"The deepest trauma is disconnection from country."

What does it truly mean to heal? How can we reclaim our ancestral wisdom and break free from patterns of diseased thinking?

In this episode, we sit down with Valerie Ringland, a powerful voice in the world of Indigenous healing and restorative justice. Born on traditional Shawnee land in the U.S. and now living on Yuin Country in far southern NSW, Valerie brings a unique blend of Indigenous knowledge, and Western healing practices to her work. She’s the author of the transformative book "Healing Through Indigenous Wisdom," which offers 52 weeks of profound exercises designed to help us reconnect with ourselves, our land, and our lineage.

Valerie challenges us to reimagine cultural expression, confront our wounds head on, and see trauma not as a life sentence but as a spiritual calling. She invites us to explore shame, grief, and belonging as essential parts of our journey toward wholeness.

In this episode you will learn: 

- The role of rituals, ceremonies, and ancestral connection in emotional well-being
- How Indigenous wisdom offers powerful tools for self-discovery and community healing
- And why "never enoughness" is a modern disease—and how to break free from it

Get ready for a thought-provoking conversation that will challenge your perspectives, touch the deepest parts of your heart, and inspire you to reconnect with your true essence.

Connect with Valerie:

🌍 Website: Earth Ethos
📘 Facebook: Valerie Ringland
▶️ YouTube: Earth Ethos

Join Valerie at Her Upcoming Events (March 2025):

📍 Retreat Series | Far South Coast, NSW (Yuin Country)
March 28 @ 5PM | Tilba, NSW

📍 Author Talks – International Women's Day (Melbourne, VIC):
🗓️ March 8 @ 11AM | Qi Crystals, Caulfield
🗓️ March 8 @ 3:30PM | Theosophical Society, Melbourne

📍 Author Talks – Far South Coast, NSW:
📖 March 13 @ 3-4PM | Tura Marrang Library, Tura Beach
📖 March 24 @ 10:30AM | Bermagui Library, Bermagui

💫 If today's episode resonates with you, explore Valerie's retreats and author talks through her website Earth Ethos.

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Megan has made it her life work to bring the voice of the feminine into our stories, workplaces, communities & ultimately our culture. Ensuring they are heard & have agency to do what we do so well - be women with feminine traits which are celebrated & valued. You'll be delighted to hear its not about minimising the power of men but allowing women to meet them in a place that they have long relished and together they can create a world no longer dominated by the patriachy.

 Navigating a hard fought journey of finding her purpose & then having the courage to lean into it, Megan, now in her early 50s is committed to a life that enables women to rise.   Author, single mum, business owner & now completing her PHD in women's spirituality - she is taking her leadership role to new heights.

In this conversation she talks about the seasons of life & places the idea that 'what is for you will never pass you'. She shares why change comes from the ground up in democratic environments, she offers tools for male allyship and insights into how & why women are rising. For such a powerhouse, it's reassuring to hear that her 'Enough' is what it is - and having peace in that.

Links you’ll love

• Women Rising - Mary Dalla Camina
• Menergy - Mens gathering
• Jeremy Lent - patterning instincts

Loved this ep? Try this one:

Ep 84 - Naturally well with Jo - being an intuitive generalist and being real about what is possible

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Regular Support - Patreon
Buy the Books - Futuresteading - Live Like tomorrow matters, Huddle - Creating a tomorrow of togetherness

Pod Partners Rock: Australian Medicinal Herbs 

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 Its not every day you talk with a flaming locked, beard faced wizard. This one sees through the illusions of modernity & revels in an oscillating state of making progress through decay while genuinely attuning to the living systems in order to see our dire reality. 

He attempts to embody our meta crises & seeks insights outside of mere numbers by going into the woods to 'just be'...and perhaps along the way he will experience a physiological quickening that offers hope.

He sees an undercurrent of people returning to ambiguity - warm provocations with room for textured, life filling conversation & he is building a relationship with dusk where in the liminal, he opens himself up to other intelligences & wisdoms, animacy & more than the human world.

