Memoir Body, Healing Story with Janelle Hardy

In this encore episode I'm sharing a conversation with Kate Chadbourne, an award-winning songwriter and poet, scholar and teacher of Irish language and folklore, living in Massachusetts.

We rambled all over in our conversation, talking about space clearing using traditional feather brush made by the Shaker People, being present, quality of attention, storytelling, the ugly, messy phase of the creative process and how valuable it is, the gifts of getting older, kindness, being a teacher, mentor and student and finding your story, getting swept up in your life and giving your gift to the world.

Kate is a beloved performer at venues throughout New England. She has been honored as a "tradition bearer" in the Revels Salon series and in the Gaelic Roots Concert Series at Boston College, and her music has been featured on NPR's programs, "Cartalk" and "All Songs Considered."

She has released four solo CD's, three collections of poetry, and has collaborated on recordings and live performances with many wonderful musicians.

Named as one of "The Most Fascinating People" in Central Massachusetts by the Sentinel and Enterprise Newspaper, Kate is also the founder of The Bardic Academy, a private art school for writers, musicians, singers, and young scholars.

She brings to her audiences the sounds of the harp, piano, tin whistle, Irish flute, and melodeon, a deep love and knowledge of traditional Irish story, a warm and welcoming presence, and a voice often described as "the voice of an angel."

the Irish fairytale An Fear Gan Sceal: The Man Without A Story

• About finding your story, getting swept up in life, giving your gift freely and generously
• About doing your bit and wlaking through the darkness
• About being generous and sharing our essence with the world
• How everyone has a story
• Listening to each other is a sacred act
• The fairy wind as a beautiful image for being swept away
• We all belong in the greater story
• A story is a behicle for perspective
• We're not just floating isolated in a vacuum, we're tethered in a loving way to the story unfolding
• How we need rituals of landing together, to commit to taking 5 minutes to do our last things, then tell a story of where we've come from, then commit to true listening, focus

relationship with body

• On turning 50. On turning 40.
• On enjoying aging
• Feeling like life gets getter than ever
• Developing a deep companionship with body, feeling the creatureliness of the body
• Believing the best is yet to come

relationship with creativity

• On the terrible myth of the tortured creative genius
• On receiving the world and making things and letting things flow out into the world
• On creating safety for creative to thrive and experiment and improvise and get messy
• On being a teacher and a mentor and a student

In this encore episode I'm sharing a conversation with Jen Setterfield of Vancouver Island, Canada. Jen has such a gentle nature and kind thoughtful way of understanding the world, as well as some very unique life experiences.

Jen is a woman in the second half of her life who has spent the first half finding out who she is. She came to Canada, from Yellow Springs, Ohio in her blond and blue -eyed birth mother's womb. Jen's birth mother was 16 and her birth father was African American during a time when race relations were fraught.

She was born in Ottawa in 1960 and adopted at two months old to an English couple who already had adopted two mixed race boys. Although she spent a lot of her youth wanting to be a boy, she would describe herself as a country girl and athlete.

Her adoptive mother raised beef cattle as a principle means of raising her 5 adoptive children as a single mother.

Jen played many sports through out High School and spent two seasons on the University of Alabama track team (javelin thrower).

Throughout her twenties, she worked many jobs to support her athletic training and wanted to put her years of physical training toward a career, but, although she was in great physical shape, she was considered too short to be the first female Firefighter in Vancouver.

This prompted a return to her family farm south of Ottawa in 1991, where she ended up finding and meeting her birth parents in 1993.

During this time she met her wife and began a 24 year career as a cabinet maker (or millworker). Three years ago the death of her wife, preceded by her adoptive mother's death the month before created an abrupt change in her life.

With her body inflamed from grief and many years of physical work, she began a healing journey and major life reflection. She's noticed a move to being more feminine as she ages and feel like her masculine side is more balanced. In this time of non-binary gender identity, she sees herself as both male and female, a balanced human.

Jen has recently discovered the transformative healing power of writing and creative body movement. As a lesson from watching her adoptive mother age, and how solitude is not always healthy, she's more recently focused on connections.

Her current semi-retirement job as a shuttle driver at a Ford dealership has given her a platform to connect with a wide variety of people, as well as means of developing her intuition while leaving enough energy to creatively write and dance.

