The Energy Vampires that Cross Your Digital Threshold on Cyber Monday

It’s a dangerous day in the inbox today.

The exclamation points convey urgency. The percent signs declare less is more. The barrage of messages designed to wear down our defenses and compel us to click “open.” 

It’s Cyber Monday in America (and everywhere in the world that is touched by our particular form of commodified culture), and my heart and mind feel battered. 

(Tomorrow, when the emails from a hundred different nonprofits start to roll in and you have to decide what charity is most worthy and what cause is most heartbreaking, it’s almost worse. But only almost. Let’s all give generously.)

Of course, I am complicit in all this. Those emails that keep piling up? I have done business with these brands or at least traded my email address for the chance of saving 10% off my first order.

If these corporations are energy vampires that feed off human need and the raw materials of the earth, I definitely welcomed the monsters across my threshold.

Full disclosure: I am a twenty-first century mom drowning in stuff, and I have definitely already taken advantage of those crazy good holiday sales.

And, of course, I myself run a corporation, though I like to imagine that the president of Marisa Goudy Inc. does business differently than the big guys who so famously put profit above people, passion, and the planet.

Yep. I am all of these things. And I just got distracted by an ad for a 25% off everything at Organic India (their tulsi teas fuel every afternoon writing session I ever have). I am a product of the consumer culture, and I find it damnably uncomfortable, even as I hold my breath and dive in for more.

This is all to say that I don’t really have an answer for this modern Monday dilemma.

Unsubscribing from those “fast fashion” brands that sell $8 leggings you’re going to hate in three months is certainly a good place to start. Clothing may not be classified as “durable goods,” but jeans are not meant to be disposable either.

Deciding that you’ll buy less stuff but be sure it’s well made and exploits neither workers or the environment is important, too. (But it’s also bloody hard. I was feeling good about my LLBean purchases and then started researching for this post… They don’t even begin to measure up according to Good On You’s scale that rates clothing companies based on their treatment of the earth, people, and animals.) 

What if the only solution for our consumer based present is to fix our attention on the past and the future?

I know, I know. This moment is a gift and that is why we call it the present. Blah, blah, blah. We are most likely to find happiness when we ground into our lives and bloom where we are planted, right in this instant. 

Even in our consumerism drenched modern lives, there are countless ways to exist (and thrive) for long stretches without getting swallowed whole by the big box stores and the online retail monsters. Libraries and public parks still exist, after all. Handmade ornaments and heartfelt poetry can make the perfect gift.  (During the course of writing this piece, my sister and I texted and agreed to send love and school pictures of our kids rather than trade gift certificates across the country.)

I realize one of the many reasons I am drawn to ancient mythology, especially stories of Ireland and the Celtic world, is the way their stories are so devoid of stuff. Oh sure, there was greed. There was wealth (often counted in cows). There was social stratification and even slavery. But heroes and goddesses weren’t motivated by the door buster holiday deals. They were connected to something more real that just about always had something to do with the health of the land, the survival of the body, and the journey of the spirit.

Of course, the flip side of having everything delivered to the front porch (the mail carrier just dropped three more boxes) was that hunger was always knocking at the door.

When you dare to look through the mists and get past the romanticism, you quickly realize that the past offers no shelter from struggle and strife. We wouldn’t want to wish ourselves back to some halcyon “simpler” time, even if we could. (And seriously: twenty-first century dental care is just worth the headaches of credit scores and insurance payments.)

But, what we can do is look to those old stories with their timeless struggles, weird plotlines, and wildly contemporary themes, and plot a new future in light of that past wisdom.

I cannot imagine a post-capitalist world. I am built into the walls of this master’s house and I will need to follow the lead of some brave, revolutionary thinkers to get free and find a new way. 

In the meantime, what I can do is track the myths, draw the connections, and share the old lore in hopes that it will inspire the revolutionary nature of my audience. 

This mad modern excess… It's a heady drug. And it’s gonna leave us with one hell of a hangover.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go buy some tea and brew another cup as I think about how I just keep turning the wheel of commerce and sit down to adapt a new story for the KnotWork Podcast. The Cailleach (the wise woman of the Celtic tradition) surely has a great deal to teach us about living close to the land, not close to your Amazon delivery hub.

