EPISODE 30 - Lucy H. Pearce
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🌟 Welcome to Episode 30 of Casual Temple! This week our guest is Lucy H. Pearce, who is a dynamic force in the creative realm as an author, artist, publisher, editor, and teacher. Her focus on women's healing and creativity has resonated globally, evident in her establishment of Women Craft Publishing in 2014, a platform dedicated to empowering female authors and artists.
Spirituality and magic are intrinsic to Lucy's creative process, viewing them as distinct yet intertwined expressions of life's essence. She champions writing as a powerful means of communication, facilitating deep dives into various subjects and fostering connections with others.
One of Lucy's collaborative ventures includes co-authoring The Kitchen Witch Companion, a captivating exploration of infusing magic into everyday life through culinary practices. Her latest book Crow Moon is a unique approach to describing the ineffable and is a really unique and deeply creative work.
Launching the Creative Magic podcast, initiating the Word and Image e-course, and publishing upcoming books through Women Craft this year are just a few examples. Additionally, she's compiling an anthology titled Weaving Our Way Beyond Patriarchy, slated for release in November.
With her extensive experience as an author, Lucy empathizes with the challenges faced by creatives, particularly during the developmental phase before financial success. She advocates for respecting authors' journeys and acknowledges the limitations often encountered within traditional publishing structures.
Lucy H. Pearce embodies a fervent advocate for women's empowerment and a visionary explorer of the intersections between creativity, spirituality, and magic.
Learn more about Merrily's energy healing work at Celestial Ring Guidance.
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(Transcript is auto-generated; errors are unintentional.)
00:00:02 Merrily
Welcome to Casual Temple podcast episode 30, and I'm your host, Merrily Duffy at Casual Temple. Our mission is to discover our connection to the unseen world of spirit and how that empowers us to know our true selves. But before we start a little favor, please follow us, subscribe, and hit that heart-shaped like button on your favorite podcast platform. Our amazing guest this week is the creative.
00:00:22 Merrily
Our house, that is Lucy H. Pearce, who is an author, artist, publisher, editor.
00:00:26 Merrily
And teacher in 2014, she started women craft publishing a platform that's all about empowering women authors and artists. We discussed her co-authored book called The Kitchen Witch Companion, which is a collaborative effort with contributions from 13 authors about making magic in her kitchens and homes. Her newest book, Crow Moon, is a unique work that started with a real life experience of witnessing a large group of crows.
00:00:48 Merrily
Hosting for the night, so stay tuned to the Casual Temple podcast for the magical conversations are ordinary.
00:00:56 Merrily
Oh, welcome to the casual temple this week. I'm thrilled to have Lucy Pearce join us as our guest. Lucy is a Creative force author, artist, publisher, editor, and teacher. Lucy's impactful work has reached a global audience as the author of several life changing nonfiction books where she delves into women's healing.
00:01:16 Merrily
Through archetypal psychology, embodiment, historical awareness, and creativity. In 2014 Lucy founded Woman Craft Publishing, a platform dedicated to publishing game changing books by women for women with over 50 books published in the first decade.
00:01:32 Merrily
Women craft publishing both a diverse collection of titles by international female authors that features cover art by talented women artists. Thank you Lucy, for being on the casual temple.
00:01:44 Lucy
I'm so glad I can't remember how we first met, but I just I my daughter is called Merrily and I remember commenting.
00:01:50 Merrily
Ohh.
00:01:52 Lucy
Or appearing on my Instagram.
00:01:53 Merrily
That's right.
00:01:53 Lucy
It's in one way. I don't know if that.
00:01:55 Lucy
Was the first time we met, but that was the first time I.
00:01:57 Lucy
Really twigged you and.
00:01:59 Lucy
I was like Oh my God, you're the first grown up merrily I've ever come across. So I was just so excited.
00:02:06 Merrily
Yeah. Oh, that's so cute. Yeah, I think it's such a cute name. So I'm glad your daughter is named. Merely. Is it short for anything, or is it just merely? Wow, that's cool.
00:02:09
No.
00:02:12 Lucy
Yes.
00:02:16 Merrily
Oh yeah, I definitely remember that conversation. It was very funny. Yeah. I I saw, like, your work. And like, all the cool things you're doing through Instagram, that's how I found you. And like, yeah, so, so much cool stuff that I'm excited to talk about. So we kind of just here, we just kind of start from sort of the beginning. So if you can kind of.
00:02:37 Merrily
Tell us a little bit about sort of.
00:02:38 Merrily
Your life, that kind of puts you on your spiritual and magical publishing artist path that you're on today kind of start there.
00:02:49 Lucy
Sure. So I was really creative and magical throughout my childhood and it was, yeah, creativity was my safe place, my happy place. I come from a very creative family.
00:03:01 Lucy
3 generations back have made their living through various forms of creative entrepreneurship, so that's what I come from. That's what normal is to me. Although I did wish I could have normal parents sometimes, but I now see what an absolute blessing it was to have.
00:03:20 Lucy
Of being the person.
00:03:21 Lucy
I am so.
00:03:24 Lucy
I fought hard to do art at a level which is our kind.
00:03:30 Lucy
Of.
00:03:31 Lucy
You know the exams you do before you leave school, because I was also very academic and you know, schools saw me as, you know, one of the people who are going to go off to the most prestigious universities. And I was like I.
00:03:44 Lucy
I used to do my.
00:03:44 Lucy
Creative stuff.
00:03:46 Lucy
So I was really big into drama at that stage too, so I was directing plays. I was writing plays, I was acting, loved that. So I went off to drama school.
00:03:57 Lucy
And did a year there and within the first four months, what I now know is anxiety ramped up and ramped up, but I didn't have a word for what it was. Then all I knew was I wasn't functioning and was very, very stressed. And then I was getting sick because I was very stressed. And then my migraines were coming on.
00:04:19 Lucy
And it was just kind of all ***********.
00:04:21 Lucy
So I dropped out at the end of that first year.
00:04:25 Lucy
Went into the more academic course and then I.
00:04:32 Lucy
Kind of stopped painting stopped writing because I really decided I was going to.
