Medicine Stories Amber Magnolia Hill

St. John’s Wort has evolved over millennia to capture sunlight and turn it into the molecule hypericin, which has numerous profound effects on our human bodies.
Our St. John’s Wort Oil is HALF OFF until sold out (as of June 2024)!
From deep nerve healing, relaxation, and pain relief when applied externally to its antidepressant, antiviral, and liver supportive properties when taken internally, SJW has always occupied an exalted place in the medicine cabinet of the ancestral humans who were lucky enough to live where it grew, and is one of the most used and loved herbal medicines in the world today.
IN THIS EPISODE:
St. John’s Wort acts as an extension of sunlight
The endless external uses include the healing of wounds, bruises, burns, blisters, cuts, eczema, growing pains, inflamed skin, muscle pain, nerve pain, neck tension, spasms, back pain, neuralgia, sciatica, insomnia, anxiety, and stress
The oil is indispensable for menstrual pain, pregnancy, postpartum, babies, children, elders, empaths, and highly sensitive people
Photosensitivity, precancerous skin cells, and using SJW as sunscreen
Internal uses: notes on the antidepressant, antiviral, and liver supportive effects (including my shingles story)
Hypericum feeds our inner radiance and summons forth our purpose and power
This ancient herb has always been associated with fairies and other magical beings
How empire co-opted pagan rituals and herbal practices
The widespread ritual use of St. John’s Wort as a protective herb
A word on wildcrafting and non-natives v invasives
Making your own high potency, shelf stable herbal oils
Herbal medicine is so simple, yet also endlessly complex
Kami McBride speaks about St. John’s Wort
RESOURCES:
Mythic Medicinals St. John’s Wort Oil (half off!)
Medicine Stories Patreon (patrons can download Rosalee’s ebook here)
Cute, short video showcasing our St. John’s Wort garden
Learn to Make Your Own Herbal Oils:
Kami McBride’s Handcrafted Healing Herbal Oils online course
My video Sneak Peak at the Handcrafted Healing Herbal Oils online course from Kami McBride
Podcast Episodes & Books Mentioned:
Episode 23 The Profound Medicine of Herbal Body Oils
Episode 53 with Kami McBride Healing Herbal Oils: How to Make and Use Them
Episode 55 with Lola Pickett Highly Sensitive People are the Psychedelic Plants of the Human Realm
Episode 67 with Nadine Artemis Harvesting Light: the Alchemy of Sun & Human
Episode 65 with Rosalee de la Foret Wild Remedies: Tending Relationships with the Land Around Us
Episode 17 with Sajah Popham True Holistic Healing: Bridging Plant & Human Consciousness
Episode 62 with Sajah Popham Called to the Plant Path: Herbal Myths, Healing Forward, and Human Ecology
The article Feeding Your Inner Sun with St. John’s Wort from The School for Evolutionary Herbalism
Wild Remedies: How to Forage Healing Foods and Craft Your Own Herbal Medicine by Rosalee de la Foret and Emily Han
The Untold History of Healing: Plant Lore and Medicinal Magic from the Stone Age to Present by Wolf D. Storl
The Herbal Lore of Wise Women and Wortcunners: The Healing Power of Medicinal Plants by Wolf D. Storl
A Modern Herbal II by Maude Grieve
The New Healing Herbs: The Essential Guide to More Than 130 of Nature's Most Potent Herbal Remedies by Michael Castleman 
More Good Stuff:
Kathi Keville’s website 
My website MythicMedicine.love 
Take our fun Which Healing Herb is Your Spirit Medicine? Quiz
Medicine Stories Facebook group
Mythic Medicine on Instagram
Music by Mariee Siou (from her beautiful song Wild Eyes)

In which I read a few pieces from my new Substack. Bone, blood, milk, and marrow... Nourishing Motherlines is a collection of memoir-adjacent personal writings exploring my evolving understanding of nourishment (not nutrients), how my mitochondria and minerals were inherited from my motherline (and yours from yours), my hEaLiNg JoUrNeY as I navigate hypothyroid and hypoadrenal exhaustion and a host of related symptoms, what I am focusing on as I prepare to help my daughters with seemingly inevitable future health issues as women alive in the 21st century, and your garden variety midlife self-concept implosion.
My new Nourishing Motherlines Substack
50% off Mythic Medicinals Herbal Oils (until sold out)
Energy booklet from the 80s
Medicine Stories Patreon (podcast bonuses!)
Take our fun Which Healing Herb is Your Spirit Medicine? quiz
My website MythicMedicine.love 
Mythic Medicine on Instagram
Medicine Stories Facebook group
Music by Mariee Siou (from her beautiful song Wild Eyes)

