Feeding & Healing Ourselves Amidst Collapse with Carmen Spagnola

Wow what an honor so this is Carmen span Yola who wrote the book The spirited Kitchen recipes and rituals for the wheel of the Year everyday animism folk magic and Witchcraft you know you love it because I love it and I talk about this stuff so her book comes out October 31st so if you're listening to this the weakness comes out it comes out next week and if you preorder it which US authors

really truly benefit from the pre-orders more than the post Pub sales let me just tell you that it's a game we got to play if you pre-order at she's got some pretty sweet pre-order bonuses for you. It's an incredible beautiful book which we talked about in our such a fun Lively hilarious life-giving nourishing conversation so if you never heard of Carmen Spagnola highly recommend a follow she is a Wilderness guide podcast host Le Cordon Bleu trained chef.

Rose and vegetable Gardener collapse aware coach and which have no particular affiliation in this episode we just kick it off with thing I'm most jazzed about which is the ongoing saga of her 300-plus pounds.

Tick-Tock or if you're like me just watch the Tik toks and Instagram because you're not going to do another thing famous pumpkin and explore the term collapse as it relates to being collapse aware as an individual as and as a collective I don't know about you but I find the term collapsed to feel a little confusing or scary and you know it's sort of bandied about in the culture and I think sometimes another word is like

when people talk about capital is being anti-capitalist like I think people sometimes get that confused with consumerism I think with collapse sometimes people get that confused with like.

The zombie apocalypse and so after we just go super nerd out on the amazing pumpkin she's growing we talk more about this concept of collapse and I just found it to be so so helpful so we wind through her journey from being a latchkey kid to attending Le Cordon Bleu and France to working on Mega Yachts I was like wait what learning the depths of hospitality and then writing her new cookbook the spirited kitchen

we also explore the practice of feeding memory as a way to connect with an honor our ancestors even if they weren't always the most honorable you know I love talking about that.

And then together we take a look at the large societal problems that inevitably cause grief and Carmen shares ways to soothe ourselves and move out of a free state in the face of such big issues and feelings and I find that Carmen really takes a perspective that doesn't feel sort of like what everyone sort of saying over and over again there's a way Carmen breaks it down and teaches it that feels very like okay I got it.

Thank you this is going to be very very helpful to my nervous system to my life and Carmen is all about beauty you will definitely tell from the interview and I am a super fan I'm Carmen has her own podcast that I love called the numinous podcast so settle in for this really informative delightful hilarious enlightening conversation with Carmen Spaniel. Music. Carmen Spann Yola the one and only I feel like you're famous I feel like you're real deal famous not just.

Because I've been following you for years and have been very excited about this book but also because you are Tik Tok star in my life. Yeah who Woulda thunk I would love to talk so much I was like Tick-Tock was like another platform and then.

I got into it and I think I'm pretty good about spending the time in the places that are going to feed me good algorithm I'm like pretty much the same on Instagram too it's like I follow enough goats to Graham and cheap of the Day hashtags that I get a really good feed and now on Tick Tock my for you is just like like I was into corn kid the first day you know and was like oh my gosh

yeah it's basically a vehicle for me to watch my own videos about me loving my pumpkin but I do love it I do love Tick-Tock it the the stream I'm in is a really good stream, if you get into the right stream yeah for a while I was just like somehow in like a Korean boy band, stream that I could not get out of because I think one night late at night I just happened to

Dead Eye on these K-Pop Stars dancing and I honestly I was like oh look at them dance to drop it like she loves it she loves it give it to her. Yeah that can happen and I'm not I'm not totally sure how to get out of it when that happens but yeah yes yeah thanks for watching my Tic Tacs, okay so we're recording this episode early so we're putting this recording this in early September which is like late summer early fall in the northern hemisphere you are. North of me in Victoria.

Mmm-hmm frightened and I am on tender hooks waiting for my pumpkin to fully.

Develop and become who my pumpkin wants to be and and yes right now we're just shy of 200 pounds and Becca I've had multiple dreams about the pumpkin multiple names about pumpkin and I had a dream that Bruce Springsteen he was giving me advice about like work and other things which I Facebook has told me in past years that I dream about Bruce Springsteen Every Spring so I don't know what's going on with that exactly but I welcome it,

yeah I know Facebook memory that's like the one good thing it's therefore it's like I posted a number of years ago I had a dream about Bruce Springsteen and so now I know oh it's my annual fall or spring dream about Bruce Springsteen so it's like I guess around Equinox I have dreams about him anyway he was giving me like business of Life advice and we were actually sitting at his place and in the distance he's not he's got like.

Horsey Farm kind of thing is got like land and horses but there was a pumpkin patch right there and so I was like a Bruce Springsteen's house at his pumpkin patch we weren't directly talking about the pumpkin but I felt like it was a pumpkin it was a blessing on my pumpkin and a blessing upon the house of Carmen's been Yola by Bruce Springsteen.

I feel that I feel that deeply and as a fan as a full-on follower fan of yours and more particularly invested deeply in this as I call it the telenovela of the pumpkin I mean every day you post this is Real Deal everyday you post like, you do the measuring way that you cuz you can't pick up the pumpkin so you show us how you're measuring to know according to the Great Pumpkin.

