ABOUT BELINDA
Ok it might be official!!!
Spinster: "a woman whose occupation is to Spin, to participate in the whirling movement of creation; one who has chosen her Self, who defines her Self by choice neither in relation to children nor to men; one who is Self-identified; a whirling dervish, Spiraling in New Time/Space."
Revised by The feminist philosopher and theologian Mary Daly (1987).
Oh how I love this! While I have an almost adult child and have been married (more than once!), and I do not see my Self as separate from Life, I deeply identify as a spinner on the frayed edges of acceptable life.
It has been said that the gift is found in the wound, the medicine you need is in your hands; and, that you’ are always wrong when you track alone.
These three guide my outer and inner foraging, tracking, meaning-making, medicine, story, and art along the way....
Hi there, my name is Belinda, you might know me as a passionate storyteller, a photographer, or a nature connection mentor, or, perhaps you once watched me make a scene on the bus in an attempt to spark community care and connection. However you arrived here, welcome. You are needed exactly as you are. I hope one of the sticky threads I am weaving gathers you in.
I have been spending this past two years gathering in the many threads of my passions to one place, The Twining Trail, it's a long process. My deep desire is to share the potent intersections of story, deep nature connection, inner tracking, earth arts and culture repair through my writing, poetry, in person and online workshops.
Like Grand Mother Spider, this work is slow and meticulous, please be patient with me. I have been on a slow journey through the ashes of healing, post concussion, post, long, slow trauma of a very difficult shared custody. If you know the story of The Handless Maiden, you'll guess, perhaps, that I am growing my hands back. All this time, I've asked the questions:
Can attachment be repaired post trauma?
What roles do the village AND the forest play ion raising our children (our inner ones too!)?
Is it true that the stories we tell, are the stories we live by?
What is the hard work our hands and hearts and hands must do?
My background is in Communications and Media theory, I have been a gatherer of stories, wide eyes, listening ears, and camera in hand, for as long as I can remember. I have long had a strong need to weave a basket of belonging, especially for those who fall through the cracks. I've realized Nature will catch us if we give her a chance, and that culture is a kind of basket that needs to be repaired, constantly woven and carried by many.
I have struggled with belonging my whole life, and stacked up my fair share of massive struggles to keep me humble, cracked open, and times profoundly lost. I know I am by no means a lone in this. I believe in sharing these fragile and trembling parts as hard as it may be.
I have been an alternative educator with children for the past 17 years, specializing now in nature connection, story and earth arts. I have began to extend this passion for mentoring to adults and have been held and mentored by many at Firemaker Earthsklls Gathering, Wisdom of the Earth School, Earthkin Learning, The Art of Mentoring, and over teh last 4 years entering and committing to the waters of Story Carrying and Grief Tending with the Salt Spring Grief Ritual team. I've deepened my study and application of mythic story telling, applying story as medicine, story catching, deep listening, inner tracking, grief tending and council practice during Renewal of Creative Path with Jon Young at Village Talk, Story Catching with Grace Upshaw, and steeping myself in the works and story telling of Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Michael Meade, Martin Shaw, Danny Deardorf, Sharon Blackie, Robin Wall Kimmerer. The works of Bill Plotkin, Wild Mind, Nature and the Human Soul, Jon Young and the 8 Shields, Joanna Macy, Randy Jones and Francis Weller and The Wild Edge of Sorrow, as well as mystical and deeply evocative poetry of Thomas Berry, Mary Oliver, Rumi, and Rilke among many others have deeply influenced and guided me.
As I look around at colleagues, my age and younger, I am struck suddenly buy the fact that during the last 20 years, I have not officially trained in any one of these modalities. I do not have initials beside my name, or stripes on my shoulders. Instead, I leaned into attachment parenting, grieving and healing my own wounds, trying to recreate the village I knew we all needed, and learning in the only ways i could access as a low-income mother. I wouldn't change any of it, though my throat chokes up with grief and gratitude as I type this. I got here by fire, by rough initiation.
Why The Twining Trail
The Twining Trail is inspired by the same phrase by Francis Weller, in his book The Wild Edge of Sorrow.
