformity and insatiability. Kalah’s loving practice reveals the human capacity to be in equanimity, trust, and deep satisfaction. Her healing balm of pleasure is how she creates a bridge of solidarity in crossing the threshold into liberation. Kalah’s experience and facilitation is multidisciplinary, ranging from biological and ecosystem-based sciences, somatic coaching, social justice, maiden to mother lineage, and doula work. 

Here’s our chat. Click below to listen, or scroll to read.

The text below is a transcript of our recorded conversation. Grammatical and spelling errors may be present.

Cassie: hello, welcome, Kayla. I’m so happy to have you here and to chat about Pleasure and grief and all the juiciness that comes with those topics. So welcome. 

Kalah: Thank you. Cassie. It’s so nice to be here. I’m really excited. 

Cassie: Me too. before we dive into those juicy topics, I would love to hear a little bit about. The land that you’re on and maybe what that land is sharing with you today or how it’s showing up, which is a practice that I learned from Dr. Rocio Rosales Mesa that I just really love and think it’s such a beautiful way to start a space. So I’d love to hear a little bit about that from you. 

Kalah: Gorgeous.

Yeah, I’m on, the, occupied stolen territory of Guamares, the Guamares people, and I guess today known as San Miguel de Allende in Mexico. and this land has been teaching me a lot, actually. That’s such a good question. I’ve been based in Costa Rica for the last six years, in, Chorotega territory.

And I recently came out of the jungles and into the desert, mountainous, regions and it’s a completely different landscape than what I’ve been accustomed to and what I’ve been working with and I really work closely in partnership with the land. I do a lot of different ritual,and just honoring and grounding and nourishment and giving back.

And so giving back to. This land has been so clear to me that it’s time for me to transition fully out of the jungle, and I’ve been shown a lot of beauty in that transition thus far, and I’m just listening right now. I’m very new to this land. I’ve only been here for three months, so I’m, paying my dues, so to say.

and still cultivating a bond and a connection. 

Cassie: Beautiful, thank you. I didn’t realize that you had just moved, so recently. I didn’t realize I had, I’ve changed, I’ve recently came from the desert to the Midwest, so I have a reversal of lands that I’m getting to know, so I know that, that place well.

Kalah: Yeah, it’s quite potent. There’s A lot of good workings here for me, and I’m very grateful that I’m so attuned to my orientation, my, my earthly orientation. I’m very clairsentient. So wherever my body is. really matters. The environment matters. And I’m just grateful that I have such clarity around movement and where I need to be at any given moment.

So yeah, it’s beautiful. 

Cassie: I’ll pay, honor to the place that I’m on to, which I’m on, occupied Miami or Miami land, which is in so called Indiana in the States. And. I am really loving the way the land is showing up and appearing today because we’re deep in the waning moon might be in the dark moon and I’m on my moon cycle and it is overcast and cloudy and rainy outside, which feels so nourishing and like what the earth needs and what I need.

So it’s feeling, very well aligned within my body and out in the land. as far as your work, I would love to hear a little bit about what brought you to your work and maybe a little bit about your lineage and that could be ancestral lineage to what brought you to your work or just teacher lineage, whatever speaks to you and resonates and wants to come out.

but just a little bit of your journey and process to coming to the work that you do now.

Kalah: Well, I guess it always begins with the mother, right?

Um, yeah, well, I was born to Deborah, a beautiful woman. I call her a white witch. My white witch mother, descendant from, English and German blood and a wild woman, a mystic and single mom. And, I just learned, I learned a lot from my mother in terms of the capacities that I have with magic and mystery and Otherworldly ventures There was a lot of access to exploration and curiosity. I was given full permission for those things really raised, to enjoy life really raised to, be in pleasure, whether it was in my body or whether it was with food or with imagination or fantasy, those things were very much fostered. The pieces that I’ve had to pick up along the way involve my mother’s inability to be fully actualized in the 3D practical world.

And that was really challenging for her and for us. Growing up from me growing up, it was,very unstable kind of material financial situations. And so I now am in this place of creating context and bringing the dream into reality and really creating heaven on earth because I know heaven to be so true.

because of these like early on gifts of access to pleasure and enjoyment. And I remember, and I’m going to get just real honest. I remember, I started self pleasuring when I was four years old and my mother had caught me. I was in the back of the car. I was in the car exploring, It was, open.

And my mother said, asked me what I was doing. And I told her, oh, I found this thing. Oh, it’s so pleasurable. And she was incredibly supportive. She said, oh, that’s called masturbation. It’s really great for you. And. But you do it in the privacy of your bedroom, right? Because I was about to go public. And I think because of that fostering, and that, literal, no shame, no judgment around me accessing this pleasure in my body from the age of four to literally today, age 38, I just have decades of practice when it comes to, Harnessing and accessing my pleasure and enjoying myself and there’s that bleeds out into everything, right?

Like it’s not just a masturbation practice any longer. It’s like a life form of its own that really has sprung from that initial, that initial, finding inside of myself. so I’ve had a lot of amazing cultivation, as well as, my father’s side, my father’s lineage, my father is African American, black man in the United States from Harlem, and I just love to seep in black feminist literature, I love the lineage of pleasure that is the thread line of so much of.

That work, when we talk about Audre Lorde, Bell Hooks, Maya, Angelo, Nikki Giovanni, all of these brilliant black feminist writers who really saw pleasure as a critical piece of the liberation movement and the movement towards. Justice and activism work, and it’s, adrian maree brown, who just published Pleasure Activism a few years ago, really brought that collection of work together in one great piece of work, and I love that book.

It’s It’s like my Bible and because I didn’t grow up with my father and I now have a relationship with him going on about 14 plus years now. I’ve known my father and it’s been really great to actualize those components of my lineage as well. And so I definitely spring from that. And in terms of teachers, I think you and I are familiar.

We have the same teacher, Sarah. Sarah of Magdalene and she’s really supported me in the mother wound work and working with my white witch and my white witch mother, who is brilliant but also very much, indoctrinated by the patriarchy and really exiled in many ways. and it’s been so reparative to work with Sarah.

I also have a really great embodiment, embodiment dance teacher, Amber Ryan. She comes from the Five Rhythms lineage. She studied with Gabrielle Raw and, my somatics, coaching teacher. So my best friend. Who I grew up with, actually. Her name is Dana Regan, and she’s the founder of the Somatic Soul Coaching School, which I am now on faculty for as well, and also certified as a Somatic Soul Coach.

So we’ve done a lot of embodiment work with various teachers and really beloved women in my life. It’s been a great healing journey.

Cassie: I really enjoyed hearing more about your story because yes, as Kayla mentions, the way that I found, I got to know her was through, Sarah Durham Wilson, mother to maiden teacher training.

The third cohort of it that has almost come to an end. but it has just been a beautiful transformative supportive, training. One that I am just internally grateful to have been a part of and to meet so many amazing women like Kayla. and so many things are coming up. For me, just about what you shared about your lineage and your ancestry, one thing, you know, I love that you shared so honestly about self pleasuring at a young age, because I think it ties in so beautifully to pleasure and grief.

And I also have a similar story, and it’s one that’s Burned into my memory and not in a bad way, but you talking about it is just bringing up a lot of curiosity around this memory that I have. I was, I had a similar experience where I was self pleasuring. I was probably four, maybe five. And I was, it was just in the living room, like in front of the TV, just laying on the floor.

And I remember my mom just being like, what’s she doing over there? And she wasn’t. It wasn’t there wasn’t any judgment or shaming associated with it, which I’m very grateful for. But then when I think about that same kind of. Self pleasuring as a adolescent, I can sense all the shame attached to it. And I’m like, when did that happen?

How did that happen? and I feel like a big part of the teacher training, the mother to maiden teacher training has been me really rediscovering and reclaiming that pleasure in a very personal, liberatory way. 

but yeah, I would love to just hear you share more about, any musings or insights you’ve noticed in that relation between grief and pleasure and specifically self pleasure and those shifts that happen from that young age of just innately knowing that we have this ability to bring such pleasure to ourselves.

And then those shifts that happen that so many of us come into feeling shame around pleasure, which then turns to grief at a lot of times. Yeah. 

Kalah: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I want to say, yeah. Yeah. It’s almost like, welcome to planet Earth, where you will be, under threat of shame, guilt. It’s a consequence of our, of our current state of affairs and of a long history of, repression and oppression and systems that, that really are no longer sustaining, sustaining us.

And it’s so curious to me because I find this to be true for every single human is that there’s this original innocence. Where think of it’s as a young girl, just like self pleasuring in public or just in broad daylight, not even thinking twice about it. Oh, yeah, this feels good.

I’m going to do it. And. That’s what I’m trying to get back to, and not that I’m trying to masturbate in public. That I’m trying to get back to that sense of full permission and choice over my own body. Which, as most of us know, if any of us are not living inside a cave, that, women’s bodies… have been under threat for millennia for thousands and thousands of years.

Our bodies have been under threat and access to agency over our own bodies is at threat and alive and well today, especially with the Supreme Court ruling overturning of Roe versus Wade, right? All of these things have come now. There’s so much shadow work, I think, available to us, and this is where I find that when someone really accesses or remembers their pleasure for the first time in maybe, let’s say, 25 years.

There are calcifications that have formed inside of our nervous systems, inside of our bodies, that as we chisel away at those calcifications and break them open by liberating our pleasure, we’re reminded of the great grievance. That is also there in the way of we’ve kept ourselves from ourselves for far too long, and there’s something to mourn about that.

And so the way that I practice and the way that I work with clients is that I work really slowly at like piece by piece, chisel by chisel. Removing these calcifications to open to the softening of what is truly and inherently, our birthright, essentially, to be a soft human, to be safe enough, to be upheld to be, actualized, in the truth of our pleasure.

that is a process in and of itself of unraveling usually decades of shame and fear and guilt and oppression and violence and abuse and, the list goes on of what we’re unraveling. But in that unraveling, there’s a deep cathartic release that tends to happen. And typically it’s in the form of a grievance in the form of tears.

maybe there’s anger, right? we start to go through all of these stages of grief when we open to our pleasure and that’s what I see time and time again. 

Cassie: Yeah. Yeah. And that’s what inspired me to reach out to you for this was, during the teacher training, I had the pleasure of getting to be led by Kayla to, to embark on some pleasure work and what stood out to me and these were in groups.

So it was a non sexual pleasure, that we were cultivating and building and. I think that’s also such a, it’s just such a big part that, I was lacking for my personal practice. And I think something else that came up was, either in the reading, but I think it’s come up in some of the training too.

It’s just the. Pleasure that can be inherent and just in, in female relationships and friendships, that’s non sexual. And that is something that I did not even realize how much grief I had. Around that topic of all of the years of, Oh, there can be pleasure. There can be sensuality in these relationships that are not relationships with, an sexual partner, but there can still be that sensuality and pleasure there and reclaiming that.

And the grief. Oh my gosh. That is where I felt a lot of grief is around those untapped relationships where it was like a veil was lifted. Oh, I can have pleasure and sensuality in these relationships to sign me up. how do I return to that? I would love to hear you share just about, I don’t know how that’s shown up in your work or ways to cultivate that because I have found it to be a little bit.

