On Making Up Myths (Or, Will the Real Cana Cludhmor Please Approach the Harp?)

There once was a poet of great skill and fame. Ireland, of course, was a country known for its poets. It’s filid.

And, Ireland was known for its banfhile, too.  The story I shall tell you is of Cana Cludhmor. Cana Cludhmor was a banfhile.

Cana Cludhmor was a woman, a poet, and a person of great skill and great renown.

Her story was folded into a couple dozen lines. Her story has left much room for interpretation. And yes, misinterpretation, too. If your passions tend toward the mythic, the Celtic, and the obscure, you might have heard that Cana Cludhmor was an Irish goddess of poetry and inspiration. You might have heard she’s the inventor of the harp.

In the great modern quest for goddesses and a deep desire to resuscitate ancient magic, someone not so very long ago spun such a tale by editing the very last line of what we find in a medieval book called Imtheacht na Tromdháimhe, or The Proceedings of the Great Bardic Institution. That modern twist on the story endures, making a woman a goddess and crediting her with the creation of Ireland’s most powerful symbol and most beautiful instrument. 

(I’m grateful to Morgan Daimler for tracing the origins of this revised Cana Cludhmor tale, which recasts the poet as “Canola,” and refers to her as inventor of the harp and Irish goddess of poetry and inspiration. I was able to find what seems to be the first mention of “Canola” - a 1916 book called called Celtic Mythology, that offered no traceable citations - but the choice to credit Cana Cludhmor with harp making and divinity seems a totally new invention.)

This is all a lot of “inside baseball,” falling into the research rabbit hole and getting into the nit-picky details that can make scholarship (and scholars!) so tedious, bear with me.

Honoring the sources of the stories and mythology we love matters. If we all pass our inventions off as “fact” we end up destroying (and colonizing) the precious, fragile traditions we purport to love.

I believe the “real” tale of Cana Cludhmor is actually even richer and more full of possibility. Even more because it’s true. Well, true in the sense that it has endured for eight hundred years, and likely long before the monks recorded it in the Book of Lismore in the fourteenth century. It’s up to you if you want to believe what the lads inscribed on vellum or you feel more comfortable with what you find on Wikipedia.

In my story, I will rob this mythic woman of none of her power, even as I strip her divine status and place the harp-maker’s tools in the hands of another. I promise. We’ll land at a different place. A place that feels a bit more human and a bit more like what we need right now.

The Poet Asked Me to Tell (and Heal) Her Story

The paragraphs above serve as the beginning of my telling of Cana Cludhmor’s story, which you can hear in Episode 13 of the Knotwork Storytelling Podcast, “How to Heal a Poet’s Heart, or The Invention of the Irish Harp.”

I discovered this story because I wanted to tell a story about the Irish harp but knew a tale of the Dagda, the Good God, with his deadly war harp was not the story for Maureen Buscareno and me to explore together. It’s an art, matching a story with a guest, and not all harp stories hit the same notes. (Sorry… the pun was inevitable!)

This great female poet, or banfhile, Cana Cludhmor is mentioned only briefly in a long, sprawling satire about the annoying habits of the bards who hang about, taking advantage of the king’s hospitality. This is a lot left to the imagination.

Below is an excerpt from the manuscript, which includes the dialog that frames this tiny scrap of story:

"I question thee, Casmael,” said Marvan, " whence originated the science of playing the harp; who was the first that composed poetry, or whether the harp or the timpan was the first made?"
"I don't know that, prime prophet," said Casmael.

"I know it," says Marvan, “And I will tell it thee. In former times there lived a married couple whose names were Macuel, son of Miduel, and Cana Cludhmor (or, “of great fame”) his wife. His wife, having entertained a hatred for him, fled before him through woods and wildernesses, and he was in pursuit of her. One day that the wife had gone to the strand of the sea of Camas, and while walking along the strand she discovered the skeleton of a whale on the strand, and having heard the sound of the wind acting on the sinews of the whale, she fell asleep by that sound. Her husband came up to her, and having understood that it was by the sound she had fallen asleep, he proceeded into an adjacent forest, where he made the frame of a harp, and he put chords in it of the tendons of the whale, and that is the first harp that ever was made.”

When you listen to the story, you’ll hear my inventions, including the curse, the bloodied hands, and the moment of healing. You’ll note how I inject motivation and emotion into the tale, as is the storyteller’s way.

This is an old story of mysterious origin–how did the monks receive this particular bit of narrative? why did they decide it worth their scribal time? But still, this isn’t a particularly mystical story, at all.

I’m all for the magical and the divine, but I think we do a disservice to the goddesses, as well as the culture, the history, and the mortal human condition, when we force women out of this world and into the otherworld to serve our desire for life on the other side of the veil.

The Work of Remythologizing is Delicate, and Important

"In order to remythologize their heroines' stories, the authors must retain basic aspects of the tales and characters and infuse them with fresh energies that comment on the age in which they were written."

Oh, from the mouths of baby academics!

That line is from my 2003 essay, Dethroning the Goddess, Crowning the Woman: Eva Gore-Booth and Augusta Lady Gregory's Mythic Heroines, which was published in New Voices in Irish Criticism 4, published by Four Courts Press in Dublin.

While I wouldn't construct a sentence like that now (and would ask my writing coaching clients to dial back the scholarly rhetoric and speak to the heart), I am proud of my young grad student self.

And I would love her to know that I am actively doing the work of "remythologizing" those beloved stories almost half a lifetime later,

Cultural Appropriation, Toxic Masculinity, and a Story from the Scottish Highlands

The Oxford English Dictionary defines cultural appropriation as: “the unacknowledged or inappropriate adoption of the practices, customs, or aesthetics of one social or ethnic group by members of another (typically dominant) community or society.”

Often, the concept of cultural appropriation involves white people “borrowing” (though it’s likely more correct to say “outright stealing”) from) the culture of Black, Brown, and Indigenous peoples. Everything from Halloween costumes to sacred ceremonies can become part of this disrespect and theft.

Cultural appropriation isn’t always a question of color and race, however. 

As an American who studies Celtic mythology and Irish folklore and then reshapes these stories, I always need to be aware that, even when I’m working with material that’s in English, I am working at the level of translation. Though my ancestors were Breens, Donovans, Kellys, and Russells, centuries in North America have crafted my perspective and my inheritance.

And yet, of course, there’s the soul-deep knowing that reaches beyond contemporary boundaries and has little to do with the nation that issued your passport. It’s an energy that comes before the modern divisions and migrations. 

This sense of being bound to what came before, even if it’s largely unknown, is what keeps the Irish diaspora connected to “the old sod.” This is also why you may be pulled to a particular culture or part of the planet, even if you can’t find evidence that your family tree was planted there.

There’s a tremendous risk of romanticizing the old world, locking a beloved place in nostalgia and forgetting it is full of the bustle and bruises of real, contemporary life. Real folks living real lives that have just about nothing to do with your imagination and projection. 

History without modern context, reviving folk practice without awareness of who lives on the land now… The work of “reviving” old traditions is rendered meaningless if you’re not curious and cognizant of today’s native residents and practitioners.

So then, how do we avoid picking up cultures, rituals, and practices and turning the ancient truth of a place into fodder for a narcissistic collage of half-understood beliefs and hobbies?

Ultimately, the way to healthy cultural appreciation is in education and exchange. It’s in respectful listening and even more respectful speaking. It emerges when we open to wonder about all that’s known, all that’s been recorded, and all that’s been lost. It’s about establishing a nourishing reciprocity between those who are born and live each day upon the land and within culture, and those from “away.” 

In this moment on the planet when multinational corporations shape tastes and trends and almost nowhere is further than a commercial airline can reach, we’re all coping with dislocation of one kind or another. We’re all called to weave the ancient wisdom with the modern. We all must merge the local with the global. 

We’re all called to hold the infinite truth that’s embedded in the earth and the language beside the lightning-fast communication and bottomless well of information (that may not necessarily yield useful knowledge).

This Week on KnotWork Storytelling: Michael Newton tells a Scottish Gaelic Story, “The Man Without a Story”

Michael Newton himself has countless stories, and he also has his PhD from University of Edinburgh and many books and scholarly articles to his name. He brings tremendous depth of knowledge and sensitivity to this story, and to all of his work.

Like me, Michael is an American who was called back to the land, stories, language, and culture of his ancestors. He has founded the Hidden Glen Folk School of Scottish Highland Heritage, which is dedicated to reclaiming and revitalizing the authentic native culture, history, and traditions of the Scottish Highlands and its diaspora.

Part of his mission, as a scholar, teacher, and community leader, is to explore “social (in)justice and decolonization from Gaelic perspectives.” These ideas came to the fore in our conversation as we followed Michael’s story into a conversation about toxic masculinity and the way Celtic symbols and Highland culture have been co-opted by white supremacist groups. 

These ideas lurk at the dark corners, existing at the opposite end of the spectrum from beliefs that Celtic culture is all about Aran sweaters and Highland games. It might be tempting to ignore “those people” and the way they’ve twisted their perception of a “rebellious warrior culture” to suit an ideology of hate, but we need to reckon with all aspects of the tradition: the hidden, the beautiful, the ugly, and the emergent.

Oh, and our conversation did take us to that other cultural phenomenon, begun by an American: The Outlander books and tv series. (Spoiler alert: Jamie Fraser is an example of the full humanity of Scottish Highlander, rather than the one-dimensional warrior stereotype that equates the wielding of broadswords with what it means to be “real men.”)

The Irish Words for Weaving that Help Us Weave the World Together

There’s a phrase in the Irish language that I have come to love. In fact, it’s a concept that I’ve always loved and lived, but couldn’t fully describe until recently: fite fuaite.

(Fite fuaite, I say? Pronounce it something like “fi-CHA foo-i-CHA.” Better yet, listen to my guest Kate Chadbourne say and describe the phrase in episode one of KnotWork Storytelling, Conspiring With Brigit.)

As author and Irish language broadcaster Manchán Magan describes it, in a piece about weaving wool and weaving words, fite fuaite means firmly interwoven, inextricably mixed up.

As human beings, we are inherently creative creatures who are here to weave ideas and visions together. As creatives who share our work with others, we are part of a great weaving that perpetually draws the world together. The point of this life is to create and connect, to weave new energies with the eternal cycles of nature.

Oh the boldness of such a statement in times like these, but it’s still something I believe. Regardless of the great unraveling that we see–environmentally, socially, and psychologically–there IS hope that art and love and conscious recreation can sew us together. 

Woven together. Again. For the first time.

The Why of the Weaving. The Why of Stories, Mythology, and Folklore.

This week, we released episode 10 of KnotWork Storytelling. 

Two months into sharing these stories and guests, weaving these themes on the public stage, and watching my creation wrap its way around a small sliver of the world, I am freshly aware of why I am investing myself in stories from centuries past. And why I will keep inviting guests and listeners to continue on this journey with me.

Whenever we turn our gaze to folklore and mythology, I think it’s essential to ask “are we just looking backwards to avoid the pain of the present and future?”

If this KnotWork Storytelling project becomes focused on stories “merely” for the sake of escapism or romanticism, I’ll be tearing the vital roots from the mythology.

If I stick too closely to the original texts in order to stay true to my academic roots, the life force will drain out of these tales.

If I twist these tales to suit modern (and American) sensibilities, I will have wandered into cultural appropriation and the perpetuation of colonialism. 

The goal is to balance all these elements – the original material, the personal passions, the spiritual resonance, the cultural tides, and more. The goal is to weave all these together and stay in integrity.

It’s no easy feat in this age, when misinformation and misattribution are rife and attention spans are limited. It’s doubly hard as an American born person who can only rely on memory, images, and others’ stories and poems to stay connected to the land that sourced these tales.

And still, I hope to manage the trifecta: entertain, inform, and (the element that excites me most) inspire.

How the Stories from the Past Inspire Us Today and Tomorrow

“Inspire” is probably the toughest element of that entertain/educate/inspire formula that I learned in my content marketing days. It is too easy to make “inspiration” into something too flimsy, too lofty, or too ill-defined.

Ultimately, however, I think inspiration is the most compelling, necessary work a creative person can do.

I turn to the Irish language again, this time to Old Irish, and the word imbas, inspiration. (Modern Irish’s word for “inspiration” is inspioráid, which, as Manchán Magan describes in his book, is functional rather than poetical, and works on the page rather than everyday life.)

There’s another Irish phrase I want to offer you: imbas forosnai, It speaks of “inspiration that illuminates.” 

I think we need to be inspired to face the great challenge and source of heartache that is woven through our modern lives: a sense of alienation from self, spirit, land, the ancestors, and cultural memory. I think that (re)discovering stories from centuries ago can give us access to those missing pieces and can illuminate the way forward.

So many of the troubles of today can be traced back to a sense of disconnection. To continue this weaving metaphor and the concept of fite fuaite, we might say that our individual and collective suffering can be traced back to tears in the fabric of self and society.

We all suffer when we cannot see that we’re inextricably woven with one another, with the ancestors and indigenous people who came before us, and with the ecosystem of the planet.

Weaving Us Back Together, Story by Story and Stitch by Stitch

The latest episode of the KnotWork Storytelling Podcast is called The Girl Who Defied Expectations.

This story, written by me, Marisa Goudy, is inspired by a piece simply named “A Story,” found in the Irish Schools’ Folklore Collection from the 1930s. It was collected by a student named Annie McLaughlin, as told by her father John Joe McLaughlin for St. Mary’s National School in Buncrana in County Donegal.

The original tale, found at Duchas.ie, offers a retelling of a traditional story of three women who have been disfigured by endless work, carding, spinning, and weaving wool. It’s the story of a “useless girl who lived happily ever after.” 

In this version, I imagine the scene in which the father, John Joe, tells the story to his daughter Annie. (There really was a woollen mill in Donegal in the 1930s where they wove carpets for Buckingham Palace!) In this retelling, details have been added to the original fairytale, which is an adaptation of a Brothers Grimm story.

My guest for this episode is Nicole Burgess, a coach, psychotherapist, and podcaster who also happens to be a phenomenal weaver and fiber artist. In our conversation that follows the story, we talk about the weight of expectations, the pressure to be “useful,” and the enduring power of handcrafting. 

A Saint Patrick Story You Probably Haven’t Heard

When you have a storytelling podcast about Celtic mythology and Irish folklore and March comes around, it’s inevitable: the Saint Patrick’s Day episode.

Seeing as Patrick is as much a folk hero as he is a patron saint of Ireland, let’s establish the basics first:

• Patrick’s birth name was Maewyn Succat and he was born in Wales circa 386 CE.

• Patrick  was abducted and brought to Ireland as a teenager and was enslaved for six years before he escaped home across the Irish Sea.

• Against his family’s wishes, Patrick eventually returned to Ireland on an evangelical mission, but he was not the first person to bring Christianity to the Irish. That credit goes to a fellow named Palladius (and “Happy St. Palladius’s Day!” just doesn’t work on a Guinness ad).

• Rather than remembering him for driving out snakes and using shamrocks as teaching tools (both associated with the “made up” kind of myths), you might think of him as antislavery crusader or at least as the author of an early Christian slave narrative

• Per America Magazine (a Catholic publication), “Saint” Patrick was never canonized and isn’t actually a saint (see reference to “folk hero” above!)
  
  

Knowing all this, I admit I have never had an easy relationship with the man. The legend of the man looms taller than the truths, and I always resented the stories that equated Patrick and his proselytizing as inherently “good” and the ways of the pre-Christian Irish to be inherently primitive and bad.

(Though clearly the practice of slavery was inherently bad, and, in light of that part of the story, I do regret being quite so flip about “Saint P.” The role of slavery in Irish history and society is something I’m still working with and explore in greater depth in Mongfind’s stoy in episode 2 of KnotWork Storytelling, The Forgotten Story of Ireland’s Forgotten Goddess-Queen-Witch.)

Saint Patrick Always Seemed Like a Difficult Person to Have Round to Tea

Here’s how I described Saint Peter in my book, The Sovereignty Knot, in a chapter called “On Running Over a Snake”:

You know the one about Saint Patrick driving the serpents out of Ireland, of course. Nice yarn, that one. Thing is, there hadn’t been any snakes on the island since at least the last ice age. Herpetology and geology aside, in the metaphorical realm where this stuff really matters, St. P. was credited with striking the first blow against paganism, bringing the new Christian faith that would all but eliminate the old beliefs that were native to that land. He was there to raise his crozier against Mother Ireland and her people’s serpentine faith that looped round and round with the endless cycles of the seasons. He was there to change history and create the Ireland we know today. He was also there to lay the foundations of a particular kind of patriarchal dominance that would hold the country in thrall for well over 1,500 years.

Saint Patrick and his missionary friends came to Ireland and changed the story that people had been living for millennia. They weren’t the first guys, nor were they the last, to destroy a sacred feminine image and use it for their own purposes. 

That book came out in 2020, and while I hold just as tight to my feisty feminism, I seem to have a softened a bit when it comes to Saint Patrick. In fact, I wrote a story for KnotWork Storytelling that more than gives him the benefit of the doubt:

Bishop Patrick of Armagh wasn’t quite called a saint yet, but he surely acted as if he’d already won the title. Though no one would ever call him the life of the party, he was a kind enough man who tended the soul of his people according to the new codes that came down from Rome.

Listen to The Christians and the Pagans: The Unlikely Friendship of Oisín and St Patrick

In episode 8 of KnotWork Storytelling, you’ll hear the tale of a pagan hero named Oisín who left his companions, the warriors of Fianna, and followed a fairy woman named Niamh to her home in Tír Na nÓg, the land of eternal youth.

After three hundred years, Oisín returned to Ireland and found that a man named Saint Patrick had arrived and brought along a faith called Christianity that changed everything.

The story of the relationship between Oisín and Patrick is inspired by Lady Augusta Gregory’s story from her 1904 book, Gods and Fighting Men. Lady Gregory, the famous folklorist of the Celtic Revival drew her inspiration from the tales found in Acallam na Senórach/Tales of the Elders of Ireland, which is a compilation of four different medieval Irish texts.

This story is written by me, Marisa Goudy, and performed by my guest Kevin Michael Murphy. In this retelling, I dare to soften the ending offered by Lady Gregory, focusing instead on the friendship that might have existed despite Oisín and Patrick’s religious differences. Rather than the usual bitter lament about the end of the magical Celtic world, which was part of the yearning inherent in the late 19th/early 20th century movement often called the Celtic Twilight, I invite listeners to consider all the ways that ancient Ireland is still very much alive.

Image: St. Patrick and King Laoghaire from Boston College’s Great Irish Hall, Gasson 100

The Goddess Macha and the Men Who Suffer the Pains of Childbirth

There once was a Celtic goddess, a fairy woman, a woman of the Sidhe named Macha. 

Her story sets the stage for the greatest epic in Irish mythology, the Táin Bó Cúailnge. This story is often remembered for its curse, but really, it's the story of a birth.