00:04:36 Lucy
Be.
00:04:36 Lucy
Normal I decided that.
00:04:39 Lucy
The problem was that I was too.
00:04:40 Lucy
Weird.
00:04:42 Lucy
I was going to in this lovely kind of early 20s where I was going to perfect myself, so I used all these self help books to try and make the perfect me and and that required not being weird.
00:04:52 Lucy
So so dropped the the the creativity by the wayside.
00:04:58 Lucy
And you know, I'm pretty useless at being normal, so I didn't enjoy that much, went off travelling for a couple of years whilst we were applying for our PhD places and.
00:05:13 Lucy
Just.
00:05:15 Lucy
Constantly dealing with anxiety, not knowing what that was.
00:05:18 Merrily
Hmm.
00:05:21 Lucy
And then.
00:05:23 Lucy
After a year learning to teach drama and English, I got pregnant earlier than expected and so suddenly kind of life kind.
00:05:32 Lucy
Of did a.
00:05:33 Lucy
A 180 as rather than diving into a PhD, someone was diving into motherhood and and what was really unexpected for me.
00:05:43 Lucy
Was in my head becoming a mother meant that everything was gonna end. My life was gonna end. And actually what happened was that my life began in that my creativity just came back with.
00:05:59 Lucy
A massive rush through my pregnancy and then straight after having my first child.
00:06:05 Lucy
Which nobody had ever told me about, warned me about might happen. It was just like it was an unstoppable force and.
00:06:14 Lucy
So I I spent the next couple of years, you know, having another two children trying to find the right ways and places that I could express myself creatively because suddenly it wasn't something I could choose not to do. Something was something I had to do.
00:06:29 Merrily
Hmm.
00:06:30 Lucy
And and my creativity has always been connected to my spirit.
00:06:34 Lucy
Reality it's always been connected to my magic, like the the three are the same thing and and sexuality goes in there too, like they're all the same. It's the life force coming through, looking for expression and and asking us to dance with the unknown, asking us to to.
00:06:48 Merrily
Hmm.
00:06:54 Lucy
Dare to try to dare to push the boundaries further and further, to explore more and more of the world and ourselves.
00:07:02 Lucy
So naturally, as my creativity started blossoming, all the other areas of my life did too.
00:07:09 Lucy
So I I.
00:07:10 Lucy
Gradually found a way. Books emerged from me. Suddenly the need to write was just there. It was not a kind of a oh, would it be nice? Twice. But it was like I have to write and I have to write.
00:07:22 Lucy
Now so.
00:07:23 Merrily
Hmm.
00:07:25 Lucy
The rainbow way. My first book came about when I was my three kids were, I think 4, two and one. They all had chicken pox and they've been sick for a week climbing all over me needing, you know, me to cuddle them and.
00:07:44 Lucy
You know, put cool stuff on them and and just, you know, they were just miserable, itchy hot little children. And I didn't realize at the time that I was, I was autistic and I was feeling beyond overwhelmed, sensory overwhelm.
00:07:59 Lucy
Just couldn't cope with this constant being needed and thought I was going to go crazy, so I literally just started writing a book about creativity and how important it is for mothers and how mothers can access it because it was. That was what I needed. It was this lifeline that I needed at that time. So that's what most of my books have been they've been.
00:08:21
Or.
00:08:22 Lucy
Some of them have been proposed.
00:08:24 Lucy
Selves of mine and some have been selves that I'm stepping into and many of the friends that I know who are going through those places and Times Now, but but they're always.
00:08:38 Lucy
Very much written to and for someone I know which I think is why so many women remark that it felt like I had written the book for them, and I was speaking directly to them because I was. I didn't know who they were, but it was directly to and for a person. And I think there's something about that.
00:08:41
Hmm.
00:08:52 Merrily
Right.
00:09:01 Lucy
Direct communication you need, like there's a gazillion books out there. You open the covers of a book. You don't know what to expect, and suddenly when you find somebody talking directly to you, it's a really powerful thing. So I think that's been a large.
00:09:08 Merrily
MHM.
00:09:16 Lucy
Thing about my books you know about why they've been so popular? Because I I try to give words to the unspoken and the unspeakable parts of ourselves and our lives, especially as women and. And that's really scary work to do.
00:09:29 Merrily
MHM.
00:09:34 Lucy
It's really scary to try and find the words and then to speak them out loud and not only just to the people, you know, in a small circle, but out loud into the world, but it's an incredibly powerful thing I've come to see.
00:09:43
Hmm.
00:09:46 Merrily
Yeah.
00:09:48 Lucy
So that's become my role is, is, is finding the words for the next step on my journey and and sharing them.
00:09:48
Wow.
00:09:50 Merrily
Yeah.
00:09:56 Merrily
Wow. So beautiful. Yeah, I love such a. Yeah. You told your story like a story. It is so beautiful. I.
00:10:03 Merrily
Yeah. And I agree about like the stepping into your power as a woman and your voice and letting putting it out there because we tend to not a lot of us don't do that. And and I know your Instagram has, you know you speak a lot about that too for sure. That's like a big message.
00:10:17
Hmm.
00:10:19 Lucy
Well, it's just it's been such a.
00:10:23 Lucy
I think it's probably been the biggest kind of pillar of my own personal work, and personal growth is is moving from.
00:10:29 Merrily
Yeah.
00:10:33 Lucy
Being silent and feeling that things are unspeakable or feeling.
00:10:38
Hmm.
00:10:41 Lucy
Overwhelmed by stuff that I cannot name or cannot even feel or cannot put an image to, but I know that it's there inside me and it's so big and it's so overwhelming, but I don't know.
00:10:48
Right.
00:10:53 Lucy
What it is?
00:10:55 Lucy
And I think most of us experience that. I mean, I think being autistic, I probably experience it a bit more because my ability to.
00:11:05 Lucy
Sense my inner world is kind of.
00:11:09 Lucy
But but many times very muffled, so it makes me work extra hard at it and it it it it makes it a real practice.
00:11:11 Merrily
Hmm.
00:11:20 Lucy
That I do.
00:11:20 Merrily
Yeah.
00:11:22 Lucy
And.
