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The Bestiary of Unearthing · Romancing the Threshold

0:30
SPEAKER_00: I've been in love with the Beast since I was small.
0:34
SPEAKER_00: Not Belle.
0:35
SPEAKER_00: The Beast.
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Most people think Beauty and the Beast is about a woman's love
0:40
transforming a cursed man.
0:43
Or worse,
0:44
that it's teaching girls to see past male anger to some hidden
0:48
goodness.
0:50
SPEAKER_00: But I saw something completely different, even as a child.
0:54
SPEAKER_00: Beauty starts as the good daughter,
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SPEAKER_00: the one who asks for a single rose while her sisters demand jewels.
1:02
SPEAKER_00: Always sacrificing, always making herself smaller to keep family peace.
1:08
SPEAKER_00: Then she enters the beast's castle and everything changes.
1:13
For the first time in her life,
1:15
she doesn't have to perform her usefulness.
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SPEAKER_00: No more earning love through endless giving.
1:22
SPEAKER_00: No more being the emotional regulator for everyone else's needs.
1:27
SPEAKER_00: And the beast, he's not asking her to fix him or manage his curse.
1:33
SPEAKER_00: He just wants to be seen,
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SPEAKER_00: not as a project,
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SPEAKER_00: not as a problem to solve,
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SPEAKER_00: but witnessed in his full monstrosity and complexity.
1:43
SPEAKER_00: They transform not because she loves him despite his beastliness,
1:48
but because they witness each other without the exhausting
1:52
performance of goodness.
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SPEAKER_00: No earning attention through sacrifice.
1:58
SPEAKER_00: Just being seen as you actually are.
2:01
SPEAKER_00: That's the real magic.
2:03
And it would take me decades and 50 different monsters to
2:07
understand why that mattered so much.
2:10
This January,
2:12
I'm tearing through every closet in my house like a woman on a
2:15
mission.
2:17
My body is finally landing after months of that particular
2:21
exhaustion that comes
2:23
SPEAKER_00: from watching someone you love slowly leave,
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SPEAKER_00: especially when that relationship is complicated.
2:30
SPEAKER_00: The conflicting emotions make it extra challenging.
2:34
SPEAKER_00: Grief mixing with relief, mixing with old anger, mixing with love.
2:40
SPEAKER_00: My nervous system had been in high alert since July.
2:44
SPEAKER_00: I had just spent three weeks in Brazil from November into December,
2:49
SPEAKER_00: tropical summer heat,
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SPEAKER_00: terrible sinus infection,
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SPEAKER_00: and the surreal task of dismantling my mother's apartment,
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SPEAKER_00: her entire physical world.
3:00
SPEAKER_00: And when I flew home just before Christmas,
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SPEAKER_00: coming back to Portland rain after that dance heat and all that sorting,
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SPEAKER_00: I felt like I was finally being set free.
3:11
SPEAKER_00: So here I am,
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SPEAKER_00: giving myself until January's end to clean my own house,
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SPEAKER_00: room by room,
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SPEAKER_00: while a court of thorns and roses plays in my ears.
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SPEAKER_00: What grabbed me wasn't the fairy politics or even the romance.
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It was how desire,
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in its ancient meaning,
3:31
from the stars,
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becomes purpose.
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SPEAKER_00: How wanting something deeply enough shows you your path,
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SPEAKER_00: gives you the strength to making possible sacrifices.
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These fey burn with centuries-old purpose,
3:47
and that purpose sustains them through everything.
3:51
SPEAKER_00: When I finished that series, I wasn't done.
3:54
SPEAKER_00: I was famished for more.
3:56
SPEAKER_00: The algorithm gods started serving me orcs, then trolls, then minotaurs.
4:04
SPEAKER_00: Somewhere deep in my monster romance reading,
4:07
SPEAKER_00: I realized,
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SPEAKER_00: I'm living my own Beauty and the Beast story this whole year.
4:12
SPEAKER_00: Each creature teaching me what I knew as a child, but had buried.
