Vasilisa and Baba Yaga: Intuition, Fire, and Our Wild Nature 

Introduction and Welcome

Hello folks, and welcome to transformed by birth, a podcast about the rite of passage of pregnancy, birth and new parenthood. I'm your host. Britta Bushnell, author, mythologist, childbirth educator and an all around deep diver with a side of goofball. I'm so glad you're here. Today's episode is a solo episode just with me. So grab your comfy beverage of choice or take us along on a walk as we dive into deeper understanding of ourselves through story. Today, we're exploring the journey of developing our intuition and meeting the wild hag within each of us. Before we begin, we start the way we always do by lighting a candle. If you want to join me, please do or just take a breath as I light mine. Today's candle is in honor of the often quiet voice of our inner wisdom and the Wildish nature within

Rethinking Intuition

One of the things I often hear nearly blasted at expectant parents and new parents, especially mothers, is the instruction to follow your intuition. It's as if your intuition is something you simply need to learn exists and the rest is history. All you need to do is listen and it will tell you what to do.

But what if your intuition is quiet, more like a whisper, and what if your ability to hear it were not something you had to develop or just turn on? What if it's something you had to develop rather than just turn on?

It's as if often the way that it's spoken about is that it's a switch that you either turn it on or you turn it off, and if you're not listening to it, it's clearly turned off. But what if instead, it were something you had to nurture and practice and develop over time?

What if your intuition isn't a vault of knowledge just waiting in your belly, waiting there, locked up, and all you got to do is find the key and go in and unlock it. What if, instead of that, your intuition is more of a processor of information, a processor of experiences and a processor of guidance that we receive from others. What if? What if? It's meant to take all of that our life experiences, the information that we've gleaned and the guidance we've received from others, take it in, move it around inside us and then feel into what feels right for us. What if listening to your intuition means practicing paying attention to what your inner voice is saying? And if our in

And if our intuition requires feeding, hang on, I'm going to back up.

What if listening to your intuition means practicing paying attention to what your inner voice is saying?

What if your intuition needs to be fed, nourished, and to make sure that it stays hydrated. Okay, I have to be a little bit careful. For some of you, I might be giving a bit too much foreshadowing here about where we're headed, so I'm going to back up let me pause before I jump in to our fairy tale for today.

Origin Story: Postpartum Circles

So let me tell you a story that's about how this story really became a part of my work with families, and especially postpartum families. When I used to facilitate postpartum circles, one of my favorite sessions was the one where we focused on developing the intuition.

I think it was the second session in a series of six. I think that's right, those were such juicy sessions, so these newly postpartum parents with their brand new babies were tired of being told, to quote, listen to their intuition as if all answers lay buried there. I mean, frankly, they were also simply just tired in general. But that's another topic for another day. For this particular session, we would focus on the Slavic fairy tale of Vasilisa the beautiful, or sometimes known as Vasilisa the brave, or Vasilisa or Vasilisa. It comes in different forms, and I want to share that story with you today as well.

But before I tell you the story, and before I would tell them the story in the class, I would pass out yarn and guide the group through the process. Okay, back up. Start again at Vasilisa the brave

Before I would begin telling the story in these groups, I would pass out yarn and guide the group through the process of making teeny tiny yarn dolls. And these would go along really nicely with the story.

And these, these yarn dolls, were something that were like a little symbol from the story that folks could take with them to help remember the story, and I invited them to put them in their diaper bags or in their purse or whatever, because an element of the story is about having a doll in your pocket. Now, somewhat recently, I bumped into a mom who had been part of one of these groups many years ago, and she was so excited, she proudly reached into her purse and pulled out a little doll that she had made during that circle, during one of those circles. And it was she, she just loved it. And I loved it. I loved seeing that she was still carrying around her doll from that time, and it was something to help remind her to feed and engage with her intuitive self, as we had explored in those groups together. So I'll put instructions into how to make a tiny yarn doll for yourself, in case you want to do that as well, while listening to this episode or at a later date, or if you want to have a connection to that, and stick it in your diaper bag or your purse or some place where you will keep track of it and use it As a reminder to check in with your intuition. I'll put that on the website.

