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Still Curious
Curiosity is a gift we start with but often lose. So what about those people who are still curious? Grokkist founder Danu Poyner meets people who insist on relating to the world with curiosity and care and talks to them about the red thread that runs through their life story and which ultimately empowers them to flourish as their unrepeatable selves. Find out more at https://grokk.ist/stillcuriouspodcast
Still Curious
Listening with the heart: how the wisdom of plants helps us remember our connection to the divine - Amanda Nicole | S3E8
Amanda is a liriodendress, a human embodiment of the tulip poplar tree. We discuss her journey of reconnecting with nature, listening to the wisdom of plants, and exploring alternative ways of knowing in her pursuit of heart-centred living.
Episode Summary
- Raised in a conservative Baptist church, Amanda always felt the divinity in the world but questioned the disconnect between the teachings of the church and her own experiences.
- After experiencing miscarriages and feeling unheard by medical professionals and her preacher husband, Amanda found healing and strength through acupuncture and connecting with plants, which led to a disruptive divorce and ex-communication from her church community.
- Amanda explored alternative ways of knowing and being, including herbalism, and discovered the transformative power of listening and dissolving the distinction between human and non-human.
- Through her work as an author, podcast host, and artist, Amanda shares her heart-centred offerings and messages to help others remember their connection to the divine and the interconnectedness of all living beings.
Key Themes
- Challenging the systems and structures that don't resonate with our hearts
- The transformative power of listening and the importance of being heard
- Reconnecting with nature and dissolving the distinction between human and non-human
Full Show Notes
Visit the Grokkist podcast hub for a full digest of this episode including highlights and links to stuff we discussed: https://grokk.ist/stillcuriouspodcast/s3e8-amanda-nicole
Recorded 29 August 2023
Website: grokk.ist/stillcuriouspodcast | Email: podcast@grokk.ist | Socials: @grokkist
Music: Kleptotonic Swing by Tri-Tachyon
If you have a miscarriage, lot of people don't even think there's a soul or a life or a baby there. It was just this invisible happening that most people couldn't connect with. People thought, you have three kids. Why are you sad? No one had ever listened to me. And no one was believing anything I said about what I thought was going on with my body All the appointments were 10 minutes if that, and they didn't hear a word I said. And that's why I loved the acupuncturist. There are people we meet that are life changing. My first session with her was almost two hours. She just let me say everything I needed to say about every single miscarriage and how they'd happened. When I finished she put her pen down and she looked at me and she said, Someone should have been taking care of you. I can help you. In that moment, the healing started because she heard me, she cared. By being heard, she strengthened my voice. That was the change that opened the portal for me to the plants and other ways of knowing and being. And it was the beginning of my exit from the previous life. I just didn't know it at the time.
You're listening to the Still Curious Podcast with me, Danu Poyner. The show is dedicated to exploring the lives of people whose most sincere orientation to the world is curiosity. and care. The people I refer to as grokkist. In each episode, I set out to connect with the unrepeatable person who is emerging from the place where history meets biography. My conversation partner today is Amanda. Nicole who describes herself as a Leary or dangerous. That is a human embodiment of the tulip Poplar tree. Amanda grew up in a conservative Baptist church in the mountains of Appalachia. As a girl, she went to church every Sunday morning, Sunday night, and every Wednesday night to. As a mum put it. If the church doors are open, we're going to be there. And Amanda didn't need persuading to pursue a relationship with God and the divine. She had always felt there was divinity in the world and that she was connected to it. So little Amanda was very focused on being good because being good was what helped you to be with God. But she had a lot of questions, especially about the parts of the church's teaching that told her she was separate to God.
Amanda Nicole:I was having trouble reconciling this idea that God is love with the anger, and the destruction and the hate. What I was told repeatedly when I was small was that the purpose was to break my will. And they did, in large part, they did break my will. And it's why I did such a good job for so long, and I think it's why it was so disruptive when I changed my mind.
Amanda felt her life had been planned out for her. She was dreamy and had aspirations of being a writer and did study literature, but this was too off-brand. And so she ended up marrying a preacher and settling into the life. She describes as a kind of cookie cutter existence. After three healthy pregnancies, she began to miscarry, not once, but four times. This led Amanda to the acupuncturist you heard about at the beginning. Which opened up alternate ways of healing, knowing, and being. And so Amanda meandered into the woods where she began speaking to trees and other benevolent nature beings, listening to the wisdom of plants and realizing that they were communicating the voice of the divine.
Amanda Nicole:I will start to feel a physical, almost energetic sensation in my heart space and I can feel it. It starts to make it where it's hard for me to talk. It's as if all of my attention and knowing and consciousness is being directed to my heart space. And that's how I know that the tree is saying, yes, I'll talk to you.
Amanda started to study herbalism. And became briefly involved in our Christian herbalists group. Before being kicked out after asking a question about communication with plants.
Amanda Nicole:They called me a creature worshiper and they tossed around words like pagan and witch. I felt like my experiences with the plants actually brought me closer to God and to the divine. So I told them that I thought their God was small
With her voice strengthened. This was a threshold moment. Then came a sudden and disruptive divorce that Amanda found out about by email. And after that, there was no turning back.
Amanda Nicole:I feel that the systems that I had been a part of, and that exist in this world as a human collective, are full of bondage and fear and necessity and an emphasis on the head rather than the heart. I decided I'm going to pursue something different and I'm going create something different. And with that divorce, a lot of times you're just trying to survive. And I said to a friend of mine during that time, I'm not interested in just surviving. I want to create a life.
The life Amanda has since created is about sharing verdant, heart centered offerings. Using plant communication and medicine to help people remember they are loved and part of something larger. She did become a writer and is the author of flowers for a girl plant medicine and sexual trauma. She's also the human voice or podcast called whispers plant spirit medicine. My background and Amanda's could hardly be more different. I grew up in a non-religious household have spent most of my professional career accustomed to the starting assumptions of scientific and technological rationalism. And perhaps most importantly, I lived a large part of my early life, almost entirely in my head. And if affliction, from which in some ways I'm still recovering. All of which to say this was a very interesting and unusual conversation for me, but ultimately a joyous, humbling and affirming one. In which we bonded over the problems of institutions that have a way of obscuring and suffocating, the very things they are supposed to represent. We also shared a deep appreciation for the sacred practice of listening. And I learned something of personal and spiritual importance through communicating with a blueberry. Please enjoy all this and more in a very special conversation with Amanda Nicole coming up after the music on today's episode of the Still Curious Podcast.
Danu Poyner:Hi Amanda. Welcome to the podcast. How are you?
Amanda Nicole:I'm doing well.
Danu Poyner:I've been looking forward to talking to you for a while. you describe yourself as a liriodendress, a human embodiment of the Tulip Poplar tree, and you began your human incarnation in the mountains and church pews of Appalachia. After studying literature and marrying a preacher, you meandered into the woods where you began speaking to trees and other benevolent nature beings. You're the author of'Flowers for a Girl, Plant Medicine and Sexual Trauma', and you're also the human voice of a podcast called,'Whispers: Plant Spirit Medicine'. And you have a website, where you share your verdant, heart-centered offerings and messages. That's a very intriguing introduction and before we start to unpack it, what would you say is the most important thing for someone to understand about what you do?