00:11:23 Lucy
And I just think that.
00:11:25 Lucy
You know, if if we weren't where we are in women's history, I wouldn't need to do it, you know, but our psychology, our philosophy, our spirituality in the mainstream doesn't have those answers. It doesn't have the descriptors of what it is I'm experiencing. So here's.
00:11:41
Yeah.
00:11:41 Lucy
What I have to?
00:11:42 Lucy
Go off the beaten track and try and figure it out for myself.
00:11:45 Lucy
But you know.
00:11:48 Lucy
That's changing and I'm really proud to be a small part of of helping that change and I'm always so grateful to come across other creative souls who are doing the same because.
00:12:00 Lucy
You know, can feel very lonely when you know you're writing books all by yourself in your.
00:12:02
Hmm.
00:12:05 Lucy
Bedroom.
00:12:07 Lucy
Making art and you know, so to to kind of know that there's all of these hundreds of thousands of creatives and spiritual magic makers out in the world doing that too.
00:12:19 Lucy
And we're each doing our own little bit of the puzzle and we're kind of joining together with other bits of the puzzle.
00:12:24 Lucy
As we discover.
00:12:24 Lucy
Them and yeah, but we're all doing it together and we're all doing that work and and we're not alone in it. It's just such a lovely.
00:12:31 Merrily
Feeling. Oh yeah. So beautifully put. Yeah. And that's my observation too. I love everybody doing their unique piece.
00:12:39 Merrily
And it's a great tapestry. So I love that you called that.
00:12:44 Merrily
Now.
00:12:44 Merrily
I mean especially.
00:12:45 Lucy
And in so, yeah, in in patriarchal culture, what we're very much taught is, yeah, you know, you have to be an expert in order to put your work out there or to be listened to.
00:12:51 Merrily
Right.
00:12:54 Lucy
And that there isn't room for all of us. There's only room for for a few, and that's the important people and.
00:13:01 Lucy
So I just.
00:13:01 Lucy
Think it's so important that everyone knows like there is room for you. There is room for your voice, your perspective, your insight, and it's needed like.
00:13:09 Merrily
Yeah.
00:13:10 Merrily
Worse, especially when you know you explained that you're trying to put words or describe or art something that you can't really describe very well. And I think a lot of us feel that right. There's like something there and I can't really put words to it. I mean, I can. I can try, but it's very difficult.
00:13:30 Merrily
And so who is an expert in that? You know, besides your own self, right?
00:13:34
Well.
00:13:37 Lucy
And again, like in our culture, we're not encouraged to do that. We're very much encouraged to read the stories of other people or to go to a therapist. And for a therapist to kind of help you fix it or whatever. Whereas to actually.
00:13:47 Merrily
Hmm.
00:13:49 Lucy
Just learn to trust yourself and to learn the tools that you need to access these parts of you and to be able to move through and past trauma. For example, if that's kind of acting as a gatekeeper to certain parts of yourself and blocking them off, I think is a really important and valuable skill and.
00:14:08
Hmm.
00:14:09 Lucy
You know, one that good therapists do teach you so that you can do it yourself. Good, any any sort of, you know, physical therapists do the same. They teach you how to fix yourself. They teach you how to, you know, journey with and explore yourself rather than make you reliant on them. But as a whole, as a culture, there is this thing of kind of.
00:14:29 Lucy
Infantilising us slightly and kind of making us always need to reach out to the expert to get the answers as though there is one answer, one truth.
00:14:37 Merrily
Right. So within that, did you have any sort of support within your family or guidance like any anybody who did look up to kind of on your journey or was it all self?
00:14:53 Merrily
Examination. I mean, I've I've had a.
00:14:56 Lucy
Huge. I think the most helpful things to me have always been books. Books have been my, my ways into worlds of knowledge, knowledge domains, giving me new language, new ideas. And I don't have to deal with people in order to get that knowledge.
00:15:13 Lucy
Which makes my life much easier. I've had some very good therapists along the way. Not only, you know, kind of like talking therapists, but also, you know, doing E MDR like eye movement therapy.
00:15:30 Lucy
Massage therapy, physiotherapy, but kind of working on much deeper levels, you know. So I've had lots of very helpful people as well as very wise friends husband, you know, and parents who are.
00:15:49 Lucy
You know, based on their own journeys too, and both still learning and growing and you know, I'm very touched by the fact that both of my parents read all of my books and are willing to talk about my books with me because, you know.
00:16:03 Lucy
A lot of people I know wouldn't read many books, and when you know you're gonna appear in a book in various ways, it must be challenging. Yeah, but, you know, it's been really lovely to see how.
00:16:16 Lucy
How my work has helped the whole family grow and change and discover new things. That's really powerful to be giving language to my parents and giving insights to my parents as well. As you know, the flip side. You know that it, it helps and supports my children too, so it's.
00:16:28
Hmm.
00:16:37 Lucy
It's it's very satisfying.
00:16:41 Merrily
Yeah.
00:16:44 Merrily
So with that, yeah, that sounds like a very, yeah, satisfying, fulfilling sort of conversation that you get to have with the people in your life that care to read your books. So that's really wonderful.
00:16:56 Lucy
Only things that I would have like been scared to bring up into conversation. Do you know what I mean? They're not kind of normal dinner parties. Expensive things I write about and I love to dive deep. But you know, there's always this being say to being in vulnerability when you do dive deep into something like that. Whereas when you've written it down and someone.
00:17:02 Merrily
Totally.
00:17:07 Merrily
Yeah.
00:17:09
The.
00:17:17 Merrily
Yeah.
00:17:17 Lucy
Like it's.
00:17:19 Lucy
Absolutely terrifying at the time, but it actually it brings you another layer deeper into your relationship of the things that we can now talk about, the things that we have shared language for.
00:17:31 Merrily
And and it's more, it's more of ease when you can quietly write those things down, right instead of maybe at a dinner party.
00:17:38 Merrily
Bringing it up and then.
00:17:40 Merrily
And then you know, you're whoever's reading it, receiving it, can quietly read, like, absorb it, you know? Yeah.