Trickier, I would love to hear anything that’s coming up for you around that. 

Kalah: Yeah, there’s a deep need, I think, and a deep calling inside of the culture and inside of our individual bodies for touch.

And for somatic residency with one another, and there’s a couple things that came to mind. one is that we’re essentially like primates, right? We’re essentially primates, and I think that in our biology, we are wired to basically like, groom and cuddle each other. there’s something like, if you see chimpanzees or bonobos,they really, they’re always in the herd.

They’re always like grooming each other, sifting through their hair, and there’s this, real biological, mechanism that is hardwired for touch. So there’s that piece. And then I also sense another thing going on, maybe a little bit deeper around, not deeper, but just different context of we don’t need to be speaking as much it’s not so much about what we’re saying.

It’s more about how we are co regulating things. With each other by actualizing contact with each other. And, I remember reading a book by Parker J. Palmer called Let Your Life Speak. And he went through a series of really deep depressions, clinical grade depressions, and he was pretty much bedridden for months.

And, He said that the least helpful people during that time were the people who would come over and say, Oh, Parker, why don’t you get up and take a walk? Or let’s go out in the sunshine and get some fresh air. Or how about what have you eaten today? Let’s eat something together. It was like a lot of let’s get up and out of this.

And he said the most helpful person was this man, a fellow platonic male friend who would come over and he wouldn’t say anything. He would come over, he would walk in, and he would just rub his feet and he would do, give him a foot massage, Three times a week or something. And he said that was the most impactful experience during his deep depression because he felt finally that he could just be and he felt deep connection to the person that he was with.

Whereas these other people who were trying to like fix the problem and find a solution. Really, he felt completely disconnected from them. And so I do feel that touches radical and radically healing, and it’s part of, now post coven really becoming a part of my. private practice with individuals and laying of hands on what it is to even just braid each other’s hair or,take a bath together.

I do a lot of ritual bath work. And yeah, we hyper sexualize all of this. And I think it’s been hyper sexualized as like a colonial tactic to divide and conquer us from each other. Because, I can’t, have sexual relations with all of these people. I don’t want to, so I guess I can’t actually touch them.

I guess I can’t actually get into a bath with them and, play with each other’s hair, there’s all of these things that have been removed from our innate, biological needs. as a species and now it’s, it’s like we’re well enough, I think, and safe enough, at least I am. And so I take that privilege and I use it wisely to, to reestablish these connections and to practice touch as often as I can.

Obviously in consensual ways, right? It’s all in agreement. and it’s all a choice. And that’s the piece that is so liberating and wildly free. It just, it’s so nourishing to the soul. And even, even self touch right the work that we did. And in the maiden to mother journey with that one pleasure call, it’s like rose brushing.

it’s looking, it’s mirror work. it’s, how are you touching your own body is also like a really great indicator of, where you’re at in terms of opening to and responding to these inherent pleasure, wirings and codes that lie inside our nervous systems that are really wired for success.

Like they will bring a lot of, let’s say satisfaction to one’s experience. and whether that satisfaction feels good or feels bad is also not a thing, right? Because sometimes what I’ve noticed with touch is that it unlocks. Tapestries inside of my own body that actually don’t feel great. I feel really sad when they are unlocked and I’m able to go into that morning and I’m able to go into that pain a lot easier when I have appropriate touch in my life.

Cassie: I love how you phrase that. It really helped me make a little switch in my head because I’ve, like I said, one of the reasons I wanted to talk about this with you is because I see this inherent connection between pleasure and grief. And I was thinking of it, in one way, touching into the pleasure brings up the grief, but it’s also what can bring healing to the grief.

It’s what enables us to be with it. So it’s like a both and, all encompassing sort of situation and yeah, I’ve, it’s Become a more regular part of my practice. I would say since the maiden to mother journey movement, pleasure embodiment, like all of those things have just become like daily parts of my practice and ways that it wasn’t because I’m like, Oh, I like, I need this.

I have to have this in order to continue, the direction that I would like to go in. if I want to be in the grief, I have to have the pleasure to. 

Kalah: Yes. And see how that’s like a reclamation of agency right there, which is like a critical pillar for freedom. Yeah. Yeah. It’s there’s so many layers and it’s so multidimensional, but it really, it’s almost like there’s this inherent genius that lives inside of our bodies.

And if we just shut up for two seconds. We just stopped talking, then this genius is allowed to arise and what happens then is, really what I think most freedom fighters have been fighting for a very long time and screaming Hey, listen, if you follow this thread line, I promise.

I promise that you will make it through. so it’s time, I think, to also just start listening to these people. I think, it’s time to start listening to Indigenous people, Black queer folks,it’s just time.

Fast. Listening to that and also listening to the genius of your body. Yeah. 

Cassie: Yeah, definitely. I would love to hear, just any offerings that you might have for titrating into this, because I know one thing that I noticed as somebody who did not have a really prominent pleasure practice. That it does require some titration, like there needs to be,because like you said, there are so many layers, it’s so connected to grief.

So what are some ways to slowly move into that and bring it to the forefront and one’s practice. 

Kalah: Yeah, yes, this is so important. So I am like, trauma informed. I’m not a trauma specialist, but I’m a trauma informed coach. And what that means to me is that I understand, the workings of trauma and how it exists in the body.

And When we are healing trauma, the word titration is thrown around a lot and it’s so critical and it basically means that there’s this slow drip over time of discharging that trauma out of the body. So releasing the trauma, actually, it doesn’t happen in one moment, one big cataclysmic moment, because if it did, it would retraumatize the nervous system and put us back to where we started.

And so we titrate. The same goes for intake. So when we are, let’s say, intaking,we need hydration and we’re hooked up to an IV. That hydration, that water and those, all those you know, nutrients are coming out, but they’re dripping and they’re going very slowly. That’s why it takes an hour up to an hour to rehydrate the body, right?

Because it takes, that slow titrated, experience for the body to actually uptake the hydration. So it’s the same with the pleasure. You can’t just, bombard yourself with, let’s say, I don’t know, you don’t have a pleasure practice at all, and then you just, go to some sort of, huge orgy or something, off the bat, you know, like, this is what I’m going to do, it could be not safe.

so I recommend, really enjoying the slowness. It’s like I see honey, like I get a visual of honey dripping from the comb and like how slowly and how delicious that is. Like my mouth is watering just thinking about that image. And so there’s so many different practices. I’ll name a few.

One is really working with the element of water. And so to me, water is pleasure central. I don’t know. There’s just so much about water. it holds and stores memory. we’re like 70% water. there’s a lot of it. With water and frequency and working with that element that I just love.

I also love how versatile water is. It can be a solid, a liquid and a gas. it’s incredible element. So bathing is like a big practice of mine. I know not everyone has access to a bathtub, so it’s not necessarily that you need to have access to a bathtub. But if you do, I highly recommend bathing.

But it’s more about the ritual around water. So whether it’s bathing, showering, walking to a body of water, whether that body of water is a lake, a stream, an ocean, a fountain in the middle of a city, right? Really finding water. access. It could also even just be a glass of water and you’re going to intentionally be with the water.

So in whatever way that means to you, whether that’s getting into the water, whether that’s getting around water, whether that’s ingesting water, you’re going to intentionally be with the water and you’re going to be with the water for as long as you want. So this is also what’s great about pleasure practice is that this is about what you want.

This is about what you need. So if you need five minutes, great. If you need five hours, great. And I recommend really aiming for what it is that you need. Now, it might take several months to get to a five hour intentional practice with water, right? what does that even entail? But what if we got curious with our own selves?

And this is where the original innocence comes in, because if we think about children, they’re not questioning Oh my God, do I have enough time? Or what am I going to do? Am I going to get bored? Oh, this might not work for me. They literally just go straight in to the practice of play. boom, no, no thoughts, no questions or nothing.

They are just ready. So we all have that. Become from that. We were all Children at one point in our lives and regardless of our upbringing and our household circumstances, because I definitely lived in one that was quite chaotic and tumultuous as well. So I understand that as well. I do know that the more work I do and remembering him.

That child like piece, I can find her and she is very alive and she is very well and she is very much ready to play and very much ready to explore. And so this is where I invite you to get crafty and creative and. Enjoy your time. You can put different things like in the water. Like I do a lot of ritual with just like putting stuff in the water, like flowers or crystals or oils or really anything.

Or if I’m walking along a stream and I find different rocks or I’m on the beach and I find different shells, I’ll go to the water and return those to the water. a lot of my practices are sparked by spontaneity and in intuition. And so like in the moment, it’s what am I intuitively craving? What am I intuitively wanting or desiring?

And can I actualize that for myself? It might be like, oh, I’m like. Walking down the beach and I like intuitively want to go and just immerse myself in the water. Okay, I’m gonna go do that. Or maybe I don’t want to go in the water that day and I want to sit on the edge and I want to just listen to the water.

Okay, I’m gonna do that. What do I hear from the water? All of this is ritual, and all of it is true, especially when it’s integrous to you. So that’s what I invite people to, is like their own innate knowing. I know, I like to give a little bit of structure and give people examples, but at the same time, it’s like we get to co create this.

I’m not, I don’t have the magic key. I’m human here with you. Exploring and figuring things out as I go, and I just invite all of us to have that courage to really trust ourselves again.

Cassie: Yes, I love that. You brought it back to the, honoring our inherent wisdom around pleasure. And that’s certainly what I’ve noticed. and especially with the slowness, what I’ve been finding for me is that The pleasure lives in the slowness and that when I can be in when I can pace myself on that way, the pleasure, the intuitions around experiencing sensory pleasure come in almost automatically, I’ll catch myself just walking outside and, just.

Bask in the sunlight and feel the sun on my skin and hear the sounds of the birds and just melt into the pleasure of it. And it’s like without the slowness, I can’t find that. So it’s been, for me, it’s been really pleasurable and just exciting and playful to have those moments just come in without forcing.

It’s just because my pace has slowed down. and you’re speaking my language with the elements. I love working with the elements. And water is, It’s such a fun one to work with. Yeah. 

Kalah: And fire can be great, like sunbathing, tending to a fire, lighting a candle, getting into a sauna, getting a hot water bottle, putting it at your feet, and like on a cold day.

There’s so many aspects of, Engagement, and it’s really it’s very sensorial. So it’s coming back to the body. And so really anything that’s going to activate the senses and be a pleasure practice. It’s that’s the thread line is that we’re awakening to sensation. and in that, I think we are awakening to our lives and that’s where we get to.

Kind of die and be reborn again, not to be sound like. Super like culty or something, but like to, to really shed those layers of, numbness, I’d say, and disassociation that are great, intelligent coping mechanisms for the environments in which we’ve been born into. So I’m not denying the intelligence of, numbing because that in and of itself has safeguarded a lot of our.

a lot of our psychology for a long time, but as we release into new ways of being with each other, and as we collectively start to heal, we’re going to have to shift out of, states of disassociation and start to stay in the body. And then over time, there’s actually really great practice around conscious numbing, which Adrian Marie Brown talks about a lot, too.

