Women's stories
For the past couple of decades, the primary focus of my work has been to unearth, re-member and re-enchant the lost and forgotten stories of intriguing, powerful women in our native European mythic and folkloric traditions. This work springs from my academic and professional qualifications in psychology, mythology and folklore. It continues in my books, courses – and of course, especially here on Substack, in my fairy tale salons and elsewhere. Please do read on to find out more.
New and upcoming courses and events on women’s stories
DESCENT: RESILIENCE AND REVELATION IN CATASTROPHIC TIMES
Saturday November 25, 2023, 15.00 to 19.00 UK time
This gathering will be anchored around a new and unique visioning of Persephone’s descent to the Underworld.
What kind of soul journey is required of us at a time when the world around us – social, political, environmental – is in crisis? What happens to us when we ‘fall out of myth’? How can we hold ourselves together during these long, dark nights of the soul? How can we express our grief, without allowing it to paralyse us? How can we prepare ourselves for a journey through dark times, and understand the lessons of the Underworld? How can we thrive, and transform, in this place of mystery and uncertainty? And, ultimately, how can we be reborn – how can we shapeshift into a form that enables us to bring back our own unique song as a healing gift for an ailing Earth?
FIND OUT MORE AND REGISTER HERE
Books
I began this work in earnest with my first nonfiction book If Women Rose Rooted. It was published in 2017, and since then has gone on to sell over 100,000 copies by word-of-mouth. The main inspiration for the book came from studying my native British and Irish mythology, and realising how absolutely fundamental women were to our ancestral cosmological worldview. And how women were presented as guardians and protectors of the land, and the waters. It seemed, and still seems, so important in these challenging times that we women should reclaim those stories, those ancient roles.
My most recent book, Hagitude, took up where If Women Rose Rooted left off, exploring the psychology of the second half women’s lives, and unearthing stories of the little-known but powerful elder women in European myth and folklore. My next book, Wise Women: Myths and Folklore in Celebration of Older Women continues this work and will be published by Virago in October 2024.
In addition, my first novel The Long Delirious Burning Blue and my collection of reimagined fairy tales Foxfire, Wolfskin and Other Stories of Shapeshifting Women highlight these same themes of feminism, ecofeminism and transformation.
Courses
The interactive online gatherings which I host in The Bone Cave are focused on reclaiming the mythic feminine. They include:
Psyche and Eros
Brigid and the Return of the Light
Women of the Mabinogion
Women of the Islands
Reclaiming the Dark Feminine
The Mystery of the Grail
A Psyche the Size of Earth
The Cave of Dreams
The Holy Longing
Recordings of the gatherings are available for purchase here.
My longest-running online course, Sisters of Rock and Root, is a unique year-long self-study experience for women who want to delve deeply into wild myth and archetypes. We work with story to connect with the cycles and seasons of the year, and the themes associated with them as they arise in your own life. In this course, myth is matched with medicine. Herbal recipes and land-based meditations for each season will encourage you to connect with the medicine of the land, and especially of herbs and plants, in a grounded, rooted way.