I haven’t written much in the last couple of years. I haven’t made many podcasts either. It’s not that I haven’t been thinking, or even sharing. I share in private spaces still. I share in person. I have just stepped away from sharing publicly so much. The reasons are complex. Let me try to explain.

When I think about why, so many things come to mind, on a personal level, on a local level, and more broadly in the wider world. It can be hard to know where to start. So let’s just start with that feeling. It feels like it’s hard to hold it all. Like my mind is so full of information, ideas, coping with the speed of change, with difficulties, with compassion, and with the journey of healing, or at least trying to heal as the world throws us about. There’s a yearning for peace, for silence, for something nurturing and gentle. The seriousness of holding it all can feel too much. What do we do? It can feel like the options are to either hide and cry, or laugh in the face of it all. I think many of us have been doing a bit of both.

Much of my public life has been in online spaces, whether those are in Facebook groups, writing blogs, teaching via video call, making podcasts, or going on the radio or the TV. Digital media is how the story of Druidry is being told and so that has been an important space for us to be a part of. But Druidry is not a spirituality that lends itself to the sell. We’re not interested in convincing anyone to agree with us, much less trying to convert anyone. There’s a general understanding among Druids that people come to the path when they’re ready. There’s no hustle culture in making space for people to come home to it at their own pace. It’s a spirituality of nature, peace, contemplation, creativity and wonder and that can sometimes seem at odds with a world driven by capitalism and influencer culture.

The trend I have noticed within the Druidry community in the last few years has been a move towards more private work. Less public facing communication that can feel like promotion and more in person or private communication where our ideas are less likely to fall into the hands of harsh and unjust criticism, impersonal misunderstanding, or chat bot pollution. More intimate connection whether it’s face to face, in person, or if online, unrecorded.

Reasons for this turn within are not just a general Druidic dislike for promotion and publicization. It’s also a response to the hostile environments that can be created online . Public posts are algorithmically shown to both those who enjoy a topic, and those who enjoy ridiculing it and deriding it. We have all had that experience by now, of being misunderstood online, or horrified that a public post would be shown to our worst enemies by the algorithm and not those who would support us. We have equally been horrified by those whose small-minded views seem to justified by their only seeing supportive comments for their viewpoints, thinking that their small online community holds the opinion of the whole world. And this can have us question ourselves and our own viewpoints. Are we like that too? Social media feels like an unsafe place to have an opinion. Do we share our views and risk ridicule? Or possibly worse, what if all we ever see is agreement and we lose touch with reality?

Private spaces at the very least, make way for nuanced conversation. When we meet in person our voices are not recorded to be taken out of context later by those who were not present. When we speak and listen, we find words to communicate on a personal level, talking to someone, not just to “the void”. We can also listen and respond with care. Our words will be heard with tone, our manner seen with guesture. Disagreement may come with compassion and empathy. Agreement may come with caution. Tone, facial expression and body language can make the difference between harsh criticism and gentle warning. These have become more important for me, and for those that I interact with about Druidry. In text based communication we are all too often misunderstood. Emojis can help, but they’re no replacement for the expressiveness of voice and gesture.

The impact of social media algorithmically is one aspect of the changes we are responding to, but there are many more. Social media has also, in recent years, subtly changed how groups are seen in our feeds. Groups we are already members of were not shown as much, as the platforms had begun asking group admins to pay for promotional posts. People were then seeing promotional posts for groups they were not a part of more often, and not seeing the posts from groups that they had already joined. Between 2007 and around 2024 Facebook groups that I am an admin for, like Druids Down Under, grew naturally and gathered together people with similar interests, who were welcoming of diversity and enjoyed robust and polite discussion online. We also worked on events and projects together because connection was easy there. Since then, which would have been around the time that things changed with groups on social media in terms of promotions, there has been less activity, and more dispersal into private spaces that were more easily accessed, like group messenger chats, what’s app groups, Discord, and Zoom meet ups or Facetime.