Mythology, Violence, and Why I Can’t Stop Thinking About The Killing of a Sacred Deer

Horror is not for me.

The books and movies of the genre, the grown up haunted houses, and the Halloween “decorations” featuring everyone’s favorite axe murderer. No, thank you. Or really, just: NO.

Once we roll into November, my younger daughter and I take note of every household that has taken down their spooky-gross yard displays and breathe a sigh of grateful relief.

I know we need to plumb the mysteries of the darkness and even honor the sacredness of fear, but I would tell you that I don’t want it packaged up in someone else’s commercialized gory nightmare fantasy. Ever. 

The Movie You Never Knew You Never Wanted to See

This weekend, tired and deep in the ebb of energy that comes with a woman’s flow (a regular, natural event that popular culture frames as a kind of horror show), I found myself too weary to read, so I started movie hunting.

You know that strange slide that begins with half-remembering you wanted to see something and then finding it on the one streaming service you don’t subscribe to? That’s when you start following the algorithm’s recommendations, and things start to get weird. Welcome to modern life. I skipped and jumped until I think I fell down a Colin Farrell shaped rabbit hole.

Because Netflix told me to (now there’s a first line of a horror tale!) I started watching The Killing of a Sacred Deer. I had never heard of this film and I had no idea what I was in for, but how bad could it be? Nicole Kidman was in it, and she rarely leads us astray.

I studied a lot of drama, once upon a time, but I was inspired by a love of literature, not necessarily a love of theater. I had endured a lot of weird plays and was resigned to the fact that I would never be the type of person who actually enjoys or understands the modern stage. (I was raised on Guys and Dolls and My Fair Lady… I am no longer embarrassed to admit that it’s a rare play that works without singing and dancing.)

All of this is to say that I could immediately understand that the director Yorgos Lanthimos was going for something with the strange stilted dialogue that ran between the absurdly mundane and the insanely intimate. I could deal with the “oh, so this is ART” and vaguely remember what it was like to watch foreign films at the little cinema on Cape Cod with my mom when I was home in the summer during college. I could stop looking over at the Dwayne Johnson/Ryan Reynolds flick my husband was watching on his iPad and keep my eyes on my own bizarre “entertainment.”

I could. But that didn’t mean it was any fun at all.

When We Don’t Have the Luxury of Distance and Fantasy

Watching this movie reminded me of something important (besides remembering that “entertainment” doesn’t exist just to massage our pleasure points):

It’s a lot easier to watch horrible things happen if we can create distance between us and the story. 

When we wrap the story in mythic elements, call in the costume department, and have everyone enact the drama on a windswept moor or a primeval forest, we can imagine the darkest parts of human nature lurk only in a faraway land in a near forgotten time.

As I watched Killing of a Sacred Deer, I realized that the story felt so much bigger and older than the contemporary setting and the actors’ muted delivery could comfortably hold. 

That was the point, of course. Ratchet up the discomfort. Take away the distance that makes horrible things easier to bear. Set the story in Ohio in the lives of rich people and make us all wonder what’s happening under the exterior of “normal” modern life.

It Always Comes Back to an Ancient Myth

It turns out that The Killing of a Sacred Deer is inspired by the Greek story of Iphigenia, the daughter of Clytemnestra and Agamemnon. When Agamemnon killed one of the goddess Artemis’s beloved deer, she commanded him to sacrifice Iphigenia to settle the score with the gods.

If we could see this story enacted by beautiful people in robes and laurel wreaths against a panoramic Mediterranean with some cool boat scenes, it might barely touch us. We would have been swept up by the glorious disorientation caused by great gaps in space time. Our unfamiliarity with that world would have insulated us from the heinous story at the heart of such a film. One would walk out of that theater (or snap shut that iPad) feeling like they had seen something intense, but the inclusion of cool special effects and other “gods gone wild” stuff could distract us from the filicide at the center of the plot.