00:17:46 Lucy
Exactly. And they can process and there's not gonna be that awkward thing of watching them process and then having to talk then, you know, everyone gets to. I mean, it's how I've always communicated the big things in my life ever since I've been a small child. I've written people letters because I find conversations tricky.
00:17:48 Merrily
Yes.
00:18:02
Hmm.
00:18:06 Lucy
Yeah, but I can. I've always been able to rely on writing things down to get.
00:18:11 Lucy
To the real.
00:18:12 Lucy
Crux in the heart of something and say what I need to say.
00:18:15 Lucy
But then it is the give the letter or send the letter and run and then wait. Terrifying for the response not knowing if it's gonna be days or weeks before it comes. But for me that is how I can communicate.
00:18:20 Merrily
Really.
00:18:30 Merrily
Yeah.
00:18:31 Merrily
Oh, that's such a good. Yeah. I never thought about it that way, but yeah, that's kind of like I.
00:18:35 Merrily
Guess my preferred way, so that's pretty funny.
00:18:41 Merrily
So I know you're a very magical person.
00:18:45 Merrily
I also I saw you know, I I got your book, the Kitchen Witch companion. I know. It's like part of like a another collection, I believe. And and it's so cool because you kind of write about how the kitchen is such a magical place.
00:19:00 Merrily
Can you kind of give us a little taste of that? What you're kind of exploring there?
00:19:05
Ohh.
00:19:06 Lucy
So it's part of a a twin pairing. So Sarah Robinson, who I Co.
00:19:12 Lucy
Authored it with.
00:19:13 Lucy
Wrote an extremely good selling book called Kitchen Witch and it was food, folklore and fairy tale because that's her real passion and we had lots of.
00:19:27 Lucy
Of letters and and emails and messages from people.
00:19:31 Lucy
Saying. But what about the recipes?
00:19:33
I mean.
00:19:34 Lucy
Right.
00:19:34 Lucy
OK, so I absolutely love to cook. Food is my love language. It always has been eating out together, you know, going to friends houses, having friends to us, cooking for those I love and eating is just an absolute joy to me. And you know when.
00:19:54 Lucy
When life isn't good, it always seems to kind of make it bring back the magic.
00:20:01 Lucy
So I've always wanted to write a cookery book. When I was 18, I wrote to my favorite cookery book authors and said how do you get started in cookery writing? So for me, that was the first dream, but I live in a very small village where there are 5.
00:20:20 Lucy
Cookery authors, most of them are best selling some of the best known cookery authors in our country, so it kind of made the market a bit small for me to kind of enter into. So I I realized that wasn't going to be my field and also.
00:20:24
Wow.
00:20:31 Merrily
Right.
00:20:37 Lucy
You know, to get started in any writing, you have to tend to do a lot of writing articles on different topics to kind of get your voice out there, get yourself known, and the idea of writing, you know, recipes for, say, moussaka or leek and potato soup and and having to kind of.
00:20:57 Lucy
Say interesting things about them and you know the recipe is gonna be the same as anybody else's recipe, because how different can it be?
00:21:04 Lucy
It just that filled me with dread and boredom. So food Kitchen Witch companion is the opposite of that? It is everything that is meaningful and magical about cooking. So it's the first half of it is theory about what kitchen witchery is, how we make magic in our kitchens, in our homes.
00:21:24 Lucy
What that means, what that can look like?
00:21:27 Lucy
And we've got uh.
00:21:29 Lucy
I think there's thirteen different contributors from diverse backgrounds and around the world who share their insights and recipes as well because like we were just two of us and we both come from similar ish South of England backgrounds, you know, white middle class. So there was only.
00:21:50 Lucy
So much diversity we can bring to the thing and we really wanted to kind of.
00:21:55 Lucy
Increase that. So we we we have this beautiful melting pot of lots of different people with different practices and backgrounds and and.
00:22:07 Lucy
So the writing about magic, we're thinking about what is magic? How do we make it in the kitchen? What does that look like? And that then leads us into kind of feminism, you know, because we've got.
00:22:19 Lucy
The kitchen being the place of for the Domestic Goddess or for the housewife, and how we feel about those terms and the expectations that are put in a gendered way on our shoulders as women when it comes to kitchens and cooking and cleaning and cleanliness and domesticity and making the magic of Santa and.
00:22:32
Hmm.
00:22:41 Lucy
Every you know, wedding and birthday cake and everything that women have to do to be good women. And so it was a real kind of exploration of all of that and unpacking of.
00:22:53 Lucy
The bits that we love of the kitchen and the bits that have challenged us and how we can find new ways of really making magic in our own ways rather than feeling like we have to conform to some vision of what the perfect kitchen witch or the perfect Domestic Goddess looks like.
00:23:10
MHM.
00:23:11 Lucy
So that's the first half and then the second-half is our recipes that are really meaningful to us. So there's family recipes, there's recipes that we've done for seasonal celebrations. It's organised around the seasons because that's very much how we both kind of cook and sell.
00:23:29 Lucy
Great. So it's interwoven with ways of celebrating the wheel of the year, ways of celebrating nature's bounty at each of those times. There's lots and lots of edible flowers in there, cause that's a big love of mine. There's the symbolism of the ingredients we use, as well as the actual magic of how they work in our bodies.
00:23:50 Lucy
The things that they give to us and how we can work with them magically. So there's each of these threads is just woven through the whole thing. So it was just it was a delight to work on.
00:24:00 Lucy
Because as I said before, like most of my work is very solitary. Writing is a very solitary thing for me. And so to be doing it with somebody, to have somebody there, who I just, I love working with Sarah, we've worked on, I've worked on six of her books now.
00:24:05
Hmm.
00:24:19 Lucy
It's the first book I've ever co-authored. The first book she's ever co-author.
00:24:23 Lucy
And just to have somebody there, so it wasn't always my problem that like what we do now or how do we do this, it was there was always someone to talk it through with. There was always somebody else's ideas coming bubbling through. There was always somebody else's expertise to hand that over to and say, look, that's your Forte. Run with it.
00:24:28 Merrily
Hmm.
00:24:43 Lucy
So like we've got Meditations going throughout it you.
