A YEAR AND A DAY

WELCOME here… to the first episode of the 3rd cycle of A Year + A Day!Here in the threshold of Samhain, a new cycle begins and for the next 13 moon cycles we are digging down into the energies of …REVISIONING | RECONCILIATION | REMEMBERINGthrough language that transforms, emergent collaborations + embodied imaginationWith me today a long time friend, a poet and activist, Carter McKenzie. More about Carter’s work below.A year ago Carter and I collaborated on a reading called Witch Words at Tsunami Books, in Eugene Oregon. Our collaboration was a collection of published and new works exploring the power of transformative language as agents of change, empathy and connection. Our offering in this episode is an iteration of that reading.We offer this;In praise of wild witch women who conjure, generate & co-create life. Deep honoring, holding and reparations for all bodies harmed through patriarchal power dynamics.May ALL dwell free.For the past two cycles of AYAD (which began 12/23) all of my substack pods/posts were free for all. For this cycle I’m adding extra offerings and yumminess if you become a paid subscriber starting at $9/month. Your paid support helps me support the work of emerging artists, and good humans who help me create AYAD.Consider this next 13 month cycle as a journey exploring and engaging with the above energies & intentions as a process of collective and individual transformation. You can join this intentional liminal-space adventure at any time, in whatever way works for you, and each episode will be deepen and build on past episodes. We have absolutely no idea what will be true, alive, released and present 13 moon cycles from now…and yet where we put our attention during this time will effect what is becoming. I want to accompany you in this process, if you feel called to join us. More info here and broken down below…Thank you, thank you for your tender heart & your bright listening,TracyA YEAR and A DAY is reader-supported. Become a free or paid subscriber and help ripple depth, care + soul into the world.RESOURCESTlachtga: · Tlachtga (Clock-ga) was known was to be the daughter of a great druid, she is also known to have been labelled a witch by the church, known to be raped by multiple men, and said to have died on the hill, now bearing her name, while giving birth to the third of her sons. We are saying her name and uplifting a bit about Tlachtga’s story here. More at Mythical Ireland mythology and archaeology of Ireland’s most important Samhain Lilias Adie - Lilias Adie of Torreyburn, Fife, was a Scottish woman living in the early 1700s. She was accused of witchcraft and sentenced to burn at the stake. However before her execution, she died in prison and her body was buried along the shoreline, in a disgraced location, To ensure that the devil did not reanimate his purported collaborator, the grave was covered with a half-ton slab of stone.More about Lilias Lilias AdieThe Survey of Scottish WitchcraftThe Gaza Children’s Shroud - In the spirit of remembrance and accompaniment we can learn, feel and know what we are ready to know. The Gaza Children’s Shroud honors and names the more than 20,000 children killed and asks, where is the justice? Since last month the shroud is standing across from the United Nations in NYC. ABOUT:Carter MacKenzie (she/her) is the author of two full-length books of poetry, Out of Refusal (Airlie Press, 2010) and Stem of Us (Flowstone Press, 2018), and two poetry chapbooks, Naming Departure (Traprock Books, 2004) and The Book of Fire (above / ground press, 2024). The places in which her work has appeared include Tikkun Magazine, Her Words/ The Halcyone/ the Black Mountain Press, The Raven’s Perch, The Branches: A Journal of Literature and Philosophy, the anthology Bookstore Clerks & Significant Others (Tsunami Press, 2023), and periodicities: a journal of poetry and poetics (above / ground press, 2025). Carter has read poems from her unpublished manuscript Falling in the Dark: Poems Against the Genocide for the Pacifica Radio Program Free Palestine NorCal Radio. She is an active member of Friends Organizing for Racial Justice/ FORJ (formerly the Springfield-Eugene chapter of SURJ/Showing Up for Racial Justice). Carter’s recent collection of poems; The Book of Fire -Hearty + deepest thanks to Nina Smock, a community song leader and sonic spell weaver based in the Iowa Driftless for the luscious music + voice accompaniment throughout the podcast, and to Kyle Gilmer for his patient and generous sound engineering, check out his groove on Instagram.