New Deal: ELDERING WELL: REWILDING THE BROKEN PATH by S. Kelley Harrell

S. Kelley Harrell's ELDERING WELL: REWILDING THE BROKEN PATH has sold to Jon Graham at Inner Traditions. ELDERING WELL is about the need for grounded animistic elders in modern Western culture and why we don't have them. It explores how to fulfill that calling by tending the broken path through a direct relationship with nature in order to become fit ancestors. S. Kelley Harrell is also the author of RUNIC BOOK OF DAYS.

Harrell: “When we sit with these multiple points of rejection of our kinship to Nature, we’re left with investigating why…this lack is the broken path, and in the gap of that brokenness to our present is every cultural wound. It is the heart of our disconnect and devaluing of each other. It is our traumatic disjoint from the wisdom of our well Ancestors, and the disrespect of elders and descendants. When we sit with those rejections we also find little to no space held for our sacred selves. When we can’t locate our divinity in that gap, we realize that our settler-centric systems and institutions intentionally propagate the brokenness, and our unconscious biases as folx raised in those systems set us up to, in turn, unconsciously exacerbate the wound.

"We can protect land and resources. We can open ourselves to experiencing them not just as beings with consciousness, but as family, with whom we share interwoven wellbeing. We can directly provide support to the people and organizations who protect Nature. We can improve overall quality of life for all beings by supporting leaders and policy that give everyone access to fair emergency support, clean water, nutritious food, safe shelter, education, medical care, and mental and emotional support. These acts are all doable ways to tend the broken path and reforge animistic connection."

“ELDERING WELL is such an important book for our times,” says The Rights Factory agent Natalie Kimber. “We face insurmountable challenges with societal division, grief and trauma, and inevitable climate disasters. We’re not born with the tools to see ourselves through these things—we were supposed to have elders to give us these skills. Rewilding our broken path means healing our sacred bond with nature, and that healing brings skills for the future. I am so proud to see this book coming into the world. Kelley has brilliant wisdom and the grace to help us achieve these goals.”