About me

This is a place in which I hope to share recipes and reflections, as I process and unfurl: medicine, time and the relationships within. I do this living on shared, unceded and occupied territories of Tla'amin peoples. I make a commitment to the lands which I move in seasons with, which I am sustained by, and which I seek to tend in reciprocity and respect: to be in my own healing, to carry my gifts with pride, to redistribute my wealth.

I am learning rest. I weave protective shawls, play with accordion drone and ocean poems, grow plant medicine to harvest and share in a practice of care. I seek to keep learning as i rest, to visit and be still beside waters, to notice tracks in the snow, seeds in distribution.

I grew up in the Scottish Borders, on the river Tweed, by the Eildon hills. When I wake from dreaming, it is often in those rooms and fields I have been roaming: blooming heather covered hills (my namesake), weeping willow (pisces sun, cancer moon, unknown rising), red clay. When I swim in the ocean, when I imagine myself seal-kin, and when I sing, I feel this connection most. I yearn.

My ancestry is predominantly Irish, with roots reaching back to Scotland through my family trees, and in the stories my Dad has told me again and again, of tapestries in old castles, buried hearts of kings, betrayal, greed, and spells of old language and song.

I learned ways of working with my hands from my Dad, how to light a fire, sharpen a hatchet, paddle a current, whittle and sew. I hold these hands before me now, I trace their lines, I am present in their depth.

I learned how to tend (european) honey bees from my mother, and I keep the practice while questioning balance. That they offer medicine in their being, I know. And that harm is done when I over extract from them, I know this too.

I learned how to grow my own medicine in the Downtown Eastside of so-called Vancouver. This community asked me to listen and taught me how to witness; to know when to step in and when to step back; to know what I was showing up with, name it, share it; and to hold my own ground as sacred, knowing what I too, need. I say their names as I write this, those who have passed who shared and fought and sang and imagined.

I dream of the liberation of all peoples oppressed by colonial forces of empire; all those trapped in the extractive violence of capitalism. I work towards this dream by supporting access to land, to grow food, tend medicine plants and practice relationship. I do this from a place of practice, of settler solidarity with Indigenous peoples, of healing slowly the many generations of harm. I do this to be a part of a movement that is dismantling white supremacy and building the liberatory future we all need to thrive. Free Palestine.