Hello, and welcome to Home to Her, the podcast that's dedicated to reclaiming the lost and stolen wisdom of the sacred feminine. I'm your host, Liz Kelley, and on each episode, we explore her stories and myths, her spiritual principles, and most importantly, what this wisdom has to offer us right now. Thanks for being here. Let's get started. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Hey everybody and welcome to the show. This is Liz joining you as usual from central Virginia and the unseeded lands of the Monica nation. And I am so glad that you're here with me today. As always, if you want to know whose lands native lands you might be residing on, please check out the map online native dash land dot C a I will put that in the show notes as I always do. And hey, if you are a regular listener to the show, you might have been wondering where I've been for the last couple months. So I, I did want to address that. If you follow me on social, or if you receive my newsletter, you will already know this. But I have been in the midst of a separation from my partner of Really married for 18 years partnered for 20 years. And so it's been quite a significant shift the last year has been particularly intense and especially the last few months as we've navigated moving to different houses and Co parenting schedules and all of that life has been quite a ride and I may speak about it more here It's very emergent right now, but I just wanted to Name that and that I don't have any intention of letting go of this show Some of you have reached out to me directly and and asked me to continue doing episodes And I do have every intention of that and I think for me the sacred feminine is all about well, she's about many things but emergence is absolutely one of them and allowing what needs to appear to appear and Not putting ourselves in rigid rigid boxes and structures. And so while I love to release these episodes every new and full moon If I don't have the stamina and the energy and the focus to do so, I won't do so. So that's where I'm at. And that said, I've got many new episodes that are scheduled to be recorded and I'm planning to release them throughout the end of the year. So I will cautiously, intensively say that I think I'm back. But you know, just give me some grace. If, if one doesn't show up, then know that I'm still in my process and working through it and I'll be with you when I can. And with that, I want to start today's episode. This is kind of a special episode. I, I am excited that I'm returning of sorts with this. But as I was preparing this morning and thinking, I was remembering this beautiful quote by the writer Andrew Harvey, and I don't have it exactly in front of me, but this is what I remember him saying. If the sacred feminine is anything, it is love in action. Love incessantly birthing itself again and again. And I'm going to find that and put it in the show notes so I get it exactly right. But it is, that is the essence of it. And I think we can explore the sacred feminine from all kinds of angles and We can think about it in terms of philosophically and you know, what does it feel like in the body? And i'm deeply interested if you've been listening to the show for a while You know this I am deeply interested in what does it mean to actually see? The values or the expression of the sacred feminine in action. And so my show today that's what we're going to talk about I have with me Byron Ballard. She's been on the show multiple times. I'm sure you probably Recognize her name and her face if you're watching Byron is the Appalachian Witch of Asheville, North Carolina, and the co founder of the Mother Grove Goddess Temple there. I'm also joined by the wonderful and amazing Mia Selesky. She is on the board of the Mother Grove Goddess Temple, and she is also their mycelium mama. Also known as a volunteer coordinator. She's going to explain that to us. But they're here today to talk about what's happening in Western North Carolina and how this goddess inspired, sacred, feminine response to the recent Hurricane Helene there what that actually looks like. So thank you both. I know you're really busy. I'm so grateful for you both joining me today. Thank you. Thank you so much for having us. Absolutely. And so what I thought might be helpful, just to set a stage, if either of you, you know, and as we're recording this, the hurricane Milton is hitting Florida right now. I'm not exactly sure when this episode is going to be out, but you know, we are, we are recording right in the midst of that. So we, you know, we are, we are, we are living through these climate catastrophes as we speak. And I, I am, we I'm wondering if one or both of you could just speak to the situation in Western North Carolina right now to help people understand what an intense an unusual situation this is right now. This to, to put it bluntly, this is our Katrina. Yeah. We had thousand, a thousand year flood and the, it is, except for the immediate downtown of Asheville, everything is devastated. We cannot drive from here to Tennessee on I 40 until November of next year, if we're lucky. We've seen landslides. We've seen rockfalls. We have seen houses literally picked up off their foundation by small rivers and deposited in the neighbor's yard. We, we don't even know the extent of the damage yet, but we know that in Buncombe County, the water system was destroyed. So it's not a matter of just Of just making sure the water