There is a particular happiness in a room full of people who have come to say something out loud. A baby passed around and given her name. Two people who’ve been married twenty years saying it again — better this time, because now they know what they meant. Hands bound with cord in a garden while everyone goes quiet. These are important days, and I love being asked to hold them.
I work in the folk tradition, Celtic and Druidic. A circle drawn on the ground, the four quarters greeted, water and fire. If your family has its own words or objects — a grandmother’s cloth, a language, a prayer that was once said over you — those come first, and I build around them.
It starts with tea and a long talk. I want the names, the dates, the small stories you tell each other and nobody else. Everything I write comes out of that, and you’ll have read every word long before the day, so you can stand there thinking about your people instead of wondering what’s coming next.