Mythcelium

katrice horsley
6 days ago
3 min read

Hello lovely Subscribers,

It has started - the Mythcelium Series of work. It entangles, fairytales, myths, ecology, and what it means to be human in this more-than-human-world. It also underpins much of the work that I do and I want to write a little about that here. But before I begin, you can listen to the first episode of the podcast (that forms the foundation for tonight's online Mythcelium Gathering) here .

The work I am creating now is very much focused on bio-mimicry, especially that which involves mycorrhiza. I feel it teaches me so much about how training should be developed and shared. In the past - before I developed Narrative4Change - I offered training sessions that focused in one area, such as 'Language Development in Early Years,' or 'Developing Emotional Literacy for Teenagers,' or 'Working at Your Best,' for organisations. Whilst all of these sprang from the rich, deep soil of story and story structures, they were mostly monocultures, only supporting one result/one crop.

Around about 2012 I became quite ill and needed lung surgery. During the time of my recovery I knew I wanted to work differently - that is when I conjured up Narrative4Change. I wanted to cross-pollinate. I wanted to design and deliver training sessions where a range of different people from different situations would be present, all learning and sharing with each other. I had Narrative4Leadership, Narrative4Development, Narrative4Health all as components of Narrative4Change.

It did not work as I hoped - I was still creating small islands of single crops in a way.

Then I moved to Sweden some years later, just before the Covid Pandemic and I was given more time to reflect and think about how I could invite in many different seeds, many types of growth and sharing.

I realised that people could not just be witnessed through the lense of their roles, nurses, teachers, CEO's - they had to be seen as human first - I had to welcome them as human first - this allowed more tendrils, more hyphae of whoo they truly were, to be present and offer connection.

I realised that I had to acknowledge the soil that we had all come from and the deep narratives that lay within it, so that people could start to gently peel away some of the layers of toxicity that lay around the kernel of their seeds.

I realised that in so doing, people suddenly grew and connected and nourished each other in a way that was profoundly powerful. It was truly quite magical. I felt, on some level, that I only prepared the ground and offered some support structures and the group did the rest.

The important thing here, is that all of these components had to be in place for that mycorrhizal network of learning and teaching and nourishing to take place. In the same way that snow can only speak to us (I am talking about the squeaking snow we often have in Sweden.) when certain conditions are in place. For snow to speak, the temperature must be between -10 and -20 degrees. The snow must be relatively recent. When it is this cold, the ice crystals keep their shape and edges. They have air around them - if there was moisture/water it would act as a lubricant and we would not hear them - and when we step upon them, they compress, break, rub against each other and the friction of that causes the squeak. (You can listen to it on the podcast.) I have, through trial and error, learnt that for people to speak, to speak fully, to be witnessed fully - certain things must be in place too. Then they feel safe enough to be tender and courageous.

I hope that any training you design stems from that tender and courageous part of you.

I also thought you might love looking at some ice-crystals. They too are really a relationship and form in connection with each other. But more of that another time.