Which basically gives us those moments of reprieve, Hey, you know what, I’m going to Netflix and chill and just zone out for two hours, and that’s totally, I think also very healthy too. So it’s not to say that

one is better than the other, or we’re in some sort of place. That’s not okay. It’s to say all of it is welcome. And when we welcome all of it, then we get. To be free. there’s no, we don’t have to compartmentalize so much. We don’t have

to, like, how has the tapestry of our bodies been colonized? Like, how has the tapestry of our sensation? been, compartmentalized, like divided and conquered and almost there’s like a dictator inside of at least there was inside of me, this dictator said,this is only permissible under certain circumstances and certain ways.

And if it’s not that, then that doesn’t come out. And there was a lot of regulation and rules going on in terms of like, when I was allowed to feel something and when I wasn’t. And to basically say, no, I have full permission to feel my experiences in any given moment. to have sensation run through my body.

It is my birthright. To have access to my bodily autonomy and to make choice from a space of feeling and sensation as opposed to a space of logic, really reframes and reshapes the entire experience of your life. So to me,it’s, it’s a power move. It’s a big power move to reincorporate pleasure.

Cassie: Absolutely. Yeah, I really resonate with what you said about that, the inner dictator, because I’ve certainly, I’m sure it’ll be a lifetime of unraveling that, but the inner dialogue is sometimes I don’t have time, I think you mentioned that I don’t have time for this, I need to be productive, all of those things that capitalism, patriarchy, tell us that we, I can’t do this because I need to be doing this.

and I’m at the part of it where there’s a lot of, okay, let’s pause, let’s, is this truth or is this? the inner dictator. I like that I have a name for it now. I’m going to borrow that if that’s okay. My inner dictator that’s trying to keep me from pleasure because I’m not about it anymore.

I’m ready to cut ties with them. 

Kalah: yes. so many aspects that have tried to keep us safe and that’s why it’s like there I have compassion because these are all coping strategies under pretty severe conditions, you know, we’re talking about. Stomach oppression and you know how our bodies have adapted to those environments.

And so I have a lot of compassion for the inner dictator. And at the same time, my pleasure is not their domain. That’s not the domain dictator. That’s not where they rest in my body anymore. 

Cassie: Absolutely. I don’t want to keep you for too long, so I’m just going to ask you a couple more questions before we wrap up.

but when those, because I, you know, I think about, I know for me, that inner dictator, and like we’ve already mentioned, grief comes up in so many ways, but I know for me, I have had a lot of grief as well around that inner dictator, and Remembering that I do, get to experience pleasure and I get to decide when and how I experience pleasure.

And then I will, sometimes I can go into that spiral of, Oh, I, of either feeling bad about it or feeling bad about how much I’ve missed out because I listened to the inner dictator for so long. So handling when those, griefs arise of. ways to be with them, address them, move with them, as they arise.

Kalah: Yeah. I’ve said this before on another podcast and I’ll just say it again, when I hit these moments of resistance and, or let’s say challenge when there’s shame or guilt that comes up and I start to grieve and I start to get angry and I start to get just really upset about the years that were lost.

I ask myself this question, what is the most loving thing I could do next? And so bell hooks talks about so brilliantly talks about, what it takes to step into a culture of love, what it takes to walk into a love ethic and embody that in our relations. with ourselves and with our communities.

And I think it, it takes asking questions like that in moments of despair. It takes asking the question, what is the most loving thing I can do next to take care of this grief, to take care of this grieving body. Sometimes that’s lying down. Sometimes that’s making a cup of tea. Sometimes that’s taking a walk.

Sometimes that’s brushing your teeth. Sometimes that’s, not brushing your teeth. like it really can be a very simple. exchange of realism, there’s this, sobriety, that comes online, like you sober up when you’re in the middle of this grief and you’re Whoa, like my capacity right now is not of the expectation of what patriarchy or capitalism or these oppressive societies would even deem as like.

normal, whatever you want to call these like really distorted views of how we’re supposed to be showing up as humans. And if we lovingly can slow down and ask these questions and take the next best step towards love, regardless of what that is. I think that we are starting to build cultures of care.

Beyond what we know now when we’re starting to step into unconditional loving space with ourselves and then have more capacity to do that with others. yeah, there’s so much that I think people really need to learn about how to hold space for both pleasure and grief. They’re very similar in the ways in which we hold space for both of those beautiful human attributes.

And it is one that is incredibly loving, incredibly slow and incredibly like non judgmental. It’s just okay, I got to release the control and I got to let go. Otherwise, this is going to consume me. And then I will have lost myself again. And I want to make sure that I stay with myself as much as I can.

in the sensation of all of my life experiences. 

Cassie: Beautiful. I love that invitation. Thank you. as I shared with you, interviews are new to my podcast, so I’m playing around with some sort of a closing question. And though you might’ve already answered this, I would just love to hear, what right now is, bringing you back to your innate wholeness.

Kalah: Gosh, so much. I’m like, Oh God, there’s like a million things that are bringing me back to my wholeness. This is my Gemini rising here. Ooh, I got like 20 million things going on at once. But I think, the first thing that came to me and what’s really been apparent is, the skill of letting go and the skill of saying no.

And how that actually brings me into such deep states of satisfaction and satiation and wholeness. So I am like a genius at the yes, right? that’s what I teach people. I teach people the yes. Like, how do I have you screaming? yes. Like I can probably get you there pretty well. And what I’ve learned though, is that yes, doesn’t just come out of nowhere.

That our no’s are really deep, nourishing, loving. No thank you’s are shaping our yeses. They’re giving definition to our yeses. So it creates this really dynamic partnership. And what I’m experiencing in my life is that as I really honor my own capacity and my own limitations. Which is like a really hard concept for a pleasure, a pleasury stuff.

I’m like, wait, there’s limits.

This is boundless. but to really say listen, this is my capacity. This is where I’m at. And I’m going to have to bow out of this, opportunity or social event or whatever it may be. And really. Safeguard that capacity. I’ve learned that these deep wells of satiation and satisfaction, are experienced.

I’m like, wow. Okay. So the world didn’t implode by me saying no. And what actually became much clearer was like, My definitive yes, and the things that I actually do have capacity for not only capacity but also like deep longing for. and I think that’s just a maturation process, I’m 38, which I feel like is very young.

I feel like talk to me when I’m 60. This podcast is going to be, this interview is going to be great. but I do, I feel very young and I feel that I’m still in deep maturation processes that will. Start to come to light even more and more as I grow into my maturity, and I’m really looking forward to that.

And there’s this real beauty to the boundary work that comes with pleasure. And so that’s been really tantalizing. 

Cassie: I love that and I love your description of your no’s sort of chiseling and carving out what your yeses are like bringing them. Even more fully to life. That’s a really beautiful visual.

Oh, Kayla, I’m so grateful to know you and to have worked with you and for all of the beauty and wisdom you shared with us here. Thank you so much for, for showing up and sharing. And I would just love for you to share, where people can find you, where people can work with you, the ways that they can work with you.

Kalah: Of course. Yeah. So I have my website, which is in pleasure. We trust dot com as well as my instagram at Kayla dot hill. And yeah, there’s lots of fun musings going on there. I’m getting braver shining my light. And so I’ll have more things coming, and always feel free to reach out to me. I love connection.

I’m happy for you to slip into my DMs, honestly, slip into my DMs and ask me out. I’ll probably say yes. I’m such a flirt. I love flirting. I love getting to know people. I’m very curious. And so yeah, I’m always available for a chat, and to connect and yeah, there’s many ways I work with individual clients, privately online and also in person and I do combo packs with that too.

So we’ll have some things online, some things in person. And then I also host group experiences and events of the erotic nature. I’m very ceremonial, very conscious, and intentional. space for going a little deeper into exploring, sensual touch and erotic exploration. So really excited about all those things.

Cassie: Yeah. Yes. Some of those are piquing my interest. I didn’t know about the group. Work that you did. That’s exciting. and I will, of course, I will have all of your links and everything and the show notes so people can find you easily and connect. Wonderful. Thank you again so much, Kayla. 

Kalah: Thank you, Cassie.

My pleasure. 

The Nurturing Mother of Late Summer

The golden glow of summer is present but slowly fading. Fruits are ripe as the land continues to give, and the Earth’s love for us can be seen, felt, and tasted. There’s much to celebrate and much to grieve. Burning land, displacement, and smoke-tinged air offer potent reminders of where we are. It feels like too much more often than not. Then I remember these cycles, even human-created, will continue with or without me and that soft spaces are needed. The Nurturing Mother of late summer holds out her bountiful arms to nurture our grief. Soft spaces exist to grieve and be held but sometimes need to be cultivated from within. 

In this month’s Seasonal Magic and Medicine, enjoy reflections on the Goddesses Ceres and Demeter, a short writing about our need for soft spaces, a guided journey meditation to connect with Nurturing Mother of Late Summer, and a ritual to connect with plants in your local environment. Click here to join my newsletter to receive these monthly Seasonal Magic and Medicine articles in your inbox. 

Ceres and Demeter

The presence of the Greek Goddess Demeter and Roman Goddess Ceres, who many believe are one and the same, move to the foreground during this season. Ceres and Demeter are Mother Goddesses of the harvest, grain, nourishment, protection, grief, and fertility. They help to ensure and protect a bountiful harvest while providing a warm lap for the impending grief of winter. 

L’ete, Ceres – Jean-François Millet (1864-1865). Wikimedia Commons.

In the case of Demeter, she knows her daughter, Persephone, who some view as an aspect of Demeter, will soon return to the Underworld for six months during the dark half of the year. Persephone returns to the Underworld by choice each year, rather than force, as a necessary aspect of the birth-death-rebirth cycle. Monica Sjöö references this in The Great Cosmic Mother, “As the Grieving, determined mother she descends to the Underworld–into social rebellion, role-reversals, personal madness, the dark journeys of introspection and disintegration that precedes creative, visionary power–to rediscover her own soul, retrieve the joyous daughter of self-determining life.”

Ceres was an especially beloved Goddess of the common people of Rome because she offered protection from the Roman empire and more closely resembled the original regenerative Earth Goddesses. I feel this protective essence of Ceres especially potent this season, in the land, and for the masses (human and more-than-human) demanding a liveable future. 

We see in these Goddesses an opportunity to be nourished by the land and be held in our grief as we honor cycles of death in the land and ourselves to “rediscover” our “own soul,” as Sjöö puts it. 

Creating Soft Spaces

Earth’s cycles persist. Embrace or ignore them, but know they won’t stop because you are them. Where’s your soft space, the unconditional embrace that helps you dance through these bright, burning unknowns?

Soft spaces exist. Flowers bloom, and trees fruit amidst climate collapse as their kin die, burn, or drown. They don’t hide away til it’s done. They lean in to be held and nourished from within and around. They allow it because they know they‘ll have a soft place to land, right here in the land. Swallowed up and held tight by the Great Mother’s embrace, all to rise and do it again. 

Who holds you, dear one, when you realize the soft spaces were paved over? Where do you lay your grief and gather your love, or do they lie dormant and stagnant within you? 

The cycles will persist, with or without you, and whiteness and money will never be enough to save you. Mother Earth will forever continue to birth, dance, and die.