-Tracy Chipman (she/they), hello! i am a mentor, language & healing artist. My life’s work explores spoken and written language through solo & collective engagement, and body-based, practices inviting folx into sensorial aliveness & deeper connections with life. Presently i live at the edge of an inland sea in northern Wisconsin, on the traditional territories of the Ojibwe peoples who are known for many traditional practices including harvesting wild rice. I live with my partner & two spoiled and adorable kitties, (Lady Fern + Jo Jo the Bunny-Bun). Currently my work engages with the energies of reconciliation, embodied imagination & women’s voices. In March 2023 i published my first book, Borealis Mundi - Resting in Place, Loss & Grace. And am currently working on a body of poetry. More at www.tracychipman.net— * —SUBSCRIBER INFOBecome a free subscribers will receive occasional posts throughout the cycle. Monthly ($9) or yearly ($90) paid subscribers will receive subscriber only posts, which will include the following lovingly sprinkled in throughout the 13 months:* simple and powerful somatic (body based) practices* imagination experiences as meditation and storytelling* gorgeous expressions through language from the many muses who inspire this work* also you’ll be able to post comments on the substack page A Year + A Day* and receive an invitation to join deep and soulful book groups, the first starting in January of 2027 (more soon!) with Perdita Finn’s Mother’s of Magic - Summoning the Wisdom of Our AncestorsIf you become a founding subscribers ($230) you receive all the above plus discounts to any courses, writing crucibles/salons, movement classes and 1:1 mentoring sessions through November of 2027. Emails will be sent out with more info soon. My intention is to create an intentional collective vessel of depth, care and practice. Join me in this ripe process of deep rooted change! Get full access to A YEAR and A DAY at allheredwellfree.substack.com/subscribe

From Auðumbla’s milk, from Tiamat’s blood, from Ygradsil’s roots, from the Void of Being, becoming, a reconciliation is born…as are we.Welcome to this Harvest Time episode of A Year & A Day! Recently I met with storyteller and ecological activist Andreas Kornevall with the intention of settling into the deep work of reconciliation between the maturing/balancing energies of the feminine and masculine through Northern European cosmologies and practices. And… we had less than an hour to drink deep from this well, in this episode anyway.This is an offering of radical imagination and visioning into such a reconciliation - we leaned into this from a place of keen listening, softened minds, and being tender in our hearts. We specifically did not enter into this dialog from place of fixing or solving. What a glorious dance, bordering on trance. Enjoy and thank you for your bright listening!With love + imagination,TracyThank you for your bright listening and for being part of a transformational process! Please share A YEAR and A DAY.About Andreas:Andreas Kornevall is the author of Waking the Dragons (Green Magic Publishing) storyteller and ecological activist. He is a fellow with the Centre for Myth, Cosmology and the Sacred. And he is also a member of the ‘Forn Sed’ (Old Customs Association) in Sweden which works closely with ancient Norse culture, traditions and spirituality, unearthing old legends, forgotten folklore and endangered Norse languages.He is also a Buddhist of the Karma Kagyu lineage. As an ecologist he has planted over 200 woodlands in the United Kingdom and has been voted by the University of Southern California as one of their 100 spiritual exemplars.He has an active ritual and contemplative practice and he regularly acts as as a Blot-Godi (Norse Ritualist) and conducts BLOT ceremonies and traditional “High Seat” ceremonies where he lives in England with this wife and two daughters and his Finnish Lapphund dog Appo, keeping ancient practices and culture alive.https://www.facebook.com/andreas.kornevall/https://www.instagram.com/andreas_kornevall/http://kornevall.comP.S. Things are slowly taking shape for the next 13 month cycle of A Year & A Day starting this autumn, so stay tuned. Also please consider becoming a paid subscriber to help keep this podcast of depth and change-making in the world.A YEAR and A DAY is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.About Tracy:Tracy Chipman, (she/they) is a mentor, language & healing artist. She explores spoken and written language through solo & collective engagement, and body-based, trauma-aware practices inviting folx into sensorial aliveness & deeper connections with life. She lives at the edge of an inland sea in northern Wisconsin, on the traditional territories of the Ojibwe peoples, with her partner & two spoiled kitties. Currently their work engages with the energies of cyclicity, relationality & women’s voices. In March 2023 Tracy published her first book, Borealis Mundi - Resting in Place, Loss & Grace. More at www.tracychipman.net Get full access to A YEAR and A DAY at allheredwellfree.substack.com/subscribe

