Wild Sacred Journey Podcast

Happy Autumn Equinox! Our modern cultures often view things like progress as being very linear. One of the side effects of this is swinging between extremes like a pendulum - in the case of cycles of burnout, we swing between being full on and being shut down… with very little space in between. But our long-ago ancestors understood cycles very differently, in part because they observed the seasons...

As a shadow moves across the moon today, I offer you my perspective on shadow work - what it is and how it connects to burnout.  The term shadow work is getting thrown around a lot these days, so if you’re someone who:  is curious to hear how I understand it;  struggles with feeling hijacked by younger versions of you seemingly out of the blue;  can’t quite seem to bridge the gap between knowing b...

Have you found yourself thinking, “I can either burn it all down or die,” yet both of those options feel too costly? While that may feel like an incredibly uncomfortable and desperate, or even hopeless, moment (I know, I’ve been there); I offer it’s actually a pivotal and precious one. It’s aliveness inviting you back. In this episode I share what I see as being the case in those moments, the nerv...

“Am I doing enough?” How often do you find yourself wondering that? As you look at the pain of the world, in moments of challenges in your close relationships, about your own growth journey? And how does that question leave you feeling? If you’re like me, or a lot of the clients I see, or many of my friends… you probably ask this pretty often. And it probably leaves you feeling more stressed, para...

When people are skeptical about “animal guides” or “plant teachers,” part of the criticism usually revolves around the question: “how do you know you’re not just making it up to justify things?” Answer: You don’t. Not really. But we are meaning-making creatures. And we are observant. Much of our scientific and academic knowledge pursuits are based around the idea of being an impartial observer. As...

This bonus episode explores the ancestral harvest holidays, like Lammas and Lughnasadh, generally celebrated on August 1st, and marking the beginning of the harvest of storage crops and the subtle shift towards Fall. I muse on what the practice of these holidays, the themes and perspectives they invite, might have to show us about burnout. And I share some agricultural context for the season and s...

This episode marks a shift (at least for now) in the format of these podcast episodes. Instead of sitting around the fire, we’re moving through the world.  Instead of longer and deeper, we’re aiming for more bite-sized (hopefully without losing nuance). And, at least for now, you’ll mostly just be hearing from me. These changes are prompted in part by the needs of my own life, and in part as a res...

If we assume that because we’ve been born and are not yet dead, we’re alive… is there a cost? What is aliveness, after all? And how many times will I eat soap? This is an episode about aliveness. An episode about cycles of rupture and repair. An episode where I share a silly story about me eating soap (multiple times, to date!) and some of my own journey from being unaware to being more in rhythm...

How do we say ‘yes’ to life, without saying ‘no’ to death? How do we “rise to the occasion” and “wrestle something good” from the heartbreak of a terminal diagnosis? What does it look like to “become familiar with grief and uncertainty in intimate ways”? Today’s virtual fire-side conversation about being human and being alive is with Duncan Passmore - husband, father, writer, and woodworker of 20...

What if the very things which challenge our ability to ‘fix’ or ‘produce’ in the ways we’re used to are the things which bring us closer to sacredness? I recorded this episode a month ago, right after I recorded the ‘Sacredness: Part 1’ episode and while grief and uncertainty were right under the surface of my skin. Like with Sacredness Part 1, I ended up adding in some updates and edits as I was...

If we held up a laugh-meter (like the one from Monsters, Inc) what would our laugh levels be? and Why do we just feel drawn to certain places? and Do our ancestors matter? and Is it possible to befriend crows while being a nomad? These are the types of questions (serious and silly) you’ll hear around today’s fire where I’m joined by the ever-optimistic, comedy-loving Kate Graham -  a shamanic orac...

Can we be human and not believe in sacredness? What does ‘sacred’ even mean?  The energy of these times in this moment of full moon, Spring equinox, and lunar eclipse feels deeply challenging, beautiful, and initiatory. And I had a message come through as I meditated one night about what sacredness actually is: “Sacredness is not what we do, or even what we feel - it’s a quality of presence and li...

