Had a great time speaking to my dear friend Soha Al-Jurf, on her new podcast, The Voice of All Things. Soha has this amazing way of helping you get to the essence of yourself. Through her questions and presence, I share with her in this episode about how I have been discovering the voice of plants in my homeland(s) – the Levant.
Just a few notes for clarity. I absolutely love stories. Mythologies to me are stories that give us deep lessons that help us to better understand ourselves, each other, and our times. Mythologies are stories that can span generations. I personally do not take mythologies literally. I enjoy seeing them symbolically, and finding what lessons I can glean from their allegories.
In this episode I refer to plants as “her” or “she”, but it is important for me to note that sometimes I feel plants as “he” or “him”, in addition to “they” and “them” – meaning that they embody many energies that cannot be expressed through a gender binary. I also speak of the “pili pili” who are transgender, non binary healers who support the goddess Inanna as she processes her grief over what happens to her in the mythology I share. At one point, I accidentally refer to the pili pili as “he”, but as non binary persons, I should have used “they” instead.
I also used the phrase “divine feminine” and I want to acknowledge that this phrase has been overused in the so called “wellness community”, and I have begun to question using it myself. When I use this phrase I am referring to a kind of wisdom, and intelligence, that is often not valued in our societies. Things like the willingness to be vulnerable, and to tap into the intelligence of our feelings. As these actually have no gender, perhaps this term isn’t the best way to encapsulate them.
Lastly, at some point in the podcast I share that this pandemic has been good for me. I want to acknowledge what a very privileged statement that is. This is certainly not the case for so many people who have suffered in so many different ways in this time.
If you are interested to learn more about the mythology I share in the episode, check out the notes to the episode with great links to dive deeper into this particular story. Also, check out more episodes on Sohas podcast, there are some wonderful guests with so much wisdom to offer.
Yansoon.ink: Stories From the Levant 