Here’s the most basic version of the story (you can hear it in depth over on the KnotWork Storytelling podcast): 

Macha left her place in the Otherworld and decided to take a human lover for a year. She became the woman of the house and made only one request: “tell no one about me.” Unfortunately, Cruinn couldn’t keep his good fortune a secret and when he went to the harvest festival at Samhain, he bragged that his new wife could outrace the king’s fastest horses. 

Spoiler alert: Macha won. She won even though she was nine months pregnant and gave birth the moment she crossed the finish line.

Enraged at being treated so cruelly, Macha lays an infamous curse upon all the men of Ulster: In the moments of greatest need, the fighting men of Ulster shall be struck down with the pangs of childbirth for nine days and nights.

Macha exits the story immediately afterwards and her fate is unclear. She left her imprint upon the land, however. The place where the race was run and the babes were born was called Emain Macha, meaning the Twins of Macha. This is the place of modern Armagh in Northern Ireland’s County Down.

Yes, Men Can Suffer the Pains of Childbirth, Too

As I said, in Episode 6 of the KnotWork Podcast, The Birth of a Heroine, I tell you my own extended version of Macha’s tale. And then I discuss the story with my friend Barb Buckner Suarez, a brilliant childbirth educator and the host of the Birth Happens podcast.

Barb is way more impressed by the power of the birthing person than she is by the astounding athlete who could outrun a herd of swiftest horses. Call it an occupational hazard or call it the simple, miraculous truth: the fact that birth happens is always the most awesome thing of all.

It’s no wonder that, through our modern feminist lens, we see Macha’s greatest triumph in the delivery of healthy twins. Over the centuries, however, Macha was remembered for a very different reason: that curse.

Depending on whether you were of the nine generations of Ulstermen who were incapacitated by the curse or whether you were a member of the opposing army, you would like have seen Macha in a different light. But, even the warriors from Munster or Connacht who might have benefitted from the Ulstermen’s weakness and won some battles as their opponents lay writhing in pain, probably weren’t cheering Macha’s legacy.

Think about the nature of the curse and millennia of human nature… The warriors were not paralyzed or struck blind. They didn’t get the shits or bleed from their ears. No, the men were cursed with pains that would only have belonged to women. Surely that double hit of emasculation and unimaginable pain would have made those guys wish Macha had just threatened to take all their fingernails. 

How a Two Thousand Year Old Myth Supports the LGBTQ Community Today

It only seems fitting, that a story with a unique, gender bending twist would give space for Barb and me to talk about gender, inclusivity, and the recognition that birthing is not strictly women’s work. 

I love the way Barb describes her journey toward more inclusive language and why “pregnant person” is a good choice. We talk about how we can continue to embrace the fullness that is held in “mother” and “father,” even as we affirm the experiences of trans folk and other members of the LGBTQ who are giving birth and need to be held by language, too.  

The story of Macha and the Curse of the Ulstermen was written down in the Metrical Dindshenchas (“The Lore of Place Names”) sometime between the 11th and 15th centuries and probably recounts stories first told in the first century BCE. Though we didn’t have a chance to really get into this during the episode, it’s remarkable that this particular tale, which is about a woman giving birth, would give us an opportunity to look at birth as an experience shared by all people, regardless of gender.

Yes, there are deep elements of misogyny in this story (the fact that a pregnant woman is forced to race, the fact that suffering women’s pains are the worst curse at all) but it’s these very terrible and strange elements that allowed it to endure. And now, in our hands, the story can become something new and powerful. What once seemed preposterous - men, suffering the pains of birth?!? - is now part of lived experience as our understanding of gender expands and trans folk are able to explore the fullest expression of being.

Once again, this is why we come back to mythology and folklore. We’re not seeking some “simpler time” or an imaginary realm. We’re looking for all the tools we can to understand this current moment and do better as we step into the future.

Wait, But the Episode (“Birth of a Heroine”) Has a Totally Gendered Title, Doesn’t It?

Guess what,  heroines aren’t necessarily women and heroes aren’t necessarily male. 

In The Heroine's Journey: For Writers, Readers, and Fans of Pop Culture, Gail Carriger dives deep into what distinguishes the journeys of the heroine and the hero in a way that’s based on the construction of narrative, not just biology and acculturation. She makes great points about how heroines and heroes are determined by their actions and situations, not by their gender.

Carriger outlines the Heroine’s Journey in a way that will be familiar to those who have spent time with Joseph Campbell and Christopher Vogler. Her list of  “Heroine’s Journey Basic Beats” begins with “The Descent”: 

• Familial network is broken

• Pleas are ignored, resulting in an abdication of power

• Withdrawal is involuntary

Keep an ear out for these elements in Macha’s story and you’ll notice what a remarkable example of the heroine’s journey this story is!

Power and Reality in the Midst of Fantasy: A Conversation with Novelist Kelly Braffet

But really, what would they teach in the college seminar about your life’s work? 

This was one of the “not exactly serious, but maybe” questions we pondered when novelist Kelly Braffet and I sat down for the latest episode of KnotWork Storytelling. 

Kelly is a fabulously talented writer and a damn good baker. Everyone who has picked up a copy of her latest book The Broken Tower, its prequel The Unwilling, or her previous novels knows the former statement is true. As a recipient of one of her holiday cookie packages, my family and I can attest to the latter.

The conversation you hear in “Power and Reality in the Midst of Fantasy” is a chat between friends. It’s also a conversation between two writers who love stories, the power of story in capital S sort of way, and tend to think deeply (overthink?) just about everything.

A Pandemic Novel that Never Mentions Viruses or Masks

When you  pick up The Broken Tower, I think you immediately realize it’s a pandemic novel, even though no one in this story world would understand virology or the sense of insecurity that comes with empty grocery store shelves. (They’d know that many diseases are deadly and some healers can help, though their powers tend to come at a price. And those who never worried about food supply never shopped for it and those who have worried about where their next meal is coming from couldn’t imagine the abundance of even the “emptiest” modern supermarket.)

So many of the hardest feelings we all came to know too well are part of these character’s everyday conversations:

”Why is everything horrible?” Ida said, and Korsa was shocked to see that her eyes were filled with tears. “The orphan house was horrible. The streets are horrible. This entire place is horrible, except for us. What's the point of living? So we can experience more horribleness?”

“The point is, Korsa said gently, “ to try to make it less horrible.”

Kelly’s response when I read this deeply difficult but immensely true passage was: “Oh, that is so pandemic.”

And yet, somehow, this book in which horrible things happen to people (none of whom are totally good or totally bad) is comforting somehow. Fiction has a way of doing that, of course.  

Tune into our conversation and read The Broken Tower

• Themes of “power” (not just the magical sort), and how this is central to all of Kelly’s work

• The dual meaning of “Work,” which describes the magic in this world and the factories that make the book “a capitalist dystopia”

• The question of whose stories get told and feeling haunted by all the people whose stories were never told

• The conscious inclusion of differently abled people as well as well as folks across gender identities and sexualities 

• The question “who am I writing for” and how the author’s choices can hurt certain readers, particularly those with marginalized identities. 

• Why Kelly chose to create a mythic world that does not replicate our own

More About Kelly Braffet

Kelly Braffet is the author of the Border Lands novels, including The Broken Tower and The Unwilling, as well as the novels Save Yourself, Josie and Jack and Last Seen Leaving. Her writing has been published in The Fairy Tale Review, Post Road, and several anthologies. She attended Sarah Lawrence College and Columbia University and currently lives in upstate New York with her husband, the author Owen King.

The Selkie, the Seal Woman of Irish Legend, and You

Do you know the story of the selkie, the seal who transforms into a woman and lives on shore for a time?

She doesn’t choose this terrestrial life. In fact, she’s tricked into it in a cruel way. She is offered a kind of love and safety and is convinced to stay. The selkie decides she can compromise her freedom and marry a fisherman, at least for a little while.

And then, she gets swallowed up by this landlocked life. She is consumed by the expectations and responsibilities. She finds herself at the heart of a family, caught in the nets of a husband and children who depend on her for their comfort, routine, and perhaps their sense of identity, too. 

But, in the midst of this family, she’s barely able to survive. The selkie is a husk of her former self, and she has no more to give. If she stays in this world as it is, she’ll die. If she leaves, the world says that those who depend on her will suffer something even worse.  

Have you ever spied the selkie within you, your skin parched, your heart aching for your sisters and the sea? 

Has your soul cried, “Yes, that’s me!” as you’ve considered the story of a wild creature who lost herself to the structures and shoulds of family and a “civilized life”?

The Mythology of the Shape-Shifters

Across cultures, we find stories of shape-shifters.

There are the werewolves, the children who become swans, the old witches who become hares… It’s the story of the Irish selkie, the seal woman, that wraps round my heart and feels the most real for me. 

The selkie, and the fairy woman she becomes for a time, has appeared in well-known modern stories, including the gorgeous Irish films The Secret of Roan Inish and The Song of the Sea. You’ve likely heard the selkie story in one form or another, even if you don’t know the word, perhaps as a mermaid tale. You know the inversion of the story from Disney’s The Little Mermaid, which flips the script so the heroine longs to be shacked up on land and suffers a sense of alienation and dislocation in her own ocean.

In Episode 4 of KnotWork Storytelling, Jen Murphy comes to tell the tale of her own neighborhood selkies. Jen lives in Skerries in County Dublin and watches the Irish Sea from her home. Their harbor is home to colonies of seals, and inspires her version of this timeless story.

The selkie felt stifled and trapped in that fisherman’s cottage, but she also felt a bone-deep loneliness. As you’ll hear in the conversation that follows Jen’s story, I uncovered an old memory in the midst of our dialog, and long forgotten tears returned to the surface. 

