The Breadcrumb Trail
Resources, teachers, and inspiration
Following breadcrumbs laid by dear Sophie Strand, this is the first in what I imagine will be an irregular sharing of the teachings, ideas, and resources that have been my most recent impactful breadcrumbs.
Welcome to The Breadcrumb Trail. I hope they become useful breadcrumbs for you.
Walking Into Animism
Recently, I’ve found myself being drawn towards stories, ideas, teachings, and teachers that root themselves in Animism. When I look back at the breadcrumbs I’ve been unknowingly following, I notice that the stories, ideas, teachings, and teachers act like doorways, leading me to a deepening sense of self, place, non-human beings, nature, and the ecosystems we’re so fortunate to be homed in. I find that the more I attune to place, non-human beings, nature, and our ecosystems, the more my sense of self feels real, individual, whole, and sacred, and the more I care about the actions I take and how I take them.
The cellular rearranging that took place as I absorbed the rich and lively queerness of the perspectives that animate the tales of Bayo Akomolafe and Tyson Yunkaporta has led me to really feel Animism and be initiated into its constellations of care. That objects, places, and creatures all possess a distinct spiritual essence directs me to sense and be committed to the the inter-being around and within us. This perspective has been rearranging not only my sense of self but my work. It’s stories and messages have deepened my commitment to and fascination with humane, relational-led organisations and communities, how we root these organisations and communities internally and in the world around us, self- and shared-enquiry, group dynamics, and the role of embodied facilitation.
Sophie Strand
The stories and teachings of the beautiful Sophie Strand has gifted me previously unknown constellations of support and belonging.
Through the Animist wisdom that illuminates her skin, her stories, her writing, and her words, I have been gratefully weaved and rooted into a growing sense of place and communion. From ‘The Body Is a Doorway’ to ‘The Flowering Wand’, finding Sophie has been a blessing.
(Sophie is) a neo-troubadour animist with a propensity to spin yarns that inevitably turn into love stories. Give her a salamander and a stone and she’ll write you a love story. Sophie was raised by house cats, puff balls, possums, raccoons, and an opinionated, crippled goose. In every neighborhood she’s ever lived in she has been known as “the walker”. She believes strongly that all thinking happens interstitially – between beings, ideas, differences, mythical gradients.
https://sophiestrand.com/
Sophie also writes here on Substack, ‘Make Me Good Soil’, and has a Patreon account where you can support her from as little as $1 a month.
The Emerald
The Emerald Podcast with Joshua Michael Schrei is a magic carpet ride into Animism, not a soft Animism but a bloody, drumming, pulsating aliveness of ideas and invitations that might eat you alive. Dive into the episodes ‘Alive in the Forest of Dangers and Wonders’ and ‘The Revolution Will Not be Psychologized’.
If you dare.
…the podcast draws from a deep well of poetry, lore, and mythos to challenge conventional narratives on politics and public discourse, meditation and mindfulness, art, science, literature, and more. At the heart of the podcast is the premise that the imaginative, poetic, animate heart of human experience — elucidated by so many cultures over so many thousands of years — is missing in modern discourse and is urgently needed at a time when humanity is facing unprecedented problems.
https://www.buzzsprout.com/317042
There is also a Patreon account for The Emerald.
Seaspray
The soulful speculative science fiction and magical realism of Ken Liu and Ted Chiang (Chinese name: Chiang Feng-nan) are how firmly embedded in the stories of my life. I would read their short stories aloud to my husband on cool summer evenings in France when we would curl up on the sofa together. The Seaspray Collective that I set up a few months’ ago is named after the Seaspray, a spaceship in one of my favourite Ken Liu short stories in ‘The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories’. My first serious attempt at writing a short story was sparked by the mix of cultural heritage, myth, history, and imaginative speculation their writing embodies.
It’s hard for me to articulate their impact on my work because that feels more nebulous than the impact of Animism but perhaps it’s that their stories open up new possibilities for the future, and those openings bring me the imaginings of different ways of organising and collaborating that saturates most of my work. Or perhaps it’s simply that the beauty of their stories makes my life feel richer and my work feel more magical.
Perhaps, both.
My favourites (so far):
Little Sparks
Some of the littler things that have sparked me recently…
🫧 Rethinking Self-organisation by Michelle Holiday
🫧 What Plants are Saying About Us by Amanda Gefter
🫧 How the Environmental Movement Can Find Its Way Again by Charles Eisenstein
🫧 Do facilitated workshops bring about the opposite of what they intend? by Chris Mowles
🫧 The difference between passive and active rewilding and which is better for the UK by Chris D’Agorne
🫧 The Story of Separation by Laura Storm
Hope that you found something that tugs at your interest. If you did and you’re happy to share - or you have breadcrumbs of your own - please let me know in a comment or you can jump into the new notes section here on Substack.
Warmest wishes,
Anna-Marie
Thank you so much for reading my articles on Substack. Please feel free to share.
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