Sima Basel is a Palestinian-Ukrainian therapist and the co-founder of Grassroots Village, an emerging eco-village in the mountains between Oman and the UAE.

We spoke about multiplicity and what it means to hold different lineages, different histories, different griefs in one body, whilst rooted to the land we find ourselves in. About the quiet, often unnamed longing for belonging that so many of us carry.

Again and again, we came back to this question of disconnection as something lived in the body, in the nervous system, in the way we organise our lives. The ways we’ve been taught to heal as individuals, while living in systems that keep us separate from land, from each other and often from our whole selves. Even the disconnection that happens between our many parts.

What Sima is building through Grassroots Village feels like a response to these longings as a living inquiry into what happens when we begin to orient differently.

There’s something in this conversation about remembering. About noticing where healing itself can become another identity… another thing to “do”… and gently returning to something more honest underneath. And also, something about grief. How it moves when it’s shared. How it softens when it’s witnessed. How much we’ve lost the spaces that know how to hold it.

I left this conversation feeling both steadied and opened.

I hope it meets you in a place that’s ready to listen.

Spring Equinox greetings dear ones,

In awe of the sun’s return, I’ve been marinating in the gusty sea breezes moving across the farm. Gentle wind with the occasional passionate gust has always felt like Spirit talking to place or talking to me. We named our lost baby Awel, which is the Cymraeg word for such a breeze as this. The air of spring is the kind that seems to rearrange our thinking as much as the hedgerows, blowing away the thoughts that no longer serve. After a dark, wet, harrowing winter, slow craft with hands in rhythm of thread, fibre, spindle and loom has offered a balm for my soul. Of remembering how to stay in relationship with time rather than racing ahead of it, helping me integrate the winter with tenderness.

In this Spring Equinox episode, I’m joined once again by ceremonialist Isla Macleod, with another immersive episode woven with music, ritual, lore and practice, as a way of honouring the turning of the Wheel of the Year.

The equinox is often spoken about as balance, as light and dark in equilibrium, but I’m not sure balance is ever still in that way. It feels more like a moment of active negotiation, a living recalibration. A threshold where forces are shifting, adjusting, testing each other.

And perhaps that’s the real invitation of this time of year: to stay in conversation with what is stirring without rushing toward emergence. To notice where the land is leaning toward light, and where winter still has a voice. To sense the subtle thresholds we ourselves are crossing, sometimes quietly, sometimes reluctantly.

This episode is an offering into that space of listening as a companion for attuning to the land, the body and the deeper seasonal intelligence moving through both.

You can learn more about Isla’s work here, and explore what we’re tending at Rooted Healing.

The music in this episode comes from the beautiful work of Bonnie Medicine, Cynefin, Telling the Bees and Ojhro - all artists who are also in conversation with land, memory and lore.

If the episode resonates, we’d love to hear what is stirring for you this season.

With heart,

Veronica

After another long pause, this episode arrives from a place shaped by profound loss. A convergence of grief has moved through our lives, and for those subscribed to the Rooted Healing newsletter, you’ll already have some sense of what’s been unfolding.

It is a true honour to welcome back the wonderful ceremonialist Isla Macleod. Isla returns now with something entirely new: an immersive, seasonal offering created to honour the Wheel of the Year through ritual, story, and practice - rooting us in the living seasons and landscapes, and the liminal thresholds within and between them.

For those new to Isla’s work, she is a renowned ceremonialist of these wise isles and the author of the beautiful book Rituals for Life. She also shares a beautiful newsletter on Substack.

This Imbolc also marks the opening ceremony of the final year-long programme, Deepen Your Roots. This is a profound, life-changing journey into your ecological body, bioregion, spirit, and the heart of your calling. Held in community, it offers space to explore your role in co-creating a more beautiful world.

You can support the podcast and receive many gifts in return through our Patreon community, and explore our gatherings and courses at rootedhealing.org.

Music in this episode is by Bonnie Medicine and The Children’s Forest.