Amanda Nicole:From the bio, I would say the aspect of the liriodendress. It's a label that came into being because I was constantly having to write bios and I wasn't sure, how do I tell people who I am and what I do. I'm an author, I'm a mother, I'm a teacher, I'm an herbalist. And it just wasn't capturing, I felt, my essence and who I am, and so the lireodendress was the term that came into being, and that term makes me happy. When I write that, I feel that people are receiving an accurate description of who I am, of my essence, even if they don't know what the term means yet. And then it usually occasions people to ask, what is that? Then the unpacking of it, you know, allows me to expand and tell my story because bios can be very limiting.
Danu Poyner:As someone who is having to update my bio for the first time in a while, I am grappling with this myself and trying to express everything, which is, I guess, what the term Grokkist is about for me. So yes, it's certainly a term that invites conversation and curiosity. I like that very much. The thought that really made me realize we should do the podcast was something you said like, uh, the systems and structures around us don't resonate with our heart, so many of us are trying to build something on different foundations. Would you like to unspool that thought and where it comes from?
Amanda Nicole:Yeah, I would not have been able to articulate that thought until recently, until the last maybe five or six years, because I experienced a very sudden and disruptive divorce and the nature of it was such that everything crumbled. I didn't have the home that I had. I almost didn't have my children. I lost my family of origin, my church and social community. And that happened when I was a stay at home homeschooling mom of six. I was enjoying herbal medicine at the time, teaching it, offering it in sessions, but it wasn't a business. And so when that moment happened, of course, what primarily comes into your mind is survival. But at that time, I was already deeply immersed in the world of the plants and very connected to my heart. And I honestly thought that I would die if I had to enter into conventional ways of being. So, I became very aware in a way that I hadn't been before of the systems. I was aware of it some before homeschooling. I was aware of the educational system. Being an herbalist, I was aware of the medical system, but with that experience, everything came into an exaggerated view of the system, and I was sure that if I was, at that time being given the opportunity to start over and create a new life, I didn't want any of that. I wanted to follow my heart and I wanted something that was beautiful and something that had love at its root, and a place where there was freedom and creativity and authenticity and choice. I feel that the systems that I had been a part of, and that exist in this world as a human collective, are full of bondage and fear and necessity and an emphasis on the head rather than the heart. I decided I'm going to pursue something different and I'm going create something different. And with that divorce, a lot of times you're just trying to survive. And I said to a friend of mine during that time, I'm not interested in just surviving. I want to create a life.
Danu Poyner:Perhaps we should go back just to set a bit more scene, now that you've laid that out there. You were raised in a conservative Baptist family and I wonder if you can paint a picture of what that was like and what young Amanda's outlook was on the world.
Amanda Nicole:Well, I want to begin by saying that it's an aspect of my upbringing that I greatly appreciate and that even though I am not still a baptist, it's still in there. You know, you can't really get it out of there. But I do want to say is a part of my life that I value. Part of that is because it gave me Jesus. I find the person of Jesus or the Christ to be very valuable. But as a girl, I went to church every Sunday. Every morning, every night, Sunday morning, Sunday night, every Wednesday night. The way my mom put it was, if the church doors are open, we're gonna be there. And the funny thing was is it wasn't just our church. If any other church doors were open, we were there. So we didn't just go to the revival at my church. A revivals where they have meetings on multiple consecutive nights, for people that don't know what that is. We would go to the revival at the other church. And there were camp meetings, where there's tents and sawdust, and we sang gospel, we sang hymns. I sang in the choir. I loved the music of the church. Even from the time I was little, they didn't have to convince me to pursue a relationship with God and the divine. I was all for it. But the negative part of that is that what was being presented to me was hell, damnation, salvation. The idea that I was separate from God and also that I needed to be good and keep the commandments. So little Amanda was very focused on being good because being good was what helped you to be with God. Then I'll do it. I mean, basically whatever they told me was what was necessary to be with God. Then I would do it. I also went to a small conservative evangelical Christian school, so Bible classes every day, pledges to the American flag, the Christian flag, and the Bible every day. It gave me a lot of order though, and I needed that order because things at home were not always orderly. So I think I actually had, the way I remember it, a good and pleasant upbringing in the church. I'm thankful to have had that beginning.
Danu Poyner:I liked what you said about, no one had to convince you to have an interest in the Divine. You mentioned you love Jesus, the person, and tell me a little bit more about what that means to you.
Amanda Nicole:Well, it means something different now than it did then. But even then, I just knew that there was a divine being, or there was divinity in the world, or that there was more to reality than what was in front of me. There wasn't just matter. I did believe in spirit. I did believe that I was connected to it and that it was personal. I think that we're multidimensional and that there are places other than here and the universe is infinite and vast and wide. I call myself a liliodendriss, a human embodiment of the tulip poplar tree. But I also don't mind to use terms like Angel. I believe that our souls are infinite and have existed and do exist in many places and times all at once. And so I think when I got here, my soul already knew, and that so often we as humans forget where we came from and who we are because of things that happen to us in life. And for some reason I was able to remember at least that part, if not the other specifics.
Danu Poyner:Well, thank you. That's a very beautiful thought. And I like the way that you framed it about knowing there was divinity in the world and more to reality than what's in front of me. That's a very clear and powerful kind of formulation. It sounded like you were skeptical even at that age, about the separation as you put it, and hell and those kind of ideas. Could you expand on that a little bit more?
Amanda Nicole:Well, If they told me there was a hell, then I believed them because they were the authority figures and I trusted them, but I didn't believe everything they had to say about things. So for example, they would talk about the apocalyptic last days and I just couldn't buy it. Like the fire and the death and the fear and the devastation, It scared me and I had a lot of questions about it. And I remember telling my mom when I was maybe in high school, I'm not sure I can believe all this about the book of Revelation and the way they interpret it and put it forward. Because I said, it's like we suddenly enter a sci-fi novel. I was having trouble reconciling this idea that was being put forward to me, that God is love with the anger, and the destruction and the hate. Growing up in the Baptist church, I was good girl. So I memorized my Bible verses and I sang in the choir and got straight A's. And so they looked at me and thought, oh, she'd be perfect for ministry. Let's hope she marries a missionary or a pastor. And I was just not interested. So I was sitting in the pews one Sunday and the pastor was talking about if god is calling you to Africa, and I'm so sorry to even say that, you know, and it's just Africa is this, it's sad just in their mind, this dark continent that's in need of saving. I wasn't interested. And so when the pastor said raise your hand if you wanted to, I didn't, but of course all these other teenagers in the youth group were raising their hands. And my mom like, elbowed me really hard on my side and said, Amanda, raise your hand. And I said, but I don't wanna go. So when I got home, there was this whole discussion about, are you saved? Do you even love God? How could you not wanna go? And I just thought, I don't want to, and I don't have to. And I don't think God really is wanting us to go there either. So I was being a good girl, but that's just one example of a lot times that I ask questions and they didn't really like a lot of the questions that I asked.
Danu Poyner:So, you are, not in any way having to take on, you just have the message of divinity in the world God is love and, even though you are enjoying the order and being a good girl as you put it, you've got your own ideas and your own interpretations. They've put a lot of investment in you and they have a plan for you. What's your plan at that point? Did you have a plan A?
