season 4, episode 9 - stories & memoir with christine blystone
our guest for episode 9 is christine blystone! christine is the creator and founder of velvetback, where her work as a writer, artist, designer, and maker helps people connect with plants and make meaning with their magic. her product line includes plant poetry oracle cards, botanical-infused bath salts, and natural incense cones. she’s currently writing her debut novel, "magic flowers." you can find her online at velvetback.com and on instagram @_velvetback_. click here for a beautiful pdf download from christine with a recipe and journal prompts and 20% off coupon for her shop!
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transcript
snort & cackle - season 4, episode 9 - christine blystone
ash alberg: [Upbeat music plays.] Hello, and welcome to the Snort and Cackle podcast where every day magic, work and ritual intersect. I'm your host, Ash Alberg, a queer fibre witch and hedge witch. Each season we read a new book about witchcraft practices around the world with the #SnortAndCackleBookClub with a book review by me and the occasional guest helping us close out the season. Our book this season is Babaylan Sing Back: Philippine Shamans and Voice, Gender and Place by Grace Nono.
Whether you're an aspiring boss witch looking to start your knitwear design business, a plant witch looking to play more with your local naturally dyed color palette or a knit witch wondering just what the hell is a natural yarn and how do you use it in your favorite patterns, we've got the solution for you.
Take the free fiber witch quiz at ashalberg.com/quiz and find out which self-paced online program will help you take your dreams into reality. Visit ashalberg.com/quiz [upbeat music fades out] and then join fellow fiber witches in the Creative Coven Community at ashalberg.com/creative-coven-community for 24/7 access to Ash’s favorite resources, monthly zoom knit nights, and more. [End of intro.]
I am very excited for today's episode. I am here with Christine Blystone, who is the creator and founder of Velvetback, where her work as a writer, artist, designer and maker helps people connect with plants and make meaning with their magic. Her product line includes plant poetry, Oracle cards (which are beautiful), botanical infused bath salts and natural incense cones. She's currently writing her debut novel, Magic Flowers. Hi Christine.
christine blystone: Hello, thanks for having me today!
ash alberg: Thanks so much for being here. I'm very excited for our chats. christine blystone: Me too.
ash alberg: I know that ... oh, sorry, Willow’s having a little bit of a wander [Quiet sound of Willow’s paws on the floor.]
One thing that I'm actually quite excited about that I'll just tell people a little sneak peek of in advance of our chat is that we will be chatting about EMDR therapy, which I am stoked about because I've been doing it now for a little over a year and it is literally life-changing. And so we're going to be chatting about that and the role that it has played in your life, so I'm really excited about that.
I think everybody should be in therapy and obviously, there's barriers that stop folks from being able to access it, but like really, we all need therapy and should be going to therapy. And I love EMDR because I feel like, especially if you're aware of mental health languaging in any kind of a way or are part of the community in any kind of a way. It can be really easy to talk, like in regular talk therapy, to just talk around issues or manipulate your way around shit that you don't want to deal with.
And EMDR is just nope, we're just going to do that. But you don't necessarily need to be conscious of it. So it's nice because you’re actually getting to literally the root of the issue, but then also not retraumatizing yourself in the process. So I quite enjoy it.
christine blystone: Yeah, I agree with you. It has been absolutely life-changing and honestly magical. Like when people ask me about it, I tell them, to me it feels like a mix of time travel and magic.
ash alberg: Yes, totally. And I don't know if you've experienced this, but, and I haven't experienced it recently, but I remember especially early on in my EMDR I guess when I was like dealing with more of the like really calcified shit that needed to move itself along, ghosts were just like perpetually hanging out with me in session and they, it's nice having therapists who are just like, yeah, okay.
It's like, this one's just like sitting over here. It's very awkward. And they're just staring at me the whole time.
christine blystone: [Laughs.] Yeah. Yeah. I haven't had that experience, but I have just had like different versions of myself visit me.
ash alberg: Yesss.
christine blystone: Past versions, future versions of myself. I've had a lot of animal visitors and just other people in my life who are both here and gone. So maybe that is ghosty, like the people who are now gone showing up. So I get what you're saying. Yeah.