He laments our loss of seasonal attunement & encourages us all to re-member (become a member of the earth) to reignite our presence & acuity to notice the small, more than the rational.

This wizard is indeed a wise orator & his words dance through the conversation like twinkling lights, sprinkling provocation that you may need to hear more than once.   

Links You'll Love

• How to lead a quest - Fox Wizard
• The emerald podcast 
• Daniel Schucktenberger - metacrises expert
• Tyson Yunkaporta - Sand Talk
• Nate Hagens - the great simplification podcast
• Hospicing Modernity - Vanessa Andretti
• Sue Dennett - Meliodora
• Catie Payne - Reskillience podcast
• Natures apprentice
• Regenerative Leader Program

Support the Show
Casual Support - Buy Me A Coffee
Regular Support - Patreon
Buy the Books - Futuresteading & Huddle 

Pod Partners Rock:  Australian Medicinal Herbs 

Loved it? Try this:

• Helena Norberg-Hodge - charts a path between systemic healing & oneness

We talked about:

• "Most people would rather see the world destroyed than face their grief of seeing the world destroyed".
• Mass produced distraction is not nourishing us.
• Living in an adolescent culture
• Finding ways to build relationships with our landscapes
• Not adding too much structure to an emerging community
• Relationality
• The beautiful normalisation of listening to the body & responding to what it really needs.

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Meet Hayley - the whizz who usually sits in the editing suite of the Futuresteading pod  is in the hot seat today...and a few other days actually...todays episode is the chance to get to know the voice behind a mini series within this season of the futuresteading pod we are calling Stories from the heart. Hayley has been the producer on the pod for the last 6 seasons and now we are introducing her to this side of mic. You'll love her!

From remote Alaskan cottages to inner city haunts, Hayley Jessup has been learning to live from the heart. Her journey has been visceral, gut led and has tapped a curiosity from deep inside her that she unpacks in todays conversation. It’s not just about earth shattering love, it’s about sliding into a comfortable place that stays true to you, your reason to be here and being sure of the work that is yours to do. Because you can and its right.

Loved this? Try these:

Ep 104 Tanya Massy - Can love create unison of head, hands and heart

Ep 69 Lisa Wells - Making a life at the end of the world

Ep 51 Brooke McAlary on the farce of multitasking and the power of slow

Support the Show
Casual Support - Buy Me A Coffee
Regular Support - Patreon
Buy the Book - Futuresteading - Live Like tomorrow matters

Pod Partners Rock: 

Australian Medicinal Herbs 

We talked about:

Living life in transition

her experience as a naturally curious question asker

Making decisions by intuition

Learning to be heart led

Giving yourself space to be who you need to be.

Her experience living in a remote Alaskan cottage

Her plans for the mini series "from the heart" in this seasons pod.

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Tyson Yunkaporta is an Apalech man who is an academic, researcher arts critic & father. He is also the author of Sand Talk,  an extraordinary reading experience.  Like many of Australia’s First Peoples, he has a complex identity and history but it's this that gives him authority to write and speak in a way which connects the wisdom of the past to the needs of the future. 

The way he thinks demands a longer term perspective.  He is both philosophical and practical,  compassionate yet realistic. He is filled with an other-worldly understanding of humanity.  In this conversation he urges us to consider the non linear complexity of the world. 

He challenges our expectations, points out cultural shortcomings and invites us to recognise indigenous concepts and their history. Importantly he shows how these patterns have the potential to be incorporated into our non indigenous thinking which  builds hope and possibility to benefit us all.

“I don’t have answers but I know that stories connect us to country. Country knows the answers. Notice it and be a custodian".