About This Storytelling

So today, I'm going to share with you a version of this story. Now, as is true with myths and fairy tales, both really any story from an oral tradition, there are many different versions of this story. I'm going to tell you the version alive in me today, as it's live storytelling. I don't have a script in front of me to tell you what the story is. I'm going to just follow it. I know the story points, and when I tell live storytelling, it comes alive while I'm telling it, and I don't always know which parts are going to be highlighted and emphasized. So we'll see together as as I share it.

And I'm also going to do what I sometimes call story weaving, and what that means is I'm going to weave in some of the metaphorical, symbolic and archetypal links to what the story is teaching us, or what it might be inviting us into in our own lives. So I'll kind of weave in story and pull some of those elements so that as I'm telling the story, you can be listening and unpacking it in real time as you listen. All right, so get cozy. Here we go. We're going to take a dive into the story of vasilissa.

The Story Begins: Vasilisa and Her Mother

So as many stories begin, this one begins with once upon a time, once upon a time, there was a young girl, Vasilisa, who lived with her mother and father. Oh, she was a happy girl, happy and content with all that was happening in the world, in her world, and unfortunately, as sometimes happens, her mother became sick. Her mother was a very loving mother, very content and attentive. Maybe in today's world, we would call her more of a helicopter parent, somebody who's always there, always available.

You could refer to Vasilisa's mother as perhaps the too good mother, the one who stifles, in some ways, the growth of her child, who needs to venture on beyond the realm of the overly protective, too good mother.

All of us have a too good mother part of us, that inner part that is keeping us safe and protected, rather than helping us grow and deepen in who we are meant to be.

But vasilissa's mother got sick, and she called vasilissa to her side one day and gave Vasilisa a doll. She handed Vasilisa this doll and said, My daughter, take this doll as my blessing, my blessing for you in your life, tuck it in your pocket.

Tuck it in your pocket. And when you have questions, touch the doll in your pocket and ask the doll your question. And from time to time, be sure to feed it so that it stays nourished, and give it thimbles of water so that it stays hydrated. And when you have questions, ask it engage with the doll in your pocket as my blessing, and with that, Vasilis mother died, and oh, there was great, great mourning in the house.

The Stepfamily and Compliance

And after a time, Vasilis father thought, I maybe, maybe I should, should remarry, and maybe I should get Vasilisa, another nurturing energy to help with her. And so he found a a widow who had two daughters. And sometimes, as this happens in fairy tales, maybe there's some familiarity to you about some of the fairy tales about stepmothers, Vasilis, new stepmother and stepsisters started out quite nice and pleasing when the dad was around, but when He would go away, the fangs would come out, and the stepmother and her daughters would treat Vasilisa poorly. They were unkind to her. They were not nice, and they would make her do all sorts of tasks. They would make her clean and cook and do all of the work, but vasilissa had been trained to be compliant, to do what she had been told to do with a smile on her face, as many of us have been trained to do, even in the face of that unkindness. Vasilissa was sweet, she was kind, she was complacent and pleasing. Did what it was that she was told to do, even by the forces around her that were unkind.

This can happen in our lives, where we can face voices and people and entities who are unkind to us and yet, old training teaches us to be nice to them anyway, but this does not serve Vasilisa in her journey.

It doesn't help her. She must break free from this. And as it happens, when we are being too agreeable and pleasing to others while ignoring ourselves, often, one of the things that happens is the fire within us, our creative spark, our intuitive self, our vibrancy, our passion, that spark goes out, as did the fire in the home of Vasilisa and her stepmother and stepsisters.

The Quest for Fire Begins

And so one time when the father was away working, when the fire went out, the stepmother said, Oh, vasilissa, you you must go into the forest, go to into the forest, to the hut of Baba Yaga and ask for fire.

Do this. I am too old. And your sisters, they are too frightened. You must be the one to go. And Vasilisa says, oh, okay, I guess stepmother, that's what I should do. The house will be cold without fire. So I guess I shall journey for us. If you cannot go, and My stepsisters cannot go, I will go. I will go into the forest. But vasilissa was also frightened, as we often are, as we venture into the wilderness, that place of I don't know what, I don't know what's in there. It is often dark, it is often mysterious. It is often unknown. The path may not be clear when we venture into a space of the unknown, which can be a lot like parenthood.