4:17
By the time spring arrived and I devoured several books,
4:21
I started keeping a list.
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SPEAKER_00: Not just of the titles and authors in my reviews,
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SPEAKER_00: which I did keep,
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SPEAKER_00: but of the monsters themselves.
4:30
SPEAKER_00: What began as casual notes became something more deliberate.
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SPEAKER_00: Catalogue of creatures I was meeting.
4:38
Now,
4:39
at year's end,
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I can tell you,
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50 different monsters made it into my catalog.
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SPEAKER_00: 50 different anatomies, ways of moving through the world.
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And it's only now,
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looking back,
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that I realize I was creating my own bestiary.
4:56
SPEAKER_00: You know those medieval illuminated manuscripts?
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SPEAKER_00: Monks would paint elaborate guides to creatures both real and imagined.
5:04
SPEAKER_00: Lions and lambs alongside dragons and phoenixes.
5:09
SPEAKER_00: But the imagined creatures,
5:11
SPEAKER_00: many of them were monsters,
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SPEAKER_00: and they always came with the most elaborate warnings.
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You see,
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the word monster comes from Latin,
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monere,
5:21
which means to warn,
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to show.
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SPEAKER_00: In those old manuscripts, monsters were always cautionary tales.
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SPEAKER_00: The basilisk, whose gaze kills, teaching about the dangers of pride.
5:35
SPEAKER_00: The siren, whose song drowns sailors, warning against temptation.
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SPEAKER_00: Stay away, be good, don't stray from the righteous path.
5:45
SPEAKER_00: By my bestiary, these monsters weren't warnings.
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SPEAKER_00: They were teachers.
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Witnesses who saw their heroines whole without needing goodness
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as currency.
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SPEAKER_00: And from my catalog of 50, seven stood out.
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The ones whose medicine hit deepest,
6:03
who marked the major thresholds of my year.
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So let me take you through these seven teachers,
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starting with the ones who found me first.
6:13
The fae arrived in those January fairy battles while I was
6:17
sorting through closets
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SPEAKER_00: and Feyre was being dragged across the wall between worlds.
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SPEAKER_00: Now, in our folklore, the fae have always been the beautiful danger.
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We hung iron horseshoes over doorways,
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rang church bells to keep them at bay.
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SPEAKER_00: They steal babies from cradles.
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SPEAKER_00: Lead travelers astray with dancing lights.
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SPEAKER_00: Trap you in bargains where you lose more than you gain.
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SPEAKER_00: Never eat their food.
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SPEAKER_00: Never give them your true name.
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Our grandmothers knew the fae are what happens when beauty and
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power refuse to play
6:55
SPEAKER_00: by human rules.
6:58
SPEAKER_00: But in Sarah J Maas' A Court of Thorns and Roses,
7:01
SPEAKER_00: or Akatar for the fans,
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SPEAKER_00: when Pharaoh crosses into their realm,
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SPEAKER_00: these aren't just tricksters.
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SPEAKER_00: They're ancient beings who burn with purpose.
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SPEAKER_00: Their loves and hatreds last centuries.
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SPEAKER_00: Rhysand, the male lead, sacrificing everything for his night court.
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SPEAKER_00: Temlin, protective fury, turning toxic.
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SPEAKER_00: Even the villain, Amarantha, nursing a rejection for hundreds of years.
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SPEAKER_00: Their desires aren't whims.
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SPEAKER_00: They are the fuel that sustains them through immortality.
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SPEAKER_00: What struck me most, fae aren't just old stories.
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SPEAKER_00: They're reminders that the other world exists,
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SPEAKER_00: has always existed,
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SPEAKER_00: despite our modern insistence that it's just folklore or fairy tales.
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SPEAKER_00: Here I am,
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SPEAKER_00: fresh from dismantling my mother's physical world,
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SPEAKER_00: all those papers to sort,
8:00
SPEAKER_00: decisions about what to keep,
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SPEAKER_00: and the so-called real world has this way of being so loud
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SPEAKER_00: That it drowns everything else.
