You Do Not Need a Mentor for Death - You Need A Witness

There is a particular kind of harm that happens in death work when expertise becomes more important than presence. It may be subtle and often well-intentioned, but it sure is devastating.

It happens when someone shows up vulnerable, uncertain, and afraid. It happens when the meeting is surrounded with answers instead of the expansiveness of active listening and space. With protocols instead of pacing. With competence instead of care.

And then, their nervous system freezes, refuses to relax. It contracts.

Because what they needed was not information. It was safety.

What Death Support Actually Requires

Most people assume death support is about knowledge. About having answers to complex questions. About credentials and experience and systems. And yes, those things matter. However, they are not what matters most.

What matters most is the capacity to be with someone without trying to fix them. To hold space without filling it to the brim. To pace with their nervous system instead of pushing against it. This is what I now call tender authority.

It is not soft in the sense of lack in strength. It is soft in the sense of being responsive. Flexible. Pliable. Attuned to what the person in front of you actually needs and not what your framework says they are supposed to need.

Why Trust Comes Before Information

Your nervous system decides before your mind does. You can see someone's credentials. You can hear about their experience. You can intellectually recognize their qualifications. But if your body contracts in their presence or if your shoulders tighten, your breath shortens, and your guts say something is off; that somatic response throughout your body matters more than any resume, testimonials, or referrals.

Death work requires vulnerability. And vulnerability requires safety. The kind of safety that does not come from expertise alone. It comes from being seen as a person, not a problem. From being paced with, not corrected. From being allowed to move slowly without being treated as resistant.

This is why I am unable to rush. Why I ask more than spout rules or regulations. This is also why I create spaces for silence to exist instead of filling it with my own knowledge. Because the work is not about me proving I know things. It is about creating conditions where you can access your own knowing. You are the authority of you.

The Difference Between Guidance and Control

The good death support is collaborative, not prescriptive. This distinction matters immensely. Because when support becomes control or when a guide centers their expertise over your experience, then you just gave your agency away. And your agency attached and alive is the whole point.

• I do not tell you what you are supposed to want. I can, however, help you figure out what you do want.

• I do not impose meaning on your death. I help you clarify the meaning that already exists for you. The breadth of your imagination is something you have been creating this entire existence.

• I do not use urgency as a tool to move you faster than your body wants to go. I respect that your pace is the exact right pace.

You are not hiring someone to take over your death. You are hiring someone to support you in shaping it yourself.

How to Recognize Good Support

Here are some markers toward what good death support feels like:

Your shoulders drop during conversations. Your breath deepens. You leave feeling steadier, not more overwhelmed. Questions are welcomed, not rushed past. A solid ‘No’ or an ‘I do not know yet’ are both complete answers. Slowness is where wisdom catches air, not in the static of resistance. You feel met as a person, not managed as a task.

That is the benchmark.

If you feel rushed or pressured or like you are supposed to be further along than you are, fear not!, that is just information coming through exactly how it is supposed to. That is your nervous system relaying messages to you this is not the right support. Listen to it.

What I Am Offering Instead

I am not here to tell you how to die. I am here, to witness you, as you figure that out for yourself. I bring some structure, space, and steadiness. You bring the knowing of your own life, your own values, your own needs. Then, together, we build something that feels true to you. Not true to my framework. Not true to some external standard of what a ‘good death’ is supposed to look like.

I witness what is innate to you.
That is tender authority, and it is the only kind of death support worth having.

Death Is By Your Design: Reclaiming Authorship at the Threshold

Most people do believe that death is something that happens to them. It is a medical event or biological conclusion? Something which lies just outside their reach.

But that is not the full scope of the truth.

While you may not be able to control the timing or the outcome of death, you absolutely can shape the experience of it. You can design the conditions. You can choose the lens through which to blast your imagination into overdrive. You can participate in one of the most significant thresholds of your life… or you can let it happen by default.

This is personal and what I encourage when I say ‘death is by your design’.

