Sophie Strand on Ecological Embodiment, New Myths and Healthism - E166

How can our stories be useful to our communities and become live saving myths and ecologies?

In this episode entitled Compost Heap Wisdom, Amisha talks to Sophie Strand. Sophie is a writer and thinker who takes us to new heights and deep crevices at the intersection of spirituality, storytelling, and ecology. Her first book of essays ‘The Flowering Wand: Rewilding the Sacred Masculine’ was published by Inner Traditions in Fall 2022. Her eco-feminist historical fiction reimagining of the gospels ‘The Madonna Secret’ comes out in Summer 2023.

Amisha and Sophie speak about the magic of myth-making and the possibilities of adjacent live-saving realities they open up; places where we may envision humankind as part of an ecological niche. Sophie shares about her life with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, a rare genetic connective tissue disease that affects her entire body. By recognising the porousness of her body, she reveals the messiness of decay, ego death and life’s anxieties. As a result she brings alive life-affirming myths and new ideas around communities rooted in the deep wisdoms of the compost heap.

They delve into healthism and its exiling consequences. They reveal that its prevalence in Western medical paradigms and New Age spirituality, holds us personally responsible for coming into normativity distracting from the nourishing essence that exists within our diverse survival strategies. Sophie speaks about Eco grief, a natural outcome of Earth that is surviving outside its window of tolerance. 

We learn that sharing our profoundly messy and psychedelic stories along with the small fixes we have learnt through survival is an important form of activism that boosts our communities; whilst gathering in dance and joining hands to distribute feelings of grief and anxiety might be our lighthouse of survival.

Links from this episode and more at https://allthatweare.org/2023/03/30/e166-sophie-strand-on-ecological-embodiment-new-myths-and-healthism-compost-heap-wisdom/ 

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