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SPEAKER_00: Bills, state lawyers, death certificates.
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SPEAKER_00: It drowns out everything, even the truth that we knew as children.
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SPEAKER_00: But these Faye,
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SPEAKER_00: they reminded me that the other world is right here,
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SPEAKER_00: waiting for us to notice it again.
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SPEAKER_00: ready to engage with us, to offer what we need.
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SPEAKER_00: Respite from grief,
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SPEAKER_00: inspiration when we're empty,
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SPEAKER_00: that boost of what we dismiss is mere imagination.
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SPEAKER_00: The hidden realm where transformation happens,
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SPEAKER_00: where love can be literal fire and bargains reshape reality.
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SPEAKER_00: It never left.
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SPEAKER_00: We just forgot how to see it under all that noise.
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SPEAKER_00: The Fae reconnected me to that child who knew other worlds existed,
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who didn't need proof beyond the burning in her chest when she
9:06
heard a really good
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SPEAKER_00: story.
9:09
SPEAKER_00: After the Fae reminded me that the other worlds existed or exist,
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SPEAKER_00: I needed to know,
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SPEAKER_00: what does it mean to live between them?
9:20
SPEAKER_00: Enter the orcs.
9:22
Now,
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if you know anything about Tolkien,
9:25
you know orcs are the ultimate corruption.
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SPEAKER_00: They're elves tortured and twisted into darkness.
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SPEAKER_00: Pure evil in armor.
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SPEAKER_00: Ugly.
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SPEAKER_00: Inside and out.
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SPEAKER_00: No redemption.
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SPEAKER_00: No complexity.
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SPEAKER_00: just monsters to be slain by heroes on their way to save the world.
9:45
SPEAKER_00: So imagine my surprise when the algorithm delivers me S.E.
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SPEAKER_00: Wendell's halfling and I meet Auric.
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SPEAKER_00: He's not conquering kingdoms or serving dark lords.
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SPEAKER_00: He's a half-orc,
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SPEAKER_00: half-human hunter who's shy,
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SPEAKER_00: quiet,
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SPEAKER_00: careful with his words,
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SPEAKER_00: yearning for somewhere to belong.
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SPEAKER_00: His orc clan sees his human blood as weakness.
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SPEAKER_00: He's too small, too soft, can't properly rage in battle.
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SPEAKER_00: Humans see his tusks in size and see only monster.
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SPEAKER_00: His own human mother abandoned him as a baby.
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SPEAKER_00: He belongs nowhere, except by neither world.
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SPEAKER_00: But here's what Wendell brought to light,
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SPEAKER_00: that being both and in an either-or world isn't weakness.
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SPEAKER_00: It's a different kind of strength.
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Orc doesn't waste energy trying to be more orc for his clan or
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more human for the towns.
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SPEAKER_00: He just is.
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Protective when someone needs defending,
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fiercing battle when forced,
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but tender always.
11:00
SPEAKER_00: And that liminal identity,
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SPEAKER_00: that hybrid nature,
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makes him exactly who Saoirse needs when she requires safe
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passage through
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SPEAKER_00: dangerous territory.
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SPEAKER_00: He knows all the in-between places,
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SPEAKER_00: all the hidden paths,
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SPEAKER_00: because he's spent his whole life walking them.
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SPEAKER_00: I just returned from Brazil,
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SPEAKER_00: from all that dismantling and deciding,
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SPEAKER_00: suspended between the good daughter I'd been for 50 years and...
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Like Auric,
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I've always been a threshold dweller,
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but this felt different.
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SPEAKER_00: The Auric showed me that in a world that demands you pick a side,
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SPEAKER_00: grieving or grateful,
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SPEAKER_00: broken or healed,
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SPEAKER_00: daughter or self,
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SPEAKER_00: being both is revolutionary.
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We guide others through liminal woods precisely because we
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refuse to be reduced to
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SPEAKER_00: anyone's simple story.
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SPEAKER_00: Plus, we can just appreciate the alchemy here.
