Creative Witness is both artwork and archive. It documents a moment of relational presence, and carries its own poetic and material force. Each text is an index of contact: a trace of what moved between myself and the being, place, or phenomenon I was communing with.
Emerging from sustained attentional practice with whenua (living earth), water, trees, weather, birds, plants, and elemental forces, these writings are pure records of encounter. They arise through deep listening, sensory meditation, and the receptive state I enter when I allow the living world to speak through image, feeling, rhythm, and language.
The Witness Writings
Communion
Where the whispers of nature first found me in Susurrus, they deepen here into Communion.
These writings are the moments when I sit with the living world and listen, recording what rises in the quiet.
Each entry is a trace of that shared space, a step toward Awen, where separation dissolves, and everything returns to unity.
“Forgiveness is a way of life. Be it, act it, become it. Feel forgiveness like you feel love, pleasure, pain. Forgiveness rises up and becomes, just like anything else.“
— Rimu (Linton Park West, Rotorua), received through Witness Writing, 16 January 2025
Hawthorne
– 5 November 2025, Linton Park West, Rotorua, New Zealand.
I am sitting beneath Hawthorne, in full flower, her mighty trunk at my back.Today I offer a gift: a segment of mandarin, to match the burnt orange gown I wear,and the energy of sunlight shining through her canopy above me.
Your shadow, Hawthorne, is the only sacred space I need right now,a cast circle across the greenscape of undergrowth.Leather fern climbs your trunk, along with lichens and spiderwebs,a quiet harmony reminding me that we are never alone.
A small insect flies toward my face, then circles backon a breath of air scented with pollen and toast from a nearby house.The air is still fresh, and so I breathe it deeply in.
My lips tingle.My lower cheek vibrates gently.I imagine the sunlight through your canopy crowning my head,and the light becomes mine.
The wind picks up softly, as it always does when co-creation begins.Your bark crunches against the plait in my hair, catching strands as I lean back.Shifting, I turn to face you, the light still alive within me.
I observe you.You are made of many trunks, six, perhaps eight,climbed by ferns, mosses, lichens, and ivy.Your bodies twist together like limbs in an embrace,a spiral dance dividing and dividinginto a great spreading crown.
Your crown flows back toward the earth,greenery and maidenlike flowers almost touching the grass.And I realise, this is a toroidal flow,the energetic architecture of every living being,as above, so below.
Strands of spider silk catch the colours of light as I watch,shifting between the seen and unseen.Light pools at the tip of one leather fern leaf.Ivy climbs one twisting limb toward the sky.The wind moves your delicate twigs like antennae.Flowers shiver and dance in exquisite embroidery.The dark, criss-crossed patterns in my depth of fieldreach toward me and away,branches nodding in greeting,clothed ceremonially in green and gold.
And I ask,"Hawthorne, magnificent sacred tree of my Celtic ancestors,what heart wisdom do you have to share today?"
Hawthorne replies:
"Grow, erratically, painfully, wildly, beautifully,into the magnificent sacred being that you are.Do not shrink.I know it is easy, especially when others or eventscome along and cut away parts of your body, your limbs, your spirit.But regrow.Sprout new life in the direction of the damage.
The wounding has given you not only darkness to process into light,but also the space for new growth to emerge.We cannot grow when we are full of our old energetic belongings.We cannot grow while our past experiences still tryto shape us into a mould for others' acceptance.
We must encounter breakage in order to release.When our sacred space is cluttered,when our temple of transmutation is filled to burstingwith the possessions of others,then there is no room to grow,unless we consciously release, shatter, or explode.
And if the need becomes too great,and we still refuse to release,there is an implosion instead.Destruction takes many forms.It matters deeply how you grow,and what you refill, refuel, and recreate yourself with."
I ask,"Thank you, Hawthorne. Do you have any advice surrounding re-creation?"
Hawthorne responds:
"Do not keep rotting fodder.Allow its transmutation into soil.Let decay complete its cycleand feed the smallest creatureswho have no need of eyes to see in the dark.
