81. We Belong to What We Long For: Reclaiming Lost Lifeways in the Age of Loneliness - Becca Piastrelli
Release Date: 11/01/2021
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...
info_outline 110. Women's Bodies are Metabolically Expensive (Why Things Break So Easily) - Dr. Suuzi HazenMedicine 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’...
info_outline 109. Loving Ourselves Home: Finding Sanctuary in Herbal Medicine - Kami McBrideMedicine 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 ...
info_outline 108. The Mythic Hive & How Bees Heal Us - Ariella DalyMedicine 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_outline 107. Death is the Great Healing: Reclaiming Ancestral Relationship w/ the Dead - Perdita FinnMedicine Stories
“I pray to the dead to help me remember who I am while I’m still alive.” To be in relationship with those who’ve gone before us is a deeply human way of being. Our ancestors knew that the “departed” never left, and that they answer when called. The way modern Western people conceive of the dead is a deviation that discards millennia of human knowing. Let us pray to the ancestors to help us sober up from civilization, remember what we’ve always known, and reclaim the long story of the soul. RESOURCES: Perdita’s website (book giveaway & course coupon code) by Bernd...
info_outline 106. Chronic Illness: Telling Honest Stories, Navigating the Underworld, and Tending the Roots - Sarah RameyMedicine Stories
It is estimated that half of all Americans have chronic health issues, and yet these conditions are new to the human species. What has happened? And how does an afflicted individual navigate a medical system that dismisses them and offers little help, embedded within a culture obsessed with self improvement and the hero’s journey of triumph? Sarah and I talk about the multifactorial nature of chronic illness and what has changed between generations, walking the fine line between self-responsibility and acknowledging that we’re all embedded in toxic systems that are out of our control,...
info_outline 105. Synchronicity Reveals Our Ecological Niche - Sophie StrandMedicine Stories
Healing is communal. Settle in softly for this wide-ranging conversation with my most requested guest. Sophie and I talk chronic illness and trauma, diagnosis as blessing and as hex, the theater of medicine, the aquatic nature of memory, and the entanglements of time. RESOURCES: Sophie on Sophie’s newsletter by Sarah Ramey ACE- by Bessel van den Kolk (giant trigger warning; read the book below instead) by Rupa Marya and Raj Patel by Erik Wargo by Julia Cameron by Barbara Ehrenreich (a podcast beloved by both me & Sophie) Read by Ursula K Le Guin by Karen Barad by Joanna...
info_outline 104. Your Body is Not a Closed System: The Sun, Cell Signaling, & Metabolic Wellness - Sarah KleinerMedicine Stories
The sun rules the rhythms and the well-being of all life on Earth, and humans are no exception to this rule. With the very recent (evolutionarily speaking) advent of indoor living and the even more recent advent of indoor lighting, we have inadvertently shut down the vital communication between sunlight and our cells. This is as upstream as it gets when it comes to health, and when we come back into relationship with the sun all manner of issues (insomnia, obesity, infertility, and so much more) can resolve. Let’s talk about the science behind circadian rhythm and practical ways to heal with...
info_outline 103. Midlife Burnout for Women & Why Healing Work Can Make Us Worse - Dr. Suuzi HazenMedicine Stories
Suuzi has been one of my best friends for 15 years, and our lives have taken parallel tracks recently- deeply interested in health & natural living for decades, we have nevertheless both found ourselves in total burnout at the edge of collapse in our early 40s. We share what got us here (and the irony that so much of it is doing things we truly believed were making us healthy), the current state of our metabolic/thyroid/mineral health, and our paths going forward. We hope this inspires others feeling stuck and confused- despite tremendous effort to be healthy- to quiet the outside noise, self...
info_outline 102. The Living Matrix of Fascia & the Resonance of the Heart - Lindsay CourcelleMedicine Stories
We can’t talk about fascia, the connective tissue that touches every single cell in the body, without talking about water, memory, and the quantum information that travels along this network at speeds 1000x faster than biochemical/neuronal signaling. When we bring tactile witnessing to our fascia through presence and touch, mountains move. Get ready to have your mind blown and, if you’re anything like me, to spend the rest of your life diving deeper into these subjects. RESOURCES: Lindsay on Amber on Lindsay’s Lindsay’s (use coupon code MEDICINESTORIES for 66% off) Get the 100+...
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