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SPEAKER_00: Romance authors taking orcs,
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SPEAKER_00: Tolkien's irredeemable evil,
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SPEAKER_00: and making them tender lovers,
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SPEAKER_00: devoted mates,
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SPEAKER_00: gentle protectors.
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SPEAKER_00: If an orc can be a cinnamon roll hero, anything can transform.
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SPEAKER_00: So the orc taught me about being both and.
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SPEAKER_00: But what happens when you need to protect that liminal space?
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SPEAKER_00: When the threshold itself needs defending.
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SPEAKER_00: Time to meet the trolls.
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SPEAKER_00: I went hunting for troll romances because,
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SPEAKER_00: and this is where you can laugh,
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SPEAKER_00: that's my nickname for my husband.
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SPEAKER_00: my protective,
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SPEAKER_00: home-loving,
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grumpy when disturbed troll who guards our domestic space like
12:47
his own personal
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SPEAKER_00: bridge.
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So naturally,
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I needed to see what romance authors were doing with actual
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trolls.
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SPEAKER_00: In folklore, trolls are the ultimate gatekeepers.
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SPEAKER_00: They lurk under bridges demanding gold,
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SPEAKER_00: turn to stone and sunlight,
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SPEAKER_00: steal princesses to their mountain halls.
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SPEAKER_00: Always obstacles to trick or defeat, never to love.
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SPEAKER_00: But romance authors see deeper.
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SPEAKER_00: In Ella Larsen's Falling for the Hidden Folk series,
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SPEAKER_00: starting with Adjusting Focus,
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SPEAKER_00: Norwegian trolls guard their hidden valley fiercely from humans.
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SPEAKER_00: But here's the tension.
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SPEAKER_00: Their valley is struggling, dwindling.
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They need new blood to thrive again,
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and yet they keep the borders closed.
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It takes an avalanche threatening a group of human friends to
13:42
crack them open.
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SPEAKER_00: That crisis forces them to choose, maintain isolation or save lives.
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They save the humans,
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and in that opening,
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find not just love,
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but transformation.
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Both worlds change,
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trolls and humans,
14:01
because connection always transforms both sides.
14:06
SPEAKER_00: Emma Ham's The Kingdom Below trilogy goes darker.
14:10
SPEAKER_00: In a darkness so sweet,
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SPEAKER_00: Ragnar is a troll healer tricked into marrying a human woman,
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SPEAKER_00: a florist,
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SPEAKER_00: a gardener.
14:20
SPEAKER_00: At first he sees only her human fragility,
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SPEAKER_00: her weakness,
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SPEAKER_00: but slowly he recognizes her adaptability as its own kind of strength.
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SPEAKER_00: His friend Bjorn has it worse.
14:34
SPEAKER_00: In a light so blinding,
14:36
SPEAKER_00: we learn he spent years as the human king's prize fighter in a labyrinth.
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SPEAKER_00: When he finally escapes with a human priestess,
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SPEAKER_00: he's so traumatized he can't imagine belonging anywhere again.
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He can't believe anyone,
14:54
especially her,
14:55
could love something so wounded,
14:57
so beastly.
14:59
SPEAKER_00: The trolls taught me something essential about discernment.
15:03
SPEAKER_00: Like a gardener with their garden,
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SPEAKER_00: we need to know when to protect fiercely and when to open the gates,
15:11
SPEAKER_00: when to prune back invasive growth,
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SPEAKER_00: when to welcome new seeds.
15:16
SPEAKER_00: If we close off completely to new possibilities,
15:20
SPEAKER_00: even when they seem too other,
15:22
SPEAKER_00: too different,
15:23
SPEAKER_00: we kill our own life force.
15:26
But we also need boundaries against the greedy forces that
15:30
would strip mine our
15:31
SPEAKER_00: gardens for profit.
15:33
SPEAKER_00: It's not about all or nothing.
15:36
SPEAKER_00: It's about wisdom, knowing which bridges to guard, which to lower.
15:41
SPEAKER_00: Understanding that real protection sometimes means transformation.