It describes the two interweaving pathways of grief: on one hand, the much needed retrieval of collective ways of grieving together; and, on the other hand, the deeply solitary inner journey of grieving alone.
When I first read it, I felt a huge recognition, ‘Ahah! Just like twining plant fibers into cordage, or like spiraling DNA, or the weaving way of the umbilical cord.’
And now, working as I have been with the fibers of my process, alone and in community, with words, plants, stories, children and tears, running these all through my fingers to make rope and baskets like Grandmother Spider, the twining trail has become more than just these two threads: solitary and communal grieving paths. It now also entwines the work of the hands with that of the heart, the tracking of deep nature with deep culture connection, the weaving of earth skills with those of story catching.
The twining trail invites us into what must come apart and be worked on, so that it may be rewoven into a stronger rope of connection, to ourselves, to each other, to the more-than-humans, and to the larger story that is dreaming us.
Story Council
Join me online or in person for Story Council. Upcoming...
Coming this February, monthly Story Councils on line and LIVE on Salt Spring!
Sliding Scale Donation $5-$50, no one turned away for lack of funds.
Dates to be announced soon! We'll be starting with Holding on By a Thread: A Story for Unravelling Times.
This year Story Councils will synchronize with the ROCP & Story Catching cohort so that folks who would like to deepen can attend both.
Story Council is a practice of bringing our troubles as way of a gift to the elderhood of an ancient story and in return receiving some improbable yet wholly palpable council. Join us after dinner for tea and an old tale!!
“In the universe of fairy tales, the Just often find a way to prevail, the Wicked generally receive their comeuppance — but there's more to such tales than a formula of abuse and retribution. The trials these wounded young heroes encounter illustrate the process of transformation: from youth to adulthood, from victim to hero, from a maimed state to wholeness, from passivity to action. Fairy tales are, as Ellen Steiber says, maps through the woods, trails of stones to mark the path, marks carved into trees to let us know that other women and men have been this way before.”
Terri Windling
Grief Ritual
Grief's Able Rudder
Some years ago, I headed the call to become the elder I wish I'd had, to work with the heavy prima materia of my life to transform it, so as to make of it a gift to life. This could not have happened without deep grief and loss, nor without being caught someone, magically, by the earth, and by community. It is because of both this falling and this catching that I am here.
And honestly, I feel I am only at the beginning of my journey, but deeply grateful for 'Grief's able handling of the rudder of our little ship of sorrow and loss." Martin prechtel
I have long found it easy to cry, and often felt that I was crying on behalf of all. Through the work of Jon Young and The 8 Shields, Joanna Macy and Francis Weller, I have learned that the deep grief I feel, the unbelonging, is much more than a condition within me, but is the result of not having received what my biology expected, and of a deep receptivity to the multiple losses of our times.
"The grief and sense of loss that we often attribute to a failure in our personality, is actually a feeling of emptiness where a beautiful and strange otherness should have been encountered.” Paul Shephard
In his book, The Wild Edge of Sorrow, Francis Weller describes 5 Gateways of Grief:
The first gate: Everything we love, we will lose
The second gate: The places that have not known love
The third gate: The sorrows of the world
The fourth gate: What we expected and did not receive
The fifth gate: Ancestral grief
I remember the first time I felt the hint of a village at Firemaker Gathering, and then all-of-a-sudden, the utter devastation that I would never fit in, or that it would quickly be over. I recall the ache of grief that begins to well up the minute we find ourselves safe, held. I rememeber the realization that even though I could see how much better it was for a child to learn outdoors in the arms of a community of all ages, that this was far from my day-to-day reality. I recall too, after years of working on my distrust of humans, I still felt as if I were 'falling out of the container' so easily. But the trees had stepped up to catch me, the river listened to my tears and spoke back with ancient wisdoms, my dreams and the signs I noticed on my path seemed to be elders guiding me. My time studying with Ingrid Bauer and Jean-Claude Catry of Wisdom of the Earth introduced me to the natural cycles, core routines, rites of passage and the wounds modeled by the 8 Shields. I had been welcomed by the coucil of
I am blessed to have been welcomed into the arms of the Salt Spring Grief team who carry on the work of Randy and Rowena Jones.