Every phase has its place in her warm embrace, readying for death and rebirth to continue. She’s breaking the pavement of soft spaces paved over.

Where does it leave you, us? The soft, warm lap of the Great Mother, the Earth, whoever you call them, offers this respite and the wisdom to remember. Their love can be seen in weeds weaving through cracks and Orcas fighting back. Each example a reminder that cultivating soft spaces together makes us much safer. 

Is it time for you to allow or to come out from hiding? When we build soft spaces together, they’re much harder to crack. The flowers do not struggle to bloom or do it alone. They take their time, roots connected to all. Taking cues from above and below, guiding them to grow, dance, and die. They know their blooming signals an eventual return to the soft space of compost, yet they move right along. Maybe that’s why we deny our own mysterious callings. We know it’s a surrender to eventually going back home. 

So, I ask you again, who holds you, dear one, when you realize the soft spaces were paved over? Where do you lay your grief and gather your love, or do they lie dormant within? Perhaps, we can create soft spaces together, held in the warm embrace of a Great Nurturing Mother. 

Nurturing Mother Meditation

What are you grieving this season? Let’s cultivate a soft space within to give it a home. Join me in a live circle to grieve and be held by the great Nurturing Mother of Summer by clicking here. Or, follow these steps to have a meditation journey of your own. As always, modify as needed. 

Before you begin, bring something to mind that feels tender and needs grieving. You might decide to have a physical representation of what you are grieving. If so, you can have that with you for meditation, but it is not a necessity.

1. Create a sacred space for your meditation in line with your practice. There are many ways to do this, like lighting incense, a candle, calling upon guides, and honoring the four directions. You might also like to play soft drumming music, or nature sounds that help you meditate. 

2. Begin to focus on your breath and body. Spend as much time here as you need to feel aware and embodied. 

3. Close your eyes or gaze softly ahead and begin to visualize with your mind’s eye an environment that feels safe. If you work with any guides or allies, you can connect with them here and invite them on the journey. 

4. Notice a door appears, and if it feels aligned, walk through it. 

5. Out ahead, you see a great stone circle. Walk in through the East to the center. From the center stone, orient yourself towards the Southwest and notice a warm golden glow. 

6. As you exit the stone circle and walk towards the warm glow, become aware of how the environment looks, smells, and feels. 

7. With the warm sun overhead, call upon the Great Mother with your grief in hand. She will appear uniquely to all, perhaps as a person or not or as the land itself. Allow yourself to be guided in how you interact with her. 

8. Offer your grief to be held, again allowing your intuitive connection with her to guide you. 

9. Spend as much time here, perhaps sitting in her lap, weeping, or noticing the beauty and nourishment of the season. 

10. When you feel ready to go, thank the Great Mother, and head back towards the stone circle to the center stone. Pause at the center stone before exiting out the east and heading back to the doorway. 

11. Once through the doorway, thank any guides or allies who accompanied you. Open your eyes and return to your space as you are ready. Consider journaling your experience, looking around your room, and having food and drink to help reorient you to your physical environment. 

Plant Connection Ritual

This ritual is an invitation to connect deeply with a plant(s) in your local environment as a form of gratitude and nourishment. The plant world’s ability to continue to give fruit amidst our quickly changing world holds wisdom. 

This ritual does not require receiving anything physical from the plant (although it could) and might come through as an insight or simply through being present with a plant’s beauty. 

Vervain, Verbena Stricta.

You might find it helpful to take some time before committing to this ritual to become more aware of the plants growing in your local environment and notice if any particular plants call to you or if you notice some more than others. 

You’ll need:

• 20-40 minutes

• offering (smoke, water, stone, anything that feels aligned with your practice)

• plant(s)

1. Based on what is accessible to you and your body, go for a walk or find a place to sit where there are plants. Doing this does not require a lush forest or prairie and can be done with plants in your yard, community, or even a shopping center. 

2. Once you’ve decided on a location, find a plant you feel called to connect with and sit with or near it. Before connecting with the plant, consider asking permission to connect with it. If getting close to a plant is not accessible, you can perform this ritual as a meditation by visualizing the plant within your mind’s eye. 

3. Notice how the plant supports life and gives to its local environment. Does it have fruit, flowers, or seeds? Are there bugs, birds, or bees on or around it? Is it protecting the soil? Notice the plants, leaves, fruit, or flowers. What do you find beautiful about them? 

4. Consider asking the plant questions. Some to consider might be, “Tell me about your essence?”, “Who do you nurture?”, “What bring you joy?”, “Can I do anything for you?”, or “Would you like to give anything to me?”. Answers might come through as inner knowings, feelings, visuals in the mind’s eye, or inner dialogue.

5. Act accordingly, and as you can, if you receive invitations to give or receive from the plant. For example, if you feel the plant wants water, bring it. If you feel the plant wants to share itself with you in some physical way, allow yourself to receive it (of course, do not ingest anything unless you know it is safe to do so.)

6. Thank the plant for its energy and give your offering. 

As late summer slowly yields to fall, its beauty and bounty feel especially transient and tender. Our ever-turning cycles are a constant reminder that nothing lasts forever. Fortunately, lasting forever is not a prerequisite to savoring the fruit of the season, the joys of life, or the beauty of the earth. May your grief give way to soft spaces that allow you to be nurtured enough to descend into your own personal underworlds.

Weaving Wisdom Past, Present & Future

The Magnolia tree is the oldest flowering tree that we humans know of. Fossils of Magnolia have been found dating back 58 million years. Some botanists think the Magnolia flower, or something resembling it, may have been the first flower on Earth from which all other flowers descended. Magnolia lived amongst the dinosaurs and continues to flourish today in various species. Magnolia is so old that these ancient examples pollinated with the help of beetles rather than bees because bees did not exist. It has witnessed many of Earth’s phases, expansive, destructive, regenerative, and everything in between. 

A beautiful Magnolia tree, Magnolia X soulangeana, often called Tulip or Saucer Magnolia, lives next to our house. It was quick to get my attention upon moving here last year. When Spring came, it flowered early, as many Magnolias do, and let me know it was time to weave some magic. The early bloom of Magnolia is something else I find interesting about these trees: they often flower early, losing blooms to inevitable cold snaps, yet, Magnolia continues to thrive. 

Magnolia X soulangeana bloom.

How Magnolia and I would work together was still unclear in the early Spring. I’ve learned to allow these things to unfold in their own time. As I continued to connect with Magnolia, both in person and in journey, guidance and direction began to take shape. Others were invited in, Grandmother Cedar and Lilac Tree, so, I began connecting with them too. I’m increasingly taken by the force at which some magical workings move me into actions I do not always fully understand. I now know this to be where the most potent magical workings happen. When I release control around what magic I think is needed, I open myself to the energy currents around me and the wisdom of other beings and spirits I’ve come to trust. I can be an instrument for needed magic to take shape without my human influence, inserting myself as a more communal part of both the physical and non-physical realms. I am simultaneously an integral and insignificant part of the magical workings, as I trust another would bring it to life if I did not. 

Throughout this process, I learned how to weave a cord from the inner bark of Cedar and crafted a beautiful three-strand rope as part of this collaboration. I am quite proud of it! Further guidance suggested combining these tree energies in a vibrational or flower essence. However, the water worked with in this process holds more than the flowers placed atop it as there was quite a bit unfolding around it at its inception.

Grandmother Cedar tree and her inner bark used for the rope.

As my practice deepens, I’ve become more aware of collective energy shifts and often feel a need to help midwife energies in or out of the collective. Sometimes, I sense these shifts in small groups of people, the country, or humanity. This was one of those times and felt like the latter. Though Magnolia tipped me off to this project months earlier, these workings culminated during an eclipse season. Which, if you know, you know. Right? Most of this last eclipse season felt like a trance-like blur. Perhaps, for you too? 

This collaborative creation was a midwifing in situation, a remembering. Magnolia’s easeful wisdom reminded me that we have access to the same timelines they do. Like Magnolia, we can weave back into the past by connecting with the parts of ourselves that lived in various parts of the world hundreds and thousands of years ago. It’s all there in our blood, bones, and the dirt beneath us that grows our food. As is the future. Magnolia showed me time as an accordion-like shape that can fold in on itself and expand, as though time is simultaneously linear and singular. A feature that enables us to access different points at will, inviting us to lean on the perseverance and wisdom from our past well and healed ancestors and the strength and desires of our future well and healed descendants. Beyond different timelines, I was also invited to explore different parts of my personal timeline for healing, strength, wisdom, and hope. For example, accessing the healed and whole maiden bursting with playful curiosity and desire when needed, knowing I can also access the wise crone who may or may not be fully realized physically yet lives within me now.

The invitation I found in this experience was to become more comfortable navigating and seeking support and guidance from these different timelines, both within myself and the collective. Working in this way felt more like a remembrance than a new practice. It also helped expand the depth of my otherworld support network in ways I didn’t know I needed, which helped me navigate the unfolding present. I think most of us, especially magical and spiritual folk, sense significant changes on the horizon. Our desires as a collective, alongside our plant and animal kin, feel like they’re culminating. Albeit outwardly and by design, it may not appear that most of us have the same overall desires, I believe our desires are more similar than we’re led to believe. Seeds are planted, and it seems all timelines seek to support a bountiful harvest that supports all life beyond humans. 

But these transitional times can be messy, confusing, and scary. Our metaphorical growing season may bring pests, drought, or uncertain situations. Messy isn’t bad, but it often requires additional resources to navigate the frequent reorientations needed to move through it. Magnolia impressed upon me some solutions, a remembrance of our ability to weave together the wise and healed ones of the past, present, and future. We need to expand our perspective far beyond the perceived challenges of these times by leaning on the wisdom of the past and future well and healed ones. Well-rooted strength, hope, and love are waiting for you in different timelines, and they are excitedly watching, ready to assist, as are the different versions of yourself. 

If you’re reading this, I doubt this is surprising. I suspect it’s information that will feel like a confirmation because it’s energy you’ve also picked up on. We’re in for significant changes here on Earth, but I feel well-resourced and equipped for whatever comes. And, when I don’t, which is also often, I remember that I have the support of the wise ones in all timelines guiding me. 

Chanting and weaving the Cedar rope as the essence steeped.

I chanted as I wove the cedar cord over the steeping essence of Magnolia and Lilac flowers, “Wise ones, maidens, mothers, and crones—healed and whole. Past, present, future, weaving together the here and now.” or some variation of it. The essence is bottled, with a portion of the Cedar cord around each bottle, and titled the Wisdom Weaver Elixir. It feels important, but it also feels like the waves of the work are rippling out regardless of who consumes the essence. I do like it, though, and it feels like some of the most meaningful magic I’ve been a part of. 

The essence with Lilac & Magnolia flowers & the finished Cedar rope around the glass.

A personal result of accessing these timelines is that I’ve been connecting with a second-generation successor of my children. It’s been inspiring and exciting as most of my spiritual connections have revolved around ancestors and otherworld beings. Connecting with this related being from the future grants me a hopeful and beautiful perspective. Your ancestors have walked through much, as have you and the lineages beyond you who will inhabit this realm, or are already.  I’ve certainly enjoyed expanding my community beyond the present by allowing it to weave through different timelines within myself and beyond. Perhaps we’ll need more than ourselves to dance through this phase.