What Death Authorship Actually Looks Like

Death authorship does not mean you are about to control the death itself. It means making intentional choices and clarifying how you want to be cared for, what environment feels right, who you want present, and what kind of atmosphere you are moving toward.

It looks like asking yourself a few mighty questions:

● What do I want the room to feel like?

● Do I want intervention or comfort prioritized?

● What sensory details matter to me—lighting, sound, temperature?

● Who do I trust to hold space with me?

● What do I want said, or not said?

These are not abstract or unattainable questions. They are design questions. And the answers shape your experience of…every thing.

I have watched someone relax the moment we sat outside daily in the air. I have read poetry, weaved with wool, told stories for hours, and decorated environments away from the noise of outside. The span of comfort or preferences such as dimmed lights and lamps from home. I have been with families that respond with softness when we turned off the relentless beeping of monitors. I have witnessed the shift in a room when someone's favorite music or instruments replaced a sterile, clinical silence.

These simple and free choices matter. They are by no means frivolous. They are part of how your body experiences the transitional threshold and also the beginning questions to the agency of your design.

Why Most People Avoid This Work

The cultural narrative around death is passive. So many of us are taught by example that death is something to endure, not design. Something that happens in these supposed, cubicle rooms with protocols and rules and regulations that we do not fully understand. These decisions have been made by people in white coats, usually male bodies, and black coats behind desks.

But that really is only one version of death.

I am here to embolden the changes taking place.

These decisions are not the only ones available to you.

The reason most people avoid thinking about their death is not that they are afraid of dying. It is that they are afraid of arriving there unprepared, disoriented, without language, without ground.

Preparation will remove that fear. Not by making death controllable, at the whims of others, nor by shrugging shoulders. Let us make it participatory.

Imagination as a Practical Tool

One of the most powerful tools in death preparation is imagination.

Before you can make practical decisions, you need to be able to visualize the threshold. To imagine what good will feel like for you. Imagine a nervous system that recognizes itself. This can be met gently and with your entire being.

Where visualization and values statements intersect, fear takes a backseat. This is a step that turns the abstract into something concrete. It gives your body a reference point that you recognize.

A quick and tender check-in is to close the eyes and float, then imagine:

What does the room look like? Who is there with you? What does the air feel like? What sounds are present? How does your body feel held? What do you not want to be there?

You are not committing to anything here, just wandering. You are building an orientation. The awareness of yourself in ideal terms, and the orientation is where all the good trouble of preparation begins.

The Freedom in Authorship

Here is what I have paid attention to and learned after only a few years of this work: the people who prepare for death are not more afraid. They become less afraid. They have done the thing so many do avoid. They look directly at their own mortality to clarify what matters and design the choices.

And now they are free because of their courage and bravery.

Free to live without that background hum of dread. Free to talk about death without flinching. Free to know that when the threshold comes to meet them, they will not be walking completely blind.

That is not a morbid space; it is a creative agency.

Death will come. It shows up to meet with you.

And perfectly enough, you do get to choose how you meet it. That choice, that unique and personal authorship, does change every thing.

Language Prepares the Nervous System Before the Mind Understands

There is a reason most death conversations feel unbearable. It may not be the topic itself, rather it is most likely the language we use to approach it.

lan·guage
/ˈlaNGɡwij/
noun: language; plural noun: languages

the principal method of human communication, consisting of words used in a structured and conventional way, conveyed by speech, writing, or gesture.

The words like "terminal." "end-stage." "life-limiting." "final arrangements.", these are NOT neutral terms; these are words loaded up with finality, fear, and medical distance. When your nervous system hears them, it buckles into the chair and braces. This is not because we are unprepared or weak. It has been proven that language shapes experience, often before the conscious mind even arrives with the actual words.

The language and words that are used here go through a creative and tenderness filter of my mind first. As a poet at the helm with Under The Root, my personal language prepares the nervous system before my mind understands and allows them to be used across the forest floor of everywhere else.

Why Language Matters in Death Work

Does your body respond to language faster than your mind can process it?

