Breadcrumbs, Blood, and the Path of Needles
A tale of story medicine, red threads, and a new cloak I’ve donned
Breadcrumbs, Blood, and the Path of Needles
A tale of story medicine, Red thread, and a new cloak I’ve donned
Vivienne Beaumont -tapestry art
I’ve been on the trail of mystery.
Eating breadcrumbs flung from the hands of the MythMother.
Following the thread of Red—the primal color—into the heart of seeing and not-seeing.
Bound by story.
Clever-footed.
And still, I don’t want to give too much of her Mystery away.
Because I’ve only tasted a drop of her blood.
Stained with secrets. Still finding their way into my skin. Tattooing themselves into the mystery of me.
Vivienne Beaumont, Tapestry art
I’ve slept with Little Red Riding Hood for decades.
I married myself to her tale during a self-designed rite-of-passage—
a write-of-passage—into the woods.
Literally.
And metaphorically.
Tracking and dancing the backwards thread through grandmother stories.
Sniffing my way to wildflowers and ephemerals at the forest’s edge.
Entered the forest of story.
She has so much to offer. When we spend cycles of time with her.
Story is a Medicine Woman.
Ancient. Bone-knowing.
Beating the drum of her heart hearth. Casting her spell. Cloaking us in blanket of mystery, velvet. shining with stars.
Diving into the darkness of the belly of the wolf, you learn the danger of story.
And also, its wild mercy.
You begin to see the web of story.
You learn to discern:
The sticky threads. The red threads. The golden threads. The broken threads.
You dance your way in and through.
You walk the ordeal. And you re-member.
Story is a rite of passage.
A rite of remembering how to see.
How to recognize the guardian.
The trickster.
The initiator.
The awakening.
vivienne Beaumont
To truly enter a story, you might be asked to remove layers.
To burn a name, a pattern, a mask.
To remove what keeps you from seeing.
I’m veering off the known path and into the mouth of an older, darker, stranger, gnarlier version of Red.
A French tale.
The Grandmother.
Also known as The Path of Needles, or the Path of Pins.
Which path do you take?
Vivienne Beaumont
I’ll be telling her story—live—on Saturday, May 24th at 10:30am MT
✨ Free for paid subscribers ✨
Click here to find your way in.
This version is older. Bloodier.
More marrow. Less moral.
It’s gritty and taboo. Earthy and strange.
A thread that pulls us back into forgotten ways of seeing.
This isn’t a modern tale.
Modern eyes will try to interpret.
But this story asks something else.
It asks:
Can you shed layers? Your colonized sight?
Your conditioned mind?
Can you let the story seed its questions into you. Can you come closer to its teeth, to its bite, it’s hunger, it’s sight? Can you allow the story to ferment you, rather than consume it like a fast food?
The deep stories are not overnight oats.
They’re slow medicine. Bone broths. Root stews.
They take their time inside of us. Digesting us as we digest them.
Their medicine aids in our digestion of our stories and the world around us.
If you feel the call—please join us.
All voices welcome.
All bodies.
All stories.
Calling all wolves, daughters, grandmothers, hunters, cloaks, forests, needles, pins, wildflowers, and seekers.
Vivienne Beaumont
Also: I’m donning a new cloak. She has been red-ing me for some time.
I’m now writing under The Wild Remembering—across Substack, Facebook, and beyond. I’m devoted to the Wild Remembering on all platforms. And in forgotten ways. I’m also midwifing a new baby.
A year-long immersion.
A spiral of story and soul, moving through the Wheel of the Year.
Seasoned by the shining days (festival days)
Guided by myth, fairytale, and the heroine’s descent and return.
We write. We dance. We voice. We listen. We remember.
The Wild Remembering is a creative rite of passage.
It’s also a feminine, mythopoetic mystery school.
A braiding of the mythopoetic and the personal, through body, somatic wisdom and transformative language arts. Rooted in place. To return with the elixir of becoming, the elixir of self in the form of a personalized sacred manuscript.
We begin in September.
I’m still weaving the finer threads—refining, reshaping.
The site is in process. The structure is and design is forming.
Its not polished yet—but I’m showing up.
Because that’s what story asks of us.
Please check out my evolving site. The logistics and everything else will be refined and patterned more specifically by beginning of June!
Let’s spiral in for a taste, shall we? Hope to see you May 24th. I’m grateful to be with you. To assist in midwifing the stories you have been waiting for. Within and without.
Will you join me? Howl YES!
xoxo,
Stasha
YES! How do I get the zoom link?