The Magic of Grief & Grief Tending

Every rite of passage and rebirth you experience, whether on a spiritual, emotional, physical, personal, or collective level, includes opportunities to grieve. Yet, talk of grief is often reserved for death and dying alone. While in truth, grief relates to any deep sorrow, and sorrow accompanies many of the rites of passage we walk through. Some of the rites of passage, rebirths, and deaths that come to mind that so often lack our grief are the onset of menstruation, puberty, childbirth, monetary changes, loss of friendships, moving, changes in important relationships, career or work changes, deaths, and collective changes like climate change and the pandemic, just to name a few. 

Listen to this post on my podcast, Rooting into Wholeness, here.

Grief lives within every death and rebirth cycle, waiting for us like a wise teacher ready to help us alchemize through another right-of-passage portal. Unfortunately, for many of us, rights of passage are sorely lacking in our personal lives and collectively, leaving our ability to properly grieve important changes neglected. How might our view of grief and grieving change if we could hold these words with more reverence? How would life's rights of passage, death, and rebirth processes look and feel if you had more time and space to grieve them properly? How might we as a collective find more peace if we made more space for the magic of grief? 

In the book Death Nesting by Anne-Marie Keppel, she shares this about grief, "Rather than seeing it as something to "get through” and "move on" from, learn how these new feelings incorporate into your life. Death changes life–that's what it does. Be gentle with yourself and others as you learn this new being you are becoming." When I grieve, I'm often reminded that I need far more time and space than I think to be with my grief. What would happen if you allowed more time to tend to your grief or, as Anne-Marie put it, “to learn this new being you are becoming”? Would you turn into a pile of tears, incapable of moving forward? Maybe for a little while, but not forever. I suspect your grief, like mine, has wisdom, healing, and even inspiration to offer you as you navigate this physical world. Perhaps focusing on our grief is the transformative and paradoxical magic we need to emerge from personal and collective rites of passage more healed and whole.

This isn't to say grief tending is easy, and of course, there are barriers to regular grief tending embedded in the systems in which we live, so each person's ability to grieve will vary. The natural cycles of nature and the moon show us ways to grieve even when it may be difficult. I've found in my own grief tending that my ability to grieve directly correlates to my capacity to love myself and others and experience deep joy. Like most things, the more time you spend cozying up to grief, the more natural it will feel over time.

Like so many areas of life, perhaps the best place to better learn how to grieve is by turning to our closest teachers in the natural cycles surrounding us, like the moon and the seasons. In this share, I'll explore grief through the seasons, moon phases, and the tarot, gleaning ways to honor and learn from our grief to help us become whole and more firmly rooted in our humanness. I'll offer energetic insights into how I see grief show up in the energy body as an energy worker, how I approach it on an energetic level, and other grief rituals. This share is an invitation to examine your grief, and the magic, healing, and joy found within the grieving process. 

As a human who grieves, a death doula, and an energy worker, I'm no stranger to grief, but I'm also not the authority on grief. As a cis white woman, I carry internal biases that skew my perspective, which undoubtedly pertain to my experiences around grief. As always, take what you like and leave the rest. Furthermore, if you've recently lost someone or are experiencing deep grief, I invite you to be gentle with yourself as you listen and take breaks if you need. Therapy can be a wonderful ally to grieving. You don't need to do this alone. 

Grief and the season of slowness, winter

Wintertime is our dark moon of the year and a palpable reminder of the need for slowness, darkness, death, and the need to retreat inward. The hibernating flora and fauna remind us not to extend our energy outward year-round. Inward and descending energy has a vital and nourishing role in our existence. My son wisely described this season as the time that "the sun takes a rest." As I write this, here in the Northern Hemisphere, we are a week away from the Spring Equinox, positioned on the cusp of the season of rebirth. For me, the grief is palpable. 

As my first year back in a cloudy, cold climate for winter, it dawned on me that the seasonal depression I felt creeping in was another metaphorical red flashing sign inviting me to "slow down!". Leaving me wondering, would the effects of SAD be as bad if I could rest and retreat inward even more throughout the winter months? The amount of sunlight we have access to throughout winter may be fixed, but the reality is that slowing down, regardless of the season, is simply not an option for most. Depression is real, and lack of sunlight can certainly play a role, but would SAD be as severe if people could slow down and grieve more amidst these natural seasons of less light?

A view from one of my many midwestern winter season walks.

When I lost my grandmother and father within a couple of months of each other, I entered what I like to call a "grief portal." Time seemed to slow down, everything felt hard, and through my patriarchalized and capitalized lens, I just wanted to return to "normal." The biggest lesson I took away from that experience was how much slowness my grief required. I needed loads of time to do nothing to allow things to process. Of course, the way each person processes their grief will be unique, but for me, getting to a place where my grief can come out to be processed requires tremendous slowness. 

Of course, rest and slowness may sound lovely, but there are very real barriers to this kind of big rest, grief tending, and inner transformations. I was privileged to have the space to slow down amidst my grief amidst deep loss. Having time for big slowdowns to process grief may not always be doable. Add to these barriers the fact that many of us have endured various levels of conditioning to place more value on our ability to produce over our ability to simply be. Slowing down can feel like a life-and-death situation. Yet, for many of us, this is what grief needs. 

It is within this season of slowing down and integrating that our grief wants to be witnessed and held close the most. The world outside is in a literal death phase, reminding us daily to honor our personal need to grieve. Yet, our attempts to make space for grief can, understandably, feel too difficult to make space for or thwarted due to the demands of living in a capitalist society, stretching us ever thinner in a time when we should have the space to be with our grief and let parts of ourselves die away. 

Returning to the midwest and communing with the winter landscape has left me pondering how to rewrite this season to make more space for my need to grieve, integrate, and transform. I'm learning that being with my grief at this time is the most potent spell and healing gift I can offer myself this season. When the inevitable happens, and my grief bubbles up, or someone else's grief begins to overflow in my presence, I try witnessing it without judging it or trying to fix it and instead, asking myself how to lovingly hold the space for it, allowing it to be witnessed just like the death of nature all around me. What a powerful gift for myself and others when I can approach grief from this tender and vulnerable space. 

When I look at grieving as something I need to thrive and become whole, it feels less like something I need to get over and more like something I need to hold dear. When I move further into being present with my grief, its magic shines even more. My ability to be present with more grief and the grief of others expands, and my grief transforms into the gift of being present for someone else in their grief. I found myself sitting with the starkness of the winter landscape, witnessing the grief of nature on full display, and wondered if, rather than tucking grief neatly away for an "appropriate" time, perhaps we could be like the winter landscape and allow our grief to simply be. 

Of course, wintertime is not our only season of grief, death, and rebirth. Mother moon shows us how to die, grieve, and be reborn every lunar cycle. Let's explore the wisdom of the dark moon phase in relation to grief.

Honoring the dark moon 

The dark moon phase is mother moon's death, rest, and integration season. Unlike the full moon's magic, the dark moon is not a time for manifesting and materializing but for returning to the inner cauldron, shadow work, and connecting with unseen realms. It is a monthly opportunity to honor death and grief. 

Dark Moon card featured from The Ritual Deck (discontinued)

In Sarah Faith Gottesdeiner's book The Moon Book, she describes the dark moon as "a site of liberation," and I couldn't agree more. It is within the darkness of this phase that we are granted the space to excavate from our depths the parts of us that need to be witnessed and loved the most. By loving these parts of ourselves and witnessing our grief, they can be fully integrated into our inner soil, cultivating a necessary richness for new seeds to be sown. 

When I neglect this phase of the moon's cycles, my inner earth remains parched, thirsty for my grief to be witnessed and tended. Liberation comes when I can hold my sorrow close, rock it, and tell it it's okay to be. Giving my grief permission to integrate into my inner landscape gives rise to the fertile soil needed for new life. I get free. 

The beauty of honoring grief through the dark moon phase is that it comes every month. You don't have to grieve everything at once. The moon reminds us daily that we're not fixed beings and that change is our true nature. We are not meant to be radiant and positive every day; we are also not meant to grieve every day. Every lunation is an invitation to honor where you're at and how you feel, not how society tells you to feel. The dark moon is often the reminder I need to honor my grief and the little day-to-day deaths we all experience. Sometimes, we're intended to crumble and be held by the earth, and the dark moon phase can be a monthly ally to assist in this kind of grief tending. 

Grief as paradox and the chariot

Beyond my personal grief tending this season, I’ve noticed the topic of grief surfacing more on a collective level as well. Have you noticed this, too? Being in a chariot year (2+0+2+3=7, which corresponds to the chariot), I found myself called to think about grief in relation to this card and was excited to see so many overlapping themes and invitations around grief and grieving. Even though the chariot is not usually correlated with grief, I think it has some wisdom for us in this collective season.  

The first clue to the chariot card being an invitation to help us grieve is its placement, and I’ll be honest, the placement of this card did not dawn on me immediately. It wasn’t until I was in the final editing process of this share that I received a little nudge reminding me that the chariot card is the last card of the first line in the major arcana. Wow. Talk about an opportunity to invite grief in. The placement alone sets this card apart as a point of death and rebirth. The fact that the chariot card is the card associated with 2023 indicates that this is indeed a year to, among other things, honor our grief individually and collectively. 

Left: The Chariot Card from Journey Tarot by Cassie Uhl, Right: The Chariot Card from the Waite/Coleman deck

This isn’t the only invitation to grieve that I’ve found in the chariot. The chariot card is one of those cards in the major arcana that I find has many layers, paradoxes, and can mean different things at different times of life. Let’s dive into the paradox of this card and how it shines a light on the paradox in grief. 

The name of the chariot indicates movement and action, yet, on the Waite/Coleman deck, there is no movement shown. It is often touted as a card of willpower yet corresponds with the soft and intuitive energy of Cancer in the zodiac. The paradox continues with the duality of symbology, which can be seen in the black-and-white sphinx looking in different directions. I captured this in my deck with the black and white birds heading in different directions. The medicine of this card is potent and not one that I will be able to fully expand upon here, but I think it has some powerful invitations for us as we examine our grief on a collective level.

There’s a certain amount of resiliency building that accompanies regular grief tending. This is where the chariot comes in. Within the chariot's many layers, there are elements of softness, which we can see with the Cancerian energy tied to this card. There is an invitation to allow what is, to sink into it, and to try to be in a state of flow with what is, even when it’s uncomfortable. 

I see the willpower part of this card come in with how we engage with emotions and grief. The chariot asks us to allow a steady stream of emotions to flow, all while staying on course or perhaps being open to flowing in a new direction. With the gates of grief open, your emotions may indeed put you on a new course entirely or direct your life in new ways. The chariot can be an invitation to get more comfortable in the ups and downs of grief tending. It shares possible avenues to explore around building resiliency while pendulating between grief and joy. Asking, “how can we be with the joy and the grief without being knocked off course so far that we can’t come back?” or, “how can we allow the pendulation between grief and joy to carve a new pathway?”