Another reason for this general desire for private space has been the state of the world. Perhaps social media can also be blamed to some extent for the anxiety felt by many. The algorithms have a tendency to plunge us from feeling a compassionate interest in a post, to quickly seeing a barrage of sensationalist media reporting that might be biased or even fabricated as it tries to serve us more and more of what it perceives we want to see. A whirlpool of algorithmic content can be hard to wrench ourselves from. This can cause an immense amount of stress for the viewers. Long gone are the days when we would just watch the news for an hour in the evening to stay informed. Now, if we show a glimmer of interest, it can become our entire online world, and it is taking a toll on people’s mental health.

I have written about the anxieties I have personally felt around climate change, environmental issues, First Nations rights, and the pandemic. In my book Belonging to the Earth I have discussed how we, as a community, responded to these crises in various ways. We gathered together to share our worries and concerns in circles, finding healing through sharing ritual, divination and creativity. I wrenched myself away from the algorithm showing me shocking stories of environmental disaster in the Murray Darling river systems to go and see them for myself in person. I managed my anxieties during the pandemic about uncertainty and instability in the world through gardening and community volunteering, as well as through dance and nature journaling. My experiences are just one facet of the wider Druid community’s experience.

On a personal level, the coming to a natural end for some of those activities like dance, my work at the community gardens, and my nature journaling classes has also made me aware of how much of my time they were taking up. I loved them all, and enjoyed every moment, but in their ending I will also have more time to return to my blogs and podcasts and I am pleased to be able to, though there are still reasons to hesitate a little:

The last influence I want to mention is the impact of artificial intelligence or Ai, particularly in social media, but also its effects on how we understand value in creativity, connection and the sharing of ideas more generally. In recent years we have seen a flood of Ai generated content in every digital space imaginable. As an admin of Druids Down Under I had to opt out of having an Ai bot named after the group that was going to “spark conversation” and “add to discussions”. I immediately deleted it as I knew without a doubt it would create confusion, disconnection and probably provide misinformation. Having spent time testing the Chat GPT app for its ability to discuss Australian Druidry with any accuracy, I knew it would not be able to handle the nuances of an emerging spirituality where there are various view points held, and no hard and fast rules than could be summarised. It would answer questions about the Southern Hemisphere wheel of the year with wildly inaccurate confidence, and suggest sources for information that simply did not exist, sometimes citing my own work with incorrect sources. In fairness, Chat GPT has seen some improvements since then, and is more likely to use real sources, however, there are still inaccuracies, and concerns about its environmental impact alone would be reason enough to not want it to be a part of our Druid group online. More to the point, Druidry is about connection, about inspiration and creativity, and chat bots offer us none of these things.

Ai is also a threat to creators of all kinds and creates reasons to hesitate in sharing online at all. Ai art and text generation has also been discouraged in Druid groups, with the OBOD members group going so far as to ban it completely due to a flood of Ai posts in the group. Ai is seen as stealing art and intellectual property from our creatives – our bards – whether they work with visual art, poetry, music or information. Images of fake Celtic knotwork that show no understanding of the complexities of the art are a stab to the heart of anyone who has actually taken the time to learn how they work. Humans don’t tend to learn how to do things well and incorrectly at the same time. That is a telling attribute of Ai content, yet it steals from those who have learned these things in order to make its output.

Numerologically, 2025 was a 9 year, and 2026 is a 1 (if you add the numbers together). It is said amongst those who follow numerology, that this is the end of a cycle and the start of a new one. Last year we let things go to make way for something new this year. I feel that could be very true. I am noticing a big shift in how people are facing this new year. With wars and turmoil around the world causing great harm and anxieties for those who feel helpless in the face of it; with our online spaces becoming fragmented and social media a space we can’t trust as we used to; with Ai threatening creative work and the role of our Bards; we are moving towards something new, something different. The world feels chaotic, overwhelming, too much. It can feel destabilising to exist in a world where you feel you have no control – not over global issues, not over our social meeting spaces online, not even over the sharing of our own art and our very ownership of it. In the face of all that, people are turning within, or to closer connections For myself, I am letting go of the activities that have held me for the past few years, and am embracing something new coming in.

