New Year Ways

An Introduction

Happy New Year Ways! Today - a bit of an introduction. Here I am. My name is Linden and I am happy to meet you. I started this Substack a few years back and have only recently revived it in an earnest way. I am here sharing about Sacred Arts Ways and other Living Ways. It is my hope to form a community of interested folks circling around similar topics. Perhaps we find each other by accident in the ethers here. Finding photos that feel okay - well that’s a forever challenge in this world of showing ourselves at every turn. I grew up in a time when this was not the norm so it still feels a bit off to me. Photographs were more of a special occasion - at least in my life. Every scene was not documented. I do love photography and especially enjoy seeing others photographs that are shared. I am not here to say there is too much sharing. I will say it is not natural or typical for me. I also did not photograph every moment of my now grown daughters life. I think there is something mysterious in the not knowing all the documented moments of living. They have still happened of course - it is all there in the tracks of your mind. Dendritic downloads.

Along these same lines - I am going to be offering Substack in a way that feels right to me. I am keeping this newsletter free with no paywall. Of course if you feel so moved to join at a membership level to support me that is tremendously helpful and wonder full! My writing is something that I hope resonates and around that rhythm a resonant community might form in foundational support for one another. Like most people, I ride the waves of length and breadth of my imagination. This will change as the firing of brain neurons excite themselves at will. I hope you will also share what is happening in your life on the posts that offer something to you.

Some things about me that frame my life. I see the world through a lens of connections. I have been married to the same man for 38 years. We were married in Scotland in the Western Highlands. We have a grown daughter. We have led a self-led learning journey with her. Curiouser and curiouser is the pathway.

I live in New England in the United States. I love books and read quite a bit. I am reading War and Peace and Wuthering Heights currently. I have had an Etsy vintage shop as well as a brick and mortar vintage shop - I no longer have them. I play the ukulele. I make my own clothing and always have - frocks are the thing I wear every day. I cut my waist length hair last year after my mother died. I try to be a comedian - humor and laughing are favorite pastimes.

The Sacred Arts are where my work travels. I have been in several puppetry troupes over the years. I am good at visioning about different things in the world - often I excel at reframing an idea into a creative vision. Intuitive describes me overall - Pisces sun helps this along. I like to be in deep meaningful conversation with nature and humans. I have attended music festivals all of my life. I know how to start things.

Tarot plays a role in my personal growth as well as in my work with others. Story is a treasured land that I like to travel to and live into. I am awake to the political landscape that murmurs through the world - it is often not something I share online as it needs nuance and presence to be understood in my experience.

Writers that have shaped me - Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman, Annie Dillard, Emily Dickinson, Helen & Scott Nearing, Rudolf Steiner, Thomas Hardy, Astrid Lindgren, May Sarton, Louisa May Alcott, Beatrix Potter, The Grimms Brothers, Lloyd Kahn, Emma Goldman, Virginia Woolf, Leo Tolstoy - the list is endless. I really loved A River Enchanted by Rebecca Ross. Chris Brennan has a brain I admire in Astrology. Ina May Gaskin a founder of The Farm and influential midwife helped guide me into holistic care over a lifetime.

I live in a little house built in the early 1700s. Lifeways is what I write about here. Making Ways has been a path that has been the most prevalent style of living.

My hope for this community is that it becomes a place of Care. With a deep listening to one another we can discover delight in who we are - what we might become - the things we can offer to each other and the world. It is a place that is mostly outside of the over culture - it is the Way Finding of meaningful discovery. It is less about tending ways with folks that are all the same and more rather - a Place Finding toward what we are about in our internal and meandering selves.

I am okay with the hard parts of life. I tend to see the painful parts in an awake way. I certainly do not know all the answers. I do know a wide expanse from living a life that is moving into Elder Wisdom. We won’t always agree. I do want to connect with you however. I make mistakes and move too fast sometimes. I hope that if I do - I am able to rectify my missteps. As a teacher once shared - Assume Forgiveness.

May we find one another here in a free and honest way. I bring a cloak of kindness. I stretch out before you on a wooden bench - offering a view that holds the People as important. May this New Year Unfolding bring a glimpse of some beautiful elemental magic to your shores. I see you. I hear you.

May All Good Things Find You…
With Love,
Linden
Cadence Croft
The Bone Lines