There’s a certain tension held within the chariot card—a tension between the world of our subconscious emotions and the logical world. In Rachel Pollack’s book Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom, she expresses the tension found in the chariot through our relationship with speech and language in this excerpt. “However, just as the ego is limited, so is speech. First of all, speech restricts our experience of reality. By forming a description of the world, by giving everything a label, we erect a barrier between ourselves and the experience. When we look at a tree, we do not feel the impact of a living organism; rather we think ‘tree’ and move on. The label has replaced the thing itself. Also, by relying too much on this rational quality of language we ignore experiences that cannot be expressed in words.” 

In what ways do we limit our ability to feel our grief fully and all of the magic it has to offer? Cancer, the astrological sign connected to this card, epitomizes feeling and being in our emotions. When paired with the strength and willpower of this card, how are we being asked to use those emotions to direct our movement forward? There is an over-arching theme of being in flow with the discomfort of not knowing where our emotions will take us, which may be another reason some fear sinking deeply into grief. I know I’ve certainly held this fear. What would it look like if the tension between your emotional and logical worlds were in harmony? How might inviting more grief into your daily life inform your daily actions or larger goals? 

This plays out in so many ways societally as well. I find myself constantly faced with the paradox of seeing and experiencing deep pain and injustices in the world, yet, I’m asked to forge ahead like everything is okay, or worse, that it’s completely normal to shove these grievances under the rug and carry on. I think intuitively, even humanely, many of us see how problematic this is. This is certainly one side of the chariot, the idea of forcing and forging ahead at all costs by leaning deeply into our willpower. But, if I invite in more of the nuance this card offers, I can see the need to bring my emotional and subconscious world into my decision-making and how I use my energy. Through this lens, I can see the chariot as an invitation to lean into my willpower to find ways to dance between and betwixt my emotions and the logical world. 

How might our trajectory as a collective change if more of us were forging new paths by flowing between our emotional/subconscious and logical/physical worlds? I sense this shift coming as many of us tire of binary thinking, especially in political spaces. These shifts could be slow and painful, but I don’t think they have to be. There’s so much space for deep joy and pleasure in these in-between spaces around our grief, joy, and the real demands of day-to-day life. I hope 2023 will be a year of flowing more intentionally between our grief, emotions, and the logical steps needed to build a more just and equitable world. 

Grief and the heart space

I don't often share experiences from my energy healing practice, but this specific topic felt like the right time to do so. Tending to grief within the heart space is one of the most common themes in my healing work with clients. Grief often presents to me as heavy weights or boulders in the energy body settled around the heart space. Sometimes these energetic weights are buried deep under several layers. Sometimes it takes multiple sessions for these pockets of grief to be revealed to me as a person becomes more comfortable working with me and my guides. 

How I approach untended grief in the energy body is quite different from how I approach a general imbalance in energy. I'm not the type of energy worker that removes everything from the person I'm working with. So, I certainly don't go in clearing away layers of grief when I come across it. I've found that clearing everything away is not only non-productive and ineffective but can potentially have negative side effects. Over the years, spirit and my guides have become exceedingly clear that grief needs to be witnessed, held, and danced with by the person I'm working with to be fully integrated and processed. There are things I can do to help bring awareness and help the grief surface or to give tools to tend to the grief, but it is not a healing path I can walk for someone else. 

This isn't the answer most folks want to hear. Of course, it would be much easier to remove people's grief, never to be seen again. However, as I shared, I feel there's deep wisdom in our grief and what a tragedy it would be to be severed from our humanness in this way. This isn't to say I won't remove energy from a person's field that isn't serving them, but my guides are always very clear about what needs to go and what needs to stay when I work with others. 

Unsurprisingly, most of the grief I see as an energy worker is settled in the heart space. Like the chariot card, the heart space is an extremely nuanced, layered, and paradoxical part of the energy body. The bridge area holds a unique duality between the physical and spirit realms, where these two qualities seek a sense of harmony. When I see untended grief in the energy body, it often affects one's overall ability to give and receive love, which has been my experience with grief, too. Love, on all fronts, is undeniably a bedrock of our human experience. Again, pointing to grief's important role in our ability to love, be loved, and experience deep joy. 

When I encounter untended grief in the heart space while working with someone, I usually sense a deep desire to witness, feel, and hold the grief. What I offer this kind of grief when I come across it is that deep witnessing. I give it space to tell me what it's been holding onto for so long. I hold it and rock it. After sessions like this, clients often report a sense of openness in the heart space. I do this to help bring it to the surface, not to clear it away. Instead, it's an invitation to embark on a personal grieving and healing journey if the client wants to, with or without me.

The rituals I offer after this kind of work are similar to what I do when I'm energetically engaged in someone's heart space. I invite folks to sit with their heart space, see what arises, and give it space to be witnessed and held. What our grief wants of us is rarely difficult, but the structures in which we live can make it feel like they are. If you're feeling pulled to tend to your grief in this way, you can find a by-donation grief-tending guided meditation I created here. I'll explore this meditation in greater detail below as well, as well as some other grief-tending tools.

Touching into the magic of grief through ritual

The ways we approach our grief will be as varied as the ways we approach life. Let these offerings serve as a place to play and create your own rituals around grief. As I shared earlier, what I offer here is based on my experience as a human who grieves, an energy worker, and an end-of-life doula. I am not an expert or a therapist. If my experiences of grief and grieving do not relate to you or your experiences, that is okay. As always, take what you like and leave the rest.

It's also important to note that working with a trained therapist can be incredibly helpful for grief work. I am a huge proponent of therapy, and many of my deepest underworld journeys have included the aid of a therapist or spiritual counselor. You do not need to go this alone.

Grief work can look like a lot of things. It can look like inner child healing, shadow work, or grieving the loss of someone or something. Remember, grief is paradoxical, so it might take you on surprising journeys and not look how you thought it would. For example, when I was seeing a therapist to help me navigate the grief of losing my father and grandmother, much of the work that transpired between us revolved around healing grief within my childhood. I invite you to be open-minded and curious as you explore your grief. 

Grief Witnessing Meditation

In my practice, some of my most powerful grief work is quite passive. I have learned a lot about slowness through my grief tending and working with those at the end of life. Grief works on its own time, which can be challenging in and of itself. Especially those of us who like to have a checklist! I've shared this before and will continue to. During one of my grief journeys, my therapist reminded me often that in grief, "doing nothing is doing something." It took me a long time to hear her, but I finally did, and it's something I remind myself of regularly today. Grief requires us to slow way down, and there's no shortage of barriers trying to prevent many of us from doing that. 

Vintage illustration of a Young woman bathing by moonlight, Victorian art print, 19th Century

This meditation practice is the most common practice I share with my clients who are carrying grief. It is very passive and may even seem overly simple, try not to let the simplicity of this grief-tending exercise keep you from trying it. 

Find a guided audio version of this meditation here.

Grief tending heart space meditation 

• Carve out 10-40 minutes, whatever you feel you have the capacity for, as I'll encourage you to return to it often.  

• Settle into the present moment by noticing your breath and body. Add in any practices that help you root into the moment. 

• When you feel ready, settle yourself energetically in the heart space. This might look like visualizing traveling into the body and the heart space, visualizing a green or pink field of light around the heart space and focusing your energy there, or something else. There's no wrong or right way to do this. Your goal is to focus your attention on your heart space.

• As you settle into this space, simply notice what comes up, any physical sensations, emotions, visuals, or where you feel called to move within the heart space.  

• If you feel stuck at any time, you can consider asking your heart space questions like, "Are there any parts of myself that need tending to?", "Are there any versions of myself that need to be witnessed?" or "Are there any griefs that need to be held or honored?" I usually find an area of focus that my heart leads me to. 

• Go where you're led as far as you feel safe to continue. You could come in contact with any number of feelings or past experiences that feel they need your attention. Remember, you do not need to feel them all simultaneously. Spend as much time with each layer in your heart as you want, knowing you can always return. 

• You may find it helpful to ask your grief or any younger versions of yourself that you come in contact with if there's anything it would like for you to do to better tend to it. You may find that your grief simply wants you to play or laugh more to honor parts of your childhood that were taken away. 

• Come out of this when you're ready, and take your time returning to your physical space. Consider reintegrating by eating some food or having some tea to root into the physical body. 

If you'd like some support with a meditation like this, find my guided meditation for grief here. 

Play, expression, and ritual

Play, ritual, and various forms of expression have held and continue to hold key roles in grieving that is often forgotten in modern times. In Ireland, there's been a resurgence around the art of keening, which is the intentional wailing, singing, and crying for the dead—a practice initiated by Goddess Brigid after the death of her beloved son. In Ireland, a woman is sometimes hired to keen or wale at a ceremony. The keener holds multiple roles, one to give permission for others to wale or yell, but also to help usher the dead to their next phase. Did you know there are also past practices of game-playing and storytelling amidst the grieving process in Ireland? They were called "wake games." Similar to keening, they were suppressed as Christianity dominated. 

In Monica Sjöö's important book, The Great Cosmic Mother, she speaks of the importance of group ritual and expression in rites of passage, "Rites of transition from one life stage to another required group participation in ritualized expression, all designed to keep the individual's psyche united and in balance while passing through crises." I see this passage as another reminder of how many have forgotten the importance of grieving together. Of course, this "forgetting," was quite intentional. Grieving takes time, and many systems we abide by now, like capitalism, white supremacy, and patriarchy, do not allow the time it takes to grieve properly. This isn't true for everyone, and there are certainly many cultures that have maintained beautiful and powerful grief practices, and, as I mentioned, some are seeing a resurgence like keening. However, for the most part, what I see, as someone who works with folks at the end of life is that many of us have a beautiful opportunity to learn how to grieve better, especially together.

Preparing and conducting rituals around grief throughout the dying process was a big part of my end-of-life doula training. There was also huge importance placed on guiding folks to create rituals independently or as a family. As someone who lives and breathes ritual in my personal practice, I understand the personal nature of ritual. The way you need to grieve, or your family needs to grieve, isn't something I can tell you. I can encourage you to explore your ancestry, if it's accessible to you, and learn about ways your ancestors grieved together. I can also offer you some questions to ponder or journal on when thinking about ways to express or ritualize your grief. 

1. What story does your grief have to tell, and how might that story want to be told? 

2. What parts of your life have died or will die amidst this grief? How might you honor those parts and their ending?

3. How will your grief and loss create openings in your life, whether painful, sad, or happy? Can you think of any ways this openness may want to be honored or acknowledged while simultaneously holding space for your loss?

4. While sitting in your grief, what does it feel like your body wants to do or not do? How might you honor this?

5. While tuning into your grief, can you ask how it would like to be expressed? What does it have to tell you? 

Beyond these reflections, I will offer you one tool that has served me well throughout my life and my grief, and that's through working with altars. 

Grief altars

Different cultures have used altars since the beginning, and grief and loss are powerful ways to work with them. When I was fresh in my grief after the death of my father and grandmother, it caused me deep pain to see pictures of them. Each image served as a reminder of their absence. One of my earliest grief-tending methods was through creating a grief altar. This altar had no images. Instead, I used stones, flowers, and other found objects to represent them. My altar for them held space for all the indescribable feelings I was experiencing around their deaths. It gave me a physical space to put all my big feelings when I needed a break from carrying them. Over the years, I eventually added images of my loved ones to this altar. It is still up in my house today and continues to transform in appearance and purpose. What started as a container for my grief that I could dip in and out of has morphed into a physical representation of my reverence and connection to these loved ones. 

