Your Longing Will Lead You, with Amanda Verdery Young
Where could your longing take you? In this episode, my guest Amanda Verdery Young - soul guide, ecomystical writer, and initiated medicine person in her Celtic ancestral tradition - helps us understand how to weave together a life of calling and purpose. Amanda and I explore how longing can show us the way, and how our own talents can meet the longing of the world around us.
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Welcome to A Wild New Work, a podcast about how to divest from capitalism and the norms of modern work and step into the soulful calling of these times we live in, which includes the call to rekindle our relationship with the earth. I'm Megan Leatherman, a mother to two small kids, coach, writer, and amateur ecologist living in the Pacific Northwest, and I'm your host today.
Hi friend, and welcome. I'm so glad that you are here. We are into the summer season now. The sun is in the sign of Cancer. We're about a week in, and I just hope that you're finding ways to be with this time and whatever it needs to be for you, whether that's slowing down, increasing your joy, increasing aligned activity... whatever this time is about for you, I hope you're just finding ways to make that real in your day-to-day life. And this is an excellent time - you have extra support in doing so.
So in the Tarot, Cancer corresponds to the chariot card or the chariot archetype. And when the fool enters into this season, if you will, the season of the Chariot, it's an invitation to move out of that Lover's, Gemini mix and into a place of choice and precision, where we are hearing the callings that we're getting, we're answering those calls. We have focus and dedication to where we wanna flow into next, where we wanna go, and there's extra heat and movement because we're doing so in a way that aligns with where life is going.
So, with the vitality that's all around us this time of year, this season, I'm always thinking about river banks and just the sort of extra flow of that unique channel of water. And our daily lives can be channels through which our unique soulful selves and our gifts, our talents, our pain, our wisdom, our insights can flow through.
And if that sounds preposterous, I understand. A lot of us have these ideas that things should be more like this vast delta or like the water should all be spread out everywhere. Our energy just sort of diffuse. And of course there are ecosystems that need that and really benefit from that yearly, just, flooding and maybe that's how you are.
But in Cancer season, I'm always noticing and seeing these channels, these contained channels of water, and I'm thinking about how life includes work, of course, like even if we lived way, way before civilization even, we would've had to find ways to feed ourselves and have shelter, and have clothing, and that's all true.
But I don't think that life was ever meant to be about spending most of our vitality in areas that are completely draining and harmful to the planet and to us, and then kind of keeping whatever we can for the rest of life. My sense, and it may not be true for everyone - it's certainly not true for everyone throughout history - but I'm feeling the ripeness of this idea right now that our lives really can be wide, full channels for life to flow through. Our life, our joy, our vitality, our energy, our spark, the things that we came into this lifetime with. That our daily lives can be openings and gateways for the part of us that is spirit to flow through.
There's a part of you that came from who knows where. I don't know where you'll go after this lifetime, but there's a part of you that chose to come to this planet right now and live, and so all of these themes at play right now come up and line up so beautifully with the work of our guest today: Amanda Verdery Young.
I'm so excited to share her insights. I think she has a really unique and lovely perspective on how to live in a soulful way, how to live in a way that is a channel for more of, of the soul, the spirit to come through. Before I introduce Amanda, I just wanna let you know that I'm taking a couple little podcast breaks in July. I'll be traveling, and so the next episode will come out July 11th, and then July 25th.
So let me introduce Amanda to you. Amanda Verdery Young is a soul guide, eco mystical writer and initiated bhean feasa, or medicine person, in her Celtic ancestral tradition. Devoted to a wild romance between self, earth and calling, she creates poetic rebel sanctuary for tending one's deeper life. Her one-on-one mentorship program, Shamanic Healing Services, and Membership Community orient around re enchantment, self-love, and the greatest expression of our individual and collective medicine.
I haven't known Amanda or her work for very long, but I've benefited so much already from her writing, her perspective, her weekly newsletters. I think they're so rich, so felt, and so obviously from her own journey doing this work. So I'm so grateful that she joins us today. I hope you love this conversation. I'm gonna read us our opening invocation now, and then I'll shift over into our interview.
So wherever you are, you can take a deep breath.
Maybe you feel your body and time and space. May each of us be blessed and emboldened to do the work we're meant to do on this planet. May our work honor our ancestors known and unknown, and may it be in harmony with all creatures that we share this earth with. I express gratitude for all of the technologies and gifts that have made this possible.
And I'm grateful to the Cowlitz and Clackamas tribes among many others who are the original stewards of the land that I'm on.
Okay. Well, Amanda, thank you so much for being with us today.