is potable and and all the things you have to do for a water system. They're having to rebuild our water system, and they can't do that until they rebuild roads to get to the places to rebuild the water system. We have been so fortunate power companies from across. Well, I was going to say across the country. The U. S. but we have people here from Canada too who are helping us get power back on. I am really fortunate in my home that I have power. We got power a couple days ago which makes everything a little bit easier to do. But, but the, the real, I'm not going to say the real, there is a devastation outside of Asheville. Everybody knows Asheville now because it's a, it's a cool place to go. But, These slopes were not, they were never meant to have 22 inches of rain in two hours. They just weren't. These rivers can't hold that. And so we are looking at towns that are, literally, don't exist anymore. They've all just been blown away with the water. The River Arts District, which is right above my, right below my house, Has always been an art center for really edgy artists that can't, you know, they're, they're not the people who are in downtown galleries in New York and DC. And whole buildings are lost, Liz. Whole buildings, whole communities are lost. And my words are not enough to describe it. It's horrific. And I want to say this now, before I forget, don't come here. Don't come here with the idea that you're going to help because you're just going to clutter things up. If you want to help send money to reliable places and Mother Grove is one of those, but certainly not the only one. Send money, send your thoughts and prayers. I want to see the, the national and international goddess and pagan community paying attention. We mock Christians all the time because, Oh, I don't know what to do. I'll send thoughts and prayers. You know what, right now we'll take your thoughts and prayers. We'll take your donations. We'll take what we can get, but don't come here either as a disaster tourist or good with good intentions to help. Because you just can't. The roads cannot handle more traffic and for god's sake don't come here thinking you can camp and look at the colors stay out Stay out send money. Thank you. Thank you for saying that and I just I wanted to add to For people who are not from that area when byron says that i 40 is you can't drive it We're talking about so for those of you on the east coast. That's like A major chunk of I 95 being gone for a year. Like you trying to move through the states in the northeast or for those of you on the west coast losing I five. So you cannot trans, you can't get back and forth from LA to correct Cisco or San Diego. A massive thing. It's a major interstate highway that goes from east to west and west to east. Yes. Yeah. It's, it's, yeah, it's a, it's a big deal and I I so appreciate I would like to add in there too. Yeah, please. I normally commute pretty often to Asheville. I mean, I'm up there every other weekend. I'm there for our circle of council meetings. And it is like, even though I am an hour and a half away, that they are on the other side of the world. I cannot get there. Even if I want, you know, if I had the ability, there's not the roads to get there. And when you get to the roads that could lead you in. They're so unstable. If you're not in a four wheel drive vehicle, you're risking your life and whoever would be responding to your accident. It is deeply irresponsible to try to go up there right now. Thank you. Thank you for putting that in perspective and So I want to talk about so byron you were on the show not too long ago Actually, we were talking about your upcoming book feral church and the the idea of I want you to speak to that, but from my perspective, the idea of sort of reclaiming this idea of spirituality, putting it back in the community, putting it back into our own hands and our, and making it rooted deeply in the goddess. And so here, now, Is a prime example of what this looks like in real life. And, and I would imagine we would all wish to be talking about this from a more joyful place, right? Like a celebration of of something new life. But I'd love to hear you both kind of talk about how the mother grove is playing this role, this, this feral church role and what that means in responding to a situation like this. I don't know where to start. For over a decade, I have been touring the country talking about community, community, community. I've been beating the drum for community. And and Mother Grove Goddess Temple is, I think, about 18 years old now. And we have reliably for many years, except during COVID, we have we've done Public rituals for the eight holy days, nine, if you count Earth Day, we have had a food pantry. We've taught classes. We've done all those things that a quote unquote church would do. But community is a hard thing and community requires Action and it requires tending and and out of my teaching and my frankly proselytizing about the concept of circles on the ground, which is relocalizing everything that can be relocalized and saying, because the climate change. We don't even begin to understand what that's going to look like, but it's going to be dramatic and we need to be ready for it. And I've been frustrated time and again with communities nodding. Oh yeah, no, no. Oh, I get it. I get it. I get it. But not preparing. So we in this region are going to be the object lesson for that preparation because