Amanda Nicole:Yeah, that might've been the last time I had a plan for a long time, so what I wanted to be was a writer and I had this idea that I would go to New York and write for a magazine, but I was told, you should only write what you know. And I remember thinking at the time, I don't really know anything, which was kind of a true statement. Also it was communicated to me that that was ridiculous because, this is especially my mom, you're not gonna be a writer. Get serious, Amanda, that sort of thing. You're not gonna be a writer, you're not gonna be a dancer, you're not gonna be a this, you're not gonna be a that, be sensible. I was in the church and also I was a girl, so they don't really give you a lot of choices. So I decided I would be a teacher and that I would teach English literature,'cause I loved books. l loved writing. I actually didn't ever actualize Plan A, but that made all the adults in my life happy, at least through high school graduation and beginning college.
Danu Poyner:Yeah. That gets them off your back.
Amanda Nicole:It gets them off your back. Right.
Danu Poyner:Were you doing any writing secretly or on the side?
Amanda Nicole:Not anything that's even worth talking about, because I was just so discouraged in doing it. And so it was just more something that I longed for, and I had people steal my journal and my diary at school and that didn't go well. I was part of a creative writing club for a short time in school, which was really stepping out on a limb because in junior high I realized if I did not make some significant changes, I was not going to survive because, you know, I was this good girl in the church. I loved nature, I loved being outside. I loved to write. I was really full of imagination and quite dreamy, and that wasn't gonna fly. So in junior high, I decided I was gonna make a change, and I became a cheerleader in school, like captain of the cheerleading squad and homecoming queen a couple times, and homecoming court. So being part of the creative writing club is offbrand as they would say. Writing came later.
Danu Poyner:The question that's on my mind as you paint this picture is what would young Amanda have said if someone fell through a portal from the future or from the multidimensional all space, and told young Amanda she was going to become someone who practices listening to the wisdom of trees.
Amanda Nicole:Well, I wouldn't have believed them, partly because I didn't even know you could do that. And also at that point in my life, I probably would've been afraid that what they were telling me was evil and bad, because I was also, during that time, very drawn to stories about witches and witchcraft. I remember in maybe elementary school being in the library, and there was a certain section in the children's part of the library that had books about demons and demonology. It was right near the section on Greek and Roman mythology, which I loved and devoured. And so I scooted over just a little to those books, but I didn't check them out because I would get in trouble. So I was drawn to it but it was forbidden. So if someone had come and told me that I could be an herbalist and listen to the voices of the plants, I wouldn't have had any context to understand what were saying. I certainly didn't think plants had voices, and it would've probably sounded like it was in line with witches and paganism and that way of being. So it would've been forbidden. But I loved fairytales and I loved nature, and I had this imagination I think there would've been something about it that would've made me hope that what they were saying was true and that there could be more to my experience than this like box checking, cookie cutter existence that was being imposed on me.
Danu Poyner:My natural next question is, when did things start to become more off-brand for you, I guess?
Amanda Nicole:Well, I did marry a preacher, although he wasn't a preacher at first. At first he was going to be a professor. Then we got married and his path changed, and so my path changed. After my first three children, I miscarried quite a few babies and became very sick. And part of that, if not all of it, to be honest, was the environment. It was just miserable. So I went to doctors and everybody said, your blood work is fine, everything's fine. It's just a phase, which is insane to me to have woman who's had three healthy pregnancies, who was as young as I was when the first time I went to a doctor, maybe I had had four consecutive miscarriages at that time. And to be told, it's just normal and it's a phase. So I did what a lot of people do. I self-diagnosed and I started researching. And by accident I ordered a book that came in the mail and it was written from a traditional Chinese medicine perspective, TCM, which I didn't know when I ordered it'cause I wouldn't have ordered it because Ooh, that's bad, we can't read that. And I flipped it open and there was chapter that was titled exactly what I had self-diagnosed myself as. And I read it and it made so much sense. And so I thought I have to find an acupuncturist. And that opened up everything. Alternative ways of healing and ways of being. So suddenly this pastor's wife in this church where you have to cover your head, there are no musical instruments. You can't observe any holidays. You keep the Sabbath. Some of the people whisper about whether or not you can wear pants. As a woman, I am going to an acupuncturist, beginning to go to yoga, and then the acupuncturist gave me Chinese herbs. I would come home with brown bags that when you open them, had literally sticks and twigs in the bag. And then I would make a decoction on the stove and I would drink it. It opened up a remembering inside of me of things that I liked before life happened and everything took over and I was told what to do. So from there I began to change my lifestyle, what I eat and what I used as medicine and healthcare. And that's what led me to herbalism and to take herbal classes.
Danu Poyner:You mentioned one of the things you really liked about the church environment was the music and then you said that in your family situation, you were not able to have any musical instruments or any of that. Forgive my ignorance, but I don't know how to marry those two things.
Amanda Nicole:Yes. I don't know how to marry them either. so In the Baptist church you have the piano and we had the organ we did four part harmony, my dad played his guitar. So at home we'd sing country and folk and seventies rock with my dad. I loved music. And when I was in college, I went to a Baptist church. And then I had a lot of questions in college because of some things that happened. And I had a professor who I really loved and still love, appreciate his presence in my life. And he went to a Presbyterian church, a reformed church now, not Presbyterian, mainline and liberal, but a more conservative Presbyterian church. And he invited me to his church. That was the context in which I met the person who became my husband. We were a part of that church. Now that church did still sing and have instruments, but once we got married, my husband became convinced of even more conservative doctrines that are connected to what's called, the Scottish Church, and so we ended up in a denomination that believed that you should only sing the Psalms that are in the Bible. So there's a book of Psalms, and those were the songs that were approved and so you can only sing those. Through their interpretation of scripture and their application of it, it needed to be sung acapella. I went from having so much music and a diversity of music and instruments to no instruments and no diversity. It was sad and I can't marry it. And it was a very great loss in some ways to have not had music for such a long time. But the positive part that came out of that is I came to have a great appreciation for the human voice all on its own, through the acapella singing. I recently took a songwriting class. There were classes where we could share songs we had written. And so when I shared my song the first time, I sang acapella. She said afterwards, no, I want people to offer their songs with musical accompaniment. She said, people can't hear the song. They don't know where the song's going if you don't have all of the instruments and that's actually something that needs improvement on their end. So I wrote her a very lengthy note in defense of acapella singing. Singing acapella is so much a part of me that to tell me I can't sing acapella is to silence me. So she said, okay, you can do that, but if you could add in harmony and stuff, that would be great'cause it helps people fill it out. So that's what did. I determined that every class after that, I would present my songs acapella in defense of the Human Voice. And the next time we presented our songs, I presented a song, Ancient Tree. And I did three part Harmony. And when I turned it in, I didn't know what she was gonna think because she didn't want acapella. And when the song finished, she was silent for a length of time. And I was thinking, oh no. And she said, well, we could leave this just as it is. Not every song after that was received in that way, but I had made my point and I had advocated effectively for the human voice.
