The festival of Imbolc and how ancient Celtic wisdom invites us to create ritual to navigate thresholds.

The stories that have inspired us to raise our own turkeys on our smallholding in County Down.

A gathering of women to celebrate the winter solstice.

The roller coaster of raising, slaughtering and butchering pigs at home.

When navigating a period of transition, a wise friend encouraged me to create ritual. Sitting beneath a full moon with poetry is where I began. Staring moon-struck into the sky is nothing new. I have volumes of poetry written by fellow lunar lovers. It is not really about the moon, it is about the space […]

This piece was featured in Issue Eight of Freckle Magazine, an independently published magazine celebrating the people and landscapes of Northern Ireland and beyond. When the moon is full and the children asleep, I wander the fields in search of fox. There is a family tunnelled beneath an Ash tree; we have hair fragments and […]

This year we have known eviction and generous hospitality; grief and deep joy; the bottom of the barrel and the flight path of an owl. As I gathered the material for another moon ritual, it was like having a conversation with elders who have travelled these paths before. I am a little less intimidated by […]

One of the greatest and most rewarding challenges of this season is to be present. I love Pádraig Ó Tuama's work on the ways in which we can find shelter in the world by acknowledging where we are in all of its complexity. “To greet sorrow today does not mean that sorrow will be there […]

This month's moon is named in honour of an animal I have never seen. It is believed that the beavers labour to build their lodge at this time of the year before the hard cold sets in. Many of us feel that tug to hunker down, stockpile for the winter and hibernate. The ritual I […]

Once, I rescued a fledgling from a starling siege. It was pale and unremarkable. Its freckled front heaved as feathers pecked clean of their rachis caught an updraft and stuck in the hedge. He carried his left foot like unwanted baggage and flinched at my touch. The rabble returned to business: worm-gathering for their clamorous […]