I guess I have had those ghost like appearances there.
ash alberg: Yeah, that's an interesting one. But, okay. Let's officially take it back to the beginning. Tell us a bit about you and what you do in the world.
christine blystone: Okay. Yeah. My day job is in graphic design. And so I studied graphic design at Florida State University. I've been out of there and a designer for about 10 years, and I think that being a designer and maker really influenced my ... what I did with Velvetback, especially in the beginning ‘cause I started with incense and I started with the bath salt soaks and more like hands-on craft type things.
And that all started because I was just looking for rituals. I was looking for a ritual in my life. I had just left behind my other small business that I'd been working on for about a decade. I was sewing a lot. I was making retro like neckwear. I had an Etsy store.
And I was so burnt out by like the fashion industry and feeling like I was in a sweat shop and I just, okay, it's time, I have to leave this behind. And so then I, that was at the end of 2014. And so I spent all of 2015 just getting out in nature and learning how to make incense.
My husband and I would like, our morning routine back then would be make breakfast, light some incense and just start the day that way. And then I started to move towards like aromatherapy, and I started beginning my relationship with plants and how those relationships could help me.
And that's where the botanical infused salt soaks were born, ‘cause I was, I had just started therapy and so all this stuff was coming up and I was like okay, how can plants and this ritual inside the bath helped me access things I'm looking for, whether that's more self-compassion or courage or strength of protection?
And so that's where everything started. And to back up a little bit, I also have a background in writing. When I was in my early twenties, I went to community college and studied journalism and ended up with an internship at an alternative newspaper here in Portland called the Portland Mercury.
And I ended up getting a job there as a web editor right out of community college, and so I spent the next two years on as a staff writer. I was doing all, I was in charge of their podcast program. And this was like 2006 before podcasts were even a thing.
ash alberg: I know, I’m like thinking in my head, I'm like, this is amazing, like the early days.
christine blystone: Yeah. And so I did that for a while and by the time I left it was a very, such an enriching experience, especially like people who work there. Just the culture, there was such like a stark difference from the sort of like part-time corporate office assistant job that I had up until then.
But I also left feeling very burnt out and I set down writing and it took having relationships with plants to bring me back. And that was like very special. So my family had this like insane spiritual crisis in 2016, which my daughter started therapy after that. And so at night, once a week on Mondays, we, I would take her to therapy.
And so I had this hour of time to myself in this like really peaceful, empty, ‘cause it was like, after school, after work, waiting room and I just began drawing plants. One, one a week. It was lavender, it was mugwort, it was camomile.
At the end of 10 weeks, I had these 10 drawings of plants, and I was like, and at that point, I ... what was going on was what I like to call following a muse. I didn't know what was going to happen, I just had this urge to do these drawings. And so I went with it, ‘cause by that time in my life, I was like, when that happens, you have to follow that.
And so I had these drawings and I was like, huh, okay what am I going to do with these? And something outside of me or inside of me just was like, you need to turn these into a deck and you need to somehow capture the essence, personality essence of all these plants. And I spent a day up at Mount St. Helens, hiking and writing, and this set of poetry came out of me.
And that's like the story of the first set of my plant talisman cards, so in a nutshell, that's the long and short of what I do.
ash alberg: That's so cool. And I love how there's part of it where it's like, very much attached to, the things that you had trained in and what you had gone to school for. And then there's a lot of it that's this is what the universe was like, you're going to do this. Here you go.
christine blystone: Absolutely.
ash alberg: Which is just, it's, I think it's funny ‘cause I think a lot of times people feel like magic is this very ... it's either like completely rooted in intuition and anything that might have any structure outside of that somehow makes it less legitimate or less magical. And then there's also the part where people then also feel like it's, if they're not feeling that intuition, or if they've been cut off from that intuition, that there's no way that they can root into it.
And this is a really lovely story that kind of shows how both/and are possible where it's like, you can have specific skills that you have trained in and that you have experience and specific education within, and then also follow your intuition and follow the muse that you are being led towards.
And it also, like as soon as you were like, yeah, I have background in graphic design and I was like, oh, that's why everything looks so pretty.
christine blystone: Yeah, it does help. Like I, and it's interesting cause school for graphic design, I feel like that was a total push from the universe too. I was so, I was so burnt out from writing and, following this dream for years, my whole life I'd always wanted to be a writer.
And then to come out of that being like, wow, at least this part of it isn't for me. And what am I going to do? And it's so silly. It was just like, I want to learn how to build websites. And I was like I'm just gonna apply for the school and then do it. And sometimes you just need like a weird push in that direction and then once you get there, you figure it out.