Danu Poyner:When you said before that the questions that you were asking were not always received. I'm getting a sense of the forthright. Where does that forthrightness, and advocacy come from Amanda? Well,
Amanda Nicole:my mom is sure it didn't come from her and the church certainly wouldn't want it to come from them, but I do think, actually some of it came from my mom. She would like for me to use my voice the same way she uses hers. I don't know where it came from. It's just a part of me. And it's interesting because there was this book when I was growing up, the Strong-Willed Child. It was by this Christian person, a psychologist or something. And so my mom, oh, she has to read the strong-willed child because I've got a strong-willed child. What I was told repeatedly when I was small was that the purpose was to break my will. And they did, in large part, they did break my will. And it's why I did such a good job for so long, and I think it's why it was so disruptive when I changed my mind.
Danu Poyner:I don't wanna take you into the space of the miscarriages'cause it's difficult conversation. But I just wanted to offer how difficult and frustrating it must be, on top of a situation like that, the not being listened to or having your perspective acknowledged about something as core to you as your own body. I just wanted to make space for that thought, if you wanted to talk about it at all.
Amanda Nicole:No, I appreciate that. I wasn't heard during that time, and it wasn't just because of the allopathic mainstream medical system, though they were not listening. But also the church wasn't listening. If you have a miscarriage, lot of people don't even think there's a soul or a life or a baby there. I believed there was a soul and I was attached to the soul and I loved the soul. But to everybody else, there was no proof of it. I miscarried before there were usually any visible physical effects of the pregnancy. So it was just this invisible happening that most people couldn't connect with. So they didn't understand why I was so sad. And also people thought, you have three kids. Why are you sad? So no one was listening and no one was believing me about anything I said about what I thought was going on with my body. And that's why I loved the acupuncturist. There are people we meet that are life changing. My first session with her was almost two hours. She just let me say everything I needed to say about every single miscarriage and how they'd happened. By the time I went to her, I'd had, I think five and I had two more while I was with her before things changed. And I told her every detail. No one had ever listened to me. All the appointments were 10 minutes if that, and they didn't hear a word I said. When I finished speaking and she finished writing, she put her pen down and she looked at me and she said, Someone should have been taking care of you. I can help you. In that moment, the healing started because she heard me, she cared. And when she said, someone should have been taking care of you, I had no idea how true that was. And then for her to say, I can help you, and she did. By being heard, she strengthened my voice. The miscarriages and the healing that came with those, I believe was the shift in the change that opened the portal for me to the plants and other ways of knowing and being. And it was the beginning of my exit from the previous life. I just didn't know it at the time.
Danu Poyner:You mentioned how you came by this really significant life changing book almost by accident. When you were having these experiences and no one was listening to you and you were grieving alone, and this thing comes to you and you're not sure about it, did you have doubts about meeting the acupuncturist? What was going on for you then?
Amanda Nicole:I was very cautious about the acupuncturist I chose. There was this term that was used in the church. Of course there's pagans, there's witches, there's the new age, there's all sorts of terms, right? And so I didn't wanna be any of those things, and so I was trying to be careful about the choices that I made. But I also, at the time, was who I am, which is intuitive, and she felt good to me. She sounded good. But I did have questions about it, and I actually remember praying one morning and saying that I did want to be well and I did want to be healed, but that I didn't want to be well and I didn't want to be healed if it meant that I was going to be without God or separate from God..And so I prayed, is this okay to use herbs and to make these decoctions? Am I doing the right thing or is this outside of you because I want to be with you. After I prayed that, I just let my Bible fall open, which was not recommended by my particular Christian tradition. I looked down and it was the Book of Revelation, and it said the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the people. And that was my answer. And knew that the divine had spoken.
Danu Poyner:So you met the acupuncturist and you had the connection and that healing process began, and then there's a kind of duality because you're not sharing this with the rest of the world that's not listening to you. So how long does that go on before there's a point of tension?
Amanda Nicole:Well, I kept a lot of what I was doing a secret until I was pregnant again, because I thought if I say too much about what I'm doing and they don't see the effects of it, so it's not blessed, right, God doesn't bless it, then that's not going to go well. So I didn't say much about going to an acupuncturist. I didn't mention the yoga. It was very careful, because of what people thought. When I found out I was expecting my fourth child, I knew it was going to go well, but I kept that pregnancy even a secret until the third trimester and they were, oh my goodness, you know what happened because everybody had just written me off as like the woman who's gonna grieve the rest of her life and mourn dead babies. I mean, I know that sounds morbid, but that's really what they had done. The point is, don't say too much. Just say acupuncturist, oh, what do they do? And then downplay what they do. But people were concerned because I was in herb school and also for four or five years I was attending home births as a midwifery student and assistant, and I was hosting a community birth circle outside of the church. So people were already concerned because they felt that I was spending too much time with what would be called unbelievers and people outside of the church.
Danu Poyner:So you had the fourth child and it was successful and you mentioned you had six kids. So that was,
Amanda Nicole:very successful. I said to her when I got pregnant the next time, so fourth and then the fifth, I said to her, I just wanted to stop miscarrying was Exactly, know? Right. But I was so well, I was well, so that's what happens.
Danu Poyner:Now I'm curious if you can take us from that quite joyful place to what you described earlier as a sudden and disruptive divorce. What's the chain of events that leads you there?
Amanda Nicole:So the church was extremely conservative. We were in a denomination, then we weren't, and ended up just being that one church, which some people said was a cult. And it eventually disintegrated. One of the main reasons was because the church practiced excommunication, which means if you do something that is considered sinful or scandalous, then you can be put outside the church. And this was being done for things like wives that weren't obeying their husbands, like how they make breakfast or how they speak to him, or young adults, 18, 19, 20 who decide to elope and get married. So it wasn't as if there were murderers in the congregation, and so this is what was happening. But a small body of people can only handle so much of that before things start to crumble. You just start running out of people. And then also my husband at the time, this is gonna sound weird but to his credit, found excommunicating people stressful. So he ended up not being well. He started to have trouble comprehending when someone was speaking or even being able to speak himself. It was the effects of the stress. So I started to remember abuse that I experienced when I was small and I started having flashbacks and that was very stressful. So that was also happening with the last few excommunications and it was just this perfect storm for things to collapse. And he ended up resigning and we moved from Northern Virginia to the upstate of South Carolina. I was so happy to not be there anymore. And I couldn't believe that we were having this opportunity to start over. I could talk about whatever I wanted to talk about and read whatever I wanted to read. I didn't have to keep herbalism a secret anymore. And I could fully express who I was and who I was becoming because I wasn't the pastor's wife anymore. And I didn't have to worry about the church backlash that could come from some of those things. But my former husband, he wasn't feeling like starting over or letting go. It was almost like he had moved locations, but none of his beliefs had changed. Whereas for me, my beliefs had been changing for years. Now, I was just getting the opportunity to express them and embody them. And the plants took me on a path where the voice of the preacher and the voices of approved commentators and theologians were no longer my sole authorities. I began to listen to my own heart. I began to think that I could hear the voice of God without these mediators. I began to listen to the plants and believe that they were communicating the voice of the divine, and so I began to listen to more voices and allow for more input. And I began to find words and concepts in different ways. We were getting along well, but we weren't moving in the same direction, and we had become very different people than who we had been. He filed for divorce secretly, quietly, because I was told the church says you can't get divorced except for certain reasons. And I got an email from him that said he had filed and that the paperwork would be arriving in a few days. And I had two weeks before a temporary hearing, and all of that started to unwind and it was very disruptive and it wasn't kind and it wasn't peaceful. It was very hard. Partly what was happening was that we were no longer part of a physical church, well, we were, but he wasn't the pastor and it wasn't a church that practiced excommunication. But the thinking was some of the things that I had done and that I was believing were worthy of excommunication. Since there wasn't a church, the civil courts were used as a form of excommunication or attempted to be used in that way as punishment.