Episode Summary
Minimising abstractions between lore and land
The illusion of the environment which is hidden by siloed systems
Let’s look like dickheads for a minute while we work out the path forward
Looking for seasonal signs and responding to them
Lore carries recipes for how to live our lives with story and pattern
Coming back into rhythm with the natural world
Running out of time - the time to reconnect with country is now
The dominating authoritarianism in the western world demands people are disconnected from the landscape
Mutual aid activism - not about throwing bombs but making sure everyone is fed.
Self determination being thwarted by authoritarianism
Stop looking at things and look at structures, systems and patterns instead
Quietly getting on with it - syndicate your neighbourhood with the next neighbourhood
The bullshit of nation building is key in the decimation of connection to country.
Activism is an industry 
Positive and negative feedback loops to understand how symbioses interlock with others
Story, ceremony and ritual for real thinking and real meaning making
Until art became capital it was something that every human did every day to understand their place in the world
How do we find a way of storytelling without reducing it to words
"Image, dance, song - can all portray story but they have no depth of meaning if they don't have place"
The lore is in the land 
"Leave those who are pecking over the carcass of the earth to their dying beliefs and the rest of us can get on with rebuilding relationships, stories, knowledge and place. Quietly and with people"
Why we need to stop self flagellating acknowledgments of country and start building relationships

References

Viktor Stefanson - fire country management
Sand Talk - Tyson Yunkaporta
The other others - podcast.

Thanks to our podcast partners:

Wwoof Australia
Nutrisoil

Buy the Book

Futuresteading - Live Like tomorrow matters

Shout out to the rockstars who smooth the sound Open Door Studios

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Following the shocking & heartbreaking death of her younger sister Indira leant into grief with the help of the natural world. She formed a deep friendship with a tree, learnt the power of self trust & became conscious of death in a way that led her to see puddles as portals into another world.
Despite the genesis, this conversation is joyful & powerful.

Show Notes

•  Forced  to be present - the pressure is off 
• Living the now is how the body and mind forces you to be in grief
• "The ‘now’ is not muddied by the past or the expectation of the future"
• Tackling the big topics and being prepared to sit with loss, grief and unexplained emotions
• Discovering that the answers to all the questions sit within you if you're prepared to lean into the discomfort
• Discovering it's possible to feel closer to people in death than in life
• The forgiveness that comes with death
• Deliberately seeking the wondrous memories to overcome the sadness
• Becoming much more contented and grateful in the face of grief
• Live while you are alive and don’t die until you are dead - suck the marrow out of life 
• Why the fuzziness has been taken out of life - she is rarely not sure anymore
• Learning to listen to herself
• Learning to make your backyard your world
• Why her tree is her favourite place on earth
• Waiting for a generation before we see the impact of our actions
• By being still you realise you're not separate from nature but part of it.
• Why she no longer sees where her skin ends and the bark on the tree begins 
• Let’s go fly a kite together
• Reminding people to seek healing capacity through nature
• Finding ways to create a sense of boundless space 
• Understanding the impact of the colour green
• Allow yourself to be where you are
• Trust how you’re feeling, what makes you feel better
• The varied faces of grief
• Why acceptance wasn’t enough - seeking meaning is the next phase
• Learning we are in ‘the line’ 
• Becoming livened by the idea that death won’t elude any of us
• Discovering how much knowledge is already in your DNA - but learning how to unlock it
• Unlearning ‘being the one with all the answers’
• Spending time with people who are “experts in life”
• Stepping away from manufacturing experiences 
• Discovering intoxication by being aware of the nature around me rather than the addition of stimulants
• The power of observation
• Becoming conscious of the subtle nuances in life 
• Being drawn to the force of a tree
• Baby steps to bring change NOW to open a crack of light in life
• Find the time to build magic into your life

References

The Space Between the Stars - Indira Naidoo

 Podcast partners ROCK!

Hidden Sea - Wine that saves the sea
Nutrisoil
Wwoof Australia

Buy the Book

Futuresteading - Live Like tomorrow matters

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Casual Support - Buy Me A Coffee
Regular Support - Patreon

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If climate reports and dystopian vibes are getting you down, this conversation with Meg Berryman might just lift you (gently) from the tiles.

Meg is the host of the Regenerative Life podcast, where she holds activating and catalysing conversations about social change, sustainable business, holistic wellbeing, personal development and regeneration, creating ripples of change from the inside out.

