REMEMBERING OUR WAYS
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Memories and knowledge are not just passed down from person to person by word of mouth, no-- we carry it in our very bones, in our DNA. Knowledge of plants for food and medicine, knowledge of the cycles of the land and how to live in tune with the Earth, knowledge of wellness and birthing babies in moonlight...
WOMXN'S WISDOM
We are becoming a Village, creating connection like mycelia interwoven between tree roots, sharing information & nutrients between plants...
We are womxn of the wild places. Our hands remember how to harvest nettle without being stung, how to turn it into spider silk-thin thread and weave it and bless our bodies with its leaves and root. Our arms know the draw of the arrow notched on the bowstring, of the bowdrill bringing forth the ember, the weight of carrying our young held close. Our eyes are better adjusted to firelight, they can see the patterns in the dancing leaves and the trail through the wood. Our bodies crave our ancestral foods, wild-harvested and fermented-- and they know how to grow babies and birth them when they are nourished and loved. We need the support of both the Wildwood and the Village, the Plant and Stone and Animal Clans- all our Relations.
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Most have forgotten the Old Ways. But some are Remembering, some are Returning.
You, are Remembering.
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You feel the bone-deep draw to the willow stand by the river for basket-making, the call to the fields and meadows for the yarrow and blackberry for food and medicine, the song welling up inside you as you come together with your Village to dance a new mother across the Veil and return with their new babe in arms, the need in your very cells to be nourished with whole foods from the earth...
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Awilda We'Moon is working towards offering + facilitating the space for this Returning & Remembering, for the sharing of skills and knowledge that are buried in our Ancestral Memory, in our very DNA. This will be accomplished through various programs, in-person and online workshops, sisterhood skillshare gatherings, and community village-building and outreach.
Come, Forest Womban, Wild Witch, Moon Mama. Come to the Place of Remembering. Sit by the Ancestor Fire, deep in the earth, where the stories of a hundred thousand years are painted on the walls. Come listen to the Elders speak, hear their words in your bones, and Know...
Kiss your children goodnight and slip out into the star-lit darkness. Gather in the Moonlight, whispering the tales of our grandmothers by firelight that the stories may be remembered, that new ones may be told. Form the elk hide over the bones of your drum, pulling the strings tight and warming them by the fireside. Spin the nettle into fiber for weaving, for making your prayer shawls and the string skirts for dancing. Pass the mead brewed with medicine and magic round and round the circle until we're howling into the night, speaking prophecy and dancing till dawn.
With the blush of the coming sunrise on the eastern horizon, kiss your witch sisters good-bye and return home, hair tangled with twig and leaf, feet muddied and fingers bruised. Step into your home, light the morning fire from the banked embers of the night before. Listen to the stirring of a house coming to life, rising to greet the dawn as you wrap your nettle-shawl around your shoulders and with feet bare and dancing, set the kettle and begin the day with dandelion fritters and honey from your sister's temple hives.
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Mid-day your sisters join you, their children on their backs or running through the forest with your own, as you gather and tend to the wild things and the garden things and craft and cook and clean and teach together, telling stories over blackberry tea or rosehip wine. You laugh and you cry and you break and you mend, in her arms, in the arms of your children and your lovers.
You let go, you remember, you return.
