Hello my dears.
Today, my heart is heavy because I am not on my way to the Spirit Weavers Gathering which takes place on it’s own beautiful homeland in Southern Oregon, where many of my dearest sisters are communing together and preparing and blessing the land for 600 women who will meet this weekend and next for a sharing of ancestral earth skills, sacred activism, healing, empowerment, adornment, and on and on and on.
I have been to this gathering the past 2 years, and it has filled an empty longing in my heart that I had carried with me my entire life. I didn’t know why exactly I wanted to go in the first place, I just felt drawn to it and now I know why……Because it has facilitated in me a necessary awakening that holds me to my path in a beautiful space with many other seeking souls.
I could really go on and on here but I don’t want to go too deep right now, I just have to get off my chest how sad I feel to miss it this year. No regrets on my choice not to go, I’m simply too pregnant. I’m just having spiritual FOMO and missing my sisters and the forest. Thanks for bearing with me.
Today, I want to take a minute to share with you a beautiful conversation that I had a few weeks back with Becca Piastrelli, Bay area writer and Blogger whom I met at last year’s Spirit Weavers Gathering.
She hosted me in her beautiful Mill Valley home for a Braid/ Haircare Workshop a few months back, and then got back in touch about doing an interview on the topic of Hair as Adornment, Self-care, Brushing Ritual, Braids and Ancestry. We dropped in together over video-chat and she asked me some great questions that I really enjoyed answering and am glad to share with you today.
Here is her beautiful intro for the blog post she put together with the video footage.
Words from Becca Piastrelli…..
As I journey deeper into the ancestral traditions of the women of my lineage, I feel all the more connected to my own body.
I often look at my hands with such awe and reverence for what they are capable of and how all the women that came before me are helping to guide them in my daily acts of making (from breakfast to writing emails to dip dyeing fiber in indigo).
Having grown up in this beauty-obsessed culture, feeling comparison with the hair (and bodies) of the women plastered on billboards and in the pages of magazines has come up for me often. There have been times where I’ve hated that I wasn’t blonde, didn’t have curly enough hair, didn’t have straight enough hair, or sucked at making it look good.
But a lot of that has shifted over the past year as I’ve begun a deeper exploration of my hair as an expression of who I am and my connection to the earth and the people who came before me.
Here is the post/ video Interview. Give it a look, and let us know your thoughts!
Also, follow Becca here on IG for more life musings for the creative heart.
Thank you for being here, lots of love.
RJH