Grief touches all of our lives. Many of us have lost someone we loved, experienced loneliness, felt the weight of ancestral burdens or struggled to face the harsh realities of this world. Grief can take many forms; sorrow, anger, shame, fear. The expression of grief has become a taboo in our culture, and so we have become alone with it. In exiling grief, we also exile its innat intelligence, its ability to point us towards healing. As Martin Prechtel puts it, “Grief is praise, because it is the natural way that love honors what it misses.” Love and grief are two sides of the same coin. In regaining our ability to grieve we also regain our ability to live and love fully. Here is a great talk by Martin Prechtel that elaborates further on these ideas: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6h3JNOCTYc
The work of Salt Spring Island Grief is inspired by the work of Jon Young, Malidoma & Sobonfu Some, Randy & Rowena Jones, Joanna Macy, Francis Weller and Michael Meade among others.
What is Ritual?
Ritual is an opportunity for us to come together in a manner we may have forgotten but know deep in our bones. It's a space for verbal and non-verbal conversation with the unseen in its myriad of mysterious forms and expressions. A grief ritual invites us to freely and fully express our grief in conversation with the unseen, to experience the eldership of story and to become more wildly ourselves.
"Even the simplest of rituals is a way of acknowledging the unseen, the unspoken-about, the holy, which feeds our lives with its inexhaustible generosity. Ritual restores us to one another and to that grander coherence to which we all belong. Devoting your time to a ritual is like tending to a living bridge between the seen and the unseen, keeping that reciprocity alive."
Toko-pa Turner from "Belonging: Remembering Ourselves Home"
Weaving Ways
I come with gifts, as do we all... to do my part, to pick up one or more golden threads and begin the work of reweaving connection to our inner selves, to nature, and to the larger community of life.
My ways are through
Story Council, Renewal of Creative Path, Wild Days Nature Re-connection, and Earth Skills.
How can we tend to the earth an
I come with gifts, as do we all... to do my part, to pick up one or more golden threads and begin the work of reweaving connection to our inner selves, to nature, and to the larger community of life.
My ways are through
Story Council, Renewal of Creative Path, Wild Days Nature Re-connection, and Earth Skills.
How can we tend to the earth and to the fraying edges of society without reconnecting to our deep, sensory body, the well of repressed emotions, the play of childhood, or the interweaving of relationship with earth's gifts?
What is one bright thread we can retrieve from the tangled mess? What is our next best step?
I have been working and receiving ongoing mentoring in deep nature connection for children and adults, earth skills, tracking, weaving and plant medicine among them, grief tending, council practice and deep listening, and in the profound medicine of the old tales, that like seeds have endured.
These are the logs I bring to the fire on most days, though, I still show up empty handed and leaning out for love and confirmation almost as often!
It's pretty amazing I'm here, and that you are here too. We made it somehow to this moment, didn't we? How?
Many to thank, the lands that feed and shelter us, where I am, the Coast Salish Territories of the Pacific North West of Turtle Island, my ancestors and the ancestors of these lands that dreamed us into being, and so many teachers, mentors and communities. Firemaker Gathering and The BC Art of Mentoring, Wisdom of the Earth, Thriving Roots and Earthkin Learning schools founded on the work of Jon Young, Tom Br Jr and many other elders that lead to the forming of the 8 Shields, Bill Plotkin as well, for his profound contribution to mapping the human / nature cycles, the Grief work of Francis Weller, Josea Tamira Crossley, Joanna Macy, and Randy Jones of Wild Genius, and the many who have kept alive the mythic imagination, bringing the old stories forward, Clarrisa Pinkola Estes, Micheal Meade, Robert Bly, Martin Shaw, Danny Deardorf, Sharon Blackie, and so many more, poets, Mary Oliver, Rainer Maria Rilke, Thomas Berry, gosh... I can go on and on. Those that didn't let us forget that we swim in the sea of psyche, James Hillman, Tokopa Turner, on and on. Last of all, those honouring indigenous ways of knowing, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Tyson Yunkaporta.
I am grateful for all these and so many unmentioned as well, the more-than-humans, and the unseen holiies, for keeping me alive, and keeping the fire in my heart burning through some of the darkest times.
My greatest wish is to share a little of this with you.