we prepared as best we could, not knowing that it would be a thousand year storm. My family lived through. In 1916 a flood on the same set of rivers. That decimated Asheville and I grew up with those stories of, of the things that came down the river, the people who died, how hard it was to rebuild the infrastructure in 1916. At that point, the river then, and we'll talk about the French broad 'cause that's the river closest to me, the French broad rose, 22.4 feet above its banks. In this storm, it rose 27. So that's the difference in, in 110 years, but for us, we. We never thought we would be a relief agency. We had a small food pantry that served a small community. And and Amelia, I, I was laughing the other day about, you remember at the last circle of council meeting we discussed the food pantry and how much money we needed to put towards it every month. And I just said, look, we're not just a food pantry. We're a goddess temple. And now of course, we are both a food pantry and a goddess temple, because. As of, I don't even know how many days ago, let's just say two weeks, my friend Beth Trigg contacted me late at night and she said Swannanoa, which is a small town outside of Asheville, and it's a beautiful valley, and I think actually Swannanoa is either a Cherokee or a Creek word that means beautiful valley, was decimated and they needed help and they needed it right now. And so I got her in touch with beloved Asheville, which is a, an amazing organization run by an amazing woman named Amy Cantrell. And then she said, but we need this and we need that. And I put out the all call then that we need water. We need diapers. We need volunteers. We need, and you can go back on my Facebook page and on mother Grove's Facebook page, and you can see how we've kind of consistently every day said, these are what we need and bring them in, please bring. And we're in a central location that still had power. And that's really the key. The temple flooded because it always floods, because our old building has bad French drains. It flooded, but we came in and we just started gathering, we started the in gathering of things. And then, because we're not a huge organization, we're not beloved Asheville, we would target different communities, fill up someone's car with everything that we could, primarily water, food, diapers, formula, and we would send them out. And we were sending out three to four carloads a day to different places. We went to elder homes we well like apartment complexes for the elderly. We went to outlying communities. We, we, well, we just went to a lot of different places and just left everything we could. And it, it has been amazing how that has just happened. And our intention as a temple was that we would say, please donate to this relief effort. And we were going to divide that money up between beloved Asheville. Who we have a great rapport with and the cathedral of all souls, which is our home in the winter. They let us use the parish hall and they were in Biltmore village and they took substantial damage and flooding. And whatever we can raise for them will be a drop in the bucket to restore that historic building. But that was our intention. And then, and then we became a resource center and people would say, Hey, you know, over at this place, they're giving away water. And we would, I would look around the room and go, who wants to make a run over to that place? And they would run and they would come back with literally cases of water. The first run we did, I went out to, and it was Z Strouderman who also serves on our circle of counsel and myself, to a place called Barnardsville, because we had been told that they were just desperately in need. So we loaded up Z's four wheel drive. We went out there. The road out there was good. We got off the interstate. That road was good, but a quarter mile on either side of the road. It was apocalyptic and we got to the place we were told to go and we, I don't know, I have no expectations at all right now about anything, but this group of anarchists is the best way I can describe them. A lot of them are with our firefly community, which is a primitive skills group. They'd taken an old firehouse. and they had totally organized it. So you go here if you're missing for missing persons, you go here for first aid, you go here to the welcome table and they will direct you to where you need to go. You go here for food, you go here for clothes, you go around the side of the building and there are 10 by 10 pop ups erected, and there were probably, I don't know, thousands of cases of bottled water. And they had people directing traffic, so if you were coming in to pick up, you went one way. If you were coming in to deliver, you went another way. You opened the back of your vehicle, people came, they unloaded, they took it where it was supposed to go. It was the most organized thing I've ever seen. Sorry, this is long. Sorry, I haven't talked this much. Except to say, load your car, go there. That as an example to us of how it can be done. If we can do this, anybody in any community can do it, but you need to know how you need to figure you, you need to have a plan and we didn't have a plan. We're, we're, I mean, we're pulling it out of our asses. We go but we will have a plan because we're going to go back through all that we did, and we can have a plan to give to communities. So whatever your natural disaster is, you can organize that, because we are