Welcome here to this summer solstice offering of a Year & A Day. Today’s episode is with author, wisdom keeper and shift-shaper Perdita Finn. Her book Mothers of Magic: Summoning the Wisdom of Our Ancestors is out in the world and wow, what a rich weaving it is! In our conversation Perdita calls upon us to bring back all the pieces of the lost, dismantled feminine, through deepening our relationships with our ancestral mothers. It is through the eyes of the dead we can re-member this fractured, over civilized world, and ourselves. We can re-enliven our passion, our power and our purpose, becoming empowered with our grandmothers’ help to feel just a little dangerous, meeting this moment in time more rooted and resourced.Thank you for your bright listening!Always,Tracy* image of my grandmother Leona’s hands holding an apple from her apple tree. also AI was not used for any of my posts.About Perdita:Perdita Finn is the author of Take Back the Magic: Conversations with the Unseen World, Mothers of Magic: Summoning the Wisdom of Our Ancestors, and with her husband Clark Strand The Way of the Rose: The Radical Path of the Divine Feminine Hidden in the Rosary. She teaches popular workshops on connecting and collaborating with both the dead and the animate everything. She lives with her family in the moss-filled shadows of the Catskill Mountains.www.takebackthemagic.com@Perdita Finn on FB & IGPerdita Finn (Take Back the Magic ) on SubstackA YEAR and A DAY is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to A YEAR and A DAY at allheredwellfree.substack.com/subscribe

This is the last pod in this 13 month cycle of A Year and a Day, it’s an ouroboros moment deep in the liminal in the initiating energy of a New Moon in Aries. More about that here from Dr. Mindy Nettifee.Reflecting back at the extraordinary feast of episodes and offerings these past 13 months and feeling paradoxically celebratory, noticing a festive feeling wrapping around me at this closure moment like a richly woven shimmering tapestry created by so many of us. Like the all-is-possible moment before the birthday candles extinguish in a mighty wish laden exhale. This is an exhale moment. A place of thanksgiving, acknowledging, hunkering and an incantation to women’s voices, women’s bodies and our shared cyclicity! Ripple this onwards…So in this snug and heartening…again paradoxical closing, is an opening as wide as a canyon and grander than this little podcast. A sun-soaked canyon of women now; visioning, grieving, planting, raging, resisting, feeling, screaming, witnessing, tending, resting, being, mending, whirling, singing, weeping, holding and, yes, welcoming other women, weary women, into the folds of what is becoming, in spite of the mortifying world events where everyday offers yet another unprecedented layer of mortification. Big forest inhale, and long sea-change exhale for this exit and arrival.13 months ago Elizabeth Jane Lovely joined me for the first new moon emergent collaboration in this AYAD cycle and we danced our trance-dance with Vasalisa, and the mighty Baba Yaga. Now, for this galloping new moon in Aries ending, she has returned to play! And we invite you to join us.We offer you this liminal journey, through our sisterhood soaked in the archetypal feminine becoming, and burnished in the pyre of holy witch women to a remembering of the Unf*@k-withable Cauldron within each of us. ‘Tis a sovereign place we know, feel and live from…each arriving and pitching a sturdy yurt in our own time, becoming inevitably a luminous net of power with ourselves and with each other that holds and murmurates us into the wild unknow, alchemical journey together.Thank you to those who became paid subscribers this cycle! Deep bow.What’s next you may be wondering? A Year & a Day will take a moon cycle of fallowness and a summer of sporadic showers (watch for an amazing episode with Perdita Finn of Take Back the Magic ) and re-constellate in it’s next iteration just beyond the horizon. Stay tuned!Thank you for your bright listening,TracyA YEAR and A DAY is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Elizabeth Jane Lovely is an artist whose experimentation encompasses the written form, oral storytelling, ceremonial chant, and spell speaking, through ritual interaction. She is a Creative Arts Doctoral Researcher at Loughborough University and an English Cunning Woman of sorts. Her specialisms within and without the academy are centred around how we can cause kindly disruption through enchantment, the story as the activist, the essentiality of our bodily state as gateway to sacred creativity, and everyday imagination as change maker. She currently lives in the United Kingdom in a tiny county that does not always exist, regularly having to negotiate with the brambles and briars to access the rest of the human world. All Our Voices These 13 Moon CyclesAdriana Forte | Anna Lisa Clifford Gold | Brianna McInerny | Carter McKenzie Cielle Backstrom | Cybele | Debrae FireHawk | Elizabeth Jane LovelyEmmaleeya June | Erin Tenny | Jackie Singer | Judith Tamara | Julie HillKerri Kirnan | Lara Burrell Martinson | Laura Rovi | Marisa Goudy | Nina SmockShelly Sharon | Stasha Ginsburg | Steph Ament | Tracy ChipmanAnd many thanks to Tim Britton & Kyle Gilmer @ Residual Audio for sound editing Get full access to A YEAR and A DAY at allheredwellfree.substack.com/subscribe