Danu Poyner:What had been happening with your journey with the plants at that point. What had you been up to and how far had you got, and what voices had you incorporated into your listening?
Amanda Nicole:I had been teaching, herbal classes, plant medicine classes in person and online. I had been teaching classes that were about plant medicine for the body, but also for the spirit, for the soul, for the emotions. I was already sitting and listening to the plants and inviting other people to sit and listen with me, teaching them how, facilitating that practice in those spaces. I had written a book, Flowers for a Girl: Plant Medicine and Sexual Trauma. I'd been teaching at some herbal conferences and I had incorporated many voices. So, sweet violet, a flower, any plant that wanted to talk to me, white pine, tulip poplar. I was listening to the land. Not just plants. I would sit and listen to land in certain places. That was happening.
Danu Poyner:You mentioned that it was important for you when you started on that journey to pray on whether this was with God or not. And I'm curious how that conversation had been going.
Amanda Nicole:Before the divorce happened and before we moved, before church fell apart, I was curious about plant communication. And I wanted to know more. If it was possible that could talk a rose, I wanted to talk to a rose. Right. But I wanted to be sure it was good, that it was right, that it wasn't sinful, and so I didn't want to ask my teacher and people in the herbal circles that didn't identify with the church because they have a different perspective. There was this group called, The Christian Herbalist. I was part of this group, so I put into the chat space,'is there anyone here who would be interested in talking about plant communication?' and it was a And hours I was kicked out of the group. They called me a creature worshiper and they tossed around words like pagan and witch. I was so taken aback by the aggressiveness of the response to just a well meant question. My response was that I didn't worship the creation at all, that I felt like my experiences with the plants actually brought me closer to God and to the divine. Like, if plants do this, if they heal the way they heal the body and if they support us emotionally like this, and if they do talk, doesn't that just make god and the creation even more amazing and miraculous. So it's not just that God made a rose, God made a rose that you can have a conversation with that can also be healing to your womb and your heart and your blood. That makes God greater, right? But that's not how they viewed it. So I told them that I thought their God was small, which was actually a bold way for me to speak at that time. And so I got kicked out of the group and I went on my own journey. By the time the divorce happened, I had decided that nothing about these things were contradictory. In my mind, I saw and heard and felt and experienced the divine in nature, and I felt closer and more connected to the divine in those places. And I thought that what I was experiencing was beautiful and good and full of truth.
Danu Poyner:We're at a really important moment where you've had this sudden and disruptive divorce and the home that you had has now gone, but you are making immediate pragmatic choices about survival but you're doing so from some place of Yeah. The institutional representation of the divine is now not my home, but I feel more at home with the essence of the divine. And so that must give you some comfort and some confidence for not just surviving, but making a life. What do you do next?
Amanda Nicole:Yes. I'm still in the middle of that. He filed in the fall of 2018, and it was final in the fall of 2019. And so here we are in 2023, so it's been four or five years. It's a lot to try to put back together. It's a lot to hold together, especially with my children, especially when I haven't had family. But what I did was I had the plants and I had plant medicine and I still needed to be home with my children because homeschooling was still required. I took the classes and the sessions that I had been teaching, and I started to attempt to create them into a business. But it's been very difficult because that's not conventional. There aren't structures already out there, but I couldn't go and get a conventional job because it wouldn't have paid enough anyway. I hadn't worked for a thousand years, in any way that anybody was gonna notice on a CV or resume. When everything is gone and you have to start over and you have to build a new foundation, what sort of foundation do you want, and what kind of structure are you going to build? Because do you want to find yourself in that same place again? Do you want to have to go through all of that again to rediscover and find yourself? Do you wanna waste any more time? No, I don't. So it's been a very pivotal season and I'm still moving through what I'm creating and what I want it to look like and what will be sustainable. It's very hard to do something outside of the systems.
Danu Poyner:I'd love to ask you a little bit about the plant communication, and how that works. I live alone and I have house plants and I do talk to them sometimes, but they don't usually talk back to me, not in a way that I have heard. So maybe you can let me know a little bit how the plant communication actually works for you.
Amanda Nicole:I feel the most like myself when I'm listening and then when I share what I receive, I feel like Amanda, it's why I'm here. I just sit and listen. I will go and sit with a tree or sit with a particular flower, or I will sit with a picture of it on my computer, or just think it. And then I listen. I don't hear an audible voice. Some people may. But what happens is I see words. I have a knowing. The tree I sat with this weekend, there was a point where it wanted to say about a telephone pole that was beside of it. It wanted to say, I never really thought I'd end up with someone like this. And that's what I heard. In my mind, that was the thought that rose up. But sometimes I'll also see images. So again, this tree I sat with this weekend, it was wanting to talk to me about a person that had gotten stuck at a place in their life, and hadn't been able to move past that place of transition. So these thoughts are rising up, but I'm also seeing this person in the middle of a river and they've just stopped in the middle and they have no ability to go further. Or maybe there'll be a song that will come to mind. I'm very open to any way of receiving the messages and the voice. Over time I've learned to discern what is the voice of the plant or the river or the land, and what is my own or someone else's. I think it's a skill we're all capable of, we've just forgotten how.
Amanda Nicole-1:Something you said earlier about you went and listened to any of the plants that would have a conversation whether you or wanted to talk to you, and I'm curious how you know,
Danu Poyner:when there's a
Amanda Nicole-1:conversation in the offering?
Amanda Nicole:Well, sometimes I initiate the conversation, so sometimes I'll approach a tree that I want to talk to and I'll say, hi, I'm Amanda, and then I'll start to speak. But then what happens for me, I will start to feel a physical, almost energetic sensation in my heart space and I can feel it. It starts to make it where it's hard for me to talk. When I teach classes, I just have to stop talking. It's as if all of my attention and knowing and consciousness is being directed to my heart space. And that's how I know that the tree is saying, yes, I'll talk to you. If I don't feel that, then they're probably not in the mood. Sometimes too, when I'm walking around, suddenly I'll feel it in my heart space, and I'll just have a knowing to look to the right or something, and there'll be a particular plant or tree there. I literally feel the energetic connection from my heart to them. Sometimes too though, they'll just say something as I'm walking past them. Like the black walnut tree was one of the first trees that ever spoke to me more than a decade ago. I was walking past it on the way to my car. I was new to all of this, but I could tighten you up and clean you out. it said
Danu Poyner:Oh, that's quite an opening line.
