SWEET FERN HOME GATHERING - September through ??? (we will see how things go, my hope would be to be together for a full year cycle and then evaluate what is next) The Facebook group will open September 6th and the official start will be September 13th.

$25.00 a month through auto withdrawals, Facebook group for the gathering

Click here to join

…….

In 2008 I started a blog called Hannah’s Harvest with the Post, “Eli Turns Three.” My heart is tender with this three year old suddenly eighteen and in college, the school I graduated from in 1996. Tender, not because I struggle with my kids being in college, because I have a tenderness towards time. There is a swirl and connected feeling of the past and challenges with remembering and dreaming into the future.

I can remember stepping onto that campus, fresh from living in Europe for seven years and feeling like I was in a country I didn’t know. The freedom, the possibility, the dreams—I was emerging and I could never have imagined the paths I would walk from those arches on campus to the home I now sit in surrounded by dogs and kids and in the second half of my life with my partner—to wondering what I should do next.

I have stepped into my invisible years, the unknown quantity of years of peri-menopause reaching into menopause, the time between mother and crone. I am growing into my fullest Maga archetypal self and with that comes a calm and a peace that wraps itself around my ankles and wrists like the gentlest tether. I have gone from a woman suffering to a woman healing. I have transitioned and attempted and loved and hurt and stumbled and found. I have turned from someone who needed to know to someone who trusts deeply in the sounds of the forest and the steps over pine needles and crunching leaves.

These invisible years have me in search of a simplicity as quiet as my face looking up to find the moon each night as I put the chicken to bed and take the dogs out one last time. Soon I will not cycle with my blood but only with the moon and I look to her now to guide me there. My capacity is less, my needs are less, my desires are like a water color painting washed out over time. I love it here. Less intensity, less push, less angst.

Who I was still holds me tight. I am a space maker, a magic-maker, a sacred mother and a weaver of story. I am a lover with fierce devotion and I will dream into pockets of my life until I no longer have breath. The pace has slowed and I am met with the gentle surrender of ego that comes with sobriety, age, loss and deep integration of parts of self. I wonder often what is next, where am I going, what am I here to become?

What is next? The wild woman cry from my community gathered over the last fifteen years is one of community, of gathering, of just somehow being together in space and time. I’ve let go of wanting to create something fancier and bigger and more; these things have never worked for the type of human I am and so I know, for others too. The gentle nudge to come back to gathering, the words spoken from you that remind me it doesn’t have to be complicated to be just enough.

What is next is a gathering, back to the roots where it began. An intimate gathering using a Facebook group called Sweet Fern Home Gathering. While I set out to create a homestead in suburbia-- what I’ve found is simply a home, a tiny life to nurture and grow. Making home—using what I have, repurposing, thrifting, growing, searching, making, wandering—this is my joy, this is what is next.

There will be no emails, no site to log into, nothing to print out (eventually you’ll have the option for that though). This will be a bare bones group gathering. Think group coaching meets bless this home meets all the magic we can summon. We will weave and play and dream and adorn and uncover and be as invisible or seen as we like.

On Monday, Wednesday and Friday of each week I will begin each day with a thought, a prompt, an old letter from a course in the past. You can show up whenever, in any form you like. Comment, start your own thread, make a video, pop on a Live and say hello. We are going to do some hard core connecting like we used to.

I’ll do gentle guiding, give you lots of prompts and unearth many of the letters from the past that seem relevant to us today. You will help guide this gathering. What you are interested in, what is most present for you. There are no boundaries, we can use this space for everything. My guiding forces right now are sobriety, peri-menopause, mothering teens, partnership with my love, making home, living on less, healing my body, stewarding my land, feeling the goddess within, trusting the universe and deep peace as I sink my roots into time.

PPROMPTS :: on Mon, Wed, Fri I will start our day with a gentle prompt, guide, letter.

ADORNING :: one of the things I am passionate about is using and wearing the closets we have. I love to thrift and build a gorgeous closet but I can find myself falling back into old patterns where I don’t honor myself with adornment. When I do this I don’t feel as connected to my spirit or my body. We will look at and talk about using and wearing the things we have and showing up in our Spiritstyle to help us live inside the lives we dream of.

MAKING HOME :: my home is sweet fern, a name chosen because the land once belonged to the Sweet family and for the ferns that grow with wild abandon on the edges of the wetlands all around us. I’ll encourage you to find your home’s name and we will look at ways of making space in your home, blessing your home and truly loving the rhythm of making home.

There will be no separate emails or logins. Everything will be posted to the Facebook Gathering space. Eventually I’ll compile the month’s prompts and letters into a small pdf so you can print it out at the end of each month if you like.

You can show up in any way you like, as much or as little. This will be a space of co-creation, give me ideas or directions or ask for anything I have archived from the past to be revisited. This is ours to create, a community centered coziness with kindreds.

$25 a month through a monthly withdrawal using PayPal

Facebook Group for gathering

Click here to join us

questions?

Why Facebook?

Because looking back over time I can see that this is where the community connection worked its magic. I longed to be free of as much social media as possible, and I have taken a nice long break. Since a return to Facebook because of Facebook Marketplace as my daughter was looking for furniture for her first apartment, I started to remember how much connection this space held for me. I became obsessed with looking at my daily memories and then slowly I poked around a bit. So many people are still on this platform and it feels gentler than I remember, or maybe, I just know how to safely navigate these spaces now.

Looking back, this is the space that worked. I will be on the group Mon-Fri and the prompts will be posted three days a week in the mornings after the kids get off to school. There will be a rhythm, I’ll be setting my timer and blessing that time of day to be in circle with you all wherever you are, no matter what you are doing.

What about Patreon?

Patreon is staying!! I truly love it there, but it does not offer community connection. I will continue to post an end of the month podcast and I will continue to ask for support there to continue making videos, which will resume again in September when I get my new video camera. I hope to get more creative with the topics for the podcasts, but mostly I speak to what is on my heart. This is where I share my intimate updates, it feels safer than social media and for now this is where I land with these sharings.

The income from Patreon over the next few months will support the classes I will take to learn video editing to hone my craft.

I have created three options that get you all the same things, so you can choose the $2, $5 or $8 price point. Please feel free to leave the Patreon group or change your subscription if you wish at any time, there are no obligations.

Will there be opportunity for in person gatherings?

Yes! Once we spend some time as a group and get a feeling for who we are and where everyone lives I will begin to scheme a bit on ways of getting us together in person. Many of you know after the pandemic one of my kids was faced with some heavy mental health struggles as well as transitioning genders. During these last three years I have been in hyper vigilance mode and I needed all of me here, all of the time. Now that this kid has grown and is healing and exploring the world in new ways my capacity has opened and I will slowly work my way from the cocoon. It may take me some time, but I am dreaming into an intimate retreat at the Magic Lake House again!

Other questions?

Email hello@hannahmarcotti.com and I’ll get back to you.