As mythologist and author Sharon Blackie says when she tells her own version of the Selkie story, “these shapeshifing stories tap into a longing we often don’t even know we have and we feel that very deeply as sorrow.”

When we give ourselves full permission to feel the pull of the currents of the selkie story, we recover necessary parts of ourselves. You may know this cry deep in your heart. Or, it may be hard to reckon with the voice within that whispers, “This. This life. It’s a blessing. But sometimes… it’s a trap.”

Find a place where you can either snuggle in or root into the wildest part of nature where you can feel at home and tune into The Skerries Selkie.

I’m so excited to hear about what comes through for you when you seek out the selkie within you. Tell me more on Instagram or on in our Facebook community.  

Parenting Amidst the Ruins of Childhood’s Mythologies

“Mom, I know magic isn’t real.”

My just-turned-eight year old made this grave declaration at the bus stop the other day. As the cars ripped through the filthy slush on our back country road with a sound that tore the morning in two, I felt something rip in the fabric of this childhood we’d co-created with our girl.

I wasn’t ready. Lately, we’ve been going through a lot of emotional ups and downs with this daughter I have always called my “little mystic.” It’s impossible to know how much can be blamed on the disruptions and fears stirred up by two years of Covid and how much of this was always destined to be part of her path, but this child, the quintessential old soul, has access to the depths of the depths. And some of those depths are dark. 

We’re getting her the help she needs to regulate her own emotional terrain, but as we huddled together on a frigid February morning, I wondered where my help was to deal with “I know all magic is just made up.”

Living, Writing, and Parenting According to the Rules of Magic

Now, as you likely know, I am a woman who has built much of her creative life and work on this word, “magic.” I call myself a word witch because I know my superpowers lie in the weaving of language. I believe that we cast a spell when we craft well-made sentences. I believe stories are formulas for miraculous transformation.

I have never flown on a broomstick, watched sparks fly from my wand, or seen anyone turned into a toad. I don’t think burning just the right number of candles will attract a lover or help you get revenge. I know that tarot cards have nothing to do with predicting the future but have everything to do with reframing the current narrative.

And yet, I do believe in magic.

And in this moment of revelation, I wasn’t sure how I would relate to a child who didn’t want to speak the language of unicorns, dragons, and fairies.

The Stories We Make Up. The Stories We Make Real.

By bedtime that night, she knew that Daddy assembled the toys and Mom filled the wooden shoes with candy from Sinterklaas (and kept up with all of the global holiday traditions she learned about at school and wanted to make part of our tradition). She knew we tossed Rudolph’s carrots into the yard and put Santa’s cookies back in the tin because we were too full of sugary carbs by midnight on Christmas Eve to enjoy them.

The next morning, she was saying “I’m so sorry I realized magic wasn’t real.”

There was real sorrow there, but also a sense of pride, I think. We celebrated her curiosity and her wisdom. We told her that we were proud of her for being brave enough to ask questions. We showed her that we wouldn’t lie to her.

Her biggest fear, as we picked our way up the icy driveway for another school day, was that she might start telling other kids. ( I had asked her to promise not to share this revelation as it’s important that everyone come to their own realization about how magic works in the world). The believers in her second grade class are safe. I trust and admire her thoughtfulness, even as I wish I did have a functional magic wand to instantly restore her peace of mind.

I think we arrived at a good place. We discussed that, though she lost something in losing her belief in leprechauns who leave gold on March 17 and a sleigh that circumnavigates the earth in one night, she had gained something that was even more… magical.

Now she knows what the grown ups know:

Magic isn’t about watching wishes materialize in an instant. Magic isn’t about mythical beings creeping into your house in the middle of the night and leaving gifts in exchange for gingerbread. 

Magic is about the love that families have for their children. 

Magic is about the great collective stories that get made real.

On the Other Side of a Belief in Magic Is… More Magic

I still believe in what Dion Fortune says, “magic is the ability to change consciousness at will.” Someday, maybe my daughter will, too.

Despite the heartache that comes from realizing this chapter of mothering is closed and knowing we all must enter the stage when Easter baskets become ceremonial offerings of parental chocolate rather than the gifts of an egg laying bunny, I am breathing into the magic that is found in this change.

We get to talk about all the forms of magic that are in the world, from science to love, from the beauty of a sunset to the way a cardinal swoops by your window when you need it most. We’ll learn together how to court wonder in a non-magical universe and make room for those mysteries that still can’t quite be explained. 

And, we have a daughter who has learned that her mother and father will tell her the truth, even when the stories seem prettier. She gets to understand how devotion creates delight, and how well-loved she truly is.

So yeah, she may know magic isn’t “real.” But she also gets to find out that the real world can be magical in ways she never imagined before.

---

What about your stories of magic, heartbreak, and realization?
Have you been giving yourself the time and space to consider them and put them on the page?

I think of our online writing community, he Sovereign Writers’ Knot, as a creative cauldron. Over our thirteen weeks together, you’re giving yourself a chance to explore, imagine, draft, and craft some of the stories you’ve longed to tell.

Do Ancient Stories Mean More To Us than Modern Life’s Luxuries?

The irony of launching a podcast when your power and internet are down is as deafening as a gas-powered generator.

This weekend, I continued to recite the new podcaster’s creed “please listen and subscribe to my new show, KnotWork Storytelling” while the power was out all over the Hudson Valley, and along much of the east coast.

As we waited for the electricity and WiFi to return, I wrangled with the strangeness of pouring so much time and passion into retelling ancient stories on a modern medium that is much more fragile than we care to imagine.

But then, we always create at the crossroads of disruption and daily life, don’t we?

Paradox is a key ingredient in the mix of modern existence.

And, if we’re aware of it, we can use those paradoxes to our creative advantage.

We were fortunate and made it through the “Great Icing of 2022” with only a twenty-four hour power outage. According to NPR, residents in twenty-five states were affected by this weather front, and many fared far worse than we did. I’m deeply grateful for a partner who is prepared for anything and for good friends with whom we could ride out the storm. 

The Mystery of Finding Comfort in the Midst of Catastrophe

On Saturday, after the skies cleared and the sun streamed through the ice-laden branches, we popped champagne, devoured take-out, and shared ice cream cake. We had a birthday and a creative milestone to celebrate. For a little while, we were carefree. Underneath, we were conscious of how the luxuries of modernity and friendship wrapped around us the way dangerous layers of ice wrapped around the outer world. 

As with all of the joys of life right now, this gathering felt decadent, necessary, impossible, and well-deserved. 

Has life always been this paradoxical?

Have delight, pleasure, and connection always taken place against a vast, frozen “out there” where the night is dangerous and lonely?

Of course they have.

These days, we know that the divisions between the “haves” and “have nots” isn’t an accident of destiny or the will of the gods. It’s got everything to do with institutional racism, classism, colonialism, sexism, and the structures inherent to the capitalist patriarchy.

It can be hard to have those conversations though. Those words can get stuck in the throat when everyone is supposed to be having a good time. Folks don’t want to bring down the mood by welcoming the worries and the inequities through the door. (I am grateful for friends who will “go there” with me, because any party at my house is bound to include several book recommendations, an eclectic playlist, and a curse upon myriad forms of social injustice). 

But, of course, this resistance to hard conversations is why we have stories. Stories help us explore the difficult emotional and intellectual territory that can be too hard to explore in its raw contemporary form. 

What If Stories of the Past Are More Familiar than Many of Modern Life’s Luxuries?

Back to the paradox I began with: the strangeness of launching a project about ancient mythology and folklore on a purely digital platform while marooned atop an icy hill with minimal access to the online realms.

As I’ve dedicated myself to the idea that ancient stories are medicine for our modern maladies, I have worried that I am looking in the wrong direction. Am I slipping into nostalgia when I should be finding ways to root into the present moment? Shouldn’t I use my skills and creativity to contribute to solutions to the problems that plague the future rather than lavishing all that attention on imagining the past?

I keeping asking myself whether I am burying my head in the “good old days” of my long ago academic career and the fantasy realms we call the Celtic world.

That inner conflict is largely resolved after this weekend.

When we couldn’t heat our homes or power our lives as usual, friends gathered together. We let the kids run wild as the adults raised a glass. We laughed and we lingered. We discussed the state of the environment, culture, and society. We made room for some tears when the difficult, intimate stuff came up. We listened. We created our own warmth and light on that long, dark night.

Our lives are ruled by the towers, satellites, and transoceanic cables that make up our global web of electricity and information. Very few of us actually understand how those work, however. (That well-prepared husband of mine, an electrical engineer, is an exception).

Mostly, we only think about how the tech stuff works when it doesn’t.

Digital creatures that we may be, we are actually a lot more like our ancestors from hundreds and thousands of years ago than we realize.

We might panic about getting through one night without central heating in a way that would make our foremothers and forefathers scoff, but the stuff we know in our bones–the importance of nourishment, companionship, and a powerful story–is a lot more immediate and intimate than our knowledge of electrons, waves, and particles. 

Even though we’re 21st century creatures, we could connect in the most human and important way without any of the modern trappings of life. 

When you look at it through this lens, really, what do you understand more readily: the innovations that makes our cellphones and power grids function or the experience of a 17th century Irish woman who lost her greatest love and then found a way to keep her home and children safe?

On the KnotWork Storytelling Podcast: A Most Ferocious Lady of the Castle

The newest episode of KnotWork Storytelling offers you the story of Máire Rua MacMahon O’Brien, an Irish noblewoman who was known for pushing at least one of her many husbands from the roof of her County Clare castle.

