Awakening Ancestral Wisdom:
An Introductory Writing & Creative Course
Book Recommendations
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Fiction:
Cloud Atlas, David Mitchel. The Hours, Michael Cunningham Pat Barker's war trilogy. The Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez Beloved, Toni Morrison People of the Whale: Linda Hogan Ceremony: Leslie Marmon Silko House Made of Dawn: N. Scott Momaday The Antelope Wife: Louise Erdrich The Overstory:Richard Powers Braiding Sweetgrass: Robin Wall Kimmerer |
Non-Fiction:
Hospicing Modernity, Vanessa Machado de Oliviera Right Story Wrong Story, Tyson Yunkaporta Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer It Didn't Start with You, Mark Wolynn Ritual: Power, Healing and Community, Malidoma Patrice Somé A Field Guide to Getting Lost: Rebecca Solnit. Is A River Alive? + Underworld: Robert Macfarlane Listen to the Land Speak: Manchan Magan The Star Thrower: Loren Eisley The Solace of Open Spaces: Gretel Ehrlich Spirit of Place: Susan Owens To Speak for the Trees: Diana Beresford-Kroeger Entangled Life: Merlin Sheldrake The Perception of the Environment: Tim Ingold The Mushroom at the End of the World: Anna Tsing How Forests Think: Eduardo Kohn Staying with the Trouble: Donna Haraway The Spell of the Sensuous: David Abram |
Poetry
Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth, Warsan Shire The Wild Iris, Louise Glück The Peace of Wild Things: Wendell Berry I Never Dared Hope For You: Christian Bobin Spontaneous Particulars, The Telepathy of Archives: Susan Howe A History of Kindness: Linda Hogan Whereas: Layli Long Soldier And - Pattiann Rogers, Mary Oliver, W.S. Merwin, Alice Oswald |
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“The past is already in debt to the mismanaged present. And besides, contrary to what you may have heard or learned, the past is not done and it is not over, it’s still in process, which is another way of saying that when it’s critiqued, analyzed, it yields new information about itself. The past is already changing as it is being reexamined, as it is being listened to for deeper resonances. Actually it can be more liberating than any imagined future if you are willing to identify its evasions, its distortions, its lies, and are willing to unleash its secrets.” Toni Morrison
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"The purpose of poetry is to remind us
how difficult it is to remain just one person For our house is open, there are no keys to the doors, And invisible guests come in and out at will." Czeslaw Milosz |
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What we encounter, recognize or discover, depends on the quality of our approach. An approach of reverence invites revelation. To pause and reflect on this can make all the difference between living in a cold, detached world, populated primarily by judgements and cynicism, and living in a world riddled with intimacy and offers of communion. When our approach is one of reverence, we find ourselves falling into a deeper embrace with all that is open to encounter, both internally and in the surrounding, breathing world. (John O Donohue)
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Mythic Genealogy Tree
Tracing the stories that shaped you
How to Use This Template
This is not a family tree of people, but of myths, stories, and narratives that moved through your lineage and shaped your consciousness.
Fill in each box with the myths, legends, fairy tales, religious narratives, cultural stories, and archetypes that each generation carried. These might be conscious (stories told) or unconscious (deep narrative patterns lived).
Consider: What stories did they tell? What gods/goddesses/spirits were alive in their worldview? What fairy tales or cultural narratives shaped their understanding of gender, power, destiny, love, sacrifice?
Grandparents' Generation
Maternal Grandmother
What myths lived in her?
What stories shaped her world?
Which goddesses, spirits, or archetypes moved through her line?
Maternal Grandfather
What myths lived in him?
What narratives of power, duty, or destiny?
Which heroes or gods shaped his understanding?
Paternal Grandmother
What myths lived in her?
What stories shaped her world?
Which goddesses, spirits, or archetypes moved through her line?
Paternal Grandfather
What myths lived in him?
What narratives of power, duty, or destiny?
Which heroes or gods shaped his understanding?
Parents' Generation
Mother
What myths did she inherit?
What new stories layered over the old?
Which narratives shaped her ideas of femininity, sacrifice, love, power?
(Religious stories? Fairy tales? Cultural narratives?)
Father
What myths did he inherit?
What new stories layered over the old?
Which narratives shaped his ideas of masculinity, duty, strength, provision?
(Religious stories? Cultural heroes? Archetypes?)
Your Generation
You
What myths do you carry?
Which stories are in tension within you?
What are you inheriting? What are you composting?
Which new myths are you weaving?
Future / What Wants To Emerge
The Stories You're Seeding
What narratives are you consciously choosing?
What deep stories do you want to pass forward?
Which myths are you rewriting or reclaiming?