And once I got there, I was like, oh my gosh, like graphic design is so much more than this, but it's so cool. And I'm like connecting with it. And it's also just ended up really being something that has really not just helped me, but just really an enriching part of my life.
ash alberg: That's so lovely. What is ... the fact that you and your husband almost 10 years ago, your morning routine was we're gonna, we're gonna make some coffee and light some incense is like, clearly ritual has played a large role in your life for an extended period of time. What was ... like, has that always been the case for you?
What role does ritual play at this point? Like, clearly your husband is into it as well. What role ... I feel like often, I don't hear so much about the rituals that play a role in partnerships, in those longer-term partnerships. So how does that kind of all roll out for you?
christine blystone: Yeah. To go back in time, I think that I probably ... it's always funny to look at things retroactively. I have a dresser that I've had forever. I bought it in my early twenties at a thrift store. And my dad gave me my grandmother, so his mother's, radio, like old radio.
It doesn't work anymore but it's just a gorgeous object and it represents her. And I love that. There's like a speaker, even though it doesn't work, I feel that she is connected to that and like I can receive her protection and anything she needs to give me through that radio. And that radio has always set on that dresser.
And I've always created what I would call back then, like little vignettes around it, but it was an altar. Like it was always an altar. It just took me a long time to realize what I was doing. So I would say in the past, yes, I was making altars, even though I didn't realize that what was going on. And now we have that same radio in our dining room.
Our dining room is split between our dining table and a lot of my sort of studio space. So we have a central altar in our home. And we do a lot of just a lot of home protection ritual with plants and with incense and with sound. It's like singing bowls and stuff. And yeah.
Like I, my husband is woo woo, which I love. And I think that was one of the things that like when we met, I was really like drawn to. He, his mom is definitely a plant whisperer. She's a Reiki master, she's an EFT practitioner. And he has a lot of that in him.
And there's also a lot of spending time in nature together and quiet time in nature together. We love backpacking and just like going out where no one else is, and just spending a lot of time being quiet and quiet together. And it's really lovely.
ash alberg: That sounds really lovely. That sounds like a really nice marriage. [Giggles.]
christine blystone: [Laughs.] Yeah.
ash alberg: That's so fun. How does ritual play a role in your day-to-day life now, especially where you've got like day job and also running your business, and then also being a present partner and parent? And like all of these things that make it I think sometimes tricky to find ritual and also so much more important that ritual gets embedded into day-to-day life.
So how does that kind of all roll for you?
christine blystone: Yeah. that's such a great question. One easy way that I incorporate ritual into my daily life is just in my garden. And that's a huge part of ritual for me. I spend a lot of time in the garden. I spend a lot of, I do a lot of energy work in the garden.
I love on my plants. I give them energy work and just spending time with my hands in the dirt taking care of plants is a huge ritual for me that just keeps me grounded and sane. So there's, that's always an easy thing. And sometimes, ritual can be pretty simple. One of the things that I've done for the past few years off and on, but at the start of this year, I was like, all right, I'm gonna do this daily.
I have a planner and I've never been able to use like the weekly parts of planners. Like I'm great at like entering in dates on like the months spread, but then the weekly stuff just goes to waste in a way. So I'm like every day, I'm just, that's just going to be my gratitude list. I'm going to do that at the end of the day.
And I've been able to like stick to it cause it's just a small space, no pressure. And instead of being like, “I'm grateful for ...” like, the prompt is “I celebrate.” So today I celebrate, and that can be things I'm grateful for, things that I accomplished, or just like little moments that when I think back on over the day, I was like, yeah, that was like, awesome.
Even just like being like little moments in the garden or whatever. I think the trick is, I think sometimes people might think that ritual can be or needs to be like these big grandiose things. And that's great when they are, and I think there's absolutely a time and a place and a need for that. But for day to day, the trick is finding a couple little things that you can just commit to and that are powerful and meaningful for you.
ash alberg: Absolutely. And I love that reframe of, I find like gratitude lists can be honestly hard to do, especially like if you're in a headspace where a gratitude list is really make an impact for you. Gratitude can be a hard thing to reach for as well.
And I love the concept of reframing it to “I celebrate,” especially like for me, I am notoriously bad at celebrating the small and the big things, which is a little ridiculous, but I will spend so much time doing something and finish it and I should celebrate it, but I'm already like onto the next thing. And I don't spend time thinking about it.
