This Samhuinn, the Winter Queen embodies winter at its bleakest – a season of endings. On his journey coming to terms with his part enacting Summer’s end, a core lesson this Queen learns is that living with grief does not mean overpowering or defeating it, but simply walking alongside it. Grief is a messy and chimerical force, there for deaths both real or perceived. At its rawest, it threatens to stop time and trap us as beings defined only by loss; the unfair hand dealt to the living is to learn how to the methods of acknowledging and understanding your grief without letting it bury you.

As the person representing the Winter Queen, one way I find grief is made easier to bear is through community memory. I believe that by sharing the names and stories of those we’ve been forced to say goodbye to, we keep the impact they made in this world alive. Community memory is also a powerful weapon. The knowledge of what we’ve lost, though painful, can be wielded against people attempting to benefit themselves by pretending it never existed at all. 

To create this space for our community, the Winter Queen and his Court invite you to take part in this ritual of shared remembrance. In the Google Form below, we offer you the chance to submit the names of your dead (human, animal, plant or place) to us. Each name will be individually painted onto a piece of fabric and sewn into the interior of a cloak the Winter Queen will wear on Samhuinn night. 

Please submit your name here: https://forms.gle/vwrR7wwxwpSxawRq5

Our hopes for this ritual are to: 

• Invite you to reflect on what you loved about a person, animal, plant or place. 
• Show that, in some way, those gone still walk with us, by physically keeping their names close on the night when the Veil is thinnest.

With love and care, 

Your Winter Queen, Izzy.