15:47
SPEAKER_00: The trolls taught me about discerning when to open the gates.
15:51
SPEAKER_00: But once those gates are open and new life floods in,
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SPEAKER_00: what do you do with all that creative force?
15:59
SPEAKER_00: Time for the Minotaur to teach me about channeling abundance.
16:04
SPEAKER_00: Greek myths gives us the Minotaur as shame incarnate.
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SPEAKER_00: Born from a natural desire,
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SPEAKER_00: they lock him in a labyrinth,
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SPEAKER_00: feed him virgin sacrifices to keep the secret contained.
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SPEAKER_00: All that creative potential sent to die because of shame,
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SPEAKER_00: societal expectations,
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SPEAKER_00: family dynamics that drown out life force.
16:30
SPEAKER_00: The labyrinth isn't just his prison.
16:33
SPEAKER_00: It's shame turned into architecture.
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SPEAKER_00: So imagine my delight discovering C.M.
16:40
Nascostas,
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Hambrick Creek Universe,
16:43
starting with Morning Glory Milking Farm.
16:47
SPEAKER_00: Here's a town where hallmark sweetness meets monstrous diversity.
16:53
SPEAKER_00: Minotaurs, orcs, mothmen, all living alongside humans.
16:58
SPEAKER_00: And our minotaur?
17:00
SPEAKER_00: No labyrinth.
17:01
SPEAKER_00: Rourke walks into coffee shops, runs his business, lives a regular life.
17:08
SPEAKER_00: Well, mostly regular.
17:11
SPEAKER_00: He does visit the milking farm because,
17:14
SPEAKER_00: let's be practical,
17:16
minotaur biology means abundant production that would literally
17:21
clog the plumbing
17:22
SPEAKER_00: if not managed.
17:25
SPEAKER_00: So he donates, gets paid, moves on with his day.
17:30
SPEAKER_00: The irony?
17:31
SPEAKER_00: His biology gets turned into human Viagra,
17:35
SPEAKER_00: literally enhancing creative libido for those who need help,
17:39
SPEAKER_00: accessing theirs.
17:41
SPEAKER_00: What really matters to him?
17:43
SPEAKER_00: His growing feelings for Violet, who works at the facility.
17:47
SPEAKER_00: The Minotaur taught me about creative life force.
17:51
not as something shameful to hide,
17:54
but as abundance that needs the right channels.
17:57
SPEAKER_00: For 50 years,
17:58
SPEAKER_00: my creative energy has constantly been leaking,
18:02
SPEAKER_00: siphoned off by family members who wouldn't do their own healing work.
18:07
Always on call for someone else's crisis,
18:10
someone else's drama,
18:12
someone's refusal to grow.
18:15
SPEAKER_00: That constant drain meant never feeling my creativity at full flow,
18:21
SPEAKER_00: Now, no more leaking.
18:23
SPEAKER_00: The abundance is staggering.
18:25
SPEAKER_00: Articles are pouring out,
18:27
SPEAKER_00: podcast episodes,
18:29
SPEAKER_00: and I'm even daring myself to start my first romance novel.
18:33
SPEAKER_00: Turns out the life force was always there, waiting.
18:37
It just needed to stop being extracted by people who preferred
18:41
my emotional labor
18:43
SPEAKER_00: to their own transformation.
18:45
SPEAKER_00: The Minotaur showed me,
18:47
channel your gifts where you choose because creative overflow
18:53
isn't monstrous
18:54
SPEAKER_00: excess to manage.
18:56
SPEAKER_00: It's renewable resource flowing where it's meant to go.
19:01
SPEAKER_00: I'd found my creative flow channeled into my own Cambric Creek universe.
19:07
SPEAKER_00: But abundance means nothing if you're still starving in other ways.
19:12
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes you need death itself to teach you how to truly feed.
19:17
SPEAKER_00: In fantasy lore, liches are the ultimate abomination.
19:21
SPEAKER_00: Sorcerers who sold their souls for immortality,
19:25
SPEAKER_00: becoming skeletal undead through the darkest magic.