00:24:45 Lucy
Know.
00:24:46 Lucy
She's a yoga teacher.
00:24:48 Lucy
And is very popular meditation teacher online on insight timer and so we have these meditations to really get you into the magical headspace so that even if you don't want to like cook anything, you can still experience the magic of the seasons and kitchen witchery.
00:24:55 Merrily
Hmm.
00:25:09 Lucy
Through your imagination. So yeah, it was a joy. And then I illustrated it too, which again was was another joy. It's I've done.
00:25:19 Lucy
You know, kind of illustrations of a sort in in my books, create tricks and full circle health, but nothing like the the scope of this and obviously it being a book on food and cookery like the the images of the herbs and the flowers.
00:25:40 Lucy
Had to be identifiable so that you know if you didn't know what something was, you could see the picture and then go out and look for it in the garden or the hedgerows rather than just, you know, kind of be an expressive kind of illustration. It had to be really.
00:25:54 Lucy
Actual so that was that was really.
00:25:58 Lucy
I mean, it was a daunting thing I when I started what I was going to do was just we had some images that we had bought for her original kitchen witch book and I was just going to add in the ones that we couldn't find anywhere, but it just snowballed into something else. And just every day I'd send her another like.
00:26:18 Lucy
10 illustrations I'd done. I was in bed with migraines.
00:26:23 Lucy
And so I couldn't read. I couldn't concentrate on stuff, but for some reason I could draw. And so I just drew and Drew and Drew and just absolutely loved.
00:26:33 Lucy
It.
00:26:34
Wow.
00:26:35 Merrily
What a cool process, though. Yeah, it's very like and it is that too. When I talk, we're going to talk about your other book Crow Moon. I'm very excited. But yeah, you have this way of, like, really thinking through the process of, like, this level of the process. Let's explore that this level of the process. Explore that like, the way you walk through it is so whole.
00:26:55 Merrily
Probably using the wrong word, but it's very wholesome. It's like the whole thing it's you're very considerate of.
00:27:01 Merrily
And so, yeah, you and Sarah did a.
00:27:02 Merrily
Great job so.
00:27:04 Lucy
Thank you. I just, I really enjoy.
00:27:08 Lucy
Taking things as deep as I can and trying to find all the dimensions of them because you know, everything's been done before. You know, it's certainly not the first book on kitchen witchery or the first book of recipes that ever has been published. So it's like, how can I make this mine? How can I take it in a direction I've never seen before?
00:27:25 Merrily
Hmm.
00:27:29 Lucy
How can I find the depths in my own practice and experience?
00:27:34 Lucy
And then how do I go deeper still? So that's always the challenge I set myself and and it's fun. I mean, it really is fun because, you know, in daily life, with the exception of doing things like podcast interviews, people don't tend to ask you, you know, what's under there and then what, and then what.
00:27:53 Merrily
Yeah.
00:27:53 Lucy
So it's just lovely to be able to do that with a topic that you are passionate about, that it has always been close to your heart that you've immersed yourself in other people's work for so long and suddenly it's like and now it's my.
00:28:08 Lucy
Then.
00:28:09 Lucy
How much deeper can I go? What has what has been missing for me?
00:28:11 Merrily
Yeah.
00:28:14 Lucy
In the things that I've read before, and that's for me.
00:28:17 Lucy
Always because there's.
00:28:19 Lucy
Always doubts that come into your mind. You know, there's like 400,000 books published a year, you know. Does the world need another book? No.
00:28:28 Lucy
But.
00:28:29 Lucy
No, I have never written on this topic. I have never given my perspective, my insight, my missing pieces on this. So there will never be another book like mine. So that's OK. There's there's space.
00:28:41 Lucy
For it then.
00:28:42 Merrily
Yeah. Wow, that's so inspiring. Yeah. Everybody to write a book. Like, get your ideas on there. That's so cool.
00:28:51 Merrily
Yeah. So thanks for walking through that now. Yeah, definitely. So Crow Moon.
00:28:57 Merrily
I live in the Pacific Northwest. We have pros here that are very intelligent. My husband and I, we feed the crows outside. We have a really great relationship with them. And so, yeah, I was so excited that you were doing a book about on crows. And again it's like.
00:29:13 Merrily
Very multi layered, the way you wrote it, your illustrations are amazing. I like the dual chromatic black and white is so cool. Looking like everything about it I love. So can you tell us about like what inspired you to write it?
00:29:29 Lucy
I absolutely will, but first thing I will ask your question wasn't what you were expecting.
00:29:35 Merrily
No, I thought it was just going to be like a history on crow, basically, like, right, like a history. But there's there's some of that. But then there's, like, your story with the crows. Then there's poetry. There's quote. I mean, it's awesome. Like, it's basically I. I was pleasantly surprised.
00:29:54 Lucy
Good because.
00:29:57 Lucy
My intention when sharing it.
00:30:00 Lucy
Was I didn't want to let people know too much about what comes later on in the book. I wanted it to be a kind of an unfolding and a journey of discovery. So it it was a tricky book to Mark, Mark it in that sense because obviously when you it's not a fiction book, so there isn't kind.
00:30:20 Lucy
Of like a.
00:30:20 Lucy
Spoiler that I can live on one level, and yet there is, you know, there is. There are bits of it that I do not talk about in interviews because I want people to discover it.
00:30:29 Lucy
For themselves.
00:30:30 Lucy
And and.
00:30:33 Lucy
So but it's tricky because you know I I'm somebody who loves to share about everything and.
00:30:36 Lucy
Love.
00:30:37 Lucy
To kind of.
00:30:38 Lucy
Kind of give insights into all the bits and pieces, and yet with this it's like, how do you tell people about this book but not tell them at the same time? How do you share about it yet, keep it hidden and in a way, that's the theme of the book is, you know, kind of what is hidden.
00:30:53 Lucy
What is in the dark woods that we cannot see or cannot talk about? And how do we get into the dark woods? And why do we go into the dark woods and what the dark woods?
00:31:04 Lucy
Bar. So that's kind of a large piece of of the puzzle of it. So Crow Moon started as a real experience. It started with me going into the woods at dusk. The dog walkers were coming out, and suddenly the sky.
