81. We Belong to What We Long For: Reclaiming Lost Lifeways in the Age of Loneliness - Becca Piastrelli
Release Date: 11/01/2021
117. Cannabis-Induced Psychosis: A Mother’s Story of Love and Loss - Tara Couture of Slowdown Farmstead
Medicine Stories
In 2021 Tara and her family got the knock on their door that every parent fears most. In the days that followed they discovered eighteen-year-old Mila’s journal and were able to piece together the shocking and devastating chain of events that led to her death. Tara’s Instagram and Substack, Slowdown Farmstead, is followed and admired by tens of thousands of people. Tara and her husband raised their three daughters on their beautiful Canadian farm, lovingly tending to and butchering their own livestock in order to nourish their family and community. Deeply acquainted with the cycles of...
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116. Women Making Medicine for Healing & Connection - Kami McBride
Medicine Stories
My most beloved herbal elder and I talk about our favorite subject- women throughout time using plants for self care, family healing, and community connection. After nearly 4 decades as a practicing herbalist and teacher, and in an age of informational overabundance, Kami has seen what actually works when it comes to truly embodying herbal knowing. (including the peek at what you see when you log in to the course). Two for this episode- an extended conversation with Kami where we share our stories of Mothering Without Elders, and two free videos with Kami entitled Garden Herb Walk- meet 9...
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115. Nourishment Lost: in Culty Spaces, Self Induced, & Culturewide - Dr. Suuzi Hazen
Medicine Stories
Suuzi and I continue the discussion sparked by my last episode about culty trends in the wellness space by talking about her past with Kundalini yoga- what drew her in and, eventually, how noticing the state of nourishment of those deepest into the cult precipitated her exit. We then catch listeners up on our midlife metabolic meltdown hEaLinG jOuRnEyS and what path we’re taking forward as we continue to recover our vitality and deepen our understanding of why women’s bodies are so metabolically expensive. for this episode include an extended conversation w/ Suuz about the reaction to the...
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114. German New Medicine: A Lot of Magical Thinking & A Little Bit Culty Too - Demetra Gray
Medicine Stories
GNM is an alt health trend that has grown in popularity in recent years. It is attractive to so many (including me and my guest, once) because it acknowledges the role that emotions and trauma play in physical health and symptom manifestation, something that mainstream medicine still somehow refuses to do. But just because some aspects of an ideology are true and helpful does not mean that the entire framework is valid. Critical thinking and humility are essential tools for navigating information overload and complex frameworks, especially when it comes to health. The allure of certainty and...
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113. Elemental Inheritance: Minerals & Metals in Modern Life - Niecia Nelson
Medicine Stories
What metabolic patterns did you inherit from your parents, and what may you have passed down to your own children? Many behavioral issues, and even what are usually considered personality traits (like that of high sensitivity), can be linked to mineral imbalances and overall health. Heavy metals often accumulate in individuals due to stress, compromised metabolic function, or ancestral imprints, not necessarily always due to direct exposure. Heroic detoxification protocols should be approached with caution, as forcing the removal of metals without addressing underlying nutrient...
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112. Fertility is a State of Being: Metabolic Wellness Through a Woman's Lifespan - Niecia Nelson
Medicine Stories
Fertility is not just the ability to conceive, but is an indicator of overall health and the capacity to nurture life; it is how we extend genetic strength across time and space into generations we will never know. Pregnancy and menopause are transformative states that reveal underlying metabolic and hormonal imbalances, emphasizing the complex interplay between biochemistry, psychology, and lifestyle. In an age of rampant metabolic dysfunction, let us together find our way to renewed vitality, for ourselves and for those yet to come. course membership (extended convo w/ Niecia) Substack...
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111. Nourishing Motherlines
Medicine Stories
In which I read a few pieces from my new Substack. Bone, blood, milk, and marrow... Nourishing Motherlines is a collection of memoir-adjacent personal writings exploring my evolving understanding of nourishment (not nutrients), how my mitochondria and minerals were inherited from my motherline (and yours from yours), my hEaLiNg JoUrNeY as I navigate hypothyroid and hypoadrenal exhaustion and a host of related symptoms, what I am focusing on as I prepare to help my daughters with seemingly inevitable future health issues as women alive in the 21st century, and your garden variety midlife...
