Fertility is not just the ability to conceive, but is an indicator of overall health and the capacity to nurture life; it is how we extend genetic strength across time and space into generations we will never know. Pregnancy and menopause are transformative states that reveal underlying metabolic and hormonal imbalances, emphasizing the complex interplay between biochemistry, psychology, and lifestyle. In an age of rampant metabolic dysfunction, let us together find our way to renewed vitality, for ourselves and for those yet to come.

Eat To Go Deep course membership

HTMA packages

Medicine Stories Patreon (extended convo w/ Niecia)

Nourishing Motherlines Substack

Niecia on Instagram

Take our fun Which Healing Herb is Your Spirit Medicine? quiz

My website MythicMedicine.love 

Mythic Medicine on Instagram

Medicine Stories Facebook group

Music by Mariee Siou (from her beautiful song Wild Eyes)

Get the transcript here

Mentioned in this episode:

Wise Women Diaries podcast interview w/ Niecia telling the story of her first birth, instagram of podcast host is Trusting Life

Casey Means

Niecia has learned about biomechanics in pregnancy and birth from Adelaide Meadow

Reclaiming Childbirth as a Rite of Passage by Rachel Reed

Mary Lou Singleton on early motherhood

St. John’s Wort has evolved over millennia to capture sunlight and turn it into the molecule hypericin, which has numerous profound effects on our human bodies.

Our St. John’s Wort Oil is HALF OFF until sold out (as of June 2024)!

From deep nerve healing, relaxation, and pain relief when applied externally to its antidepressant, antiviral, and liver supportive properties when taken internally, SJW has always occupied an exalted place in the medicine cabinet of the ancestral humans who were lucky enough to live where it grew, and is one of the most used and loved herbal medicines in the world today.

IN THIS EPISODE:

• St. John’s Wort acts as an extension of sunlight

• The endless external uses include the healing of wounds, bruises, burns, blisters, cuts, eczema, growing pains, inflamed skin, muscle pain, nerve pain, neck tension, spasms, back pain, neuralgia, sciatica, insomnia, anxiety, and stress

• The oil is indispensable for menstrual pain, pregnancy, postpartum, babies, children, elders, empaths, and highly sensitive people

• Photosensitivity, precancerous skin cells, and using SJW as sunscreen

• Internal uses: notes on the antidepressant, antiviral, and liver supportive effects (including my shingles story)

• Hypericum feeds our inner radiance and summons forth our purpose and power

• This ancient herb has always been associated with fairies and other magical beings

• How empire co-opted pagan rituals and herbal practices

• The widespread ritual use of St. John’s Wort as a protective herb

• A word on wildcrafting and non-natives v invasives

• Making your own high potency, shelf stable herbal oils

• Herbal medicine is so simple, yet also endlessly complex

• Kami McBride speaks about St. John’s Wort

RESOURCES:

• Mythic Medicinals St. John’s Wort Oil (half off!)

• Medicine Stories Patreon (patrons can download Rosalee’s ebook here)

• Cute, short video showcasing our St. John’s Wort garden

Learn to Make Your Own Herbal Oils:

• Kami McBride’s Handcrafted Healing Herbal Oils online course

• My video Sneak Peak at the Handcrafted Healing Herbal Oils online course from Kami McBride

Podcast Episodes & Books Mentioned:

• Episode 23 The Profound Medicine of Herbal Body Oils

• Episode 53 with Kami McBride Healing Herbal Oils: How to Make and Use Them

• Episode 55 with Lola Pickett Highly Sensitive People are the Psychedelic Plants of the Human Realm

• Episode 67 with Nadine Artemis Harvesting Light: the Alchemy of Sun & Human

• Episode 65 with Rosalee de la Foret Wild Remedies: Tending Relationships with the Land Around Us

• Episode 17 with Sajah Popham True Holistic Healing: Bridging Plant & Human Consciousness

• Episode 62 with Sajah Popham Called to the Plant Path: Herbal Myths, Healing Forward, and Human Ecology

• The article Feeding Your Inner Sun with St. John’s Wort from The School for Evolutionary Herbalism

