Host: Sarah Mooney, Storyteller

Intro music by Queen Space Baroque

Episode Overview

A tender, vulnerable episode where Sarah acknowledges she doesn’t have the “spoons” to fully arrive this week. Instead of pushing through alone, she contradicts the belief that “only she can do it” by inviting beloved artists into the space - Elizabeth Jane Lovely shares a haunting story about ancestor statues, and Samana offers their transcendent song “Lakeside Song.” A beautiful meditation on asking for help and the power of community care.

Featured Artists

Elizabeth Jane Lovely - “The Ancestor Statues”

Elizabeth Jane Lovely is an artist whose experimentation encompasses the written form, oral storytelling, ceremonial chant, and spell speaking through ritual interaction. She is a Creative Arts Doctoral Researcher at Loughborough University and an English Cunning Woman of sorts. Her specialisms centre around how we can cause kindly disruption through enchantment, the story as activist, the essentiality of our bodily state as gateway to sacred creativity, and everyday imagination as change maker. She currently lives in a tiny county that does not always exist, regularly having to negotiate with the brambles and briars to access the rest of the human world.

Her story for this episode explores themes of colonization, the resilience of ancestral wisdom, and the journey from remembering to forgetting to remembering again. The ancestors - whether as statues, dust, or breath within us - remain patient witnesses to everything.

Connect with Elizabeth Jane Lovely:

* Website: www.elizabethjanelovely.com

* Substack: thefaerytaleapothecary.substack.com

* Featured in Season 1 of Moony’s Mythic Podcast

Samana - “Lakeside Song”

Samana was born in the heart of a vast, mountainous forest during a year-long odyssey that Rebecca Rose Harris and Franklin Mockett embarked upon through the untamed wilderness and distant cities of Eastern Europe. As multi-disciplinary artists, Samana weaves together poetry, music, striking photography, and fine art into a single transformative and immersive experience. Every element of their work is crafted with ritualistic devotion, recorded in their analogue studio, The Road Records, and developed in the darkroom tucked away in the remote hills of Wales.

Their music confronts the most profound aspects of the human condition, embracing both its weight and its transcendence. Oscillating between melancholic ballads and spiritual awakenings, Samana’s sound guides listeners through cinematic landscapes, invoking ancient beliefs, revolution, healing, the unseen, and the profound depths of love, loss, and death.

“Lakeside Song” was composed by a lake that holds deep personal and spiritual significance for the band. This song emerges from a place of stillness and reverence, where the lake represents a threshold between the seen and the unseen, yearning and reflecting, serenity and infinity.

Connect with Samana:

* Website: www.samanaroad.com

* Spotify: Samana on Spotify

Key Themes

* Asking for help - Contradicting the isolating belief that “only I can do this”

* The blankets pulled away - Facing what we’ve been avoiding

* Community as medicine - Being held by others’ art when we can’t hold ourselves

* Sensory deprivation and earth connection - The power of returning to darkness and stillness

* The art of letting go - As explored in Samana’s lyrics

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sarahmooney.substack.com