Sidheag MacLeod

This is in calmer times along the beloved Nooksack River.

Just two days ago we experienced catastrophic flooding to the region with record level water rise throughout the downtown cores of our two nearest small towns. Our mountain dwelling was spared as our creek tributary found it’s own way back to the larger flow.

It’s been challenging since to find the best route out of the mountains that I can travel to my studio where I make art, and hold space for folks to make connections with ancestors and beloved guides in the in between places of waking, dreaming and walking in liminal time and space.

This is one of the those liminal thresholds where, grief and fear rise with the waters.

High and fast moving water has a way of making us deal with our grief, reckoning with our past, present and future all at once. The anxiety that builds from not knowing what is coming, how much will be lost, or if we’ll ever recover. The barrage of predictions, alerts, and warnings compound the uncertainty until the rivers overflow, changing our paths and forcing chaos into the stillness of surrender.

When I made it back to town today after the waters receded I attended a ritual for grieving and forgiveness. The spirits gently showed me the places where my heart is barricaded with sandbags, where the logs and debris were unleashed to flow with the rushing waters of grief. Offering forgiveness to the places where I am holding blame and judgment for the past helped even more tears flow, adding salt and sugar to the rivers where story finds its way to the seas of dissolution and greater tidal pull of planetary love.

In Studio news:

I am starting an Ancestor Circle this month that runs through March 2026. It meets twice monthly on the the 1st and 3rd Mondays at 2pm PT. It is drop in based, online, so you can come to any or all as you are able. Sliding scale donations. The opening circle is this Monday, December 15th at 2pm Pacific time.

The focus of the circle is on connection to wise and loving ancestors, supporting you while you navigate relationship with self, community, and family. It’s a place to bring your stories, your offerings to the dead, to our more than human kin, and to each other. We’ll make song, and beauty in honor of the beloved earth. Bring your whole heart, your poetry, your art and craft to show and share, let your stories be known.

Visit this link to learn more and register for a circle or two.

Ancestral Healing Sessions:

If you’d like more personalized attention to deepen relationship and navigate healing themes with your ancestors, I offer individual sessions for ancestral healing and also spirit guided rituals of support. Contact me for a no cost 15 minute consult to explore support options.

I hope you are gently tending the waters within as we enter the darkest time of the season.

With love and kindness,

Sidheag

ancestors, art

Muse and News for September 2025 at Sidheag’s Sacred Smithy

September 2, 2025September 2, 2025 Sidheag MacLeod

Whidbey Island Labyrinth ~ photo by Sidheag

Hi Everyone!

As I move my online presence further away from social media and returning more toward my website and blog, I’m offering this mode of communication “Sidheag’s Muse & News from the Sacred Smithy” my little corner of the internet where I compose and create, offer sessions for spirit connection and ancestral healing, and open the doors on new classes and circles for community uplifting and earth tending rituals. The intention is a twice monthly mash up of newsletter, creations from the studio including artistic musing, earth lifting prose, announcements of offerings online and in-person.

New in September!

For the Autumn months I’ll be introducing my new circle offering for Practitioners of Ancestral Lineage Healing. A once monthly mentoring group for Practitioners and Practitioners in Training with Ancestral Medicine. Begins September 23rd. Follow the link for details and registration.

Also in the works in the realms of ancestral healing, is a new monthly ancestor circle focused on the cultural healing layers and tracking the nuances of family inheritance. This support offering is perfect for those who want focused time to resource with earth and the ancestors, tending to offerings of heart for the world. Details and registration info will be forthcoming in my next newsletter, mid-month.

Mid~Autumn Ancestral Healing Ritual Intensive:

This Autumn season I will be supporting at an in-person Ancestral Lineage Healing Intensive facilitated by Shannon Willis of Red Earth Healing and ritual director of Ancestral Medicine. The 3- 1/2 day event will be held in Union, WA at The Sacred Waters Center. October 30 – Nov 2, 2025

From the Facilitator: “If your bones ache with old names, if your dreams have grown crowded with those who came before, if you long to reweave the threads that connect breath to bone, root to star, come. Bring your tenderness. Bring your songs. Bring a stone or a story. The veil is parting. The ancestors are stirring. And they are waiting for you.”

Join us if you feel called to make lasting connection with your ancestral lineages in community ritual with other deep hearted souls. More information here:

Shannon will be giving a free introductory talk about meeting your ancestors and share about the upcoming intensive on Sunday Sept 7th at 12 pm PDT sign up here:

From the Bench!

I’m finishing up a custom Brooch for a friend/client who collects handmade artisan jewelry. She’s been ogling mine for a while, and now it’s her turn to wear the ancestrally inspired celtic open circle design. Loving the deep red glow of the garnets she chose. If you’d like something made just for you, reach out and we can get something forged for you!

