It’s about every three years when we at Feminism and Religions put out a solicitation for a new intern to join our team. Back in 2013 we had the great privilege of having Kate Brunner join us. She came on… Read More ›
Kate Brunner
Emotional Labor, Elastigirl, & Me
Last year, I turned 40 and started grad school while working part time at the public library as the Children’s Services Manager, living in a cohousing community, volunteering with my Sisterhood, and raising three teenagers. I’m between semesters at the… Read More ›
Refrigerator Poetry by Kate Brunner
I am at such a loss over the state of things these days. What’s left for me seems to be a process of assessing where I have agency at this exact moment and of taking refuge in small things. After… Read More ›
The Forgotten Art of Integration by Kate Brunner
It’s suddenly mid-July. I’m in the throes of managing my library’s Children’s Summer Reading Program. My own children are galavanting about through the swirling, time-bending vortex that is summer break. My grad school program starts in 22 days. Each sun-soaked… Read More ›
Leadership and Community: Continuing to be Teachable by Kate Brunner
Over the last several years, the North American Pagan community at large has been engaged in an often turbulent process of self-examination. A lot of allegations of abuse, bigotry, and oppressions are surfacing very publicly as the greater Pagan culture… Read More ›
My Name is Isis BOOK REVIEW by Kate Brunner
My Name Is Isis by Susan Morgaine is the fourth book in the My Name Is series from The Girl God; a series of picture books for children. The series serves as a child’s gentle & colorful introduction to one… Read More ›
Sheela na gig: The Dark Goddess of Sacred Power BOOK REVIEW by Kate Brunner
If there are devotees of the Dark Goddess on your Yuletide gift list, Starr Goode’s gorgeous book, Sheela na gig: The Dark Goddess of Sacred Power, may be the best gift you could choose for them. Goode’s connection to the Sheela is… Read More ›
In Church, Mosque, Temple, Coven, Synagogue, Whatever — #MeToo Lives There by Kate Brunner
The diversity of the stories of people who have experienced sexual harassment or assault shows that this is not a partisan issue. Conservatives and liberals, rural and urban, religious and non-religious, sexual harassment and assault cross every boundary. It happens… Read More ›
Every Moon Is Different by Kate Brunner
When my doula clients would share with me that the pregnancy they were going through was not like the previous one, I often gently reminded them that they weren’t the same women anymore. Their bodies were starting from a different… Read More ›
When Community Eclipses Polarity by Kate Brunner
I recently accepted a new position at my local public library and yesterday the duties of that position happened to include staffing our library’s Eclipse Viewing Party. From about 10am to 1pm, I answered countless questions about the eclipse, helped… Read More ›
With Women by Kate Brunner
Someone told me the other day that Death Doulas are one of the fastest growing career fields out there right now. As a (currently not practicing) Birth Doula, this does not surprise me. The term Doula came into its modern… Read More ›
Moon of Liberation by Kate Brunner
“I stand firmly between the worlds of who I am and who I shall become, celebrating my wholeness. I celebrate my Sovereignty and I do not fear my Shadow, for together they hold the seeds of wisdom: as they grow,… Read More ›
Choice Feminism & Celtic Pagan Spirituality’s Quest for Sovereignty by Kate Brunner
Years ago, in an early postpartum blur, I took a crack at writing a piece on an old personal blog about the question of an at-home mother’s claim to the feminist label. The process of writing it was really an… Read More ›
Alice Paul & the Women Who Will Keep Marching by Kate Brunner
The day before Woodrow Wilson’s inauguration, the 1913 Women’s Suffrage Parade took place in Washington, D.C. to demand the attention of the incoming administration and advance the cause of suffrage. Organized primarily by Alice Paul, 8,000 women marched on Washington on… Read More ›
The Dandelion Insurrection: A Must-Read for These Times by Kate Brunner
I don’t know about you, but I am fried. These last two years proved personally & professionally exhausting. And yet, another year looms ahead unavoidably — another incredibly demanding year which will require more than I can fathom I actually… Read More ›
Save Your Own Arse by Kate Brunner