Amanda: Thanks so much for having me here.
Megan: I would love to start by getting your thoughts on some of these, like, very big sort of spiritual words or terms that we use that also inform our work and meaning making in life.
Like a lot of times I'll even throw out words like, you know, destiny, or we use purpose or calling or vocation, and I think you have a really unique perspective on what these actually are, and I'd love to just kind of ground us in how you work with them and then sort of take us from there.
Amanda: Surely. The first thing that I think is important for me to say is that, you know, I don't know for sure.
These are, these are mysteries to be lived for sure. And that's my first and most important weigh in, is I'm not sure. Let me see. You know, and so what I can share is what, what I've experienced and what I see, you know, in the people that I work with all the time and in what I've learned with my mentors and, and my lineages and guides and teachers, and I'll kind of weave in some of those influences.
But I think if we're gonna talk about, you know, destiny and calling and purpose and vocation, the most important word that sort of all of that orbits around is the word longing. So, so really we have these longings in life and sometimes they're really hard to name or quite put our finger on. And the longing sort of becomes this magnet towards, towards what, towards whatever it is that we're longing for.
And so I kind of think of a calling as a place where our longing is sort of being met by the world in some way, and for me, I've come to see callings more as an ongoing thing, like we have a lot of callings in our life and they might become sort of, you know, sequestered around a central star. But I think for me what it is, is that I'm called to something and when I reach or meet that something, I'm called to something else and then to something else and to something else.
And over time, this creates a kind of momentum towards what you might call a purpose. You know, a reason for being here. Purpose for me is really another word for, for our very soul. You know, for that part of us that is somehow we sense eternal, somehow bigger even than our corporeal bodies and yet very much in need and to being in partnership with our bodies in order to, to express itself. And our soul knows why we came, you know, in, in my view, in my experience, and we have to follow the callings towards it.
The other thing I wanna say about purpose though, and I think this ties in with vocation, is that what I've really come to feel a purpose is, is a way of belonging to the world. Like a gift, like a teaching that you carry, a medicine that you have within you, that you sort of just are in the world. And to understand it is to know your purpose, and from there you get to choose. What vocation or what ways would be best in order to give the world your gift?
So one of my greatest influences is Bill Plotkin and the Animus Valley Institute, and they do what they call, they call soul initiation work, nature-based soul initiation work, believing that we all have this amazing opportunity right now to fully participate in regenerative earth culture, right? Amongst humans. He likes to call these vocations as you will kind of delivery systems. So once we know like what our medicine is, what our purpose is, what our reason for coming is, our way of belonging to the world, then we can see like, well, what vocations could that really be beautifully expressed in?
But the one thing I'll just add to that is it's not only our vocations or our jobs or the things that pay us, right, that can express our purpose. And I think that's a really big, in my view, misunderstanding out there today - is "I've gotta find my purpose and that's gonna naturally become what I like do for a living."
But the freedom here is that - and what I've found is that - in understanding my medicine and understanding, my mythopoetic identity as you might call it, I get to be that one in every area of my life, like as a mother, with my spouse, when I'm tending my land, with my friendships, when I go to the movies... also, when I write, also when I'm a soul guide and shamanic practitioner, it's like I'm always able to be that one.
I'm always able to give that medicine not just to humans, but to the more than human world as well. So maybe I'll just pause there for a moment.
Megan: Yeah. Thank you. I love that you wrap it up in this longing - that is so resonant and I love that it shows us the helpfulness of longing, actually. I think in our culture sometimes we think of longing as lack, as bad as you know, emptiness, and of course, we all know deep down that those are necessary parts of the cycle, that there has to be some emptiness or void from the thing for the thing to come through.
And also that that longing, I think is sort of just a core human experience. And I like that you frame it as this kind of guide that will show us our callings and lead us into purpose. And yeah, I just think the way that you talk about it is so beautiful and so rich.
Are you open to sharing a little bit about how these themes have shown up in your own life and how your callings have led you to this work now and how you've identified your purpose or your medicine?
And then maybe we can dive into how some other ways listeners can do that too. But yeah, could you speak a little bit about your own journey in this vein?
Amanda: Yes, yes, of course. It's a very long and winding myth of its own right, but I was thinking about it a little ahead of today and yeah, what came through was just the, the sort of beginning of what both, for example, like the Animus Val Institute and also my own shamanic lineages, and most earth-based spiritual paths would call a descent. So a downward, into the underworld, kind of time in one's life or times - doesn't necessarily have to be one - that tend to change us.
