belonging Archives - Fates and Graces Mythologium

Rosalyn’s talk is called “Rewilding: A Reclamation of Primordial Belonging”

After 25 years of city living, I found myself deep in the Underworld of health issues, crushing debt, a crumbling career, and a deadened soul. In desperation, I begged God, the Universe, anyone who could hear, for guidance. “Move to nature‚” a voice whispered. For the first time in years my body relaxed. Heeding the call, I left the city for the Coastal Redwoods. There, in the sanctuary of a single room cabin and the stillness of the forest, I began an eight year journey of reclamation. That simple act of surrender ushered me on a mythological journey of healing decades of disconnection from both the natural world and my own wild soul. My inner stories of unworthiness, shame, and not belonging, as well as decades of repressed grief and rage, rose to the surface. Yet I remained surrendered, and in doing so, ravens, wild boars, a 1500 year-old tree, a fiery Texan crone, a feral cat, a Gandalf-like homeless man with flowers in his hair, and roses appeared as guides. The consistent messages were to slow down, simplify, and trust my own wild heart, which eventually led me back into the circle of life, a magically animate world, and my own belonging within it.

About Rosalyn

Rosalyn is a writer, a women’s empowerment and grief facilitator, ritualist, herbalist, storyteller, and a lover of wild things. She is a devout listener of the quiet realms, to children, the elderly and plants. She is a firm believer in the simple primary satisfactions of life and the unbridled creative spirit. She resides in the northern California redwoods in a tiny house she built where she writes, sings, dances, and makes hand-crafted goods and herbal medicine for the local farmer’s markets.

Devoted to the slow, intuitive, feminine way of the senses and body, you can often find her wandering the local woods harvesting edible and medicinal plants, singing with the birds, listening to the wind, dancing barefoot, celebrating and grieving life inside ancient trees, and writing about her experiences.

To hear Rosalyn’s talk and many others, join us at the Mythologium!

The Mythologium is a conference and retreat for mythologists and friends of myth, held July 30 – Aug 1 via Zoom. Register here!

Fee’s talk is called “‘Being’ Emplaced: Restorying Earth-Felt Belonging”

Writer, psychologist and mythologist Sharon Blackie observes that for many people living in contemporary neoliberal societies, “our relationship with place has become demythologised—a fact which is both an explanation for and a consequence of our sense of alienation from the world around us” (2020, np). She argues that processes and practices that remythologize place are not only “an interesting intellectual exercise, but an act of radical belonging” (2020, np). Heeding Blackie’s (2020) call to remythologize place, I restory what I call Earth-felt belonging.

Drawing on Elspeth Probyn’s (1996) emphasis on the ontological ‘beingness’ of belonging and Donna Haraway’s (2003) theorising of ‘natureculture’, I situate Earth-felt belonging through embodied, relational and emplaced entanglements that nurture a sense of interconnectedness alongside recognition and respect for the agency and vitality of Mother Earth and her Earth-kin (Matthews, 2011). More specifically, this presentation examines longing and belonging through intimate engagement with storied meaning making processes. It draws from fieldwork undertaken on Darkinjung Country (Central Coast, New South Wales, Australia) with five women (myself included) living in Australia’s colonial and patriarchal present. Together, we restory what it is to belong, through inhabiting the mythic landscapes of a Selkie folktale from the Outer Hebrides.

About Fee

Fee Mozeley is an environmental feminist who lives in Mulubinba (Newcastle) on Awabakal Country. She designs and facilitates feminist-popular-education workshops and retreats for self-identifying women on story-making, transformative leadership, and intuitive approaches to social change. Her research brings together more-than-rational ways of knowing and being in the world, lived praxes that actively challenge and dismantle patriarchy, and the agency and social power of stories and storytelling.

To hear Fee’s talk and many others, join us at the Mythologium!