Amanda Nicole:It's quite an opening line, but they have different ways of introducing themselves, so,
Danu Poyner:It's a beautiful thing. I'm curious how you go about sharing it with others, because there is this translation into the verbal realm when you're talking about it. My favorite movie is Ratatouille, which is about the rat who wants to be a chef and there's a scene where he's discovered the whole world of cooking and the radical possibilities of having a completely different relationship to food. And he's trying to convey the concept of combining different flavors to his brother'cause the rats just normally eat garbage. And his brother is being politely supportive, but also a bit weirded out and not really getting it. It really captures the feeling of trying to share something that you can see that other people can't. And in this case, it's also because what Remy the rat is trying to convey is a completely non-verbal, non-visual thing. It's an experiential thing. So I just really like the way that the animators do the flavors and it gets me in the feelings every time I watch that scene. So that came up for me.
Amanda Nicole:I like that movie too. The way that I communicate what I experience is I translate it. I transcribe what I receive into words. So my podcast, I do that with my spoken voice, sub stack or my email newsletter. I'm interested in doing more visually, with art and even myself, just the way I appear in my presentation. So that's different ways that I would communicate and share what I receive. But for other people in my classes or in one-on-one sessions, I invite them to do it with me. They can do it without me, obviously. But if I'm there, it's like I energetically turn things on in the other person and make it possible. I've done that over the years in classes. Or I'll pull up a picture online. That came about with Covid and then I will just invite the person to listen with me. I'll say, we're gonna sit with this plant and then We're just gonna open up to receive what it might have to share with us. So I'll say, just notice what do you hear? Do any words or phrases come up? What do you see? Are there any images? Do you feel any sensations anywhere in your body? Do you have a memory of a certain person? Does a certain song come to mind? Anything that you notice while we're sitting here, feel free to share it when we're finished. And so usually we just sit for a moment, it doesn't take long to receive and then when it's finished, I invite them to share. But I'm also listening and so I will write down what I receive and I always let the group go first I want them to be able to share without having heard what I received. So it doesn't color what they think is right,'cause there is actually no wrong answer. Then when they share it, I reflect back because I know the voice and I know the medicine of the plant, so I can say, yes, it's beautiful because the medicine of this plant is such and such, or, yes, that's perfect because plant once said this, or I'll read what I got, and they're just blown away because that's what I got. What I think is important is that they experience it too. Because once you experience it, it's real and it opens up a portal and a door to what's possible. And then some people, they wanna practice more and become more fluent in the language of the plants. And it's really just a way of beginning to trust what you hear.
Danu Poyner:The undeniable experience is the phrase I always go to for this, because once you've had it, then it changes the way that you think and you can't unknow that. Is there an exercise or something you can do with me while we're here to honor that practice?
Amanda Nicole:Yeah. Actually, I know we're on a podcast, I see how I can share my screen, I'll do that. Do you mind? And then what I thought was we could just sit here and just do it together. So, gonna share my picture.
Danu Poyner:Ah, this is a blueberry.
Amanda Nicole:Yeah. So, we'll just take a moment and you can just take maybe a couple of deep breaths just to settle in, and then maybe I'll just sing'cause I like to sing to bring us into this space. And then we can just sit here for a moment and you can just notice. I sit and listen to the trees, the messages, they fall like leaves, into my heart, into my soul, tree talk is how I walk whole. I sit and listen to the tree, the messages, they fall like leaves into my heart, into my soul. Tree talk is how I walk home. And then we can just look at it for a moment and just see what you notice. Are there any words or emotions or images that you notice?
Danu Poyner:Nothing that's coming up for me unbidden that I'm not going to force onto it.
Amanda Nicole:No, you don't have to force anything.
Danu Poyner:I'm just looking at the shape, to be honest. It's not something I'd noticed really. There's star shape, it's very much a star, but it's also round not a pointy star.
Amanda Nicole:So it's interesting because don't usually notice the stars on blueberries because we're not usually looking at them this closely. But blueberries, the Ojibwe and other indigenous people would also connect them to the stars. They call them starberries and consider them to be a gift from the stars. One of the first times I ever sat with blueberry, it invited me to look through that star on its outer edge because it told me if I looked through it, I'd be able to see the galaxies and the stars. There's a great deal to blueberry when it comes to astrology and star medicine and even our own human connection to the stars, and even the idea of a home being in the stars or sometimes home, feeling like it's very far away.
Danu Poyner:It's nice. It's a nice kind of like golden hour sunlight.
Amanda Nicole:It's interesting too because with the light and you speak about the golden hour, so like sun setting, but blueberry has been traditionally used to improve night vision, eyesight.
Danu Poyner:I'm catching myself feeling guilty about thinking about the flavor because I'm talking to the berry. So how should I feel about that? It's sweet and it's quite
Amanda Nicole:so you're thinking of the flavor, which is sweet, right?
Danu Poyner:It's got a bursting feel to it.
Amanda Nicole:Yes. I love it. I'll go with bursting in a moment. Okay, so part of Blueberry's medicine is sweetness and traditionally its leaves especially, but also the berries have used to regulate blood sugar for certain diabetics. This is even gonna be even more interesting in the moment because you said you felt guilty thinking about eating it. A client, maybe six, seven years ago, he came to me and he has been diabetic for decades and at his session he didn't bring it up and then it came up at the end of his session. I said, why didn't you say something about that? And he said,I'm diabetic. I don't deserve sweetness. So you bring up this idea of guilt in connection to, oh, there's this being, and I'm thinking about eating it, which is true, but also there's this aspect of it with the sweetness of life is being able to enjoy it and to think that it's yours to receive. So part of blueberry medicine is the medicine of abundance. You don't even have to pick them, they'll just fall into your hands. But you've got to be open receive them. It's interesting too, when you talk about bursting, it's such a joyful plant. It bursts with joy, but also it's juicy. So it bursts with juice.
Danu Poyner:When I was looking at your. Interviews with the trees, which you describe as a interspecies philosophical dialogue. The one that leapt out to me personally the most was the one with red maple, and red Maple is saying, you've forgotten how to dance and who has time to think about ethics when we're dancing? And that just really landed with some force for me.'cause I'm very much in my head and very much intellectualizing and systematizing my feelings. So that really spoke to me. And what you're telling me about blueberry is accepting the abundance and the joy and the bursting and being in that experientially is something I'm working on.
Amanda Nicole:Yeah, I would just also offer, part of blueberry's medicine is that you are enough. So abundance, it offers there is enough. And also this medicine, it's given to me that I don't have to do another thing to be accepted and to be enough. There's no apology. There's no lack. That's how blueberry offers it. Thank you for being willing to sit with it. But do you see what happened? So even if you didn't receive a line, you might not have thought you heard anything while we were together, right? But you were receiving, you were engaging. It was bringing out words like sweetness or guilt or the apology or the bursting or the star. And that's how a lot of people start. They just start by about they see and what comes into their mind. And then what I did is part of what I do, which is help you see how you are in the realm of blueberry. You are talking about blueberry, and then it moves from there for people where then they start to over time, just have confidence and be able to discern and not intellectualize it because it's not an intellectual experience in some ways. You have to drop into a certain space and a way of being.
