season 3, episode 2 - (re)definitions with farai harreld
our guest for episode 2 is farai harreld! farai is a postpartum doula, folk herbalist, urban homesteader, writer, and caregiver. she was born in zimbabwe, raised in botswana, and currently living and loving in kaw and osage land in so-called kansas. her passions include empowering people to build community and reclaim simple herbal medicine as their birthright. farai derives joy and connection to her ancestors through handwork, she is a freelance writer and covers topics ranging from plants, motherhood, food, race, fashion, gardening and much more. you can find her over at @thehillbillyafrican on instagram or at faraiharreld.com. her patreon folk herbalism for everyone can be found here.
each season we read a new book about witchcraft practices around the world with the #snortandcacklebookclub, with a book review by ash and the occasional guest helping us close out the season. this season's #snortandcacklebookclub read is brujas: the magic and power of witches of color by lorraine monteagut.
take the fibre witch quiz at ashalberg.com/quiz. follow us on instagram @snortandcackle and be sure to subscribe via your favourite podcasting app so you don't miss an episode!
seasons 1-3 of snort & cackle are generously supported by the manitoba arts council. you can support future episodes of snort & cackle by sponsoring a full episode or transcript.
transcript
snort & cackle - season 3, episode 2 - farai harreld
ash alberg: [Upbeat music plays.] Hello, and welcome to the Snort and Cackle podcast. I'm your host, Ash Alberg. I'm a queer fibre witch and hedgewitch. And each week I interview a fellow boss witch to discuss how everyday magic helps them make their life and the wider world, a better place.
Expect serious discussions about intersections of privilege and oppression, big C versus small C capitalism, rituals, sustainability, astrology, ancestral work, and a whole lot of snorts and cackles. Each season, we read a new book about witchcraft practices around the world with the #SnortAndCackleBookClub with a book review by me and the occasional guest helping us close out the season. Our book this season is Brujas: The Magic and Power of Witches of Color by Lorraine Monteagut.
Whether you're an aspiring boss witch looking to start your knitwear design business, a plant witch looking to play more with your local naturally dyed color palette or a knit witch wondering just what the hell is a natural yarn and how do you use it in your favorite patterns, we've got the solution for you.
Take the free fiber witch quiz at ashalberg.com/quiz and find out which self-paced online program will help you take your dreams into reality. Visit ashalberg.com/quiz [upbeat music fades out] and then join fellow fiber witches in the Creative Coven Community at ashalberg.com/creative-coven-community for 24/7 access to Ash’s favorite resources, monthly zoom knit nights, and more. [End of intro.]
I am here today with Farai Harreld. Farai is a postpartum doula, folk herbalist, urban homesteader, writer and caregiver. She was born in Zimbabwe, raised in Botswana and currently living and loving in Cah and Osage land in Kansas.
Her passions include empowering people to build community and reclaim simple herbal medicine as their birthright. Farai derives joy and connection to her ancestors through handwork. She is a freelance writer and covers topics ranging from plants, motherhood, food, race, fashion, gardening, and much more. You can find her over at @thehillbillyafrican on Instagram or at faraiharreld.com.
Hi Farai!
farai harreld: [Sighs.] How are you?
ash alberg: Good, how are you?
farai harreld: Good, good. My dog chose this moment to stand up and walk very loudly out of the room. [Both laugh.]
ash alberg: Of course, classic.
farai harreld: Exactly. Thank you for having me.
ash alberg: Thanks so much for doing this with me. This is going to be fun.
So, tell us a bit about you and what you do in the world.
farai harreld: Oh, I was actually trying to define that with myself in the shower yesterday. [Ash giggles.] I was just like, man, what is it that I do? Because I used to be a domestic violence, sexual violence and human trafficking advocate.
That was, what I did out of … a little bit in college and afterwards, and then I had my daughter and did that, took her to work with me for about six months.
ash alberg: Oh, my goodness.
farai harreld: And then I left that job. And I began to stay at home and in the process of that … So I thought I was a stay-at-home caregiver. That's what I identified as. And then I found myself doing things in my community and writing and started teaching more about plants and it's melded into this whole thing now where I teach herbalism but I stay home with my daughter, but I leave and go teach.