Commonwealth's there their system I'm dialed here we're doing this as profession as we can I'm very serious about it, and you know when you're like marketing team is like well if you want the algorithm to like you you're going to have to post three to five times a day and people are like this impossible and I'm like. Would it be weird if I posted three times about the pumpkin and I want to I want to sometimes I post more than once a day about the pumpkin.

Well we love it and when this comes out we there was so much we don't know about the future of this pumpkin ahead and when this comes out we will post in the show notes. You're Tick-Tock channels that we all like right now all of you listening know what happened but we don't know what happened. And what's your what's your goal with the pumpkin is there a weight is water.

No so it started with date I really want the pumpkin I want the pumpkin too be alive and fresh and looking great at sewing right October 31st November first I would like the pumpkin to be there to spread joy and cheer to all of the children and families coming by for trick-or-treating but we had a very early injury

to the stem early in the season which has slowed significantly and now the powdery mildew is coming it's very stressful back at and so now I'm just this close to 200 pounds and this is my kind of a secondary goal is if it's not going to last until Samhain then I would like for it to at least hit 200 pounds after if I can hit 200 pounds after that it's just going to be euphoric like I just don't know.

Anything could happen and I am open to all possibilities but I would like for the pumpkin to be around to be on display for October 31st that's the big dream and that's how it all started and we had a very late start I'm not going to replay the whole telenovela but people go back to Late July early August you'll see I didn't even think there was going to be a pumpkin this year and then a miracle happened.

I know those spring rains I know I was following and the powdery mildew the powdery mildew took out all my pumpkins, and my cucumbers and so I feel you so deeply and so yeah we are like.

Laughing here and also there's something there's a kinship work tapping into and I think something deeper which you talk about work with and write about in your book which is coming out next week when this comes out the spirit of kitchen is your connection to ancestral ways and this the Great Pumpkin watch like yes we're talking about it on the internet but like this is what our ancestors did and there's a way you touch upon it. Resonates deeply for me and I think a lot of other people.

Thank you I you know I laugh and I'm facetious but I have genuine tears and I have genuine concerns because it really does tap into that sense of like oh my God what if this was a life-giving harvest. And. You know it was like oh no I'm seeing mildew in the wheat I fucking freaking out it was be all I can think about and the whole family would like down tools and all the community would just you'd be like.

This is like watching the farm Channel you'd be like oh talking over fences oh the powdery mildew came over to the McLaren's or whatever you know you feel like you would you would definitely all be gathering to be like what are we going to do and when should we Harvest and should we wait another day is it going to be a really dewy night and will wake up tomorrow and everything's wilted I mean

this is you know it back in the day this was life or death stuff so you can also then see why you would celebrate so much I mean oh my God after the exhilarating highs in the terrifying lows of the growing season by the time you get to harvest home by the time you get to Samhain of course you're like elevating your Harvest this like sacred like life-giving grain or vegetable or whatever it was and of course you'd have to have a party to like let her rip am I allowed to swear.

Yeah oh for sure yeah okay okay of course you need to like have that somatic and emotional discharge of like oh my God we made it through the harvest season and. It was you know we hardly made it was very narrow you'd want to tell the same story again and again about how the powdery mildew came and you be thinking back oh well you know that reminds me of you know back in 67 whatever you know I see very much now how you become kind of Enchanted.

With the fruits of your labor but also how it can become like an extremely palpable this relationship where you're like please please hang on please stay for another day like please don't die because your your investment is so full and true it's not too many steps I mean you know I'm growing a giant pumpkin yeah it's fun and I can do a little magic around it and, it sort of seems significant when it hits different moon cycles and things like that

but really if I think back to my ancestors living through potato famines and things like that I mean you see a blight come in and there is something ancestral that just makes me. And yeah I think a lot of the like laughter and tears that I have so that the that are genuine. They're not just oh Carmen's doing the silly thing it is like an ancestral discharge of like holy crap I am being absolutely wrapped up in the life or death of this crop.

And something needs to be discharged something needs to be let go because it's like I haven't had any outlet in. Modern capitalist imperialist white supremacist patriarchy it's like we're not oriented around these things and so you don't get that same direct discharge of like oh my God my life depends on um how good the season is you know unless you are a farmer you don't really know the intimacy and the stress of that.

Yeah I don't know that's a good turn but that's that's what that's what I that's what I feel is like wow this is actually super stressful. But it's a healthy stress I think it's like really growing my edges in terms of some resilience and also how quickly your problem solving and getting smart me like own extra I'm going to do it like this or you know it.

It really is developing different parts of my brain and my body and kind of that felt sense intuition of like oh what is needed what is the pumpkin telling me it needs and it's a lot of Attunement which I talked about in the spirit of kitchen all the time. But this is this is definitely a very visceral experience of the tune meant to a vegetable that I've never experienced before. Yeah I think your modeling something.

Important for a lot of us like I know what it's what feels like stirring and me is I. Currently live in Northern California and it's very dry and hot in this in the late summer and fall and I have always sort of been channeling my like ancestors who are from like British Isles and Scotland and Lake, I've realized I've been treating my garden like it's in another place like wanting it to feel like

you know the like the Misty Moors or the highlands and it just isn't and so I find this time of year I get very very frustrated. I have a friend Aaron Duffy Oswald it says it's far easier to plant seeds than it is to last through the Harvest and I find like that's true in so many ways you know metaphorically and in the garden which is like seeing it through and harvesting the lessons as well as. The bumper crop and this time of year things start failing.

