cThese Feet that work to remember how to step with beauty.

This Womb that Bleeds, Knows, and in later years will crystallize.

This Heart who has never once stopped singing.

This Breath, Wind, these Wings. These Shooting Stars in my Belly. These Ocean Waters around my Spine and Brain.

I am my Ancestor’s daughter, their granddaughter, their great, great, great.

My birthright is a body who plays sings, laughs and knows.

I am the descendant of the Lands that they tended, migrated through, sang on, wove from, loved deeply and daily.

And, this is where the story becomes weave & crossroads. The ancient plot twist, written long ago.

I am made of of many Lands.

I am of Tlingit, Welsh, English, Scot, Norse and Sami Lands.

I carry medicine, gifts, ancestral adventures, stories and pains.

I long for Lands I can only visit. I tend to Lands who are stolen.

I grew up on Mik’Maq Lands, Forests, Stars and Oceans, who taught me diligently. And my Ancestors called, waiting for me to Remember.

Medicine folx told me I carried a ‘war’ in my own Blood. Between Settlers and Indigenous Ones. Between the Scots, the Welsh & the English. Between the Sami and the Norse. The pain was steep. The shame, the hiding, the ignorance, the arrogance, the righteousness, the beauty, the joy, the birthrights, the gifts, all mixed together.

The ancestral load more massive than my mind can understand.

The weight woven into the heavy knots of my shoulders, the Wings of my grief and the golden threads behind my Heart.

I found myself trying to dig my way out. I had been dug in deep. I got stuck. I forgot. I forgot again. I took wrong turns. I got caught. I got eaten. I limped out. Some thing pulled at my bone memories. At my teeth. At my womb & ovaries. At my heart strings. At my dreams. I went back in. I learned to listen.

I found a way. I still listen. I still look for the way. Daily.

The journey has been star pointed, long, webbed, tangled and true.

Years spent with Medicinal Plants & remedies from all over the planet. They whispered their ancient relations with my cycling Soul, and my Soul hang there. 

A year in India, with Her Pujas, Her Ashrams, Her Temples, Her Ceremonies, Her Medicines, Her Songs. She reminded me devotedly of my way home.

Years in medical school, and I longed for connections between the dots. The Ones which Indigenous knowledge, never forgets.

From Peru to North America, time spent with Ayahuasca taught me I was not home. She was not of my Lines, this lifetime. She was not my clear Path.

And so the weave and warp continued …

In Scotland, I met the Queen Faerie on the Isle of Skye, and will never forget Her Healing. Met Eagle bone flute and ancient stone circles, and the stories held by the Heathers and the Peats. I sat at the base of Glastonbury Tor, in a beautiful ashram, and wondered why we were singing to Shiva (no offense, to blessed Shiva) when the King Faerie and Dragons were said to live right outside this door. I took my Drum up the hill, I drank the water from the Wells, sat naked in her candlelit Faerie Portals.

I played with the Witches in United Kingdom, I got burned. Not for the first time. I felt the same strong brutally charred threads in Denmark.

I discovered the enmeshment of pain, of 1,000 years of persecution of the settler Magic ones, of magic blood, within and without. The colonialism of Christianity, the betrayals, the knots. They reached back much further than the Lands I was born on.

My nightly Dreams taught me that I needed to go back beyond, to unwind the pain like an Ancient Curse, to the Lands where there was peace before the pain. Indigenous Ones taught me that the Land would ‘protect’ me.

I learned to unwind the Curse, Walk the Lines, Reweave the Dream, to Remember the art of smithing words and thoughts.

I learned to sing to the beauty in the blessed Demons.

I found an Ancient Honey Bee lineage, that my Settler Soul remembered. Or rather, She found me.

I traveled to Wales, met Her Language, Indigenous Fey and Stone People. I felt wonder in my blood, hybrid rememberings.

I visited Sapmi and channeled all night, I was home.

I visited Tlingit Lands. Met Mountains and Lakes who helped me to truly heal, who spoke my name and made me weep.

I felt parented in ways I have never known before.

I visited Greece, the Lands where I have never felt so Golden and She. I met Pythia, or rather She found me. I remembered the Sybils across Europe.

I met Volva, Staff and Seidr, I became enchanted. North Star held my answers, the Northern grasses sang me home.

The Ancient Grandmothers arrived. They taught me how to hold Circle. Or rather they held the Circle, and I learned.