And I'm still involved in my community. So overall I'd say I'm a writer, content creator with several other hats, herbalist, doula. So lots of … a lot, I wear a lot of hats, so I don't think I could define that actually.
ash alberg: I think that's a good thing though. I'm into the like, having multi-passionate approach to life in general. And then also just to like how we create livings. And sorry, go ahead.
farai harreld: No, I used to say that I was a Jill of all trades [Chuckles.] But now it's exhausting having to explain to people all the multiple hats that I wear. So sometimes I just say, writer,
ash alberg: Yes. Yes.
farai harreld: Call it that.
ash alberg: And I feel like, ‘cause I, I came across you on Instagram. That's how I found you. And you're … like, your content creation is beautiful and stunning, but I feel like part of what I appreciate the most about it is like your photos are very pretty. And also the captions are really … like, they're well thought out, they're longer form, which is my preference, and there's always just like really lovely thoughts in them.
And I find especially on Instagram lately in particular, but just generally, like it's not a platform that encourages particularly nuanced conversations. There's literally character limits to how much we can write.
So it's, there's only so much that you can go into anything and it's, you can have conversations with folks, but that's why, it honestly, it's a big part of why I love doing the podcast because you can talk to somebody for two hours and really dig into things, whereas on Instagram, if you were to actually read out a longer interaction on Instagram, it would still be maybe four minutes worth of speaking.
farai harreld: Thank you for saying that because that is not at all how I feel about my Instagram. [Ash laugh-snorts.] So the fact that how it's [indistinguishable], it's, “Oh my goodness.”
I tried to … Instagram for me started out as a hobby. I was just sharing bits and pieces of the things that I was interested in for representation reasons. I just didn't see a lot of Black people, a lot of women of color, a lot of those people being featured in the kind of slow living herbalism lifestyle that I engage in.
And so I was like, I'm going to share it. And so that someone like me, who's looking for someone like me will find me. And then, it's expanded over time. And I really want … I try … my biggest thing about Instagram is that I have to be authentic. And so ...
ash alberg: Yeah.
farai harreld: … this is going to sound terrible, but I've tried to put in the least amount of effort possible because I feel like if I try to make this huge big thing, which it totally is, it's a viable source of income for a lot of people and it's provided and given me so many opportunities, but I feel like it would drive me bonkers if I tried to like, figure out what was hip and what was cool and what was in.
So I don’t, I try not to do any of that and I just try to share what is inspiring me at the moment. I should probably share a lot more than I did. I'd probably get paid more if I did. [Chuckles.]
ash alberg: Maybe, but I feel like also I had a thing with especially Instagram, but just in general, like all the social media platforms, they're just like constantly changing things up. Their business model, they don't want you to be able to figure out, oh, this is what we do. And then, oh, you don't have to stay on top of whatever they're doing.
So they're constantly changing it up. But then you end up in this game of either you have a full-time job running a thing, like trying to run your social media channel, or you have somebody who has other things that they're doing in their life and all that they can do is try and plug in as best as possible.
And I've definitely set up boundaries myself with social media. Like I, everything on my grid these days is prescheduled. It's extremely rare that I'll post something like native to the platform. And it's just because I have so much other shit to do.
Like I'm not, I don't get paid for content creation. Yes, it's part of my marketing plan, but like the vast majority of my income is not coming as a direct result of an individual post that I am posting on Instagram.
So I like, and I'm not an influencer who's being paid a certain amount for a specific post. So if that's not what you have, then you have to figure out ways of, how do you fit this in amongst all of the other things that you need to be doing in your day to day?
farai harreld: Yeah. And not get jaded or incredibly influenced, in the negative or the positive. I just kept, I was reminded a bunch of … in my postpartum period, after I had my daughter, I was so vulnerable. I have, I actually have a video about it on my Instagram, where I just shared about how incredibly vulnerable and tender I was.
And social media provides a space for people. And if you are not in a healthy environment, you can get wrapped up in the more negative aspects of it, depending on your personality. But I see a lot of people struggle with feelings of inadequacy or jealousness, enviousness, and the lifestyle, and just expressing to people.
And that's part of the reason why I want to be authentic is to be like, no life is gnarly, and homes are messy and social media only gives a glimpse of what people want you to see, and it's not necessarily the reality. And you find that … witchcraft and just the commodification of everything is that people think that, “Oh, if my practice doesn't look like this pretty picture on Instagram, then am I even a practitioner or …?”
So it's just there's all these things about social media that I loathe, and in the ways in which they affect our more sensitive sensibilities, but then I also really love it for the community and the opportunity that it's given me because holy crap, it did change my life.
ash alberg: Totally. Yeah.
I think, that's the thing, right? It's … that's why I haven't left Instagram. Facebook became a space where it's just too unsafe of a space. And but with Instagram it's no, there's still, you can still make really beautiful connections and build community and have good interactions with folks.
And if you're able to build whatever boundaries you need in place as well, then it can be most of the time, a fairly, a fairly positive experience. And that doesn't only mean that it's like only light and fluffy, right? That's also light and fluffy and surface level is not the best way that we interact with humans in general.
