Hello, dear ones -

I write to you from a garden in Aberdeenshire in the NE of Scotland.

It’s been about 10 months since I left the US for this most recent time of reflection, pilgrimage, exploration, and living here in these northern islands. A new record for me in terms of time on the road, outside of my country of birth.

I recently met up with a friend in Edinburgh for a walk and sweet treat and she said something along the lines of: “you must feel so expanded after all this! do you?”

I absolutely do. But I also realized that to be able to stay this long on the road, we have to be integrating as we go; we have to titrate the expansion. We can’t keep cracking ourselves wide open, day after day, and expect ourselves to be able to function.

So, yes, I feel expanded. I also feel generally more centered and grounded.

One of the things I’ve been stepping into is that this trip is not a peak experience like a retreat or something similar. This trip is actually a life choice - a calling I feel to bur the lines between daily life and prayerful life; an exploration of how to live in a lighter, more responsive way so that there less between me and the intensity of being fully Alive.

It’s amazing how much of how we structure our lives actually seems to deaden us.

So I’ve been dedicating this time on the road to stretching my capacity to both feel and ground so much Aliveness. To let that Aliveness express itself through me.

I’m scheduled to fly back to the States in just over a month and I’m having lots of complicated feelings about that - I can feel the tug of old patterns and ways of perceiving myself and the world. I can feel the weight of “coming home” and how that wants to relegate this moment to a dream state; how the gravity of “falling back in line with how things are done” exerts a strong pull. My choices and clarity will most likely be tested.

And yet, I’m very clear I’m not “coming home” any more so than when I’m over here. One of the things nomadism can teach us is how to carry “home” in our hearts and bodies and relationships. I find myself cruious: what might it be like to treat my time back Stateside, however long it ends up being, as the monarchs, the nightingales, or the salmon treat the stopping points on their annual migrations? A moment in time to play my seasonal part in the ecosystem before moving on to the next….? I suppose we’ll find out…

While I’ll continue to share some of my pondering about all this here, more of my long-form writing, videos, podcast episodes, etc are finding a home on my Substack. If you’re interested in:

• following along on a life-as-pilgrimage and ceremony exploration;
• walking alongside me as I listen to the land and people for animist and ancestral wisdom to help us be alive, connected, and human;
• being curious with me about what might change for us individually and collectively if we stopped accepting surviving as the baseline of success and started aligning our actions with a thriving world…

please consider giving me a follow/ subscribe over there.

And if you’re able and willing, it goes a long way towards supporting my work in the world if you can become a paying subscriber. Before capitalism taught us that commerce should be transactional (give something, get something), our ancestors understood commerce to be relational - a way of participating in an ecosystem and web of kinship. I’ve been pretty deep in the bone cave of unbecoming and becoming for the last few years, burned out, but also needing to just be on the journey myself. And as I feel myself ready to blossom into more sharing, I hope to show you that beyond my work with groups and clients, much of my real work is actually in the ceremony of creating and leaving healing ripples of love and connection with the land and people wherever I go. It’s the kind of work that gets ignored in a transactional economy because it’s hard to pin down. But a circular economy knows that supporting this kind of work and the people who do it is a key part of maintaining the harmony and aliveness of us as individuals and as a collective. If you feel you can and want to, you have my deepest appreciation and can trust it will be used prayerfully.

In any case, here are a couple of recent pieces I’ve shared over there:

My first welcome post: Read

A post on our human need for sanctuary: Read

honoring Mary Magdalene's Feast Day earlier this week: Read

divination with tarot for the July 24 new moon: Read ** some of this one is free, but for a more in-depth video from me about the card and what I’m sensing, you’ll need to be a paid subscriber

I also wanted to take a moment to remind you about two upcoming online gatherings:

A PDF and a live gathering on Zoom to honor the turning of the Wheel of the Year - and explore and reimagine how our ancestors used these moments in time to root deeper into amidst relationship with the world around them (Seen and Unseen) and to celebrate and practice being alive, connected, and human. Info and Registration

• The PDF will go out in the next few days and we gather live on Zoom, in our virtual round house, on Sunday August 3rd at 2pm ET. (A recording will be sent out if you can’t attend live, though it’s wonderful to see your face if you can be with us.)

A space of deep rest and soul-nourishment. to come home to your heart and body, reset your nervous system's baseline, and drink deeply from the well of inspiration and softness. Our next one is coming up on Aug 11. This is a 45min gathering with an optional informal community chat time afterwards. Info and Registration

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NOTE: Both of these gatherings can be purchased individually OR you can become a “Patron of the Journey” on Substack for $40 USD/ month and you’ll automatically be enrolled in these gatherings for as long as you’re subscribed on Substack.

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I'll leave it there for now, with Love, and until we meet again -

Kate

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P.S. I’ve also been dreaming into and building out some signature talks/ ceremonies to spark a deeper sense of connection and re-membering to ourselves, to Aliveness, and to the Unseen world. The ones I shared both at the online OracleFest back in early February and the in-person Elements Retreat in south Wales back in June went really well. If you have a community, either online or in-person, you think would like a visit from me, I’m happy to come share a talk/ ceremony. Let’s talk.