Why I read it: It was recommended as being similar to ‘Women who Run with the Wolves’ + I’m looking for feminine non-fiction books for some extra empowerment and inspiration. My first event in The Bone Cave, in December 2020, was a free live webinar based on If Women Rose Rooted. I spoke about the process of writing it, how the inspiration came about, and how my ideas on reclaiming the mythic feminine have progressed in the intervening four or more years. There was also a chance for participants to ‘ask me anything’ about any issue related to the book.

Women have long been told to 'know our place'. This powerful and inspiring exploration of the female relationship with landscape turns the diktat around, showing us what may be gained from doing just that." — Melissa Harrison, author of Clay and At Hawthorn Time Sometimes, if you have grown up in certain ways, a fear of being seen to fail can outweigh the personal cost of continuing to live in impossible circumstances.” I feel I received this great collection of stories just at a right time to get grounded and to find my roots in every day life. I also felt better able to deal with my own aging process, something that has been hard for me to accept. The idea (familiar to me but forgotten, pushed aside) that age has something of its own to offer the world, something valuable is a source of comfort and inspiration.Beautifully written, honest and moving, If Women Rose Rooted is a passionate song to a different kind of femininity, a rallying, feminist cry for the rewilding of womanhood; reclaiming our role as guardians of the land. I love this book. Truly, it’s mind-blowing in the most profound and exhilarating sense. This is an anthem for all we could be, an essential book for this, the most critical of recent times. I sincerely hope every woman who can read has the time and space to read it.’ ~ Manda Scott, Boudica and Into The Fire Every woman needs to read this book. It will speak to your soul, it will stir up your long forgotten ancestral wisdom. It will have you connecting with instincts you didn't realise were divine, or it cement the notion that you are on the right path. I was born in the north-east of England, a Celt through and through: my family and ancestry is both Scottish and Irish, and I was raised on an imaginatively rich diet of Irish myth, poetry, music and history. After studying psychology, I spent several years as an academic neuroscientist/ psychologist specialising in the field of anxiety and panic, and working at the Hôpital Pitié-Salpêtrière in Paris and the Institute of Neurology in London. After a few twists and turns, including some unwise years advising a tobacco company on smoking and health and safer cigarettes, and the acquisition of a master’s degree in Creative Writing, I moved to a croft in the north-west Highlands of Scotland. There I returned to my roots, in practice as a therapist specialising in narrative psychology, myth- and storytelling, as well as in other creative imagination techniques and clinical hypnotherapy. My passion during those years was, and still is, creating transformation in individuals and groups.

It was one of those rare times when I felt as if by some means of synchronicity, the right book reached me at exactly the right moment." — Dreaming in StitchesMenopause is not a medical condition, it is an earthquake, shaking us to our deepest foundations, wiping out the edifices we've so carefully constructed on what we once imagined to be the solid ground of our life.” I love this book. Truly, it's mind-blowing in the most profound and exhilarating sense. This is an anthem for all we could be, an essential book for this, the most critical of recent times. I sincerely hope every woman who can read is given one, and has the time and the space to read it." — Manda Scott, author of Boudica and Into the Fire A beautiful, intelligent and unusual book... I'm hoping this book will become the anthem of our generation." — Kate Forsyth, author of Bitter Greens, The Wild Girl and The Beast's Garden If women remember that once upon a time we sand with the tongues of seals and flew with the wings of swans, that we forged our own paths through the dark forest while creating a community of its many inhabitants, then we will rise up rooted like trees. And if we rise up rooted, like trees...well, then women might indeed save not only ourselves, but the world.” But we don’t much talk about spirituality in this post-Enlightenment culture which respects and rewards only rationality. We live in a society whose power systems value only the material, and which dismiss, become vaguely embarrassed about, or actively ridicule the spiritual. Elderhood is a passage that ends in death by design, and we don’t much talk about death, either.”