Hello, hello!Welcome to A Year & a Day and this the 13th full moon episode in this 13 month cycle bowing to the archetypal cycles of women’s lives through story & collaboration.Oy! We have arrived into the 13th and final month of this podcast cycle. Welcome here for this springing, full pink moon pod in balancing, love-spelled Libra. More about this sweet full moon threshold from Dr. Mindy Nettifee here.This episode is so full of heart, it’s brimming in buckets, spilling in all directions. These stories were shared with me by three women; Morag MacNeil (Barra), Mary MacLean (Grimsay, North Uist) & Mary Ulph (South Uist), all tradition bearers from the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. From 1996-2004 I was blessed to connect with them and other Gaelic speaking tradition bearers from the Outer Hebrides with The Hebridean Folklore Project. Morag, Mary and Mary all gave their permission for these stories to be shared and I have had deepest honor of carrying these stories for thirty years. I offer them here to you, in their memory, and for their lives devoted to language, culture and their island homes.As a collection these stories weave a non-linear cloak of power with the energies of the Maiden, Mother, Magah and Crone and the transcendent land of these western isles. Two of the stories are retellings. One I will read to you*.Each of these stories were shared with me in a space of relationship and trust; eye to eye, heart to heart & mind to mind.Each story holds the heart medicine of those connections, the precious fluidity of their the oral transmission into my ears then, and now into yours. This is magic stuff here and I’m so honored to share these three wee tales in this last full moon story offering for this AYAD cycle.So settle yourself and welcome the voices of these three women, telling women’s stories.We have one more pod left in this cycle, so come gather with me and Elizabeth Jane Lovely for our new moon, emergent collaboration finale!Bottomless thanks for your bright listening… agus moran taing (and many thanks) to Morag MacNeil, Mary MacLean and Mary Ulph. Love in the ongoing,TracyThanks for reading A YEAR and A DAY! This post is public so feel free to share it.** read from Borealis Mundi - Resting in Place, Loss & Grace*** thanks to Kyle at Residual Audio for audio editing support. [email protected]**** image taken from Eriskay 1997 Get full access to A YEAR and A DAY at allheredwellfree.substack.com/subscribe

Hello and Welcome to A Year & A Day! We are here, in this the most disturbing, profound and challenging time collectively (and perhaps individually) of our lifetimes. We are here. Here we are. How is your body, your heart, your mind? So, so, so much has been playing out within and without…and here we are in this fertile and feral fluster-cluck of endings.In this 13 month odyssey on A Year & a Day, we are in the 12th month of our journey exploring the seasons of women’s lives. This is the last episode celebrating the Crone phase. Joining me in this new moon in Pisces emergent collaboration are three brilliant women living their gifts in the wide arc of cultural rhythmicity, feminine empowerment and story; Adrianna Forte, Stasha Ginsburg and Marisa Goudy.I am so humbled by this episode, by us! As I listened to the final edit of all our voices woven together I wept…this work, our voices = deep meaning for me! I am honored and so grateful for their generous offerings and for our collective ‘yes!” to do the work we are each doing, alone & together.This teeny-tiny microcosm of an ending also coincides with the new moon opening in the last degrees of the final sign of the Zodiac cycle! And here in the northern hemisphere, we are in the final days of winter. This is a Matryoshka doll’s worth of endings and… the Spring Equinox is only days away! Mighty, unprecedented beginnings, re-patternings & shift-shapings await! Just pause and take that in….dream into this new moon portal and then, in a few days take up the reigns and ride! I highly, highly recommend reading/listening to this new moon post from Dr. Mindy Nettifee - every word, the braiding of all the layers of this complex threshold and the sustaining fluidity in between.In the past month I reached out to Adrianna, Stasha and Marisa and invited them to; Tell me about crone energy through your lens, this could be a story and or a sharing of your relationship with her as both lived experience and as an archetype?Enjoy their responses. Below more about their work in the world, the poems read and pictures from the magic of fresh March snow and northern sunshine.Thank you for your bright listening and all love, all ways!Yours in the ongoing,TracyPoems:Cailliach Bheag an F’hasaich | Little Cailleach of the Wild‘Duair bha an f hairge mhor‘Na coille choinnich ghlais,Bha mis am mhuirneig oig,Bu bhiadh