When someone says “it is time to get your affairs in order”, your nervous system may hear a sense of urgency, a threat is in the room, something is wrong.

When someone says "let us share some ideas of how YOU want to be cared for", your nervous system hears an invitation, possibilities, agency.

This is the same conversation, wildly different outcome.

I do work diligently and honestly with words. Not because I am working hard at being precious or poetic for its own sake. But because I understand that the language I use either creates a sturdy, tender ground or it outright deletes it.

And in death work, it is clear as the night sky that a connected and woven ground is precisely the mighty foundation suited for the many things that it will support.

The Difference Between Clinical Language and Human Language

I have noticed that most death education uses clinical language.

Advance directives. Living wills. Healthcare proxies. DNR orders.

These terms are necessary for legal and medical contexts. But they are not where you begin when working with someone who is afraid. Clinical language creates distance. It turns death into a bureaucratic process instead of a gracious threshold.

Human language does the opposite. Instead of "advance directive", I may want to say: clarifying what matters most to you. Instead of "end of life planning", it seems most fitting to say: preparing for the meeting with your threshold. Instead of "patient wishes", I will use: what you want.

These are not just my semantic choices. They are nervous system choices with creative thinking, tenderness, and unique imagination at the core.

One set of words makes the body contract. The other helps it be at ease and soften.

How Language Creates Safety

When I work with someone, I pay attention to their body.

I am simply noticing when their shoulders rise, when their breath shortens, or when their eyes glaze over because they have left the conversation and gone into a protection mode. These are my cues to change the language. Not to just simplify it, but to make it more human, more spacious, more true to what we are actually talking about.

Because here is what I have come to believe:

If the person’s nervous system is in a threat response, they are unable to integrate the information. They are having a tough time making clear decisions because they are blocked from the access of their own knowing. They are probably just working out how to survive our conversation.

So, when the language feels safe and secure, it creates oodles of space instead of forced pressure. An invitation has just been created instead of urgency. The body relaxes and breathes in the surrounding air.

This is when real preparation becomes possible.

The Language of Under The Root

Under The Root, we are building a sanctuary for the language about death to be ultra supportive and kind, full of possibilities.

We will not use fear or urgency as the motivators. We do not rush. We do not impose or frighten.

We use words like:
Threshold instead of "end".
Because death is a bridge or crossing, not a conclusion or the goal.

Authorship instead of "control".
Because, silly humans, although we can not control death, you CAN participate in shaping the experience of it.

Ground instead of "plan".
Because what people need most is not that perfect and precise roadmap. Humans desire a sense of steadiness.

Witness instead of "expert".
Because death work is not at all about me having the answers. It is ultimately about creating ample space for you to find yours.

Tenderness instead of "compassion".
Because tenderness implies action, care, and attunement. It is not just a feeling.

This is not our branding language. This is our use of philosophical precision. These words do not seem to be interchangeable with their clinical counterparts. They create entirely different nervous system experiences.

That unique difference matters immensely.

What This Means for You

If you have ever left a death conversation feeling more overwhelmed than when you started, it was not your fault. It was the language.

If you have ever felt rushed, pressured, or like death was being presented as an emergency that you are behind on… that was the language too.

At Under The Root, we are approaching death as something that can be met gently and with confidence. This is not because death itself is gentle. We believe it is because the language we use to approach it can be.

So, when the language is right, when it creates safety instead of threat or orientation instead of panic, the very thing that is frightening changes shape.
Your body will stop bracing.
Your mind will stop spinning.
Your breath deepens down to the very core.
And suddenly, the preparation does not feel like something you have to force yourself through.

It feels like something your nervous system has been waiting for.

Why This Approach Is Different

Most death work does prioritize information over integration. I will say that again, most of the death work prioritizes all the damn information over the integration.

It assumes that if you just have the right facts, the right documents, the right legal structures, you will be prepared and be ok. I do not believe that the human preparation works exactly in that way. You can have all the paperwork in the world and still feel unprepared if your nervous system has not had the chance to orient to what is on its way.