Another word for that is initiation, and a big one came for me when my son was born. You know, I was so overjoyed to become a mother, and at the same time, you know, I experienced what the culture just kind of just blanketly calls PPD, like postpartum depression. But what it really was for me was an identity, uh, a full on identity crisis met with the deepest longing to belong and to not sort of lose the thread of my belonging in becoming just like mother, you know, and at the same time wanting to show my son what it looks like to live your life on purpose. To live a life that is driven by your reason for being, you know.
I knew I loved to write, but I, but it was like the longing was moving beyond that, like what I wanna be or do. It was like, who am I? It was existential, like, who am I really though? And feeling this sense of incredible, like magic and enchantment about being a human, but not being able to really touch it, like feeling as if there was just more to being human and I wasn't accessing it.
And this is coming from, I mean, I, I've lived a really adventurous life, you know, so this is saying something, you know, and it was really deep. It was a sorrowful longing, right, that I couldn't deny, for more, more understanding. Why am I here? Really? Who am I on a, on a mythic level? And I wouldn't, I didn't necessarily say it to myself that way, but it, that was the feeling of it, you know?
And I decided to follow one of the callings, right? Which was to write more publicly. And so I thought I would start a blog and I started to look for a rare word for this blog because I thought that would be cool, you know? And I stumbled upon, I was in this beautiful library surrounded by trees one day, very pregnant with my son, and I stumbled upon this word bombilate, which is an archaic word that means the sound of bees humming. It's like the, it's the actual sound of bees pollinating. And I just fell in love. It was like, I have goosebumps right now just telling you the story cuz it was one of those moments. I was like, that's it. But the URL l was taken.
Now, this is such a funny, tiny thing, but I love it. It's like, have you seen the movie Everything Everywhere All at Once or something like that?
Megan: I've heard good things, but no.
Amanda: So yeah, so this idea that as we follow our callings, it will just bump up against us , right?
So I started to think more deeply about what I was after and really I realized I was, so after storytelling, And so after this idea of, of bringing a different story to life, like about who we are and what's possible for us here. And I started to go through all these words of story storytelling, and I found lore, which is like the, the best in my view ever.
You know? And so I made up this word bombilore, stories that hum the world to life. And after that happened, I started to be found by bees. Everywhere I went, everywhere I went, and bee people and beekeeping. And it's funny cuz just the other, just this weekend, I, for the first time had the opportunity to suit up and go and actually interact with bees on that level and begin that journey of actually learning.
But what, what happened was, in this, in this process of following the call, I was found by the bees. And what I was found by was a tendency or a gift or like a soul power to pollinate things, right? To help things bloom, to help things come to life. And so I started to follow that thread, right? And that led me to a whole lot of other things.
But I wanted to tell that first part of the story and see if you wanna, you know, say anything before I go on or, or continue on. But that was the beginning for me. That was like a very initiatory time and began a very challenging time. A lot of challenging things started to happen in my life. After that, down and down and down, I went right, like deeper in the labyrinth of who I am and amid st it, a lot of loss and yeah, the death of my mother.
And again, throughout that process, following these threads and starting to meet teachers and mentors. Which is something that I find naturally starts to be a, a calling within. The calling is, who can help me with this? Mm. Who can help me with this? Maybe I'll just pause there and see.
Megan: Thank you. Yeah. I so relate to your experience of motherhood being an initiation, but not really having a framework or a lot of support in that way. I remember being at a naturopaths office and she was like, "I think you have postpartum depression." And I remember just like kind of scoffing, like who wouldn't be depressed? I mean, I just had a kid and like have no support. I have a loving spouse and my mom is around, but there's no, it was completely ungrounding and I just couldn't understand like how... I think I felt, I mean there's lots of threads to this, but like just the assumption that it's because you're not like handling it correctly or that you're an anomaly.
But of course it's an in initiatory experience, like your whole body chemistry just changed. And so I really like how you tie that in and yeah, I have a question, but I'm gonna save it till we hear more about your story. So I hope you'll keep going.
Amanda: Yeah, so you know, the situation became this journey where I just started to say yes, you know, to one calling after another, and the callings weren't necessarily to, well, there was one calling, for example, to do a wilderness immersion for my 40th birthday. With Soul Initiation Guides, with the Animus Valley Institute. And that was, that was an amazing experience where I met my mentor, and that was really important, right?
