Megan McGuire is a mother, partner, permaculture gardener, and ritual weaver living on the lands of the Dakota people near Kaposia. Her ancestors have tended the Mississippi River for many generations, and she continues to steward this river in her day job as a biologist with the federal government. Megan is on a long journey to reclaim the earth-honoring practices of her primarily European ancestors — especially their seasonal rituals and holy days — and to wed these practices to her local bioregion. She seeks to belong herself to the land and waters through devotion, ritual, and activism.
Together we talk about finding belonging to the land you live on as a mother, teaching children about death and including them in grieving to allow them the opportunity to have a relationship with the dead, mothering as ritual, spiritual connection, and ancestor veneration, detangling from harmful aspects of Religion, and bringing ancestral European birth traditions to the modern day.
“Our children are our ancestors’ lineage manifest and so by loving them and giving them time and patience and attention, we are healing our ancestors and our lineage traumas.” -Megan McGuire
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Resources:
- Megan mentioned Toko-pa Turner’s definition of belonging in the sense that it is an act of devotion
- Belonging Episode #68: Dreams as Nature Naturing Through Us with Toko-pa Turner
- Belonging Episode #27: Conscious Dying and Death Midwifery with Jerrigrace Lyons
- Megan’s blog post “Northern European Birth Traditions”
- Megan shares how Lara Veleda Vesta put out the virtual smoke signal when Megan was in labor with her second child
- Belonging Episode #73: Braided Blood with Yaya Erin Rivera Merriman
More from Megan McGuire:
