At the Hearth
Sanctuary is a quiet hearth in a noisy world — a place where the inner flame steadies, where you can pause at the threshold of your own life and remember what has always been yours.
It is the soft glow that gathers around you on a dark night, the warmth of a well-loved sweater, the scent of cedar after rain. It is the tender space where your breath slows, where the noise falls away, and where something deep within you finally exhales.
Here is where you are invited to come home to yourself.
The Rhythm of Sanctuary
Rooted in the turning of the Celtic year, Sanctuary follows the seasons as teachers — the dark and the light, the fallow and the flourishing, each offering its own kind of wisdom.
Through story, reflection, and gentle practice, we return to what feels steady, essential, and true. This is a place to lay down what you’ve been carrying.
A place to wander in myth and memory.
A place to listen for your own belonging.
What Awaits You Here
Free subscribers receive the heart of Sanctuary — the Invitations and the Pauses — seasonal letters that weave story, reflection, and mindfulness through the rhythm of the Celtic year.
These writings are gentle companions for the full and uncertain days — a soft place to land when you need stillness most.
The Invitation arrives near the start of each season — a gentle opening that invites you to reflect on the season’s themes and return to what feels steady and true for you.
The Pause comes mid-way through the season — a quieter moment to notice what’s arising in your inner landscape, to listen, and to let the season’s wisdom meet your own lived experience.
The Practice unfolds through Linger, my paid circle — a space for guided meditations and embodied practices that bring seasonal wisdom into the rhythm of your daily life.
If Sanctuary is the reminder to return to yourself, Linger is the invitation to stay — to embody what you’ve remembered, and to dwell more gently within your own becoming.
Together, the Invitations, Pauses, and Practices form the heart of Sanctuary — a rhythm of reflection and return, a way of living more gently with time, with nature, and with yourself.
Like the ancient Celtic triskele — the triple spiral carved into stone — Sanctuary turns through these movements as one living pattern, reminding us that rest, growth, and renewal are not separate paths, but one shared rhythm of becoming.
Finding Your Way Home
Sanctuary is for anyone longing to live more slowly, more gently — to reconnect with rhythm, rest, and the quiet wisdom of the earth.
It may speak to you if you are a:
Writer, artist, or maker seeking renewal and creative rhythm.
Caregiver, educator, or leader who gives deeply and longs to refill their own well.
Someone navigating change, loss, or uncertainty, seeking stillness and clarity.
Nature lover or contemplative drawn to Celtic landscapes, myth, and the sacred in the everyday.
Anyone learning — as I am — to linger a while and live more gently.
If you’ve arrived here carrying grief, know that you are not alone. My hope is that Sanctuary will be a quiet resting place for you — a pause to remember what remains whole within you, and to be met with tenderness, exactly as you are.
Season after season, Sanctuary offers invitations to slow down, to notice, to tend the quiet places within. It is not only a refuge but a way of walking — a reminder that home is not something you earn or build from scratch, but something you return to, again and again.
You do not have to arrive perfect or certain or brave.
You only have to arrive as yourself.
🌙✨Céad Míle Fáilte — a hundred thousand welcomes.🌙✨
Come in. Warm your hands at the fire.
You are welcome here, just as you are.
About the Keeper of this Circle
My name is Kim West (she/her). For many years, my life circled around academia — teaching, researching, and writing about the stories held in stone and the shifting ground beneath our feet.
Then the earth moved — a fracture, a forming — and from that turning came Sanctuary: a way to gather what had broken open and create a home for others finding their way through change.
My path has led from rocks to roots, from classrooms to coaching, from science to story. With a PhD in geology, I’ve spent years weaving education, leadership, and contemplative practice into my work — and now, that weaving includes a new thread: the early, hopeful pages of my first novel. Through it all, I keep returning to one question: How do we live in rhythm with what is real and alive?
I write from Treaty Six Territory and the Homeland of the Métis in Canada — land long cared for by the Cree, Saulteaux, Dakota, Nakota, Lakota, Dene, and Métis peoples. I strive to live, write, and act with respect, reciprocity, and relationship — honouring both the land and its peoples, and acknowledging the ongoing impacts of colonialism.
May Sanctuary — and all that unfolds within it — serve as a small act of reconnection and care: an offering of gratitude, belonging, and love for the living world we share.
