Hello, I’m Henrietta
For most of my life I have felt that I belonged in another century.
For many years I saw this as a problem and wished to fold myself seamlessly into western 21st century life, but now I know it is a gift .
As a child I was happiest scrambling about in Nature making dens and plant potions, or drawing, reading making up stories about the Little People who lived in the Wiltshire lanes where I grew up. . I wanted to write and illustrate books, heal people with herbs and live in a remote candlelit cabin with goats .
The well meaning adults in my life had other ideas about safe life options and a language degree followed.
Running away after graduation, to work on farms internationally and back in the UK,, led me to a deep conviction that being close to the land, plants and animals was where I was supposed to be . Early marriage and young motherhood claimed me, and for years my latent creativity was channelled through my five wonderful kids , handcrafting, storytelling, healing them with herbs and growing food.
I continued to feel a jarring sense of incongruence with 20th and then 21st Century life and wished that I could transport my family back to simpler times when it was normal to have few possessions, dye fabric with berries and live a life deeply connected with the intuitive wisdom of our bodies and the natural world around us
Bereavement as
transformation
It took years of healing and the sudden loss of my eldest daughter Lily Rose, to open my eyes to the necessity of living authentically and sharing my voice.
And alongside that, recognising the gift of being able to inhabit the fragile intersection between the turbulence of contemporary life, and the deep longing for ancient ways.
My bereavement, although cataclysmic, became the fusion point for two worlds to meet, with me as the bridge.
To learn to weave ancestral wisdom into contemporary practice , and integrate ancestral practice into modern day wisdom,
Healing and creativity
Being accepted on the MA illustration programme at Falmouth in later life was a moment of shedding the still persistent childhood voices who insisted that art was not for me.
I wrote and illustrated my book ‘Poppy and the Horse’ at the tiny dining table in my converted horse box home in West Cornwall last year.
Reclaiming creativity after years of simmering neglect was a first step towards living authentically.
I started to paint from home around my remaining small children, mostly learning from online courses watched during nap time. I started a blog, ‘Angel Wings and Herb Tea,’ documenting my then family life in the woods after the bereavement.
I began to exhibit and sell my work from cafes and galleries.
Apart from a few previous short story successes and a spell writing for a forestry journal…my words and art were out in the world for the first time.
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The book is based on my experience of losing my daughter Lily. She was seven years old when she suffered fatal brain injuries following a tree climbing accident.
This life event was the the catalyst that alchemized grief into an unfolding journey of awareness. Awareness of what lies beyond the physicality of the everyday, awareness of a universe that brims with magic and possibility, and a connection to the divine
My book Poppy and the Horse is the manifestation of a promise I made to my daughter after she died and describes the journey of a child passing over to ‘The Beyond’ under the guidance of a wise white Horse.
What I am doing now
I now live between a yurt and gypsy bow top caravan in a snug location in West Cornwall with my youngest son and several surprise kittens. I also have a studio in a large artist community nearby where I continue to paint and write.
After five years of living in my lorry while I studied, I now have space and capacity to return to my facilitation work, weaving the disparate threads of my life experience and training into a cohesive series of developing programs . They will sit under the umbrella of my emerging business Hearthwing
Over the years I worked with numerous teachers and have held many groups myself , from natural healthcare and women’s creativity, to workshops in schools; and from groups exploring death at festivals. to foraging and nature connection sessions.
They will initially be offered local to Cornwall, with online versions becoming available in the near future.
My experience with death, and my awakening to the reality beyond what we can see with our eyes, has given rise to my conviction that we can emerge and thrive from our apparently tortured world. We can rise from the deep rifts that currently sever our connection with nature, ourselves and the vast potentiality of life.’
…….. if we remember how to human like we used to .
Hearthwing is the emerging expression of the myriad threads emerging from a rich tapestry of life experience, and Substack is where I have started to write about it, Instagram is where I share how life teaches me everyday….come and connect with me there xxx
Love Henrietta x