And so I love that just like very intentional practice of each day, I'm going to look back and think, okay, what can I celebrate? For me it would probably be a lot of what can I, what have I accomplished? Which is also just acknowledging that I did a shit ton today even if it doesn't feel like I did.
But also celebrating things like, celebrating your health or celebrating that the sun was out today or that there was rain and it watered your plants and things like that. I’m going to stop Willow from chewing a bone because she has decided to do that. [Both laugh.]
christine blystone: No worries.
ash alberg: She gets to a point where she gets tired of Zoom and so then goes
and finds something loud to chew on that she knows is going to get attention.
christine blystone: [Laughs.] I know. That's like my cat like sleeps most of the day, but like around 2:30 or #, she'll like, come, and then she'll just be like, I'm going to come sit on your keyboard because you've been at the computer for way too long.
ash alberg: They can be really useful for keeping us in human physical body of and now you need to get up and stretch your legs because I need you to do something for me. And it's like, whenever things get really busy then often the first thing that people will offer is to take care of Willow for me.
And I'm like, no, I want her here, ‘cause if I'm actually that busy, I also need her here to remind me to get up off my ass after eight hours or stretch or to feed myself.
christine blystone: Absolutely. Yeah. [Giggles.]
ash alberg: So how does ritual play out for you in work life?
christine blystone: Ooh, that's a harder one. With Velvetback, like I said, I do a lot of ritual in the garden and even some ritual in packing my orders. I infused my orders with a lot of love and a lot of intention, and I think people can feel that. So I feel like that's the easy answer.
The day job, that's a little harder to be honest. That's a little harder. [Laughs.]
ash alberg: Is your day job one where you're working with other folks that are more on the witchy side of the spectrum, or is it more on the corporate side of things?
christine blystone: I would say it's more on the corporate side of things, although not as corporate as I ... as other jobs I've had in the past, but I do work from home, which is great. We started working at home, all of us at the start of the pandemic, and honestly, I had been wanting to work from home for 20 years.
So I was like ...
ash alberg: This kind of forced you to do it, figure it out.
christine blystone: Yeah. And at the end of two years, they were like, okay, whoever wants, this is obviously working, whoever wants to stay remote, if you want to do hybrid that's fine, if want to come back and wear masks in the office, that's fine. So I was like, hell yeah, I'm going to stay remote.
ash alberg: With the gas prices right now, you're just saving so much money.
christine blystone: Oh my gosh. Yeah. Insanity. Like I'm one of those people where it was very difficult for me to work in an office just because I think being constantly around just so many other different energies all the time and in a space that didn't feel like mine, but it was mine.
And yeah, like even the few times I've had to go back in here or there, and I hear the hum of the building and I was like, how have I ever been able to even concentrate in here? Like the fact that I got anything done before is a miracle.
ash alberg: Yeah.
christine blystone: So yeah, but I do take breaks during my workday to go stand in the garden. And I think that maybe that is, is the answer there, is that my ritual in my day job is grounding and that's important. To go outside, reconnect with the earth and my plants and my yard, and just be reminded that okay, yeah, like I am a person in a body, like outside of this other day job thing.
ash alberg: Absolutely. So do you grow all of the plants that you use in your products or do you supplement as well from other sources?
christine blystone: I grow as much as I can, but I do also supplement from trusted sources. And I live in Oregon and so it's a great place for organic herbs. Like especially even a little east of Portland where I live, there's a gorgeous female-run organic herb farm called Rise Up Remedies. And those, they're amazing and their farm is amazing.
So I do like to support them and a couple of other places, but so I have gardens here at my house and then I also have a very established herb garden on my parents' property, just a little bit north, just like 20 minutes away. And that was where like the original Velvetback garden began because when I began Velvetback, my husband and I and daughter, we were all living in an apartment in Portland.
And so there was just no, no place to, to grow plants. And so my parents live on half an acre and they're avid gardeners and they're like, just come over here. And we'll give you this little plot of land. You can grow whatever you want.
So I started doing that and that's also been a really beautiful collaboration with my mom and my dad. Like my dad is definitely like plant whisperer, whether he thinks he is or not. Like he's such a green thumb of the family and I've learned a lot from him. So they helped me take care of that garden.