I followed a call, but I wanna just say like, the longings were subtler. You know, it was a longing to belong. It was a longing to feel at home in my body. At one point it was, you know, it was all these different, and those became the, the breadcrumbs, you know, what became really astounding and life changing for me, and at this point I was already working with people on you know, their dreams, so to speak, but in such a different context, like I was working with people more in the realms of soul centric business, and it was really coming unraveled for me. Like it was getting really hard for me to do. And what I've come to realize is I was hiding a lot of my real work in what I thought were socially acceptable, like, business models.
So I had to do a lot of basically dismemberment, I mean really taking apart all of these things that I was doing and also all these things that I, that I was in the world - a kind of persona. And I don't, and I wanna be really honest about how challenging that is and how there isn't always space for it.
And that's why I feel that finding mentors is essential, either if you're interested in that kind of, if you're in that initiatory place, right. And not all initiatory places are like descents or like deep underworld journeys. You know, you can make a big move and it's just a big move and it takes time to adjust and whatever. Other people can have a child and it's a big adjustment, but it's not, you know, like that initiation, it has a, a weight to it, it has a feeling of this is different. Something is happening. I need to act on it, you know, and those kind of thresholds.
Yeah. I'm just so grateful that I have had mentors, and for me what that's looked at like is soul guides and shamanic practitioners, meditation teachers, but I wanna say like it can also look like someone who you just feel incredibly attracted to. I don't mean like, you know, sexually, but on a soul level. In Gaelic, in my Celtic tradition, we call this Anam Cara, you know, the soul friend. Someone who just seems to be so kindred to you, right. Can really help you.
But I guess what I wanna also say about my journey is - because it's a very long story, you know - but, what began to astound me and just like really wake me up to our full potential as humans is the way that spending a lot of time out in nature began to, as well as with my dreams and as well as with some of my shamanic practices, which I can talk about in a little bit, how the earth began to meet me. You know, how the earth began to, you know, mirror and show me who it is that I am, why it is that I'm here, and this, this happened again and again and again in different ways and subtle ways, like with the bees. But that ended up becoming just the beginning of an understanding of my mythopoetic identity, which I can share here.
Sometimes I'm tentative about that because it's not something that you can think up, and we're so trained to think who am I and what happens when we, I think when, for me, when I stepped out into nature and I spent a lot of time there and I wandered in an intentional way and I was holding these longings in my heart, is that all of my senses got to be, you know, became more accessible to me.
I got out of my head around these questions of what is my calling and what is my destiny and what is my vocation? And I got into my body and I started to, yeah, see, hear, dream, touch, taste, smell. So I wonder if that makes sense to you...
Megan: I love that you brought that up cuz I pulled a quote that I wanted to share, and this is from something you wrote in your course, Keys to the Garden, in the Become the Wild Wanderer section.
And it's, it's exactly what you're saying and I just wanna share it. You wrote, " the greatest wonder I've received from this practice is that the earth will show us again and again elements of our purpose and innate soul powers. We just have to ask and show up in a reciprocal and respectful manner. She will show us that what we long for longs for us and that what we fear fears us. The myriad beings of land, sea, and sky, and the elemental forces themselves will respond according to the presence we bring."
So, it is obvious that it's something that you are living. It's not just, again, that you're thinking this up. You really have embodied this. And I'm curious if, and I'm sorry if I'm getting the timeline mixed up, but were you already sort of steeped in your Celtic tradition, the bhean feasa way, the shamanic practitioner skills that you have, was that before your son was born and you were bringing those forward, or is that something that comes later?
If you're open to it, I'd love to hear just how that fits in.
Amanda: Yeah, so I was very interested in the world of Celtic spirituality before my son was born, but it was new for me. And over 20 years ago actually, I learned how to essentially journey with a drum, right, which is the core practice in most earth-based shamanic cultures.
I had originally learned shamanic practices from a Huichol medicine man , which is a indigenous Mexican tribe, and the man I learned from is actually a white man, gringo as he calls himself, you know, that was taught by Huichol medicine man . And that man, his name is Elliot Cowan, he wrote Plant Spirit Medicine, which is a fantastic, amazing, important book.
And so for 20 years I sort of, in a very hidden way, I practiced what I had learned with them in terms of journeying to the other world. I've always been someone deeply interested in imagination and the deep imagination, and in the mythic and in the presence of the spirit and the unseen. Right? I've always been very interested in the unseen, and I've always felt the animism of the earth, meaning that everything around us is ensouled and alive. Right? And that's the core of any shamanic culture. Is, is that the world is alive and ensouled.