miamh maidne dhomhDuileasg Lioc a Eigir,Agus creamh an Sgōth,Uisge Loch-a-Cheann-dubhain,Is iasg an Ionnaire-mhoir,B’ iad siud mo ragha beatha-saAm fad ’s a bhithinn beo.Chuirinn mo naoi imirean lurach linAn gleannan grinn Chorradail,Is thogainn mo chrioslachan chnoEadar dha Thorarnis.’That time the great seaWas a grey mossy wood,I was a joyous little maiden,My wholesome morning mealThe dulse of the Rock of AgirAnd the wild garlic of ‘Sgōth,’The water of ‘Loch-a-Cheann-dubhain,’And the fish of ‘Ionnaire-mor,’Those would be my choice sustenanceAs long as I would live.I would sow my nine lovely rigs of lint (rows of flax)In the little trim glen of Corradale,And I would lift my skirtful of nutsBetween the two Torarnises.from Alexander Carmichael’s Carmina Gadelica, 1900, p. 284The Hag’s CallShe is the essence of weather itself.She is the windtearing violently at the roof, squealing on the old gate,calling down the chimney.She is my fear taking human form,calling into me tonight -unexpected -seeking lodgings.Dressed as Karalalam,she torments me’til, at first sight of day,she flees.Let me out to the wind after her.out of my concrete skin,out of my iron skull,because there’s a fierceness in methat desires the edge,the tempest,the change.Marrow stirs in my bonesreviving the awe of youthin my flesh,endingthe inertia of winter,reopening my sword-sharp eye.Glaoch na Caillí’S í an uain féin í.’S í an ghaoth íag réabadh cheann an tí,ag gíoscáin ar gheata críonna,ag glaoch anuas an simné.’Sí m’eagla i gcolainn dhaonna íag bualadh isteach chugam anocht -gan choinne -feis na hoíche á lorg aici.Gléasta mar Karalalam,cránn sí mégo dtí go dteitheann síag lóchaint an lae..Scaoil mise amach sa ghaoth ina diaidh.amach óm chraiceann coincréideach,óm chloigeann iarainn,nó go bhfuil fiantas ionama shantaíonn an t-imeall,an t-anfa,an t-athrú.Smúsach ag smúrthaíl im chnámhaa athdhúisíonn scéimh na hóigeim bheo,a chuireann deireadh lestolpacht an gheimhridh,a athosclaíonn mo rosc rinnghéar.by Ceaití Ní Bheildiúin, an Irish-language poet living in Kerry. This is her own translation from the original Irish.Guest Collaborators:Adriana Forte is a cultural architect, philosopher, and writer dedicated to bringing the cyclical nature of women’s minds into collective awareness. She aims to create spaces for provocative thinking, reflection and transformation through dialogue, writing, workshops, retreats, online group work, and one-on-one mentoring. Above all, she’s a mother to two amazing girls, a partner to an awesome guy, and an apprentice gardener living off-grid in a community in Australia. To tap into some of my written work, please visit https://theclab.substack.com/ To watch some of the conversations I’ve had that brought the cycle into culture, visit: https://www.youtube.com/@thec-lab/videos |Stasha Ginsburg is a transformative language artist, song tender and storyteller in Boulder, CO. She is the creator of the Wild remembering —formerly the Wild matryoshka. Stasha assists others in rupturing narratives and disrupting the old story with embodiment and [email protected] IGTheWildrememberingFacebook.com/thewildrememberingSubstack.com/thewildrememberingMarisa Goudy is a myth worker, a story healer, and a writing coach. She’s the author of The Sovereignty Knot: A Woman’s Way to Freedom, Power, Love, and Magic and the host of the KnotWork Myth and Storytelling podcast. Marisa studied at the University of Galway and got her BA in Irish Studies and English at Boston College. She received her MA in Anglo-Irish Literature and Drama from University College Dublin. The land itself is Marisa’s greatest guide and solace. She grew up on Cape Cod, Massachusetts (traditional and ancestral land of the Wampanoag) and now lives in the Hudson Valley (originally home to the Esopus-Lenape) with her husband and two daughters.www.marisagoudy.com, www.KnotWorkStorytelling.comIG: @marisagoudy @knotworkpodcastFB: https://www.facebook.com/marisa.goudy/https://www.facebook.com/knotworkstorytellingSubstack: Myth is MedicineAnd with enormous thanks to Kyle Gilmer at Residual Audio. [email protected] image source unknown.A YEAR and A DAY is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to A YEAR and A DAY at allheredwellfree.substack.com/subscribe