She’s not only a brilliant interviewer, meeting mighty minds like Tyson Yunkaporta and Claire Dunn for the kinds of intellectual-yet-accessible chats that leave listeners awestruck, but a formidable thinker herself. 

We’re stoked to welcome Meg for a wide-ranging convo that covers nervous system care, sitting in the magic dark, tending survival energy and watering the seeds of discontent. We discuss the perils of trying to make a positive impact out there if it’s having a negative impact on you and your people. And how to go about satisfying that deep primal yearning to reconnect with self, earth and other beings. 

Right now, in this time of grief, confusion + frustration, Meg Berryman is pure medicine. Listen in. 

SHOW NOTES

• The inspiration behind the Regenerative Life podcast
• An unlearning journey of dropping the postures and dropping into true self.
• Finding the balance between the unknown + the five year plan. 
• Challenging domesticity with wildness
• Regeneration is an embodied experience; but it’s not as easy as we’ve been sold. 
• The things we’ve sold as making us happy aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. The agitation and restlessness we’re feeling as feedback is not anything wrong with us! The lie of capitalism is that it’s your problem, you need to buy something to fix you.
• The seeds of discontent are also the seeds of regeneration
• Homeostatic flux: ecosystems are constantly recalibrating according to feedback.
• How to reconsider + reevaluate what a good life is. 
• We have a deep primal yearning to reconnect with ourselves, the earth, other being. That urge is continually being overidden because on some level, we assume there’s something wrong with us. 
• "It’s not that I’m allergic to life, I’m allergic to the ways we’ve organised society and systems that are so removed from those basic primal instincts of being connected and belonging."
• Wisdom birthed from the bathroom floor. 
• Epic burnout led to total breakdown led to epic recalibration.
• Is sheer willpower the only way to get shit done?
• Reframing breakdown as a period of magic dark.
• We’ve had a health and wellness paradigm for 20 years that’s focussed on DOING things. But that keeps us in survival mode; it’s not sustainable or regenerative.
•  We need a whole lot of people to be regulated enough, for long enough, to make life giving decisions and make a dent in these systems.
• Being in conversation with questions. 
• How do we come back to ourselves, and is that enough?
• Getting out of hustle culture in business. 
• Everyone is saying, "we can’t slow down because x, y, z….” It’s the courageous soul chooses to interrogate that. 
• If you’re making impact out there, but that work is having a negative effect on your people in here, it’s a net zero. It’s not regenerative.
• The best gift you can give other beings is the gift of a settled system. 
• Avoiding the one-two punch of shame and guilt.

LINKS YOU'LL LOVE

• My Grandmother's Hands -- Resmaa Menakem

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Catie chats with Dr. Sapphire McMullan-Fisher, an ecologist with a special interest in biodiversity conservation, particularly macrofungi and mosses.

Sapphire is a renowned scientific researcher, speaker, teacher and author with a knack for communicating fungi’s vital ecological roles — and why we should all pay a lot more attention to these remarkable, all-connecting entities.

She's is also a pretty radical member of the community here in Naarm/Melbourne, who last year let Catie + George transform her suburban backyard into a market garden through the Growing Farmers program. 

Wise, lively and friend of the fungi, enjoy this cracking convo with Sapphire McMullan-Fisher.