And so my mom will do a lot of harvesting for me in the summer and just like taking care of those plants and I get up there as much as I can. But I love that it's also turned into this little bit of a family business too.
ash alberg: Yeah, that's really sweet. I love that. It's yeah, it's funny ‘cause like, it's similar situation for me, where my parents have significantly more land. And at this point I haven't done too much of planting other things there, but they do have my seabuckthorn bushes ‘cause I'm like, I need multiples of these. I don't have space for all three of them, especially with how big they're going to grow.
And yeah, it's nice to ... and my dad is also, my mom's very good about just growing all of the things, but my dad gets like really nerdy into it and like his ... each year he like finds a new thing that makes his yields just so much more intense. And I'm like, this is great.
But yeah, it's ... especially when you're growing herbs, I feel like a lot of folks feel as though in order to grow enough herbs, even to support a small business, you need like huuuge amounts of land. And it's no, you actually, you don't, especially for, as a natural dyer, yes. I need like stupid amounts of material a lot of the time, which is also why as a natural dyer, when I'm teaching folks about
foraging and stuff, I'm like the amount that you are going to need compared to the way that literally everybody else is going to use these plants is extremely different. So don't fuck with them.
christine blystone: Yeah.
ash alberg: But as an herbalist, the amount of plant material that's going to go into some bath salts is a very small amount of a harvest. And so it makes it a lot more sustainable, especially if you've got like a few different sources so that even if maybe one year a patch doesn't do so well, if you've got two or three patches that you're working off of, you still end up having enough to be able to have an abundant amount of growth.
christine blystone: Yeah. And that, that has absolutely been how things have worked for me, that between the gardens at my house and the gardens at my parents' house, we've been able to be fine, so that's been really great. Yeah.
ash alberg: Nice. So, you're working on your first novel, which is delightful. How did all of that kind of come about for you?
christine blystone: Yeah. I had finished my third Oracle deck and I had also started to write some short stories, each sort of based around a plant. And ...
ash alberg: I love that. I want to read these stories.
christine blystone: [Chuckles.] Yeah, and so I was like ... and it has always been a dream of mine to write and publish a book. Like even from the time I was very small and I've always been a creative writer.
Like, when I was little, I was going to like the young authors conferences in high school. I wrote hilariously cheesy and trashy, like brunch band, like romance novellas, which I wish I still had in a sense, because it'd be hilarious to go back and read. But in another sense, I'm like, I'm glad that old 3.5 floppy disk like got a virus and died because it's probably like in my mind is probably a lot better than what I, what is actually, what it actually was.
ash alberg: Yeah, a hundred percent. It's almost one of those things where it's kinda like how romcoms from the nineties are very rarely holding up to now. It's oh, that's not as romantic as I think it is.
christine blystone: [Laughs.] Yeah, exactly. But anyways, so I had gotten my feet wet back with writing with this poetry. And so then I was like, I'll write a
book. So I started writing a couple of short stories and I had a couple under my belt and they were all memoirs. And that's always been the thing that I've always been really connected to is like the personal essay or the memoir.
And so I started writing these stories and the first one I wrote was actually based on an EMDR session I had where I was in this like red cloud and this wolf came in. And backstory to that wolf, I used to meditate in like my late, like mid-twenties to early thirties. And I would go to this place where there was a big tree and I'd go inside the big tree.
And it was like a tiny altar, and it was like my safe place. Eventually this crazy wolf came and started to circulate around these woods and it scared the shit out of me. And I was like, I don't know what the fuck that is. And so every time I'd go back, it was like relentless. It was like chasing me.
And so I stopped meditating because I was too scared to go back. ash alberg: [Softly] Ooh noo!
christine blystone: And so I was in this EMDR session in this crazy ass red cloud of anger or whatever it was, and this wolf came back. And at that point, like it had been at least a decade since I had even thought about that wolf. And I was like, holy shit, there you are.
So I was like, okay, you sit with it.
ash alberg: Yeah. What are you here for? [Chuckles.]
christine blystone: And then I'm like, and I'm like okay. I got to reach out and touch you because you're me. You are all the parts of me that I have rejected or felt shitty about or felt ashamed about. And so like in my mind, like I reached out and I touched this wolf and the red cloud dissipated and we were in the desert and we like, that, the wolf was just like, so relieved that like I had acknowledged her and accepted her.
And we were in the desert and we were running and we saw this huge, like black, not black, like dark gray rain cloud coming. And so we ran towards it together and then it was raining on us and all I could hear was like the undulating of the rain and just feeling so free. And then like tears just like streaming down my face. And that was the first story that I wrote. And that one was tied to like sagebrush and juniper ‘cause we're in the desert.
