Hi, I’m Ray–rooted in plants, steeped in ritual.
I have become many things over the years: writer and rural farmer and death midwife and clinical herbalist and paralegal and funeral priest and medical writer.
Sovereign Birch is the trifecta of three in particular–death midwife, funerary priest, herbalist–as I am called again and again to death and grief as the source of our deepest liberatory potential. As I am called again and again to community as the site of our grandest liberatory creations and practices.
For the last 10-plus years I’ve been studying herbalism and applying it to my own life for everything from acute issues to profound long-term shifts. I’ve been helping others do the same since 2018. Death midwifery inducted me into its practices in 2014, and in 2018 I became a funerary priest, death awareness saturating the vibrancy of my life. Now in this time of rapid societal shifts, all these practices blend together to support, challenge, and embolden our pursuit of liberation.
Why Birch? Why sovereign?
Birch is a sacred tree and medicine in the Ukrainian tradition, associated with rebirth, healing, the creative force, purification, and the ancestors. Birch receives our offerings, give us shelter, helps us to create loving boundaries, cradles our dead, heals our ailments. I call on both the ancestors and Birch’s generosity and resourcefulness, bending with the winds while never losing its core self.
Sovereign as a concept so often relates to nation-states, but here I draw on its meaning of self-governance. Sovereign is about being in your own power and challenging the ways in which we have been taught that we are without power, both as individuals and as communities. Here we rediscover that our powerlessness is and has been a lie.
What I Do
I help people explore their grief though plant allies, ritual, seasonal observance, and somatic practice, weaving together threads from my Ukrainian and Kemetic traditions. We come together in workshops and longer courses, or you might decide to work with me one-on-one for a season. One day I hope to bring you Covid-safer, in-person offerings.
Teachers and Inspirations
My teachers and inspirations have included Commonwealth Holistic Herbalism (particularly their Family Herbalist, Community Herbalist, and Clinical Herbalist year-long programs), various instructors at The Human Path school, mandana boushee, Jade Alicandro-Mace, Mara June, Melissa Word, Narinder Bazen, Aleah Black, many books, and of course the plants themselves.
If you’d like to work together
The best way to hear about my offerings is signing up for the email list, where I also share medicine recipes, seasonal reflections, and other gifts. The second best way is following me on Instagram.
Want to get in touch? Shoot me an email