This is why language is coming first at Under The Root. Before the documents, before the decisions, and definitely before the logistics.

We will begin with words that help your body recognize: This is something I can meet. This is something I am allowed to shape. This is something that can be held so very close to my person.

That is the ground everything else is built on.

The Invitation

If the language in this piece feels different to you or if something in your body softened and lit up while reading it, that is the intended meaning of this information.

It may well be your nervous system recognizing: This is the kind of support I align with.

Not the language that rushes or pressures. Not language that treats you like a problem to solve. But language that creates and expands your space. Language that honors your pace. Words and feelings that treat death as a threshold you are allowed to approach consciously and with all the awareness you can muster.

That is what Under The Root offers.

And if you are ready for that kind of preparation, I am here, weaving words to support and steady the threshold for you.

The Brambles and the Business of an Innovative Hekate

A new gregorian year is about to make its appearance and just as I am halfway through the intention burnings for the 13 Nights of Yule.

A few years ago, while on a hunt to find more information about what guides businesses. Not the above ground regulars, the unseen shadows from which a well is the source. My intuition landed on 2 different question and answer platforms. One was for finding your goddex archetype by the glorious Kristen Jett. The other was an in-depth exploration of questions and answers by Cerries Mooney. After the results landed in my inbox, I set about to prepare them as diy pamphlets.

The following is what was sent as the results from these very gracious and helpful beings.

Business Archetype - Hekate - Kristen Jett
Your Business is Hekate!
INTUITIVE.
SEEKING.
MYSTERIOUS.

GODDESS STORY
Born to the Goddess of the Stars, Hekate lit the way for those who were in the midst of a personal transformation.
She is often depicted carrying two lit torches on the path between the Underworld and the earthly plane, guiding the vulnerable toward a new phase in life with her own special brand of wisdom.
Queen of the InBetween Spaces
The unknown is a comfortable space for Hekate people, as they often gravitate toward gray spaces and blurred lines.

The breakdown goes on to explain the unique abilities, client connection as a Divine Alchemist, joys and findings being a Gatekeeper of Magik, client attraction through helping others peer beyond the veil, Opportunities to keep an eye out for, Symbol and Color, plus how to Settle into the Darkness. There was also guidance on Ways to Grow, and a Prayer to Hekate.

So very interesting to read these pages again after time has streamed by. These foundations are actions that will be taken even more to heart as time passes. Thank you, Kristen.

Primary Archetype - Innovator - Cerries Mooney

You are an Innovator
You are a catalyst for creative energy and are highly sensitive to the hundreds of ideas that pass through your brain every day.
You are inspiring. When people are around you, they feel fired up (even though they may not be able to put their finger on why).
This archetype explains the gifts, attractions, challenges, shadows, business and brand map, a blueprint to suss out some development flavours, keywords, and toolbox suggestions.
Thank you, Cerries.

Both of these generative archetypes are being taken under consideration as we are in the midst of stoking the fires. The deep end is so dark right now and these pamphlets showed up just in time.

Creating Ethical Boundaries for a Safe Integration Space

Community regards every participant as an individual, yes?, and with that individualism lies unique experiences before they reach a community space. Each person has memories, thoughts, behaviors, and ways of using their own interpersonal communication. Now, how are we to know where boundaries are set? Where are each person’s triggers? Cultural perspectives are also a care factor within communities.

Ethics and Agreements are a way to enhance communication by setting clear boundaries based on a soft set of ley lines. They provide a working framework of expectations. Boundaries are not restrictions as much as they help acheive an architecture of safety. Without them, a circle becomes this shapeless field where expectations blur and harm can quietly grow. Nobody wants that. We use some common ethical boundaries such as:

• Confidentiality agreement that establishes mutual trust.

• A clear distinction between sharing and advising.

• Cutural humility with responsivity and equity for inclusive curiosity.

• No substance use during or around meetings.