There is so much more to this story, of course, and my friend, the brilliant storyteller Maura McMahon, illuminates the nuances of this story in Episode 3 of our show. This woman’s story is really about love, loss, survival, and sovereignty. (And if there was a murder or two thrown into the mix, well, that part of the reason we’re still so fascinated with this story four hundred years later.)

I hope that you have access to all the modern conveniences to listen to this episode now.

My deeper prayer? You have good friends with whom to share it. 

Brigid: Goddess, Saint, and the First Heroine You'll Meet in the KnotWork Storytelling Podcast

Brigit, with all her guises (goddess, saint, a sacred Celtic blend of the two).

Brigit, with all her spellings (maybe she’s Brigid, or Bridget, or Bríd?).

Brigit, with all her power (fire, healing, hospitality, poetry, beer, smithcraft… and that’s just the short list). 

With all her names, faces, and skills she has spoken to the soul of the individual and the collective for millennia. 

Throughout my life, Brigid has been my soul’s guide. The first time I heard her name, I felt like I had found a companion, but it was only when I sat down with Kate Chadbourne for the first episode of my new podcast, KnotWork Storytelling that I fully connected with the idea, “Brigid is a friend.”

In Episode 1 of KnotWork Storytelling, Conspiring with Brigit, Kate tells two stories of Ireland’s matron goddess and saint.

A Story of Friendship: When Brigit and Mary were BFFs

Now, everyone knows that Mary and Jesus lived in Ireland for a time, right?

A cozy cottage with Brigit in the midst of a long Irish winter sounds like the perfect place to recover from childbirth. Brigit, after all, is the saint one calls upon for all matters of fertility, pregnancy, and birth.

At the start of February, when it was time for Mary to return to mass, to be “churched” after Jesus’s arrival, Mary didn’t want to be the center of attention. Brigit, always a mother of invention, had a solution.

Listen to the entire episode to hear the story of Brigit’s “flaming headdress” and how a grateful Mary decided that Brigit’s Day (February 1) would always be celebrated before her own feast on Candlemas (February 2).

 A Story of Resourcefulness and Kindness: When Brigit Saves a Fox and Outfoxes a King

A woodcutter killed a fox in defense of his chickens. Unfortunately, that fox was a favorite of the king. The king was heartbroken and threatened the woodcutter with death.

Brigit, in her goddess form, riding in her great chariot, hears the laments of the woodcutter’s daughters and offers her aid. This is a tale of power, both the foolish and the compassionate kind.

Is Brigid a Goddess or a Saint?

Brigid, of course, is both.

Irish and Scottish folklore are rich with tales of Brigid. Our greatest source for her stories, including what we know of Brigid as a goddess, are the weird, wild, and wonderful stories recorded by the Church in various volumes called the “Lives of Saint Brigit.”

These stories offer us the entire tapestry of Brigit’s traditions: Brigit as goddess, as saint, who we know through hagiography, and through the oral tradition. 

As Kate says, “If it sparks you, it belongs to you…. Stories are deeper than bloodlines.”

What is KnotWork Storytelling?

On this new podcast, we’re on a mission to untangle our myths and reweave our stories.

In each KnotWork Storytelling episode, you’ll hear a story from mythology, folklore, or history. Then, my guest and I will explore why these ideas and characters still resonate today.

I’m your host, Marisa Goudy. I created this show because I’m so passionate about Irish folklore, Celtic mythology, and heroines’ tales from around the world.

We'll explore sacred stories and traditions from around the world, particularly Ireland and the region known as "the Celtic fringe." Join us as we wander through these ancient storylines as we set out on a quest to learn from the past, better understand the present, and craft a sustainable future.

Every episode reminds us that ancient stories are medicine for our ancient maladies.

Fáilte: Welcome to the KnotWork Storytelling Podcast

On my new podcast, KnotWork Storytelling Podcast, we’re on a mission to untangle our myths and reweave our stories.

I started this show because I know in my bones that mythology is medicine for our modern maladies. We use the ancient stories to understand our lives all the time. Thing is, we usually just aren’t aware of it.

Let’s start here, with storytelling, because everyone has a relationship to storytelling, even if they think they left that stuff behind or that storytelling is “mere” entertainment.

Here’s one way for me to tell my story of story

I grew up on Disney movies, classic novels that every American girl “should” read, and the best (and worst) of 1980s and 90s TV. I grew up on my mom’s stories of both the terrible and the beautiful nuns at parochial school, and my dad’s stories of riding his bike across town to football practice. I grew up on stories from my French Canadian grandmother and my Irish and Scottish grandfather, but they talked about long Canadian winters on the Miramichi River in New Brunswick, not the ancient stories their ancestors might have brought from Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries.   

We’re all made of stories, the stories that create us in childhood and those we find, and those that find us, along the way through adulthood.

In my early teens, the folklore and mythology of Ireland found me. Call it passion or obsession, the words, spirit, and land of the Celtic world swept me up and made me feel like I was home… even when I was a high school kid on Cape Cod, Massachusetts doodling Celtic knots in the margins of my math book or a student at Boston College with a stack of history and poetry books and plays by Irish authors. I would go on to study at National University of Ireland in Galway and get my MA in Irish literature and drama from University College Dublin.

And then… I lost track of those Irish stories for a while. They were set in the background of an American life I never expected to have. That ticket to grad school was supposed to be one-way and take me all the way to a PhD and a professorship, but we never can predict how each chapter will end. Or where we’ll be when the next one begins.

Of course, stories were always part of my life. We are a culture made of stories, whether it’s the latest show everyone’s binging, or a conversation that begins, “Oh my goddess, did I tell you what happened???” 

Put simply, stories are essential to us. They are the essence of who we are. And that is why I have created KnotWork Storytelling. Each episode opens with an ancient story from mythology, history, or folklore and is followed by a conversation about why these themes still resonate in the heart and spark our imagination today.

This first season will span at least 13 episodes.

You’ll hear many stories from Ireland because those stories are dear to me and are closest to my expertise, but my guests are bringing tales from their own traditions and ancestral lineages. In future seasons, I hope to cast our story net further and further and call in storytellers, characters and plots from around the globe.

All of the tales you’ll hear on KnotWork Storytelling are original in that either myself or my guest is offering their own version of a story that might be centuries or millennia old. I’ve written many of the stories you’ll hear and I consider it an act of re-mythologizing to tell the stories of Irish goddesses like Macha, Mongfind, and the Cailleach. I work to balance the material from the original manuscripts and the tales collected by folklorists with the modern sensibilities that really make these stories come alive.

Some of my guests are sharing their own written stories and I’ve asked them to source their retellings not just from their own mythic imaginations, but from the original sources as well. A few of my guests are brilliant oral storytellers. I hope you’ll tune into episode one, Conspiring With Brigit and Episode three, A Most Ferocious Lady of the Castle, which each open with some fabulous performances. 

Occasionally, I’ll welcome an author who has created their own new story, but I can guarantee we’ll be exploring how the novels of today are influenced by those ancient origin legends, heroes’ journeys, and heroines’ tales of old.

Each of these stories is fascinating in itself, and can transport us to another time with a different set of worries and a different set of values and ways to measure success. 

But here’s the thing… the differences are often less striking than the similarities. Human nature and our need to connect with nature have not changed all that much over the course of recorded history. The themes and schemes, despair and passions that feature in these old stories prove to be relevant in countless ways. The conversations I have with my guests in the second half of each episode seek to explore the threads of meaning that tug at us most insistently.

And what’s the idea about knots and knotwork?

I’ve been working at the knots of life and story for a long time. My book, The Sovereignty Knot: A Woman’s Way to Freedom, Power, Love, and Magic really began that discussion publicly. Here’s something from the book: ​​

We are creatures of curves and spirals, of circles and spheres.

We navigate the contradictory nature of our roles and goals, dreams and fears everyday.

We are a beautiful, intricate design. We are a terrible tangle.

We glow with the artistry of creation, even when we burn in the face of its chaos.

We are heroines. We are heroes. We are creative beings who have been put here to do so much more than survive. We are here to interpret the rich tapestry of the past and to pluck out the old tangles and bring old wrongs to right. 

We are here to make sense of the threads we’ve wrapped around daily life, to discern what ensnares us and what holds us together.

 We’re here to weave a future that’s more than just bearable. We’re here to live and craft new stories that are beautiful and bold, stories that weave together all the parts of ourselves that have been denied, all the people of the world who have been marginalized. And we’re here to recommit ourselves to the earth and to nature, to this great planet of ours that cares nothing for our words, but which depends very much on how we live out our stories. 

Can stories heal the world? Well, stories can heal us. And only people who have healed the old wounds of this lifetime and who have paid heed to the wounds and triumphs of the ancestors who came before us are going to have a chance to do our part and make this world a better place.

I’m so excited that you’re entering the Knot with me. I hope these stories will challenge, console, and entertain you. I would love to hear what you think of the stories we tell on the show and how they resonate with the story you are living, healing, and telling right now.

Do find us on Instagram and Facebook and do spread the word about KnotWork Storytelling.

The further we cast our nets of story, the stronger the fabric of life will be.

The Winter Solstice, the Cailleach, and the Struggle With the Light

This is a damn strange time to make plans for renewal.

Today there is scarcely 

a dwelling-place I could recognize; 

what was in flood 

is all ebbing.

- The Lament of the Old Woman of Beare

‘Tis the season to read ninth century Gaelic poems.

Oh, wait, is that just me?

Well, I always told my mother I would never be popular because I could never be like the other girls.

