Hearth & Heather

“The excellence of a gift lies in its appropriateness rather than in its value.” ― Charles Dudley Warner Gosh, hi. Come in, it’s nice to see you. We’ve been away from our shared hearth for a while, and have come in from the cold of this month to talk about giving gifts. In particular, gifts that don’t cost much (or anything at all!). Together, we reminisce about gifts given, joys received, and the...

As the cold settles in, we’re talking about the ways that we stay present, and the pleasures that we’re appreciating right now. Notebooks and paper planners are some of the tools that we’re using to keep steady and help us remember interesting tidbits, and in our ongoing relationship with softer ways to keep time, we’re using lights, music, and actual programs on the actual radio to give shape to...

Join us as we share our favorite winter solstice poems. Kateri reads “Shab-e Yalda” by Anis Mojgani and Kathy reads "Shortest Day" by Susan Cooper. Happy Yule, Winter Solstice, and New Year!

Virgo season has arrived: it’s time to keep hold of our values while also doing botanical crimes. The days grow shorter; the light dips lower. Our energy is dipping lower, too. In this episode, we talk about some of the ways that we’re learning to navigate perpetual crisis (hint: with slowness). As usual, we’re also swapping stories about the things that delight us, keep us curious, and hurt our V...

Join Kathy by the fire as she talks about reframing the Slavic summer solstice ritual, Ivan Kupala, into a less binary intention-setting practice. Mentioned in Episode - Wolf of Coins on YouTube - Polish Folk Witch on YouTube - Kupala Summer Solstice Ritual from Crone Vibes

On the late winter Easter Sunday when we recorded this episode, we were feeling the accumulated weight of ongoing trauma. Somehow, acknowledging this led us into a conversation about play, and this episode ended up being a LOT of laughing. We do some digging into our videogame likes, dislikes, and style of play. We ask who is the Patrick Swayze of this era? What is the standard number of dicks in...

We’re bringing just-woke-up bear energy to a conversation about our intentions for the months ahead. As we think about what we want for ourselves this winter, the conversation takes us into vulnerability in play, being [un]comfortable with letting silence play out, the idea of “coolness,” and risk and authenticity in friendship. Can we use play to reach for deeper community, while still honoring o...

In the Northern Hemisphere, the leaves are turning, flowers are going to seed, and we’re very excited to be unpacking our cozy-times decor and blankets. Here on H&H, fall is our favorite season, and this episode is a whole snuggling vibe. Both of us did some hard work field-testing various soft products that physically and emotionally support us; we bought the stuffies and squishmallows so we...

This quarter, we’re both experiencing what it’s like to grow passively - to learn about what springs up when we leave empty space. As we explore the feeling of liminal spaces, we talk about being (recovering) people-pleasers, how we’re learning to be curious about ourselves, some tools we’re using to keep those spaces of possibility open, and the growth that happens accidentally along the way. We...

We’re still very much in conversation with time this spring. On this episode of Hearth & Heather, we’re looking at time through the lens of our hobbies. We talk about the living nature of the spoken word, and the way that boating on a river can shift a small slice of landscape into a big, slow, and contemplative world. Kathy shares what she’s been experiencing recently in her experiments with...

Small moments of fables, stories, and poems with Kathy and Kateri, sprinkled among our quarterly podcast episodes. In this mini-episode, Kathy tells her variation of the folk tale of Baba Yaga and Vasilisa, mainly based on how her grandmother told it to her, with a few dashes of the feminist re-tellings she read as an adult. This story does not tell a neat tale of bending all things to our will ju...

As we’re in the year-long month of January, it seems like the perfect opportunity to dig into the subjective nature of time. We talk about how time has slowed for both of us recently, and we reflect on some of the ways we’re experiencing that and what it means for us. We also explore creative projects we’ve encountered about how to mark time. There’s also some casual chat about perfectionism and h...

Small moments of fables, stories, and poems with Kathy and Kateri, sprinkled among our quarterly podcast episodes. In this mini-episode, Kateri reads two poems for Winter Solstice: "Burning the Old Year" by Naomi Shihab Nye  and "To Know the Dark" by Wendell Berry .

Our favorite season is beckoning, and we’re talking about the slow-down of the year. As we get excited about tea, sweaters, golden light, and liminal spaces, we also dig into the ways that social media can create a false sense of urgency, preventing us from integrating our experiences in deeper ways. Of course, no episode of Hearth & Heather is complete without a lot of laughing, so we also ta...

It turns out, murder plays a very large role in our relaxing times. Not committing it, of course; we would never…We compare favorite series, scoff at silly titles, and ponder the origins of the genre known as “cozy.” We take a breath to acknowledge the heavy forces that are threatening us and demanding our attention at this moment in time, and we talk about some ways that we rest and refresh our e...

Virgos navigating somatics! Habit-soothed people realizing none of our practices feel authentic right now. We’re in exploration mode, our feelings are itchy, and we’re talking about tarot fatigue, changing spiritual practices, honoring our bodies when we have low energy, letting go, trauma-sensitive yoga, breathwork, and polyvagal theory. Shoutouts to our therapists and to anchoring our bodies in...

We talk about our adoration of Mole and Rat’s friendship in Kenneth Grahame’s classic, The Wind in the Willows, and why Toad can just eat a bag of *****. We also lust after Mr. Badger’s cellars and general domestic situation, dream about fictional food, and revel in how this book is a love letter to bioregion. Mentioned in episode: The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame Chris Dunn’s illustrati...

It’s death season, we’re leaning in! Don’t worry, there’s still swearing. We start out with goddesses, take a long walk through our altar habits, and their connections to the dark moon. We discuss the intersectional practices of deathwork and herbalism, dig into grief and where it lives in our bodies, talk about our favorite ritual oils, and using oracle decks for clarification. Finding meaning is...

Pickled Scottish birds, Street Art and it’s ephemeral nature, bird song, holly for protection and boundary magic, cheese in Spain, fertility rocks, chalk path in England. We begin by comparing notes on two books by naturalist and wanderer Robert MacFarlane, and we end by making a pact to eat pickled birds in Scotland. Along the way, we get into the reasons why we’re drawn to street art, ways to us...

We talk about urban foraging and how that relates to focusing on small details and slowly gaining confidence in plant identification. We also explore how murder mysteries have influenced our herbalism education, the fear and allure of poison plant gardens, and the ever-relevant question of how to survive a zombie apocalypse. Lastly, Kateri talks about how she harvests and creates her conifer herba...