• A trauma-informed tone that normalizes pacing, consent, and emotional regulation.

• No diagnosing, no coaching, no rescuing - just listening and reflecting.

• Active listening - as a way to sit with what is being shared between individuals.

Boundaries also protect the spaceholders and guardians. When lines are clear, you are free to be present without feeling responsible for anyone’s healing outcomes. The spaceholder and guardian maintains the container, the vibe, the pace and environment, not steer personal process.

Holding ethical boundaries comes from a place of care, universal love, and grounded tenderness, not limitation.

They allow participants to relax into their experiences and authenticity.

Made The Lot Out Of Hell

If you place your hands on the earth, the areas that they touch make room for that connection.

There is not one thought in my mind that claims to know what the hell begins words on a page. Do I research something then regurgitate a point of view? Do I relay stats showing proof of belief in something that matters to me personally? Do I write about a subject that proves I know what it means to be human?

First thing to be damp with the soil are my arms. So we begin there and free fall into a place that exists outside of linear time. I let go of my strong belief in this dimension and after some fuss, sit in the existence of nothing. The flow of my surroundings is now only a couple breaths away. I try to blend in and let go.

While in this non-place of buoyancy, I turned to Madeleine, Lottie, and Helga. Their skins do not feel the way that mine does, they just are.

The day is rainy and overcast, sensational for clearing and centering. If left in the void of a page, the words flow through my brain, down my neck, across my shoulders, rushing into my hands that land on keys. The keys that if left unattended, will saunter down roads of rocky hills, lay on moss laden trees, rest on rivers sweeping towards the ocean. It feels like the decisions of each word mean less and less. What grabs my attention to keep pressing down on these plastic squares is feeling. The following of feeling to find meaning.

If there is comfort between the brain and the tap, it opens. Because if I write words that are painful, no matter how honest or earth shaking, the soil will swallow my hands whole. Oops, no more hands.

Mycelial Manifesto

Under The Root is in pursuit and on task to trigger a transformation of people from their disconnection with the planet and its living beings - to recognize and engage the undeniable tether with the essence of life coupled with our unique capacity as part of this vast ocean - all the while, activating a system of voluntary cooperation and mutual aid.  We are here to remind people of their power, especially when they feel that survival mode is the only way.

We began as a line of intimate apparel that was tough, hearty, soft, and affectionate. During those 20 years, our growth moved mountains to maintain course - because hemp fabrics, hand-dyeing, and community action was one way of moving the needle towards a gentler world.

Over the last eight years, we sustained our safety, surrendered to a labor intensive production job for another company’s products as eventually Under The Root closed up shop. The employment paid the bills, added a secure roof and food in the fridge. The exchange was a bit of monies for my body. Do you relate to this story? The body began to collapse from the strain to gain, and 6 months ago, the position was simply deleted, my financial foundation quietly taken from me, just as the red was turning to black.

But well before that fatal day, I had begun following a deeply driven question from a dream. The dream was to somehow create a union between my 30 years of psychonaut foundations and an industry that seemed to be stealing good death choices from people.
As the psychedelic realm was entering my sphere again and as my studies revealed, a resurgence above ground was taking shape. I continued to train, explore, research, and eventually volunteer.


My findings, this ongoing quest needs only to follow the flow, engage with the peoples already in motion, stand with the many others bringing death back home.

Have you ever struggled with the reasons why many of the peoples and communities of this planet are so war torn, violent, and shaken at their core?  Why are there so many people working against one another right now?

These questions had been my struggle and the facts that have haunted me for most of my life.

Homelessness was often a reality.  Capitalism ruled.  Failure was accepted and encouraged.  Governments and their financial backings were using brainwashing, lies, secrecy as a tactic to increase powerlessness.

I did not see a way out of the vicious cycle of continued helplessness.  It was similar to what I imagined torture to be like for nearly all of the living beings on this planet.  Not enough people seemed to care or believe in their voice enough to do something truly authentic about it.

