If Women Rose Rooted: A life-changing journey to authenticity and belonging

Scotch-Irish Blackie was born in England and has lived mostly in Scotland and Ireland. She offers the Celtic traditional stories of “first things,” which “honor Women as the creators of life, the bearers of the Cup of knowledge and wisdom, personifying the moral and spiritual authority of this fertile green and blue Earth” – and great stories they are. She mixes her personal story and poetry with the old stories. Here is how she states her understanding. “The sense of belonging to the world that those of us in these Western lands once had, that sense of deep rooting in the Earth, is all but dead. The patriarchy crippled it; Modernity dealt it the final blow. As a woman, I want to make it live again. We belong to each other, this land and I. The Eco-Heroine’s Journey is a journey back to a solid rooting in the land where we live and the traditions of our native places.” Her advice to older women: Pass your wisdom on. Tell your own story. Your truth shatters hypocrisy. When necessary, become fierce. Be wrathful.

We are reading this for book club and this is just a great book.

Majestic in its scope, “If Women Rose Rooted” is an insightful and inspiring book. Blackie is generous in her sharing of her own and others’ lives in service to restoring word and world. I am always grateful for books that incorporate a mythic perspective and this one, resonant with a Celtic heart, is soul-nourishing indeed.There are many aspects of the book to appreciate. Most striking to me is how “The Eco-Heroine’s Journey” is introduced as a framework, (a further development of Maureen Murdock’s Heroine’s Journey, sorely needed in our time of ecological despair). Without Blackie’s skilled weaving of many levels of story, that schema could stay abstract. Instead, it is offers a path from grief to empowerment and ultimately hope, that each, in our own way, can root and rise. I am full of gratitude for this offering and look forward to it rippling out into the world.Mary OakAuthor of "Heart's Oratorio: One Woman's Journey through Love, Death and Modern Medicine"

If you asked me just two weeks ago what my favorite book was, I’d give you a list of quite a few (I read a lot). While many books will forever be in my heart, this book stands out from the rest! Blackie’s book has left me changed; understood, heard, empowered, and most importantly, inspired!She so eloquently explains all the feelings and phases (I believe) most of us modern women struggle with. This book is pure magic yet brutal reality at the same time; a call for destruction of all the false facades we’ve had to hide behind and a call for a rebirth; true and strong, rooted yet gentle. Whatever your ethnic background sisters, I feel we all need to read this story, and answer the call!Reading this book “we are forced to go deep into ourselves, so that we might first discover what it is that we must accept, know, and above all lose before we can find out what it is that we might become” (p.115).

This book put words to my deep and growing sense of disorientation in the modern world. Sharon Blackie's work points us to a truer, richer, deeper way to live. As an American of Irish descent, I found her connection to our ancestral homeland even more profound and believe others in the Irish diaspora would, perhaps for the first time, go deep on who we truly are, through Blackie's storytelling. I tell everyone I know (who will listen) about this book.

As a fan of "Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype" and "Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants," I felt myself drawn to Sharon Blackie's book especially since it dealt with women and mythology."If Women Rose Rooted"is an honest, sometimes emotion-stealing read of a woman in search of her roots and her rootedness. Do you ever have a strong desire or pull to not just visit but belong somewhere other than where you live? Blackie did. And this is the story of her journey to find not just the place but her authentic self.Nowadays, I believe we're so caught up in busy-ness that we don't take time to slow down, to dream, to probe the soil, to immerse ourselves in nature. If CoVid-19 isolation/quarantine has done anything, I think it has given us time to do just that. Blackie helps guide our self-exploration by creating a "heroine's journey" which is similar, yet different, to Joseph Campbell's "hero's journey". Within each section of the heroine's journey, she tells stories of Celtic mythology, stories of strong women who loved nature, nurtured the land, and were independent. She weaves her own personal story into these retellings.". . . women want Sovereignty--to take up their ancient role as the moral and spiritual authority of the land. In our native myths and stories, Sovereignty represents the creative, regenerative, life-giving feminine principle; when it is balanced by the good masculine--when the goddess of the land enters into a sacred marriage with the true Kind of the people--then the land is fertile and the people safe from harm."". . . feminine qualities of relatedness are suppressed: relatedness to other humans, to the non-humans who share the planet with us, to nature and the rhythms of nature, as well as to the rhythms of the physical body and the stages of passages of our lives."This book is another that will remain in my ever-growing collection of nature and women studies.

Such a great book for girls and women to be empowered, learn that we don’t have to put up with the way we are treated, raised in this oppressive society!

Interesting and beautiful book.

No reliability when it comes to refunds. Very bad and disappointing.

This is a lovely book that provides so much inspiration for women to take action and follow their inner attachment towards things they care for - especially nature. It is a wonderful book that undermines the power of women in the conservation of nature for the past ages.

This book blew my mind. If you ever read "Women Who Run With The Wolves" and were disappointed, then this book is for you. If you liked WWRWTW then this is a million times more empowering, inspiring, informative and just easier to read. If you read Campbell's "The Hero's Journey" and wished there was an equivalent Heroine's Journey, then this is it. If you're a man who is sick of the patriarchal society AND grieving over the destruction of the planet, you may find this a powerful and enlightening read. In this book Sharon applies Celtic myth and folklore to her own Eco-Heroine's journey to show how to apply it to our own lives. She links the onset of the patriarchal society, beginning with the rewriting of the story of Adam & Eve into the Christian religion (thereby depicting women as a creation for man's pleasure alone, and as weak-willed temptresses, not to be trusted and responsible for the downfall of man) with the destruction of the planet. In the old Celtic (and worldwide) indigenous stories, women were the guardians and protectors of the Earth and all who live in it. They had sovereignty and were respected and revered, they held spiritual and moral authority. But the patriarchal society stripped women of their natural roles and so the planet goes unprotected. She advocates a re-telling of the old stories as a way for women to return to their natural roles of sovereignty and guardians of the planet and all its living beings. This is not about one gender dominating the other but about restoring balance which has been lost. It struck so many chords with me I couldn't put it down!