• Wild Remedies: How to Forage Healing Foods and Craft Your Own Herbal Medicine by Rosalee de la Foret and Emily Han

• The Untold History of Healing: Plant Lore and Medicinal Magic from the Stone Age to Present by Wolf D. Storl

• The Herbal Lore of Wise Women and Wortcunners: The Healing Power of Medicinal Plants by Wolf D. Storl

• A Modern Herbal II by Maude Grieve

• The New Healing Herbs: The Essential Guide to More Than 130 of Nature's Most Potent Herbal Remedies by Michael Castleman 

More Good Stuff:

• Kathi Keville’s website 

• My website MythicMedicine.love 

• Take our fun Which Healing Herb is Your Spirit Medicine? Quiz

• Medicine Stories Facebook group

• Mythic Medicine on Instagram

• Music by Mariee Siou (from her beautiful song Wild Eyes)

In which I read a few pieces from my new Substack. Bone, blood, milk, and marrow... Nourishing Motherlines is a collection of memoir-adjacent personal writings exploring my evolving understanding of nourishment (not nutrients), how my mitochondria and minerals were inherited from my motherline (and yours from yours), my hEaLiNg JoUrNeY as I navigate hypothyroid and hypoadrenal exhaustion and a host of related symptoms, what I am focusing on as I prepare to help my daughters with seemingly inevitable future health issues as women alive in the 21st century, and your garden variety midlife self-concept implosion.

My new Nourishing Motherlines Substack

Energy booklet from the 80s

Medicine Stories Patreon (podcast bonuses!)

Take our fun Which Healing Herb is Your Spirit Medicine? quiz

My website MythicMedicine.love 

Mythic Medicine on Instagram

Medicine Stories Facebook group

Music by Mariee Siou (from her beautiful song Wild Eyes)

Chinese Medicine holds that women’s bodies are 10x harder to heal than men’s, as our reproductive system is biologically much more precious and metabolically more intensive to maintain. In this conversation my good friend, third time guest, and Doctor of Chinese Medicine Suuzi and I catch up one year after we both underwent severe energy loss to share how we’ve rebuilt and healed.

We talk about shifting away from the mindset of achieving “optimum human health” (an illusion that contributed to our health crises), working and mothering in a state of total burnout, how our childrens’ metabolic patterns can mirror our own & how we’ve helped our own kids heal, the link between high sensitivity and mineral depletion, why we’ve chosen a metabolically appropriate approach to weight loss even though it takes much longer, and so much more.

RESOURCES:

Join Amber & Suuzi for the Medicine Stories Retreat in Croatia, August ‘24!

Register for our Croatia Curious Zoom Call on April 10th (replay available for those registered)

Suuzi’s website Mother’s Best Liver Pills and her Instagram

Medicine Stories Patreon (podcast bonuses!)

Take our fun quiz Which Healing Herb is Your Spirit Medicine?

The Science of Human Energy newsletter book from the 80s

Suuzi’s previous interviews- episode 103 Midlife Burnout for Women & Why Healing Work Can Make Us Worse and episode 18 Land Based Living, Mothering, & Eating

Women whose work has helped us-

Niecia Nelson- Eat To Go Deep course and Instagram (my guest on episode 100 Returning the Mother to Herself: Our Nourishment Shapes How We Receive Life)

Sena Maria- Offerings and Instagram

Jenna Hamm- Offerings and Instagram

Sarah Kleiner- Offerings and Instagram (my guest on episode 104 Your Body is Not a Closed System: The Sun, Cell Signaling, and Metabolic Wellness)

My website MythicMedicine.love 

Mythic Medicine on Instagram

Medicine Stories Facebook group

Music by Mariee Siou (from her beautiful song Wild Eyes)

The times are unprecedented and there is no template for the future. We all feel this, and we feel the overwhelm of information, influence, and opinions.

Herbalism, as it always has, offers us sanctuary from everything vying to take hold of our attention and life force.

Not so that we can check out in an endless fog of self care, but so that we can be truly present and embodied as we navigate this time of rapid and radical change. 

The plants call us home to ourselves.

