FOUNDATIONS
– ancestral reconnection for witches and radicals of Celtic descent –
FOUNDATIONS is an offer of cultural nourishment to support us in these times.
Together we spend the dark half of the year reconnecting to Celtic Isles culture, land relations and plant kin (focusing on Ireland, Scotland and Wales). We learn about the folklore, cultural relations and medicine of ancestral plants. With plants & stories as our guides, we have honest conversations about how we relate to land in our present, about whiteness, about cultural disconnection and more. We listen to how our ancestors moved and related to the world, and we let that inspire how we too want to show up in this moment. Let yourself be nourished at the roots this season.
Join us for community education & transformation with like-minded folks as we reconnect to our vibrant, deeply rooted ancestral legacies.
words of appreciation from a past participant:
I signed up for Foundations because I long for community spaces where I can connect with other people of Celtic Isle Lineages and talk about the complexities of ancestry and our heritage while at the same time reconnecting with our history of colonization and assimilation. I also love plants! What I got from the course was a deepening in my connection and understanding of my personal heritage and how I relate to it. The plants we learned with brought incite that fed deep compassion and new understandings to questions I find hard to sit with around ancestry and colonialism. Rowan creates a space where people can say and ask hard things and be vulnerable. Their wealth of knowledge and research, and their care for community and plants has touched my life in a deeply meaningful way. I feel inspired and grateful to have joined this circle! – Uma, 2024
OVERVIEW
Join us for the fifth year of this community project toward remembrance and reconnection.
Over the course of six months, we will spend time with specific plant kin and regional culture as we open to the wisdom of our Celtic diasporic lineages. We will take time to get to know these plant kin, and to listen to their wisdom. As we sit with each months learning, we each will then explore for ourselves what the content stirs up in our bodies and our lives. Through the online classroom, co-working sessions and monthly live community calls, we will deepen together into our ancestral lineages and build living breathing community networks of folks committed to justice and liberation in our lifetimes.
Participants are welcome to make monthly payments for the duration of six months ($300-100) or pay all at once upon registration.
WHATS INCLUDED
- Depthful learning curriculum in the online classroom; including 2+ hours per month of videos, pdfs, and additional practice invitations
- Monthly coworking & body doubling space for accountability
- Monthly community calls to process the months content, share whats coming up for you and learn from each other; these sessions will include facilitated group discussion, embodiment practices and more
- Bonus invitations for more learning about subjects that excite you
- An online digital hub to connect with each other in between our live sessions
what folks are saying
rowan’s nurturing care and loving intentionality brought this community program to life, and I so appreciated my time spent with them and the other folks in the program. I feel both more connected to my ancestral practices and to plantkin than before, and finished the program with a veritable rucksack of leads to look into, next steps, etc. Thanks rowan for all that you do! —R
rowan’s course is well researched, and they hold a high standard for radical analysis while also creating a space that is gentle and embraces exploration, stretching ourselves, and well-meaning mistakes. It felt like a safe space to explore cultural roots and I came away with new actions and commitments to implement in my life. -M
this is an invitation to connect with ancestral land & plant kin through lore, reflection and relationship.
what wisdom might ancestral plantkin have to share with us this dark season?
Program Details
- TIMELINE The autumn cohort will run from Oct 2025 – April 2026
- BASIC OUTLINE: This program includes both self-paced online learning content through a digital classroom, as well as monthly calls on the second Wednesday of each month; there are also optional bonus coworking sessions throughout for accountability and support.
- ONLINE CLASSROOM: You will be able to access the prerecorded course content each month module by module at your own pace. We will work through six sections of material, one section per month. You will receive an email notification when new content is available. Content is a combination of recorded video, articles, PDFs, songs, links for additional learning, and more.
- PRACTICE INVITATIONS: Each month, you will be invited to engage in reflective and practical prompts to deepen into the course material. You are welcome to do this at your own pace, and you can direct the pace of your learning. Finding a balance of connected accountability to the work, with your capacity and needs is crucial!
- COMMUNITY CALLS: In addition to the recorded online classroom content, we will also have monthly Zoom calls for community connection. We will connect over the material and our experiences over the past weeks, learning together and building affinity. These calls will have live transcription enabled and will be RECORDED for folks who can’t make them live.
Logistics // Dates & Times
We will gather together twice monthly live via Zoom on Wednesday evenings from 6 – 8pm ET // 3 – 5pm PT.
Community calls will take place in the first half of the month. We meet on Oct 8, Nov 12, Dec 10, 2025 and Jan 7, Feb 4, March 11, and April 8, 2026.
Community calls will include group discussions, personal reflection invitations and embodiment exercises. The calls will be recorded. However, they are meant to be experiential, so please attend live if you can! The month’s recorded course content will be shared the next day after our community calls and you will be notified via email that you can dive in.
Monthly coworking and q&a sessions will also be on Wednesday evenings, approximately two weeks after our community calls. We will meet Oct 29, Nov 26, 2025 and Jan 21, Feb 18, and March 25, 2026
Online coworking sessions will include checkins, what we are working on, and then an hour of quiet coworking; we will come together again to share how it went, and then as desired we will have optional q&a time // discussion time at the end.