00:31:24 Lucy
This became alive with thousands upon thousands of black birds. I called them crows. I later discovered that they.
00:31:32 Lucy
Were rooks where we live.
00:31:34 Lucy
And it was just an awesome experience. Just standing there by myself in the darkening woods with these 10s of thousands of black birds flying around me, cawing and moving away and together and dancing in the air that's settling into the trees, and then just silence as though nothing had happened.
00:31:55 Lucy
And.
00:31:56 Lucy
I was just.
00:31:58 Lucy
It was such a direct experience of the magical.
00:32:03 Lucy
The other world.
00:32:04 Lucy
Really.
00:32:05 Lucy
And yet it was just some birds flying over my head and going to their nests, which they do every day during the autumn and winter. I'd just never seen it.
00:32:14 Lucy
And I was amazed that nobody else was there watching because it just felt like such a it was a life changing moment and there was no one to share it with. There was no one to say. Ohh, did you just see that? Did you feel that too? It was just so it was just a really bizarre experience of the magical bang in the midst of the mundane.
00:32:34 Lucy
Everyday world and just unexpected coming from nowhere and igniting within me.
00:32:45 Lucy
A curiosity about.
00:32:48 Lucy
Why these birds are flying like this? Is this normal? Is there something strange and weird that you know? So I started this adventure asking those questions.
00:32:59 Lucy
Why are there so many crows in the woods? Why are they flying around?
00:33:04 Lucy
And it became.
00:33:06 Lucy
As I was saying before, this thing of going down and down layer after layer, why are humans so fascinated by crows like what are crows? Why, why crows rather than other birds I've, you know, I've always liked birds, but they fascinated me and they fascinate a lot of humans. So what? What is that? And then going.
00:33:26 Lucy
The next layer down, why do we hate them so much? Because there's a lot of hatred for blows in our culture, and that's really historical too. So there's these two threads of crow.
00:33:31 Merrily
Yeah.
00:33:38 Lucy
As.
00:33:39 Lucy
Something very kind of treasured, something that appears in a lot of stories and myths and legends all the way up to today as a symbol that is both revered as something of deep knowledge and wisdom, but also feared connected to death.
00:33:59 Lucy
And bad omen.
00:34:03 Lucy
And so it was. Why have we, as humans connected these particular meanings to these particular creatures? Then we start to explore symbology and why we we make symbols and how we create our own languages of symbols as humans. Then it starts to go further into the dark woods.
00:34:23 Lucy
Following the process of my own life, which was a gradual disintegration of losing meaning in my own life, losing.
00:34:33 Lucy
Losing a kind of a sense of the life force being totally burned out, totally exhausted and overwhelmed, and not knowing what path to take, which way to go forward.
00:34:47 Lucy
Which then developed into incredibly intense long migraines. I went from having, you know, a migraine once a month for one or two.
00:34:53
Hmm.
00:34:57 Lucy
Ways to having 15 or so days of migraine a month, which is, yeah, it changes your life pretty fast.
00:35:07 Merrily
Yeah.
00:35:08 Lucy
So there was this kind of excitement of what I just discovered in the natural world and this being brought to my knees by pain and having to be in darkness.
00:35:19 Lucy
And not be able to be out in the in the woods discovering more and a feeling of losing my creativity at the same time as being creative and finding new creative avenues. But this constant fear of.
00:35:37 Lucy
How it's going to turn out what's going to happen and.
00:35:38 Merrily
Hmm.
00:35:41 Lucy
Images and symbols emerging that really scared me and I didn't know what to do with them, so I decided to follow them rather than kind of shut them out like we do with nightmares and kind of say I'm not going to think about that, I'm not going to look at that. Instead, I followed these strange, disturbing images, one of which was the crow. Another was the caped.
00:36:02 Lucy
Woman the caped figure that appeared to me.
00:36:05 Lucy
And I followed them through a process of Union active imagination.
00:36:12 Lucy
Shamanic journeying, witchcraft practices and creative practices, a practice I I have created, established, evolved, whatever you want to say, called word and image.
00:36:26 Lucy
In order to follow.
00:36:28 Lucy
These images to see where they came from within me, what meanings they held, and to see where they were trying.
00:36:35 Lucy
To lead me.
00:36:36 Lucy
So it was a really interesting creative process for me. So most of my books are word based. Just, you know, ordinary paperback books and. And as I said with.
00:36:49 Lucy
With the kitchen witch companion? I illustrated it, but there were illustrations.
00:36:54 Lucy
Whereas in Crow Moon, a large part of the journey is through the images, the images themselves were leading the way they were dictating the narrative, the.
00:37:08 Lucy
Words at many places came after the images, so it was a totally different way of creating a book.
00:37:17 Lucy
And it was both exciting and very scary as to know, is it gonna work? Is it like, is it gonna work as a book? Is it?
00:37:25 Lucy
Gonna be readable.
00:37:26 Lucy
Is it gonna be of interest or is it gonna be too weird? And then again, to sell it to share it with the world was like, oh, sugar, how's this going to land? And actually, it was my fastest.
00:37:36 Lucy
Selling book of all time so.
00:37:37 Lucy
There we go. Ohh yeah.
00:37:39
I was sure.
00:37:40 Lucy
It was just going to be a little niche book that only my ******** fans were going to buy and read, and it was gonna be, you know, a cult classic that's like.
00:37:42 Merrily
Mm-hmm.
00:37:50 Lucy
200 copies over its lifetime, and that was that. People would occasionally you'd know a ******** Lucy HPS fan by the fact they say I've read Crow Moon and that ohh wow, you were about 5.
00:37:52
Yeah.
00:38:01 Merrily
Others. Well, I'm glad it was a surprise for you. So how it turned out. That's really cool. Yeah, I think.
00:38:07
Replies.
00:38:10 Merrily
The the thing for me, right? Yeah, as you know.
00:38:14 Merrily
I love crows, right? So that was a draw. And then just the the way the in it like the how the book is beautiful like the way you design the cover, it's just you're it's very attractive to to me it's like intriguing. So I think you just did an excellent job. So yeah, that image and it's funny because you were like.