Dear Bright Listeners,A medieval feminist tale and poem written by men! What? Yes, so says history anyway!If you are not familiar with the story of Dame Ragnelle and Sir Gawain, welcome here! Come set your weary bones down and have a listen. If you are familiar, or have vague memories flashing back from high school lit class, you are also welcome. This 6oo year old tale and the question it begs are still powerfully & absolutely relevant today - strangely and sadly too.Thank you for opening your ears and eyes here for this full blood & worm moon story, on A Year & A Day - a 13 month journey through the cyclical seasons of women’s lives; archetypally and literally from maiden, to mother, to mage to crone. We are winding up Crone season with this tale.A story which was born from the 15th century poem, The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnelle, which sprouted from an even older story - The Wife of Baths Tale, from Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales in the late 14th century. Tis a worthy rabbit hole if there ever was one!The original tale (The Wife of Bath) challenges the double standard, the socialized and conditioned belief in the inferiority of women. It also sets out to create a defense, upholding women's sovereignty and opposing the conventions of the time, drawing attention to the imbalance of power in a male-dominant society. Sound familiar? This was written over 600 years ago. Thank you for your bright listening! Please share comments below. What does sovereignty taste, sound, feel, look like for you, in your life? Please share! Things are moving and rising. Stay with your sovereignty. Stay connected with what nourishes and lights you up, and love, love, love up your peoples.Yours in the ongoing,Love,TracyA YEAR and A DAY is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Sources:Crane, Susan (1 January 1987). Alison's Incapacity and Poetic Instability in the Wife of Bath's Tale. PMLA. 102 (1): 20–28.Feminist Readings in Middle English Literature: the Wife of Bath and All Her Sect. p. 75.image by Frank Lampard Get full access to A YEAR and A DAY at allheredwellfree.substack.com/subscribe

Dear Listeners, Dreamers, Composting Wonders,The womb of the underworld is not hell, let’s restory that mistake of the intellect.Lay your body down, lay it down on the floor, ultimately all the way down to earth for reals, or through your fecund imagination. Let’s call in the Cailleach, the Crone of Winter’s rest. Give in, give it up, open it, shut down. Get still, like a stone, like a sun-sucked bone, breathing all your breath out. Pause. Become snow covered. Become a perch for a chickadee flooding clear air with song. Invite a passing owl to land, to lend a helping hand and dig in. Become a feast. Become good earth with the holy hat tricksters of decomposition; ectoparasites, protozoans and wily helminths. Or if fire is your medicine, strike a match, catch fire and blaze with the sun’s kin until there are only shards of char and smoked bones. Above you, as ever the bluest sky welcomes you home into the non-story beyond all stories.Welcome to a Year & A Day, our 13 month feast celebrating our cyclicity through the seasons of women lives and our changing, shapeshifting bodies!We are arriving into the initiation of Crone - the big D. Death. If this isn’t your scene, this post is for you. If you are down getting down with death - this post is for you!In the weave for this post, a true story from my grandmother’s end of life journey. From that sweet liminal straight to you. Also in this pod a reading of ripe words belonging to two beloveds, who when offered this prompt -My death will be…. picked up the crimson thread, courageously imagined in, and seeded their own inevitable death beds, perhaps catalyzing yours. Then (yes there’s more) a truly gorgeous response to the prompt from The Faerytale Apothecary : Elizabeth Jane Lovely. And… all this playing out in the new moon in Aquarius, the start of the Year of the Fire Horse in the Chinese lunar year cycle, and a wildly generative astrological symphony of the watery deep, the old, old, and the spontaneous new who are conspiring to offer up the most exquisite of reincarnations. More about that from Dr. Mindy Nettifee (Everything is Changing). And this from Marina Ormes.Thank you for your bright listening and your powerful becoming!TracyTHANK YOU COLLABORATORS!Carter McKenzie (she/her) is a poet and activist, whose most recent collection of poems, The Book of Fire, published by above / ground press. Through imagined voices, often based on specific court cases, this chapbook is a remembrance and exoneration of the victims of the Scottish Witchcraft Act 1563-1736. Of the nearly 4000 accused under that law, 84% were women and girls. These poems are a bridge between the living and the dead. They serve as a way to grieve and understand our connection to those whom the forces of the Reformation attempted to erase, as if they never were.Cybele - My voice and music across airwaves is meant to evoke an altered experience and a subsequent deep introspection of my listeners. I take them to inner perches they may have never or rarely stepped out upon so that they can remark at vast and intricate landscapes within themselves that are oftentimes as yet undiscovered. I meander lyrically into territory that explores what Love really is in its most universally spiritual and also practically lived sense. Each of my shows is a tapestry that emerges through the process of quieting the intellectual mind such that the soul’s wisdom, one we all recognize as our own innately, can come through and speak. I seek to rekindle an awareness of the extraordinary treasure that