The powdery mildew takes things out the I fail to water enough because we also have water limitations here because of drought and so I feel like I get confused about water and then I start to.

Feel like I can't do this and then I like my Western colonized mind gets like frustrated just wants to throw in the towel and like go to the grocery store and I didn't do it and start again next year and and these are all important things to feel and there's something about watching you just process you know the pumpkin Tick-Tock Saga that has me realizing like oh it is resilience building to be with what happens in the garden every year.

Oh yeah for sure it's I love that you've recognized that that you get frustrated by the end of season I mean we you know we're similar with like weeds and stuff but I have this seasonal on WE Every Spring where, I get this kind of spring depression and I kind of stare out my window and it feels like it's not the right Vista or view like I just feel the raft and sad and what I want is to be looking out and and I want to step out my door and here sheep bleating.

You know I just I want the sound of sheep I want pastoral Vistas I want lambing to be happening you know like yeah and so then I get sad and I you know troll real estate I can't afford and get angry about old I know but you know these are good lessons I think it's nice to feel. The pull of the roughness and loss I think because it reminds me what I care about and it's like oh yeah okay I got a reorient my life it's it's takes a long time to turn a ship.

But I'm not doing nothing in the meantime right I am learning how to be a better grower how to be more attuned how to process the emotions. You know and you got to do a quick you got to recover in motion if you are actually relying on food to sustain you you know it's like.

With the grains that I've grown in the past I've been like, well they were just for they were just for wheat weaving so it's okay that the voles and the mice got it but you know as I get closer and closer to an age where I'm like no I gotta live my life right I've got it actually, relocate somewhere at some time and go back to my roots a little bit more I am like god dammit knee against the.

In rodents like so now I have to be in relationship with rodents in a new way where I'm like tracking what they're doing in like oh I did see some digging over in the corner and what do you know two days later on my wheat was gone like why didn't I pay attention to that and now it's like okay all right you and me we're in relationship now what's your, seasonal habit where do you live like how do I protect from you because you know at some point.

We aren't going to be able to just walk to the grocery store and get what we want is easy so we want I don't know about you but, here where I live your three of pandemic you're starting to kind of well I still don't actually get used to it I don't really go to the grocery store luckily all that often but when I do I sure notice a lot of empty shelves so you know I we're tracking that that.

Getting a little bit more fluent and skillful and patient with with growing food and being attuned to the ecosystem you're in is more than just kind of a hipster thing to do you know all right collapse after all yeah so I'd love to dive into that, more because I've really seen you as a model for living, with what you call collapse awareness and also living with such joy in your life and such beauty and I find myself feeling quite wobbly.

In in honoring those two parts of life and really quite tempted to. Just stick my head in the sand when it all feels like. Too much information that is pointing to the way things are going and that's what I know to talk to just talk about it and talk to people and. I just would love to talk to you about it because this is such a beautiful book. That takes you through the wheel of the year and brings in this this energy of Celebration and connection to the land and animism and.

Folklore and Witchcraft and it just feels so beautiful and I know that is like the antidote to this like. Collapse induced fries and panic and so I and I also love watching when you share on social media like your life your like urban homesteading life and. And so whatever feels true to share about how you live your life with collapse awareness I would love to hear oh for sure well I mean first of all let me.

Frame out collapse a little bit like everybody it is what the word sounds like right we all have them at different scales so in the spirit of kitchen I share about like a personal collapse that led to, more awareness about societal collapse my personal collapse with a failure of a business and fighting myself as a very privileged able-bodied white woman who you know previously been successful too

being at the welfare office and realizing like oh wow there isn't the safety net particularly the class that I come from as like working class it's like oh there isn't a safety net of like intergenerational welfare like family members are going to show up and like bail me out, and then I kind of cast my awareness a little wider and was like

oh Society doesn't have a safety net either even here in Canada which were usually pretty proud of our social safety net it's good joke now anyway so everybody whether you are quote collapse aware at that societal level or not everybody has personal collapses that we go through we can think of them as initiations The Long Dark Night of the Soul you know however you want to frame it but.

I talked about in general is like okay so go from the personal to what's happening at the collective and so when I'm talking about collapse awareness and talking about tracking those converging emergencies of large-scale cooperation dilemmas so like, climate change pop the political spectrum is like to party systems capitalism these are large-scale cooperation dilemmas for which there is no solution.

Meaning like if there was a solution we'd of licked it by now you know it's not a lack of ideas or imagination or anything like that it's a scale problem there it's like they're so big they have to fail.

And so a collapse is like an initiation you know it's grief that needs to come it needs to happen we need a collapse to shift us into whatever is next and it's scary because we don't know what's going to be next and so we, into these personal and Collective free states what I know as a cinematic practitioner is that when you're in freeze. Rapid embodiment doesn't help that just sleds you you need like a little bit at a time at the right time.

And so it our house my husband and I have been you know that that was like kind of a thing that attracted us to each other as we both had this worldview our very first, date we'd known each other prior but we weren't romantic so our first like romantic date we were sharing this world view of like what am or collapse

he was talking about it the city scale he's working for the City Vancouver I was talking about a personal scale and a business scale because I'm kind of a natural born entrepreneur and. We were just like oh wow this person speaking my language like that the future isn't going to be the same as the past only brighter and shinier. We both found ourselves.

