90: ENCORE: Amber Magnolia Hill shares a selkie story, thoughts on creativity and body

In this encore episode I'm sharing a conversation with Amber Magnolia Hill, podcastere rand plant medicine maker, for people who yearn for knowledge about herbalism, deepening ancestral connections, and remembering what it is to be human upon the earth. She helps folks to drop the cultural lies of disconnection and disempowerment, and to remember that the old ways are in our bones. Amber is an herbalist with 17 years of study and practice under her belt, and she's been growing my relationship with her ancestors for the last decade (or technically since birth, since she was lucky enough to know both parents, all four grandparents, and even four great grandparents!). I've walked with thousands of people on this path via interviews and talks on the Medicine Stories podcast and by offering hand-crafted, mythically-minded herbal medicine. Amber is also a mother, writer and podcast host. You can explore Amber's work here. Things we chatted about in this episode: the Celtic myth of the Selkie folk how Amber researched then wrote and shared her own version of the Selkie myth how she resonated with the woman who didn't feel she belong feeling the mother'daughter connection feeling the matrilineal connection of passing on of blood on love, and the aspect of the child saving the mother on ancestral lineage, and taking a healing intensive via Daniel Foor's Ancestral Medicine work (see above for resource links) being reminded of the delight of the Song of The Sea film, as well as it's precursor, the Secret of Kells film (see above for resource links) how the joy of seals is present to her, how much she loves swimming relationship with body how her relationship with her body is changing has been a person prone to stillness, really truly not being athletic, even as a child – PE class was a total embarassment yet, has always loved swimming and yoga experiences pain in back and shoulders, how helpful bodywork is for that and how excited she is to wake her body up, start working out, shift out of stillness feeling so free to have recently stopped nursing her daughter – is experiencing a while self shift relationship with creativity has always wanted to be two things – a mother and a writer shut down her creativity because of negative feedback at school with the birth of her eldest child her creativity came back, started blogging now knows she wants to write books – non-fiction about the motherline, ancestry and herbalism, and on mothers and daughters having a lifelong dream to write children's books the pleasures of children/youth-oriented books like Calvin and Hobbes and Harry Potter how herbalism requires creativity – making formulations is so specific to each person – it's a joyful and creative process loves naming medicines and working with graphic designers to realize a vision and loves podcasting – having never done it before she's finding it a fun challenge