Nourishing Kin
a place to practice ritual & reconnection

↓

Your heritage is made of love, respect, and relationship. Your legacy can be too.

Nourishing Kin is an experiential collective for women and femmes of the Northwestern European diaspora. With a focus on education and embodiment, we explore culturally sensitive, non-appropriative approaches to ritual and reconnection. We are devoted to the restoration of reciprocal relationships with all our kin: land, ancestors, and community.

We care deeply for our

  • Nourishing Kin embraces equitable relationship with land through animism - a framework which honors plants, animals, and other-than-human beings as conscious, ensouled, and alive. This animist reverence is essential to deconstruct the attitudes of extraction and entitlement endemic to the diaspora.

  • Reconnection with ancestors and cultural heritage is a fundamental practice for folks of the European diaspora who seek authentic belonging and reciprocal relationships. Ancestral connection is complex, especially for folks with settler-colonialist heritage. Nourishing Kin affirms that ancestral stories, traditions, practices, and choices are both worthy of celebration and grief. We facilitate knowledgeable, compassionate, and thoughtful reconnection with the stories of the people who made us who we are.

  • Relationship is not something which can be done in isolation. We honor the human need for connection and recognize that it is through relationship that we find growth and a sense of belonging. However, we are keenly aware that members of the NW European diaspora often lack the skills necessary to participate in communities in healthy and sustainable ways. We seek to build a space where those who are ready to practice healthy relationship can build a skillset of resilience, repair, and reciprocity.

We facilitate meaningful connections through

  • Education

    Our facilitators are dedicated to sharing an abundance of research and lived experience in anti-appropriative, embodied, and ancestral practices. We intentionally utilize multiple backgrounds of experience and skillsets to facilitate reconnection with land, ancestors, and community. Nourishing Kin tends to the gaps in knowledge and experience regarding culture, belonging, and reciprocity for women & femmes of the NW European diaspora.

  • Experimentation

    We acknowledge the challenges of building a truly healthy community as we simultaneously unlearn our role in systems of white supremacy, colonization, and anthropocentrism. This is why we do not only teach skills for connection, but view our gatherings as opportunities to practice them. Nourishing Kin is a space to support the process of education. We want members to ask questions, make mistakes, and deepen their learning through trial and accountability.

  • Embodiment

    Ritual and reconnection are multi-sensory experiences with dual purpose. Not only do rituals comfort the mind and body, but they also inspire growth and change in heart and psyche. We engage with ritual to galvanize the skills and frameworks of connection learned during our gatherings. We intend to cultivate confident community members who embrace the roles and responsibilities of humble students of land, ancestors, and community.

Meet your facilitators

  • Alisa (she/her)

    The tapestry of Alisa’s life is woven through with threads of love for earth, history and ancestry. She has been involved in many of the living folk arts and traditions of the British Isles and has focused her academic studies in English, history and folklore. Alisa lived in the UK for 10 years, immersing herself fully in the culture and history of the British Isles. She currently lives in Bountiful, Utah with her husband and 4 children. You can connect with Alisa on Instagram @round.the.year.

  • Channing

    Channing (she/they)

    Fairy tales, myths, and sunflowers are at the heart of Channing’s work as a post-Mormon Norse pagan witch with an ecofeminist flair. Their love of language and poetry combines with their experience as an embodiment educator to bring a gentle-yet-inquisitive intensity to life. Engaging in the traditions of her Scandinavian animist ancestors helped them bridge a painful faith transition to a somatic, justice-oriented practice of belonging. Channing identifies as bisexual, and lives near Ogden, Utah with her partner, two children, and their dog Lulu.

  • Madee

    Madee (she/her)

    Madee is thrilled to put her finance background to work by helping to build Nourishing Kin. She also generously shares her grounding, playful presence in our community. Her ability to create meaningful, reciprocal relationship with all her kin rather than the transactional relationships she was taught is a gift she shares freely. Madee firmly believes that the most practical acts are simultaneously deeply spiritual, and finds joy in being able to blend the two. She lives in Heber, UT with her partner and their four children.

We follow the rhythm of the modern pagan Wheel of the Year to meet every six weeks in northern Utah to mark the passage of time, to learn new ways of engaging in ritual, and practice new ways of building and maintaining relationships.

Our next gathering is right around the corner, and we’d love to see you there!