Ali Isaac's Blog: H A G , page 2

Hope is Green

H A G is free, but sometimes I send little gift-posts to my paid sybscribers.

Good morning! It is now the 7th day of the 25th year of the 21st century… how futuristic and science-fictioney does that sound?

I don’t do New Year Resolutions, or reflections on the previous year, or round-ups of all my successes/ failures/ books I’ve read etc etc etc… You were with me for much of it as it happened, you don’t need your noses rubbing in it again. But I do want to say thank you for keeping me company; yo...

The Eternal Sway of the Sun

Céad míle fáilte, a hundred thousand welcomes to H A G! I’m Ali Isaac, and this email comes to you from the intersection of female senescence and Irish landscape, both mythical and natural. My book, Imperfect Bodies, will be published by Héloïse Press in the spring of 2026.

Most posts are free, but sometimes I send little gift-posts to my paid subscribers.

On this morning of winter solstice, the rain is falling and the wild wind is raging around the hill where I live, and I think of our ancestors...

Waking with the Winter

Céad míle fáilte, a hundred thousand welcomes to H A G! I’m Ali Isaac, and this email comes to you from the intersection of female senescence and Irish landscape, both mythical and natural. My book, Imperfect Bodies, will be published by Héloïse Press in the spring of 2026.

Most posts are free, but sometimes I send little gift-posts to my paid subscribers.

Child of Summer

Until a couple of years ago, I always thought I was a Summer person. My body shrank from the cold, I feared the dark, and I coul...

Moving Through the Dark Together

Hi friends!

I just wanted to jump into your mailboxes to make a personal thank you for being with me throughout the past year. This email is going only to you, who have committed to supporting my work. I appreciate you being here.

So how do we move forward from here, through the brink of darkness and global chaos into a better world? One way is to do it…

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Plant Generosity & Negative Reciprocity

Céad míle fáilte, a hundred thousand welcomes to H A G! I’m Ali Isaac, author, mother, historian and guide. My book, Imperfect Bodies, will be published by Héloïse Press in the spring of 2026.

My posts are free but sometimes I send out little extras to my paid subscribers.

Berry Confusion

The first time I encountered elderberry, I didn’t know what it was. I was mooching around the old abandoned site of Fore Abbey, when I almost stepped on a cluster of tiny purple-black berries held on a spray of de...

Braving the darkness in search of light

Céad míle fáilte, a hundred thousand welcomes to H A G! I’m Ali Isaac, author, mother, historian and guide. My book, Imperfect Bodies, will be published by Héloïse Press in the spring of 2026.

Most posts are free, but sometimes I send out little extras to my paid subscribers.

The call came, as I had hoped it would, to journey with friends into the heart of the Morrigan’s cave. Since 2017, this has become a tradition for me that I look forward to, one that I have missed only twice: once during Cov...

Welcome to H A G

Hi! I’m Ali Isaac and I founded H A G back in 2022 when I was going through the trauma of perimenopause. I had no older women around me whose wisdom I could draw upon. The only information available to me was medical, and limited to symptoms such as hot flushes and loss of libido. What I was experiencing was so debilitating and overwhelming that I thought I was losing my mind. My doctor offered me antidepressants, but I didn’t want to go down that route.

I had been writing about Irish mythology ...

Ali's Gone AWOL

Céad míle fáilte, a hundred thousand welcomes to H A G! I’m Ali Isaac, and this email comes to you from the intersection of female senescence and Irish landscape, both mythical and natural. My book, Imperfect Bodies, will be published by Héloïse Press in the spring of 2026.

Most posts are free, but sometimes I send little gift-posts to my paid subscribers

Autumn gifts from the wild hedgerowFemale Fallowing

Something happened in July. I tried four times to write a piece for August’s newsletter, but ...

July | This is not the post I'd planned on writing, but I have some very exciting news!

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez 🇨🇦 on Unsplash

I can remember my very first experience of reading as a child, when letters on a page suddenly swam together into words and made sense. I was six years old, and it was a comic based on the Disney movie, Robin Hood; the images had no speech bubbles, but a short paragraph beneath each one. After that, there was no stopping me; three years later I was reading Richard Adams’s Watership Down, Joy Adamson’s Born Free, Rosemary Sutcliffe’s Tristan and Iseult, M...

Of Change and Inertia

A wild rose; as a bud its petals are pink but our native dog-rose will unfurl into a white blossom. Its Irish name is Feirdhris. It is associated with love, purity and healing © Ali Isaac

I woke up this morning with my head full of all the usual plans of all the things I need to do. But once I’d got Carys up and off to school, and I sat down with my breakfast and thoughts, I felt the energy and the will drain away. Not even a coffee-kick could shift the malaise.

Unfortunately, I am no stranger to ...