Jen's hope is to share lessons from my life experience and conduct herself in a peaceful and loving way.

• the fairytale The Handless Maiden

• relationship with body

• relationship with creativity

In this encore episode I'm sharing a conversation with NICOLE GULOTTA, the author of Wild Words: Rituals, Routines, and Rhythms for Braving the Writer's Path and Eat This Poem: A Literary Feast of Recipes Inspired by Poetry, which was inspired by her blog of the same name.

Her winning poetry chapbook, Migration, was published by Flyway: A Journal of Writing and Environment at Iowa State University.

As the founder of the Wild Words community, she helps fellow writers embrace the season they're in, create at their own pace, and care for their minds and bodies along the way.

Nicole holds an MFA in poetry from Vermont College of Fine Arts and her essays and poems have been published in Life & Thyme, LitHub, Motherwell, The Write Life, The Portland Review, Georgetown Review, and others.

As a Daring to Rest™ yoga nidra facilitator, she guides women to feel both physically rested and tapped into their creative potential. Born and raised in Southern California, she lives in North Carolina with her family.

Connect on Instagram @nicolegulotta.author.

the fairytale Beauty and the Beast

• how Belle is such an introverted bookworm and such a caring person
• themes of digging under the surface

relationship with creativity

• how creativity ebbs and flows with the seasons
• in fall and winter cosiness and consumption rules over creation
• in spring and summer creative energy and starting projects rules
• how her creative process includes a lot of thinking pondering time before creation comes
• how asking the question "am I in a season of consuming, or a season of creating?" is useful
• how creativity is affected by how she feels in her body
• if she doesn't feel good there isn't enough creative bandwidth to explore her work
• how walking relieves and shifts any creative roadblock – how physically changing space and walking away from whatever it is you're facing and getting fresh air and letting brain and mind go to work gets you unstuck

relationship with body

• the importance of caring about how she feels in the body, rather than what the number on the scale says, and how much exercise has been done
• how having a baby changed her body relationship drastically
• on pregnancy and nurturing a baby in their first year, and how much things change
• how luxurious really getting dressed feels after having a baby
• on reintroducing her body to herself, and how much yoga and walking helps
• how neck and shoulder tension tells her she needs to care for her body more
• how important self care is for parenting in a present contented way

In this encore episode I'm sharing a conversation with Linda Laino, an artist, writer and teacher who has been making art in one form or another for over 35 years.

Holding an MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University, she enjoys playing with words as much as form and color.

Since 2012, she has resided in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico where the surreal atmosphere and sensuous colors have wormed their way into her paintings.

Finding beautiful things on the ground is a favorite pastime.

the myth of Sisyphus

• On being always intrigued by the story
• how Sisyphus scorning the gods appeals to the rebel in her
• his sentence of pushing a big giant boulder up the hill for the rest of his life – his labour/struggle to forever be sentenced to pushing it up the hill then watching it go back down, and starting over
• loves Albert Camus' interpretation of Sisyphus
• how it can be a happy struggle – the struggle of life
• how this idea of constantly ending and beginning again is also very Buddhist, and considering the moment of walking down to retrieve the rock to start pushing it back up and how it's the moment of consciousness
• the in between the breath point of an inhale/exhale cycle, and how this myth speaks to the absurdity of life
• how it's part of our life as humans, to struggle every day in different ways, and being happy in that struggle is a nice way to view it
• how whatever we emphasize is what we realize
• having been a meditation practitioner for a long time – how our struggles are our thing – when we think our difficulties are not really our life – but if we remember that the struggles and difficulties are part of our live – we can change our view of our struggles and learn and transform through it
• recognizing that everything we do has a place in our lives, something to show us
• how struggle is necessary – it teaches us to be resilient