Amanda Nicole-2:Until recently, say five or six years ago, I didn't even know that there was a way of being that wasn't that intellectualizing space. People talked about it and I thought about
Danu Poyner:emotional connection and I
Amanda Nicole-2:thought I understood that, but
Danu Poyner:I didn't actually experience it. The point is, that expanded my universe and when I had that realization of, oh, there's a whole other way of being and it's just as important, if not more so, then I felt I had already known that and always known that. And it's something that I had now remembered, and all of that reading that you did in the library when you were little with the mythology, must have been useful because in ancient Greek, the word for truth, alethia, does mean literally unfor getting. And I wanna ask, when you are talking to people and taking people through exercises, how open and how emotionally intelligent does someone need to be, to be able to go on this journey with you?
Amanda Nicole:If someone is completely uninterested and closed off, it's be a more difficult go than someone who's ready to jump in and believes it's possible. But I can be with anyone if they're willing. Some people are more or less in tune with their heart and their emotions, but I feel like part of what I'm here to do is to help them get in touch with it. So it's not just that I'm here to facilitate their relationship and communication between themselves and the blueberry. I am also here to help them begin to learn how to drop into their heart space. The plants are a way that we do that together. If I feel that someone's uncomfortable or closed off, then I try to read them to know how I can help them open more. But what they see and experience really is up to them and the timeframe of how long it might take to open to have this or that type of conversation is also up to them. I do believe that this is something that we, as humans are meant to do.
Danu Poyner:I understand by consciously making plants into spokespeople of sorts, we're able to get in touch with our heart space and retrieve our own voice. So there is a sense in which it isn't really about the plants, it's about us, but also it is really about the plants, or at least dissolving the distinction between human and non-human and being part of the all. How do you think about that?
Amanda Nicole:I have this phrase that I use, which is that plants are instruments of incarnation. I believe that they are here to help us remember. I have a background in Christianity, and Christianity has a doctrine where it teaches there was a fall. For some reason we do struggle to experience, acknowledge, embody our connection to the divine, to incarnate, but the plants and the animals don't. And even the Bible will talk about that, where it's the humans that fell and then, we'll say that the creation groans waiting for us to return. In my experience, the natural world, what we think of trees, plants, rivers, lakes, land, the earth, the stars, everything except us seems to have retained its connection to the divine. It doesn't need to remember. So part of why they're here is to help us remember. When we speak to the plants or other non-human beings, it is about them. It is about recognizing their consciousness and their being and acknowledging their existence and their essence and relating to them. So it is about their voice, but then they would also think that it's about our voice and they see how we're disconnected, how we've forgotten certain things, and they have all these ways of helping us remember. So, for instance, blueberry that we sat with: aspects of being enough, being connected to the stars, having the ability to experience sweetness and to be worthy of it. Feeling at home, or if you look at another plant, maybe white pine, this idea of being at peace, having all of the pieces gathered together. Each plant has its own, I think, aspect of what we would think of as the divine. And it is about recognizing them and then for them it is also about supporting us.
Amanda Nicole-2:It kind of reminds me of the acupuncturist. It's like the message from the plants and the non-human entities is, I'm sorry for what you
Danu Poyner:experienced and I see you and I can help you. Come with me and I'll show you.
Amanda Nicole:Yeah, I'm really glad you said what you said, with the plant saying, I'm sorry, and I'm here to help you because one of the things that I hear a lot is that humans are the bane of the earth, and they're ruining it, and they're destroying it. And it's such a horrible way to view humanity. We do misuse our resources. We do make everything into profit and commodity. We do pollute. We don't recognize the plants as conscious beings, and so we just take our lawnmowers out and whack their heads off, but we are loved and we are seen and we are wanted, and we are not this horrible, awful plague, I don't think, that covers the face of the earth. The Earth loves us. Nature loves us. And it knows that if we could just remember, we would make different choices. It's here to help us remember, because it wants to be with us. Just as much as a honeybee or a lion or a oak is part of this ecosystem, so are we. And this feeling of guilt you mentioned. Like a lot of what the plants do is let's get rid of this guilt. Let's get rid of this shame. Let's get rid of this unworthiness. Do you know how amazing you are?
Danu Poyner:The thing I'm apologizing for all the time is because I feel not wanted in the space in a very big way. So what you said about the rivers would miss us, that means a lot to me. Hmm.
Amanda Nicole:Well, part of Blueberry's medicine is home and belonging, that we belong, and so for myself, when blueberry came to me the most powerfully was when my mom had just left me, like abandoned me and there was no home. So this feeling of not being wanted, for some of us it's just like in our blood. So part of blueberry's medicine is you do belong here. This is your home. You are a part of something. You are always wanted, you're the thing it most wants. It wants to eat you up. Like you were like, oh, I feel so bad when to eat the blueberry. The divine is like, I can't get enough of you. But we don't think that about ourselves. But part of blueberry medicine is you're so wanted and you belong.
Danu Poyner:Thank you for that. Well, thank blueberry for that. Um, this has become a personal therapy session for me. You have a favorite conversation partner in the plants, which is the namesake. So tell me about Tulip Poplar.
Amanda Nicole:So Tulip Poplar, I describe it as the tree of my heart. It's the plant that I feel most resonant with, that I've been speaking to the longest, and that has been a companion through really difficult circumstances. Part of my purpose in being here is to understand that tree and learn it and communicate its medicine to the world. It first came to me before everything started to fall apart. It was the first tree I'd ever spoken to. And I just got this sense that it was an impenetrable fortress. That was the phrase that came. And I just felt like it didn't want to talk to me. It was like it had a moat around it. And then I was in an herbal class and Tulip Poplar tree came up and everybody starts, oh, it's such a sweet tree. loves humans. And I was thinking, that is not what I got. So Matthew Wood was the teacher that day and I had my hand up and he said, Amanda has something to say and I said, that's not what I'm getting. I get from it that it's an impenetrable fortress and it's unapproachable, and the whole class started. Oh, where did she get that? And I was kind of it's an herbal class. We don't all like start chitter chattering that person is wrong about what a tree said. I mean, how are you gonna know? So Matt, who's usually pretty soft spoken, he got firm, and he called the class down and he said, that's enough. It's teaching Amanda something That was like 10 years ago. The next time I was with it, it said to me, we will be your parents and I saw it like lifting me up these two trees swinging me between them like you'd swing a child that you're playing with. And at the time I had both parents and I thought, well, why would I need trees to be my parents? But I wasn't going to continue to have both parents and so I began to experience that tree as a parent. It has an enormous amount of wisdom. It's a tree of the heart, it talks about the heart being a golden compass that shows us our true North. It's the one that's taught me most how to listen. And it told me once, tell our stories, and I felt so honored. cause I'm just this little person that doesn't even know what they're doing. And so I told it that I would, and I thought it meant like tell Tulip Poplar stories. And so I've been very focused on that, that I want to be sure I talk about Tulip Poplar and share who it is. But then what I realized was over the years is, tell our stories. It's so intertwined with mine. So tell Tulip poplars stories and Amanda tell your story because this is our story. But then I've realized, this is story, the Human Collective, like the story of all of us together, the one, the divine.
Amanda Nicole-3:To, come back to how we framed this conversation at the beginning about not just surviving, but building a life.
Danu Poyner:How is that going?