Instead, watching Colin Farrell and Nicole Kidman walk the corridors of a hospital in Cincinnati just made it all too claustrophobic and real - even though no one would ever speak like they do, even with the totally unexplained curse that sets the horror in motion.

The Horror Hiding Here, There, and Everywhere

On Sunday morning, I picked up Sean Kane’s Wisdom of the Mythtellers and tried to cleanse my brain of all the stark, maddening cruelty of a movie that many critics celebrated. As one reviewer said, “Like the Greek myth that inspired the film, it feels powerful enough to be timeless.” 

Kane’s book offers a brilliant analysis of mythologies around the world. What I find most fascinating is his reminder that myths are not meant to be psychodrama but are, at their original core, a way of understanding nature, relationships in nature, and the human relationship with the unseen world.

Kane looks closely at stories of the Haida people of what we now call British Columbia, the aboriginal people of Australia, and the Celts. Due to the way the stories were preserved and passed and a host of other factors, the Celtic tales are the most ridden with human drama. With my modern brain and lack of indigenous consciousness, it’s no coincidence that theses are the stories that touch me most deeply.

I found myself in the midst of the story of Branwen from the Welsh epic, the Mabinogi. It’s the story of the young woman who is married to her brother Bran’s greatest rival, Matholwch. I may find myself telling this story on the KnotWork Podcast sometime, but I mention it today because of one scene of particularly horrific cruelty that includes the maiming of horses.

Ugh. It was hard to type that phrase. I want to edit it out and soften the blow. Somehow, it is even harder to think of someone deliberately taking a knife to a herd of animals than it is to mention a father sacrificing his daughter above.

Of course, this is the trick of storytelling… I am appalled by what I saw in that movie, I am disgusted by what I read in that ancient Welsh myth, and I am quite sanguine when it comes to poor Iphigenia’s death. You know why, of course: the storytellers in the first two instances gave the audience something to see or imagine. 

The obituary style mention of the slain Greek girl is easy to handle because the mind can’t conjure something specific enough for the heart to contract.

Violence Chills Us When It Feels Too Close to Home

All of this has me thinking about the everyday nature of violence and cruelty. We know that death and abuse are part of the everyday - we see it in our movies and in headlines constantly. When against all odds, something truly terrible breaks through our jaded armor of distraction, it is doubly chilling. 

We respond to the packaging of death more than to the idea of death itself. We can accept the destruction packed into a fantasy epic and flock to it as mere entertainment. But then, we feel devastated by violence that looks like it could happen in the neighborhood up the street.

And, of course, we see these varying octaves of reaction in the real world, too. And it has deadly, horrible consequences. When Black or indigenous women go missing, the mainstream media is largely silent. You need to follow a very specific Instagram account to know. When a white girl vanishes, you get four People magazine alerts a day. In a culture that puts whiteness at the center and declares white as “the norm,” anyone whose identity places them outside of that circle can be viewed with enough detachment as to be immediately dismissed and forgotten. 

(We can change this, you know. We all can amplify the voices of those who aren’t included in the popular narrative, and we might even save lives. Learn more about the Sovereign Bodies Institute.)

As Students and Weavers of Story, We Are Called to Bear Witness to the Most Challenging Narratives

I’m a creative who is heeding the call to work with ancient stories and bring them into the modern conversation. (That’s the mission of the upcoming KnotWork Podcast!) 

Standing at the intersection of the remotest human history and this contemporary moment when we’re trying to make sense of a relentless stream of information, I must decide what stories and elements I will bring to life. How will I bear witness, shape, and share stories that are often full of such terrible things, like killing children and torturing animals? 

Do I stick close to that declaration, “Horror is not for me”? Sharing only the “lovely” bits of mythology is disingenuous (and would make for a very short podcast season).

So then, how deep can I and should I go? For my own self preservation, for the sake of wanting to bring more beauty and wonder into the world, for the sake of those who might be triggered by the old stories that have all of the murder, rape, and inhumanity that shadow life today?

I am wise enough to know that this task of discernment will always be the hardest part of this project.

The Public Storyteller’s Sacred Task: Be Clear on the WHY of a Story’s Telling

As I watched The Killing of a Sacred Deer all I could ask myself was “why.”

