Can you hear it? The sound of a civilization falling, the story of progress crashing upon itself, a world burning like Icarus in the fires of man’s untempered, egocentric heights. Can you feel it? Rivers of pain flowing from the earth, the clear-cut forests, the polluted rivers and oceans, the war-torn villages, from the dwindling creatures of land and sea. Can you sense it? An underground current swelling and surging beneath it all, tugging on you from within to slow down and listen to the moment…
If you can hear it and feel it, if a part of you is grieving, if sometimes you feel numb. If you have a hope, an inkling, a biting dream, a story that you can feel but can’t yet tell. If in the middle of it all you can hear rising from the earth, from the water, from your womb a whisper, a song, a story of something-more, then you are one of the ones who are called to midwife into culture the current of another way…
This is not about saving the world. The world goes on in its own devastatingly perfect way; a force that belongs to another category from ourselves pulling the strings of its minutest happenings. Rather this is about grieving and loving well, remembering what’s been forgotten, and living intimately in relationship with our places. This is about being seed-bearers, regenerative weavers, givers-of-life, carrying through the current of our distinct song beauty and imagination and a grief that loves into our pockets of a dying world. There are no answers or solutions, only the pulling of all of those rivers of pain into us, allowing it to break us open — together — into more of what we are. This is the Big Story, the universal myth of which we are all a significant, small part.
It begins with you — woman, regeneratrix, giver-of-life. The revolution takes place on the most subtle level of your being: your life, the micro-myth living out the universal myth of this world. The rebellion is in a completely opposite way of being than the prevailing powers-that-be would have us know: slow, embodied, un-striving, intimately in relationship with the human and other-than-human world and the Unseen numen that glows behind it all. We do-without-doing. Know by un-knowing. And succeed by un-trying and moving slow.
This is the ancient, regenerative way, lost to the decision makers of our day, heralded in by the everyday woman who decided one day to close her eyes, follow the current, and get free.
“The times are urgent… let’s slow down. “ ~ Bayo Akomolafe
“The doors to the world of the wild self are few but precious. If you have a deep scar, that is a door. If you have an old, old story, that is a door. If you love the sky and the water so much you almost cannot bear it, that is a door. If you yearn for a deeper life, a full life, a sane life, that is a door.”
— Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes
Banner image: “Vessel”, 1983, Meinrad Craighead (c) Amy Dosser
Helping women embody the ‘new story’ of the sacred earth through the language of imagination:
Creative Writing Salons
Writing by the Well
Storytelling
Myths, folktales, stories
Old Ways of Knowing
Course coming summer 2024
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Current Offering
Waking the Well: myths, poetry, and essays on animist women's histories
“Waking the well": an Old English phrase for the practice of holding vigil by wells in order to receive guidance from the waters, often practiced by women in the night. Waking the Well is my Substack publication — a weaving of mythos and logos as an offering to the dark rivers, the land, and to the invisible thread that weaves all things; for re-knitting our two bodies back together and recovering women’s old ways of knowing...
“Hearing a story awakens the mythic story living in each of us. It places us in a “mythic condition” that reconnects us to the core imagination and living story at the center of our soul. Being touched by myth carries us to the center where the world is always ending and always beginning again.” — Michael Meade
About Brielle
Brielle Elise Martinez, M.A. is a scholar of myth, writer, storyteller, and transformative coach (ICF) in private practice for eight years. Through curated storytelling journeys, creative writing salons, and transformative coaching, she helps women return to the otherworld in their bodies and the land through the language of imagination. Brielle completed post-graduate study in mythopoetics under the supervision of mythologist and storyteller Dr. Martin Shaw, and wrote her thesis on re-fleshing the deep feminine in culture through the language of imagination. She is currently researching women’s old ways of knowing and Eurasian indigenous folktales, and lives near tannin rivers and moss-hung hammocks of Timucuan lands known as North Florida.