So yeah, there's going to be times where on Instagram, somebody might call you in for something, or there might be something that's like a heavier topic that needs to be discussed. And there are ways to do that on the platform that are that are positive in terms of like actually giving people space, the trust that we, that they can grow, right?
We're, it's, we're asking you to say this, or we're addressing it with you from truly the good intent of, we believe that you have the capacity to grow. Not in the way that often it can be, which is like either like performative allyship or I'm going to prove that I'm a better person by calling out this random person who you have no interaction with or understanding of what's their life.
There's that balancing act that I think often we, as a general human group, we don't always … we tip back and forth and how we deal with the balancing act but …
farai harreld: Yeah, there's definitely nuance, right? There's nuance to things. And social media, it lacks nuance sometimes. I feel like people are unable to recognize each other's humanity. Especially when it comes to being performative and the calling in.
I don't know, people just struggle with being held accountable. And my friend gave me the best vocabulary for it and I've completely forgotten it, but it was like … oh man, I wish I remember how she phrased it, but basically it was like, we need to hold ourselves in account.
To hold ourselves to better standards, so that now when the time comes, when you've caused harm, you're able to be present and sit with that. Because so many times in my experience, when people cause harm, their first reaction is shame. And then that shame is defensiveness, anger, retaliation. And instead of just being like, oof, man, I really messed up. I am not perfect. How can I fix this?
Like when I fuck up, my first instinct is not shame, because I recognize that I'm a human being, I make mistakes. I have a set amount of experiences in life that has, that's given me some grace and some shortcomings. And so the only thing that I can do is learn to be better.
And so I've just left … I don't even know when I left shame behind, but it's just allowed me to be a better friend, a better partner, a better mother.
ash alberg: Yeah, I think …
farai harreld: I don't even know how we got to this topic.
ash alberg: [Laughs.] I'm not sure either, but yeah, it feels, I feel like that's a really key thing is, yeah, when you screw up, like we are humans and the way that we learn is by fucking up and trying again and getting better. And that's consistently how we grow and whether you're learning a new skill or you are learning a new vocabulary around like systemic oppression, in both cases, the way that we learn is by being exposed to new things that we didn't previously have exposure to and taking them in and figuring out like, oh, I didn't do that right this time. Okay. Let me try again. And it’s …
farai harreld: Exactly.
ash alberg: We need to trust ourselves that we can try again and that we should try again. And then also, like as community, we need to give people … I don't always necessarily agree with this. There's certain things where I'm like, nope, you just done fucked up and you should go away now.
I recognize that's not necessarily the most helpful way of like communal non-harm methods. I'm not the nicest human all the time though. But like in, in theory, what would be best, I think, is trusting that other people can also … like not where we just like softly talk around an issue so that people stay comfy and whatever, but …
farai harreld: … actually face …
ash alberg: Yeah, face it, address it, name it directly and do it in a way that is giving people the compassion to try again. Like, it's like when people fuck up pronouns, I'm like, my issue is not when you fuck up pronouns the first time, or even honestly, the sixth time.
Like as long as you're trying and you're putting the effort in, that to me is more important and says more than whether or not you get the pronouns. My issue is if you have been told what whatever pronouns are supposed to be, and you choose to continue to not do it correctly, that is where we now have a problem, because now you're showing that you don't have any, any desire to be a better human. Go away then. [Laughs.]
farai harreld: Yeah, no, again, that's where the nuance comes in, is, are we seeing people's humanity? And when, if someone was to mess up someone's pronouns, how the person who's messed up handles it is what makes the difference, right?
If they're like, if they're just like, oh, I don't believe in those things. Those are, the things are too hard for me. It's oh, now you're dismissing my humanity. How now am I supposed to make room for yours?
ash alberg: Yes, totally.
farai harreld: But if someone has messed up and genuinely is trying and … it's something that we all had to learn. I remember I practiced on … what did I practice on? I practiced on just calling things that I gendered they/them until it clicked for me.
ash alberg: That's a really smart method.
farai harreld: And then with my daughter, to teach her, I just didn't gender things for awhile and then she got it. We like to joke and call her the … this is completely normal developmentally, whenever they're going through some kind of thing where they just have a rigidity in their thinking. And so sometimes she'd really struggle with it and we’d call her the GOP, call her the Republican party. [Ash cackles.] We don’t care about the GOP.
You need to understand that boys can …
ash alberg: That's amazing!
farai harreld: … wear dresses if they want. She was just … and it wasn't even things that she was seeing in our home. It was just the way that she was seeing the world. Because at home, she had friends that were wearing … who are gender fluid in their attire.