I heard many titles given to this path: Doctor, Witch, Shaman, Artist.

They are English words that feel lit with heavy projections and expectations. They often do not rest well on my skin and bones.

I speak with Sprits, I heal with Claires, with My Hands and Voice. I carry a birthmark, traditionally said to be a mark of medicine.

Healer is the title that seems to span my Ancestral Lines with respect. Medicine Lover is the title that lands with humility.

Healer, Medicine Lover. She who seeks, with love, works to heal, HerSelf, and what she can, in sharing with you.

I am blessed with the hearings of Lands and Ancestors. I have no other English words for the Medicine that comes. And, I am not so fortunate to have been traditionally taught, this was not accessible to me. For me, this has been lost.

Instead I grew up surviving and hiding in a world that eats most of us, at it’s worst, and at it’s best, simply ignores the rest of us due to our misfit.

I am a wild mix of many seeds, some hidden, some rotten, some glowing, some daring.

I accept.

I search for my Origins, Songs, Seeds, to remember the Ancestors who feed me daily.

I work to respect the Origins and more than gracious Hosts of the Stolen land where I live.

I work to learn not to hide. In hopes of being respectful to the Stories of the Lands of those who have walked behind me, on all threads. And to those who carry their own tangled or untangled golden threads, and who arrive here, after me.

And, in view, of how much folklore, indigenous knowledge and inner knowledge has been colonized, oppressed, persecuted, quieted and hidden over the generations, it is all our work, to remember our own divination tools, inner knowings, gifts and healing. To have a song from within to offer.

Rememberings.

Education Formalities

I want to acknowledge years of learning at the edges, across the globe and many continents, from Lands, Animals, Plants, Healers, Seers, Herbalists, Homeopaths, Farmers, Swamis, Shamans, Misfits, Strange Ones, Wyrd Ones, Marked ones, Unseen Beings and anyone who would teach me really.

All while learning to honour, and offer healing to my own Ancestors of these lands, and to my ancestors across Europe.

Such deep gratitude to Martin Prechtel, who since 2012 in the loving embrace of The hand built Lady, at Bolad’s Kitchen. I have sat with teachings & offerings that have loved & shaped me into remembering with my Hands, Heart and Words. Reminding me that I too, could come from Singing, Reverent Magical People and Living Seeds.

Deepest of bows to Betsy Bergstrom, my ongoing primary teacher in the Healing Spirit Arts, who taught me to sing to the beauty in my Demons, and to all Suffering Beings, to remember my Sovereignty, the breath of Dragons, to walk the Ancestral Lines, to tend & mend my cursing ways.

I am so grateful, for their True Selves, in this world, and all they have both given to it.

Bolads Kitchen, an ongoing student of Martin Prechtel 2012 -2020. Two ten day sessions per year. Studies in world ancestral magical Stories, the work of the Hands, the Honouring of Seeds.

Spirit-Wise, an ongoing student of Betsy Bergstrom, Curse unwinding, Seidr & Volva, Norn, Vala Work, Compassionate Depossession, Mediumship work. Completed her Teacher Training February 2021.

The Weavers Trail, ongoing learning with British Drum maker & Song keeper Carolyn Hillyer, Dartmoor, UK.

Trolldom, ongoing studies with Johannes Gardback, Traditional Magic Studies of Scandinavia

The Sacred Trust UK: Two years of studies, Path of Pollen, Trembling Veil and Roar of Roses, Arte Triptych Melissae, Drum Journeys and Soul Loss/Healing work

Doctor of Naturopathic Medicine: graduated 2009, 4500 hours of medical study with the western sciences, Homeopathy, Medicinal Plants and Acupuncture/Traditional Chinese medicine. Much additional training in Homeopathy, TCM & Ayurveda Studies.

Cranial Sacral Work: 350+Hours training & 15 years of practice in listening to the ocean rhythms and bones of the human body

MA, Medical Anthropology, Cross cultural perspectives in health and healing. Women’s experiences in western medical systems

BA Hons, Anthropology/ Indigenous Studies, From the study of colonial ethnography to focus/Critique on Media Representation of Oka Crisis.

*Disclaimer ~ The work offered on this website is in no way intended to replace western medical or psychological advice. If you are looking for naturopathic medical treatment please find me at Birdsong Naturopathic Clinic here: www.birdsonghealing.ca