And in that way, EMDR cracked my brain open in this way where the experiences that I've had with it have really shown me just how creative I can be when like things just are like flowing. It's really taught me how memoir, because with EMDR, it's, that's just my memories now. That's just my brain and how it's like firing and how that memory is stored in there. And in a way, even though that wasn't quote unquote real, it's still very real.
So it was amazing to me to look at memoir in a way in that way, where it was like huh, like you can take things that are real and also make them real in this other way, through this like creative, this really creative way.
And so at that point, a couple months later, my friend, Katie, who I've known forever, we used to play in a band together, she sent me the book. We were ... We Were Witches by Ariel Gore and that, and that book blew my mind because to me it was one, talks about a young single mom going through college, which like I can totally relate to. That was me in like my early twenties. But also, she like interweaves magic into her story.
It was like reading an EMDR story to me, I was like, oh my god, this is like someone who, whether they realize it or not, I have no idea if she does EMDR or anything like that. But I was like, this is someone who is like encapsulating this idea in this like memoir. And I looked her up and bought all of her other books.
And then I realized that she also teaches online workshops. So a few months later I signed up for a first workshop with her, and that was like a bomb to my soul that I needed so badly, because at that point I had had a miscarriage and was like deep in grief and all this crazy shit. And like that brought me back into myself a little bit and also got me even more excited for writing.
And then after that it was like, it's on. I'm writing this book, I'm going to her workshops. Like I'm going to get this book done. And I'm ... so my book is this combination of like plant magic and folklore, experimental memoir, and a little bit of like ancestry magic in it. But the idea is each short story or chapter is based, loosely based on a plant.
ash alberg: I am so excited for this book. I'm just like, everything about this. I like, this sounds fucking great. [Christine laughs.] That's so cool. It's so interesting hearing other people's experiences during EMDR, because it's so familiar and also so like unique to each person.
And it's, it's funny because it makes me think oh yeah, probably the folks who have the hardest time with EMDR in my experience, like I've never met anybody who has done EMDR and not had significant improvement in whatever they went initially for the sessions to deal with, but there's definitely folks who have a harder time like opening up to what is happening. And I feel like those of us that are more witchy and more open to the magic of things and the way that different worlds like crash into each other and time is a little more elastic or a lot more elastic than we allow in like reality (I put in quotations.)
We have a lot easier time with EMDR, because it really does rip open parts that, just even just in terms of like how grief gets stored in the body. The shit that's old and is calcified, how hard it is to dislodge it and then move it out through, and then learning which parts of your body hold different emotions and especially will hold onto grief the longest for you, and then recognizing where, oh, I also have historically a hard time with that part of my body, like that part of my body and I are in this like ongoing negotiation of how we feel about each other and then realizing, oh, you store most of my grief.
I see. This is why it's, you've, you are harder part of my body for me. And learning new appreciation for those things. And yeah, it's just, it's interesting when like, the EMDR sessions allow you to really deal with that on a pretty consistent basis over a chunk of time. Whereas for other folks, like I remember one of my friends she ... I always talk about like how the body holds onto emotions and how the body holds grief.
And we were working out. Like her wrist was spasming and so we were like doing some massage to get the spasms to chill out and she like hit, we hit something and some shit started coming out and I was like, okay, just breathe through it. We're going to just keep on working it out because if you stop now, then it's going to stay stuck, and let's just help it move its way out of your body.
And after that, she was like, I never really understood when you would talk about how grief gets held in the body. And now I understand. And I’m like, ta da. Welcome to my world, all the time. [Both laugh.]
christine blystone: Exactly. Exactly.
ash alberg: Ah, that's wild and so interesting that you have a wolf. I think this is also an interesting thing where folks like tune into the spirit guides that are like, trying to tell them things that maybe were like, not trying to tell us things in languages that we are either not ready or not willing or unable to hear.
And like the ways that eventually, hopefully, we crack through the whatever the thing is that's stopping us. ‘Cause yeah, it's funny. Like I've got, my wolves are the ones that, for me, I've always been like, yeah, okay, you're cool. It's the other creatures that I'm like you’re terrifying, you can stay over there. Please go away.