And she, and, but when she'd go out in the world, she'd be like, she’d see that girls are like this and boys are like this. And so when she'd come home and we'd be like, no, actually things can be however people want them to be in. So she had to wrap her head around it. And I was like, man, think about the people who kind of don't have the environment that we've been providing for her, and they're struggling with those thoughts.
It's just mind boggling to me, but it's the whole thing about nuance and understanding humanity and understanding exposure and brain chemistry and how people were raised and how they were cultured, how they were loved. There's so many things that go into what makes people human and how they interact with other humans.
Yeah, it's nuanced.
ash alberg: Yeah. I think also a thing that people forget about regularly online, which makes it even more ironic, is that cultural and by cultural, like literally the culture of the country or location that you are will then influence the way that you are seeing and speaking. And so like when people will start complaining about “Oh, you use the wrong acronym for something,” or like “You're using the wrong language.”
It's like a … there's generational differences in the way that we use language. We, if somebody says this language is hurtful, then okay, you have to listen to that and also if they're using language that up until this point, they thought was okay then likem it's not that they were intentionally trying to cause harm.
With like caveats, right? There are certain words that have been not okay for a long period of time so you can't use that excuse anymore, but that, and then it's, “Oh, the correct wording is this.” And it's okay, that correct wording is often coming from like very elitist academic circles.
farai harreld: Exactly.
ash alberg: So like now you've got like classism and elitism in play and also it’s like classist and elitist within your country. And this person is in … like on an entirely different continent. The language that they are using is different. Also the language that you are conversing in is not their first language. So there's so many nuances within it.
farai harreld: Oh yeah. Being born in, being raised in Botswana, growing up Zimbabwean, and I grew up very incredibly Christian. And I don't know if being gay is probably still illegal in Zimbabwe, but in Botswana it was illegal my entire childhood. And they've only now begun addressing that in parliament and things like that.
But you know, I was raised homophobic and I remember thinking cruel things while being queer and having feelings about girls. [Ash snorts.] And oh man, I'm possessed. ‘Cause that was the thing.
ash alberg: Yeah, yeah, yeah!
farai harreld: That’s what I was told, that I have people who are gay had demons in themselves. Like I got a super gay demon in me.
ash alberg: Oh, my goodness. That's why … which like then, but this is also where you're literally living proof that the messages that we receive, even in formative chunks of our lives, do not need to be the things that we then continue living our lives by it later. Like you are now …
farai harreld: Exactly!
ash alberg: Yeah! Like you're raising your kid to understand gender fluidity, which like, if you were to have stayed with the same mindset that you had as a child, like there's no way. Like you would be the little GOP running around.
farai harreld: Exactly. And so I, yeah, the … okay, this is the thing about nuance, right, is that people forget that people change. Right? I am, I was blessed to be able to come into myself and discover myself and figure myself out. And I think there's power in me going, I was homophobic and I was all these things ‘cause people like to get where they've come from.
So now when you come across a homophobic person, you're like, I hate this person, they’re the worst person in the world. And I'm thinking, no, think about what they've come from and where they've come from. And what has made them this way.
And I'm not saying you have to befriend them and be their besties and even try to be the one to save them. But I'm just saying we all come from somewhere. We've all had a bunch of unlearning to do.
ash alberg: Yeah.
farai harreld: Yeah. I'm not trying to justify it, homophobes’ behavior, at all.
ash alberg: Yeah, no, but I think it's also … yeah. Yeah. And it's … it is just, it's additional unlearning, right?
Like I was talking to a friend recently about something entirely different, but when you're repeating patterns in a relationship and it's not only do you have to figure out how to unlearn and redo that pattern within that relationship, which at this point is now very solidly cemented, and that's hard in and of itself, but then you're also needing to unlearn the exact same modeling that you received from your parents.
You're needing to do double duty on something that already is hard in just a single version of it. And that doesn't mean that you can't, right? Like I see my friend actively working on it, but you also have to give yourself some grace and some compassion as you are learning and working on it. Like it's not just going to happen overnight, even if we wish that it could happen overnight.
farai harreld: And that, yeah. And that you're imperfect and that people are imperfect, right? There's no sense of superiority in like achieving the most enlightened title. [Chuckles.]
ash alberg: Yeah. And I feel if you are calling yourself the most enlightened, then there's like some solid narcissism going in play there.
Okay, so now I'm like extra curious about how ritual and magic has played itself out in your personal life, especially being raised in like super Christian households back home. And yeah, like how does all of that play out for you now?
farai harreld: So it's super interesting. My dad was American.
ash alberg: Okay.
farai harreld: Born and raised Kansas farm boy who moved to Southern Africa and met my mother and subsequently my stepmother who were colonized. The country that I was born in and the country that I was raised in, they were colonized by the British so Christianity was one of the main religions. It was the main religion.