Why on earth would someone make such a movie? Why would people who seem rather lovely (Kidman as well Farrell, who said he was “fucking depressed” after the making of the film) star in it? Why would anyone but the creepiest of creeps willingly watch it? Why would the snootiest film people purport to like it?

I kept watching even though I could barely stand the inner screaming, “why are you still sitting through this???”

And here I am, days later, now quite sure of why. 

It wasn’t just because I needed to satisfy my curiosity and know if he went through with it. It wasn’t just because I was trying to prove to the unseen critics that I too could watch something other than The Eternals and Jungle Cruise (both of which I also saw this weekend and rather enjoyed, by the way). 

It was because the movie asked questions we need to wrestle with, with the darkness we would prefer not to face. The specifics of the movie were awful in the moment and in memory, and could never be replicated in “real” life. But, the spectre of that which we do not want to face, the senseless cruelties that do still mark modern life? That is all terribly real.

Stories exist to help us explore, consider, and respond. 

Stories shape our minds and then enable us to reshape our realities. 

Stories cannot erase the very real violence of the past and the present, but they just might help us rewrite a future based on a more nuanced, sophisticated understanding of WHY.

How to Unlock the Wonder of Your Own Story

In a conversation about aging, a wise woman I know quoted her mother, “The good old days were only good because I was young.”

Nostalgia can be poisonous, especially when looking back to “simpler” times means celebrating the days when white, straight, and patriarchal culture went largely uncontested. 

And yet… looking back and seeking the gold hidden in the past can offer its own restorative magic. We can learn from our own history, just as we can learn from ancient mythologies and folklore. There were good days, and not just because we were free of all the adult responsibilities, had resilient joints, and an even more resilience in the face of a hangover.

Lately, some exciting future plans have me looking over my own 20 year-old shoulder. 

I am remembering what it felt like to spend hours of every day pouring over poetry and mythology, literature and history. I am tucking my 40-something self into that iconic Junior Year Abroad backpack and accompanying that younger version of me as she takes on that first year in Ireland. I am revisiting the years when I knew how to dance like no one was watching and could love like I’d never been hurt.

While I don’t have the luxury of reading all day and I don’t have a plane ticket in hand (yet), I am steeped in the energy and possibility of those days and realizing that it is possible to go home again, in a way. 

Have You Met Your Young Genius?

This year, I have the good fortune of working closely with author, branding consultant, and all around brilliant soul, Jeffrey Davis. His approach to entrepreneurship and maintaining creative focus is helping me establish the straight lines that will hold my spirals of creativity.

Jeffrey’s new book, Tracking Wonder: Reclaiming a Life of Meaning and Possibility in a World Obsessed with Productivity comes out next week. In it, he talks a lot about his concept of the “Young Genius.” 

“Genius is that force of character that wakes your up to your best character and work in the world--if you awaken to it.” - JD

Jeffrey invites us to look to our younger selves, when we were 6 or 7, or maybe a little older, and seek out the instances when we felt free and shone with our own unique, best light. Seeking the qualities that lit up that child can unlock our innovation, creativity, and unfettered energy right now. (And the research backs this up!)

My elementary school self was a reader and a writer who adored imaginary worlds, especially those conjured in brand new book fair purchases! That little redhead (who was really quite loud when she didn’t have her head buried in a novel) had a fiery love of language. She had her own elemental magic, but I find the Young Genius that truly inspires me emerged more than a decade later...

I am most drawn to the genius of the American college kid on the Aer Lingus flight, the no-longer-a-child who spent so many hours in university libraries, pouring over the footnotes to find the next book before she had even devoured the one she was reading. I want to walk beside that not-quite-an-adult who would close the books and take the first country lane out of Galway and walk until she worried the sun might set and leave her alone in the dark with the sheep.

She combined fearless moxie and bookish devotion in a way that I still admire. 

There’s a long story of how I lost track of that energy, but that is a story for another day (and one that I tell in The Sovereignty Knot, to some degree).