Leaning towards grounding practices things I would Now call grounding practices that help like stabilize and help helped us to co regulate so being able to just get a grasp on one small thing. Is very settling for the nervous system and the good thing about. Developing collapse resilience is that all you do is you like learn one little skill.

And once you learn one little skill what you're actually learning is that you can learn new skills you can learn new ways of being you can learn new ways of doing so we just kept exploring stuff that felt grounding for us and some of them were ancestral skills like canning for me it was.

Learning how to use guns and stuff like that in case I wanted to go hunting I became a Wilderness guide you know we have the tons of different things we do one of them was I also did like facilitation, training like how to be a facilitator Mental Health First Aid those kinds of things are also collapse kills and you learn that like okay I can acquire these new skills and they can fit into my world view which is that.

Whether it's me or my neighbor whether it's my close friend or somebody in a different country or Nation. Everybody is going to be going through collapse and that means there's going to be more things like death injury poverty there's going to be more lost there's going to be more trauma so I want to live my life in the most trauma-informed way that I can what I know is that trying to learn everything and trying to get a grasp at the large-scale often overwhelms

so I don't have to know everything I also don't have to do everything in fact if I tried that would be that rapid embodiment thing if I throw myself into the deep end and be like learn how to swim I'm just going to drown, so it's way better to just kind of start clothes in start at the thing that feels the most appealing to you and for me it was like a lot of ancestral.

Yearnings you know gardening like my grandma did canning like my great grandma did Growing the same things that my ancestors would have learning about the agricultural wheel of the year, those things helped me feel like I could see the pattern not only right now in society the pattern of collapse but that this has been going on for generations and generations and generations centuries my great great grandmother in the highlands went through.

You know yeah indigenous people around me going to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and hearing their testimony they've gone through collapse very recently and so what are the things that that helped them through for us we call it the small and delicious life it's those things that are skills that are joyful for me they have to create a lot of beauty and a lot of kind of a sense of hospitality and warmth and invitation.

They also need to be things that I'm genuinely kind of geeked up about and nerd enough about so you know everybody's collapse kill it's going to look a little different but we all have something to contribute and. Again if I go back to my sabbatic teachings.

What we know is that when we're in that fries and we're overwhelmed we do small movements small gestures and we develop a sense of self-efficacy and confidence and then we get really clear on what it is we care about, and we imagine or think about reaching towards what we care about while still staying grounded where we are so like that's strong,

back body but with arms and legs on and mobilized or reaching towards what you care about without it being a grasp or a desperate cling or something like that it's like it's being pretty strong and stable. So you know yeah collapse involves a lot of sad things and so you just become grief literate you become death literate you know you like these are things.

At our house we have a stoic practice when we wake up in the morning it's like oh my God you made it you made it through the night you know because one day maybe my partner will not have made it through the night and so then we like. Give a lot of gratitude that we both woke up like say the prayers.

Great mother Spirit Creator thank you for safe passage to tonight and then you know we do the same at the end of the day like come back to me you know I kind of thing so we practice those kinds of, tiny little ways of reconciling that the future isn't going to be just like the past only shinier we are going to have what all humans have which is like. Overwhelming change.

Duress Challenge and the thing that gets us through is knowing what we care about and reaching for it all the time and and what I really care about is. Beauty connection sense of meaningful purposeful contribution and I think what I can contribute is you know maybe. Some. Genuineness in that like I'm genuinely in love with my pumpkin and I will genuinely be absolutely devastated when when it dies you know and I think that's a beautiful thing to share with people.

People feel like collapses a little overwhelming for them or. Or grief or loss or those things could be overwhelming I'm like well I'll prime the pump my tears usually come pretty easily or like I could talk about this forever. And over time hopefully you'll see that there's a lot of beauty and connection and love to be had when you, are framing all of your relationships in the context of like really hard time.

Thank you so much for all of those words and I know you have such skills in this area and you have a. Program where people can develop these skills as well specifically with like, somatic Attunement and connecting with your ancestral veneration practices and that's the numinous network so we'll put a link to that along with the link to the book in the show notes yeah I. Realized a few years ago when we almost had a devastating fire on the street where I live that.

Didn't have the tool like it finally landed for me that like the tools for being resilient. In the face of collapse like weren't in my body they were just like I was just reading reading reading reading reading reading reading and I just like wasn't moving into like my Soma it just like wasn't moving into my body. And so what I was the most scared of but the most curious about was death and grief and so I enrolled in a death Midwifery course.

And learned about dead body care and how to preserve it and how to do home funerals and I haven't finished that training because covid and a baby. I was always like what am I doing like why am I doing this and it I've realized like that was like an eight, desire to show up to whatever is to come which is like people will people are dying people die and like how can we show up for a community way that our ancestors once did.

You know because they weren't on their emails or trying to hustle and you know the relentlessness of capitalism was like okay this person died let's be there for that. So it's been interesting to watch how that comes up.

For us in the ways that it doesn't maybe it's Canning you know or maybe it's watching Outlander and seeing you know the herbs hanging from the ceiling and feeling like swoony it just shows up and all these ways and I think I think it's it can be, joyful and Beauty filled to follow those breadcrumbs.