And My dad was non-Christian. My dad was a hundred percent an animist. So he never went to church with us. Did not care for anything. He was straight up outdoors, men in the woods convening with great spirit is what he called god. Earth, universe.
So my dad was incredibly spiritual. And I would even say had his own ritual and magic, but because of toxic masculinity, that's probably not what he called it. But now as an adult, that's what I identify it as. And I … like holy crap, the church, the churches that I grew up in, the church.
I grew up in one church, the Salvation Army. It's a big deal everywhere else, but in the United States.
ash alberg: Yeah.
farai harreld: In specifically in Botswana, which is where I grew up, I went to as Zimbabwean Salvation Army church. And even though the … so church is like an all day thing. So all day Sunday, and then Wednesdays, there's probably Bible study.
Reflecting back, that was some of the witchiest shit I ever probably did.
ash alberg: Yes! [Chuckles.]
farai harreld: Because all of that African, the Zimbabwean spirituality that Christianity had snuffed out and turned it into a pseudo-Christian thing, right? All the rituals that we had at the time, all the rituals, the music, the chanting, the singing.
ash alberg: Yes.
farai harreld: It fed me so much. Everything else felt wrong. Like the scripture, I always remember just feeling intrinsically that I didn't belong. I even taught Sunday school and I was like, bro, I'm not the one, but okay.
ash alberg: Indoctrinate all these kids a liiittle sideways.
farai harreld: Yeah. And so I remember all I would do is just pull out colored Bible coloring pages and let the kids color ‘cause I was like, I have nothing to teach them. The only thing that resonates with me is the golden rule, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” And I was like, I don't even think that's in the Bible.
But I remember everything else. The drumming, the music, the singing, the hymns. [Sighs.] The convening … like on Easter, we would … it was basically a séance. We would all come together, we'd have a sleep over in the big old church hall. We would cook together. There would be fire. We would dance our fricking butts off. I miss that part of it so much.
And so I think I had a lot of magic and ritual that came from church that I didn't even know about. Those are the things that I just loved, but nothing else resonated with me. And then when I was nine, my cousin gave me the first Harry Potter book. [Ash cackles.]
It was like, [whispers] “What is this?”
ash alberg: Did your parents know that you had it?
farai harreld: Yes.
ash alberg: OK.
farai harreld: Yeah, yeah, yeah. We were very big readers. My dad was a voracious reader and I was too. And holy cow, I related so much to Harry’s story because I had an evil stepmom who was very cruel to me and my mom had died when I was young.
So I definitely felt unseen and unheard. And the idea of this world that I could go to, where I could belong was just, oh, I just dived into those books. And back then when they came out, they had, JK Rowling was still writing them. And so I had to wait.
ash alberg: I did the same thing. Like we were literally like aging with them. I still am like, my letter to Hogwarts got lost during the wars and just the owl went sideways and that's why I don't have my letter.
farai harreld: On my first email address, my email was Wizadora because my family called me Wizadora because they knew I was just obsessed with all things witchcraft. And thankfully my step-mom didn't … a lot of Christian parents were like, “It's the devil,” and they didn't let their …
ash alberg: That's why I'm like, did they know you had the book? [Laughs.]
[Both talking at the same time.]
farai harreld: She didn't care enough, thank god!
ash alberg: Yeess. [Laughs.]
farai harreld: So that was probably the first time I ever played with the word “witch,” right? Because another thing, being where I'm from, is that witchcraft was so demonized by colonization that witch doctors, which back in the day, which I am descended from, but back in the day witch doctors who were vulnerable members of society now, we're forced to the shadows and it was looked as evil and people who engaged in using the services of sangomas, which is what we call them, were people who were stuck in, who were seen as stuck in olden ways and were consorting with the devil.
So we were, I was raised to not … to think, to be scared of them and to not think that they were reputable members of society, even though they existed, they lived on the fringes. And to be fair, some of them even probably were snake oil salesmen, as an adaptation to their ostracization in society. And so a lot of them, they were probably scamming the mess out of people. And a lot of sangomas did do very toxic things, dangerous things.
But I think I see that personally as a … the downside to, one of the downsides to colonization.
ash alberg: Absolutely.
farai harreld: The down … they, yeah, I don't need to go any further than that. But I think, I don't even know if I answered the question. So were you asking what was my first, what ritual and magic were like for me as a child?
ash alberg: Yeah. Like how did it come into your personal life and how do you use it now? So like coming from that to now as …
farai harreld: Okay. So then, I left the church around 16. I had become disillusioned after some traumatic experiences. And I was just very angry. I got angry at the world and probably … I don't even know when I fully embraced the title of witch.
