Welcome to Story Medicine, my newsletter for the Storyhood® community. Twice a month, I share something new – a lesson I learned, an idea I wrestled, or something perplexing I just found – plus a story prompt for you to explore in your own voice.
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Storytelling as a Practice
New to Story Medicine? Start with this foundational piece on what storytelling as a practice really means.
#12: The space of the mother(s)
Berlin 2025 I’ve been reading Daniel Foor, Ancestral Medicine, and watching Vanessa Machado de Oliveira’s course, Hospicing Modernity, on the Science and Nonduality website. That combination, and living for three weeks in a city not my home, has opened up a lot of thinking about my maternal line. The words “space of the mother” have…
#11: Hard lessons from my mother … that are very hard to shift
In my last newsletter, I focused on some of the important lessons my mother passed down to me. This week, I am looking at some of the hard lessons that caused me harm growing up. I often think the most important things we learn from our closest family and friends are the things they are…
#10: 3 enduring lessons from my badass mother dying
The most important lessons my mother taught me are the ones she wanted the world to take away from her memoir and her life. Eat First, Cry Later was her first-generation college alumna version of “when life gives you lemons, make lemonade”; “put your own oxygen mask on first,” and “never, ever, ever give up”…
#9: Sitting with awkwardness
[Content warning: SA will be mentioned] More than three weeks ago, I received a terse email from my brother-in-law to me and my cousins saying that one of my mother’s hospice nurses had said she could die any day. The physical pain of the rupture between me and my sister coursed from my brain to…
#8: Get intimate with what you do not yet know…
A week ago, very early Saturday morning, I looked out the window and saw a shimmering arch in the backyard. For a second, I wasn’t sure if I was having a vision or a hallucination. As the archway faded in and out, I saw how the lights from the front of the house worked their…
#7: What does it mean to call myself Grandmother to the World?
I had two amazing grandmothers … and I will write about them and their influence on me in due time … This week I want to explore what it means to me to call myself “grandmother to the world.” The first time this exploded into the present for me was right after Hamas invaded Israel…