For sure well and you know capitalism as you're saying like it puts us into a functional freeze there are many different kinds of fries and they don't all look like sitting there catatonic right A lot of them look incredibly productive, and so yeah you can be learning learning learning Amir but actually still be.

Part of your freeze response is I'm just going to process all my emotions on the mental level I'm just gonna like consume as much information as I could ever possibly do and like never actually put it into, um into action and so again like well how do we get out of fries well first of all.

We don't really get out of freeze by ourselves if we do it's because enough time has passed that we feel safe enough usually but like you know in a world that's like this so fast so fast that does really happened we get out of fries because someone comes in and is like checking in on us by somebody like provide some contact nutrition

and so maybe it's that you find the video of the person whose canning and their vocal prosody is just so sweet it's like banana that you wish you had or something like that it's the contact nutrition, I've like somebody providing some kind eyes and a reassuring presence and,

and so that's what I'm trying to do in my Instagram feed my Tick-Tock it's like I'm going to give you contact nutrition I'm going to let you hear in my voice how much I love my pumpkin gonna let you see in my eyes that I am like, tracking this going to let you like seeing my body what it's like when I'm trying to get my arms around it like it we're getting contact nutrition and that's what thaws of Frozen nervous system. So you know it may not look like collapse kills but it is.

Thank you I feel soothed you can probably see it by your words and yeah like fortified to keep going. In all the ways and that's how we do it someone's got to encourage us and and be like hey I'm here I'm here I'm here I see you I see you. Let's do this thing together whatever this thing is that's how we saw it and we go okay maybe it can come into my body maybe I can take just a little sip.

Or I can look but it's like a blank and reverse I'm just going to look and be like oh I gotta do my will okay let me do my will or whatever it is we've got to do right. So then where does food come into all of this because I know that food plays a very big role. In your life and yeah it feels spiritual when I hear you talk about it when I read about. The way you write about it when I see the way you treat it and a lot of this book is a cookbook. Yeah so I'd love to hear more about.

Food in your life in your practices as you know in your ancestral veneration in your way of going around the world and your collapse awareness in. In all of it as it relates to your life in this book.

Sure well first of all I did not grow up in a household where it was like let's gather around the table with our home cooked meal like you know I was a latchkey get key kid my grandma worked my mom worked like a you know it's multiple generations of not having that sort of cooing and amygdala Whispering experience at the dining table that was not it at all and so.

When I left home learning about food became a corrective experience for me I went to you know my friends houses where they were having good experiences around the dinner table with family, where they were entertaining and there was like this gorgeous Hospitality they had like friends over you know their parents did and I was like oh this is like a very very cool way to be so there was something very alluring.

About what I couldn't name then but which was the quality of the relationships the quality of the presents that was happening and I kind of associated it very much with the food and hospitality.

And so I did that thing I went I wanted to learn I went to Le Cordon Bleu in France I was working as a private Chef on Mega Yachts so I learned about hospitality and always worked in restaurants I loved the idea of hospitality really enjoyed that coming into being a householder and being a parent I was like oh I I want to have an emotionally.

Fulfilling time at the table it's not just putting on a show and trying to be a little Martha Stewart though she was definitely an iconic early Mentor for me is definitely. Love Martha and everything she was about very much pattern my book The spirited kitchen off her book entertaining about in like 1982.

Anyway. So food I was like a late Comer in terms of learning how to work with it I don't have recipes passed down from parents or anything like that but what I. Did develop was this very strong sense of. Wanting to express love and wanting to express.

My devotion to the land to my garden too my child to my partner to my loved ones I really I love the experience of Hosting workshops in my home with my husband especially I love the experience of cooking for the questers when they come up with me into the Wilderness that's a huge part of what I do I know now again because of my cymatics training and and Trauma recovery work that ingestion behaviors like eating and drinking.

And our experience or lack of them as an infant or young child shapes how our autonomic nervous system responds to that form of connection as an adult and so. If you imagine a little infant right the little infant in an ideal world comes into the world. And it's getting so much contact nutrition through kind eyes and that emotional resonance in the voice of vocal prosody there hopefully getting skin to skin contact.

With some safe touch they're getting shared rhythm with like rocking or singing or you know sleeping together waking together. When that infant is then eating whether it's breast or bottle feed. They're getting all that really delicious yummy nervous system input that's shaping their brain and then they are actually being physically sated. At the same time, and so they feel oh I'm full like I'm being so nurtured and all these different ways and I'm physically feeling full at the same time.

Ideally that's what's supposed to happen now a lot of us don't get that and.

That inability to feel full emotionally full that what we could call satisfiability, the ability to be sated is very related to how much contact nutrition how much of the other forms of, you know interpersonal neurobiology call security catchment there are if we don't get it around eating and drinking, it causes all kinds of different shapes in our body causes our brain to be shaped differently our digestion to be shaped differently at cetera so if I can get like very personal

it became clear to me why I was constipated for 10 years of my life when I realized I was in a functional freeze. And then it became clear to me what I needed to do was dose the field with more safeness around. My entire life but I particularly was trying to do that around food is just dose the field with more safeness that you know that.