I was in my twenties. When I first started dating my now person, my partner, who I'm married to, he was raised in the church. And I remember I hadn't been in church for a long time. And I remember telling him like bruh, this may not work out because you’re real wholesome and I'm a demon. [Ash cackles.] I remember saying that. I was like, I don't believe in the things that you believe in and as it goes, he was just like, nah, nah, nah, this is where I want to be at.
And I made him question things. And in me making him question things, it made me question what I really and truly believed in. And my dad was stepping more into his role as my father and we were engaging more now that I was older and he shared his beliefs with me and I shared my beliefs with him and I had some experiences with I guess someone who talks to spirits and just started to uncover more about my ancestry and what resonated with me and what felt right with me.
And as I delved deeper into herbalism and plants and plant magic, I just developed this comfortable animist relationship, which I guess could be categorized as witchcraft. But it's more ancestral to me even before then.
ash alberg: Yeah, absolutely.
farai harreld: Yeah.
ash alberg: I love that a lot.
So random question that's not related to that technically, but do you find living … ‘cause I'm not sure like quite bioregional-wise, like where Kansas and then Botswana would be in terms of relationship to the equator, but is there a fair overlap in the plants that you are able to find now in Kansas? They're quite different.
farai harreld: Not at all. No, where I'm on … Botswana was south of the equator and then Kansas is straight up not anywhere near, so no, there's not a lot of flora and fauna overlap. But one of the things that my dad taught me was just in order to become one with the place, you have to become one with the flora and fauna.
And he did that so well, wherever he went. You can never really feel alone when you know the plants. And I, I never came … even though I'm half American, I never came here until I was 18. So when I first moved here, the culture shock, and the culture shock among everything else, was sooo much.
And I really, truly didn't feel like I belonged. Until I started going outside and convening in nature and working with plants until I knew the flora and fauna of my neighborhood, I didn't really feel like I belonged. And so I get that from my dad. He did that so well.
ash alberg: I think that's a really important thing for all of us to think about. Like for me, my, the, my ancestral homelands, and then where I live now, like bioregion-wise, they all are in a similar … of earth. And so there's quite a bit of overlap and growing wise, I'll have had an affinity with a certain plant my whole life and then find out, oh, it's actually like a very important ritual plant back in one of the ancestral homelands.
And so it's okay, that makes sense. But I always wonder for folks where their bioregions are very different, how like stepping in and making relationships with those plants would feel? And I think that you've highlighted something really important, which is that the way of building relationship with new land is to really understand the beings that grow there.
And I think it's also a really important way of, if you're going to be moving around the world and navigating with the world, then a way of just always respecting whatever land you are in is to really tune in. And now that I think about it, I'm like, oh yeah, whenever I travel, like the thing that I always find interesting is connecting with plants that make a point of showing themselves over and over again.
Like when I went to Iceland the second time and was traveling around, like the crowberries just followed me everywhere. And it was like, okay this is an important plant here. And just like building connections with plants that I … I'm sure crowberries would grow further north than where I am here, but it's not a plant that I'd come across prior to that.
But then like building a relationship in a fairly short period of time, felt like I was like honing in and tuning into the land that I was traveling around more than if I was just like oh, look, this is a pretty landscape.
farai harreld: Yeah. And for me, having parents of two completely different races and places of birth and things like that, oftentimes just because of the way this world treats and sees people who are of multiple races or cultures or some that whenever, when someone is mixed, I just feel like there’s not a place in the world for us.
A lot of people that I know who are mixed, we struggle with identity crises. Oftentimes we feel like we don't belong, either because we're ostracized from either side. There's always something that has to do with us trying to figure out where our home is.
And so I think plants remind … the, having a relationship with plants have always been like your home is wherever the hell your feet are because you're on earth and you belong here.
And so that was major key for me. And I'm grateful for it.
ash alberg: I love it.
So how do you view your relationship with ritual and magic and especially with animism and plants in your work? And I guess in like the many things that you do, ‘cause yeah, you are like caretaker to your kiddo and then also do like a bunch of other things.
farai harreld: No, to be honest, I wish I had more of a ritual and more routine, but I don't. I think right now in for this place that I'm in, in my life. And I've said this to multiple people, whenever I get asked this question, I think the most magical thing that I'm doing right now is uncovering who I am and myself and honestly mothering my daughter.