we each truly are. Cybele’s amazing music and DJing here.Elizabeth Jane Lovely is an artist whose experimentation encompasses the written form, oral storytelling, ceremonial chant, and spell speaking, through ritual interaction. She is a Creative Arts Doctoral Researcher at Loughborough University and an English Cunning Woman of sorts. Her specialisms within and without the academy are centred around how we can cause kindly disruption through enchantment, the story as the activist, the essentiality of our bodily state as gateway to sacred creativity, and everyday imagination as change maker. She currently lives in the United Kingdom in a tiny county that does not always exist, regularly having to negotiate with the brambles and briars to access the rest of the human world. More here and here.A YEAR and A DAY is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Thanks to Kyle at Residual Audio for sound supports; [email protected] Get full access to A YEAR and A DAY at allheredwellfree.substack.com/subscribe

Dear Dreamers, Tenders, Keeners, Revolutionaries… and any and all who land here - you are most welcome!Ah, just an fyi in advance, there will be swearing that follows, it’s medicinal and appropriate. These are swearing times. How are you feeling, doing? It’s Imbolc - yay we made it through the heartwood of winter and right on schedule a stiff warmish wind is stirring the trees, gently, gently waking the tucked-in roots as i type.There’s a lot going on in the world and there are great stories in the stars (more here from Marina Ormes).My dream for myself and us all, right now, is that we can practice; meeting life on life’s terms, live in the discomfort, the not knowing, and to what feel what we are ready to feel, showing up where & when, tending to what is each of ours to to tend to, together. It’s a f**k-ton! We can hold paradoxical energies and as fascism spins it’s toxicity, remember to open your hand to new beginnings, to the awe of ______ (fill in the blank) or use mine which is, the radiant glittering fresh snow, to the birds singing nearby, and to the cycle of life reminding us rebirth & renewal are inevitable. The cycle of life also says that death and decay are inevitable. And this so is my practice, to sit in the discomfort of what is presenting in my life, in the collective, give myself space and time (both often not available, and both strangely a privilege) and move with and through, sometimes with the support of allies…and this can really, really suck. I also must do my best to stay open to expressions of connection, care and aliveness. Okay, that was a lot….here’s to us, to holding a slippery center with all that’s inevitable, tending, resisting, loving, dreaming, witnessing, taking action and resting (don’t f*****g forget this folx!!!) to the best of our us’ness.So, if you are still here, thank you! Would you like a story? Open a window or your front/back door and say, YES! to the day, or night, invite the story in, light a candle, get cozy, pour yourself a cup of tea, pause into the weight of your body, let your attention settle into the bowl of your pelvis. Now, breath into that hallowed hollow and notice the hum of quickening energy there fully held and protected in the cave space of your womb (whether you have a physical one or not!) Now, invite the story into this well feathered nest.Today’s tale is a retelling of a story i’ve been carrying for three decades. The Maker of Dreams was shared with me long ago by Scottish storyteller, David Campbell. ‘Tis a tale from the Isle of Skye and offer the energetics of the sharing of the old ways, from the oldest ones, with the new, with young life. This story is one of two of stories in me that makes reference to a time when the ancients revered the gentle, nourishing grace of the mighty Deer People.Thank you for your bright listening!Yours in the ongoing,TracyConsider offering mutual aid, standing with folx in Minneapolis and St Paul through these sites: standwithminnesota.com, linktr.ee/mplsmutualaid. Also super helpful info here.image source unknown. Get full access to A YEAR and A DAY at allheredwellfree.substack.com/subscribe

Hello Still Tender Ones, Again, Big deep loving breaths. Here. Now. And later.This might be the most potent, powerful and profound pod in this series…my whole body is still ringing from Carter’s audio offering. Wow…and if the story I shared on the last full moon stirred and touched you in some way, this deeper dive through Carter’s art and voice is a feast. If you are reading this before you listen to this episode a few things to know; these notes will refer to two previous post. The first is the story of the Cailleach at the End/Edge of the World which I told at the last full moon.The second is a short episode just before this one you might want to listen to as an Introduction to Carter and this pod. Thank you for your patience as I navigate the audio editing obstacles. My desire is to continue to offer the emergent