It can be a bit frightening. It can be a bit uncertain.

Journey Through the Forest

And vasilissa begins the journey. She walks in to the darkness and the shrouded focus of the forest anyway, not knowing for sure how to get to the hut of the Yaga.

But let's remember she has the doll from her mother in her pocket, and she has a few scraps of bread and a little tin of water. And so she reaches down and feeds her doll a couple of crusts of bread, a few crumbs, and feeds the doll a little bit of water and journeys into the forest.

And as she would come to an intersection in the forest, she would place her hand in her pocket and ask her doll, which way should I turn is it this way? Is it that way? And the doll would respond.

One of the tasks of utilizing our intuition is asking it what it thinks, putting the hand in the pocket and saying which way feels right.

And so vasilissa places her hand in her pocket, and the doll tells her which path to take. And so she journeys onward. And at one point, a horse, a white horse with a white rider comes riding by her and the sun rises.

Vasilissa is surprised, but she keeps going. Sometimes, that which we do not expect shows up on our path, even our path to the center of the forest.

And she keeps walking and keeps feeding her doll little bits from her bread and giving it little bits of water. And she keeps going. And soon a red horse with a red rider comes riding by and their full day breaks the brightness of full day, wow, oh, beautiful, but also startling, because sometimes the beauty and The startling can happen at the same moment, and she keeps walking, and soon a black horse with a black rider passes by her, and as it does, darkness falls, darkness falls, and Ooh, she gets a Little more nervous, again in in the darkness, but up ahead, up ahead, she sees a fence, a fence with on top of each of the posts of the fence is a flaming is a skull with flames coming at it, a flaming skull head.

It's quite an eerie sight.

Arrival at Baba Yaga's Hut

And inside this fence is a house. I don't know. House might be too strong a word. Let's call it a hut, a hut. And this hut is extra special because it is actually running around the yard on scaly yellow chicken legs.

You could say that this space with the fence made of bones topped with flaming skulls and a hut running around on chicken legs is the wild nature personified.

It is the house itself. Is wild and alive and untamed. It's it's the instinctual world itself. It's the wild world.

And this is actually what vasilissa herself needs.

And soon as she's taking in this site, in flies Baba Yaga in a in a vessel that looks like a mortar, and she's using the pestle, like like an oar to fly herself in, and her wild hair is pouring out behind her as she enters into the yard and into the hut.

And vasilissa is just taken aback by all of this, and she reaches her hand down into her pocket and asks her doll, Is this the place is this? Right? And the doll jumps up and down and says, Yes, this is the place you seek.

And so vasilissa takes a deep breath and readies herself to face that instinctual, wild hag that is Baba Yaga. And she heads into Baba yaga's Hut, knocks on the door, walks in, and there is Baba Yaga MA

Meeting the Wild Hag

And Vasilisa says, grandmother, hello, please. I am vasilissa, and I need your help. Then Baba Yaga is like, what girl? What are you doing here? And how dare you? But Vasilisa did speak with respect. She referred to her as grandmother, honored the power, the wisdom, the guidance available from that elder place, and spoke to her respectfully. She also held her ground in in the face of the power and and wildness of Baba Yaga, and this, too is a really important part of Vasilis journey and our journey, when we come face to face with the wild, instinctual, great power of that wildness, we must hold our ground and be respectful of its essential power. It's, it's wild power.

And Baba Yaga. Baba Yaga agrees. She says, All right, all right. Vasilisa, since you were respectful, I will, I will give you fire, but only if you complete a few tasks for me, let's see if you are worthy of this fire.

So I need you to do these things for me.

You must do my laundry. You must clean my hut and my yard. You must prepare meals for me.

And lastly, do you see that pile out there of corn? Part of it is mildewed, and part of it is good?

You must sort the good corn from the mildewed corn.

The First Night: Tasks and Rest

You must do these tasks for me, and then, then we will see, then we will see Vasilisa, wondering how she can possibly accomplish all these tasks. But says, okay, grandmother, yes, I will, I will do this. And her doll is jumping up and down in her pocket and saying, I will help. I will help you. Just say yes. So Baba. Yaga eats a giant meal, goes to sleep. And while she is sleeping, vasilissa get so scared. Says, What shall I do? How will I do this?

