Gather round this eve, kindreds and community. It is time to remember who we are, to find our resources and recall the power of the solstice fires that burn bright at the heart of all humans: the magic is creation, the kindling is story.
The story you contain is a story present in all of our peoples, a story spread with many names and places, a story with a form recognizable in the hard things life brings. Life may be difficult even now. Fire may be scorching the fields, or the rivers may be in flood, or the fever could be again wandering the land. These are difficult stories to name or claim and we may feel shy of the telling, the sharing, afraid of the pain our stories know. And yet it is in the sharing we can touch the secret—of the oldest tales, the most sacred tellings—that we are not alone in challenge, that we are descended from survivors. That we, too, survive.
You also hold within a story of hope, of resilience, of becoming. You carry a story of transformation, manifestation, heroic growth and the creative seed of this story holds inside its germ yet another essential power: that of healing, annealing, honoring, transforming.
We, as humans are made of stories. There is no exception, no one of us exempt from this. In our stories we carry ancestral truth, we receive a magical instruction that tells us the challenge of life is no time for despair. Instead, hardship invites us to press our hands to the earth, pull on the linen cloak, the sturdy boots, and place bread in our pocket to feed whatever comes our way.
Are you listening? Then you might hear these words: when the trials descend, above all, you must not lose hope. This pain has a purpose, and we have a path. Even in the darkness of the underworld, the realm of the Dark Goddess, when we have received the medicine of story, the way is always clear.
You have a mandate to share your story in this life.
It is our cask to carry, our burden and our gift.
If it makes you feel afraid, this call, better still. For where there is fear, there is power.
You must tell the story you are afraid to tell.
You must find a way to offer it to the world, to the gods and ancestors, to your human kin.
Will you heed this invitation?
Will you pour out the contents of your story?
Will you let flow the blood that spirit imbues, the mead of memory?
Will you honor your very bones with the telling?
What is the story that spirit will tell through you?
What is the story that you will share, as legacy, as remembering, true?
I have always believed that story creates the world, a belief not disabused by my own experience of meeting fictional characters I created in the airport lounge (her name was Prairie, and her description matched down to her red boot laces), nor my ancestral research into symbols, writing systems, runes and myth. My experience in university teaching reaffirmed what I always expected: story is not for specialists, it is for everyone. You don’t need to be a great writer to tell your essential story. Story is our magic, all of us.
And we need your stories, my stories, all stories. We need them desperately, these stories of life and joy and pain and death. In a world saturated with corporate storytelling and tech manipulations we need the raw, authentic connection that comes from deeply human telling.
My process for writing what I can hardly bear to speak—my story, contained by loss and pain and fear and grief—has been honed through years of chronic illness and work with hundreds of people, midwifing story. It is a process of ritual, aligning with spirit, clearing the channel and moving into a state of reciprocal offering, trusting in the necessary tale, honoring and dissolving expectations. It is generative, rough edged to wear away my own academic training and censoriousness. And it works, it gets the words out there, it brings the story forth. If you are here it is a result of this Spirited Story process, weaving my imperfect tale into the world in hopes it might reach you, in this moment, right now.
If you are reading this, you are called to find your own sacred thread—your tale, or “yarn”—and spin it into being.
If you are reading this you are called to share your story.
You know the one:
It keeps you awake at night.
It churns your heart with grief.
It pricks the edges of your sight.
It holds you to belief.
Now, let us clap three times to call in our helping and compassionate spirits, that we might see what needs seeing, read what needs reading, know what needs knowing, and recall our part in this whole and holy myth.
The tale is before us.
It is a story of struggle and survival.
And like all stories of creation, we must begin in the necessary dark.
How will you begin?
With love—ᚨᛚᚢ
Will you be offering another Spirit & Story Sacred Writing Workshop? I am sad to have missed this one!
Hi Christina--Thank you for reaching out! The generative class is still available for self-study and we will be starting a live critique workshop this fall. You don't need to have completed the class to join the workshop, all are welcome. There is more information available in the classroom, which is now available with school membership, or I offer scholarships too. If you are interested here is the link: https://wildsoulschool.teachable.com/p/spirit-story-sacred-writing-workshop/ I look forward to connecting with you! <3