Wild Hawthorn Homestead & Therapy is a therapeutic sanctuary offering experiential, educational, and healing programs. We foster community collaboration, support lifelong learning with special emphasis on women’s wisdom, and honour our deep interconnectedness with the natural world.
Why “Wild Hawthorn”
Within the Celtic tradition, the hawthorn tree is considered a magical tree, a witch tree, and a portal to the Otherworld. It is said that at the festivals of Beltane and Samhain, when the veils between worlds is thinnest, sleeping under a hawthorn may invite tricks and visits from the fairies (sidhe) and other beings from the otherworld.
Hawthorn flowers and fruits are said to mimic the smells of fertility and death, connecting us to these universal life cycles.
Energetically, the hawthorn tree is considered therapeutic for a broken heart, and can be supportive during times of trauma or grief. Within herbalism, hawthorn is used to treat cardiovascular ailments, quite literally making it heart medicine.
Wild Hawthorn Vision & Values
Wild Hawthorn Homestead & Therapy endeavours to utilize permaculture values to tend the land, and to revitalize matriarchal models of community and leadership.
Matriarchy is not an inversion of patriarchy. It is a model that welcomes folks of all genders, elders, and children into a network of community care. Values include ways of knowing and being traditionally associated with the feminine principle:
Collaboration instead of competition
Communication and relationship building over individualism
Embodiment, emotion and intuition alongside logic
Resourcing sharing, generosity and regenerative practices
Interconnected responsibility to community and the land
Conflicts and dilemmas are addressed through consultation with a council of women elders
Wild Hawthorn programming is offered in rhythm with the cycles of nature and seasons, and with deep reverence and respect for the land and other species.
Wild Hawthorn seeks to foster a sense of place and belonging for participants through relational safety, kindness, acceptance as you are, and personal agency
Wild Hawthorn prioritizes diversity as essential for a resilient ecosystem, and the inclusion of wisdom and learning that has historically been moved to the margins under patriarchy
Wild Hawthorn embraces the paradox, complexity and depth of the human experience, and values both the light and the darkness of life as vital for growth and healing