I created a similar altar for my grief around my difficulty having children. There is no grief too small for an altar. Every grief you carry deserves your love. Altars can be small and simple or large and intricate. There is, in my opinion, no wrong or right way to create an altar as they are extremely personal. One purpose of an altar is to bring physicality to something you're working with or an experience. In grief, an altar can be a place to hold, honor, or work with your grief. If this feels like something you'd benefit from, I invite you to approach your grief altar with curiosity and a playful spirit. You might even find it helpful to try the grief-honoring meditation earlier and ask for insight into what creating a grief altar might look like for you.  

Grief offers us a bridge between our deaths and our inevitable rebirths. Whether we honor the grief within them or not, the death and birth cycles will always continue within our own lives and the collective. The invitation of grief is to be a present participant within the many processes of death and rebirth we will all experience. When I become an active participant in my losses, when I decide to feel them fully and dance in the grief, I am simultaneously allowed the presence to rebuild myself or my life in meaningful ways. We can extend these sentiments to the collective as well. When I seek moments to be present in the grief of the mass extinctions happening all around us, to feel it and dance alongside it, I also create avenues to become an active participant in our rebirthing process as a collective. That is the magic that grief offers us. May you be with the grief fully, dance with it, let it wale through your body and out your mouth, and let it stream down your face and stomp through your feet into the great mother earth who holds us all until it is fully witnessed and held. 

Accessing Your Inner Healer with the Element of Water

Situated in the cardinal direction of the west, water is our winding and healing teacher that spirals us into the underworld in the Autumn months. Water connects deeply with the archetype of the Goddess calling us down and in to clear and heal in preparation for our descent into the colder months of stillness, integration, and regeneration. Also related to the moon, intuition, and mysticism, water is our wise teacher helping us move into the current of intuitive wisdom all around us. Within the current of water lies your inner healer and the wise one within you, who holds the key to your interconnectedness and wholeness.

Unlike Spring and Summer, when we face the west on our seasonal wheel, we are asked to begin channeling our energy inward to explore our internal worlds. It's a time to connect with the parts of ourselves that need tending and healing. The direction west and the element of water help us do this. 

While exploring the element of water, we often focus solely on her intuitive nature, which is true, but water is so much more! In this share, you'll learn more about the placement of west and water on our seasonal wheel and how it relates to the corresponding zodiac seasons, explore wisdom from water, common correspondences for water and west, and a few rituals to connect with, protect, and honor water.   

Listen on the podcast here.

Let's start with the placement of this direction and element on our seasonal wheel of the year. 

Seasonal Placement of Water on our Wheel

The element of water begins to spiral into our cyclical year at Lughnasadh as we face southwest. At this point on the wheel, we have a playful and intense time where water and fire mix and play. What happens with we introduce fire to water? It moves, becomes agitated, and may even turn into steam. This sense of activity is mirrored in the energy associated with the harvest season, busily preparing for the cold months ahead. 

When we shift fully westward at the time of the Autumn Equinox, we also move into Libra season. It's telling that our season of water begins with Libra and then moves into Scorpio. Libra, ruled by the planet of venus, our watery and sensual planet of love and beauty, seeks to find pleasure and nourishment from the beauty all around. As the earth begins to get colder in the Northern Hemisphere, water slows down, and we shift into Scorpio season, where we're invited to slow down and descend into the watery depths of our internal worlds for deeper healing and wisdom from within. 

Water Element card featured from The Ritual Deck by Cassie Uhl

For many who are in tune with the seasonal changes, the shift from Libra to Scorpio and Lughnasadh to Samhain feels palpable. The earth also mirrors this shift, with leaves falling from the trees and animals beginning to retreat. A slow spiraling dance inward that prepares us to shift north towards the element of earth and the time of composting and regeneration. 

Everything about this liminal space calls us inward to notice what within us needs to die so seeds can be planted for a new cycle to begin. Rebirth cannot happen without death. When we sink deeper into our internal oceans, we can find clues to what is ready to surface, what needs tending to, and what is ready to be returned to the earth for renewal. This need to retreat inward is where your inner healer comes in. Connecting with your inner healer and wisdom keepers resources you to love, heal, and excavate what needs tending and what needs midwifing out. 

Wisdom from Water and West

Water is the keeper and teacher of our emotional and intuitive world. Acting as a conduit between the physical/mundane world and the mystical/otherworld, she is a magical bridgebuilder calling you to swim in her waters to meet parts of yourself below the surface. We all have inner healers, wisdom keepers, and ancestral knowledge.

Seeking answers and wisdom from outside of ourselves oftentimes feels like the easier route, especially when the dominant culture inspires extraction at every turn. We've been taught not to trust ourselves and not to go within for answers and healing. Going within for our own healing and answers can feel incredibly uncomfortable. In this same thread, it's also important to state that sometimes we must seek outside of ourselves for help! Water asks us to discern when to seek healing and wisdom from the outside and when to go within. 

My most impactful mentors have always inspired me to seek my answers from within rather than supplying me with their formulas or answers. I've learned that this is a mark of a good mentor, and I am hesitant of mentors and teachers who appear to have all the right answers. As I continue to deepen my relationship with my inner wise woman, I've learned to discern better when I need to go within and when I need to ask for help. I've come to recognize that if I have a sense of urgency when searching externally for an answer or comfort, I need to pause, slow down, and look within first. I aim to no longer use mild discomfort as an excuse to seek external validation or answers. Sometimes, discomfort is simply an invitation to go deeper, not a problem. 

We can turn to the wisdom of Scorpio to better understand this desire to sink deeper into our depths. As I already shared about the timing of this season, it's no wonder we find Scorpio here aligned with the west and water. Scorpio energy always aims to go deeper. It encourages us to be with and learn from our emotional worlds, especially the often neglected and ignored parts. This requires us to begin flowing between our pain and pleasure so we can go deeper still, unafraid of our depths and where they may take us. Scorpio energy understands that the most beautiful gems and potent medicine are hidden within our deepest fractures. Learning from our pain doesn't mean we stay with it, but it does mean that we learn how to be with it and how to alchemize it into potent healing for ourselves and others. 

I love this excerpt from Bewitching the Elements by Gabby Herstik on the element of water that illustrates its healing powers so well. 

"Through this element you learn about your innermost world, about how you love, about your fears, about your shadow. Water is your connection to your intuition to the all-knowing consciousness that's bigger than just you. When you embrace the fluidity and majesty of this element, when you recognize your own ability to flow and ebb, you are able to come back to your magick, to your mysticism, to your truth: unconditional love. A mystical being in a human suit. Through water you feel, and through water you heal."

The innate healing gifts you harbor within are unique to you, which is why it's so important for each of us to travel to our sacred depths and explore hidden parts of ourselves. When we return to the surface, we are imbued with new tools to heal ourselves and others. We also come back with more empathy. When we lean deeply into our emotional world and understand why we feel the way we do, we can see these same patterns in others and have more compassion for them. 

Water is the mysterious shapeshifter of the elements, flowing from solid to liquid to vapor. Her shapeshifting abilities speak to her enigmatic nature. Water speaks through emotion and deep feeling. Her communication may present as contradictory and illogical due to her shapeshifting and interconnected nature, calling us to be at peace with simultaneous truths. So much of being present is learning to hold multiple truths and realities simultaneously. I encourage you not to abandon the wisdom water offers when you find it contradictory, it may still be true.  

Water is the great uniter and connecter, not only to each other but to all life and our ancestors. Water reminds us that we are all connected. When we move into her current, we have access to the past, present, and future. She is the divine wisdom keeper and healer residing within every living creature. My water teacher, Jen Isabel Friend, shares more about this idea in this quote from a longer article she shared on my blog in 2019.

"For the Kogi people of Colombia, for example, water is the origin of reality. For them, the structure of the world is sustained by water – every river, runoff, and raindrop maintains the world. Kogi know that within water is the metaphysical blueprint of existence, it holds the map of reality. All "worlds" of reality, from dreams to the structures of daily life, to psychic visions in medicine journeys, all are maintained by water.

This makes a lot of sense when you consider that water is actually holographic in nature. The internal arrangement of her molecules can imprint, store, and transmit information faster than the speed of light. Encoded in every cluster of water molecules is a record of everything that water has experienced. In fact, water is like a sensory organ of Mother Earth – she feels and remembers everything."

I'll dive deeper into how science is starting to catch up with some of these claims later in this share.

Water asks us to slow ourselves. It's the only way we'll feel her magic. It's how we can tune into and remember our unique gifts. If water knows all, connecting with it to learn more about ourselves, our inner healer, is less about acquiring something new and more about remembering who we are. Water asks us to sink into our depths and explore our wounds to remember who we really are and why we're here. When we shift into the element of earth and the direction of the north, we can better integrate these gifts and tools for the cycle to begin again. 

Water and West Correspondences

Correspondences are ways to connect with a particular energy. These are common correspondences for water and west, but it should always be noted that they can vary from practitioner to practitioner. Correspondences can be unique and personal. If there are specific items outside this list that help you feel connected to the element of water, honor that.

The Moon and High Priestess cards from Journey Tarot by Cassie Uhl

• Moon Phase: waning moon

• Phase of life: the priestess, wise woman, and the crone

• Themes: releasing, healing, letting go, slowing down, intuition, magic, the wise woman

• Color: Blue, 

• Element: Water

• Time of Year: Autumn

• Time of day: Sunset

• Energy center: Pelvic bowl and reproductive organs

• Items and tools: water, cauldron, chalice, symbols of the moon and the Goddess, shells and other items from water

• Crystals: Moonstone, aquamarine, carnelian, lepidolite, sodalite, opal

• Plants: Mugwort, ivy, aster, rose, lemon balm, poppy, valerian

• Tarot: Suit of cups, the Moon, hanged one, and death

• Ogham: Vine, ivy, reed 

• Runes: Laguz

• Planets: Moon, Neptune, Pluto

• Zodiac: Pisces, Cancer, Scorpio

Rituals to Connect with West and Water

Let's explore ways to deepen your relationship with water through ritual and magick. As always, take what you like and leave the rest. These are all examples of ways I've personally found to connect with and honor water and the west.

1. Connect with water through meditation, trance, or dance

Meditating on the elements is always a go-to for me. If you'd like guided support, you can sign up for or purchase Journey to Your Inner Healer meditation and workbook here. Otherwise, you can carve out some time to connect with water on your own through meditation. Here are a few thoughts I'd like to share if you want to connect with water through meditation or journeying. 

Because water is a shapeshifter, everyone will experience this element uniquely. My experience working with water in a meditative state is that water is deliciously subtle, requiring us to sink deeper, quiet the outer world, and attune deeply to our inner worlds. In a physical world where so much of what we come into contact with is quite loud, tuning into the subtleness of water can take some fine-tuning. At least, this has been my experience. Once I learned how to tune myself to the subtleness of water better, I was better able to experience the fullness of her wisdom. 