00:38:34 Merrily
Like had to work. You changed your process, right? Instead of words first and then image and it and this thing started with an image essentially of the crows, right. And you're like, what is this?
00:38:44 Merrily
Figure that out. So wow. Cool. I love that you just kind of walked us through that. So it's very.
00:38:51 Lucy
And The thing is like that was my 12th book, so it's not my first rodeo. And the thing about writing books is you got to, if you want to make a living as a creative, you have to.
00:38:56
Right.
00:39:04 Lucy
Bring your readership.
00:39:05 Lucy
With you, you can't kind of totally jump ship and do something.
00:39:10 Lucy
Totally left field, but you've also gotta keep things interesting for yourself as a creative. You can't be constantly kind of redoing the same thing. So it's that constant balance between is this going to keep the readers happy? Is it going to be what they expect from me or want from me?
00:39:28 Lucy
And.
00:39:29 Lucy
Is this nourishing something within me? Is it challenging me enough? Is am I being challenged to take that next step in my my own creative journey because they all take the next step in my own psychological development, in my own kind of giving language to stuff within, but to give oneself?
00:39:49 Lucy
A creative challenge, too is is interesting and exciting because.
00:39:56 Lucy
Creativity is partly about aesthetics and and making art of some sort, but it's also about using our brains creatively, thinking outside the box.
00:40:10 Lucy
And so it's it's always nice when it can fit both of those challenges.
00:40:15 Merrily
Yeah.
00:40:16
Yeah.
00:40:18 Merrily
Is this so? Yeah. You have like your own collection of books. And you also do your publishing company, Women Craft publishing. What would you say is your the biggest gift of being a publisher like?
00:40:36 Merrily
What's your your favorite thing about being a publisher?
00:40:41 Lucy
I think it's partly the not doing things by myself, you know, because it's that feeling of.
00:40:51 Lucy
Being creatively involved, working creatively alongside other people is just so nourishing and being able to share what I've learnt along the way with our authors, most of whom are first time.
00:41:06 Lucy
There's, you know, because.
00:41:09 Lucy
Obviously, you know we we share, I share my editorial skills, we share our marketing abilities. You know all of that which any publisher would do. But what we also do is to share.
00:41:22 Lucy
I mentor our authors and we have a a kind of a a community of our authors so.
00:41:23 Merrily
Hmm.
00:41:30 Lucy
They when they launched their books into the world, they're not alone in that emotional process. That spiritual process of birthing a book into the world, which is extremely.
00:41:43 Lucy
Vulnerable. It's intense on an energetic level and.
00:41:50 Lucy
It's something that I don't think most publishers, mainstream publishers would even notice or acknowledge. And yet, being an author myself, I really know how big that is.
00:41:56 Merrily
Hmm.
00:42:01 Lucy
And so I think that's the thing that I really give to our authors, which differentiates us from any other publisher I know of. But it's certainly why we've now got authors who are choosing us who have published. They have been mid career authors. They've published several books with different publishers, and they can see that we are offering something.
00:42:23 Lucy
Absolutely unique within the publishing world.
00:42:27 Lucy
And that's really a it's a real honor to have that recognized, you know, because we don't have the reach of, you know, pay house or Harper Collins or anything. But we have the integrity and we have the vision which is beyond just, you know, how much money.
00:42:40 Merrily
Yeah.
00:42:47 Lucy
Let's make.
00:42:48 Merrily
Hmm.
00:42:49 Merrily
Wow. Yeah, that is so, yeah, that's such a cool again. Because you were an author and then you kind of understand the process and helping and mentoring people. Wow. What a special thing. That's awesome.
00:43:01 Lucy
I just think that publishers, because most haven't been authors. Most publishers have only ever been editors or creating producing books in terms of creating an object or creating a text.
00:43:13 Merrily
Clear.
00:43:16 Lucy
I think the missing that lived experience of of what it means to be an author, all the complex threads of what it means to be an author, what it means to sell yourself, what it means to create to a deadline, what it means to have somebody go through your work and rip it apart and say that's not OK.
00:43:37 Lucy
And rewrite that. You know, they're all really challenging things, which, if you haven't experienced it yourself, you wouldn't.
00:43:42 Lucy
Know.
00:43:45 Merrily
Yeah. Yeah. So it's nice to have somebody at least who's walked the same Rd. So that's really cool.
00:43:51 Lucy
Yeah, they know that. I would never ask them to do anything that I wouldn't do myself or that I that I don't underestimate what I am asking.
00:44:03 Merrily
Right.
00:44:04 Lucy
Which, you know, I think especially for.
00:44:09 Lucy
Creative people generally in our culture have just been kind of are not respected. You know, when you are developing your creativity before it makes money. That part of the process isn't respected at all. And then when it does make money, you're just harnessed as a cash cow and you're expected to churn out more and more and more.
00:44:23 Merrily
Yeah.
00:44:31 Lucy
The same, you're just expected to produce in the way that a cow in a dairy farm produces milk. It's just, you know, kind of food in one end, milk out the other, there's there's no respect for who you are as a human, how you're developing.
00:44:47 Lucy
What challenges you none of that, that doesn't matter. And I just, I think it's so vital to.
00:44:55 Lucy
Respect the humanity of creative people because they give so much to our collective culture, and they're doing so much work that most people don't have the time or the energy or skills to do themselves and are bringing back the things that sustain us. The things that nurture us, the things that.
00:45:16 Lucy
Create.
00:45:17 Lucy
All of the things that we love to do and wear and listen to and read and like they create what we wrap ourselves with and define ourselves with, and identify ourselves as. So I I really feel there's a need for respect there. Yeah. And support, you know, deep support of the whole creative process.
00:45:39 Merrily
Yeah, you're right, I think, yeah, especially mentioning sort of like you're not considered either an artist or a writer or whatever creative field until you've sold something until it has, you know, and there might be something to that. Yeah. Made it made it big, whatever that means. And so it kind of. Yeah. So we're even starting out.
00:45:51 Lucy
Made it safe.