Every day was like this never ending pit of doom and yet I was supposed to buy into the status quo if I wanted my life to amount to anything.  The days wore on and on and on.

"You just need a man to take care of you." "We must test on animals to be sure it is safe for people."  "This is the way it has always been."  "If you give up your needs for the whole, it will matter in the end."  "There was no penetration, therefore it can not be accused as rape." "Marijuana is the gateway drug."  "War is our last resort." "Racism is an illusion." "Are you a man or a woman?"

After a few years of allowing my melancholy and self-doubt to lead my life, something inside me made a definitive, resilient step out of the invisible trap set by the hunters of the their own species, the human race.

I had had enough - no more pussy footing around, no more following the herd, no more mornings and nights of tears, no more bullshit.  There was so much fire in my being that wanted out.

The time for me to take action was crystal clear.  My person was breathing again, and, I was still alive.

My next night off was coming up and I decided to sit down with a pad of paper and a pen, not leave the seat until I had pinpointed my strengths and skills, then write down exactly where to begin.

I understood that my decision to forge a death doula collaboration with an optional psychedelic component was not easy, quick, or without learning curves, however, my magnificent pull to sustain the path had just been burned on my skin like the Helm of Awe.

There is a void, a gaping wound, in the deathcare industry for support and companionship to assemble, assert, advocate, and ascertain the human rights, the living rights of individuals. A death of absolute sincerity.
It is possible to have an entire lifetime to flow with the sun and moon and speak with the stars inbetween. Our exact day and time of death may be uncertain; this only solidifies that as above, so below.

And, Under The Root was awake after a much needed rest and rebirth; back at it with a skillset ready to forge another chapter with this objective:

I WANTED A DEATH THAT EMBODIES A LIFE LEAD WITH THE RESILIENCE AND GORGEOUSNESS OF EVOLUTION. AND I WANTED ALL PEOPLE TO HAVE AGENCY FOR A GOOD DEATH WITH THIS ROOT CONNECTION TOO.

Under The Root is about resilient transformation.

Because there is no best time, every present moment is the time for change.  Change of the status quo.  Change of your choices. A chance for all living things to breathe together as one into infinity.

It is within your power of individuality to be free.
Free to choose to die in a way that makes you move with the sense of honor for yourself and those that hold space for your freedom to be an evolution.

Be the life force of balance; eat your horrors and dreams.

You are extra ordinary today, tomorrow, and yesterday.

Remember, you have been floating for over a million years.  

Community Evolution

Each month we give back a portion of our proceeds to programs, businesses, organizations, and companies with close ties to Under The Root and our ethical principles.  These communities are making continuous strides to transform the injustice, inequality, inhumane actions found throughout every corner of the world.

Since the agenda was set down in our plans, our responsibility and ability to support each of them becomes more apparent every month.  My hope is that even the smallest amounts give rise to a never ending flow in their cause.

Under The Root Creed

Who is Under The Root for?

“There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique, and if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium; and be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is, not how it compares with other expression. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. No artist is pleased. There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer, divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.”

― Martha Graham

We are the underserved populations that have fallen through the cracks of a broken system, so we learned to pick up our boots by the straps. 
We are the young people that stared at a culture with its misplaced anger. A culture that had long since lost the sense of being one with each other and all living things. 
We are the humans stripped of their connection to the earth at a very young age in order to become civilized workers. 
We are the people that had to choose one gender or the other.

But now, we are becoming… and we are not at all alone.

We represent a collaboration restoring people and planet by challenging the status quo.
We are the artists, the dreamers, the thinkers, the doers and the warriors. 
We are here to rewrite the narrative by our existence in the present. 
We are here to lead the way for your choices of transformation and most importantly to advocate for your voice.. your voice is loud.. the entire world is listening.

We are standing our ground and turning down the volume of the typical death messages, then wielding them into movements of equality, social justice, and the golden threads that bind them together. 
Our bodies are our own and no matter how far the seeming majority wishes to take us into the depths of their own control, you can not claim what is not yours. 
In every single circumstance, you have the dynamic integrity of your death.

