Welcome to the
Story Apothecary
Medicine & Wisdom of Old Stories for New Uncertain Times
Hi, I'm Nana, and I believe that the wisdom and medicine of stories can guide us to find belonging. To ourselves, and to the world.
Stories are soul work.
Stories carry within them a power, a magic, a mystery. Not empty words strung together, but potent, necessary, challenging.
Stories belong to the wild, in ceremonies, to gatherings around the fire, to communities coming together to witness each other. They belong to sorrow and grief; to happiness and ecstasy; to birth and loss; to the land. To mystery.
I am a traditional oral storyteller, a medicine woman, and a nature connection guide.
Stories speak of descending to the underworld, of shedding your skin to reveal a true form, to walking to the Sun's palace to gain answers to impossible questions. They offer hope, courage, wisdom and medicine. That's what they have offered me.
That's what they offer to all who have the ears to listen, and the heart to let them in.
The stories I tell focus on Belonging, Grief, and the Woman's Quest.
" A story is like water
that you heat for your bath.
It takes messages between the fire
and your skin. It lets them meet,
and it cleans you!
Very few can sit down
in the middle of the fire itself "
~Rumi~
“Stories are medicine. They have such power; they do not require that we do, be, act anything – we need only listen.”
We are living in unsettling, troubled, and uncertain times. Illness, climate crisis, war. And yet there is love, beauty, joy. Hope.
They are all here. The difficult and the delightful; the sad and the joyous; the heartbreaking and the loving. There is not one without the other.
So what can old stories offer? A guide, a map to the terrain of life. A guide to your true nature, a bread crumb trail to where the inner treasure is hidden.
There has always been illness, and famine, and war. There has always been love, and heartbreak; grief and joy; loneliness and belonging.
Stories can offer us maps to our personal, and collective journey in this world. And more importantly, they can the conversations flowing about the things that are important.
Stories become alive in the wild. And so do we.
Stories belong in nature. This is where they have been told for millennia. The oldest recorded story is at least 5000 years old.
There is something magical that happens when stories are told on the land. Stories and nature become one. The trees dance. The birds sing. The wind howls. All in response.
The people who came, are not the people that leave. There is transformation through story.
“This storytelling is the best medicine I’ve found so far whilst showing up each day in my mum's journey to death. ”
― J.A.
Stories can guide us on our journey. They are filled with wisdom passed through countless generations. Stories are not just some menial entertainment, it is soul work. In some cultures the shaman who could walk between the worlds, and the storyteller were one and the same. With over a decade of experience in mental health, I have walked alongside people in their darkest moments. A real privilege. This is what I bring in my work as a Medicine Woman - a Story Apothecary.
If you would like to work with me, as an individual in need of Story Medicine, if you would like to bring story to your community or to your organisation, contact me for a free chat, to see if we are a fit to work together.
An Enchantress...Her mesmerising voice is transporting me to some faraway places"
