The vision for Red Earth Roundhouse has arisen out of deep ancestral healing and also claiming the land I live on as home. 

When I was feeling the sense that I was stepping into my menopause process for real, I felt the rumblings and took a journey to New Mexico.

I stayed in a little ochre red, round casita in the mountains of northern New Mexico that had beams circling around the ceiling skylight opening, where I could see the sun, stars, and moon. I realized it was like a modern-day Pueblo kiva, only as a guest house. 

Out the window, with an expansive view down the valley, there in the distance I was stunned to see the Pedernal, a flat-topped mountain that indigenous peoples consider to be sacred. The mythical Navajo Changing Woman was born on this mountain. Every spring she is reborn and emerges as a young woman. She becomes a mother in the summer. In the fall she becomes her menopausal aspect, and in the winter she turns into an old woman, only to be born again in the spring.

I immediately saw the connection. This little red round house with a hole to the sky and a direct view of the menopausal Changing Woman (to me) Pedernal became my menopause temple. I’ve come back various times throughout my own changing woman process.

The roundhouse inspired me to look at other examples, and I landed on the roundhouses of my own brythonic Britain ancestors, before the Romans invaded, bringing along their style of square-building architecture that we still have today. 

There is a primal feeling in my body when I’m in a circular structure. A circle symbolizes the interconnection of all living things. There are no sharp edges.

Intrigued by this concept, I want to create a sacred roundhouse gathering space for community and nourishing healing. 

And the red earth? The state I live in, Oklahoma, is renowned for its red dirt. Bright, iron red. To me, feminine red. Red of the Mother Earth.

I’ve always tried to run away from Oklahoma and Kansas, where I was partly raised (born in California), but somehow my life path keeps bringing me back. It’s grounding here.

When through ancestral research, I realized my main four lineages all converged in this region of Kansas and Oklahoma, I started to feel more at home. Though the decolonizing journey of the damage my more recent ancestors have actively created in this land is another story.

So, in a nod to my ancient ancestors and their feminine wisdom, the Red Earth Roundhouse was born. Welcome, the doors are open.