And they like disappear for a decade and then they pop back up again and you're like, excuse me. I thought I got rid of you. They're like, no, I’m back. And it's terrifying, but often it's that they're like, trying to tell you something really significant and just doing it in a really not subtle way, and so it freaks us out a little bit. [Chuckles.]
christine blystone: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.
ash alberg: So are ... is your book going to include illustrations?
christine blystone: Yes. So the other thing that I definitely want to include in my book, I want to intersperse between chapters illustrations and plant poetry, for sure. And I've dabbled in botanical cyanotype, and I would love to incorporate that too.
I created a zine that I released at the end of last summer called Seasons and it's all about witnessing the grief of miscarriage specifically because I had, I've actually had three miscarriages in the past two years. It's been a wild ass ride.
ash alberg: Holy shit.
christine blystone: So much grief. ash alberg: No kidding.
christine blystone: So much ... yeah. And I, when I released this one, I was actually pregnant and then with my second, and then miscarried the week that it released, it was just like insane.
ash alberg: Oh my god!
christine blystone: But yeah, so it was crazy, but that zine is a template for how I would love my book to look. So it gave me a starting point of like a creative starting point of what I would like that to be. And yeah, it incorporates cyanotype and illustration.
And I definitely want this to be a novel that you read, but I also want it to be a little bit of a ... of a beautiful object that you just want to spend more time in. There's a lot of talk in writing about world building and there's like this urgent need to make the actual book object a world in itself. Not just the words, but how it looks as well.
ash alberg: Absolutely. As a lifelong bookworm, I appreciate that so much. Like whenever I find books where like you want to purchase the hard copy instead of just grabbing the e-book version, especially nowadays. Back in the day, it was like, you're just going to spend the money on a book, but now it's like, there is a reason that you have purchased the hard copy version of this book.
And it is absolutely worth every extra penny and the cost of shipping and the space it takes up on your bookshelf. Like those books for me are usually, honestly the ones that I end up like passing along and then buying like multiple copies over and over. And then I'm like, you can have this one and I'm just going to buy another copy for myself.
Oh, you need to read it too. And this is the way that move my favorite books through my life.
christine blystone: Yes. I love that. I do that too. Yeah. There's always a favorite that you have on the shelf that's, when someone's what book have you read that's blown your mind? Like just take it. Yeah, and I'm going to go buy it again from the author or wherever and just keep that going.
ash alberg: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. It makes such a big difference too, like the way that things get laid out on the page, which of course like you and graphic design are gonna understand more, but like the impact of what colors you use or like how many words end up on the page. Like I think of I don't know if you've read it, but Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer, is still one of my favorite books.
And I remember when they, ‘cause they made a movie of it at one point and I remember ... and it was like a big blockbuster movie. Like it exploded in popularity. And I remember seeing the commercial for it and being like, they fucked it up because the little boy in the book wears all white only. And it's, he's this quirky little character and his clothing is part of that. As a textile person I'm like, that's fucking important.
And in the commercial he's like wearing a navy shirt and black pants, and I'm like, you fucked it up. Like, how do you miss something that is so integral? And so I just never watched the movie and I never will. But the way that the book is laid out, it's spoken through multiple characters and each time you switch, you can immediately tell which character is speaking, just by the way that the words end up being laid out on the page.
And then there's these like sections where there's like, photographs that kind of flip you through a moment. And then other sections where like a whole bunch of things have been like scribbled out and it just, it changes the way that your reading experience and the way that you have stepped into this world, your whole journey through this particular story takes you through.
And so, I feel like especially as creatives, when we're taking those projects on, it's so important that we are able to maintain those things and that if you're going to partner with a publisher, that they get it and they understand why that's important. And that if they don't get it, it's like a very clear nope, we're not meant to work together.
christine blystone: Yeah. Absolutely. And I agree completely, if you have that vision, stay true to it. And like you said, that book ended up being such a meaningful, for lack of better word, like treat to have all those multifaceted parts, like working together beautifully to create this experience, like what a treat. And yeah, like you wouldn't want it any other way.
ash alberg: Yeah. Yeah. If you were to like find, oh, the e-book version, but then it's like, offsets the imagery or somebody’s printed a different version and so like the type gets changed. It just, it does ... or they just decide, no, we don't want this and so we're just going to include the plain text. And it changes your experience of the whole thing.