I wonder what your Young Genius traits are and what age you feel most connected to… Do check out the Tracking Wonder book as I know it will be an essential guide for all of us who want to bring more meaning and magic to our lives and to our work.

Announcing one of the KnotWork Podcast’s first guests!

It feels like no coincidence that this exploration of my Young Genius comes when I am actively courting that adventurous, intellectual spark that bursts forth when I indulge my passion for Celtic wisdom and Irish stories.

As you may have heard, the KnotWork Podcast debuts on 2/2/22. It’s a significant day because it’s the second birthday of The Sovereignty Knot and, even more importantly, it is Imbolc, the ancient festival celebrating the goddess Brigid and Saint Brigit’s Day. 

Brigid, in all of her guises across the pagan and the Christian centuries, has been my guide since my early teens when I took her name at confirmation. She has been a quiet presence throughout my life, and I have to believe she saved my Young Genius from herself more times than I might care to admit!

Yes, the “good old days” are continuing to seed the wonder of the present moment.

Kate Chadbourne, who was my first Irish language professor at Boston College, will be amongst the first guests on KnotWork. Kate is a deeply talented storyteller and musician, as well a writer and scholar of Celtic studies. A wise and compassionate editor, she helped make The Sovereignty Knot into the book it is. She’ll be coming to share some of her favorite Brigit stories in celebration of Imbolc.

Want a taste of Kate’s magic now? I highly recommend you check out her brand new ebook/audio performance offering, A November Visit: Poems, Stories, Company. 

Up in the northern hemisphere, these are the dark times. This November stretch between the mystery of Samhain (Halloween) and the return of the light at the Winter Solstice can feel leaden and bleak. I promise that a dose of wonder and a visit with Kate’s tales will be just the medicine you need to get through. (And then, when we're all truly sick of winter and so ready to welcome the spring, KnotWork will be here!)

Creative Originality, the Raven, and a Writing Prompt

This week in the Sovereign Writers’ Knot, our focus is on dreams.

As our group is made up of writers of all kinds--novelists, poets, bloggers, and memoirists--I invite members to approach prompts in either the first person, or as a character in their current work. I think some interesting things will come through as the writers play with their characters’ dream worlds and begin to wonder if their non-human story elements have dreams, too.

I want to share one of the prompts from yesterday’s writing practice session because I think it speaks to a question all creatives ask at one time or another: but what if someone has already said all this before?

Writing Prompt: A Brand New Dream

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before

- Edgar Allan Poe, “The Raven”

Is it possible to dream something no one has ever dreamed before? We might say, “Sure, that’s true if you are Edgar Allan Poe, but for the rest of us…? HA!”

Modern advice around creativity (which I often give myself) declares that there may not be any more “totally original” ideas under the sun (or in the darkness). Instead, it is our sacred task to call universal, timeless ideas, images, and emotions through our own beautifully particular lens of experience and wisdom.

If you’re someone who finds yourself tangled in the “but it has all been said before!” blues, I invite you to take on these demons and say, “maybe it has, but no one has said it like me!” And then, proceed to tell a story or explore an emotion in a way that is totally original to you.

It’s important to note: The Raven is actually just a poem about being unable to get over a lover and we have certainly all heard that one before!

(Would you like to write with us? We’ll be forming a new group for another 13-week writing adventure in late January. Learn more and sign up to join the interest list so you’ll be the first to know when registration reopens.)

Want some further proof that you don’t need a brand new dream, you just need your dream?

Pick up that copy of Big Magic you very likely have on your shelf. If you don’t have it, I highly recommend you ask a friend for her copy (honestly, you know someone who has this book), or just order it right now because it’s an important piece of the modern creative canon.

Elizabeth Gilbert says just about all the things about creativity I would like to say to you (she happens to say them in her way with the authority granted to her by writing a mega best seller and several other fabulous books). The way she talks about creativity gives us all permission to keep writing about creativity:

“If it’s authentic enough, believe me, it will feel original.”

She expands on that idea in this blog post too.

Speaking of New Creative Dreams… Have you heard about my new creative project?

It’s a variation on something that has definitely been done before, but it’s also a universe of ideas that has more than enough room for my own creativity and authenticity.