This is what you need and it is within you now.

We see a world that is filled with a new majority, potent change-makers who are intimately connected to themselves, one another, and their collective magick.

Where we reinvent the antidote of insecurity, move with the chaos while validating our alchemical silhouette, and ultimately shift the deadly impact of commerce away from living systems. 
We see a world that performs a healing relationship with their natural environment every moment of every day.

A world that has seen gender inequality as a construct of control, then demolished it.

A world where humans embrace their individual capabilities for an evolution of cultural, social, and environmental justice.

Under The Root Brand Ambassadors

Under The Root is not here to offer the same spiel as so many other brands.  We do not covet the ownership on a good death.  This brand is about the union of values and choices inside you, the core movement within you that exudes the reality of life.  And we do this with advocacy and stewardship of these values and choices. The ones that are deeply rooted with the planet's impermanence, which in turn become transferred to the agency and pathway of your death.  

We continue to conjure and create handcrafted goods. We do this with ethical, transparent manufacturing practices of small runs, limited editions, and authentic radicalism in every decision.

We honor your innate intelligence while the current state of an industry sincerely believes that they know best. Authentic, radical changes must come from the ground up; they must come from brands and people with the courage to build new models.

We do this by offering you a personal stake in our systems, methods, and supply chains.

We demand goods and services to be worth the true sum of its parts, from the lands to the hands to the heart.

Miscellaneous Truths

Death is inherent with every human body. The body knows how to die. Death claims the right of a body without repression or compartmentalized zones, and it is a natural, whole being submersion in sensory exploration.

Death is final and there is no wrong way to ingest it with yourself. You can wash with it in the rain, dry it in the light breezes, lay it on a rocky ground cover, or bring it to the fire. It is yours to claim. Even a quick moment of acceptance sends it the message to smolder WITH you.

These words above are a personal calling card to make room for it in yourself and others. Do away with the judgment of what it is supposed to look like, talk like, act like, or be.
It is yours; every last drop of the blood of it is yours. Some people may see it just as you may see theirs, but make no doubt that it belongs to the only one who sees it as a completed circle… you.

It is time for innovation across all facets of the deathcare industry.  In order to sustain the evolution of a good death, the acceptance begins and ends with the agency of each authentic, creative individual.

The Rising Call for Attendance: Community Integration Spaces Matter Now More Than Ever

The psychedelic world is expanding faster than our collective understanding of what to do with the experiences we are opening ourselves to. Humans have grown surprisingly good at seeking—less so at digesting.

And digestion is where the real alchemy takes place.

Psychedelic integration circles are the hearth of this work: communal fires where we are tending the embers of meaning, cooking down the contents of the cauldron, sharing expansive breaths, regulating nervous systems, and weaving the threads of insight into everyday life. Without a place to metabolize, profound realizations remain like unplanted seeds—beautiful and potent, yet unrealized.

Communities need spaces where people do not have to pretend to be healed, enlightened, or endlessly thriving. Places where confusion is seen as intelligence trying to reorganize itself. Places where awe and fear sit side by side at the table, both welcome, both valid.

In a world that constantly pulls us into speed, comparison, and self-curation, community psychedelic integration circles offer something almost rebellious: slowness, humanity, and shared presence.

And perhaps most importantly—they normalize the strangeness of awakenings. Psychedelic experiences can be intimate, non-linear, disorienting, and wildly tender. But when we tell our truths in the company of others, they become less isolating and more integrated into the vast, ordinary gorgeousness of being human.

This resurgence needs us not as consumers of experience but as stewards of community wisdom, community in action. Integration circles are one of the few places where that wisdom is still cultivated through human-to-human connection, fractal inquiry, gentleness, confidentiality, and active listening.

The door has opened.
Now we build the house.

Away

I have been away.
Strolling into avenues, taking peeks of fancy through weathered stained glass, imagining places that exist only in my dreams, venturing down into the gallows below, turning corners covered in an invisible cloak, sat inside the trestles of doorways hoping not to ever be seen again, definitely not for awhile at least.