not, we're not doing anything anybody else couldn't do. We're just not. Anybody could do this. We were lucky we had space, and that space had power, which makes it nice because you can boil water and have a cup of tea. We have a volunteer who comes in every day and brings us hot meals, brings the volunteers hot meals. So the goal at this point for me personally is to, is to keep a good record. And that's what this notebook is that I've been writing in to keep a good record. Not only the people who have volunteered, but of the people who've sent things, the places they've gone so that I can create a document that can go to any community and they can adjust it. For the specifics of their terrain and environment, and then they can, they can do it because if we can do it, anybody can do it, but they have to do it, and they have to not sit on their hands, because there are people right now in this community who could be coming to Mother Grove and just sitting and waiting and holding the fort so that other people could leave, but they're not, they're not, and it is probably, probably My biggest joy, but also my biggest complaint about the pagan community in general and the witch community in general, is that they're really good online. They, they, they look really, really good. I need them to walk their talk. And I need to see more of that because the people here are doing that. The people of Mother Grave Goddess Temple are doing that. And I, my personal plea to everyone out there is get ready, get ready because it's coming. We are eight hours from the coast. Okay. We're six hours from the South Carolina coast. We're hours from the coast and we got hit with a hurricane. And if you think that can't happen to you on the Great Lakes, you're wrong. You're absolutely wrong. So circles on the ground. And I'll say one tiny thing about Feral Church because Feral Church is always It's an outgrowth of my work at Mothergrove, is that this is all about saying you find the divine, you find goddess where she is, and she is everywhere. So you don't have to go into a special building, you don't have to go to a special festival, you can do all of that and it's beautiful, but she's right here. She is right here, right now. I want to piggyback off of that if I can, too, and kind of go back on the online aspect of this. Because there was a big part of this that started when Asheville had no connectivity. We went for about two and a half days where nobody could communicate to anybody. And the Pagan community is incredibly strong online. It is one of our best aspects, I think. And sometimes it is, it can be our downfall too. But in this, on those three days, it was incredible. Because Here I am. I'm down in Concord, you know, pretty good distance away, but my entire community is there and I can't get in. I can't hear from them. And of course, I'm not the only one that feels this way. There's a lot of people that love our community and stay very much in touch. And our weird army was doing their best to be boots on the ground. From all over the country, we were looking, we were checking the GIS maps to see if the landslides were affecting people's homes. We did everything we can to find the right information. And I know that there were a couple of occasions when connectivity was so limited that every message count, every single one counted. And we were Breaking down maps and relaying information to the people that we could, so that hey, it's the first day we know you don't have water. This location closest to you is they have water and they have groceries and they have power, and you have a little bit of cell phone signal there. It was that in important for every communication to count because it, you didn't know what was gonna get through and what didn't. Now, when we were in the state, the community was. Scared online. We were very worried and concerned and also feeling intense helplessness, had no idea how to reach the people that we loved and wanted to lift out of this. And that's when I started to see people get more organized and figure out where we could communicate the right information and where it needed to go. On that day that we finally got communication. There's nothing that can describe that sense of relief. When you know that people are still there, so I would say that we're strong online and there are things that even if you are two hours away and you cannot access people that you can do, then not all of them are monetary. Yes, a good portion of that is, but making sure that every point of communication counts and is the right information that matters a whole lot to. And I want to piggyback on that by saying. I woke up day before yesterday, I think time is irrelevant at this point and and it's getting cold here. It's October, it's getting cold. And I thought I am going to talk to my fiber friends and say, if you are somebody who knits or crochets. Send us warm woolies. Send us, and I started with caps. If you know how to knit what we call in the mountains, a toboggan hat, which is a, you know, a beanie thing. We would love those. And the whole point of that was, was to engage the people that I know wanted to do something, but didn't know what to do because it's, they can knit or they can bring their knitted things or fiber art things that they already do. And they could really, really be helping because it's getting cold. Well, I had no idea how that would explode. All over the country. So I think, I think by by