And her doll in her pocket says, Do not worry, my dear, do not worry.

Rest now.

All will be clear in the morning, and so vasilissa eats a little bit of her bread, gives a little bit of the bread to her doll, sips a little thimble of soup, shares it with her doll, and rests and in the night, the doll has taken care of it.

In the night, the doll has sorted the good corn from the mildewed corn.

This is often like what is required of us when we are working with discernment, when we are working to sort this from that is this good? Is this not and interestingly, the mildewed corn, the mildewed corn is actually the mildew that would grow on corn was often used as a hallucinogenic. It's even the hallucinogenic that is a version of it that is thought to be part of what happened, or what was used in the hallucinian mysteries in ancient Greece that we'll have to talk about in another story, in another time, but that that mildew could be thought of as being what's not good or what's magical, what allows us to see differently, and it can be helpful For us to sort that which is going to nourish our bodies and that which is going to nourish our minds, or that which is going to be toxic. There's different ways to look at this, but the task of sorting is about discernment, and often when we are unsure and there is a feeling of needing to sort through things this from that what makes sense to what doesn't make sense. Often our intuition needs rest, and so the doll has told vasilissa to rest, and in that rest, the doll takes care of it.

Intimacy with the Wild

And when vasilissa awakes, Baba Yaga is gone, and now what remains of the tasks are things that vasilissa can handle. She washes Baba yaga's laundry. She cleans the yard and the hut. She prepares some of the meal for Baba Yaga. And now, if we think about these things, these are also really an important part of getting intimate with our own wild it our own wild nature connected to that part of us that is otherworldly

Laundry, for example, when we do somebody's laundry, there's a real intimacy with it. It is, it is actually like becoming engaged with their clothing that contains their bodily fluids, their smells, the the dirt that they've been engaged with in their daily life.

Washing the clothes is an intimate task and a task of purification, and Vasilisa getting this close with Baba yaga's clothing is like the part of us that needs to become that intimate with the wild nature within us that lives there. Similarly, the clearing and cleaning of the hut and the yard is clearing the space so that we can think more clearly, cleaning and becoming intimate with the wild homeland of the wild nature, and finally, the making of the food. You could say that that's like feeding the wild nature, kind of like how vasilissa feeds the doll, her intuition the nourishing and preparing of food for Baba Yaga.

It is is about that nourishing of the wild nature and cooking is also about tending the fire under the cauldron of creation that all of us need to feel and feed our wild nature. So that fire cooking is also tending to the fire under that which nourishes us. What is that fire can be, passion can be, creativity. There's so much that fire can be representative of and so through the day, she has completed these tasks of the washing of the laundry, the cleaning and the prepping of some food.

Baba Yaga Returns

And Baba Yaga comes back from her day, and she rides in and she's kind of cackling and hopeful that Vasilisa has failed at her task, because that's actually what she expected.

And she comes in, and she sees that the corn has been sorted into two piles, that the food has been prepped, that the laundry has been completed, and the yard and the hut have been cleared. And she says, Well, you are a lucky girl. And from out of thin air, Disembodied Hands are snapped into creation, and those hands take the corn, and they husk the corn and they smash it into corn oil, and Baba Yaga laps that up and gets greased all over her face and her hair, and mixes it in with her food, gives Vasilisa a small bit of that food and a little bit of water.

Eats enough for four people, and says, Well, now, now tomorrow, you have another task. You must, again, do my laundry, do my prep for cooking and three, you must clean my hut and my yard. And do you see that pile in the yard? That pile is part poppy seed, millions of poppy seeds and dirt, lots of particles of dirt you you Vasilisa, must sort between the poppy seeds and the dirt.

The Second Night: More Discernment

Then Baba Yaga goes to sleep, and vasilissa is worried. Oh, my goodness, my goodness. How will I ever do this task?

And her doll says, rest. Now. Vasilisa, have your soup, drink your water and go to rest, sleep. I will take care of this.

