In this beautifully imaginative conversation, I’m joined again by Zoë from The Runa School to explore how ritual and play can come together to help us navigate grief, transformation, and everyday life. You can listen to our first conversation on the Kind Business podcast over here.

Zoë shares how her work designing ritual games grew from her studies in rites of passage and her deep interest in how we can bring the sacred and the playful into conversation. We talk about the ritual game she created for me, The Grandmother’s Quilt, and how this experience opened a space for healing, intimacy with the land, and a sense of being witnessed in grief.

Together we explore:

• How ritual games bridge devotion, creativity, and play

• What it means to be seen and held in moments of transformation

• The healing power of simple, repeated acts of presence

• What it looks like to root into community, ancestry, and the land

• How we might bring ritual and reflection into workplaces and everyday life

Zoë also shares her vision for the future of The Runa School: bringing ritual games into collective spaces and reimagining our relationship with technology, storytelling, and community care.

Zoë Ackerman is a co-founder of Mycelios, a game design studio, and Runa, a school dedicated to teaching and learning animist ritual. Zoë draws on over a decade of experience in participatory design, rites of passage, and embodied storytelling. Originally from Charlottesville, Virginia, Zoë now lives in Curitiba, Brazil, on the ancestral lands of the Guarani, Kaingang, and Xetá peoples.

You can find Zoë’s work and sign up for her newsletter at runa.school.

You can join our weekly glimmer sessions here: https://griefmagic.com/blessings/

and this is the link to my business group program Rooted: https://pinkwellstudio.com/rooted/

Thank you for listening!

Love,

Yarrow

Enrollment for Rooted 2026 closes this Sunday, January 25th, and I would love for you to join us. In this short episode, I’m sharing what to expect inside the program and a few new updates that make it an even more beautiful experience.

You’ll hear about:
🌿 The six themes we’ll explore together in Rooted
✨ The new series of short pep talks you can download and listen to anytime
🕯️ Two new Sunday co-working sessions for peaceful focus and accountability
💛 The new six-month payment plan and sliding-scale options (starting at £50/month)

If you’ve been thinking about joining but haven’t said yes yet, this is your moment. Rooted begins on Saturday, February 1st, and I can’t wait to get started.

👉 Learn more and enroll here: https://pinkwellstudio.com/rooted

Today I want to talk to you about something really simple but surprisingly life-changing: the emotional support bag.

I started this practice in 2021, after my friend Francis died. I was deep in grief, and at the time I was mostly homebound due to an accident and lockdown. My days blurred together and it was just hard to keep track of things. I noticed that the things that could give me comfort, like a soft blanket, a lip balm, my stimmy toy or a good smell were always scattered around the house. So I began gathering them into a small zip pouch that I could keep near me at all times.

Over time this became what I call my emotional support bag. It’s small enough to fit in my backpack, but full of things that make moving through the day easier. I know this is super simple, but its also great magic.

Here are the two links I mentioned:

Weekly Glimmer sessions https://griefmagic.com/blessings/

Rooted group program https://pinkwellstudio.com/rooted/

Thanks for listening!

Love,

Yarrow