What happened was, as I began to, as I began to open to my, my medicine, which has a lot to do with helping remember, literally remember who they are, put it back together, which sometimes calls for dismemberment as well. So those two are both in there. And also this thing of pollination or what I call it, you know, singing flesh on the bones of magnificence, that's, that's a part of my medicine, right? I started to feel into like, Where do I feel like I come alive? Because it's where we come alive that's vocation, right?
That that is where our medicine can be really well expressed. So a great clue or a great way to your medicine or to expressing it is like, what brings me alive? I mean, there's a reason that question is just ubiquitous, right? And this is what brought me alive - was this shamanic work, but it didn't feel aligned for me, especially in this beautiful time in which we are, we are really facing appropriation and, and colonialism and all this and, and so I felt called to find out, you know, what - for the Celts, because I am like intensely Celtic in terms of my heritage, you know? But I also am just enamored with, with these cultures. And as soon as I said yes to that, it was just like door after door, after door after door started opening both in this world and in the other world. Right? So in my journeys, everything started to shift.
I started to meet the ancestors of my people more forthright, and then of course a teacher appeared. One of my, my most beloved teachers is Jane Burns, who I've been apprenticing with for a couple years now, and she is an elder in shamanic Celtic traditions. We don't actually have a word for shaman. You know, in Gaelic, it's not a blanket word, it's a very specific word used by Siberian medicine people for their medicine people. It's been kind of cast out, and I use it because, you know, people sort of recognize that.
But more and more I've just been trying to just use ban feasa because it is one of actually many words that we have in Gaelic for medicine people in that tradition. And I can say more about what that word means in a minute, but I think what's been so, so interesting and affirming for me is how moving towards this calling has, how it has then moved towards me.
So that thing of what you long for, longs for you. But I don't wanna say that anyone can be a ban feasa, but I do wanna say like, if there's something that you love, if you love to do it more than anything else, Then you belong there, right? Like that's where you're supposed to be. So for a long time I thought, no, I can't be that.
No, I couldn't be that. No, I wasn't born there in Ireland this lifetime. No, I, you know what I mean? Until finally, basically the earth and my guides just banged down my door. I mean it, to the point where it actually started to feel, um, disrespectful to say "No, I couldn't be that," you know, it just became like a distraction from just dropping into this amazing, you know, delivery system for my gifts.
But the choice is always ours. And of course I'm only speaking for myself. There may be cultures, I'm sure there are who have roles that you have to be, you know, there's a very specific process for being invited in. But I think in our culture, we're missing elders. So we have to trust what we love. What we love has to be the elder.
Megan: Thank you. Yeah. What we love has to be the elder. That's beautiful. I wanna hear more about, and this isn't a fully formed question, but I'm really curious... part of my longing has been wanting to feel a deep kinship with the land that I live on, which the last year or so I've been trying to sort of unravel, and feels complicated as a descendant of settlers, as a settler.
And I'm curious what you have learned through this tradition in your own experience. I know you live in Western Massachusetts and do wander there and have a relationship to that land. What you know about belonging to a place as a settler, you know, have you considered... I think sometimes about moving back to Germany or Ireland and sort of picking up the pieces along the way and kind of retracing my descendants path and kind of going back, and that doesn't really feel feasible right now, but I wonder a lot about what it means to be in deep relationship with the earth here.
Amanda: You know, I did a vision quest last year out in the Sonoran Desert with 12 fellow women and two of my mentors. And yeah, there was this beautiful conversation of like, wow, it's a bunch of, you know, here we are, white women, descendants of colonizers here on the sacred land, attempting a modern version of a vision fast, and what does that bring up for us? And well, a lot for sure, but I mention it because when you asked me the question, the first thing that came to mind was leaving that conversation with some of my fellow questers and going out on a wander with the land and basically just being really forthright in my apology and also in my intention for being there, And I've done the same thing here on this land, to offer our heartfelt apologies and also to offer up our feelings about it.
Like to tell the land, this is how I'm feeling about this, and I'm here with you and you are holding me up and feeding me and clothing me and sort of, you know what I mean? It's like, and so this is how I feel and I, and also, I'm so sorry. In my experience though, the land is not interested in us carrying the load of shame on our backs for eternity, that that's not something that I feel from the land ever. Personally.
I do come across wounded places. I think we all have, you know that feeling in the back of your neck, you just feel a sadness in a place. And you don't know why. If you feel that you can make an offering there, you can offer a song, you can offer a prayer that this place find its peace. You can ask if there's a way that you could reharmonize this place or be a part of the reharmonization of this place.
For me, it's all about the conversation. I think a lot of times, because we're in such a doing culture, we're trained to think, what do I do here instead of how do I be here? You know? And what's beautiful is that you start to just be with the land as you would a really, really good friend.