Note: dates are subject to change; however, any changes in the schedule will be communicated clearly with notice.
Registration
Registration for this year’s cohort is now closed.
Sign up for the waitlist to participate in future iterations of this work.
Note: Space is limited for intimacy and connection.
more feedback from past course participants
rowan provided a feast of resources through this class which will be feeding my future ancestral connection curiosities for a long time. I’d already done a lot of my own ancestral research coming into this class, and I still got a ton out of it. It was also so sweet to connect with fellow radicals who care about this work, what a gift. -K.M.
This offering was so rich in detail and history. I loved the compassion and conversation we created as a community. It made me feel a sense of deep belonging not only in shared ancestral roots but also in our shared beliefs and hopes for our world. – Erin
I’m so grateful for the community space rowan is creating here! The self-paced study allowed me to integrate plant kin and herbal knowledge into building relationships with the plants on this land that my ancestors have also know, while the community calls brought in rich perspective and nourishing interconnection. This space has been so important in my journey of connecting to my Celtic lineage as a resource for anti-colonial resistance on this land. -Al
the shape and flow of our container
October: OPENING – Who/What/Where, Meeting Clover
November: ROOTING – Celtic Cultural Threads, Exploring Modern Values, Meeting Oak
December: CONNECTING – Settler Colonial and White Supremacist approaches, Ethical Relationship Building, Meeting Mistletoe
January: BRANCHING – Midpoint pause and catch up time; Connecting to Culture & History, ARC Project Introduction, Meeting Ivy
February: LISTENING – Settler Responsibility & Unsettling; Meeting Hawthorn
March: WEAVING – Reflection and Integration; ARC Projects, Visioning our Steps Forward and Making Commitments
Note: the flow of thematic content is subject to change slightly based on group need and relevant world events.
Who is this for?
This program is intended for:
- people who are longing for a space of politicized ancestral reconnection work
- folks of Irish, Scottish and Welsh descent living on Turtle Island/N America seeking reconnection with disrupted cultural lineage
- folks deeply longing for cultural connection and ancestral repair in likeminded community
- folklore and herblore nerds excited about recorded traditions of the Celtic Isles
- folks who are ready to have complex conversations around oppression, and the ways it shows up in the world and in ourselves
- folks who can hold complexity & truth with gentle fierceness
- folks seeking to align their actions with their values, their ancestral lineages with their current practices, and reweaving their lives with their ancestors
- folks who enjoy learning in community – through dialogue, deep listening, resource sharing, and accountability
- folks who feel a YES when envisioning spending the dark half of the coming year devoted to ancestral lineage & plantkin
Program Cost
This program is offered at tiered pricing for accessibility and to accommodate a variety of economic realities. Please self-select your tier according to your access to wealth and power.
Three tiers are available for Foundations:
- $300 per month // $1,800 in full
- This is for you if you have steady housing, have a steady job, make more than 70k a year, are financially supported by others, often go out to eat and on vacations, are privileged in society, those who do not experience regular housing or food insecurity, OR if you have access to generational wealth.
- $240 per month // $1,440 in full
- This is the base price of the program. To utilize this tier, enter coupon code FOUNDATIONS1440 at checkout.
- $180 per month // $1,080 in full
- This tier is for those who live paycheck to paycheck, do not have access to generational wealth, and or generally lack access to wealth & resources. To utilize this option, enter code FOUNDATIONS1040 at checkout.
PAYMENT PLANS: To be able to run the program, I need at least half of registrants to pay in full at signup; however, I know that payment plans increase access, so I’m also offering limited payment plans with no additional fees as well. If a payment plan makes your participation possible, please select the 6 payment plan option at checkout. Note: When you sign up for a payment plan, you are agreeing to pay the complete amount in full, regardless of your participation level. No refunds are available after signup. Thank you.
SOLIDARITY SPOTS
There are a number of Solidarity spots available for this cohort, intended for low income trans folks & QTBIPOC. These Solidarity spots are $600 in full or $100 per month for 6 months. If you need this rate to access the program, please reach out! Email me at: ofhawthornandyew@protonmail.com and I’ll send along the discounted link!
Registration
Registration for this year’s cohort is now closed.
Hop onto the waitlist to participate in the 2026 cohort.
Note: Space is limited for intimacy and connection.
who facilitates this space?
rowan walker is a queer trans herbalist, facilitator, writer, and researcher. they are a white-bodied settler of Irish, Lithuanian, Scottish and Sicilian trancestry born on Turtle Island/North America.
they are mad and chronically ill, and love to share information that they have learned through experiences and deeply impassioned rabbit holes of research. they have over a decade of community facilitation experience.
rowan loves to nerd out about ancestral plantlore and sacred practices, how we might live more deeply in integrity with our values, and the ways cultural herbalism & politicized ancestral reconnection can support movements for total liberation.
FAQs
What is the difference between the two programs, Foundations and Attune?
I facilitate two different programs for settlers in diaspora of Celtic Isles lineages: FOUNDATIONS and Attune.