That’s what I said thirty years ago as a middle schooler with (undiagnosed) depression. Now, I’m the mother of a middle schooler, and we’re wiser about what depression is and we’re watching for its signs in ourselves and in loved ones as 2021 fades into 2022.

This year, I am aware of a heaviness in the air that seems to mute the lights on the tree and makes my old favorite songs sound a little off-key. I’ve been trying to push it away and stay busy, to keep smiling and keep planning so that mom’s optimism can carry my spiritually eclectic family through our sacred cluster of holidays: the Winter Solstice, Christmas, the College Bowl games, the New Year, and the Feast of the Epiphany.

And, of course, as an entrepreneur who offers what has become an annual event to reflect on the passing year and envision the year to come, I really need to find the joy and possibility and turn on my megawatt grin in the midst of the “bleak midwinter.”

But really… do I? And honestly, can I?

Are We Ready for the Return of the Light? 

This December, the tears are closer to the surface than they have been in memory. (You may be feeling the same, even if the gratitude and the hope are right there at the surface, too.)

It’s the usual grief and longing that comes with the holiday memories. In our house, this is the first Christmas my husband and I will have with both of our moms gone.

And, of course, it’s the news of the new variant and how ill-equipped our nation and our global community are in the face of it. It’s the deepening divisions as public health becomes a matter of personal belief, rather than devotion to collective well-being. It’s the long weekend I spent in bed after my Covid booster, feverish and achy. It’s the call that family members were exposed and cannot be here on Christmas Eve.

And, it’s this time of year when we are all ready to celebrate the return of the light. 

The question is, are we just that jazzed up about the lengthening days or are we just yearning for relief from a darkness that has become too long, too dense, too real? 

To make our celebration of the returning light into something meaningful, we need to be willing to see the reality all around us. We need to acknowledge the darkness and reckon with the fact that none of this is just a story about the color of the sky. 

Because really, what’s the big deal about a few more minutes of daylight in an already well-lit room?

At the time of the Winter Solstice, we’re supposed to be feeling the hollowness, and even the sorrow and the uncertainty at this time of year. (And this is when we remember we live in a great big world, and our friends in the Southern Hemisphere are having a distinctly different and yet utterly related experience right now.)

Here, where nights are long and days are preoccupied with last minute work and preparations for holiday cheer, the difficult feelings are more accessible than ever. 

And yes, we need to give ourselves a chance to acknowledge and speak them aloud, even when we’re more afraid than ever before that the hollowness of sorrow and uncertainty will take over if we dare stop smiling.

A Different Way to Look at the Solstice In What’s Another Very Different Year

The business as usual, festivities as expected, planning as proscribed model just doesn’t seem to work any more.

This isn’t admitting defeat or refusing to try to put on a brave face. 

Taking a moment (or more) to pause and be with the reality of our current darkness feels utterly necessary right now. It’s the only way to be in integrity. It’s the only way to make way for magic and renewal in the new year.

Here, for those of us in the midst of the darkest point in the year, this is the time to sit with the weight of the shadows and in the presence of our fears.

For me, that looks like pouring an extra cup of tea and revisiting an ancient poem by an Irish woman from West Cork who went by the name of Digde. This is a time to listen to the sad song of a woman who declares, “I have had my day with kings, drinking mead and wine; now I drink whey-and-water among shriveled old hags.”

This is the voice of the Cailleach, the goddess of the Celtic world who danced through centuries of youth before she sat upon a great stone by the sea to contemplate the painful mysteries of aging. She’s worn out after having done all that work, shaping the mountains with stones from her apron, and playing Sovereignty Goddess and sacred consort to so many kings. Worn out, but still longing for those days when she sat in the center of the light.

This is a deeply human look at the Sacred Hag. She doesn’t always feel like an intimate friend, but at the Winter Solstice, she’s holding up a divine mirror and allowing us all to pause and be with our own laments and our longings. She holds space for us as we mourn what has ebbed away, even as she still holds space for the memories of the “flood” of energy and possibility that used to fill her life.

A creature who has seen so many seasons, the Cailleach reminds us that all of that light, energy, and possibility, of course, will fill our skies once again. And yet, also being the ultimate elder who is reaching the close of her long life, she also reminds us that even the greatest parties eventually end. 

This is a time of great contradiction, when light is so scarce here in the Northern Hemisphere but when holiday abundance (and excess) are even more obvious than the sun in the sky.

We Can Welcome the Light When We Also Make Space for the Lingering Darkness

The wise folk I’m talking to all tend to agree: it’s hard to trust someone who just wants to play the “good vibes only” game and ride their eggnog buzz right into the “best year ever” on January 1. 

There is unfathomable hope, light, and possibility in 2022, but the days are still short, the night is still long, and there’s a staggering amount of uncertainty wrapped in the years to come.

It’s in that spirit of hope for the light and awareness of the darkness that I offer my end-of-year online retreat, A Sovereign Way.

I couldn’t believe in any visioning for the future practice that wasn’t grounded in our both our power and our pain, and I don’t think you could either.

When we gather together to imagine the year to come, we’ll begin by grounding into who we are now and who we have been throughout 2021 and through all the years before. We ask the sparks of “the world as it is” to light the new blaze of “the world as it could be.”

And we’re going to call on the Cailleach, the wise, ever-changing, earth-shaping Cailleach to be our guide.

Would you like to join us?

The half-day event is happening at noon ET on Wednesday, December 29. 

The Mythology of the Land Beneath Our Feet

A quick but mighty storm front moved across our stretch of the Hudson Valley on Monday night. 

The temperatures had been in the 50s and the earth was reminding the sky it was meant to be December. Enough of the sweater weather, it was time for hats, coats, and mittens. And so, an argument was had in the space between here and the heavens and, inevitably (for now), the seasonable cold air won out.

Considering so much of my passion and attention are devoted to Ireland, I can believe for just a moment that these were the first breaths of Storm Barra, which engulfed the country on Tuesday. But, of course, the Atlantic is wide and even a fairy wind probably couldn’t travel so far so fast. 

On that stormy eventing, while we were out in the dark, ensuring the chairs didn’t blow across the deck and the cushions didn’t sail into the neighbors’ yard (we’re having trouble letting go of the trappings of warmer weather as well), we heard a tree split in the woods behind the house. Since the swing set still was standing and nothing came close to the deck, we didn’t dwell on the mystery and simply got back to the endless business of being human in the stillness of the indoor air.

Tuesday morning, after the school bus left, I put on my boots and went searching for what we’d lost.

I was looking for what we’d lost on our land, but I soon realized I had no idea what we had.

I crunched across the grass, all frost kissed by the almost-winter chill. There was a spectacular scrap of bark nearly five feet long lying on the ground. It would have been stripped from one of the dead ash trees. Those old sentinels lose a little something in every gale, but their naked trunks, fragile yet unyielding, still insist on challenging gravity and clinging to the last of their past glory.

Maybe that noise we’d heard in the night was simply the stripping away of ash skin. The sound had carried over the wind, but it certainly wasn’t the kind of explosion that rips through when the forest loses a long time resident. These woods came back from clear-cutting more than a century ago and it seems they’ve created a close, thriving community since being left alone. Certainly the bears, fishers, and coyotes seem to like it.

This wasn’t a day for tracking wildlife. I was here to speak to the trees.

That’s when I noticed the birch.

When we moved here thirteen years ago, there were two birch trees at the edge of the new lawn. I loved those trees almost as much as they seemed to love one another. One shone with masculine energy, the other with the feminine. It felt like we were being greeted by an old couple who had lived on the land for ages, even though our house was brand new.

Perhaps there had been an entire family of birches here before they bulldozed and blasted to place a home made of sticks and vinyl. Perhaps I interpreted the sway of their elegant branches as waves of welcome, when really, they were performing a dance of mourning. 

We lost the tree I still think of as “Himself” years ago. When he fell, his trunk disintegrated into neat, symmetrical pieces. The were scattered evenly down the hill that leads to what we call Blackthorn Alley. It seemed a regal, intentional way to be laid out and I took it as one more sign that this patch of the planet was enchanted in its own small way. 

On this particular morning, I saw the tangle of white branches just past the bramble of the eastern wineberry patch, and I gasped. Had we lost his lady, Herself, in the night?

It’s the time of year when we can remember what it is to ramble and explore. The ticks all ought to be sleeping. The poison ivy is dormant as it plots the next season’s revenge. As I do near the end of every autumn, I recover my sense of bravery and take to the wild wooded acres beyond our property. I wonder why we ever spent so much time on that boring old lawn. We’ll have this freedom til the sap starts to rise in the maples and the specters of Lyme disease and skin rashes loom large again.

Unafraid of the beasties in the brush and ready to offer my prayers to our fallen tree sister, I tramped over to the long stretch of her body. She’d split twenty feet up at the unique twist in her trunk, the shape of which looked like a nipple on a nursing woman’s breast. Unlike Himself, she had held together well when she came to rest on the earth.

A Friend Long Gone

And then I looked more closely at the intricate network of trunk and branches that lay on the ground. I realized that a brown-gray poplar was tangled with the birch bark. The break in Lady Birch’s trunk was faded and soft. 

We’d lost that tree, a tree I have no right to name, a tree with whom I can claim no special relationship, ages ago. Apparently, I was a fair weather friend to Herself. 

I have romantic notions of living in relationship with nature and the land. It’s nice to consider myself to be singularly connected to this bit of hill that runs between the ridge and the river. When sitting at my cozy desk looking out to the five-way crossroads in front of the house, I like to imagine I’m a worthy caretaker now that this land’s original inhabitants, the Esopus people of the Lenape Tribe, are gone. 

