hi! i’m rowan.
I’m the creator behind of hawthorn and yew, a sacred cauldron of education, plant wisdom, relationship-building, embodiment and invitation into deeper aliveness.
it is the cauldron of work for euro-descended settlers living in north america seeking to untangle embodied whiteness and de-assimilate by remembering who they are – through ancestral folklore, cultural reclamation, somatics and anti-colonial plant relations. i support community in these efforts through short classes, 6 month and year long programs, zines, and 1:1 coaching.
I am a facilitator, culture worker, herbalist, researcher & writer. I love plants, ritual, somatics, folklore and deepening into ancestral practices of blood & community. I am a bookworm, lover of song, and shy Pisces heart in a Virgo shell. As an agender trans person of Irish, Lithuanian, Scottish, and Sicilian trancestry, I benefit from the settler colonial and white supremacist nature of the United States. My pronouns are they/them.
my work centers queer & trans community, and reflects a lifeway committed to anarchism, biocentrism, anti-white supremacy, punk DIY ethos and total liberation. Through pathways of plants, ancestral lineage & community, i am commited to remembering cultural lifeways in service to a world beyond whiteness.
about me
I’m a teacher, facilitator, and creative nerd who loves to share what they know with community. I am deeply spiritual, whose work is rooted, resourced and woven by devotion to the sacred, the land, and my ancestors. I’m passionate about ancestral reconnection and cultural reclamation work, and how it can resource our communities to keep showing up for the work of deassimilation & collective liberation. I’m curious, love to learn, and am so interested in how we can bring our lives/practices/habits more in line with our values. and i loooove to talk about plants & ancestral cultural threads with community!
I have over 15 years of research experience, in both academic settings and as an independent researcher, and i weave that into the things i share here. I’m a writer who is full of words that want to flow out of my hands onto the page. the focuses of past academic study – both undergraduate and graduate – were Ireland & Palestine. i have been facilitating over the past 15 years through local community organizing and anarchist projects. I also studied conflict resolution & transformation, and dialogue facilitation in the US as well as in the north of Ireland.
As a lifelong student of cultural lineage, I love learning languages, song & dance, reading old books, ethnobotany, and talking to those of undisrupted lineage connection. I contine to learn from Irish, Scottish and Welsh teachers & peers, both directly and indirectly. PS if you are looking to learn to sing in Irish gaelic, Mary McLaughlin is amazing!
i am trained as a community herbalist in so-called traditional western herbalism and have been in study & practice for a decade. I am committed to reweaving anti-colonial ancestral herbalisms. i am a somatic bodyworker in the living lineages of generative somatics & Strozzi somatics.
I live as a chronically ill & disabled person with long-c, and this too shapes me deeply. I am woven into amazing communities of disability and madness, and am so so grateful for the care flowing in all directions.
If you are seeking support on your lifelong journey back to your people, I would be honored to collaborate with you.
Living Breathing Community Webs
All the work I do is deeply impacted by the world around me, my teachers, mentors, peers and beloveds.
I wanted to name some of the influences that have shaped me and inform my approach to my work specifically, orienting myself in the wider ecosystem. this is the long version!
Much of my work grew out of a childhood love of books & learning, a love for playing in the woods behind my house making mystery plant soups, and a family that raised me with an Irish American identity in the n east of the US. This groundwork was then built upon through institutional academic study (both undergraduate and graduate) focused on culture, Ireland and Palestine. My life was deeply impacted by spending extended periods in the SWANA region, both in Egypt and in occupied Palestine, as well as visiting Ireland and later living in Ireland in the occupied north.
As a lifelong student of cultural lineage, I love learning languages, song & dance, reading old books, ethnobotany, and talking to those of undisrupted lineage connection. I contine to learn from Irish, Scottish and Welsh teachers & peers, both directly and indirectly.
Others working in the field of politicized ancestral lineage work for settlers in diaspora who I admire include: MaryBeth Bonfiglio, Lisa Fazio, Marika Heinrichs and Stevie Joy Leigh, and more.