I have noticed also that there is a turn towards joy, and unrecorded moments of fun, silliness and the humour of the absurd. I have personally been shifting my own creative work in that direction. For the last 15 years, my main work has been in creating jewelry with crystals and resin clay sculpted designs. They are a joy to create, and through them I have shared stories of healing, empowerment, compassion, peace and connection. They help the people who wear them to bring positive change into their lives. For many years I shared them online through social media and my website alone. But as the changes in social media affected our Druidry groups, they also affected pages for small businesses. I can’t afford to pay for advertising – attempting to compete with Temu and Amazon would be insane. So instead, I took my handmade, one-off designs to in-person markets. I met people face to face. I heard about what people needed, and I have noticed a shift.

Last year the market group that I show with mainly used the theme of “Crystals, Creatives and Mystics”. It was perfect. There were crystal vendors, healers, tarot readers, and all kinds of mystical creative wares. Then, towards the end of the year, after their own online difficulties caused by much the same issues as I have had on social media, the group decided to work with a new theme – the bizarre and weird. The other markets would continue, but this new market – also in-person – would have a theme of strange things, unique things, odd, silly and curious. It sparked something in me and I feel it might not just be me.

My business name is Forest Spirit Jewelry, and at one of the recent markets a customer had said “oh they’re so lovely, but I don’t wear jewelry. Do you ever make sculptures?” and it had stuck in my head. So I started to experiment. What emerged seemed to be just what I was looking for, and what others have needed too. I made some lovely serious altar pieces, and I also made weird, silly little forest spirit creatures that fit the new market theme. I gave them cute faces, sometimes smiling, sometimes grumpy. I giggled as I made them. I named most of them Bob, because the absurdity appealed to me. Hey, look I grew up with Monty Python, ok?

I started learning more about sculpture and enjoyed the mirth of other creators as they experienced “cute aggression” where you love something so much you just want to squeeze it. See You Tube creators like KaypeaCreations, Carys Cuttlefish and PricklyAlpaca for a bit of what has been inspiring me. I called my creations “Little Dirtbags” because they were brown and looked like they were made of Earth. I gave them crystals to decorate them and a bit of moss and told people that they could tell them their problems and they would compost them. I found so much joy in helping people laugh and let go of some of the heavy feelings we are all holding. The joy was the gentle healing that was needed, for me as a creative, and for the people who chose to take them home. A very different kind of Earth healing, but Earth healing all the same.

In Druidry, in public space, I am usually quite serious about what I do, so this was a bit of a stretch for me to bring this into my work. It still feels a bit new there. Anyone who knows me, however, will know that in my private life, I can be quite silly. I joke around a lot. I enjoy absurdist humour, silly voices, acting out skits and am known to quote Monty Python and similar kinds of comedy. I like to make fun of what I also take seriously. We named the one and only large event we have held in 2018, the “Druids Down Under National Gathering” because we thought the abbreviation DDUNG was funny for goodness’ sake. It wasn’t shit, but like any good dung, good things grew from it. In 2024 at the OBOD Assembly, my Grove performed a play of one of the stories of the Maginogion as a comedy. We had such a good laugh being ridiculous. This is not a new way of being for me, it’s just not one I have felt brave enough to show a great deal publicly until now. I’ve recognised how healing it can be.

In a world of uncertainty and chaos, we can at least embrace the chaos of humour. We can choose to be in control of our joy. That feels to me like the response that is coming. If our communication online will be stifled, we will find other ways to communicate – in private, where we are in control, not an algorithm. If media can’t be trusted because of Ai slop and sensationalism, we will turn up in person, face to face and see for ourselves. If our art is going to be stolen, we will make it unique and not put it online at all. We will pass things from hand to hand. We will memorise and not record. We will value the original much more than the copy. We will find joy in the absurd and mirth in our sharing of it together. Our silliness and joy will not take away from our being Druids. It’s a part of it, and it’s a part of the healing we all need.

If you like my little dirtbags, you’ll have to come see me in person sometime. Find the Crystals, Creatives and Mystics Fair for more information.