But then, I cannot even be relied upon to know whether my friends, the trees I claimed to know and love, are dead or alive.

Recommitting to the Story of Place and the Mythology of the Land

All I can do is promise to do better, be better, and walk the talk.

I can actually read the book of Lenape stories I found used online.

I can keep fulfilling that promise I made to walk the natural boundaries and speak to the whispering trees, the sleeping stones, the spent gardens, and the distant ridge.

I can look to the horizon every morning and ask my ancestors’ distant goddesses and the local spirit guides to help me see clearly.

I can linger instead of instantly coming in from the bus stop to get swallowed by the screens and photos of other people’s views of the planet.

Mythology Connects Us to the Land, Both Distant and Right Here

As I prepare to share a season of stories on the KnotWork Podcast, I keep reminding myself that mythology was never meant to be mere fodder for psychologists and story nerds. At its core, mythology isn’t about the quarrels between gods and heroes or about which clan claimed a particular swath of territory. At least, mythology isn’t just that.

Mythology is the account of the land and the people’s relationship with nature and their quest for survival. Mythology offers us insight into how ancient people grappled with the unknown, be it storms in the atmosphere or storms within the human heart. 

The stories that speak to me and through me tend to be from Ireland and other parts of the Celtic world. These are the stories are in my blood and hold my soul. It has been half a lifetime since I lived and learned on that tiny island, however. I make my home a few hundred miles from where I was born, on soil we now call “American.”

When I look out to the Shawangunk Ridge, it may look a bit like the rounded mountains of County Sligo, but I can’t populate this piece of New York with Queen Maeve and the warriors of the Fianna. As those two fallen birches taught me, I cannot rely on romantical visions about myself and this land.

I am called to root in, open my eyes, and ask the stones and trees, plants and creatures what I can do and what I must learn.

We are all called to root in, open up, ask, and listen to the stories that come up from the soles of our feet

The stories we carry with us, which may come from halfway around the world can help us pause and tune in. Characters from distant myths, like the Celtic Cailleach who made the land by throwing boulders from her apron, never set a foot on the granite of the northeastern US, but they remind me of the power of creation and the sacredness of a tossed stone and a rotting tree. I can transfer that awareness to my own backyard, my own valley, my own understanding of the global ecosystem.

Mythology describes the deep, enduring relationship that existed between the spirit of the land, the plants, the animals, and the spirits of the people fortunate enough to coevolve beside them.

Mythology helps nurture that relationship still as it reminds us to open our ears to hear and our eyes to see the non-human narratives constantly being woven around us.

Mythology, Violence, and Why I Can’t Stop Thinking About The Killing of a Sacred Deer

Horror is not for me.

The books and movies of the genre, the grown up haunted houses, and the Halloween “decorations” featuring everyone’s favorite axe murderer. No, thank you. Or really, just: NO.

Once we roll into November, my younger daughter and I take note of every household that has taken down their spooky-gross yard displays and breathe a sigh of grateful relief.

I know we need to plumb the mysteries of the darkness and even honor the sacredness of fear, but I would tell you that I don’t want it packaged up in someone else’s commercialized gory nightmare fantasy. Ever. 

The Movie You Never Knew You Never Wanted to See

This weekend, tired and deep in the ebb of energy that comes with a woman’s flow (a regular, natural event that popular culture frames as a kind of horror show), I found myself too weary to read, so I started movie hunting.

You know that strange slide that begins with half-remembering you wanted to see something and then finding it on the one streaming service you don’t subscribe to? That’s when you start following the algorithm’s recommendations, and things start to get weird. Welcome to modern life. I skipped and jumped until I think I fell down a Colin Farrell shaped rabbit hole.

Because Netflix told me to (now there’s a first line of a horror tale!) I started watching The Killing of a Sacred Deer. I had never heard of this film and I had no idea what I was in for, but how bad could it be? Nicole Kidman was in it, and she rarely leads us astray.

I studied a lot of drama, once upon a time, but I was inspired by a love of literature, not necessarily a love of theater. I had endured a lot of weird plays and was resigned to the fact that I would never be the type of person who actually enjoys or understands the modern stage. (I was raised on Guys and Dolls and My Fair Lady… I am no longer embarrassed to admit that it’s a rare play that works without singing and dancing.)

All of this is to say that I could immediately understand that the director Yorgos Lanthimos was going for something with the strange stilted dialogue that ran between the absurdly mundane and the insanely intimate. I could deal with the “oh, so this is ART” and vaguely remember what it was like to watch foreign films at the little cinema on Cape Cod with my mom when I was home in the summer during college. I could stop looking over at the Dwayne Johnson/Ryan Reynolds flick my husband was watching on his iPad and keep my eyes on my own bizarre “entertainment.”

I could. But that didn’t mean it was any fun at all.

When We Don’t Have the Luxury of Distance and Fantasy

Watching this movie reminded me of something important (besides remembering that “entertainment” doesn’t exist just to massage our pleasure points):

It’s a lot easier to watch horrible things happen if we can create distance between us and the story. 

When we wrap the story in mythic elements, call in the costume department, and have everyone enact the drama on a windswept moor or a primeval forest, we can imagine the darkest parts of human nature lurk only in a faraway land in a near forgotten time.

As I watched Killing of a Sacred Deer, I realized that the story felt so much bigger and older than the contemporary setting and the actors’ muted delivery could comfortably hold. 

That was the point, of course. Ratchet up the discomfort. Take away the distance that makes horrible things easier to bear. Set the story in Ohio in the lives of rich people and make us all wonder what’s happening under the exterior of “normal” modern life.

It Always Comes Back to an Ancient Myth

It turns out that The Killing of a Sacred Deer is inspired by the Greek story of Iphigenia, the daughter of Clytemnestra and Agamemnon. When Agamemnon killed one of the goddess Artemis’s beloved deer, she commanded him to sacrifice Iphigenia to settle the score with the gods.

If we could see this story enacted by beautiful people in robes and laurel wreaths against a panoramic Mediterranean with some cool boat scenes, it might barely touch us. We would have been swept up by the glorious disorientation caused by great gaps in space time. Our unfamiliarity with that world would have insulated us from the heinous story at the heart of such a film. One would walk out of that theater (or snap shut that iPad) feeling like they had seen something intense, but the inclusion of cool special effects and other “gods gone wild” stuff could distract us from the filicide at the center of the plot.

Instead, watching Colin Farrell and Nicole Kidman walk the corridors of a hospital in Cincinnati just made it all too claustrophobic and real - even though no one would ever speak like they do, even with the totally unexplained curse that sets the horror in motion.

The Horror Hiding Here, There, and Everywhere

On Sunday morning, I picked up Sean Kane’s Wisdom of the Mythtellers and tried to cleanse my brain of all the stark, maddening cruelty of a movie that many critics celebrated. As one reviewer said, “Like the Greek myth that inspired the film, it feels powerful enough to be timeless.” 

Kane’s book offers a brilliant analysis of mythologies around the world. What I find most fascinating is his reminder that myths are not meant to be psychodrama but are, at their original core, a way of understanding nature, relationships in nature, and the human relationship with the unseen world.

Kane looks closely at stories of the Haida people of what we now call British Columbia, the aboriginal people of Australia, and the Celts. Due to the way the stories were preserved and passed and a host of other factors, the Celtic tales are the most ridden with human drama. With my modern brain and lack of indigenous consciousness, it’s no coincidence that theses are the stories that touch me most deeply.

I found myself in the midst of the story of Branwen from the Welsh epic, the Mabinogi. It’s the story of the young woman who is married to her brother Bran’s greatest rival, Matholwch. I may find myself telling this story on the KnotWork Podcast sometime, but I mention it today because of one scene of particularly horrific cruelty that includes the maiming of horses.

Ugh. It was hard to type that phrase. I want to edit it out and soften the blow. Somehow, it is even harder to think of someone deliberately taking a knife to a herd of animals than it is to mention a father sacrificing his daughter above.

Of course, this is the trick of storytelling… I am appalled by what I saw in that movie, I am disgusted by what I read in that ancient Welsh myth, and I am quite sanguine when it comes to poor Iphigenia’s death. You know why, of course: the storytellers in the first two instances gave the audience something to see or imagine. 

The obituary style mention of the slain Greek girl is easy to handle because the mind can’t conjure something specific enough for the heart to contract.

Violence Chills Us When It Feels Too Close to Home

All of this has me thinking about the everyday nature of violence and cruelty. We know that death and abuse are part of the everyday - we see it in our movies and in headlines constantly. When against all odds, something truly terrible breaks through our jaded armor of distraction, it is doubly chilling. 

We respond to the packaging of death more than to the idea of death itself. We can accept the destruction packed into a fantasy epic and flock to it as mere entertainment. But then, we feel devastated by violence that looks like it could happen in the neighborhood up the street.

And, of course, we see these varying octaves of reaction in the real world, too. And it has deadly, horrible consequences. When Black or indigenous women go missing, the mainstream media is largely silent. You need to follow a very specific Instagram account to know. When a white girl vanishes, you get four People magazine alerts a day. In a culture that puts whiteness at the center and declares white as “the norm,” anyone whose identity places them outside of that circle can be viewed with enough detachment as to be immediately dismissed and forgotten. 

(We can change this, you know. We all can amplify the voices of those who aren’t included in the popular narrative, and we might even save lives. Learn more about the Sovereign Bodies Institute.)

As Students and Weavers of Story, We Are Called to Bear Witness to the Most Challenging Narratives

I’m a creative who is heeding the call to work with ancient stories and bring them into the modern conversation. (That’s the mission of the upcoming KnotWork Podcast!) 