19:29
SPEAKER_00: They're a walking decay, everything life abhors.
19:34
SPEAKER_00: So when I picked up Layla Fay's lich romance, I braced for horror.
19:40
SPEAKER_00: What I found was the tenderest resurrection story.
19:44
SPEAKER_00: Virgil the Lich needs a bride to save his dying race.
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SPEAKER_00: He chooses a human dancer who's been carefully managed.
19:54
SPEAKER_00: Her keepers at the orphanage keep her on strict diets,
19:58
SPEAKER_00: monitor her weight,
20:00
SPEAKER_00: tell her no one will want her unless she stays slim.
20:05
She's technically alive,
20:06
but barely surviving,
20:08
rationed down to almost nothing.
20:11
SPEAKER_00: And this creature of death,
20:13
SPEAKER_00: he feeds her,
20:15
SPEAKER_00: actually feeds her,
20:17
SPEAKER_00: not just food,
20:18
SPEAKER_00: but care,
20:19
SPEAKER_00: attention,
20:20
SPEAKER_00: the radical permission to take up space.
20:24
He tends her like a garden that's been drought-stricken,
20:28
watering her back to life.
20:30
SPEAKER_00: By the end, they create a child together, literal life from death.
20:37
The lich taught me that sometimes what looks like death is
20:39
exactly what resurrects you.
20:42
SPEAKER_00: My mother's death freed my life force from being constantly split.
20:47
SPEAKER_00: For years, I lived within carefully drawn boundaries.
20:51
SPEAKER_00: Taught to be useful, but never expand beyond what she could tolerate.
20:56
Always tending my creative garden with one hand while
20:59
protecting it from her envy
21:01
SPEAKER_00: with the other.
21:02
SPEAKER_00: Not starvation exactly, but a careful rationing of self.
21:08
Keeping joy small enough not to trigger,
21:11
keeping success quiet enough not to threaten.
21:15
SPEAKER_00: Here's what Virgil showed me.
21:18
SPEAKER_00: After that kind of rationing ends, you don't just suddenly feast.
21:23
You're like that dancer,
21:24
unsure how to take up space,
21:27
suspicious of abundance.
21:29
SPEAKER_00: Resurrection is slow, patient work.
21:34
SPEAKER_00: It's learning to receive without constantly calculating the cost.
21:39
SPEAKER_00: It's someone seeing your careful portions and saying, you can have more.
21:44
SPEAKER_00: My mother couldn't celebrate my joys.
21:47
SPEAKER_00: They reminded her of what she'd never claimed.
21:51
SPEAKER_00: Now she's gone, and I'm learning what that orphan dancer learned.
21:56
The thing everyone calls monstrous,
21:58
death itself,
22:00
might carry the exact medicine you need.
22:03
SPEAKER_00: Not because death is romantic,
22:06
SPEAKER_00: but because sometimes endings are the only way beginnings can find you.
22:11
SPEAKER_00: The lich knows death and life aren't enemies.
22:15
SPEAKER_00: They're collaborators creating space for what was never allowed to grow.
22:21
SPEAKER_00: The lit showed me how death resurrects what was carefully rationed.
22:25
SPEAKER_00: But resurrection is one thing.
22:28
Claiming joy after generations of sorrow,
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that requires a different teacher entirely.
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SPEAKER_00: Enter the serpent whose gaze turns you to stone.
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SPEAKER_00: Medieval bestiaries warn the basilisks kill with a glance,
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SPEAKER_00: poison the ground with their breath,
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SPEAKER_00: their death incarnate,
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SPEAKER_00: the serpent king whose very presence destroys.
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So naturally,
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Lindsay Strobe makes them seduction tutors in Kiss of the
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Basilisk.
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SPEAKER_00: Tempris,
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SPEAKER_00: or Tem,
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SPEAKER_00: as she goes by,
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SPEAKER_00: must train with Caspin,
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SPEAKER_00: the serpent king,
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SPEAKER_00: to be chosen by the human prince as his queen.