Yuletide, we will have like thousands of hats and scarves. And socks and, and I was trying to be very clear that I wanted them to be handmade so that as you're working it, you're putting in your own magic and your love and your care and your comfort. And people would say, well, you know, I can get them in bulk from Amazon. And I go, no, please don't. Because the whole point is that this would be a magical goddess filled act. From your needles or your hook directly to the head and neck of somebody that you will never know You'll never know who got it You will only know that you were the hands of the goddess and and we'll see we'll see we've already gotten three enormous generous like garbage bags full of stuff and that will go to beloved community because they they They take care of our homeless citizens all the time. So that, that will never be bad. And, and we are stocking up on canned food because canned food lasts forever. So yeah, it's been amazing. And Mia has been such a huge part of that because she is a mycelium mama. And right now that's. That's a great irony of having this much rain and then that warm weather is that the earth and the mycelium people have given us so many flushes of beautiful mushrooms to eat. And that's just how that works and and magically or energetically speaking, elderberry is blooming again elderberry, which is. The cure for all ills. St. John's Wort is blooming again, which is a wonderful nerve thing for calming people down. It's, it's extraordinary. And I want to say one quick thing about, in addition to being a relief center, we are also a goddess temple. So at two o'clock every day, Eastern time as a Facebook live, one of our priestesses, and in this case, it's Mary Jane Finley, will come on to do a brief meditation and we light the candles on the main altar and it's very quiet and it's a chance for people to just sit. And be quiet together. People gather in the temple to do that. We also have set up an outdoor altar for the missing and the dead and today at four and we don't know when this will air. But in the past on this day at four, we're doing a ritual of gratitude. And grief and Liz, you had said something about being more joyful and we are joyful because so many of us survived. So we, we're grateful that we were aware. Yes. Oh, thank you so much. And Byron, I know you need to run to go get ready for work. So I just want to thank you for taking time out of your very busy schedule to share with us. And Mia, if you've got a little more time, maybe we can chat for a few more minutes. Absolutely. Much gratitude, Byron. It's always a gift to have you with me. So thank you all so much. And Liz, thanks for taking the time to tell our story. We need that too. Absolutely. Yeah. Thank you. God is blessed. And Mia, I wanted to say to You know what Byron was saying it, it reminded me in my, in my book, and this is a much smaller example, but in my book I wrote about a few years ago being present to a man's death on a hiking trail that I was on with my kids. And what that experience was like. He was in his forties. I, we don't, you know, it's hard to know what happened to him, but he, I mean, he was healthy. He had a heart attack. He fell down and died in front of his wife and small child. And you know, it wasn't a super remote place, but it was remote enough that. A helicopter needed to be flown in to get him out and in the meantime, you know, there's this, there's this medical crisis that's occurring in front of so many of us who were just out on the trail to have a good day and as was he, and what struck me about it was There was so much that struck me about it and I'm, I can feel myself kind of tearing up as I talk about it still because it was such a, an incredibly powerful and sorrowful and moving experience was that it was witnessing what Byron just said, that the goddess is here, that everybody who saw it just Just launch themselves into their higher selves in whatever way that they could. And so there were medical professionals who happened to be on the trail who Jumped in and were trying to save this man's life and my two kids, you know, my my former partner had the the incredible instinct to call this little girl who was his child over and invite her to play with my kids because What we had was our children and our family and we could distract this little girl While her mom sat with her dying father You There were people who were clearly praying and like other people who were holding space to not let anybody get too close, you know, so that people could work with him and it was like, Everybody just knew like there was not we just knew how to show up as expressions and emanations of the divine. And so I think that maybe, and I don't say this lightly, because I know how much suffering there is, but maybe that is the gift or the silver lining in these horrible, horrible tragedies is that we remember that we just what Byron said, we are there. We are her. We are her. There is nothing outside of ourselves. We are her. I couldn't agree more. And the whole theory that the mycelium network from Mother Grove started talking about this when I joined the council, Circle of Council, I recognized, even though I lived an hour and a half away from Asheville, that I wanted to be a part of a spiritual community. Deeply. And that I wanted to serve and help and I have talents that are a little unique, you know, I have a marketing background. So what am I going to do with that