relationship with creativity

• on how creativity is everything
• has been making art her whole life – has known she wanted to be an artist since she was 11
• went to art school, has made being an artist the focus of her life – everything else has been in service to that
• making and immersing self in art on a daily basis – it's not just about making a product but about living creatively
• living creatively in the world involves being aware of surroundings, what she's touching, seeing, hearing because all of those things come into play in your work
• Mary Oliver's poem – 'pay attention and tell about it'
• how creativity is about sharing and understanding that she can make lots of paintings/products, but it's also about sharing the experience, that it's about the process for artists, and being her best self when painting – and that that gets transferred to the viewer of the finished painting
• the artwork needs to be seen in order for the process to be completed
• a huge part of artmaking is making sure that it gets shared, because it creates dialogue too, and it's how we connect as humans
• how sharing and knowing about how your art touches others, and vice versa, helps us keep going as artists
• on the experience of not being able to not be an artist – 'I can't not do it'
• on having a very simple life – single with grown child – has so much time compared to carving out creative time as a younger woman
• how she used to worry about running out of things to say and share – now realizes she will never live long enough to make all of the images and ideas she has
• no longer worries about rejections anymore – has gotten so many rejections over the years – the positive stuff starts to build too, and confidence grows
• how getting older means you care less, and how there are less barriers mentally – getting older has meant getting braver

relationship with body

• On having so much gratitude for her body
• in a serious car accident at the age of 29/30 – changed her life and body forever – long recovery in the hospital
• the accident made her more aware of her body
• after her accident she became very interested in the body – looking at her own xrays, anatomy books – became fascinated with the body in that way, and started to incorporate that in her paintings
• loves looking at organs and the insides of our body – such beautiful forms
• studying anatomy and the body connects her to nature
• getting older and experiencing aging and things breaking down but because of her accident and how it caused a lot of pain and debilitation, now she dances all the time
• how much she loves dancing – because her body works now
• on having surgery 4 years ago that completely took away her pain after having pain most of her adult life – so much gratitude
• how wonderful to not have a car and walk everywhere

Her art can be seen at www.lindalaino.com.

Some of her essays and poetry can be found on Elephant Journal, The New Engagement, and Life In 10 Minutes.

In this encore episode I'm sharing a conversation with Amber Magnolia Hill, podcastere rand plant medicine maker, for people who yearn for knowledge about herbalism, deepening ancestral connections, and remembering what it is to be human upon the earth.

She helps folks to drop the cultural lies of disconnection and disempowerment, and to remember that the old ways are in our bones.

Amber is an herbalist with 17 years of study and practice under her belt, and she's been growing my relationship with her ancestors for the last decade (or technically since birth, since she was lucky enough to know both parents, all four grandparents, and even four great grandparents!).

I've walked with thousands of people on this path via interviews and talks on the Medicine Stories podcast and by offering hand-crafted, mythically-minded herbal medicine.

Amber is also a mother, writer and podcast host.

You can explore Amber's work here.

the Celtic myth of the Selkie folk

• how Amber researched then wrote and shared her own version of the Selkie myth
• how she resonated with the woman who didn't feel she belong
• feeling the mother'daughter connection
• feeling the matrilineal connection of passing on of blood
• on love, and the aspect of the child saving the mother
• on ancestral lineage, and taking a healing intensive via Daniel Foor's Ancestral Medicine work (see above for resource links)
• being reminded of the delight of the Song of The Sea film, as well as it's precursor, the Secret of Kells film (see above for resource links)
• how the joy of seals is present to her, how much she loves swimming

relationship with body

• how her relationship with her body is changing
• has been a person prone to stillness, really truly not being athletic, even as a child – PE class was a total embarassment
• yet, has always loved swimming and yoga
• experiences pain in back and shoulders, how helpful bodywork is for that
• and how excited she is to wake her body up, start working out, shift out of stillness
• feeling so free to have recently stopped nursing her daughter – is experiencing a while self shift

relationship with creativity

• has always wanted to be two things – a mother and a writer
• shut down her creativity because of negative feedback at school
• with the birth of her eldest child her creativity came back, started blogging
• now knows she wants to write books – non-fiction about the motherline, ancestry and herbalism, and on mothers and daughters
• having a lifelong dream to write children's books
• the pleasures of children/youth-oriented books like Calvin and Hobbes and Harry Potter
• how herbalism requires creativity – making formulations is so specific to each person – it's a joyful and creative process
• loves naming medicines and working with graphic designers to realize a vision
• and loves podcasting – having never done it before she's finding it a fun challenge