Then the land starts to be with you, right? Then you start to have those experiences. A mystical experience essentially, which shows you something of your own medicine. Oh, this is how I'm being received by the earth. This is how I'm being experienced by the earth. Wow. Is that true about me? Why, yes, it is. It is true about me. Oh my gosh. You know?
Megan: I feel like I am at the beginning of that journey of really just opening up to the conversation I can have that, that that is a real thing that I think has been true for people since humans even evolved. And so, yeah, I'm excited to keep trying it and see what I learned in those conversations.
So thank you.
Amanda: Yeah. Maybe I'll just add one more thing to that, which is that I'm really a big fan of intentional time alone in nature with no headphones, no pets, and no other people, because without that kind of time, it's hard. It's hard to sit there and have a conversation with a tree, you know, or river or stone, if you know your kids are around or your dog's pulling on its leash or you got like Tina Turner, bless her soul, you know?
Megan: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I have a question about Soul medicine and culture, and then maybe we can talk about some specific ways you recommend people sort of discover or are in conversation with theirs.
So this is just like, this is limited to my perspective, but a lot of the people that I know who sort of use this language or are living out their Purpose or following their callings and like are very in touch with their unique medicine or contribution that they're here to make, are often doing work that's related to like healing or helping others do that, or the arts.
I can't really think of anyone who would tell me, like, I'm very in touch with my souls medicine and I go, I work like on Wall Street or I work on an oil rig or something like that. And that's not to say that that can't be true, but something I think about a lot is that I wonder what the world would look like if even 50% of its people were really attuned to and committed to their soul medicine. It seems like our culture would collapse. I mean, I'm just not, I'm kind of curious if soulful medicine and walking our path and being in conversation with the Earth is, antithetical to civilization even, or capitalism. And I have a sense that it is, but I wonder if I'm sort of just limited by my perspective.
Do you get that same sense that if we were all answering these callings more regularly, that the world and the sort of hum of daily life would look significantly different?
Amanda: Yeah, I hope so. I think though, you, you, you're pulling on a really important thread, which is, "it must be nice, right? To be able to go wander in nature. It must be nice to be able to just pursue your longing, but I've gotta do this stuff over here, so that's not for me. Or I'm working on this oil rig and this is how it really is in the world."
But the miraculous thing is I have met people from every walk of life that you can imagine. Who I can just feel are living their medicine, whether they've named it or not, and this is something that other soul guides may not agree with me on. And I do personally feel that if you can name it, if you can understand who you are and on a deep level what your medicine is, you can be more empowered in your life and be even more, but man, I have met people throughout my whole life - you can feel it. You can feel when someone is just in it and they could be your plumber.
The closer we get to our calling, the closer we get to our medicine, the closer we get to understanding that we belong here on this planet, this time, this moment, the more things in our life that don't align with all of that, with what we've discovered about ourselves, with our, with that feeling of belonging, that we feel out in nature, that we feel with people that are really just, like you said, living their medicine, how we feel when we're doing what we love. The other things that certainly are really, really misaligned will begin to fall away. And I do know people who have left corporate jobs, who have left the proverbial oil rig, because they found out who they really were and that was not at all something that they were willing to participate in anymore in that way.
I say that with full acknowledgement that I participated in it this morning when I filled up my car. So, you know, I think for me, one thing I always say when I start with new folks, when I start with a new client is we're gonna use the raw material of your life. As the raw material of everything we work with.
We're not gonna do this soul work here and your life is over there where you have the laundry and the children and the bills and the, all the stuff we have to do. I think the first step, and I certainly am far from having the answers, but the first step is that soul life begins to be woven again with daily, mundane life.
That the two stop being a separate thing, and we can see how in a lifetime if we're able to follow our callings, even if we're have certain situations in our life that we just can't easily get out of, like a job we really don't like, what I say to people is, if you devote yourself though, even a little bit of time each week to following that calling, eventually you will leave that job.
Maybe becoming an entrepreneur, maybe, or maybe you find a job that's way more suited to who you are or like what you need in order to feel good in your life, in order to give your gifts in other areas. In other ways, right? But whatever the future may be for our species, we all have the, you know, we all get to have what the poets since the beginning of time have called a good death.
Which is one in which we can look back and say, yeah, I followed what called out to me. I followed what I loved. I trusted myself. You know, I did what I, what I could in alignment with what I love. So I don't know if that like answers, I don't think there is an answer to your question, but yeah. Like our daily lives and our medicine, they're not two different things. It's like this work has to go together for sure.
