May 22nd 2023
Moon Phase: Waxing crescent
Location: Lancashire, home.
Weather: Warm and sunny.

Today has been a slow and steady day of studying both the nutritional and herbal benefits of Rubus fruticosus (blackberry) for my Herbal Foundational Study, and, sorting the childrens’ garden dens and sheds ready for a good old spring clean and de-webbing from the hundreds (I’m not kidding) of spiders that have taken up residence. The children have requested that both me and their Dad turn their main play shed (a small shed in a colonial style of a Dutch barn) into a ‘witches cottage’.
So, armed with a vacuum cleaner, duster, jet washer, paint, and accessories, we are finally prepping to do the task. It’s one we had been putting off until the weather improved, and, now summer is almost here, the children are rightly holding us to our promise.

With the evening approaching, and my joints aching and nerve pain starting to tingle and sting from the incessant plague that is fibromyalgia, I’m ready to have some quiet time alone.

Or, perhaps not alone…
I think I shall sit with the Ancestors – or specifically, one Ancestor in particular; my Nan.

My Nan and I were extremely close.
Having brought me up when my mother became too unwell too look after me, my Nan became a second mother to me.
I still had regular contact with my mother of course, and it was the two of them (especially my mother) who introduced me to many of the folkways I now practice as a Witch. It’s funny actually, that the Rubus should come up today of all days within my further educational studies. You see, the blackberry featured so heavily in our family’s folk ways that my own tradition has become lovingly named ‘the way of the Rubus’. It also happens to be one of my youngest son’s middle names.

Since both my mother and Nan have passed away, I have somehow found myself the matriarch of my family.
Hardly unsurprising, what with being the eldest of five children and having many cousins, and then children of my own.
I often find myself being called upon for help and advice. At first, I found this difficult to adjust to, especially as I was only twenty five when my mother died. But over the years I have not only adjusted, but come to love this honoured role. Perhaps it was meant to be, especially as I am now a practicing Wise Woman, Birth Doula, and training to be a medical herbalist.

But I digress…

My Nan sadly passed away just after Imbolc 2021; another family member claimed by the viral monster that is covid.
When she passed, I found once again, just as when my mother passed away, no immediate time to grieve.

When my mother died, I was five months pregnant, getting married, moving counties, and handling all of the funeral arrangements – this time, ten years later, I was again handling the funeral arrangements, but also moving house with four young children.

As a family matriarchal figure, I don’t begrudge this honour and responsibility. Especially when as a Priestess of Cerridwen, we are actively taught to be death companions and funeral Priestesses.

But with each of these losses, I found that I had to pause my feelings and grief, and journey through it at a slower pace. Perhaps this is unhealthy. Perhaps it isn’t?

I am still processing and ‘dealing’, but I’m unpacking it in a way more suitable for me. Perhaps this has actually being a blessing in disguise? After all, being neurodiverse means that I naturally do process my emotions differently to other people.
So, who knows… perhaps being too busy to immediately and intensely grieve was what I needed in order to process my feelings more mindfully, instead of one big car crash of emotion?

My Mother and Nan have been on my mind a lot recently. The older I get, the more I hear my Mother and Nan in my own tone of voice when I’m parenting my children.
“Oh my god! I just sounded like my Mum,” is a phrase that seems to often fall from my lips.
I also see my Nan more in my eyes now that I am nearing forty. With age, my face is naturally changing, and if anything, it’s nice to see my face as a road map of not only my life journey… but of each of the ancestors who made me ‘Zanna’.

The intensity of my gaze… that is my Nan.
My cheekbones were gifted to me from my Great Aunt, my Nan’s sister (Thank Aunty).
I have my paternal Grandmother s Celtic skin tone.
My Dad’s frown and love of history and politics.
And my mother and maternal grandfather’s – well everything! I look a lot like them and the rest of the Kelly/Howe clan (from Ireland and North East of England) .

The more I see my mother and Nan within my face, the more I want to connect again.
Just as grieving people often wish that there were a telephone to heaven, I often wish there was a garden chair to sit beside my Nan, the way that we used to do.
Almost impossible, but not quite…

Sadly, I did not get to retrieve a lot of my Nan’s personal effects due to Covid restrictions on travel. And then, when lockdowns eased, I found that Croydon Council had gutted my Nan’s flat and discarded all of her possessions and a lifetimes worth of my personal family history.
I must admit, that this did complicate my grief for a while. I erupted with an anger that I’ve never felt before. And yes, the council were on the receiving end of this rage – and no, I’m not sorry.

One of the things I was not able to salvage from my Nan’s home was her favourite garden chair. A very 1970’s vintage green floral chair that was beautifully loud and of it’s time.

If there was one thing I could have saved from my childhood home, it would have been that garden chair. More than any black and white photo, or old birth certificate.
To me, that chair was the epitome of my nan sitting in the garden and teaching me about herbs and remedies, or my mother sitting beside her, talking, and leading me down the Rubus path, or ‘blackberry’ ways, as my mother would sometimes discreetly refer to it as.

“You grow rosemary by the front door for good luck and protection” my Nan would say – she had a huge hedge of rosemary that ran the length of the front of her downstairs flat. Every summer, pink roses would stretch their way up and through the thick hedge of rosemary – fighting for their own space that the rosemary was also trying to lay claim to.

My Nan would also say…

“You grow mint to make sure you always have money coming in,” was another folk way she would share while sitting in her little green garden chair.