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110. Women's Bodies are Metabolically Expensive (Why Things Break So Easily) - Dr. Suuzi Hazen
Medicine Stories
Chinese Medicine holds that women’s bodies are 10x harder to heal than men’s, as our reproductive system is biologically much more precious and metabolically more intensive to maintain. In this conversation my good friend, third time guest, and Doctor of Chinese Medicine Suuzi and I catch up one year after we both underwent severe energy loss to share how we’ve rebuilt and healed. We talk about shifting away from the mindset of achieving “optimum human health” (an illusion that contributed to our health crises), working and mothering in a state of total burnout, how our childrens’...
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109. Loving Ourselves Home: Finding Sanctuary in Herbal Medicine - Kami McBride
Medicine Stories
The times are unprecedented and there is no template for the future. We all feel this, and we feel the overwhelm of information, influence, and opinions. Herbalism, as it always has, offers us sanctuary from everything vying to take hold of our attention and life force. Not so that we can check out in an endless fog of self care, but so that we can be truly present and embodied as we navigate this time of rapid and radical change. The plants call us home to ourselves. Kami’s Free Workshop (week of 3/3/24 only) Kami’s Free Webinar (week of 3/3/24 only) Kami’s revered course ...
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108. The Mythic Hive & How Bees Heal Us - Ariella Daly
Medicine Stories
Nothing exemplifies the magic of nature more than honeybees. They are insects yet their colonies are akin to a mammalian being, they produce numerous healing substances from their bodies and within their hives, and they have been revered and mythologized since time immemorial by countless cultures. Beekeepers live longer than folks in any other profession, and being in relationship with bees is deep medicine for the spirit in these frazzled times. Let us relearn ancestral ways of tending and listening to bees so that we may maximize our chances of reclaiming a vibrant and thriving Earth....
info_outlineIt is through land that we find ourselves. It is through lineage that we return to ourselves. It is through community that we expand ourselves. In this age of disorienting change and fracture, let us wander within our daydreams of another way of being.
TOPICS:
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A Western suburban childhood- television, processed food, malls, and fear of nature’s dangers
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Evolutionary Mismatch Theory: our human bodies were not made for these times
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We are living in the Eremocene: The Age of Loneliness
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The medicine of women’s circles and the two questions that should be central to each gathering
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The collective yearning for ritual and embracing the awkwardness of not knowing what you’re doing
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Repercussions of the Burning Times
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We do this reclaiming work for our descendents, knowing we may not reap the fruit of our labors in this lifetime
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Listening to what the soul of your home wants
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Connecting to lineage with food and folklore
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How an offering of food from a stranger saved Becca’s ancestors’ lives
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Connecting with our ancestors in Mythic Time: what stories from your lineage are ever happening?
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The echoes of the electroshock therapy Becca’s grandmother underwent & how writing Root and Ritual completed an ancestral storyline
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Musings on women in the 1960s, twilight births, the rise of consumerism and isolated living
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The world we were born into is gone: the end of the Pax Americana and the unraveling of culture and collapse of institutions
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We need to grieve as a culture so that we can be responsive to what’s next
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Your body is sacred land
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Parenthood and postpartum in the modern age
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Mothering as ancestral reverence
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Calling in energy from unexpected sources
RESOURCES:
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Becca’s Instagram
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Medicine Stories Patreon (podcast bonuses!)
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My website MythicMedicine.love
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Take our fun Which Healing Herb is Your Spirit Medicine? Quiz
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Medicine Stories Facebook group
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Mythic Medicine on Instagram
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Music by Mariee Sioux (from her beautiful song Wild Eyes)
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A Hunter Gatherer’s Guide to the 21st Century: Evolution and the Challenges of Modern Life by Heather Heying and Bret Weinstein
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The Millionth Circle: How to Change Ourselves and The World: The Essential Guide to Women’s Circles by Jean Shinoda Bolen
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My interview with Toko-Pa Turner, Medicine Stories podcast Episode 41 The Dreaming Channel and Remembering Ourselves Home
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My blog post Ancestral Voices, Women’s Weariness, and the Illusion of Linear TimeFamily Constellations
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Becca’s interview with Megan McGuire on the Belonging Podcast: Mothering as Ancestral Reverence
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Becca’s interview with me on the Belonging Podcast: Motherhood, Grief, and the Grandmother Hypothesis