It seems like the most magical shit that I've ever done in my life. I feel that I am breaking so many toxic ancestral cycles by choosing to parent the way that I parent. So, I like, I feel like I'm doing a lot of … because there's a lot of violence and rage and pain on both sides, both matrilineal sides of my family, that I've been working to uncover and come to face.
And I feel that in every day in choosing to be different and choosing to do different and choosing to not let the way that I was raised affect me, I feel like I'm doing some pretty fuckin bad-ass magic every day. I try to observe the seven holy days, like Imbolc and all those other things, but sometimes in the day to day, I wish I could. I wish I paid more attention.
I have ADHD. So I'm like, yeah, I'm ready for Imbolc this year! [Ash laughs.] I'm ready. We'll have all these things. [Ash snorts.] And then the time comes and I'm like, yeah. Nope. [Ash laughs.] We’re gonna make corn bread. We're done.
So one day I would love to be more settled and have more ritual, but right now I feel like me existing right now, me … there's things that are, that I have incorporated into my life, like the ground, the things that I already do every day, choosing to put plants on my body and use plants and interact with myself and interact with my family, the way that I do or take care of the animals that I take care of or steward, certain things, the way that … even mother myself, mother my friends. Those, I think, right now are the most holiest rituals that I engage in.
And in one point in time, I know that I'm craving it and I'm trying to build it and one time I will have more, more ritual and more space, but I'm not there. I hope that makes sense.
ash alberg: It absolutely does. And I feel like, yeah, I fully agree. I remember at the beginning of COVID, ‘cause I don't have kiddos myself at this point of time. I am also highly aware that I would not be a good single parent. [Laughs.]
There are some people who can single parent and like they do an amazing job. If I was single parenting, and obviously you can't control everything, but like I would not choose to go into a situation where I am single parenting because none of us would be good for it.
Like, we would survive by the skin of our teeth. My kids would need a very solid therapy fund. It would not be good. But I do want to parent in the future, once I've structured my life in a way that gives me the time to be able to spend with them, which is not my life right now.
And I remember at the beginning of COVID just that moment of realizing, oh my god, this is really important. And in that same moment, also thinking to myself, this is the biggest fuck you to all of the shitty things that are happening, like the … to choose to raise the next generation, despite all of the shit, I feel is the biggest spell for hope for the world.
farai harreld: I agree. Yeah and caregiving of … to change the narrative of how you speak and how you see yourself in a way that's rooted more towards the love, and then also how you interact and engage with others, to me that's spell. Anytime you're changing the status quo intentionally, right, with intention, that's magic to me.
And yeah, I literally would not have made it through this past year without my ancestors and the spells and the caregiving of my friends and my loved ones because I solo parented for a year. And it was hell. I knew even before being a stay-at-home parent that I knew immediately that single parents were Olympians. Gods.
ash alberg: Yes!
farai harreld: Immediately. And so I knew that I wasn't built for that life. And then it got sprung on us, and then I had to do it for a year and I would not have made it if it had not been for the spells and the care and the love of my friends and my ancestors.
ash alberg: Yeah, you really do need a village to raise a child. Like you need community. I like, my thing is like, I hit points in my days where I like, I'm just tired or whatever. And I know, and when I'm dealing with other people's kids, I'm great because I have the capacity because I'm not with them 24/7 to be able to give them the … my patience and time and all of that.
But when it's hour after hour after hour, and you just hit a wall, I know that I need to be able to be like, to basically tag team off and just say …
farai harreld: Yeah.
ash alberg: … the kid did this thing. I need you to deal with it. I need to go and take a break because in this moment I will not parent.
And I want to know that more often than not, I have the option to say, okay, we're getting a break beyond just being like k, you're going to go and see grandma and grandpa on Sunday. I'm like knowing in my head, okay, Sunday, I get a break. Like I need to know that it's a random Thursday at 3:00 PM and I need a break and I can get that break, ideally.
farai harreld: Yeah. Yeah, it definitely takes a frickin village. And in the West, that's not very common and which is why we see so many people struggling oftentimes.
ash alberg: Totally.
farai harreld: So I'm just grateful that … I just, I say it a lot, I just think that my mom was like one of my supreme, both my mom and my dad are supreme ancestors and they're just out here orchestrating shit for me to make sure that I was okay. [Ash laughs.] Because I don't know if I would have made it, it was really rough.
But yeah, no, I'm grateful.
ash alberg: So what's something that you wish … let's like, switch it back over to your own experience as a kid. What's something that you wish you'd been told when you were younger about magic and ritual in witchcraft?
farai harreld: I wish that sangomas and nyangas and the witch doctors, that their stories had been told more and the roles that they played in our society. And I later on found out that I had family members that were what we would consider to be witch doctors. I wish I had gotten an opportunity to meet them and to learn more about the role that they played in the, in our society.