talent? I want to help with the social media. I want to help do these different items. And I thought if I was feeling that way, there had to be more people feeling that way. I can't be the only one. So when I joined the Circle Council, what I wanted to do is create a mycelium network of volunteers, not based off of the task at hand, but based off of the ability of the people willing to serve. So the idea, much like our mushroom friend, relay information from tree to rock to river, that This network could form a way to jump in and have the resources already at hand, no matter what happens and in our mycelium network. When you sign up, you actually fill out a questionnaire of how do you want to serve? And that could be. Anywhere from lending cleanup help to providing comfort and having experience in mental health services, one of our volunteers actually. Is familiar with grant writing. So these are the things that we're trying to reach. And I feel that at this time, when we were trying to get contact with our locals, and when they had no cell phone. Connectivity or Internet, this is where we saw the outside of this network start to jump in because people. Provided the expertise that they could offer. And that's the key to this in me, in my opinion, is. Only give what you can and when you can because that is going to be the best you'll offer. We can only change those that we can touch. But we all touch different aspects of this world. Yeah, absolutely. And I want to make sure, I know Byron already mentioned a couple of organizations and obviously Mother Grove, but I'm going, I want to make sure that I have all this in the show notes. So if people want to support that there's some ideas of places you can go. So be sure to check those out. I'll, I'll do the best I can and maybe add to them over time. If there's, there's more than I know. Yeah. And I. You just even as you were saying that Mia, I was thinking about the ways in which we can serve like I'm A pretty sad knitter, but but I'm a really, I'm a really solid meditator and ritual maker and holding of, of energetic space in that way. And I'm so glad that you and Byron have both presenced whether we call it magic or our intuitive abilities that the access that we have to. Both the seen and the unseen realms, the material and the, the more liminal spaces that all of this matters if we do it with deep heart and intention. And yes, people need money. They need financial resources. They need tangible stuff. They need food. They need water. They need tampons. They need diapers. They need all of that. And to your point, we give what we can and that that has expressions of her is enough. It is enough. I'll do that. It is enough. Absolutely. Absolutely. Because what, what happens from that? I believe, and we are seeing, is that these circles are formed in our physical communities and our virtual communities. I can't get up to Asheville and help them, and that kills me. It, it, survival, survivor's guilt is a real thing. I'm completely unaffected down here in Charlotte and Concord. My day has just kept on going. But, I Am able to make a difference by making every point of communication count by jumping in and following that intuitive instinct to say, what do you need? How can I make this happen? What can I ask the community outside and how can they contribute? That's what I feel we can all do when we are in these situations, is lean into our own intuitive instincts and find where. Our expertise can be best used. Yes. Mm. Well, I this feels like a good place to pause that you have taken time out of your work day to join me. I'm so grateful. I know Byron has been running around like crazy. So I just really want to thank you for your time being here with me today and your heart and your dedication and all that you are bringing. It's a gift and an honor to know you and to be able to share what you all are doing. So thank you so much. Mia. I really am grateful to you. Thank you, Liz, for having us. And I do want to mention we on our website, we have a call to action if people are interested. So you can go to Mother Grove and I'm sure we can put this in the show notes. We have a whole link of how you can help. With relief efforts. Yes, I will definitely put that in. And then also when you're talking about your volunteer coordinator, can we can anybody from anywhere in the country get on your mycelium network? Can we be a part of it? Absolutely. Okay, absolutely. And we can find that on the website too. Yeah. So that is a separate Google link. Because it's to a google doc, but I can make sure we provide that for you Perfect, and I can put that in the show notes too. Awesome All right, my heart is with you My heart is with the people of western north carolina and My heart is with all of you who are listening and whatever it is that you're navigating together. We've got this Sending you so much. Love. Thank you again. Mia and all of you Take so good take so much care of yourselves and I I will be back with you soon Home to Her is hosted by me, Liz Kelley. You can visit me online at hometoher. com, where you can find show notes and other episodes. You can read articles about the Sacred Feminine, and you'll also find a link to join the Home to Her Facebook group for lots more discussion and exploration of Her. You can also follow me on Instagram, at home to her, to keep up to date with the latest episodes. Thanks so much for joining us and we'll see you back here soon.