Huge swaths of forest are burning. Over the past few years, it seems like summer and autumn bring devastating fires to some region of the United States. This year it is the Great Smokey Mountains and Tennessee, in particular, who… Read More ›
It is Over, It is Just Beginning by Kate Brunner
“In this nation of thinkers and philosophers, poets and artists, idealists and enthusiasts, the world will recognize nothing but a people of conquerors and destroyers. …we are neither loved nor respected, but only feared. We are deemed capable of every… Read More ›
The Community Bardic Exercise Revisited: Body, Land, Tribe Poetry by Kate Brunner
Two years ago, I hosted a Devotional Poetry themed Community Bardic Exercise which turned out to be heaps of beautiful, inspiration-filled fun. Inspired by Elizabeth’s latest post, I’d like to revisit this venture today. Consider this an invitation, an opportunity, or… Read More ›
Continued Adventures in Somatic Spirituality: Navel-Gazing by Kate Brunner
Some months ago, I came across a brilliant comment online from a stranger in reference to the offhanded disparaging of practices of deep introspection as “navel gazing.” Her reply to the criticism of self-reflection as a self-absorbed waste of “navel… Read More ›
Loosening the Weave: Leaving Space for Mystery by Kate Brunner
Yesterday morning, I sat in a sunrise fire circle on a ridge above my new Rocky Mountain home. Two years ago on the same day, I stood before a loom in a reconstructed Iron Age roundhouse in Wales. And in… Read More ›
Cohousing as Modern Matriarchy? by Kate Brunner
I attended the 2016 Matriarchal Studies Day that preceded the biannual Association for the Study of Women and Mythology conference only two weeks before my family and I arrived at our new home in an established cohousing community. It was… Read More ›
Syringa vulgaris, Gerard, & Me by Kate Brunner
A vast array of massive issues are affecting the Land today. Rampant pesticide use, trademarked GMO seed, fracking, mining, illegal dumping, indigenous sovereignty, water rights, accelerating extinction rates, municipal waste management, clear cutting, increasingly extreme weather patterns, and on and… Read More ›
Stop Using the H-Word to Greet This Day by Kate Brunner
Happy Memorial Day. Happy? Really? Every year, on the last Monday in May, this prosaic American phrase causes me to physically recoil whenever I see or hear it. Happy Memorial Day. With those casual words, tossed over shoulders on our way to… Read More ›
After the Body, the Land by Kate Brunner
After we learn to let our bodies tell our stories, after we embrace somatic spirituality, after we become one with these bodies that move us to action, that power the physical acts that manifest our spiritual work as feminists, what… Read More ›
Our Bodies Tell Our Stories by Kate Brunner
Getting out of my head can sometimes be such a challenge in the environment that surrounds me. The onslaught of information coming in at almost every waking moment often means my head is very, very full. Add to that the… Read More ›
Foremothers: A Book Review & So Much More by Kate Brunner
I sometimes feel as though I live caught between feminism’s assorted waves. I am too young to have experienced the rise & crest of the Second Wave. I only just began to learn there was an actual -ism type name… Read More ›
“Seeking Harbor in Our Histories” – ASWM 2016 Conference
The Association for the Study of Women & Mythology (ASWM) will be hosting this year’s Conference, “Seeking Harbor in Our Histories: Lights in the Darkness” at the Boston Marriot Burlington Hotel on 1-2 April 2016. ASWM conferences strive to support… Read More ›
Radiant Brow: Fire in the Head & How to Light It by Kate Brunner
In the middle of a deep, dark lake, Ceridwen, gifted enchantress & devoted mother, set to work to brew a potion for Her disfigured son, Afagddu, in the hopes that the wisdom & talents the mixture would give him would… Read More ›
Overworked, Overwired, Overtired? Then Disconnect by Kate Brunner
I have this belief that there used to be boundaries between work and home; between boss/employee and family. That there used to be space to take a deep breath and let go for a minute. That most jobs did not… Read More ›
Great Mother, Mercurial Child by Kate Brunner
I am not a boy-mom. As much as I wish I was, I am just not. I gave birth to three wondrous little things; first, a girl and then later, boy-girl twins. I have a son, but even after years… Read More ›