Release.Let go.Return the ancient pains and ways that no longer serve you.They were only ever meant to be your soil,never meant to be enshrined upon an altar of decay,entombed within your soul and worshipped.
Let them go."
Your shadow, Hawthorne, is the only sacred space I need right now,a cast circle across the greenscape of undergrowth.Leather fern climbs your trunk, along with lichens and spiderwebs,a quiet harmony reminding me that we are never alone.
A small insect flies toward my face, then circles backon a breath of air scented with pollen and toast from a nearby house.The air is still fresh, and so I breathe it deeply in.
My lips tingle.My lower cheek vibrates gently.I imagine the sunlight through your canopy crowning my head,and the light becomes mine.
The wind picks up softly, as it always does when co-creation begins.Your bark crunches against the plait in my hair, catching strands as I lean back.Shifting, I turn to face you, the light still alive within me.
I observe you.You are made of many trunks, six, perhaps eight,climbed by ferns, mosses, lichens, and ivy.Your bodies twist together like limbs in an embrace,a spiral dance dividing and dividinginto a great spreading crown.
Your crown flows back toward the earth,greenery and maidenlike flowers almost touching the grass.And I realise, this is a toroidal flow,the energetic architecture of every living being,as above, so below.
Strands of spider silk catch the colours of light as I watch,shifting between the seen and unseen.Light pools at the tip of one leather fern leaf.Ivy climbs one twisting limb toward the sky.The wind moves your delicate twigs like antennae.Flowers shiver and dance in exquisite embroidery.The dark, criss-crossed patterns in my depth of fieldreach toward me and away,branches nodding in greeting,clothed ceremonially in green and gold.
And I ask,"Hawthorne, magnificent sacred tree of my Celtic ancestors,what heart wisdom do you have to share today?"
Hawthorne replies:
"Grow, erratically, painfully, wildly, beautifully,into the magnificent sacred being that you are.Do not shrink.I know it is easy, especially when others or eventscome along and cut away parts of your body, your limbs, your spirit.But regrow.Sprout new life in the direction of the damage.
The wounding has given you not only darkness to process into light,but also the space for new growth to emerge.We cannot grow when we are full of our old energetic belongings.We cannot grow while our past experiences still tryto shape us into a mould for others' acceptance.
We must encounter breakage in order to release.When our sacred space is cluttered,when our temple of transmutation is filled to burstingwith the possessions of others,then there is no room to grow,unless we consciously release, shatter, or explode.
And if the need becomes too great,and we still refuse to release,there is an implosion instead.Destruction takes many forms.It matters deeply how you grow,and what you refill, refuel, and recreate yourself with."
I ask,"Thank you, Hawthorne. Do you have any advice surrounding re-creation?"
Hawthorne responds:
"Do not keep rotting fodder.Allow its transmutation into soil.Let decay complete its cycleand feed the smallest creatureswho have no need of eyes to see in the dark.
Release.Let go.Return the ancient pains and ways that no longer serve you.They were only ever meant to be your soil,never meant to be enshrined upon an altar of decay,entombed within your soul and worshipped.
Let them go."
Ginkgo Biloba
- 20 June 2025, Taranaki Base Hospital- with my son in critical condition
Ginkgo said:
I share with you survival, gentleness, mental alertness, and hope that it will be okay. Everything around you is telling you this. I am placed by wind and rain at your feet, in your room, on the path you walk as you return. I carry the message of trust in life’s unfolding.
We do not need to understand why something has happened, but we can understand so much from the things that rise in our lives and hearts. What is rising in you through this? What is rising in your family?
Things that feel like destruction are often the necessary components for creation, creations of beauty and power. You will be resilient, not despite, but because of things that feel terrible in the moment. These are your teachers. These are your moments of future enlightenment hiding inside pain. These things are necessary.
You have the power to step forward and carry light through this darkness. This darkness itself is becoming hope, becoming promise. Do you see.
I answered, Ginkgo, I see, but it hurts so much.
Ginkgo replied:
Karen, birth is painful. You are being born and birthing in endless cycles. When you grow as a light being, you chose this. You are powerful enough to withstand the pain of becoming and re-becoming, and so is your family.