And I wish it wasn't as demonized as it is, I think. It was so fricken cool to learn the plants and the rituals and the ways in which they engaged with the land. And I'm still holding out faith that one day I'll have that opportunity, but that's probably one thing that I wished from youth is that. “No, you're not alone in feeling that this isn't your fit because your fit is right over here.”
ash alberg: Yes. Is that something that like, I know that a lot of, particularly when it comes to the traditional teachings from what would be considered witch doctors or the healers, that especially across Africa, that they're primarily oral traditions.
So is that something that you would be able … are there books that you could be finding or would you need to be able to go back and find someone and be learning from them?
farai harreld: I don't know if there's any documentation. Honestly speaking, that's not probably from an anthropological super elitist perspective. I think most … any tradition like that is passed down orally and your apprenticeship.
ash alberg: Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. I hope that you have time at some point to be able to go and find someone and dig into it a little bit.
farai harreld: I keep bugging my brother. My brother still lives back home and I keep telling him, I need you to find me …
ash alberg: Yeah!
farai harreld: … something that I can learn from!
ash alberg: Yesss.
farai harreld: And then he's, “Oh no, I know this person that, they're a farmer.” And I'm like, no, think witchier. [Chuckles.]
ash alberg: Yeah. [Laughs.] Farmer, like maybe? But I need it a little further.
So what's next for you?
farai harreld: Good question. [Both laugh.]
My partner just got back. He's been home for a little over two months and I've been in survival mode for the past year and now I'm like, oh, I can think past dinner time. Oh my gosh.
And I don't know, I'm working on a zine that I would love to get published at some point. That's probably the most urgent thing, continuing to create content, my herbal related content for my Patreon and I've got some traveling, teaching gigs coming up.
And then in terms of my practice, I would really just love to deepen it more and to do more ritual and include my little one. She understands things, like she's comfortable with saying that mommy's a witch. And she sees me do certain things around the house and she talks about ancestors and things, but I'd just like to have more tradition around it so that it becomes something that she engages in.
ash alberg: Sweet.
farai harreld: Yeah. She can choose to …
ash alberg: Pardon? Sorry.
farai harreld: Sorry, I was saying she can choose to believe whatever she wants to once she's older, but I definitely want her to see the beauty of the world through this lens more than anything else.
ash alberg: Yeah. I love that a lot that, yeah, the idea of yes, exposing them to whatever options so that then they can make a decision when they're older, but the … you're living your life through a lens that you've chosen because of the beauty that it offers and because of the benefits of it, and so to be raising a kiddo to be able to look through that same lens so that then they can find their own beauty through it, I think that's a really lovely kind of way of looking at the way that we choose to raise kiddos, right?
Not because you have to, but because the benefit of it is such that we want the kids to experience that as well.
farai harreld: Yeah, especially through, climate emergence and just raising them to be stewards of the earth and treating themselves and treating each other better than we ever had.
ash alberg: Yes. Yeah. Always doing better. I like the concept of … and I've, since I have been talking to other folks about this, I have since found that there's like multiple witchy and also especially like folks working in race relations where they talk about being a good ancestor, but I've always heard it and learned of it from my trans community where we talk about being a good transcestor because so many trans folk don't live long lives.
And so for a lot of us, then we are, we're actively working on being good transcestors because the rates and statistics are that we're going to go be going through shorter, shorter lifespans. And so you're going to be a transcestor a little earlier than other folks.
And hopefully, obviously we want that to not be the case. But yeah, it's like a little bit more urgent of a conversation within that community. And yeah, to be an ancestor who is like leaving a good legacy as much as possible.
farai harreld: That's probably, when I was a kid, I called it the golden rule. Like I remember hearing that in chapel, in school and being like, holy shit, if everyone just did this the world would be such a better place. And then when I got older and I got me a real, more realistic, my goal was to be a good ancestor.
Everything that I do towards right now is in the goal of being a good ancestor.
ash alberg: That feels like a really lovely note to leave folks on. Thank you so much for having this conversation with me. I really appreciate you taking time and chatting with me.
farai harreld: Thank you so much.
ash alberg: [Upbeat music plays.] You can find full episode recordings and transcripts at snortandcackle.com. Just click on podcast in the main menu. Follow Snort and Cackle on Instagram @snortandcackle and join our seasonal book club with @SnortandCackleBookClub. Don't forget to subscribe and review the podcast by your favorite podcasting platform.
Editing provided by Noah Gilroy, recording and mixing by Ash Alberg, music by Yesable.