Valerie Sumpter

Valerie has been a lifelong native Virginia resident, raised in Northern Virginia. The first curiosity outside of the faith she'd been raised in happened in high school with a semester-long Comparative Religions elective class with an amazing teacher, and so the quest began. After witnessing a close family member's crisis of faith and their treatment by the church not long after taking that class, she started to delve deeper into the Pagan faiths and eventually dedicated herself as an eclectic witch in her early 20's.

Since then, she has attended numerous festivals, workshops, classes and trainings by respected teachers and elders, including Twilight Covening, Rites of Spring, and Sacred Space Conference. She has received Death Midwifery certification, and would like to eventually expand her training to focus on this practice in the future as a resource to the larger Pagan community and their animal companions. Her path almost always involves Kitchen Witchery in some form, and now involves learning more about the Norse pantheon and spiritual traditions.

She first attended ShadowGrove at the 2006 Beltane celebration, and hasn't left since. She has served on various forms of the inner planning council over the years, and is a founding member of the yearly Beltane retreat Fertile Ground Gathering where she runs the kitchen to feed everyone for the duration of the event. She was elected as clergy at Samhain in 2019, and is grateful to have more opportunity to serve ShadowGrove and the larger community however she can.

She is a cook, an auntie, a crafter, a cat mom, a listener, a mentor, and a doer who is happiest when helping others to reach their goals.