Amanda Nicole:I think that the trajectory is good because, I'm sitting in a home and I'm talking about the plants, so I've obviously had time and, if you think about it, luxury, to be able to sit and listen to them and receive their messages. And I'm with my children, so it's going well. I really do want to spend my life listening. And so I'm seeking out ways to be supported. There's not something that I'm aware of set up out there, for someone who communicates with the plants. And so I'm trying to create my own. What I do is very valuable and it's also unique. And I've been saying to myself lately, I live in a world where I am greatly valued, incredibly appreciated, loved and fully and abundantly supported, simply because I am. So I've made some shifts and I'm going to get my master's degree in philosophy, religion, ecology, so that I can create my own platform. I'm just gonna pull myself a chair up at the table, and start creating a structure for myself that amplifies my voice, hopefully, which can in turn amplify the voices of plants, which is why I think that I'm here.
Danu Poyner:What you were saying about being valuable and people not tapping that resource, even though that's why they want you there. It's like you're a talisman, but they don't do anything with it. This has been my experience with the world of formal education and that's a whole other story, but I have essentially left that and am building my own little table and room on the side because it just needs to be thought about differently. it's become bigger than education in the way you were saying about, tell our stories. It is about identity and a way of being in the world and saying, you are enough. All of the grokkists who have squiggly stories and ask too many questions and lead with curiosity for better or worse, and who just burst with the need to learn and understand things to their own detriment, we need a way of thinking about that, that we can run towards rather than medicalize or frame in language of how it appears as a problem to others. So that's what I'm trying to do with Grokkist. I should ask you, does the idea of Grokkist resonate with you?
Amanda Nicole:Well, I had never heard that term before until you. There's one part where you describe it as something like a multidimensional hummingbird or something like that, but flitting from one thing to the next, that is very much my person. The little bit of this and a little bit of that, and a little bit of this and a little bit of that, mixing it together and then that squiggly line. And I used to feel so bad about it because my former partner, my husband, just so linear. It just seems like he decided was that, and that's what he did. And I've been all over the place and I'm not finished squiggling, So it does resonate.
Danu Poyner:What we've talked about so much has been about connecting with the essence of something and in so doing, having to move past the institutional shell of the thing that is supposed to represent the essence, but actually is often an obstacle. So the essence is who I am, it's how I show up, it's what I do. So what's the name of that thing that we do in the world? What's the name you give to the practice?
Amanda Nicole:It might be a boring answer, but as soon as you said it, all I could think was, listen, like listening is my practice, and it's not listening with the ears for me, it's listening with my heart. It's listening with this part of me that is my essence. That's it. I am listening with my essence.
Danu Poyner:Well, I think that's a fantastic answer. Surely we live in a world that could do with more engagement with the practice of listening. There's a question I ask everyone who comes on the podcast, which is, if you could gift someone a life-changing learning experience, what would it be and why?
Amanda Nicole:this isn't gonna be very surprising, but I would invite them to listen with me. I would invite them to allow the plants to be their teachers. That's what I've done and it has changed my life. Every aspect of it, even the way I express myself. My teacher, Matthew Wood, he did write a book, Seven Herbs, and the subtitle is Plants as Teachers. And that's what I've experienced. So if anybody could have an educational experience, it would be to have a plant as a teacher. To sit with it and be able to commune with it and receive it and hear it in a way where it is teaching you something about yourself or your way of being, or the world or itself. It takes us outside of what we know, which is a good place to be.
Amanda Nicole-3:What advice would you give to someone who wanted to go a little further on this journey then, of listening?
Amanda Nicole:Well, I'm here. They can always reach out to me and I don't mind at all, even if it's just correspondence or to have a session together. But if they'd rather not, then one of the things I could offer is to just practice it. Just practice listening. So if there's a a tree that you're drawn to or a plant that you're drawn to, or a river or a place, a piece of land, then I would encourage them to go and to take a notebook if they like, try to get as quiet as you can, much as you can drop into your heart space, maybe even place your hand over your heart if it helps. Then just open yourself to receiving, which is a way of saying to observe. What do you see? What do you hear? What do you feel, what do you remember? Does a plane fly overhead? Take note of everything. I had a teacher that called it a sit spot. So there's a place, a spot where you go regularly to sit and it's just your sit spot and you start to get used to it and familiar with it and you start to relax and that helps you to open up more to listening. You don't even have to be with the plant. You can just simply sit with your own heart. Listen to your own heart, listen to your own body, listen to your dog. It's just a way of saying, I'm gonna open up to receive.
Danu Poyner:Is there anything else that you wanted to bring today that we haven't had time to cover that's important for
Amanda Nicole:I do want to mention Entosophy, which is one of my current projects. Because I love it. So Entosophy is where I'm interviewing primarily trees, but also other non-human beings, and I'm asking them questions that we received in the class with Nathan, with the intro to Philosophy and Environmental activism. So what is ultimate reality? What ethics flow from this view of reality? What policies you recommend? What is the ideal society? And then I ask them if they have any further questions, and it's beautiful. I've never interacted with the plants in this way. It's a different type of conversation that I'm having with them. So I really do to invite people to read or listen to the interviews. They're very short, they're very digestible, and they're very lovely. And from that I'm definitely going to be creating a book that not just has the interviews in it, but field notes and some follow up questions and some other stories. It's so important because this voice of the plants, it's not heard.
Danu Poyner:If you could go back through the same time portal we talked about earlier and choose a moment to go have a private conversation with young Amanda, what moment would you choose to encounter her and what would you say?
Amanda Nicole:There is a place that I need to go back to, and tell Amanda at that point, something about this moment. You're going to feel lost, but you're not. And you're going to feel alone, but you're not. And everything is going to turn out beautifully. And I would want to remind her that she is loved. Because she's not going to feel that way for most of this journey. When I was remembering the abuse that I experienced when I was small, I was in a church service and they were going to have communion or what they call the Lord's Supper, and I actually had to step outside the church building because in this moment I closed my eyes and I saw myself as a little girl in my bedroom, and I had my back against the wall and there wasn't anywhere to go. This person was entering the room and it wasn't going to go well. At that moment before communion, I saw myself there and Jesus was standing behind me in my bedroom. Jesus leaned down and said, everything is going to be okay. I'm right here. It gave me a lot of comfort because I do believe that we really and truly aren't ever alone. And for myself, what was happening was for purpose. It's part of why I was able to write my book or why I'm able to do what I do or feel what I feel. And feel like that's what I'd wanna say to myself. Everything is going to be okay. I'm right here because who I am now is who I was then. I just didn't know it.
Danu Poyner:You've gone through some pretty rough experiences and dealt with a lot of traumas of different kinds, and you've been able to retrieve something from each of those and take it forward with you. And you said you've appreciated things that you've been through, and I just am very admiring of the receptive and wholehearted way you are able to integrate the experiences of your life into a whole person and a whole way of being. I think that has incredible strength and vulnerability to it. So I just really wanna thank you for sharing your song, as it were, today and I hope it will be as meaningful to other people listening as it has been for me, having the privilege of having the conversation with you. Do check out all of Amanda's stuff. We'll put links in the show notes and thank you Invisible listeners, and thank you, Amanda, and thank you blueberry.
Amanda Nicole:Thank you Danu. I enjoyed it.