So Vasilisa has her soup, shares a little of it with the doll in her pocket, has a sip of water, shares some water with her doll, and rests and in the night, just as what happens for many of us when we allow the unconscious to do the task of sorting, of figuring out, what is this And what is that the doll sorts the poppy seeds from the dirt.

Now again, this could be symbolic of that which is magical, like the poppy seeds and the mundane, the dirt, or it could also be thought of as the dangerous, because too much poppy seed can be dangerous from the dirt or the soil that which helps us plant roots. There's so many different ways to explore these, these metaphorical and symbolic elements you pay attention to which ones enliven you.

And it's a task of discernment, discernment nonetheless.

And when vasilissa awakens in the morning, there is a pile of poppy seeds and there is a pile of dirt and Baba Yaga is gone.

And so again, Vasilisa does the laundry, cleans the house in the yard, and prepares food for the Yaga. And soon Baba Yaga comes back, and she says, ah.

What is this? Let's see what has happened. And sure enough, the piles are there. And so she takes the pile of the poppy seeds and she smashes them down and prepares her food. And Disembodied Hands come out and finish making the meal. And then she eats the food all over herself, gives a little to Vasilisa, and then says to vasilissa, you, you are a lucky, lucky girl.

Questions and Wisdom

How did you get so lucky? How did you get so lucky? And vasilissa says, Oh, well, I would love, I would love to tell you how I got so, so lucky. But might I first ask you a couple of questions grandmother, Baba Yaga says, Hmm, yes. But remember, knowing too much can make a person old too soon.

And so vasilissa listens to that and says, okay, okay, so grandmother, can you tell me, on my way here, I saw, I saw a a white horse with a white rider. What was that?

And she said, Ah, that is my sunrise.

And then grandmother, I saw a red horse with a Red Rider, and Baba Yaga says, ah, that is my day, my my Dawn, my full sun.

Vasilissa says, In grandmother. And then I saw another horse that came by, and it was black with a black rider. Baba Yaga says, ah, that is my night. What else child? What else child would you like to know? And just as vasilissa is about to ask about the Disembodied Hands, the doll starts jumping up and down in her pocket and says, no, no, no, no, no more questions. No more questions. Baba. Yaga says, What else child? She says, Thank you, grandmother, as you said, knowing too much too soon can sometimes make you too old too early. That is enough. That is all I need to know. She says, ha, you are lucky and wise. Hmm, how did you get so lucky and so wise? Vasilissa says, Oh, it is the blessing of my mother, meaning the doll.

And Baba Yaga says, ah, get out of here with those blessings. I want none of those blessings here, here. Take this skull with fire and pulls one of the posts from her fence and hands it to Vasilisa. Take this back with you. I need none of your blessings here.

Return with the Fire

And so Vasilisa now with the skull with the fire inside it, that Wildish nature that she has been given by Baba Yaga heads back into the forest.

She is now walking through the forest with the skull ablaze, which can be frightening and sometimes we may want to drop the Wildish nature that we have picked up from an encounter with the wild hag within us. We would be like, Oh, that's a bit hot. I'm gonna put that down.

But she holds on to it. The Doll encourages her.

Keep holding it, keep holding it, keep going, and the fire itself does not burn. Vasilisa up because she has been initiated by it. She has already had a close encounter with the wildest, Wildish nature, and it has become part of her, and so she can carry it.

And the light of that Wildish nature, that wisdom, glows outward from the skulls eyes guiding her path, plus she has the doll in her pocket, so when she needs to, she can ask as she journeys out of the forest, she has retrieved her inner knowing she has nourished that wisdom within her, her own Baba, Yaga, like powers, she now holds the fire of them in her hands and carries the fire of that wild nature, that intuitive, that hag like that animalistic wild nature out of the forest back with her into her life, and when she returns To the house, it is cold and dark, because without her energy there, the stepmother and the stepsisters have just hung around doing nothing, and that can be what It's like when we go on a quest away from those folks who have been sucking at us without any consent from us, any agreement, where we have Just been pliable and accommodating, they now are just kind of because they haven't been fed on our spicy nature.

