Welcome to The Sanctuary
Welcome to The Sanctuary
Thank you dearest one and WELCOME to the Sanctuary!
We are so incredibly happy to have you join our community and be a part of this new chapter of us working - and playing - together in devotion to the Earth Mother, creating opportunities for Earth Education, land healing, community connection and the creation of a healthy world.
We are beginning our Monthly Sanctuary Community Circle this month led by Stewards Isabel Barreto & Rachel Jonte on Sunday November 16th from 10- 11:30 am pst. Get full details below.
With Love,
Marysia Miernowska & The Sanctuary Board of Directors.
Theme of November
Give Thanks & Restore
The month of November begins in the pagan cross- quarter holy-day of Samhain // Day of the Dead. It is said that this is one of the two moments all year when the veil is the thinnest between our waking reality and the spirit realm.
In many cultures around the world, this is a time to honor our ancestors, to bring offerings of food, music, prayer and candlelight to the resting places of our loved ones.
The practice of speaking to our deceased loved ones and ancestors has been forgotten by many of us modern people, yet beyond the forgetting lie centuries of practice of asking our ancestors for help, protection and guidance.
As we embrace the interwoven energies of life & death this autumnal season, we weave our hearts with the threads of the past and future, memories and hopes, grief and gratitude - all woven together in wholeness through a grateful and humble heart.
We learn from the Earth, the sweet medicine of release — as the trees release their leaves from their limbs, the decaying leaves are food for new life to come next spring.
What are you ready to release and let go of? What are you ready to return to the fertile darkness?
An offering of flowers on a compost heap
November is also a month when celebrate the last of the year’s harvests, grateful for the abundance we rely on from the Earth.
We root our practices and time in nourishment, fostering togetherness and intimacy as we prepare for the winter ahead. We honor the ancestors and the indigenous people upon whose lands we live, while reflecting upon how we can help restore right relationships on behalf of all life to come.
In the United States, we celebrate Thanksgiving, a complicated holiday that often erases the experience of the Native people whose lands were taken from them just a handful of generations ago.
For us, learning how to hold the grief and the love in our hearts is part of our spiritual practice. We call upon the medicinal herbs that calm our nerves and open our hearts so we can be rooted, more expansive, capable of deeply listening and loving. Linden leaf & flower and Tulsi are two wonderful medicinal teas that calm the mind and bring us into the heart. This vibration they guide us into is helpful for moving through all aspects of the holiday season!
Tulsi (Holy Basil)
Doing our part in loving the land we live upon and adding our energy towards a reciprocal relationship can look like many different things! This can be a fun question to explore with your family or friends and to bring some ideas, offerings and practices into the month within your social circle.
Here are some ideas. Please share yours below:
Find out who the indigenous people are of your home. Here is a really neat interactive map: https://native-land.ca/
See if you can donate to a local indigenous non profit or support a movement towards habitat restoration, watershed preservation, native plant gardens, etc.
Love up on your land! You live upon a part of the Earth Mother’s body and any patch, however small, of her soil is a direct source of connection between you and the Earth Mother. In the fall, pouring compost tea over your plants or at the base of a tree at a local park will be much appreciated by the soil and Earth.
Leave your leaves! They are important food for the Earth. Mulching and covering the bare garden soil supports the Earth in her rejuvenation and rest, giving back to the gardens that gave us so much.
Organize an eating local challenge with your friends. Visit the farmers market and feast on the bounty of your bioregion, supporting local farmers and allowing the land you call home to fill your heart and cells.
Sing a song to a wild place or leave an offering.
Feed the birds, see if you can support the habitat of the non human who share the land with you.
Cook an ancestral dish and invite friends over, sharing stories.
Watch the beautiful, uplifting and inspirational documentary “Gather” and seek out other stories from the land you call home.
GIVE THANKS & RESTORE
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GIVE THANKS & RESTORE 〰️
Watch the November Visual Spell
WATCH:
Community Connection Circle
held by Isabel Barreto & Rachel Jonte
recorded Sunday 11-16-2025
Each meeting facilitated by Rachel Jonte and Isabel Barreto will offer:
Energetic practice: movement, meditation, & breath-work
Attunement to the Earth, Season & Present Moment
Group sharing & witnessing
Community cross-pollination and space to announce offerings.
Bring a cup of tea and an open heart to receive and give to one another in sacred community space!
Looking forward to seeing you all there!
Rachel & Isabel
The Sanctuary of the Sacred Wild
November Guest Expert Masterclass with Lana Smithner-Greenleaf & Shelyrose Wright: The Sister Wound & The Witch Wound
November 19th 12- 1 pm pst
At the heart of the witch wound is disconnection to land, at the heart of the sister wound is disconnection to self. Shelyrose, Lana and Motherwort, our plantcestor, will guide you through a journey for reconnection to self, land, and community.
Lana Smithner Greenleaf is a water ritualist, somatic grief and death tender, folk herbalist, flora-fauna-funga communicator, performing artist, and filmmaker. Weaving healing modalities with art and storytelling is the way she’s learned how to navigate humanity’s wounds on the earth and each other. Her desire to support people in thawing their nervous systems so they can release into the grieving process and thus fully live and dream into pleasure is at the heart of all she curates. She’s passionately watering 3 death/grief projects: the communally made recipe and art book “Mourning Elixirs”, “Grieving Gardens” around the world to process personal and ecological heartache, and the documentary and service project “death, me, dying tree” which supports all forms of grieving and de-stigmatizes having a relationship with death. All of Lana’s projects are made through communal experimentation and contribution, please take part if you want by emailing deathmedyingtree@gmail.com or follow along on her Substack, which features these projects and themes.
Shelyrose Wright is a neurodivergent interdisciplinary artist with a background in herbalism, yoga, somatics and ancestral energy healing practices. As a certified herbalist, instructor, astrologer, reiki master and ceremonialist with a bachelor of arts in dance her work delves deep through the physical world into the energetic, unseen spirals of land, lineage and cosmology that connects all space and time as one.
Growing up among the red mountains in Las Vegas, Nevada she learned that the land breathes, feels, remembers and understands. As a descendant of ancestors from Nigeria, Benin, Togo, Mali and other regions of West Africa, she strives to re-weave the lost threads of her land-based heritage and the ancient wisdom of the plants.
She discovered herbalism, as herbalism discovered her, during a period of deep disconnection from land and self. While living in North Carolina, near the site of her more recent ancestors captivity, she felt the land calling to her, nursing her back to life. From there she connected with a lineage of mentors who graciously and openly have shared the trainings from their mentors with her.
She now holds sacred space for others through in-person and online ceremonies incorporating herbal consultations, plant spirit meditations, somatic embodiment classes and energy healing sessions for women.