Kami’s Free Workshop The Art of Arnica: 7 Steps to High Potency Oil & Healing Benefits and Safe Application (week of 3/3/24 only)

Kami’s Free Webinar How to Use Kami’s Top Herbal Oil Blends to Soothe Anxiety and Support Daily Nervous System Reset (week of 3/3/24 only)

Kami’s revered Handcrafted Healing Herbal Oils course

Video Sneak Peak at the Handcrafted Healing Herbal Oils Course from Kami McBride (what it looks like when you log in)

Medicine Stories Retreat: Croatia w/ Amber Magnolia Hill (August ‘24)

Mastery by Robert Green

Medicine Stories Patreon (podcast bonuses!)

Take our fun Which Healing Herb is Your Spirit Medicine? quiz

My website MythicMedicine.love 

Mythic Medicine on Instagram

Medicine Stories Facebook group

Music by  Mariee Siou (from her beautiful song Wild Eyes)

Nothing exemplifies the magic of nature more than honeybees. They are insects yet their colonies are akin to a mammalian being, they produce numerous healing substances from their bodies and within their hives, and they have been revered and mythologized since time immemorial by countless cultures. Beekeepers live longer than folks in any other profession, and being in relationship with bees is deep medicine for the spirit in these frazzled times. Let us relearn ancestral ways of tending and listening to bees so that we may maximize our chances of reclaiming a vibrant and thriving Earth.

RESOURCES:

Ariella’s website Honey Bee Wild

Medicine Stories Patreon (3 bonuses for this episode- our extended conversation, 100% off coupon code for Ari’s 14 Kindred Bees classes, and a list of my & Ari’s favorite beetending resources)

Take our quiz Which Healing Herb is Your Spirit Medicine?

Song of Increase: Listening to the Wisdom of Honeybees for Kinder Beekeeping and a Better World by Jacqueline Freeman

The Buzz About Bees: Biology of a Superorganism by Jürgen Tautz

Medicine Stories episode 9 w/ Ariella Know Thyself: Weaving Myth & Magic Into Everyday Life

Check out our Mythic Medicinals herbal & mushroom remedies

Mythic Medicine (me) on Instagram

The Medicine Stories Facebook group

Music by Mariee Siou (from her song Wild Eyes)

“I pray to the dead to help me remember who I am while I’m still alive.”

To be in relationship with those who’ve gone before us is a deeply human way of being. Our ancestors knew that the “departed” never left, and that they answer when called. The way modern Western people conceive of the dead is a deviation that discards millennia of human knowing. Let us pray to the ancestors to help us sober up from civilization, remember what we’ve always known, and reclaim the long story of the soul.

RESOURCES:

Perdita’s website Take Back the Magic

Medicine Stories Patreon (book giveaway & course coupon code)

Life Everlasting: The Animal Way of Death by Bernd Heinrich

Otherlands: A Journey Through Earth’s Extinct Worlds by Thomas Halliday

Waking Up to the Dark by Clark Strand

My podcast about my mother’s passing What I’d Be Without You: My Mother’s Life, Death, and Legacy of Love

The Madonna Secret, a novel by Sophie Strand

Perdita and her husband Clark Strand’s website The Way of the Rose

Take our fun Which Healing Herb is Your Spirit Medicine? quiz

Our website & herbal medicines MythicMedicine.love

Mythic Medicine on Instagram

Medicine Stories Facebook group

Music by Mariee Siou (from her beautiful song Wild Eyes)

It is estimated that half of all Americans have chronic health issues, and yet these conditions are new to the human species. What has happened? And how does an afflicted individual navigate a medical system that dismisses them and offers little help, embedded within a culture obsessed with self improvement and the hero’s journey of triumph? Sarah and I talk about the multifactorial nature of chronic illness and what has changed between generations, walking the fine line between self-responsibility and acknowledging that we’re all embedded in toxic systems that are out of our control, navigating the mythic underworld of autoimmune and chronic illness, and telling our stories without the need for a heroic ending.