FOUNDATIONS is the depth, and Attune is the breadth.
Foundations is definitely more rigorous – there’s a ton of content monthly in an online learning library, lots of invitations to practice, and we meet twice a month for 6 months. its for folks seeking more in-depth learning about Celtic Isles culture, historical lore, and plants, and those desiring active, engaged conversations about our place in the world today. This work happens within an explicitly politicized framework. Foundations is sort of like an intensive crash course, and includes more content in a shorter amount of time, lots of group processing convos, embodied practice together, and more.
The Attune Community is focused on building relationships with the land we live on alongside ancestral plants in a slow, unfolding, long term way. Attune is oriented around the four fire festivals and the four solar festivals of the Celtic Isles, and we gather together over the course of an entire year. Each season, participants engage with one webinar of plantlore and sacred practices, and have 2 community calls. This program is politicized, as all my work is, but the bonus here is that it also has a spiritual focus. Attune is an invitation to work at the crossroads where bioregionalism and ancestral plant relations meet.
Both programs have online community forum to deepen webs of relationship. Both are suitable for beginners to ancestral lineage work as well as those who have been doing this work already.
In my mind, they definitely both feed into each other, and i think both are important pieces of the work. Participants are welcome to choose to participate in both programs in whatever order that feels appropriate.
How long will I have access to the course?
Participants will have access to the content for the life of the course. This will be at least one year on the online classroom platform (but likely longer!).
What is the time commitment for this course?
This is a 6 month program broken up into six sections. For each session, you will have access to 1-2 hours of learning + experiential content through the online classroom. You are encouraged to work through this at your own pace over the month in between calls. There are invitations to practice, as well as bonus content, and you are invited to engage with these as deeply as feels supportive to your process. The practice invitations for each module can range from 30 minutes to 3 hours; it’s all up to you how deep you want to go. Additionally, we will have 7 monthly calls which will each last 1.5 hours.
This is an invitation to devote 3-6 hours per month (or more!) throughout the winter to tending your ancestral connections with care and intention.
Can I take this program more than once?
Yes! This is work that we can do over and over again, spirals we can trace deeper and deeper with each pass, relationships that continue to grow and unfold each season we return to them. This type of work is lifelong work; if this specific container is helpful to return to, you are very welcome back (And many folks do in fact come back for another pass or two!)
Are there any prerequirements for this program?
No! Anyone excited to dive into their ancestral lineages is welcome – whether for the first time or returning again to trace these pathways.
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 inform my approach to this work specifically, orienting myself in the wider ecosystem.
This program grew out of childhood passion for my heritage, a love of books, 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 in NYC and graduate in Belfast). My life was deeply impacted by spending extended periods in the SWANA region, both in Egypt and in occupied Palestine, as well as 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 am an herbalist trained in the vitalist tradition of so called TW herbalism, and I am a commitment to reweaving cultural herbalisms for sake of justice and healing.
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, and queer liberation. In my early politicization, I was deeply influenced by Palestinian, Italian and German anarchists while living abroad.
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.
More recently, I am shaped as a student of and fledgling practitioner of politicized somatics, in the living lineage of generative and Strozzi Somatics. Some teachers I am lucky enough to learn from directly include: Staci Haines, Ream, MawuLisa Thomas-Adeyemo, Tesfaye Tekelu, and more. The combination of somatics and ancestral work facilitated by Marika Heinrichs and Stevie Joy Leigh via EAI has shaped my practices as well, as has the Lineage of Embodiment series from the Embodiment Institute.
More broadly, I am deeply influenced by the work of Prentis Hemphill, Susan Raffo, leah lakshmi piepzna-samarasinha, Nazbah Tom, Pavini Moray, Phillippe Citrine, Mary Oliver, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Audre Lorde, bell hooks, Angela Davis, Ursula Le Guin, and many other writers, healers and revolutionaries who work for a better world.
Other herbalists, artists and somatic practitioners whose work has shaped me include: Layla Feghali, Nicole Rose, Sirius Heart, hannah harris-sutro, Nikki Minor, the Sage Femme collective, Cody Cooke-Parrot, Becky Beyer, Ayelet Hashachar, Janet Kent, Tara of Catalyst Community Herbals, Ember Peters, and more.
Other peoples work in this field (politicized ancestral lineage work for settlers in diaspora) who I deeply admire include MaryBeth Bonfiglio, Lisa Fazio, Marika Heinrichs and Stevie Joy Leigh.
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.
STAY CONNECTED
My practice is slow, intentional and intimate. I’m not on social media so much; I do occasionally share things through my instagram, @hawthornandyew. However, the best way to stay in touch and hear whats new is to sign up for my newsletter HOME/BODY.
You’ll hear from me on a weekly-ish basis, and these notes will contain info on upcoming workshops and programs, new zines, things my friends are working on, and more alongside long form writing about things i’m learning about, feeling about, questioning and embodying. tune in for musings on herbs, relationship with the world, embodying our values, dreaming and moving towards a more just world, and the practices that will can help get us there.