We're going to come we're going to have like good eye contact we're going to have good conversation or if you don't like aren't eye contact we're going to eat quietly but like with love and pleasure and I'm. We're going to have this experience of calmness and connection while we're eating and that I believe literally reshapes our digestive system our central nervous system and the way that we relate to other people so there's like, many different forms of of.

Many different lenses I should say that I can look through why it's so important to me it's important to me from an interpersonal neurobiology cool perspective it's important to me because food affirms life. And so it says to my ancestors it says to the spirits that I know and I don't know where it however quote-unquote well or not they are it's saying I will feed you and I will feed your memory but I'm not going to feed on your trauma.

I'm going to give you a another reason to show up and be in my life and it's going to be that I'm going to feed you safeness I'm going to feed you compassion I'm going to feed you welcome. Because I for a long time had this sort of spiritual question around ancestral veneration like how do you honor ancestors who weren't very honorable. Yeah and I received a lot of kind of like patronizing and irritating responses from a lot of the teachers that I was working with at the time and.

Now one of the things I realized is like oh the answer is different for everyone and for me it's that I'm going to feed their memory with these corrective experiences at my parents my grandmother you know. These people were not emotionally demonstrative in that way in this is not a way they showed love but I bet if they hit ever received it. I bet they would have left it you know it would have been a very different experience for me if they had ever gotten their needs met.

And they had ever had safeness around it so when I create. These meals even if it's just something simple if I'm having tea in the morning and I'm thinking about how much, my great-great granny g would have loved that I'm drinking nettle tea and so I'm like here we're going to have tea together and I'm stirring it nine sweetening it to the amount I think she would like it you know

sometimes I have a rum and coke thinking of my grandma Isabel laughing like you know what it's like not necessarily my choice but I actually do love it because I'm feeding her memory, with the thing that she would like and that is a really important form of connection for me maybe not for everyone. But I think because food is so important to our survival as an animal you know as a mammal it could be if people could approach it with that lens that.

I'm creating corrective experiences and I'm feeding. The ancestors who gave me the reason to have to correct in the first place you know.

Mmm wow how beautiful I am I'm reminded of this practice that I I. It was in that I was doing a lot more pre-baby and pandemic but I'm bringing it back which is the ancestral food potluck, I wonder if you do that in your community or I think maybe in your events but I had a I had a teacher Liz million really who otherwise in a sister spinster and I did a year long

course with her called folk medicine in folk medicine and magic of Old Europe and we all brought foods of our people whatever that meant. You know whether it was like the boxed Funfetti cake that are grandpa had it. Otto birthday is or it was like I of course like needed to get an A-Plus so I looked up like Scotch eggs made him for the first time very poorly I had other people who brought roadkill cooked Roadkill it's just a really be in that practice self like.

Uttering the food that comes to their door and we all shared stories another person whose father was stationed overseas in. Okinawa and like she's white European descent and she brought like. Spam Musubi and was like sharing that story and I just realized there's something in the way the sharing of stories and the food is. A way to connect us to their stories to honor their memory and it's reparative by Nature.

In like in real time right in community and I. I really got it and I said this has to be a practice that's a part of my life which is inviting us all to bring in what. The food of our people The ancestral foods and I yeah into that that we did that pre-pandemic. My teacher Sheena McKenna who's my gallic folk singing, I'm teacher she had come out west and done little to work and so we just I just put on Eventbrite you know kitchen Kaylee for the Autumn equinoxes and.

People showed up and we had it I think we did it two or three nights in a row anyway one of them was a pop-up and people brought their ancestral Foods we have this gorgeous Altar and there was like the ancestor plate or there's a bite of everything and that went outside to the my ancestor tree and. And of course it's like oh you know.

Some neighbors like that's going to attract raccoons and it's like well who's to say the raccoon is not an ancestor and so yeah and we sang gallic folk songs all together just like crammed into our kitchen dining and, it was it was really. Fabulous it was so nice to have people say oh this was my my brother's favorite and he just died and Otis was my grandmother taught me how to make this and, yeah that I had I really cherish those those kinds of experiences too.

Mmm-hmm so why don't you tell us about the book The Spirit of kitchen how it's. How it's outlined and how when we have it in our hands like how we should begin with it.

Oh well I hope it's one of those cookbooks that you actually want to read first from beginning to end just read it I don't know if you're a person who reads cookbooks like books I do and if you've never have dear listener I hope this is one where you will because it that will give you like a good frame out so the first part is is like you know what, how I came to write the book.

I talked a little bit about witchcraft like what does that mean how did I come to call myself a which I talked about animism talk a bit about ritual so I give people like a bit of a foundation.

Then we go through 8 micro season so it's based on the wheel of the year but not a. So I guess we would call it neo-pagan modern wheel of the year but it's not Wiccan so you're some of the names are going to be a little different and my idea is that I'm not trying to recreate any tradition right there is no pristine prior tradition as my friend colleague teacher Sophie Macklin says so.

What I'm hoping people will do is look outside their window and see what's happening outside where they are so they can determine which recipes will they use and if it's not from my book maybe it's from something else because of course I live in my own little bio region my climate is very unique when elder flower is blooming in my zone it's early in the year right might be the Beltane where somebody else is going to experience that at Midsummer so

what I hope is that people will have a sense of like what are the spiritual developmental tasks. At each of these eight points at the wheel of the year and then look outside and look to Nature to teach them what am I supposed to be doing right now to make sure that I'm marking the passage of time so yes I open each chapter with an essay that's like you know here's what.