The Spring Equinox (referred to in several European countries as some version of ‘Ostara’) is midway between Winter Solstice and Summer Solstice and a day of equal dark and light - the day and night are the same length. For those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, this is a time of blossoming, of unfurling, of tending the soil and placing new seeds. (The Southern Hemisphere celebrates the Fall Equi...

It’s been a while since I’ve had a guest around the fire for a host of reasons but today, for this new moon, I’m joined by Tad Hargrave of Marketing for Hippies (among other culture-making endeavors). I got to meet Tad back in October in Edinburgh where we were both in town for the Scottish International Storytelling Festival and enjoyed our post-story session conversations around mutual interests...

I’m not going to pretend I think this is one of my best episodes. In fact, it feels like it’s one of my most rambling and least ‘helpful’. But it’s my birthday today and sometimes we get to just be human, not a’ helpful’ ‘resource’. Sometimes good enough is just that. So join me around the fire for a short and sweet episode and to hear my raw, unpolished wonderings about ritual; ceremony; threshol...

What do you think of when you think of violence and peace? Antidote? Opposite sides of a coin?  As you’re probably aware, the through-thread of my wonderings and conversations in this podcast is a question: in the face of the dehumanizing forces of the world, how do we devote ourselves to more humanity?  And in these times, questions around peace, violence, and justice feel deeply relevant and urg...

Imbolc is a Cross Quarter celebration - midway between Winter Solstice and Spring Equinox; widely celebrated on February 1st each year, although in 2024 the astrologically-derived date is Feb 4 or 5. But at its heart, it tells us we are at the beginning of the beginning of Spring and invites us to take note of the subtle shifts which herald a larger transition, the tension of opposites and contrad...

Integration often takes longer than we think it will - the space between what’s here and what we now know to be possible is a place of healthy tension, heartbreak, creativity, imagination… hopefully leading to more wholeness and vibrant human-spirit expression. As my post-pilgrimage integration journey continues, I share with you some John O’Donohue-inspired musings around Absence as creative forc...

Today around the fire I let you in a little more to some of my journey from deep disconnect and depression back to a lighter and more full-bodied experience of my life, prompted by the dark spiral I’ve found myself in over the past few weeks. I talk about the tension we often feel in those places between needing others and needing to go inward. And I share about big emotions and why those of us wh...

Welcome back around the fire where today I’m modeling showing up as I am, fresh from being sick and the rawness of landing back in the United States. It’s a pretty common phenomenon to get sick after a really expansive time. And while there are plenty of physical, immune system reasons for this, there is also an energetic and spiritual component, going often unrecognized. This component, when tend...

In my head and, at times out loud, I’ve been calling this trip I’ve been on in Ireland and Scotland an ancestral pilgrimage. While it has and is turning out to be so much more, the instigating spark first grew out of a journey of wanting to know who my people were, where were they from, and what they believed… before they became a colonizing presence in the United States, before they became ‘white...

In the past when I’ve traveled, I’d have had a steady commentary running through my mind, as if I was evaluating myself and what I was experiencing from the outside, while planning what silly things I was going to write about it to friends back home.  This trip is proving to be different. Which means, I find myself with less to say and more immersion into the stream of experiences. But I still wan...

When Erik and I recorded this episode, we intended it to be a bonus episode… and yet I’ve kept putting off listening to it. Honestly, I think I expected to find it super cringe (and it is a little, though not as much as I feared). But now here we are, approximately 1.5 months after recording it. Travel hasn’t allowed me to record many new episodes with guests and the moon moves through its phases…...

Today’s session around the fire was recorded about 10 days into my time in Scotland and watching it back for these notes, I’m aware of how ‘fizzy’ and ‘unsettled’ my system feels; how old meaning-making patterns were being stirred and and challenged and I was in the place of being unmade. Perhaps you’ll see something different in me, too. Or perhaps that’s how it always was and it looks and feels...

We all need a certain level of containment - some boundaries and understandings to help guide us. However, things get sticky when we confuse certainty with containment. And when we (often unconsciously) try to avoid our fear of uncertainty. Today, I’m joined at the fire by Erik Eging - a PR and Communications specialist, photographer, and no stranger to medicine spaces; as well as a human now supp...