Mainstays in the Smithy:

These pillars of my practice are available on an ongoing basis. If you’d like to know more, contact me through my consultations page with questions and curiosities.

Ancestral Healing Sessions ~ make direct connection with your wise and kind ancestors for their support, love and guidance. Develop relationships that nourish and endure.
Consult with Divination and Oracular wisdom, listening deep with the earth spirits and ancestral guidance
Ceremonial Drums crafted with intention
Custom crafted ritual tools and jewelry amulets for your journey through this beloved life.

If you’ve not already, I’d love it if you’d sign up for the newsletter below so it’s easier for us to stay in touch.

Wishing you a beautiful and nourishing Autumn season ahead!

Warm Regards from Sidheag at The Sacred Smithy!

ancestors, art, Uncategorized

Apprenticing to Elders

December 19, 2022 Sidheag MacLeod

It was 30 years ago when my soul stirring began, remembering the creative arts as a way to express my connection to the spirit world, the unseen others that dwell within the landscapes, the flora, the fauna and the mysteries of sea and sky. Picking up this mantle consciously was one of the most important decisions I’ve made in my life.

And throughout that time I’ve experienced the power of relying on one’s gifts of soul to navigate the world around and within, to create a body of work that celebrates the mysterious ways that life supports us whether we are conscious of this assistance or not. Whether making art solo or within a community of creative souls, uplifting one another, collaborating and sharing inspiration, creating has been a joyful and transformative experience.

I consider all of the ways I move in the world to be artful. Over time I’ve been a bard with lyric and song, a healer with my hands and voice, a crafter with metal and stone, a sculptor of masks, a painter with wax and rich vibrant color, a medium for the wisdom and beauty of ancestral vitality and earth connection. And at the center of all of this is a deep love for the mystery of life, the beauty of creation and the humility that is required of the human species to maintain the delicate balances inherent in rich and multi-dimensional ecosystems that act as essential forces in the unfolding of this mystery.

When we develop artful skills and nurture talents, we participate in the generational transmission of these gifts, the essential forces that continue to support life on this beautiful planet. Apprenticing to elders, mastering our crafts, experiencing the joy, soul-stirring beauty and magic that comes when we create in service to life, is a key pathway that needs our attention in these times where hope seems thin.
And so I tend to my winter dreaming, immersing myself in the creative power of ancestral memories that guide and nurture, remembering my faith in the kindness and wisdom that humanity is capable of while rekindling my hope that our creative dreaming will re-emerge as a beacon for our descendants to sustain their hope.

As I write this, a goldfinch lights at the window, delicately sampling the birch seed husks that cling to the bare winter branches. A yellow bird of hope against a gray palette of snow clouded skies.

Uncategorized

Luminous Elk as Ancestral Guide

July 27, 2019July 28, 2019 Sidheag MacLeod

In 2017 I set upon a Soul Initiation, to “Live with full body presence”. To encounter my soul deeply embodied. For the past two years I’ve received numerous “assignments, tasks and nudges” to follow the wisdom of my body and all that might unfold before me as I walked with this intention and initiation.

The most prominent feature of this initiation has been to engage with ancestral lineage repair. Healing familial wounds, reclaiming sovereign body, and transmuting the patterns of transmission through the generations. Opening myself to the support of my Ancestors has brought clarity and power to my life’s vision and ultimately, my destiny and lived purpose. I am in full relationship with my people and the earth.
I was guided to birth a drum. And my Father’s Mother’s people asked me to apprentice to the spirit of the drum through them. In order to remember why I walk this life as a healer, a dreamer between the worlds, a voice for the earth.
On the Summer Solstice 2019, this luminous spirit of Elk Drumming joined with me in ally-ship to guide and support the holy expression of my destiny in service to the world. Spirits, I am listening. Many thanks.

Elk Drum Spirit

Uncategorized

Studio Time

January 26, 2019February 16, 2019 Sidheag MacLeod

ancestral connection

Need some support to get back to a creative project? Or are you simply in need of some time to slow down, take a few deep breaths and push some paint around a canvas for the joy of it?

Join me in the studio for some lightly structured time to express creatively, follow the brush and your soul’s creative longing. I offer exercises and tips to listen and paint from your body, your heart and your intuition.

I’ll supply the canvas, paper and paint. I have some drawing materials too. Bring your favorite supplies if you like. No art experience necessary, just desire.

2 hour sessions with creative support $40

Contact me to schedule your creative time: sidheag(dot)macleod(at)gmail(dot)com