Ancestors of basically northern European Traditions would have been doing but essentially we can look to Nature here's what nature is doing.

And then I provide two or three or four rituals you could do and again the rituals could easily be used at a different time of the year you can you can make a bridey doll it in bulk but you could also do it at Harvest Time you know you can mix them up however you want them to be and then I give a menu so here's a feast here's a coven luncheon here's a Yuletide,

pot plant really is like you know because I'm not I'm not so great with that I'm a type a person it's like I want to know what's going to be at the potluck yeah like here here's how I do potluck so there's there's these eight different menu so in total there's like about 100 recipes and rituals and then the last chapter is chapter of magical correspondences which is actually really why I wrote, the book in a way I really felt that my grimoire which is like my.

Some people call it a book of shadows but it's like your Journal your spiritual Journal where you've got the rituals you've done you've got like what do all the you know phases of the moon mean you're like putting all these things in your one Journal I have, certain foods that I use at different times of year in certain recipes

but then the rest of the year I want to know what the spiritual significance of parsley is or you know like if I'm creating a ritual or I'm creating a recipe that's for something special I love like a good glossary of natural magic that's like I think the best kind of book and so that's the whole last chapter and so that is like, 250 or 275 items it has all of their magical and spiritual symbols so that. You would pull this book off the shelf any time of year probably many times of year.

Because you know by the time you get to the end I hope people are creating their own spell jars or or are like modifying their recipes for certain.

I don't know could be anything from date night to a birthday to a graduation you know there's certain foods that you could just add another little layer of spiritual significance and symbolism to it and it becomes a spell right une it could be your Wednesday night mashed potatoes and you could still turn that into something that is an ancestral veneration practice if you understand what the spiritual components are.

So I hope that people use this cookbook like agree more, well I'm sold my whole body was like oh my gosh yeah place it on my special cookbook holder and just get in there yeah mmm yeah that's the hope. Did you know that okay I why don't you guess guess how many recipes the average person tries out of a cookbook. Well I guess I'm assuming that's not a lot 3.

Yes oh that's very sad I know I know it's very sad and so why do we buy the cookbooks right well we buy it again I think because of the contact nutrition because the the kind of what we think we're getting with it is in my case I'm like yeah smelling delicious life sign me up baby, and so it's like the whole thing is about that but then I have this more Thrifty parsimonious part of me to that's like well it's got to be worth more than three recipes like,

that does not feel like enough value if I'm going to drop 30 40 bucks on something I want to make sure, getting good cost per use this is like my collapse awareness comes in and I'm like no it's got to be like really useful and you know it's funny because as you know, a book goes through a couple different you have your editor and then it's going to go to the copy editor and they're going to make suggestions for how to trim it.

My contract was for forty four thousand words and I submitted 80,000 and of course they're like we gotta we gotta do something about this.

And of course the copy editor was like well I think you just have to trim the the chapter on the magical correspondences that'll and I was like oh no that's the whole value that's the whole point you can get recipes on the internet with the fuck no so I had to in the end we think we settled it like 65,000 words or something and the the magical correspondence has stayed intact but much smaller and that's why the bonus of people pre-order before October 31st you get this,

bonus magical correspondences chapter which is more like 375 or something like that a bunch more things got in. Oh so smart so you can still yeah share that with the world how long did it take you to write the book hmm. You know that's a good question I mean it is essentially that.

The psyche the the psyche of the book that the entire energy and being of it has taken over our house for like three years prior to that I was just using the recipes and and I was hosting workshops for the wheel of the year in my home and I had made little booklets well and my husband designed them so like let's say somebody came for a weaving.

Workshop and I would like feed lunch and we would do these things they would leave with a little booklet that talked all about why what Harvest Home is and you know what the traditions of harvesting the wheat were and how the spirit of the grain would leap from stock to stock as it was being harvested in the fields and then like the final Sheaf of wheat was the sacred object that they would. We've into ornaments and so people get this like whole little booklet so I was pretty fortunate that.

I had all these little booklets with recipes and rituals and like folklore in it and I was able to like compile those together and just expand on them so so in that sense I've been writing it for maybe five years.

Yeah a little bit more than that yeah are you doing events again I just had my first event this summer I hosted lughnasadh with my dear friend marker of fernan row who was my high tanning teacher I that was part of my collapse kill was like okay if I ever do have animals I do need to know how to do Slaughter and harvest and then what do I do with the hides and I've already been raising rabbits for a while and taught myself how to how to ten rabbit fur.

But I learned from Mara how to do sheepskin and so. When I you know Mara who has like a pretty like Punky background she was like okay and you know like I was in this.

Multi math maybe is a year-long high tanning thing we go for four days and just the whole time I can't help it I'd be like you'll be really nice right now is a charcuterie board like it would just be like it but thinking about how I would do it differently but like how I wanted her to succeed I think that's like my love language is I just. My friends who are entrepreneurs I want their businesses to be like amazingly successful and so.

I like brought a charcuterie board on the last night and stuff like that and so I knew I wanted to do a collab with Maura and this summer we did one. It was four days it was really beautiful the participants really understood like oh this is a Rite of Passage.

