I am of Celtic and Nordic ancestry, and it has been a few generations since my ancestors walked those lands. We found our way here across the ocean, and the stories are hard and troubled. Somewhere along the way, we left our traditions behind, we left our medicine bundles, our traditional lore, we left behind the mountains and the waterways that had been tended for so long that they were as much a part of us as our own skin and bone.

As a woman here in this body, standing on stolen land, I try to find a way to connect to the spirits of this land, to tend the water ways, the mountains and the medicines here with the respect they deserve, but there is so much that I do not understand as I am not truly indigenous to these lands.

So I recreated and tend my medicine wheel, I scramble in the gullies to find the medicinal 'weeds' that also travelled accross the ocean from my homelands, and are finding their way here in the ecosystem. I paid attention to the shifts of the seasons and the cycles of flowering and fruiting, the rhythms of the tides and the calls of the birds. I attuned to the land as it is right now, without any traditional context or lens. Without any lore or custom to guide me.

Somewhere along the way, I decided that although my blood has not been back to Europe for 100 years or more, I wanted to find a way to reconnect with the wisdom of my indigenous ancestors who had their medicines stripped from them and were sent to far off lands. Somewhere along the way I learnt to listen to the waterways and mountains and medicines within my own blood, and to reconnect with my homelands. I found the voices of my ancestors pouring in to show me how to work with the medicines in the right way in good relation. I found my own footing on this land, claiming my own cultural heritage whilst simultaneously respecting and honouring the cultures of these lands that I reside.

It has taken me many years to feel comfortable to share things from a celtic perspective for so many reasons that I will not list them here. But now feels like the right time to bring in this offering that I am holding on the Imbolc on Mount Tamborine in 11 days.

Thanks for reading my share so far, and feel free to read on if you would like to know more about the significance of Imbolc, and the Women's Herbal Medicine Retreat that I am holding on on Mt Tamborine.

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There is a moment in the wheel of the year when the dark begins, almost imperceptibly, to loosen its grip. The Celts had a name for every one of these turning points, and we marked them with fire, with ritual, and with an intimate attentiveness to the elements, plants, animals, and spirits.

The four cardinal points, the solstices and equinoxes, mark the turning points of light through the year. Between these four sit the great fire festivals, the cross-quarter days: Imbolc, Bealtaine, Lughnasadh, and Samhain. These midway points were thresholds rather than arrivals; not yet the season in full, but its first stirring, sensed before it could be seen.

Imbolc is the earliest of these thresholds. Traditionally it falls as winter is still heavy but the light has begun, almost secretly, to lengthen. It is associated with Brigid, with the first flow of ewe's milk, with purification, with the quickening of seeds still hidden underground. It asks us to notice what is beginning before there is any visible proof that it has begun.

For those of us with Celtic ancestry living here in Australia, this whole calendar is turned on its head. Our bodies carry a seasonal memory written into a Northern Hemisphere year, while the land beneath us moves in the opposite direction entirely. To be of Celtic descent here is to hold two seasonal maps at once: the one carried in blood and story, and the one written into this particular sky, this particular soil, this particular light. Choosing to mark Imbolc in our own Southern Hemisphere turning, rather than importing a Northern Hemisphere date, is one way of letting those two maps speak honestly to each other rather than layering one over the other.

This is the spirit in which I'm holding a two day women's herbal medicine retreat on Mt Tamborine, timed to this Southern Imbolc threshold.

Over two days, we'll work with plant medicine as a doorway into something larger: an invitation to sense what is quickening in you before it is fully visible, to connect with the wisdom carried by your ancestral line, and to root that wisdom into the land as it actually exists here and now, rather than the land as it is remembered elsewhere. Herbalism has always been this dual practice; the transmission of old knowledge, and the humility to keep learning directly from the plants and the place in front of us.

This retreat is called Awakening the Heart, and it is as much of a personal journey into self as what it is a plant lore journey. It is a space that invites deep listening into oneself and deep listening to the plants. It invited us to connect/reconnect to the wisdom of our ancestors with depth and joy and song and dance.

If you feel the pull of this threshold, of ancestral memory meeting present ground, I'd love for you to join us.

With love,

Tatiana