collaboration podcasts on A year & a Day, and I just don’t know how that will work out. Until it does I shall be pivoting and making lemonade and swearing, maybe crying and for sure employing all my creative resourcefulness to find a way through. And the recording quality might suck…that will change.And…starting with this post I’m asking now for dedicated patrons for upcoming episodes. If you would like to sponsor any of these episodes taking us through the end of this 13 month cycle. Suggested donation is $250/episode.Upcoming pods in need of sponsorship, email me to arrange this [email protected]* 2/1 - full moon in Leo* 2/17 * new moon in Pisces* 3/3 - full moon in Virgo* 3/18 * new moon in Aries* 4/1 - full moon in Libra* 4/17 * new moon in TaurusThank you, thank you! And if you are a paid subscriber here on Substack, thank you! This experimental, experiential project is way under funded, and it’s still fully free to anyone who’s keen…and your support is wildly meaningful and helpful.The transcript of Carter’s recording is below.Thank you for your bright listening,Love,TracyCarter McKenzie (she/her) is a poet and activist, whose most recent collection of poems, The Book of Fire, published by above / ground press. Through imagined voices, often based on specific court cases, this chapbook is a remembrance and exoneration of the victims of the Scottish Witchcraft Act 1563-1736. Of the nearly 4000 accused under that law, 84% were women and girls. These poems are a bridge between the living and the dead. They serve as a way to grieve and understand our connection to those whom the forces of the Reformation attempted to erase, as if they never were.To order Carter’s extraordinary book, The Book of Fire, please email her directly at [email protected].***Carter McKenzie, speaking about the Cailleach, the Crone….“I’m so glad to be joining Tracy for this focus on the Cailleach for A Year and a Day. Thank you so much for having me, Tracy. I’m going to begin by reading a poem that I wrote in response to Tracy’s telling of the traditional tale of the Cailleach in her cave at the end of the world.I Am Not Alone HereWhat stirs beneath my closed eyesbut a desire to attend to thispassage of dark and light.Patience.The moon’s face waning again, the soft shadowerasure shaping light, my 62 yearsin this field of earth and sky.***I believe in the possibility of a return of selflike the Cailleach at the End of the World in her black cave,after the descent of the ravenwhile she was not looking, while she was stirring the elixir over the fire, the broththe essence of every living thing,What makes the grain, the deer, the stones,she had almost let burn, so bound had she been in her weaving,Her back now turned away from the loom,the raven waiting for just this moment, bringing ruin heapedon the cold floor, a tearing. A tearing of her weave holding the world together,the warp and weftremembering the harvests, the birds and stags, the many grasses,the green, golds, and earth red before the gray of winter, the mountains she had made,and lichens and blossoms, heather tops,breath of the tangible born upon the loom,ravaged, no longer visible.***Yet the threadshe found through grief,the crimson light of it. She held the loss in her hands, the threadreflecting fire. She held it up in the light among the shadows,a way of makinga way within her, she didn’t know she had.*** from The Book of Fire by Carter McKenzie (order directly via her at [email protected])This poem about the Cailleach, the goddess of winter, who must remake that which has been torn to pieces when she looked away, is placed at the end of my collection of poems in the chapbook of poetry, The Book of Fire, published by Above Ground Press in 2024. It is a collection of poems dedicated to the victims of the Scottish Witchcraft Act that was passed in a reformation parliament in 1563 and finally repealed in 1736. During that time, nearly 4,000 people were found to be accused of witchcraft. 84% of those people, at least, were women and girls. This is just in Scotland. There were hunts going on as well in other parts of Europe. And the percentage of women was similar there too. In this case, Scotland had the highest number of people accused during that time of anywhere in Europe and the British Isles. And so this was a female crime, this crime of witchcraft. And two-thirds, it’s estimated, were found guilty. And since it was a capital offense, those found guilty were mostly executed. Their bodies burned after the people had been strangled, or sometimes people burned alive. So mostly there are no graves.I wanted to bring attention to this history, which I had not known anything about until I found about the story of Lilias Adie, who died while imprisoned under accusations of witchcraft in Fife in 1704. That story became known because a forensic artist had created an image of her face based on a photograph… Get full access to A YEAR and A DAY at allheredwellfree.substack.com/subscribe