More than any other element, I'd encourage you to give connecting with water a few tries to experience it fully. There are many ways to do this. Here are a few suggestions. 

- State at the beginning of a meditation that you'd like to connect with the element of water and simply allow your mind to take you on a journey. 

- Visualize yourself traveling to a body of water. This could be a body of water you know and love or a fictional body of water. 

- Consider exploring the element of water in different states, like rain or fog, by visualizing it in your mind's eye. 

- While showering, bathing, or swimming, give yourself quiet time to connect with the feeling of the water. 

- For a more embodied experience, consider intuitively dancing or moving as if you're water and notice where this takes you and how it feels. 

- If you connect with a specific deity related to water, you could call on them to guide you into a water trance or meditation.

As you become comfortable connecting with water in one or more of these ways, you may want to begin working with water more collaboratively. This could mean calling upon water for assistance in ritual, healing, or spell crafting. It could look like asking water to guide you to your inner healer, which is what I lead you through in the guided journey meditation here. It could also mean listening to and asking for ways to protect and advocate it. Water is life. Upholding a reciprocal relationship with water will serve everyone. I'll share more on this later. 

Remember, water is the connection to your emotional world. Don't be surprised if exploring water this way brings up emotions or parts of yourself that have been dormant. Consider building in time after meditation to orient yourself to your surroundings and connect with the physical body by eating or drinking. 

2. Understanding and caring for water

I became wholly obsessed with the magic of water in 2019 when I stumbled across my water teacher, Jen Isabel Friend. You can learn more about her and her offerings here. Since my personal exploration into water through Jen's teachings, I've completely transformed my relationship with water physically and spiritually. I now understand water to be fully alive and conscious, especially when given the right environment to thrive and express herself. 

This is a huge topic and one that I will only be able to expand upon in this post partially. Furthermore, even though I've spent a few years learning and reading about these properties of water, I am not an expert. If your interest is piqued, I encourage you to check out Isabel's work here. Here are the cliff notes if you don't have time to dive in right now. 

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Isabel Friend . Water Is Life (@jenisabelfriend)

Even though water is a common part of our everyday lives, we don't know very much about it or fully understand it. Much like the spiritual properties of water, even her physical properties are quite mysterious! There's a growing body of evidence from scientists worldwide showing that water has a fourth phase beyond liquid, solid, and vapor between a solid and a liquid called H302, EZ, structured, or gel water. This fourth phase of water is more hydrating and can, among other things, store memory. Though not directly related to the fourth phase of water, some of these ideas become popular through the work of Masaru Emoto in, The Hidden Messages in Water. Books like The Fourth Phase of Water by Gerald Pollock begin to break this down and explain some of the science behind these claims. 

What I find most interesting is that so much of what we're learning about water today has been talked about by indigenous wisdom keepers since the beginning. Healers, mystics, and wisdom keepers worldwide already know and understand the magic and importance of water. 

When water can spiral, flow, and move as it naturally wants to in a spring, river, or waterfall, it can mature into its fourth phase. The fourth phase of water is structured much like a crystal with coherent and patterned molecules. Unlike a crystal, it can also flow and move. In this structured state, like a crystal, water can retain information and imprints of energy, including human emotions. It may sound fringe, but the more water is studied, the more these claims are backed up. 

When water is inundated with chemicals, forced to flow through our human-made waterways and pipes in unnatural ways, and enclosed in bottles, it loses its full capacity to heal, transmit, and store information. As I said, this is a big topic, so if you want to learn more, I encourage you to explore some of the resources I've shared, but what I will leave you within this section is a call to action because water needs our help, and we need water.

There's an opportunity to be better stewards of water and her wisdom in our spiritual practices. So many of us do a beautiful job of listening to and protecting the earth; water needs this same attention. Beyond the environmental issues related to water, when we craft our magic in extractive ways that aren't aligned with the true needs of water, our magic won't be as potent. So if you're a fan of moon water or water essences, read on. 

You can do many things to protect and restore water, even from your home. If you're using tap water or even special bottled water for your moon water or any other ritual water, the water is essentially dead. Yes, it may be able to hold some of the intentions you infuse into it temporarily, but it likely will not stay. Here are four ways to start caring for water and restoring it to its full vibrancy.  

- If it is accessible and safe, stop buying bottled water. Bottled water companies do not make water. They make plastic bottles and often use tap water or stolen water. There are situations where bottled water cannot be avoided, like the racist water crises in Flint, MI, and Jackson, MS, in the US. If you need clean water and the only accessible and safe water is bottled water, buy it without shame.

- Collect your drinking water from living springs when safe and accessible. Go to findaspring.com to learn where your closest spring is. Sadly, many areas are not close to an accessible spring. If you are, that's great! Use it, share about it, and protect it. Most fresh spring water is ideal for drinking water and great for your water magic. 

- Revive your tap water with simple or complex tools. If you're immersed in the world of water, it seems like more and more water tools are available on the market daily. You can spend A LOT of money on this, but many things that restore water can be done with simple and inexpensive tools. The best way to bring water back to life is to let it swirl and spiral like it does in nature and remineralize it, which can be done with a handheld frother and some sea salt. If you want to get fancy with it, I love my Mayu Swirl and Hi-Lyte drops. You can also find loads of water tools in Isabel's shop here. 

- Listen to water, love water, and protect water. Your water is alive! Commune with her, spend time with her, talk to her, and give her love. You are a body of water yourself, so extend this to yourself as well. When we commune with water, we'll know how to better care for her and ourselves. I learned from Isabel that the words that uplift water the most are "Thank you. I love you. I respect you." Every time I pour a glass of water for myself or my kids, I try to do so with intention and repeat to the water, "Thank you. I love you. I respect you." I do this as an offering to the water and my own body of water. 

3. Imprinting water rituals

Now that you know more about co-collaborating with water working with water in your magic and ritual will be even more special. There are so many magical uses for water in ritual. I invite you to be like water in your exploration of using water in ritual–playful and creative. Try to use living water whenever possible for imprinting water and using it for ritual. This can be water from a spring, a natural body of water (if you're not drinking it or know it is safe to drink), or water you've revitalized yourself. The care you take to collect and prepare your water is part of the ritual.

As mentioned above, imprinting your water can be as simple as sending it loving words as you pour, hold, and drink it. Here are other ways to imprint or work with water in ritual. 

- Create a water altar or water offering. Creating a special place in your home to honor your water is a beautiful way to deepen your relationship with water. You can have a permanent water alter, create a temporary one as a water offering, or both! Explore this more deeply in a past post I shared for the Autumn Equinox here. 

- Intentional drinking water. Write words you'd like to infuse into your water on the paper and place it on, under, or near your water. I also suggest focusing on your words of intention as you hold and drink the water. Here's an example of some of my ritual drinking water. 

- Moon water. Place a vessel of water under the moon for a night. It's common to see folks place their water out for the full moon, but I encourage you to be intentional about placing your water under the moon. You may find that the waxing or waning energy of a specific moon phase in a specific sign may serve your needs better. Learn more about the energy of each moon phase here. 

- Floral water and water essences. Water can pick up the energy of anything, not just the moon and your words of affirmation. If you practice working with trees, flowers, and herbs, these can also imprint water with its energy creating an essence. There are many different kinds of water essence and imprint practices. Some use the plant's energy solely to imprint the water, while others use this and pieces or extract from the plant. 

I love the work of Annwyn Avalon for even more in-depth ritual practices for water. She has a couple of wonderful books available as well.  

We have much to learn from water in both the mundane and otherworldly realms. I hope this share has inspired you to deepen your relationship with water spiritually and in your daily use of water. You are water, and water is life. 

Protection Magic with DIY Witch Bells

There are so many ways to celebrate the season of Samhain, and protection magic is a common theme. With the veil between the spirit and physical realm at its thinnest, it offers us a time to connect with loved ones in spirit, but it can also give rise to unwanted energies and spirits. Taking time to bring in additional energetic protection for yourself and your home is an easy way to address this and honor the season. 

I love to do a full house cleansing and blessing for Samhain, which you can learn more about in this past post. After performing a house cleansing and blessings is a great time to introduce additional protection magic like witch bells. 

Bells have been and still are used by many cultures for various spiritual practices, and they’re a standard tool for most witches and folk magic practitioners. Bells are a common cleansing tool, and the loud sound is said to scare off malevolent spirits. 

My favorite thing about witch bells is that you can be so creative with them and customize them, both in appearance and in intention, in so many ways. I’m going to share general steps to craft your witch bells so that you can create protective witch bells that work for you and your space. Here are some general considerations for all magic making. 

The efficacy of your spellwork and magic will consistently increase when you co-create with items with which you have an established relationship. If you’re wondering how to have a relationship with a tree or a stone, here are some simple options. 

• Meditate to connect with the energy of the plant or item.

• Spend more time with the plant or object. 

• Give offerings to the plant or item.   

• Always ask permission before taking things from a living plant or tree. 

You don’t need to use the same items I use for my witch bells. I encourage you to use items unique to your environment and needs. If there are plants, stones, or things that represent safety, protection, and clearing to you, that is great. Use those. 

DIY Witch Bells

You’ll need the following: 

• 30-90 minutes

• String, yarn, or ribbon of choice

• 5-10 bells 

• Optional: incense or herbs to energetically cleanse your items

• Optional: Something to hang your bells from, like a wooden circle, a pentacle, or something else that fits your needs. 

• Optional: Any additional items (crystals, beads, stones, plant items, etc.) that correspond with your intention.

Watch the steps in action here.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Cassie Uhl (@cassieuhl)

Steps: 

1. Take some time to plan your specific intentions for your witch bells and prepare all of your items. Consider energetically cleansing your items before you begin with smoke, incense, or something else in your practice. 

2. If you’re crafting something to hang your string from, do that now. I used fallen apple tree twigs to make a circle and a pentacle. This was the most time-consuming part for me! I am pleased with how it turned out, but wood circles or mini wreaths can be purchased at most craft stores if you want to go an easier route. You can also opt to make a loop out of your string and skip the circle. 

3. It’s time to attach your strings or ribbons. I made simple loops to secure mine, but you could also tie them onto your circle. As you begin knotting and tying, it’s an excellent time to start focusing on your intention for your bells. You could visualize an auric energy field growing around your house, offering greater protection and peace. You could also envision inviting any healed and well ancestors into your home and blocking any who are not. 

Tip: Consider your color choice for your string and ribbon. Each color carries a different energy. I used black and a deep red for grounding and protection. 

4. Now, you can attach your bells. Use any bells you prefer. You may need to tie them on or use pliers. Add as many as you like, and keep your intentions in your mind. You could even repeat a chant to increase the energy. 

5. If you’ve opted to add extra items like stones, beads, or plant items, do that now. I tied Rowan tree berries and Hawthorne tree thorns into my ribbon and strings for additional protection and grounding. 

6. When your witch bells feel complete, hold them in your hand, focus on your intention, and consider reciting a particular phrase like, “Protect and bless this house, so it is,” or anything else that feels good to you. 

7. You’re all done! Hang your bells on your front door knob. Consider charging it under full moons or giving it a good energetic cleanse every once in a while to keep them happy. 

Wishing you a magical Samhain! Check out more posts about Samhain here.