SHOW NOTES

• Being a Gondwanan
• Growing up in a mining town in the Pilbara.
• From saving African animals to fungi fascination.
• A fire and fungi pHD in Tasmania.
• Overcoming dyslexia in academia. 
• Ecosystems need fungi!
• Decomposition + partners of plants. 
• Why to leave the tree debris be.
• Journey back to the Carboniferous period when all the coal and oil was formed.
• Fungi eats wood, invertebrates eat fungi, birds eat invertebrates... hey presto!
• Life goes on. (Even though we’re seriously messing with systems.) 
• How an understanding of matter recycling gives an appreciation of post-humous existence.
• Patterns + process + life = wow.
• Where do humans fit in the bigger picture? Should we just hurry up and extinct ourselves, or…?
• Making space + food in your garden for other organisms who deserve to be here in the landscape. 
• How mindfulness of observing nature increase your understanding of it.
• Find the things that make your curiosity pop. 
• Ask: what is it? How do I found out more about it?
• Re-activating our patterning brain.
• Curiosity as a practice.
• Being on the spectrum as a superpower. 
• Growing up thinking you’re not clever. 
• Absorbing information in tiny little bites.
• Expanding communicating styles so that everyone gets it.
• How expectations shape your view of self. 
• Looking to ecosystems to confirm our need for diversity. 
• Allowing ourselves to learn and love learning.
• Biology is not a soft science!
• How a car accident changed everything. 
• Having trust that humans won’t be assholes.
• They say you need a village to raise a child… I need a village just to survive!
• The impossibility of going life alone.
• How do you learn to ask people for help?
• Letting people self select in how they help.
• Ways to be be radical and resist the status quo.
• Being sustainable within your limits.
• What’s the #1 priority in taking action for the world?
• Letting your inner child guide us towards more fulfilling life and work.

LINKS YOU'LL LOVE

• Growing Farmers
• Fun Fungi Ecology
• Fungi4Land on Insta

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Do you know where your grain comes from... the farmers name... how they grow it? Woodstock flour are doing their level best to change the last frontier via the power of building relationships and connecting. Join Jade and Courtenay as they get gritty on grains and hear why we need to value its diversity and regionality just like  we do wine or cheese.

Links You'll Love!
Woodstock flour website
Food Connect in Brisbane
Open Food Network
Kirsten and Serenity Futuresteading Interview
Tivoli Road Bakery
Holistic Management
Riverina Organics Growers Group

Show us you love us!
Casual Support - Buy Me A Coffee
Regular Support - Patreon
Buy the Book - Futuresteading - Live Like tomorrow matters

Show Notes

• Why food production is the avenue to create the most significant environmental change
• Finding a way to fit into the family farm as the 2nd generation via a stone mill & farmers markets
• Getting people to think about their grain consumption as they do their veggies or fruit
• Venturing onto their own farm in Rutherglen
• Diversifying & de-risking as part of the succession plan
• Maintaining identity in the succession process
• Building a farm business that is totally collaborative & openly shares knowledge
• The importance of transparency in building a movement
• The power of open minded, interactive relationships
• Building a business via the lens of socio-political factors
• Land ownership & its connection to class & race - privilege
• Facing the confronting reality of land ownership on unceded land
• CSA model for grains
• Covid experiences of customer demands
• Open Road Project
• Education about true cost of food & reconciling the inaccessibility of this reality
• The journey of creating a path to market from scratch
• The value of putting yourself into things regardless of financial return in the short time
• Holistic management 
• Collaborating with community is often an opportunity to connect with land, find joy through connection to others & learn from all that’s around us
• Acknowledging the slow pace of us as humans
• How do we get the next generation interested in food production?
• The beauty of rural communities being accepting of each others ways & thinking 
• Finding solidarity in the wine growing community
• Rising early to paint - no excuses, no interruptions
• Defining business roles in a small family business 
• Being deliberate about the daily decisions to ensure balance
• How her painting complements her business
• Bookending the day at the dinner table

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Recorded just days after the Federal election, Gabrielle Chan doesn't mince words - even when bone tired. A celebrated journalist with the Guardian, outspoken advocate for rural Australia and encourager of individual agency. "Our system has been made up by people and it can be rewritten by people". Lets not wait for Government to bring change but get active and organised now during times of abundance.