Megan: Yeah. I appreciate you keeping it complex.
Amanda: Yeah, it's so complex. I'm gonna go get my son later and take him to the doctor and come home and make some turkey meatballs and, and try to really listen deeply to what his day was about, and you know what I'm saying? But what I can do is I can try my best to be love story. That's my soul name. I can do my best to, to sing flesh on the bones of his magnificence. Right? I can do my best to, to be that one with him.
Megan: Yeah. Where could people start if they don't have a strong sense of what their unique sort of offering is, or their medicine? You've touched on sort of wandering and connection with nature. What are some ways that people can start pulling on these threads and meet life and have life speak back to them?
Amanda: Yeah. Well, again, so what I really feel, and this is because it's what's worked for me and really all those I've worked with, and not just in my work, but in the, in the broader, you know, realms in which I play, is that you spend time with your, what I would say with your soul every week. I like to say to spend time with your deeper life. And for me, this is a little different than self-improvement processing.
It could look like grieving for sure. It depends where you are. But the idea is that there's the thread, right? And you spend time every week finding that thread and, and just, just, you know, following it, finding the breadcrumb and following it. So again, this could look like starting with "what am I longing for right now?"
And if it's something like material that's beautiful, I'm all about the spiritual being in the material. But I would also offer to go like, okay, so what's beneath it? So if I'm really longing for a new home, why, like what's beneath that longing and then what's beneath that? Like try to really get down to something that is a feeling, it's a way that you wanna feel, it's a way that you wanna be, a way that you wanna show up in the world. So I started offering these things called soul dates. So once a week, they're exercises that are specifically designed to help with this work of hearing and heeding your calling, whatever your calling may be at the moment.
In an ultimate effort to get closer to your purpose, your mythic identity, your soul's identity. And the expression of your gifts, most importantly, right? So I started a membership community for that. It's called The Wild Becoming Sanctuary, and I offer weekly soul dates as well as monthly mini courses on different topics.
You know, the upcoming one on the solstice is on shape shifting. So kind of working with that ancient art to see how we might change shape to experience ourselves in different ways. I created that because I think it is hard to find spaces to do this work on a regular basis. And doing it on a regular basis is what made the difference for me.
So one of them is I'll often offer a wander, you know, a specific exercise for wandering out on the land. I also offer a lot of what I call mythic questions. You know, my favorite being to just ask myself, "how is it with my soul today?" Or ask someone I love, how is it with your soul today? You know, and just see what happens.
Another really important way for me is to, to track my seasons. I moved here partly because the seasons are so defined, and being that I'm a Celt and a Celtic medicine woman, I am inclined to, to really lean heavily on the year, the the wheel of the year, to instruct me and guide me through the hard parts, you know, and the blockages, as well as to accentuate my powers and, and help me bring my gifts forth. So in the Wild Becoming Sanctuary, we're always following the Wheel of the year in the Northern Hemisphere, but if people are in the south, there's lots in there for that to, to kind of meet you there.
Yeah. Which is another incredible way to not only be in conversation with the earth, but also to strengthen your creative wellbeing. You know, and it's like everything we do, any change you wanna make in your life, uh, based on where your longing is taking you, is a creative act. And a lot of times what happens is we have the longing, we follow the calling, and then we get stuck somewhere in our creative process.
You know, creativity isn't just making a work of art, right? It's creating a home, it's making a baby. It's, you know, breaking up with someone. It All has to go through its creative cycle, right? So we do a lot of that. So living seasonally, no matter where you are in the world, is for me, actually, a really powerful way to get closer to your destiny, as it were.
Megan: Lovely. Thank you. Those are all just yeah, beautiful ways, and I think what strikes me about your story and also sort of reminding us about these important ways to pull that thread or discover that thread is also the patience that it requires. That sometimes we can't see the pattern or even, we can't even see the medicine until we look back and see what we did or how we handled the situation, or, you know, We may not notice that we've been surrounded or visited by bees, you know, for three weeks until we sort of pause and look back and, and so I'm also just thinking about sort of timelines and timeframes and how this is lifelong work.
And I'm curious if in your experience of other cultures or earth-based practices, if some of this is discovered a lot earlier, with less gunk around it, through rites of passage or through communities that sort of hold space for this. The little that I do know about sort of many indigenous cultures helping adolescents through rites of passages to learn their medicine and be reflected back to them by the elders or others in their community.