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SPEAKER_00: A wild bachelor theme, but with basilisks.
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SPEAKER_00: The whole thing reads like a fever dream.
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Nighttime lessons in caves,
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learning desires,
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power,
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discovering her body's own magic.
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SPEAKER_00: But underneath a delicious tension, I found something that struck me.
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SPEAKER_00: Tim's mother is distant, carrying unnamed grief.
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She pushes her daughter towards everything she never had or
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could claim or was
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SPEAKER_00: permitted to want.
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SPEAKER_00: Her mother's unlived life hangs heavy through silence.
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SPEAKER_00: And when ten blooms in her sovereignty,
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SPEAKER_00: caught between prince and serpent,
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SPEAKER_00: claiming pleasure from both,
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SPEAKER_00: that's when it hit me.
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SPEAKER_00: Survivor's guilt isn't just about living when others died.
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SPEAKER_00: It's about thriving when those who came before couldn't.
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SPEAKER_00: My mother died not just with unhealed trauma, but with unlived joy.
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SPEAKER_00: a life forged by survival,
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SPEAKER_00: generational trauma,
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SPEAKER_00: economic hardship,
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SPEAKER_00: and an anger against the injustices of life and the world.
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SPEAKER_00: She became a warrior, but one who couldn't put down her sword.
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That hypervigilance that saved her life became the blade that
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cut anyone who got
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SPEAKER_00: close,
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SPEAKER_00: including those of us who loved her.
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SPEAKER_00: And here's the complexity that tears you apart.
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When mothers sacrifice their pleasure,
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daughters who claim it can feel like betrayal.
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SPEAKER_00: Every joy becomes accusation.
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SPEAKER_00: Every success highlights their lack.
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By being happy,
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truly,
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freely happy,
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we make visible everything they were denied.
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SPEAKER_00: We become walking proof of what they could have had in a different life,
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SPEAKER_00: with different chances,
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SPEAKER_00: with the healing they never got.
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SPEAKER_00: But the basilisk teaches something radical.
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SPEAKER_00: We don't honor our dead by joining their deprivation.
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SPEAKER_00: Tam's mother might have not smiled at her daughter's pleasure,
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SPEAKER_00: but that doesn't mean Tam should stay small.
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SPEAKER_00: I'm finally learning what Tam discovers in those cave lessons.
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SPEAKER_00: Desire itself becomes the antidote to inherited sorrow.
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Not because it erases the past,
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but because it insists on a different future.
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SPEAKER_00: The serpent's gaze doesn't have to petrify.
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SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it awakens what was always there,
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SPEAKER_00: protected fiercely from criticism and envy,
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SPEAKER_00: waiting for the day you wouldn't need armor anymore,
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SPEAKER_00: waiting for the day you could be happy without apologizing for it.
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SPEAKER_00: The basilisk gave me permission to claim joy without apology.
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SPEAKER_00: But permission is just the beginning.
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SPEAKER_00: How do you integrate all these transformations?
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SPEAKER_00: How do you become proper guardian to your own life's force?
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Sometimes the most unlikely teacher shows you how to finally
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claim your ground.
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SPEAKER_00: Scarecrows are strange creatures when you think about it,
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SPEAKER_00: neither fully real nor fully pretend,
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SPEAKER_00: forever suspended between being and seeming.
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SPEAKER_00: They stand in fields with borrowed clothes and straw hearts,
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SPEAKER_00: human enough to fool the birds,
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SPEAKER_00: but never human enough to leave their post.
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SPEAKER_00: In Naomi Lucas and Mel Braxton's The Scarecrow's Queen,
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a young woman inherits land where a scarecrow has stood
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sentinel for over a
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SPEAKER_00: century.
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SPEAKER_00: When she tries to throw him out, he's just all drunk, right?
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SPEAKER_00: He discovers he can shapeshift into human form.
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SPEAKER_00: But here's the thing.
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SPEAKER_00: He's terrible at being human in all the ways that matter.