I have been away.
I had to step away.

I have been away.

Did you see your inner workings of self, while in the away?
I did, just as a piece of dust begins its next journey, or maybe it is the last, riding air molecules, dipping with the sound of a laugh.

My pen can not stop from drifting, out of my mind and onto a place. Any place.
As long as it goes, to the space you may know,
invisible to the naked eye, an interloper, no,
a made up point in your sky.

The return is unsettling, groundbreaking wide chasms keep swallowing me whole, thorny paths littered with drips of blood flow,

Grab the water jug, the cat, and throw on some pants.
We are about to go where no body knows… again.

Introduction of Ellefolk Gazette

An Introduction and Welcome from Ellefolk Gazette
Our journal since 2008, Musings, Usings, and Loose Things, was practically dripping with a deep sincerity for overhaul.  It was time for change.  Two years of racking the brain, shaking the tree, and tumbling over how on earth to be more transparent from behind the scenes.  It has become clear that a journal for this brand, the optimal interpretation, will be best delivered in segments.  My hope is that these written words connect you to the intimacy of Under The Root and possibly your own network of undergrowth.

• Herbivore Apothecary

• Body Movement Visionaries

• Sensual Alchemy

• Cabinet of Curiosities

• Emporium Memoir

• Madeleine

• Musings of a Curious Observer

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Herbivore Apothecary

A segment dedicated to the innate and cherished respect for herbals, holistic medicine, botany, geology, and the methods we find in nature to develop our deeper kinship with it. I will be sharing the covert operations alongside weed walks, recipes, wild harvesting, herbal techniques, plus wild crafting charms and talisman projects.

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Body Movement Visionaries

The mythical works of modern dance, cabaret theater, and circus arts, across the globe today and yesterday, will populate this segment.  There has been a historical landscape forged by our human desire to imagine an upturned reality using the body as channel and translator.  I am sharing images, short films, documentaries, and performance clips in order to highlight as many facets of dance as possible.  There are dance companies, performance artists, classes, books, collaborations, generations, and so many more avenues to highlight.  With the onset of new technologies, a balance of participants as artists and audiences engage to create environments together.  This was the future and it is here now.

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Sensual Alchemy

The deeper we hike inside our individual journeys, the more apt we are to devise an allurement with the sentience of all living things. A testament to what it means to be human and not human while dreaming. In the shadows we handshake with psychics. Sensual alchemy is the transformative processes, or collaborative steps, while participating in the continuity of consciousness.  It is tender, fiery, intimate, ayurvedic, grounded, patient and passionate.

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Cabinet of Curiosities

While the corners of the studio are seething with answers, it seems important to write about the many variables that come into play.  Each handcrafted good has been steeped in brews of specifics before they become manufactured into existence.  They are fabricated from particular ideas and notions and influence of curiosity.
The objective here is to share a peek into the closet: the process involved, decision-making turns, materials used, behind the name meaning, and miscellaneous tidbits of distinction.  In the end, we still venture onward towards artful conception with the twitch of the witch.

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Emporium Memoir

In this over-populated world of information heavy, product overload, news explosions, media grabbers, and monsters of distractions, this is my shared place of private exploration into the depths of becoming.  If only for mere moments, are we not comforted with those domains of exclusive interpretations between individuals, private library access cards, and the one hundred year old wood tables to sit at and sip warm beverages while we read together?  This segment is built with the intention to generate a dialogue and experience, a treehouse of stories and solutions as seen through my personal perspective. 

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Madeleine

This dressform considers me a friend and while it may not inhabit a human body, the respect for one another is the same.  Madeleine has adventures and now has a pride of friends to adventure with.

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Musings from a Curious Observer

This segment is a bit more secluded, where the door opens to the holographic universe. A brief and informative arena that hopes to give a synopsis of likes, dislikes, considerations, lists, alternatives, mistakes and solutions.

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