Chinese Medicine holds that women’s bodies are 10x harder to heal than men’s, as our reproductive system is biologically much more precious and metabolically more intensive to maintain. In this conversation my good friend, third time guest, and Doctor of Chinese Medicine Suuzi and I catch up one year after we both underwent severe energy loss to share how we’ve rebuilt and healed.
We talk about shifting away from the mindset of achieving “optimum human health” (an illusion that contributed to our health crises), working and mothering in a state of total burnout, how our childrens’ metabolic patterns can mirror our own & how we’ve helped our own kids heal, the link between high sensitivity and mineral depletion, why we’ve chosen a metabolically appropriate approach to weight loss even though it takes much longer, and so much more.
RESOURCES:
Join Amber & Suuzi for the Medicine Stories Retreat in Croatia, August ‘24!
Register for our Croatia Curious Zoom Call on April 10th (replay available for those registered)
Suuzi’s website Mother’s Best Liver Pills and her Instagram
Medicine Stories Patreon (podcast bonuses!)
Take our fun quiz Which Healing Herb is Your Spirit Medicine?
The Science of Human Energy newsletter book from the 80s
Suuzi’s previous interviews- episode 103 Midlife Burnout for Women & Why Healing Work Can Make Us Worse and episode 18 Land Based Living, Mothering, & Eating
Women whose work has helped us-
Niecia Nelson- Eat To Go Deep course and Instagram (my guest on episode 100 Returning the Mother to Herself: Our Nourishment Shapes How We Receive Life)
Sena Maria- Offerings and Instagram
Jenna Hamm- Offerings and Instagram
Sarah Kleiner- Offerings and Instagram (my guest on episode 104 Your Body is Not a Closed System: The Sun, Cell Signaling, and Metabolic Wellness)
My website MythicMedicine.love 
Mythic Medicine on Instagram
Medicine Stories Facebook group
Music by Mariee Siou (from her beautiful song Wild Eyes)

The times are unprecedented and there is no template for the future. We all feel this, and we feel the overwhelm of information, influence, and opinions.
Herbalism, as it always has, offers us sanctuary from everything vying to take hold of our attention and life force.
Not so that we can check out in an endless fog of self care, but so that we can be truly present and embodied as we navigate this time of rapid and radical change. 
The plants call us home to ourselves.
Kami’s Free Workshop The Art of Arnica: 7 Steps to High Potency Oil & Healing Benefits and Safe Application (week of 3/3/24 only)
Kami’s Free Webinar How to Use Kami’s Top Herbal Oil Blends to Soothe Anxiety and Support Daily Nervous System Reset (week of 3/3/24 only)
Kami’s revered Handcrafted Healing Herbal Oils course
Video Sneak Peak at the Handcrafted Healing Herbal Oils Course from Kami McBride (what it looks like when you log in)
Medicine Stories Retreat: Croatia w/ Amber Magnolia Hill (August ‘24)
Mastery by Robert Green
Medicine Stories Patreon (podcast bonuses!)
Take our fun Which Healing Herb is Your Spirit Medicine? quiz
My website MythicMedicine.love 
Mythic Medicine on Instagram
Medicine Stories Facebook group
Music by  Mariee Siou (from her beautiful song Wild Eyes)

Nothing exemplifies the magic of nature more than honeybees. They are insects yet their colonies are akin to a mammalian being, they produce numerous healing substances from their bodies and within their hives, and they have been revered and mythologized since time immemorial by countless cultures. Beekeepers live longer than folks in any other profession, and being in relationship with bees is deep medicine for the spirit in these frazzled times. Let us relearn ancestral ways of tending and listening to bees so that we may maximize our chances of reclaiming a vibrant and thriving Earth.
RESOURCES:
Ariella’s website Honey Bee Wild
Medicine Stories Patreon (3 bonuses for this episode- our extended conversation, 100% off coupon code for Ari’s 14 Kindred Bees classes, and a list of my & Ari’s favorite beetending resources)
Take our quiz Which Healing Herb is Your Spirit Medicine?
Song of Increase: Listening to the Wisdom of Honeybees for Kinder Beekeeping and a Better World by Jacqueline Freeman
The Buzz About Bees: Biology of a Superorganism by Jürgen Tautz
Medicine Stories episode 9 w/ Ariella Know Thyself: Weaving Myth & Magic Into Everyday Life
Check out our Mythic Medicinals herbal & mushroom remedies
Mythic Medicine (me) on Instagram
The Medicine Stories Facebook group
Music by Mariee Siou (from her song Wild Eyes)

“I pray to the dead to help me remember who I am while I’m still alive.”
To be in relationship with those who’ve gone before us is a deeply human way of being. Our ancestors knew that the “departed” never left, and that they answer when called. The way modern Western people conceive of the dead is a deviation that discards millennia of human knowing. Let us pray to the ancestors to help us sober up from civilization, remember what we’ve always known, and reclaim the long story of the soul.
RESOURCES:
Perdita’s website Take Back the Magic
Medicine Stories Patreon (book giveaway & course coupon code)
Life Everlasting: The Animal Way of Death by Bernd Heinrich
Otherlands: A Journey Through Earth’s Extinct Worlds by Thomas Halliday
Waking Up to the Dark by Clark Strand
My podcast about my mother’s passing What I’d Be Without You: My Mother’s Life, Death, and Legacy of Love
The Madonna Secret, a novel by Sophie Strand
Perdita and her husband Clark Strand’s website The Way of the Rose
Take our fun Which Healing Herb is Your Spirit Medicine? quiz
Our website & herbal medicines MythicMedicine.love
Mythic Medicine on Instagram
Medicine Stories Facebook group
Music by Mariee Siou (from her beautiful song Wild Eyes)