On the Secret Witch Show today our guest is Siân Marie Pilkington. Siân is The Wild Mama who has raised her babies and has landed shakti-based, goddess-devoted, and in service to the taboos of blood, birth, sexuality and death. A queer celt, Magdalene, radical birth worker, herbalist, and ceremonialist, she guides femmes back to the Great Mother, blending primal intelligence with embodied, Earth-honoring magic. Siân now works purposefully to decolonize the rites of passage we’ve been taught to fear, reclaiming birth, postpartum, eros, and endings as sacred. Mentoring doulas and space holders in altered states, ecstatic birth, and collaborative community care, her work is a love letter to those ready to remember, rewild, and bring initiations home.

In this beautiful episode about death we explore Siân’s sacred and unique perspective around miscarriage as a natural, ancient healing ‘rite of passage’ - rather than the taboo, over-clinicalised, sanitised, dissociative experience it can be created as by our world. Sharing the healing transformation she was able to reclaim from her own miscarriage, and the ancient wisdom passed down from elders, Siân shines a light on the interconnectedness of grief and initiation - and the role of ritual and ceremony in alchemy. Providing practical advice on holistic practices, herbs and remedies to support healing, she illuminates the powerful remedy that can be found (for us all) in learning how to see and hear ourselves and share our stories - touching on shame, rage and grief - and how the witch can help heal the societal avoidance of death and grief.

What You’ll Learn from this Episode:

• Miscarriage is over-sanitised in our patriarchal culture - which has it commonly not seen as the significant ‘peak experience’ and transformative rite of passage that it can be, similar to live childbirth and other life transitions
• Miscarriage can be a deeply emotional and spiritual journey where we learn how to meet ourselves, face and process intense emotions, including grief and loss - and even pleasure - yet it is also often seen as ‘taboo’ and shameful
• Left alone, and if we can allow ourselves to sit patiently, whilst allowing everything to move through us, the body has a natural wisdom in how to process miscarriage - and we can attune to our bodies to navigate this. We are broken in the process - we are giving birth to death - and, often, it is also the path to reclaiming our wisdom.
• If we have had an over-clinicalised miscarriage, we can still journey with reclaiming this rite of passage - this threshold - through ritual and ceremony, reclaiming parts of ourselves that have felt lost to this process.
• Telling our story - and being seen and held in sisterhood - is a deeply crucial step in our healing journey, for personal closure. Sharing it with others also offers a remedy for them, too. We are remedies for those like us.

Resources and things that we spoke about:

• Siân’s Links:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/motherarchy/

• Our Links:

• Join our Secret Witch’s Apothecary Membership: www.nicolebarton.co.uk/membership
• Social:
• Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/nicoleamandabarton
• Facebook Group - Secret Witch Sisterhood: http://www.facebook.com/groups/secretwitch
• Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/iamnicolebarton/
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• You Tube - https://www.youtube.com/@secretwitchsociety

• Tiktok - https://www.tiktok.com/@archetypalapothecary

• Resources:

• If Women Rose Rooted: https://sharonblackie.net/if-women-rose-rooted/

Thank you for listening, we’d love to know what comes alive for you in this week’s episode, so please let us know.

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Thank you, Nicole and Team Secret Witch xox