Changing's & Happening's
A quick update on subscriptions, publications, podcasts & Hedge School
A note on free & paid subscriptions
For some time I’ve been exploring what feels right & how to decipher what I do & don’t charge for on here. What I’ve found is that when I set arbitrary deadlines for X amount of essays I feel overwhelmed & more often than not, the quality of my writing suffers as a result. I’d initially set out in my WELCOME post a tier between free & paid subscribers. But, since writing that & setting those tiers I’ve felt increasingly conflicted.
Thing is, what I write & when I write is very intuitive. This is the nature of my creative practice & try as I might, when I write from a place that isn’t heartfelt, when I write from a place of obligation, it shows.
What I’m trying to say is I need a system that works for me & works for you.
This is what I’ve come up with.
Most of what I publish here will be free. You’ll have access to recipes, stories, songs, essays, writing exercises, meditations, poems & art. You’ll find out about my upcoming courses, events, interviews & work that I’ll be having published.
Amongst that, I will be sharing longer more in depth essays, excerpts from my book & courses. For these, you will require a paid subscription.
What I’m trying to curate here a system similar to what Blindboy promotes on his podcast: those who get something out of my writing & can afford to pay a monthly or yearly subscription can & this would be marvellous. Those who get something out of my work but can’t afford a monthly or yearly subscription needn’t, since the person who pays is also supporting the person that can’t.
Making this decision feels like a risk but a risk worth taking. I’m making this decision from a place of trust. Trusting that my readership engage with r o o t & r o c k, not from a place of extraction but from a place of reciprocity; acknowledging the time, energy & care taken into tending this place.
This feels like an equitable & supportive system that invites creativity & intimacy rather than pressure, it invites a space that enables my best writing rather than a space squashes it.
What you can expect is a minimum of two posts a month. Sometimes this will fluctuate & you may well receive 5 or 6 posts a month. I want to keep what I’m curating here alive & agile. I want to curate something that mirrors where I am in this particular time-place, what I’m witnessing, experiencing, observing. Rather than orchestrating my life into an alien algorithm. Sometimes this will mean you don’t receive anything for a few weeks. Other weeks, you’ll receive something every couple of days.
I recognise this might be a disappointment to some of you & I recognise that making such a move may hinder how well this Substack develops. I have taken these things into account & I apologise if making this decision irritates folk. As a woman who lives with the challenges of neuro-diversity I can only say that attempting to push myself into linear patterns of creating feels harmful & I’m at a place in my recovery where I refuse to break myself into the moulds other people have set for us, for me.
What I want you to know is that I wholeheartedly appreciate the support I have here from you as my readership, this is a place where I’m developing confidence as an emerging writer & I’d like it to remain a place where I can experiment & share new ideas. I want to continue feeling appreciative toward this space & excited about the possibilities of sharing my work with you. To ensure that relationship remains generative, this is what I’ve needed to do. I hope you understand.
In other news
Two of my pieces have been accepted for publication. I’ll be having an essay published this Summer by Unpsychology Magazine & a poem published by Clarion in Autumn. Clarion is a quarterly journal founded by the incredible poet Tom Hirons.
On Thursday I’ll be talking to
on his renowned Eat Weeds podcast. I’ll be talking to Robin about my school ‘Hedge School’, my research ‘Recovering the Ecological Body©’ & the work I do in communities of trauma. I’m really looking forward to this & I’ll share the podcast here once it goes live.Alongside all this, I’ve officially launched Hedge School. A school that is passionate about supporting communities to recover, reconnect & restore their relationships with kith & kin through the sharing of plant work, traditional skills & unruly education. Hedge School is the place that homes 15 years of dreaming, weaving, studying, learning & working in & amongst some of the most marginalised communities in the UK. I’ll be writing an essay about Hedge School in the coming weeks to share more about what I’ll be doing there, courses I’ll be offering & how Hedge School came to be.
Many Thanks,
Happy July,
Hannah-May
Blessings on this budding, and on the flowering, and on the fruit. Thank you for your beautiful offerings.