All Mythic Medicinals products are 20% OFF Nov 24th-27th (add coupon code WINTERSUN for an additional 15% off St. John’s Wort Oil)

RESOURCES:

Sarah’s website

Medicine Stories Patreon (enter the book giveaway by 12/14)

Take our fun Which Healing Herb is Your Spirit Medicine? quiz

Whitney Dafoe’s website

Medicine Stories episode 105 w/ Sophie Strand Synchronicity Reveals Our Ecological Niche

The Heroine’s Journey: Woman’s Quest for Wholeness by Maureen Murdock

My post about my father’s life and death

My website MythicMedicine.love 

Mythic Medicine on Instagram

Medicine Stories Facebook group

Music by Mariee Siou (from her beautiful song Wild Eyes)

Healing is communal. Settle in softly for this wide-ranging conversation with my most requested guest. Sophie and I talk chronic illness and trauma, diagnosis as blessing and as hex, the theater of medicine, the aquatic nature of memory, and the entanglements of time.

RESOURCES:

Sophie on Instagram

Sophie’s newsletter Make Me Good Soil

Sophie’s books and more

The Lady’s Handbook for her Mysterious Illness by Sarah Ramey

ACE- Adverse Childhood Experiences quiz

The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van den Kolk (giant trigger warning; read the book below instead)

Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice by Rupa Marya and Raj Patel

Time Loops: Precognition, Retrocausation, and the Unconscious by Erik Wargo

The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron

Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy by Barbara Ehrenreich

The Emerald (a podcast beloved by both me & Sophie)

Read The Ones That Walk Away from Omelas by Ursula K Le Guin

Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics & the Entanglement of Matter & Meaning by Karen Barad

Time, As a Symptom by Joanna Newsom (lyrics here)

My blog post Ancestral Voices, women’s Weariness, and the Illusion of Linear Time

Episode 82 What I’d Be Without You: My Mother’s Life, Death, and Legacy of Love

Come relax at my Costa Rica Forest Bathing Retreat- last day to book is August 4th ‘23

Medicine Stories Patreon (podcast bonuses!)

Take our fun Which Healing Herb is Your Spirit Medicine? quiz

My website MythicMedicine.love 

Mythic Medicine on Instagram

Medicine Stories Facebook group

Music by Mariee Siou (from her beautiful song Wild Eyes)

The sun rules the rhythms and the well-being of all life on Earth, and humans are no exception to this rule. With the very recent (evolutionarily speaking) advent of indoor living and the even more recent advent of indoor lighting, we have inadvertently shut down the vital communication between sunlight and our cells. This is as upstream as it gets when it comes to health, and when we come back into relationship with the sun all manner of issues (insomnia, obesity, infertility, and so much more) can resolve. Let’s talk about the science behind circadian rhythm and practical ways to heal with sunlight.

RESOURCES-

Medicine Stories Patreon (podcast bonuses!)

Connect with Sarah:

Free Guide: Building Your Perfect Quantum Day - https://www.sarahkleinerwellness.com/pl/2147664711

FAQ Guide - https://www.sarahkleinerwellness.com/faq-skw

Courses - https://sarah-kleiner.mykajabi.com/store (code PODCAST for 10% off any course!)

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/sarahkleinerwellness

Podcast -https://anchor.fm/sarahkleinerwellness

Website - https://sarahkleinerwellness.com

YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCd1xxofTziySu0F9oG7G67g

My Costa Rica Forest Bathing Getaway (Sept 2023!)

The Human Cosmos: Civilization & the Stars by Jo Marchant

Take our fun Which Healing Herb is Your Spirit Medicine? quiz

My website MythicMedicine.love 

Mythic Medicine on Instagram

Medicine Stories Facebook group

Music by Mariee Siou (from her beautiful song Wild Eyes)

Related Medicine Stories episodes: 

Episode 67 Harvesting Light: The Alchemy of Sun & Human w/ Nadine Artemis

Episode 71 Liquid Crystal: Water, Memory, Consciousness, and Health w/ Dr. Carly Nuday

Episode 72 Life’s Sacred Matrix: How To Be a Truly Hydrated Water Keeper w/ Isabel Friend

Episode 102 The Living Matrix of Fascia & the Resonance of the Heart w/ Lindsay Courcelle