Links You'll Love
Acres and Acres in Corryong
Wendell Berry
The Guardian

Show us you love us!
Casual Support - Buy Me A Coffee
Regular Support - Patreon
Buy the Book - Futuresteading - Live Like tomorrow matters

Show Notes
Connecting the grass roots regen ag movements with top down politics
The need for change in our food, water, land management policies
“We export a lot of sausage sandwiches - beef and wheat”
Why it’s time to change the narrative around Australia's ag sector 
Why ‘level playing fields’ are a farce
The fragility of financial deregulations, long global supply chains increasing disease, increased drought - how do we as a sovereign nation reassure ourselves of continued prosperity
The potential for rural policy to create the framework that allows smaller scale and regen practices to thrive
The power of the colonial squatacracy
How do we bring policy reform to ag so it has relevance for smaller scale 7 regen practices to thrive
The potential of utilising the “voices for” movement as a model for local food to grow
Why we need to re-engage with politics 
The thing that only Govt does  is set the ground rules for how we conduct our business. 
People need to be involved in politics to influence its direction
The need for strategic water policy to better support us on the driest continent on earth
Talking about water, food and skills while we are in times of abundance
Where does the role of govt need to stop and allow room for community to pick up
The ongoing debate about why we do not yet have drought policy or food policy
Refine what you want to change  - get organised and get active in the arena from bottom up
The big secret - we are ALL MAKING IT UP
Her slow, gradual, accidental path to being a communicator.
Her writing approach - just keep writing, push through the creative barriers
The process of sitting down and ordering your thoughts results in a unique 
Connecting the systemic dots through political reporting
The history of farming and nature control
The Connectivity of farming to EVERYTHING ELSE
Ag and environment are different political portfolios - WTF
We cannot have an economy without an environment
The need for the economy the environment  + the desires of the humans involved in farming  to be interacting 
The need to account for ecological resources

Questions the fundamental systems
Finding optimism in the work done by others
Having faith in humanity
Connecting people to spark change

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Sign out of 2024 with this lively mastermind who suggests we take country into our body ! How?
Build routine around food,
Go barefoot to boost immunity, 
Stop seeing food as an inconvenience
Cook & eat with family often
Connect to the seasons of your life & the landscape
Create & share ceremony
Use food as a reconciliation tool

Belonging to a matriarchal community has unlocked knowledge handed down by oral stories, dance & art where kinship is more than human to human. Knowing your spirit belongs here is a gift we can all tap but with belonging comes responsibility - one to mother earth, but also to sisterhood, eldership and to being part of the greater whole.

Links You'll Love
Karkala book by Mindy Woods
Karkala instagram

Loved this? Try these:
Tyson Yunkaporta
Billa from the Wild School

Support the Show
Casual Support - Buy Me A Coffee
Regular Support - Patreon
Buy the Book - Futuresteading - Live Like tomorrow matters

We talked about:

Living by 6 local seasons
"Being part of the greater whole - we are one of the parts of many, it’s not us & them but all of us as one contributing to our country in some way we can maintain balance"
Caring for her totems goanna, echidna & wollomi pine via broader care of her environment
Societal lack of connection & belonging
Imperfect allyship - ok to make mistakes but important to maintain connection
Mob love a yarn - connect, be quiet, shut your mouth, open your listening & be there in respectful observation. Get curious about native food landscapes, 
Knowledge is the sacred part, the fundamental core of culture & treated with great reverence despite it not being written down, its taken seriously when its shared on
It’s not transactional, it’s about relationships & allows us all to slow down to a pace that humans should actually move at.
Childhood memories on country with family - eating oysters out of jam jars
Being a proud cook - not a chef
Having friends apply for masterchef on her behalf
Debunking the myth of Australian food being meat pies & sausage rolls
Asking what is Australia's cuisine & exploring culture through food
Eating foods from our landscape, they belong here, are highly nutritious & are abundant
Moving into eldership as wisdom holders - not an age but a readiness
When you’re taking care of country you're taking care of mob & community too
The privilege of taking on responsibility for cultural teachings
When women are in charge it creates a great balance - women's wishes are always community based & they are thinking about country community & culture".
You can’t be what you can’t see - be the one to lead the way
Standing loud & proud in sisterhood - uniting.
"The privilege to eat food that you’ve grown & understand the value of: local, seasonal, country gives you what you need at the right times in abundance - feeding the old people & the young people before feeding the well ones"

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