The Story's Conclusion

And now Inanna, Inanna, mixing my metaphors here, go ahead and cut that, Chris. And now Vasilisa returns, returns from the forest with the skull, with the skull of fire. Now take a moment and think about fire. And she comes back into the house, and the fire glowing from the eyes of the skull, sees that which is not initiated, the stepmother the stepsisters, and burns them to ashes.

Now Vasilisa may live out her life, connected with her Wildish nature, connected to that inner hag wisdom of the Crone, carry that fire with her and that is where we will leave the story of Vasilisa for today.

Reflection: Where Did You Enter the Story?

One of my favorite things to do after telling a story is to invite a story listener to explore within themselves, where they entered the story.

This is a prompt that I learned from a somebody that I've worked with a little bit around stories. Michael Mead, which is the prompt, where did you enter the story? I just love this, because where you enter a story tells you different things about what part of the story is medicine for you, what part of the story has juiciness for you to put that mango seed into your mouth and suck from it, get all the little bits from it. So where did you enter this story? What part kind of made your your mind go? Pop, pop, pop, pop.

Or another prompt might be what's sticking with you or what didn't make sense both of those prompts can also be really telling about what is something within the story for us to work with.

Key Themes for Parents: The Doll

So there's a few different aspects of this story, or overall kind of takeaways, shall we say about this story that I think are really powerful for expectant and new parents, and one is the doll in this in the pocket that is, shall we say, representative of that intuition, that inner voice, that is something we need to practice, nourishing, feeding, hydrating, paying attention to and asking questions of when we don't know which way to go in the forest, this way or that to ask it. And as we journey, feed it, give it water. Then if we are unsure, listen to it ask. And sometimes, when we have nourished it, fed it, given it water and asked it, asked questions of it. Then there are times when it'll just come jumping up and down in our pocket to get our attention, because it really now is activated and alive and vibrant and has information to tell us about ourselves. And so that can be a really helpful thing. And this story really illustrates that.

Key Themes: Baba Yaga and the Wild Self

The other thing, there's a couple of other really key motifs that I love. And one is that that encounter with the Wildish nature, or Baba Yaga in this story, God, do I love her. I just am such a Baba Yaga fan, I mean, the wild hair, the hut on chicken legs, the fence around her, her yard with made of bones, with flaming skulls on top. I mean, she's just, you know, sort of delicious in her haggy awfulness, or haggy wonderfulness, wildness, maybe we don't need a judgment on it. She's just wild.

And so many of us who have really well nourished, well practiced, let's use that word, well practiced, polite, pleasing, obedient, little vasilisas inside us, those parts of us that have been taught to be quiet And good and kind often we need an encounter with our edgy, wild, untamed self that breaks convention, that steps out of pleasing, and is willing to be displeasing, willing to disagree, willing to be problematic. Just take a moment with that one.

How many of us have taught, been taught and raised and enculturated to never be problematic?

This? This piece is a really important piece of new motherhood. Is learning and allowing ourselves to be problematic, to ask for what it is we want and need or even demand it. To speak to authority about our desires, to stand up to family members friends and say, this works for me. That doesn't. Here are my boundaries. I'm holding them. Baba Yaga, she doesn't care. She's going to hold boundaries, no problem. And many of us need that encounter with the wild hag within us to let some of that innocent inner vasilissa fall away.

Key Themes: The Fire Within

Additionally, one of the other themes that I love in this story is that of the fire. The fire comes up in a couple of ways. It's encircling the hut of Baba Yaga the yard of Baba Yaga in on on the fence posts, and it's also in the cooking and is in the skull that helps guide Vasilisa back. Now fire, take a moment and think about what fire might represent to you.

What does it mean to have fire?

Does it mean to have vibrancy, passion? Maybe fire is sometimes equated with creativity.

What are some of the associations you might have with fire?

I will say that it is pretty common for a lot of people, especially those who've been raised as as young women to lose touch with their wild, passionate creative self. As they step into motherhood or parenthood, they can feel less connected to that that creative spark, that fire, or that passion, and some of us need a trip into the wilderness, maybe a literal one. I love going to the wilderness to re spark my energy, but that nourishment of going into the wilderness to retrieve our fire.