00:45:58 Merrily
Like I just I I I'm just doing this, you know. Not I'm not a writer. I'm not an artist. I'm just, you know, because I can't.
00:46:05 Merrily
Be called that yet?
00:46:06
Hello.
00:46:08 Merrily
Oh, wow. Yeah, I love that humanity that you're bringing to to artists and creatives and your writers. So that's really great.
00:46:17 Merrily
So we're definitely wrapping up here. Are there any upcoming? I know you you've just kind of got off this book release, but is there are there any other projects or events that you want the listeners to know?
00:46:31 Lucy
About I mean.
00:46:31 Lucy
There's no such thing as a quiet time.
00:46:33 Lucy
In my life.
00:46:34 Lucy
Unless I'm floored by some sort of.
00:46:36 Lucy
And even then, I still seem to kind of create like a mad woman. So my.
00:46:42 Lucy
To launch Crow Moon, I created a conversation series as a kind of promotional tool with some of the women I had quoted in the book and have always longed to have conversations with most of them are authors several witches and.
00:47:01 Lucy
Just.
00:47:03 Lucy
It was just an absolute joy, so I had a lot of people asking for them to be made publicly available, so I launched, as one does in the a couple of weeks after you've launched a book, I launched a podcast, so it's been, it's been whizzing around my head for several years.
00:47:19
Well.
00:47:22 Lucy
And I I just suddenly it was like, OK, this is the moment to do it. So it's called creative magic and it.
00:47:30 Lucy
Explores both creativity and magic, and how the two intersect, and so for some people it's more about the creative process and for others it's more about magic and for some it.
00:47:42 Lucy
Is about both.
00:47:44 Lucy
So I have a really interesting array of artists.
00:47:49 Lucy
Authors singer songwriters Permaculturalists, which is podcasters, actress, you know, really interesting range of across the creativity spectrum.
00:48:07 Lucy
And so the first season is called wild initiations. After the the the series of interviews. So it includes the series that I had, as well as several new interviews. So I'm really enjoying doing that. And then if this is out then.
00:48:27 Lucy
And I've got my E course word and image where I share my process about this word and image process I was talking about that I used for my book Crow Moon.
00:48:40 Lucy
And that's starting on the 3rd of May, and it's a four week E course for people to work at their own pace. Lots and lots of exercises and insights into how we can harness the left and right hemispheres of our brain and the words and the images and how we can leave them together to harness.
00:49:00 Lucy
Our creative power and dive deeper into our mates.
00:49:04 Lucy
So there is.
00:49:05 Lucy
That.
00:49:07 Merrily
Lucy, my goodness. Yeah.
00:49:10 Lucy
As well as the upcoming books, we've got three more books coming out from women craft this year, plus the woman craft compendium to celebrate our ten year anniversary at Woman Craft. So we've had 200 contributions from women, craft readers and authors, which I'm currently compiling into an anthology.
00:49:20 Merrily
MHM.
00:49:30 Lucy
Of women's words, and the title is weaving our way beyond patriarchy. And so it's a very powerful collection of of writing and that will be out in November.
00:49:46 Merrily
You are a. You're definitely a force a force.
00:49:49 Merrily
Of lots of.
00:49:51 Merrily
Yeah, you're an inspiration. I love it.
00:49:54
Thank you.
00:49:56 Merrily
So yeah, all sorts of cool things coming up. And I do remember seeing about your podcast now, and I have to put it in my podcast loop because like, it sounds awesome. Like I love.
00:50:05 Merrily
I love that you get to talk with people because it's like.
00:50:07 Merrily
My favorite thing too. Yeah, it's.
00:50:09 Lucy
Just it's so lovely because I'm somebody who struggles with talking to people, you know, kind of in busy situations or, you know, just kind of normal social situations. I love to dive deep. And so this get gives me the opportunity to.
00:50:16 Merrily
Yeah.
00:50:22
Yeah.
00:50:25 Lucy
Talk to all of these people whose art or creative work or magic I've loved from afar, or I.
00:50:31 Lucy
Had you know conversations with or collaborated and little things with, but this gives us a real chance to deep dive and it is just a joy.
00:50:35 Merrily
Yeah.
00:50:40 Merrily
Yeah, that's so great. I'm so glad that you found an outlet for that, because it's it's really fun. So where can people find you and all the cool?
00:50:49 Merrily
Things that you're up to.
00:50:52 Lucy
So my website is lucyhPearce.com and there you can find information about my books. More about me, links to big upcoming events and teaching.
00:51:08 Lucy
For people based in the UK, I'm teaching an event called the witches revival in Lancaster and the second weekend of August and going back for a second year. That was great fun last year and I'm back with women craft. We've got a store there and I will be teaching a writing workshop there.
00:51:29 Lucy
At Lucy HPS on Instagram, which is where I love to hang out, the same on Facebook, but it tends just to be copies over from from my Instagram content.
00:51:42 Lucy
At Creative Magic Podcast for the podcast and women craft publishing.com for all of our books signed copies, E courses, and at Women Craft Publishing on all the social media too. So there you go. That will keep people busy.
00:51:58 Merrily
Yes, for sure. And you're you were busy. You're gonna keep us all busy. So it's a great relationship. So kind of the final thing you've shared so much wisdom already. But is there, like some final words of wisdom that you'd like?
00:52:11 Merrily
To share with us.
00:52:13
Hmm.
00:52:17 Lucy
I'd love to say there is, but I'm done.
00:52:20 Merrily
You know, I did. You know, you already. Like I said, you already gave us so much to think about. So everybody go back and relisten you missed anything because there's a lot of Nuggets in there for sure.
00:52:31 Merrily
Well, thank you, Lucy. I so appreciate your time and all your wonderful works. Thank you so much. Thank you.
00:52:38 Merrily
Sorry.
00:52:39 Merrily
Lucy is such an amazing, inspiring person and I'm so glad to have spent time with her. Do check out the show notes to learn more about all the wonderful projects that Lucy and Woman Craft publishing are working on. Do remember to like, follow and subscribe to the casual temple on your YouTube or favorite podcast platform. It really helps us grow. Thank you for listening and being an important part of the casual temple.