Our Story

In Season 2 of KnotWork Storytelling, Marisa Goudy took Seamus Heaney’s translation of the Irish medieval epic poem, Sweeney Astray and crafted Lost in the Wild, At Home Within: A Story of Mad Sweeney. In that retelling of a pagan warrior king driven into exile by a saint’s curse, there wasn’t time to explore the women’s stories. This time, Marisa presents a conversation between Eoran, Sweeney’s wife, and the Mill Hag, who played a key part in Sweeney’s time in the wilds.

Our Guest

Loraine Van Tuyl, PhD, CHT, is a licensed clinical psychologist, a shamanic eco psychologist, and a Depth Hypnosis practitioner. She has distilled thirty years of diverse and well-rounded professional experiences into an elegant and seamless integration of modern psychological expertise, ancient healing practices, and nature wisdom. She was born and raised in Suriname, the most forest-covered nation in the world, which inspired her unique Soul Authority™, Re-Naturing©, and Re-TREE-ting© methods. These tools have empowered hundreds of spiritual empaths and transformational leaders in psychology, holistic health, academia, the arts, renewable energy, economics, social justice work, and spiritual entrepreneurship by connecting them to their innate wisdom and healing powers.

She is the author of Amazon Wisdom Keeper: a Psychologist’s Memoir of Spiritual Awakening and Soul Authority: Liberatory Tools to Heal from Oppressive Patterns and Restore Trust in Your Heart Compass.

Find Loraine: website, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube

Our Conversation

• This is a dialog between two women with very different perspectives, but it’s also a conversation between civilization and the wilderness, between Christianity and the old ways that came before.
• Speaking as a psychotherapist, Loraine explores trauma around attachment and Gabor Maté - the struggle to be safely attached and also authentically ourselves. How do we connect, trust, and grieve in that context?
• Gabor Maté’s work is particularly relevant to the legacy of collective and individual trauma in Ireland.  Kathy Scott’s work with Irish cultural organization, The Trailblazery, is devoted to applying these ideas, promoting healing and “post traumatic growth.”
• Patriarchal conditioning that causes women to focus on the needs of men. Their conversation definitely does not pass the Bechdel Test, which measures whether women in a story discuss something other than men and male interests.
• Loraine’s diverse ethnic background as a woman from Suriname, and her PhD dissertation on diversity and identity. Her work as a healer is focused on reconnecting to nature, beyond dualities  and is rooted in a critique of clinical psychology that is based on ego and obtaining objectives
• What it means to align all the parts of ourselves and be comfortable being both Eorann and the Hag.
• Lorraine describes the importance of the elements in her healing work, as well as the practice of re-TREE-ting, at the Sacred Healing Well. Learn more: