Kristen Roderick - Toronto, Canadahttps://www.spiritmoving.org/
Kristen Roderick is a ceremonialist, rites of passage guide, writer, mama and fiber artist. She works with women and nonbinary folks through a shared desire for initiation, self-discovery and personal truth making. Through intentional community ceremonies, personal rituals, dynamic online courses, and mentoring, she brings sustenance and meaning to times of transition. Her flagship courses include On Fallow Ground, a course that explores the landscape of liminal space, and Blessing Our Secret Sorrow, a course that honors the seemingly invisible endings that touch our lives.
Her fiber art and tools for sacred living offer personal symbols for the journey and pathways back to forgotten wisdom. Her Adiona Altars and Ancestors Dolls are among her most popular offerings, and at every New Moon, she creates an Ancestor and donates the proceeds to a local BIPOC charity. Kristen is a Certified Life-Cycle Celebrant with degrees in Social Work and Women’s Studies. When she’s not working, she’s foraging through the woods looking for mushrooms and gathering herbs for magic-making. She lives in Toronto with her partner and son. For regular inspiration, sign on to her Spirit Letters, or join her popular Facebook and Instagram communities. The doll-maker imbues her personal imprint and aesthetic into the doll ~ but something else comes through as she works. These dolls are not just pretty beautiful things, but manifestations of lineage, magic and medicine, sculpted into a form that is familiar but not-quite-human, offering other-worldly meaning to our modern lived experiences.
|
Magical Me
Kristen's Doll Story
About two years ago, I dreamt that a Spirit Doll was sent to me through the mail as a gift, and I was anxiously waiting for it to arrive. When the day came, I ran to the door, opened the box, and discovered a Troll Doll with wild green hair. I was devastated, anticipating something beautiful that I would love, and this was not that. I closed the box and brought it upstairs to my office. When I opened the box again, the Troll had transformed into twin dolls with long black hair and white lace gowns. At first glance they looked the same, but while one doll was perfect inside and out, the other was not well put together ~ she had stuffing coming out of her belly and legs that were not securely attached. My instinct was to reject the doll but then I realized she brought an important lesson: that I didn’t have to be perfect, all put together, or beautiful by traditional standards. Her imperfections were offering me wisdom about self-love. Not long after, I started learning how to make my own fabric and needle felted dolls, first with my long-time fiber mentor Mical, and later with Julia Inglis ~ and this is where my magic-making has really taken root. Each time I begin a new doll, choosing herbs from my garden to bundle inside her, fibers to mold her, and symbols to adorn her, a story unfolds. Sometimes I have waking thoughts about who she is, other times, I dream of an old or inherited wound that needs attention. Recording my dreams helps me trace the lineage of a particular doll and the message or gift that she brings. While creating a Witch doll in the spring, I dreamt of women who lived with some form of mental illness, or women who were institutionalized for “madness”. As I worked the fibers for her body, face, and hair, something inside me clicked, and I remembered dreams going back over a decade with various embodiments of the archetype of the Madwoman. I realized that the Madwoman was a vestige from my family history: a Witch-wound from my ancestral Motherline that I had an opportunity to heal. The symbols and sigils that adorn the body of a doll come not from the rational mind but from a collective reservoir of symbols available to us all. As archeologist Marija Gimbutas described in her ground breaking work The Language of the Goddess, “Many of these symbols [from the Goddess religions] are still present as images in our art and literature, powerful motifs in our myths and archetypes in our dreams.” The doll-maker imbues her personal imprint and aesthetic into the doll ~ but something else comes through as she works. These dolls are not just pretty beautiful things, but manifestations of lineage, magic and medicine, sculpted into a form that is familiar but not-quite-human, offering other-worldly meaning to our modern lived experiences. This practice of weaving fiber work, wildcrafting, ancestral memory and ritual connects us to something beautiful and mysterious. While we may not be conscious of the old practices, our hands remember. The dolls are magic-keepers, and talismans of the wise self. Both the making and receiving is a practice of returning what is rightfully ours, translating a forgotten language into something we make, hold, love. |