And it seems like a lot of us are sort of trying to piece this together on our own. And it's so beautiful that you have found a tradition to be in. Is it true, I guess, that in our previous histories or in other indigenous cultures today, some of this is done earlier with more intention and finesse, or is it human nature to sort of be winging it? And it could be both at the same time, but my sense is that yeah, it's a little haphazard for a lot of us, that we're doing the best we can, but we're not inside of a larger context where our medicine is sort of shown or discovered alongside others.
Amanda: Yeah, and that's a huge reason why I started the membership, you know, the community, cuz I do feel that there's a need for community around those who wanna do this work, right? So that's you if you are really wanting, you know, you're moved by this conversation or you are in a big, in initiatory time and you, you want it to be kind of more than just you.
You sense that there's more to it, right, than just some life change that the outside world is saying, oh, your life is changing in this way. But you're saying, no, no, no, I am changing. You know this. We need spaces that can hold us in this ways.
One of the other key things that I talk to people about all the time in terms of finding calling is ceremony, self-designed ceremonies, and also being in ceremony with others, sitting in counsel with others. That's why I do the live monthly council.
But to answer your question more forthright, I know that there are cultures that have these rites in place. Very few, sadly though, have them fully intact anymore. They certainly did exist in certain configurations for the Celts. And just to clarify, I do not work only with Celtic people. It's just that that is my lineage of being a soul guide and a shamanic practitioner. But they've been lost and what's it's been replaced with is, you know, prom, and getting your first apartment and getting married and, you know what I mean? Even those don't have nearly enough ceremony around them but I don't think it's haphazard.
We're talking about a quest, right? We're talking about a quest that we're all on. That is, that is what life really is. And if you look to myth, which I love to look to all the time as instructional, it will show you this quest over and over and over and over again.
It is old, it's ancient, and we are all eligible to go on it, right? So yes, it's long, it's winding. It's lifelong to follow our calling, but in a way it's like our soul knows already what kind of quest we're on, what kind of quest we came here to undertake. So I think sometimes we have to just get a little bit out of our own way.
The way of the ego who says, well, how do I do this thing of finding my purpose? And again, coming back into contact with all of your senses, undertaking practices that tend to evoke our souls purpose, our medicine, our powers. There's a really great book by Bill Plotkin who founded the Animus Valley Institute called Soulcraft. That's a great book. That's a good way in.
The other thing that I encourage, To everyone I work with in my one-on-one mentorship program and in the, in the community - that's very new, by the way, so I'm really excited about it, and, you know, still, still creating it - is to journal, like, to really journal or if like voice memos work better, or if you draw or collage.... but the idea is to document what's happening because like you said in the moment, it's hard to track. It's hard to understand. This whole thing of the instant gratification - you should know right away - does not apply to the soul quest. It does not apply. It's like I've, I have had journeys in the other world that then materialized in the day world.
That then became a dream that then manifested and made sense two years later. You know what I mean? And it's amazing to look back and have those, oh my gosh, aha moments they call them, you know? So if you can record things like that are happening to you, that that's a very good thing.
Megan: Thank you. This has been such a lovely conversation. I feel like I've learned so much and I'm chewing on things differently already. Is there anything we didn't touch on that you wanna make sure and leave folks with?
Amanda: I do have this like short quote that I could read, that might be a good end. It's actually part of a poem by David Whyte called All the True Vows.
There's only one life you can call your own and a thousand other lives you can call by any name you want.
Hold to the truth you make every day with your own body.
Don't turn your face away.
Hold to the truth at the center of the image you were born with.
Megan: Thank you. So beautiful.
Thank you so much, Amanda, for being here with us today. How can people reach out to you or connect with the community that you're building? What are the best ways for them to continue?
Amanda: So you can find me at Bombilore.com . I'm sure you'll put that in the show notes and the While Becoming Sanctuary. I'll give you a link to that too, to include that. I also offer what I call the Wild Becoming Immersion, which is a five month, one-on-one mentorship. I mean, that's a really deep holding. So I love that. I love both spaces. I also offer one-time shamanic healing sessions as well, so you can find that all on my website.
And I'm on Instagram too. And yeah, it's been a complete pleasure. Thank you so much for having me, and much love and blessings, all those wonderful folks out there who may listen to this today.
Megan: Okay, my friend. I hope that you loved that episode and that conversation, and that you feel recommitted to answering the calls that you're getting from life right now, right around you.
I hope you'll keep going in that way, and I really encourage you to check out Amanda's work, take such good care. I'll see you on the other side.
Resources:
Amanda's website: bombilore.com/
Wild Becoming Sanctuary: www.bombilore.com/soul-sanctuary
Instagram: instagram.com/amandaverdery_