What I'm doing right now and like the same way that the sheepskin is going to be transformed from something that died to something that's a textile it's going to be able to live like an entire other life I'm going to reanimate the spirit of the Sheep by working the skin.

And so I was able to like feed them baked goods in the morning give them some like ritual and some folklore and then like bring out lunch and then end the day with charcuterie and Cocktails and then like a little circle of gratitude. That was really amazing for me so I think my work is just becoming. Light half of the Year dark half of the year so light half of the year the warm half is the gaels with a called it is going to be, in person outside things like Quest and stuff like that.

And then the dark half of the year I'm just going to be really focused on kind of cottage industry type stuff teaching online Etc so. Um funny how the pandemic really did shunt my business into that direction that it was kind of slowly going, anyway but yeah they'll be more online stuff through.

Through the fall and winter and kind of cold rainy seasons and not so much in person until the weather permits, yeah and one of the one of your programs that I really enjoy is your Yuletide program that I did like five years ago that so that windy announced that end of November well I usually announce it yeah like mid end of November and then it's like okay everyone December 1st were like in the start of pre-season it's like pregame right so back in the day this was called

Yuletide stocking stuffer and that was the hashtag I was using and then like it's kind of grown and grown every year this year we're calling it The Spirit of Yuletide a season of Celebration and ritual anyway. Spirit of Yuletide kind of starts December first and I and it really is like I am one of those people in July who's like is it getting colder and I'm all excited cuz it's gonna be it's gonna be like holiday time so December 1st we start thinking about.

You know what Gathering are Greenery what are some of the rituals we want to do are we going to make him Ali's what's the baking I start kind of planning out what what's like two or three like signature rituals I want to do this year or maybe I'm like.

Gathering stuff to make a winter vermouth out of what's in the in the yard at that time so I'm thinking ahead and then December 21st to New Year's Day is just like it's not elaborate sometimes it's literally just like putting a figurine on my altar you know but I'm like so excited because it's like ooh it's the day to put the rabbit's a third day I'm going to put the rabbit and the boar on the altar excited about it I like you know it's

yeah it's really meaningful to me it's been and what I love about that program is how many people have said it's carried throughout the rest of their year, is they finally figured out like oh this is what micro ritual is and it's actually like really easy. And I can it can be self-directed I can make it out of anything it's super family-friendly it's very nourishing if you're a person on your own.

To have something that like is really meaningful meaningful Traditions you can make yourself but they don't just get kind of sucked in to that one commercialized day or period right it's like you you do this like immersion this 12-day immersion into what it's like to live.

In Miss. And live in ritual and live in spirit and then it's like wow that was really awesome like I want to keep living like that you know and then you're like oh now I'll do this in spring or I can do this in summer and people have like a good felt sense of what it means to live in a spirit, Spirit guided way so yeah I get very excited about Yuletide. Hmm well I loved it and I'm going to do it again this year.

Yeah because yeah I love that if you do it year after year and I like you guys know it's like the same thing right I mean I do update it a little bit but it's like it's the same thing year after year of it lots of people really enjoyed that. I think it speaks to the just the need the desire the Deep yearning so many of us have to connect more deeply than just like I don't know consumerist culture does around that time of year it's just really sacred and deep and in sestra land.

I used to have a program around that time to call the handmade holiday and. Which was ultimately a beautiful thing that had to complete for the sake of my sanity but there was something about your Yuletide program that I took right after I closed it. That felt like thank you for this so I can still have that. Feeling for myself so big plug for that one. I will link to that as well we're going to wrap up this has been so wonderful I adore you so much I definitely.

I'm going to come up to one of your events I told you that on Instagram the other day because I just think what you're doing resonates so deeply for me and for so many in is, very important and as I've now shared to the whole internet I am becoming a farmer so it really resonates for me oh you think you're not gonna have time just go back at you're not gonna have time to come up to today and so I'll be so excited to come and see what you're doing on the

farm that was gonna say I'll bring you out for having me because yeah yeah. It takes a lot to get me over the Border it has to be like a really extraordinary individual to make me cross a border I like or get on a plane that means I'm going to go for like a month right I'm gonna burn that garbage. Yeah I'm forever but basically you know all that to say thank you so much for amplifying my work for being a strong supporter and.

Thank you for modeling the risk-taking this is this is a massive undertaking to step into your values and when I talk about reaching for what you care about there is a moment where you have to seize it. And pull it towards you and so good for you for doing that I'm really going to look forward to being with you on that Journey whatever you want to share on Instagram thanks thanks for having me here. Hmm well yeah maybe I'll start my own Tik Tok about who knows.

What the farm drama will be but very much inspired by you and the pumpkins Farm porn on Tik-Tok all the time yeah let's do it I want to see it I want to see it all with like yes I want to see. The Good the Bad and the Ugly yes right okay well Carmen thank you so much thank you Beth has been an honor to be here thank you. Thank you so much for joining me.

In a time when our attention is being pulled in so many different directions it means a lot that you took time out of your day to spend it with me and in these important conversations. For show notes and links and more information about my guests you can head to belonging podcast.com and if you'd like to hear more from me and get access to my free newsletter called slow and seasonal, you can head to Becca piastrelli.com / subscribe.