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He comes off cold,
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distant,
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accidentally rude because he doesn't understand social cues.
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When they finally fall in love,
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he has no idea how to be romantic,
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how to navigate intimacy.
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SPEAKER_00: Touch is foreign.
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SPEAKER_00: Tenderness is a language he's never learned.
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But he learns,
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not just because he's bound to the land,
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but because he loves her.
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Love makes him want to bridge that gap between what he was and
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what he's becoming.
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SPEAKER_00: The scarecrow taught me about integration.
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For decades,
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I was like a scarecrow standing far from the land that could
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sustain me.
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SPEAKER_00: My life force constantly leaking toward others' emotional demands.
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SPEAKER_00: Always being pulled to tend someone else's crisis, someone else's field.
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SPEAKER_00: Learning which joys to share, which to protect from criticism.
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SPEAKER_00: Keeping my harvest small so I wouldn't trigger envy.
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SPEAKER_00: But the scarecrow can only live on his own land.
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The moment he tries to exist somewhere else,
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he starts dissolving back to straw.
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SPEAKER_00: There's a profound wisdom in that limitation.
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SPEAKER_00: You can only be guardian to what's actually yours.
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SPEAKER_00: You can only tend the field you're rooted in.
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SPEAKER_00: Like him learning the language of tenderness,
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SPEAKER_00: I'm learning to inhabit this integrated life,
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SPEAKER_00: to root fully in my own ground,
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SPEAKER_00: to guard not from a place of fear,
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SPEAKER_00: but from knowing this harvest is mine to protect and share as I choose.
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SPEAKER_00: The monsters taught me transformation,
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SPEAKER_00: but the scarecrow,
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he taught me to stop letting my life force leak into fields
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that were never mine to
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SPEAKER_00: tend.
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SPEAKER_00: The scarecrow taught me to root in ground that actually sustains me.
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SPEAKER_00: And now,
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SPEAKER_00: at this winter solstice,
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SPEAKER_00: I emerge from my year of monsters,
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SPEAKER_00: knowing something I couldn't have imagined last January.
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SPEAKER_00: Seven threshold guides,
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from the fae who reminded me other worlds exist when this one
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cracks open,
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SPEAKER_00: to the scarecrow teaching me to claim my own ground,
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SPEAKER_00: each arriving with exactly the medicine I needed.
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SPEAKER_00: Beauty didn't love the beast despite his monstrosity.
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SPEAKER_00: She loved him because he let her see it.
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And in witnessing each other without the exhausting performance
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of goodness,
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SPEAKER_00: they both became free.
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not transformed into something foreign,
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but finally released into their full expression.
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SPEAKER_00: Here's what 50 monsters taught me.
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SPEAKER_00: We don't befriend the darkness to survive it.
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SPEAKER_00: We befriend it to discover we are the fertile ground.
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We just needed the right season,
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the right guides,
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the right threshold to know it.
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And as the light slowly returns,
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I wonder,
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what creature is calling to you?
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SPEAKER_00: Which monster,
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SPEAKER_00: with their particular way of moving through the world,
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SPEAKER_00: carries the lesson you need?
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SPEAKER_00: Because somewhere in all those stories,
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SPEAKER_00: there's a threshold guardian waiting,
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SPEAKER_00: not to make you monstrous,
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but to guide you through whatever transformation you're already
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in the middle of.
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SPEAKER_00: You don't need to be saved.
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SPEAKER_00: You need to be seen,
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witnessing your full complexity by something that doesn't need
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your goodness as
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SPEAKER_00: currency.
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SPEAKER_00: That's the gift monsters bring.
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SPEAKER_00: They see us whole and love us anyway.
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SPEAKER_00: They guide us through thresholds we couldn't cross alone.
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SPEAKER_00: May you find the monsters you need.
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SPEAKER_00: May they teach you to trust your own thresholds.
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And may you discover,
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as I did,
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that every ending carries its own fierce beginning.
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SPEAKER_00: The monsters are calling.
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SPEAKER_00: Time to answer.