As a child I deeply loved the wild world and the land I lived upon, and believed that everything would be better if we took care of each other; as an adult, I hold those childhood truths close. My spiritual grounding as a practitioner of earth based devotion informs everything I do, as does my ever deepening relationship with my ancestors. I have been influenced by pagan community on n america as well as in Ireland, including the Earthspirit Community, Reclaiming and the Irish Pagan School, among others.
My perspectives have been deeply shaped by political movement spaces focused on anarchism, biocentrism and eco defense, healing justice, Palestinian liberation, the movement for Black Lives, Indigenous sovereignty on Turtle Island, disability justice and queer liberation. In my early politicization, I was deeply influenced by Palestinian, Italian and German anarchists while living abroad.
i am trained as a community herbalist in the vitalist tradition of so-called traditional western herbalism. Formal study includes CommonWealth Center for Holistic Herbalism, Vermont Center for Integrative Herbalism, and the Advanced Clinical Herbal Skills program taught by Stachia, Ember Peters & Vilda Chaya. I continue to tend this learning and deepening into relationship with plant kin through over a decade+ of self study and relational practices that are more aligned with my values.
More recently, I am shaped as a somatic bodyworker in the living lineages of generative somatics and Strozzi somatics. I have been in ongoing study and practice of bodywork for the past 5 years. I have been working in this lineage of somatics for nearly a decade. My most recent teachers include Jennifer Ianniello, Wes Elisheva Somerson, Ream, MawuLisa Thomas-Adeyemo, Erika Lyla, Richard Strozzi and Staci Haines. With gratitude, I am in an ongoing somatic bodywork mentorship with MawuLisa Thomas-Adeyemo. As of 2026, I am supported in supervision by Jennifer Ianniello.
More broadly, I am deeply influenced by the work of Prentis Hemphill, Susan Raffo, leah lakshmi piepzna-samarasinha, Staci Haines, Mary Oliver, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Audre Lorde, bell hooks, Angela Davis, and many other writers, healers and revolutionaries who work(ed) for a better world.
Other herbalists, artists and somatic practitioners whose recent work has impacted me include: Layla Feghali, Sirius Heart, hannah harris-sutro, Nazbah Tom, Pavini Moray, Phillippe Citrine, Nikki Minor of Chicory Botanicals, the Sage Femme collective, Nicole Rose of Solidarity Apothecary, Kelly of Attic Apothecary, Cody Cooke-Parrot, Rebecca Beyer, Ayelet Hashachar of Doll Herbalism, Janet Kent of Terra Sylva School, Tara Mairin of Catalyst Community Herbals, Ember Peters of Wild Currant herbalism, Max Ruin of any way we can herbs, and more.
In the past, i have worn many hats. i have been a full spectrum doula, a gender + sex educator, a conflict mediator, an info shop collective member, a gathering organizer, a direct action trainer, a student in academic settings, and more. I am a longtime ritualist, and have been a member of many different organizing groups and collectives. i was a student of Daniel Foor, though i do not practice that lineage. I am a trained facilitator with nearly a decade of experience, having facilitated circles, dialogue, and meetings in a multitude of settings. I believe that deep connection and healing is possible in containers that are held with care, intention and attention – I have seen it.
to bolster my capacity to support community [and because I love to learn!], i’ve also undertaking training in trauma-aware care provision, generative (reproductive) cycle education, full spectrum doula care, suicidality support, ritual creation and priestxing skills, acupressure, facilitation, breath work, and tools for supporting people through grief, crisis and bereavement. For my own healing and transformation, I have been (and continue to be) supported through 1:1 gs somatic coaching, talk therapy, bodywork, queer kink, anti-racism education, 12 step rooms, continued politicized somatics training, ritual and daily sacred practice, ancestral tending, aerial practice, dance, ruptured cultural reweaving through language and song, and community mutual aid networks.
Beyond these relations, I am just one in a long lineage of peoples who cared deeply about the world, loved the land beneath their feet, and dreamed of freedom. I listen and learn from my ancestors of blood and community, and above all, I live in service to the holy wild.
May this work support us all in moving toward the dream of liberation.