Debuting 2/2/22: The KnotWork Podcast: Untangling Our Myths, Reweaving Our Stories.

In this new show I’ll have a chance to reach back to my studies of Irish lit and Celtic mythology and shape it with all that I’ve learned in the twenty years since I last sat in a university classroom.

Each episode will begin with a story (mostly from Ireland in our first season, but we’ll reach out into the entire world of ancient tales as we go) and will be followed by a deep-dive discussion into why this myth still matters.

Want all the insider details as I do my research, line up my guests, and live the ups and downs of creating a new thing? Join the Facebook group and/or follow @KnotWorkPodcast on Instagram! 

To Communion and Sovereignty. To Community and the Collective.

“Only as we are in communion with ourselves can we find community with others.” 

Last week, I started a yearlong journey with a new mastermind group of entrepreneurs, creatives, and thought leaders. 

I have known the facilitator as both a fellow parent and a colleague for nearly a decade. It turns out that I also knew three of the other four women in our intimate group of five, even though they are scattered across the US. 

That’s the nature of twenty-first century life, isn’t it? I haven’t learned the names of several of my closest neighbors, but I know a tremendous number of like-minded souls from around the world. I would venture to guess that your experience is much the same.

That quote above is from Parker Palmer in a book called The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher's Life. I admit I have never read it, but I trust my new coach and I feel the truth of my own lived experience echo through this single neat line: “Only as we are in communion with ourselves can we find community with others.” 

Hmmm... His “communion” sounds a lot like my living definition of sovereignty. 

Being in communion with the self in order to connect to others is a lot like standing sovereign in your own being in order to fully participate in the collective.

Because, for me and for those who walk with me through The Sovereignty Knot, sovereignty is never a lone endeavor. We tend to our own inner sense of wisdom, passion, and worth so we can hold the door and hold hands with others who are ready to step onto their own sovereign path.

Communion Within Community: Now, More Than Ever

I have community on my mind (in the most sovereign sense) because the Sovereign Writers’ Knot had its first group coaching call of the season yesterday. (We write just about every week of our 13 weeks together and also have these monthly deep dive conversations.)

“Group coaching call” is a terribly bland phrase, isn't it? I also call them our Collective Story Healing Sessions, but even that may not fully capture what we share together.

Our most recent gathering felt more like… well, here is a sampling of the phrases folks offered at the end our 90-minute voyage into story, memoir, mysticism, poetry, and a healthy dose of sacred confusion:

• a golden thread being passed from hand to hand to weave a tapestry

• a portal to another dimension and way of knowing

• A relational circle united by a shared theme: what it means to be human

A couple of members summed up their experience (so deliciously overlapping) with “lifted and woven” and “we are women weaving.”

And this is from a group of sovereign writers who, by the very definition of what we commonly understand writing to be — sitting alone with a page, setting out one word after another in silent contemplation — might be considered somewhat solitary creatures. (As it turns out, even introverts need writing buddies and sisterhood after all! But, of course, we already knew that, right?)

All of this is yet another reminder of what we've learned across a lifetime but so often forget: strengthening our own individual vessel of self enables us to hold and be held by the shared cauldron of a trusting and trusted community.

I invite you to get curious about your own experiences with community.

Test this idea of “being in communion with yourself” as well as what it means to “stand sovereign” and consider how that influences your ability to experience true connection to others.

If we have learned anything in the last eighteen months, it is that community (or its lack) has consequences.

Community matters when we are isolated and we are bereft of connection.

Community matters when we recognize that our individual responsibility to attend to our health (and get vaccinated!) is vital to the health of the collective.

Community matters when we watch people coalesce around shared misunderstandings, conspiracies, and false narratives.

Community matters when we gather in compassionate, grounded circles and realize, together, that there is hope, even in the most divisive of times. 

---

Can you see yourself in a “Collective Story Healing Session” in the Sovereign Writers’ Knot? The current group is closed to new member, but we’ll begin a fresh season together at the end of January/beginning of February. 

Head over to my website to learn more and enter your email so I can let you know when I’m accepting applications for the next season.