You are where you are right now by divine extension. You always have a choice, but you have proven your choices to be courageous and indomitable of spirit. You are a warrior of light, and the love you carry in your soul may feel like too much at times. That is so much more than enough.
Enough is not a word for what you are. Enough suggests you are only stretching to meet the task. You are the task, Karen. You are the resources. You are the energy that drives everything, and by divine extension, you are the light itself. You are the love itself. You are the power itself.
How can power, love, and light ever be described as enough. You are Everything.
I share with you survival, gentleness, mental alertness, and hope that it will be okay. Everything around you is telling you this. I am placed by wind and rain at your feet, in your room, on the path you walk as you return. I carry the message of trust in life’s unfolding.
We do not need to understand why something has happened, but we can understand so much from the things that rise in our lives and hearts. What is rising in you through this? What is rising in your family?
Things that feel like destruction are often the necessary components for creation, creations of beauty and power. You will be resilient, not despite, but because of things that feel terrible in the moment. These are your teachers. These are your moments of future enlightenment hiding inside pain. These things are necessary.
You have the power to step forward and carry light through this darkness. This darkness itself is becoming hope, becoming promise. Do you see.
I answered, Ginkgo, I see, but it hurts so much.
Ginkgo replied:
Karen, birth is painful. You are being born and birthing in endless cycles. When you grow as a light being, you chose this. You are powerful enough to withstand the pain of becoming and re-becoming, and so is your family.
You are where you are right now by divine extension. You always have a choice, but you have proven your choices to be courageous and indomitable of spirit. You are a warrior of light, and the love you carry in your soul may feel like too much at times. That is so much more than enough.
Enough is not a word for what you are. Enough suggests you are only stretching to meet the task. You are the task, Karen. You are the resources. You are the energy that drives everything, and by divine extension, you are the light itself. You are the love itself. You are the power itself.
How can power, love, and light ever be described as enough. You are Everything.
Fairy Bells - Oxalis Incarnata (Wood Sorrel)
Wood Sorrel witnesses:
"I am hidden, yet the light catches me behind the grass. Hidden in plain sight, like the love within the world.Yes, I will work with you.I am the hidden love that needs to envelop the world."
I ask her:"What else can you share with me about your energy, beautiful being."
Wood Sorrel speaks:
"Light.Delicacy.Transparency.Hard to destroy.
I will come back again and again and again and again in the garden of your life. I wish to be known, felt, embodied. I am the soft pink of the higher realms, almost too fragile for this world, but in my form, in this form, in your form, I can survive anything.
I am resilience.I am higher love.Sacred Feminine.Delicacy and power.The greatest paradox, and therefore a higher truth.I am love."
I respond:"You are love. I was told that I am love by the spirits many years ago. Can you tell me more.?"
Wood Sorrel replies:
"I am love.You are love.The world is love.
Love is everything.Without love, everything would cease to be. It is the highest formation, the fabric of the universe. Love is the unifying factor, the vibration which does not simply complete, but is.
Everything, everyone, every form in every world.You cannot be without love.You can only forget it.
I am a powerful reminder."
I ask her:"What else can you share with me about your energy, beautiful being."
Wood Sorrel speaks:
"Light.Delicacy.Transparency.Hard to destroy.
I will come back again and again and again and again in the garden of your life. I wish to be known, felt, embodied. I am the soft pink of the higher realms, almost too fragile for this world, but in my form, in this form, in your form, I can survive anything.
I am resilience.I am higher love.Sacred Feminine.Delicacy and power.The greatest paradox, and therefore a higher truth.I am love."
I respond:"You are love. I was told that I am love by the spirits many years ago. Can you tell me more.?"
Wood Sorrel replies:
"I am love.You are love.The world is love.
Love is everything.Without love, everything would cease to be. It is the highest formation, the fabric of the universe. Love is the unifying factor, the vibration which does not simply complete, but is.
Everything, everyone, every form in every world.You cannot be without love.You can only forget it.
I am a powerful reminder."