A few months ago, I began what I thought might be a vain attempt to track down an identical garden chair, along with a copy of an old scrapbook my mother used to use. A unicorn journal by Michael Hague that my mother would call her “unicorn books” (she owned several). These journal scrapbooks were used to write poems, stick in her children’s school certificates, and one book that was strictly used as her ‘book of ways and means’ (akin to a Book Of Shadows, but from our own family folk ways).

I occasionally saw copies of the unicorn journal on Etsy, but these were often listed for a frankly ridiculously high amount. One was even priced around the £70 mark.
Despite sometimes seeing these unicorn journals floating around the internet, I never saw an identical green garden chair to match my Nan’s.

That was until last week… when I not only found a blank unicorn book listed very cheaply on eBay, but also an identical match of my Nan’s chair! It was as though it was meant to be, and must admit I was in awe at the synchronicity of it all. To find not one, both both rare items listed affordably at a time I finally felt ready to process the last lingering throbs of my grief. It felt like a gift from the gods and ancestors.

I, of course, snatched up both items and ordered them.

And now they are both here in my possession. In truth, I have no idea what I plan to do with the unicorn journal. At present, it sits with one of my mother’s original journals from the 1990’s (the only one I managed to save), while I take my time to mindfully decide on how to use it. I already own several scrapbooks that contain keepsakes of my graduations, wedding, children’s births and achievements, and I also have a custom made book of ways and means, kindly and lovingly made for me by Earthworks Journals. But perhaps this is a good thing? It means I can have a small piece of my mother but in my own unique way, one that doesn’t seek to strictly emulate her old journals. I have considered using my own unicorn journal as a place to write down and store all of my poems and spellsongs. As I write this, I am, smiling because my mother was also a poet, and, like me, she also had some of her works published.

As I step out into my front porch and shut the door behind me (and with it, the cacophony of noise emanating from my children), I embrace the warm evening sun. It’s a lovely gentle nineteen degrees, so I can sit comfortably without worrying about cool air making my fibro symptoms worse.
Carefully, I fold up the green garden chair and then suddenly I exhale. Apparently I had been holding my breath – half in anticipation, half in the expectation that this nearly fifty year old chair might be fragile. On the contrary though, it’s surprisingly sturdy, a small and fading ‘made in Britain’ sticker still holds it’s original place on one of the steel leg poles. As I sit down, my stomach lurches! Gods, I had forgotten how low these chairs are! A sudden feeling of panic that I was about to fall righted itself as I settled into the chair.

And then there was peace.

Peace for a moment or two at least, before another feeling mingled with the former. It wasn’t quite sadness or grief, I’m not even sure that there is a word to describe that deep and soulful feeling of both missing someone and yet feeling so completely close to them. Even though they are gone. Perhaps in time I will coin a word or phrase for this, or stumble upon one from some foreign tongue, created by some soul more adept than I at articulating the complex emotions surrounding grief.
In a way, it’s kind of funny. I am usually a fountain of words, but to name this feeling, this emotion, well… it is past the skill set I currently have.

In the cherry tree just outside of my garden gate, a blackbird sings their evening song. A cheerful tone that lifts my spirits and reminds me of the little robin who used to visit my Nan’s elder tree. She would often talk to that robin, and the blackbirds. I remember one time, how much she scolded our cat, Binx, for killing a fledgeling magpie. I remember so clearly how a mischief (one of several collective nouns for this bird) of four other magpies sat upon the garden fence, screaming curses down upon our grey tabby cat. I had never seen magpies gang up like this, but I now know just how social corvids are, and how much they must have been grieving the loss of their baby clan member. I recall having to scoop up Binx and bring him inside as the magpies began to swoop at him in attack. No such bird -related drama occurs tonight though, just the happy song of birds returning to the nest.

It’s funny the things you remember when you finally allow yourself to process grief. for me, it’s a blend of happy, sad, and completely random memories that are popping up upon the inner screen of my mind, or dancing across my heart.

A gentle breeze flies through and sends the hag stone wind chime into a tinkling chorus, and in turn, this reminds me of the times my mother and I had looked in vain for hag stones along Brighton beach. If only she had lived long enough to have seen me move to Suffolk. I would find dozens of old holed stones along the wild and beautiful East Anglian coastline. I must admit, now living in Lancashire, I do miss the Suffolk coast. But it’s not the end of the world! Instead, I live in the land of Brigantia, where Pendle Hill rises to touch the sky, and spirits walk the expansive moorlands. I am also blessed to be only a moderate drive away from the beauty of North Wales and it’s sacred Lake Bala. So magic is still all around me, perhaps more so.

I wonder what my mum and Nan would think of my work now? One that so openly shares the folk magic and family ways that I was discreetly brought up with. My mother always said I was’ bold!’ “It will either do you a lot of good and propel you forward, or be the cause of too much mischief for you Zanna” she would say. On this, I don’t think it is a simple case of either/or, but a healthy dose of both!

My gaze lowers as the setting sun causes a glare that catches my eye, an arms length from my feet are two large garden urns that I potted up with rosemary about two months ago. My heart swells and I feel a tang of both joy and sadness. Rosemary… the very plant my Nan always said should grow by the front door. It dawns on me, that although the chair is a wonderful way of connecting to my Nan and processing my grief in a healthy and manageable way, in reality… my Nan is all around me. Not just in spirit, as I have no doubt she visits and watches over us all – but also living within me in the form of the love, affection and folk ways that she passed on to me.

Through the time, mists, and distance between us, blessings from me to you.

Zanna, 2023.

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