Standing at the intersection of the remotest human history and this contemporary moment when we’re trying to make sense of a relentless stream of information, I must decide what stories and elements I will bring to life. How will I bear witness, shape, and share stories that are often full of such terrible things, like killing children and torturing animals? 

Do I stick close to that declaration, “Horror is not for me”? Sharing only the “lovely” bits of mythology is disingenuous (and would make for a very short podcast season).

So then, how deep can I and should I go? For my own self preservation, for the sake of wanting to bring more beauty and wonder into the world, for the sake of those who might be triggered by the old stories that have all of the murder, rape, and inhumanity that shadow life today?

I am wise enough to know that this task of discernment will always be the hardest part of this project.

The Public Storyteller’s Sacred Task: Be Clear on the WHY of a Story’s Telling

As I watched The Killing of a Sacred Deer all I could ask myself was “why.”

Why on earth would someone make such a movie? Why would people who seem rather lovely (Kidman as well Farrell, who said he was “fucking depressed” after the making of the film) star in it? Why would anyone but the creepiest of creeps willingly watch it? Why would the snootiest film people purport to like it?

I kept watching even though I could barely stand the inner screaming, “why are you still sitting through this???”

And here I am, days later, now quite sure of why. 

It wasn’t just because I needed to satisfy my curiosity and know if he went through with it. It wasn’t just because I was trying to prove to the unseen critics that I too could watch something other than The Eternals and Jungle Cruise (both of which I also saw this weekend and rather enjoyed, by the way). 

It was because the movie asked questions we need to wrestle with, with the darkness we would prefer not to face. The specifics of the movie were awful in the moment and in memory, and could never be replicated in “real” life. But, the spectre of that which we do not want to face, the senseless cruelties that do still mark modern life? That is all terribly real.

Stories exist to help us explore, consider, and respond. 

Stories shape our minds and then enable us to reshape our realities. 

Stories cannot erase the very real violence of the past and the present, but they just might help us rewrite a future based on a more nuanced, sophisticated understanding of WHY.

How to Unlock the Wonder of Your Own Story

In a conversation about aging, a wise woman I know quoted her mother, “The good old days were only good because I was young.”

Nostalgia can be poisonous, especially when looking back to “simpler” times means celebrating the days when white, straight, and patriarchal culture went largely uncontested. 

And yet… looking back and seeking the gold hidden in the past can offer its own restorative magic. We can learn from our own history, just as we can learn from ancient mythologies and folklore. There were good days, and not just because we were free of all the adult responsibilities, had resilient joints, and an even more resilience in the face of a hangover.

Lately, some exciting future plans have me looking over my own 20 year-old shoulder. 

I am remembering what it felt like to spend hours of every day pouring over poetry and mythology, literature and history. I am tucking my 40-something self into that iconic Junior Year Abroad backpack and accompanying that younger version of me as she takes on that first year in Ireland. I am revisiting the years when I knew how to dance like no one was watching and could love like I’d never been hurt.

While I don’t have the luxury of reading all day and I don’t have a plane ticket in hand (yet), I am steeped in the energy and possibility of those days and realizing that it is possible to go home again, in a way. 

Have You Met Your Young Genius?

This year, I have the good fortune of working closely with author, branding consultant, and all around brilliant soul, Jeffrey Davis. His approach to entrepreneurship and maintaining creative focus is helping me establish the straight lines that will hold my spirals of creativity.

Jeffrey’s new book, Tracking Wonder: Reclaiming a Life of Meaning and Possibility in a World Obsessed with Productivity comes out next week. In it, he talks a lot about his concept of the “Young Genius.” 

“Genius is that force of character that wakes your up to your best character and work in the world--if you awaken to it.” - JD

Jeffrey invites us to look to our younger selves, when we were 6 or 7, or maybe a little older, and seek out the instances when we felt free and shone with our own unique, best light. Seeking the qualities that lit up that child can unlock our innovation, creativity, and unfettered energy right now. (And the research backs this up!)

My elementary school self was a reader and a writer who adored imaginary worlds, especially those conjured in brand new book fair purchases! That little redhead (who was really quite loud when she didn’t have her head buried in a novel) had a fiery love of language. She had her own elemental magic, but I find the Young Genius that truly inspires me emerged more than a decade later...

I am most drawn to the genius of the American college kid on the Aer Lingus flight, the no-longer-a-child who spent so many hours in university libraries, pouring over the footnotes to find the next book before she had even devoured the one she was reading. I want to walk beside that not-quite-an-adult who would close the books and take the first country lane out of Galway and walk until she worried the sun might set and leave her alone in the dark with the sheep.

She combined fearless moxie and bookish devotion in a way that I still admire. 

There’s a long story of how I lost track of that energy, but that is a story for another day (and one that I tell in The Sovereignty Knot, to some degree).

I wonder what your Young Genius traits are and what age you feel most connected to… Do check out the Tracking Wonder book as I know it will be an essential guide for all of us who want to bring more meaning and magic to our lives and to our work.

Announcing one of the KnotWork Podcast’s first guests!

It feels like no coincidence that this exploration of my Young Genius comes when I am actively courting that adventurous, intellectual spark that bursts forth when I indulge my passion for Celtic wisdom and Irish stories.

As you may have heard, the KnotWork Podcast debuts on 2/2/22. It’s a significant day because it’s the second birthday of The Sovereignty Knot and, even more importantly, it is Imbolc, the ancient festival celebrating the goddess Brigid and Saint Brigit’s Day. 

Brigid, in all of her guises across the pagan and the Christian centuries, has been my guide since my early teens when I took her name at confirmation. She has been a quiet presence throughout my life, and I have to believe she saved my Young Genius from herself more times than I might care to admit!

Yes, the “good old days” are continuing to seed the wonder of the present moment.

Kate Chadbourne, who was my first Irish language professor at Boston College, will be amongst the first guests on KnotWork. Kate is a deeply talented storyteller and musician, as well a writer and scholar of Celtic studies. A wise and compassionate editor, she helped make The Sovereignty Knot into the book it is. She’ll be coming to share some of her favorite Brigit stories in celebration of Imbolc.

Want a taste of Kate’s magic now? I highly recommend you check out her brand new ebook/audio performance offering, A November Visit: Poems, Stories, Company. 

Up in the northern hemisphere, these are the dark times. This November stretch between the mystery of Samhain (Halloween) and the return of the light at the Winter Solstice can feel leaden and bleak. I promise that a dose of wonder and a visit with Kate’s tales will be just the medicine you need to get through. (And then, when we're all truly sick of winter and so ready to welcome the spring, KnotWork will be here!)

Creative Originality, the Raven, and a Writing Prompt

This week in the Sovereign Writers’ Knot, our focus is on dreams.

As our group is made up of writers of all kinds--novelists, poets, bloggers, and memoirists--I invite members to approach prompts in either the first person, or as a character in their current work. I think some interesting things will come through as the writers play with their characters’ dream worlds and begin to wonder if their non-human story elements have dreams, too.

I want to share one of the prompts from yesterday’s writing practice session because I think it speaks to a question all creatives ask at one time or another: but what if someone has already said all this before?

Writing Prompt: A Brand New Dream

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before

- Edgar Allan Poe, “The Raven”

Is it possible to dream something no one has ever dreamed before? We might say, “Sure, that’s true if you are Edgar Allan Poe, but for the rest of us…? HA!”

Modern advice around creativity (which I often give myself) declares that there may not be any more “totally original” ideas under the sun (or in the darkness). Instead, it is our sacred task to call universal, timeless ideas, images, and emotions through our own beautifully particular lens of experience and wisdom.

If you’re someone who finds yourself tangled in the “but it has all been said before!” blues, I invite you to take on these demons and say, “maybe it has, but no one has said it like me!” And then, proceed to tell a story or explore an emotion in a way that is totally original to you.

It’s important to note: The Raven is actually just a poem about being unable to get over a lover and we have certainly all heard that one before!

(Would you like to write with us? We’ll be forming a new group for another 13-week writing adventure in late January. Learn more and sign up to join the interest list so you’ll be the first to know when registration reopens.)

Want some further proof that you don’t need a brand new dream, you just need your dream?

Pick up that copy of Big Magic you very likely have on your shelf. If you don’t have it, I highly recommend you ask a friend for her copy (honestly, you know someone who has this book), or just order it right now because it’s an important piece of the modern creative canon.

Elizabeth Gilbert says just about all the things about creativity I would like to say to you (she happens to say them in her way with the authority granted to her by writing a mega best seller and several other fabulous books). The way she talks about creativity gives us all permission to keep writing about creativity:

“If it’s authentic enough, believe me, it will feel original.”

She expands on that idea in this blog post too.

Speaking of New Creative Dreams… Have you heard about my new creative project?

It’s a variation on something that has definitely been done before, but it’s also a universe of ideas that has more than enough room for my own creativity and authenticity.

Debuting 2/2/22: The KnotWork Podcast: Untangling Our Myths, Reweaving Our Stories.

In this new show I’ll have a chance to reach back to my studies of Irish lit and Celtic mythology and shape it with all that I’ve learned in the twenty years since I last sat in a university classroom.

Each episode will begin with a story (mostly from Ireland in our first season, but we’ll reach out into the entire world of ancient tales as we go) and will be followed by a deep-dive discussion into why this myth still matters.

Want all the insider details as I do my research, line up my guests, and live the ups and downs of creating a new thing? Join the Facebook group and/or follow @KnotWorkPodcast on Instagram!