The Story Continues…
…My parents went on to step away from the conventional, my mum originally became a textile artist, then storyteller, my dad became a toymaker. It felt like I spent my childhood continually moving house, discovering new places, people, plants and stories and travelling to craft fairs and trade fairs, changing schools often and always being somewhere in-between, trying to find stories and information that would help me navigate the way.
After studying Theatre arts, English and Art at A level, I was awarded a scholarship to study Native American Art and Culture at the University of Santa Fe in New Mexico. On my return I planned on going to study Law, I dreamed I would specialize in human rights, work to support indigenous communities to reclaim land, protect the natural environment from unethical businesses, tell compelling stories that would grant flora, funga and fauna their own sets of rights.
I got two part time jobs before starting my degree, one: sociable, outward looking, as assistant manager of a restaurant, talking about menus and food combinations, waitressing, chatting to customers. The other invited quiet, intense reflection and a different layer of awareness: as an assistant in a small artisan perfumery, blending oils and helping people choose perfumes, learning how the notes would vary depending on the person and their mood, diet and health.
But once I did start my law degree, the balance altered, I found all the other students laughed and told me I needed to prioritise income, mock my passion for ethics, I had not one friend or ally amongst them.
I was due to get a 2:1 regardless of the depression that overwhelmed me, but I couldn't get a pupillage with a law firm, one particular interviewer smirked as I arrived and as I left told me 'you will never become a lawyer, you'll be lucky to become a clerk, you've got no family connections, you didn't go to the right school and you've not got a cock...I'm only interviewing you at all to prove we do speak to women outside the bedroom'...I left feeling violated and broken, five years of work for nothing.
Time wore on, dark days ensued... then one day I was walking along a liminal path on the edge of town, between the road and the river, when I encountered a small yellow star shaped flowering plant, one that evoked a distant childhood memory. I instinctively picked it and gently pressed it to release the scent, almost startled into consciousness as one of the unopened buds exuded a deep purple red effusion onto my fingertips, it was as if I was transported back to my Gran's garden, and something shifted internally. Walking back to a home I was becoming scared to be in, I spotted a shop I had never noticed before, the sign read herbalists and I walked in to ask about the plant I still clutched. The lady identified it instantly as St John's Wort (Hypericum perforatum). It's folk name 'Chase the Devil' emerged from a forgotten coil within my brain and I nodded, I had encountered an old friend at just the right moment. The women stared at me for a moment and asked if I'd thought of studying herbal medicine, she knew, she said, where I should go and handed me a leaflet, not for a local college like some she had on her shelves, but for one hundreds of miles away: 'The Scottish School of Herbal Medicine' in Glasgow.
Within days I had talked my way into an interview, borrowed the train fare and headed North...
Story nearly over, a return to formal CV type comments will pick up some of the threads...
...but shortly after I moved to Glasgow, my mum now a professional storyteller with over 20 years interdisciplinary experience, followed…
