Rooting deep to be at home.
I’m Graham. These days, my eyes are glued to the ground, gleaning earth tones for the little bits of green that shine through. As spring draws nearer, I often need reminding that there’s life to see with my eyes turned up too. The phoebe and dogwoods keep me remembering, though.
I’m a writer, an herbalist, and a tender of quiet and connective spaces. I am curious about what it is to consider healing — from daily anxiety to chronic illness, from embodied trauma to sensing purpose and knowing peace — in the day-to-day and over the course of our lives. From time to time, this lends itself to classes and gatherings, herbal consultations, and writing of one sort or another.
I’m a slow mover. I like to sit up against a tree or lay my body down on the earth. Water makes me dance. Wind sweeps me up, up, up into the forest. I am currently dedicating myself to moving at the speed of trust, cultivating a voice that speaks to what resonates in the quiet, and building an apothecary of ritual and place.
Give me a shout if you’d like to connect about these things or about living with land, books or poetry, dancing in the morning and at night, or another facet of life. I am glad you’re here.
happenings…
COMPASS
Postponed. Our autumn cohort has been postponed for us to take care here at home in WNC
A new cohort is taking shape this autumn for this integral, elemental exploration.
We are going deeper with the elements. Through the seasons, we’ll tap into not just what the five elements are about, but how they are — how they are alive in the world, how they shape us and our relationships, how they change us…
Get to know Compass and consider if this elemental journey is calling something in your soul.
allowing for change // softening the grip
One after the other lately, the days hold new challenges. Holding tight to a certain reality just isn’t working. So, like the seasons, the same way the maple looses the hold on their leaves, the same way the black-throated green warbler flies south, I move with the day, with the light, with the rain, with the night.
Sitting back in connection with Compass dwellers after the hurricane has been a curious navigation. In our conversations, we trust the elements to show us parts of ourselves most alive right now or parts of us most wanting to live. We trust the elements to hold us as we wander, slow or sharp or flowing, towards tomorrow.
I am so grateful to be harvesting what could be saved from the garden. Perhaps there will be apothecary news soon. In the meantime, consultations are donation-based for all existing clients and folks affected by the hurricane. Schedule here.
Glimpse the world in Asheville and around these days at my essay project, rough soles.
Crack open the hard seed of the self
so life can grow green from me,
so I can be of most service,
can give of myself and be nourished
- Mary Ellen Lough, from “Moon Prayer, August 30, 2020”