So reflect for yourself. What does going into the wilderness to retrieve your fire mean for you?

What does the fire represent?

What fire has gone out in your home?

What fire Do you want to bring back to your home? And by home I mean your life, your home, that which you inhabit all the time is your life.

Personal Example: Gardening as Fire

Now I know for me, when I had young kids, I was pretty focused on raising my kids and the fire of creativity and engagement in the world that often for me, showed up in the form of my work and engagement with with others in the world kind of kind of went out, but I didn't have a lot of energy or focus where I could put my Energy on that, but I still needed to tend to the fire in my life. And one of the things that I found was that gardening was kind of a creative endeavor that I could do while my kids, even when they were super little, could kind of participate with me. Not that they did a great job of gardening, let me be clear, but they could play in the dirt while I planted plants, and I could put one in a carrier and one in a stroller and go to the nursery, which a friend of mine at the time, and I dubbed the Temple of plants. We would go to the temple of plants. It was a place where we would actually go and feel like we were nourishing our spirit and our soul. We'd go to our favorite nursery. The Temple of plants is what we called it. Sadly, it doesn't exist anymore, and it was never called that to begin with? That's just what we called it. And I would walk through the the aisles of this store and be curious.

Curiosity is also a form of creativity, and I'd be curious about what plants I would want to plant, what I would end up walking away with. Sometimes I would have ideas. Other times I would just respond to whatever it was that was showing up. And I would go home and my kids would play in the dirt, and I would plant these plants and nourish and tend this garden. And there was a way in which that helped me connect with my fire, with myself, with my ability to create beyond the creation, piece of what I had done with my children or what I was constantly doing with my kids, which is a huge creative act, right, is to tend and nourish and feed our children, and it's so easy to forget to also tend to ourselves, which is why so often the fire goes out in our house, and we have to actively seek out the wilderness, the journey to the wilderness, the Journey to the Wild self to reconnect with that spark within us and carry it back and bring it back into Our home so that it warms and brightens and enhances our experience in our home or in our lives.

And that, to me, is one of the big lessons of this story. So there may be there. I mean, I know there are many, many other opportunities for exploration in this story, and there's different ways to do it. One of the things sometimes people do is write down images that stuck for them, which ones showed up, which ones really got connected, and then you can associate to those words, like I did a few minutes ago with you, with fire, it's like fire, passion, heat, warm, creativity, Spark, sexiness, like you might just just word associate to the idea, to the symbol in the story of fire. And often doing that can help us kind of explore what might be really yummy for us that is in that so you can pull out any of the the images, and maybe, maybe it's the too good mother like, what is the Too Good mother within you?

Exploring Story Symbols

Now the too good mother is, I think, for many of us in this society, is that people pleaser, that always good, always self sacrificing and letting that part of ourselves fall away so that we can meet a more integrated full part of ourselves through an encounter with wilderness, or the wildness of the Baba Yaga, that can often be one of the things that is needed for that is letting letting the too good mother move on while maintaining that the blessing from the too good mother is you know what you truly need within you, the doll in your pocket.

All right, so I can just keep going. This is one of my favorite stories, and I hope you've enjoyed this with me today, and if so, please let me know, because I may do more story episodes where it's just me solo, telling a story that I love, and I got lots of them, and today's story was vasilissa, and I will say that there's a fabulous chapter. I think it's chapter three in women who run with the wolves, by Clarissa Pinkola Estes, and that's a great version if you're wanting to dive deeper with this story. She has a version of it in there and lots of ways to unpack the story in that chapter. Also, there's also fabulous imagery online that you can find of the Vasilisa story, so have some fun with this.

Closing

All right. Thank you listeners for sharing this time with me. If something shared today impacted supported or moved you, please share this episode with a friend. I produced this podcast myself, and your support makes it possible to show a little love for this podcast and these stories. Please follow rate and review. If you'd like to continue this story, this conversation with me. Please join me on Instagram at transformed by birth. I look forward to being with you again on the next episode of transformed by birth. Now let's gather what we want to take away from this story, from this conversation about intuition, about the wild nature, about the fire within us. Breathe that in on an inhale, and we'll blow out the fire of our candle on an exhale, until next time bye, friends.