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!)