A Personal Update from Me
How are you, dear one? Since I last wrote, our whole family spent a month alternatively snowed and iced in up on the mountain. We’ve cycled through several rounds of sickness, cancelled more plans than I can keep track of, and have now found ourselves in the mud of February, glimpsing the first snowdrops of spring and planting our feet in the ground in the midst of the whirlwind.
This past month feels like a cosmic windstorm has ripped across the Earth. When I close my eyes, it looks like the re-patterning of sand in a vast, golden desert. Things are changing—personal shifts, but also the big, rippling, restructuring of the collective.
In the midst of it all, I just wanted to say that I think it’s big, what you’re doing.
It’s big to continue to be willing to be here. To feel everything you’re feeling. To keep walking in the direction of your heart and hold a vision of healing, for yourself and this world. I see it, dear one. And it’s big.
Speaking of big… I have a very big announcement coming up later this month about something I’ve been working on behind-the-scenes. It’s a brand new project that I’m so excited for. I’ll give you all the details in my next email, but it’s all about connecting in a slower, gentler, more in-depth way… stay tuned.
In the meantime, I’m teaching a free new workshop called Herbalism and Intuition: Working with Plants at the Herbal Academy’s 2025 Virtual Herbal Conference, beginning this weekend! 🌿 The conference features some of my all-time favorite herbalists and it’s completely FREE to register (which is wild when I think about how much I used to pay to attend these back in my budding herbalist days). I’d love to see you there!
On a personal note, a new mini-documentary about me just came out—A Farewell for One Willow. 🎥 In the weeks following Hurricane Helene a small crew came to film me in the aftermath of losing the apothecary. I was in such a raw, real, heart-sundered place when this was filmed. It brings tears to my eyes to watch it now. What an honor to have this elegy.
If, after you watch, you feel moved to support the recovery, Marshall High Studios—the beautiful arts community and 100-year-old building that housed our apothecary— is hoping to reach their goal by Valentine’s Day, and I would so love to see that happen! 💘
Until next time, dear one, be gentle with yourself. Because everything you are doing is enough, more than enough. You are the magic that is making this great re-patterning possible.
P.S. Photos are from a small ritual my dear assistant Aleli and I did to say goodbye to the apothecary. She flew in so we could gather up flowers, sing songs, and sit in the sand of this island that changed both our lives. It felt so good. We also rescued the Mirrors in the Earth book poster! My goodness, this poster saw a lot. It floated up to the top of my apothecary like a raft when the water rose. Then, when I first hiked onto the island and got stuck in quicksand I schemed to lay the poster down on the ground so I could crawl back out! It (or at least the backside of it) then spent the past three months doing double time as a sign for volunteers on the ground. Now, it’s ready to come back home. 🩵