And yes, it costs a bit more to print, of course, when you're changing things around and when it's oh, we're going to have an entire page and there's just like one word on the page. But it's important. That single word on that single page that is otherwise blank is very important, and it is worth the paper.
christine blystone: Yeah, absolutely.
ash alberg: I really like as well that you're basically like testing out the larger idea on these smaller projects. I definitely find myself doing that as well with my patterns and with my books where it's okay, I've got like a mini collection and the mini collection is sometimes, you're just like testing out the overall idea
and themes that will then ultimately feed into something much bigger, but also you're like, oh, I'm going to incorporate like some drawings and maybe we'll lay some doodles on top of, and you're going to test out like a small version of a collage with the idea of, okay, maybe this bigger book is going to incorporate this in a much bigger way, but let me try this out first and see how I feel about it and see, is it the right fit for what we're going to do.
christine blystone: Yeah, exactly. And just allowing those creative processes to meander and figure themselves out and just take you to some other destination. And one of the things that I always like, this is one of the things that my husband learned in grad school. We met when he was going to grad school at PNCA in Portland.
He was like, one of his teachers told him like, you're just making moves and this can be applied to anything. Like you just make a move and then you look at it and you figure out the next move from there. And then once you're there, you look at it and you make another move. And so it's just anytime I get overwhelmed with the idea of something, I'm like, just bring it back to just making the next move and ...
ash alberg: Yeah. Yeah. What's the next best rate thing. christine blystone: Yeah.
ash alberg: Yeah, and it really does it, it removes the overwhelmed portion of it because it shrinks it back down to okay, what's immediately in front of me? I can't control all of these other things and most of these other things, and most of the overwhelm, comes from hypotheticals. And when you like root it back down to, here's where we're at right now, where I want to get to is like, potentially very specific, but also fairly ephemeral realistically.
And so between here and there, what's the next move that's going to take me towards there? Because by the time that I get there, there has probably shifted, but at least I've been moving in a way that feels right for me and for what I am doing in each moment and it fits best for my life, each time that I take that next step.
christine blystone: Yeah, that's so beautifully said because so many things can change along the way, including who we are and what we want.
ash alberg: Yeah, absolutely. Ahhh ... yes. [Both laugh.] So what ... I mean, your parents sound adorable. What do you wish that you'd been told about ritual and magic and witchcraft when you were younger?
christine blystone: Ooh. That's, that is a good question. I don’t know, I think that I was raised in very like white Christian suburbia, and ultimately, I feel that was very damaging, to be honest. I think that, yeah, so that was like very damaging and gosh, I got married like a week out of high school and then got pregnant with my daughter four months later, had her the following summer and then also had to leave that very abusive relationship by the time she was six months old.
And yeah, so there was always like, there's a lot to process there, but I guess I just wished that I was told that ... let me put it this way. I remember being very small and I remember thinking, I remember absolutely believing in reincarnation. I remember thinking like, all religions are right, none are wrong. Like how can some ... like when you're talking about spirituality, like how can things be right or wrong? That made no sense to me.
And so growing up in that very white Christian suburbia, just really hammered that out of me. And I wish that someone would have come along and said, actually you were born with the right idea. Go hang out in nature. Be spiritual. It's all good. And you don't have to like subscribe to this crazy like American culture that was going on.
And, but I also wish at the same time that, if that would have happened, that someone would have gone over like energetic protections. ‘Cause I think that's a really important part that most of us, I think, probably don't start getting there until we're like, oh shit. [Laughs.]
ash alberg: [Snorts.] I actually need these like right now and I had no idea how to use them or find them or anything.
christine blystone: Yeah. So yeah, I think that if we are going to teach young people this stuff, which is super important, like we absolutely should. I think it needs to come with a sense of, this is also how, like you protect yourself from other energies and how you clear your energy and all that stuff.
I think that in the same way that mental health should absolutely be available to everyone and medical care should be absolutely available to everyone, I think that these spiritual things and tools to protect ourselves should be available to everyone too.
ash alberg: Yep. Absolutely. I think also it would just be like generally better for basically everybody to be tuned in enough to also recognize like when you need to set up those boundaries and also to respect other people's boundaries, because you're tuned in enough to your own.
I feel like that would solve probably like 85% of the problems that are out there. There's still, absolutely there's like the like corners of the extremes that there's, the sociopaths don't give a shit, but [audio cut out] else is not actually a sociopath. They're just like highly fucked up and traumatized and could use a good dose of therapy.
christine blystone: Yeah. Yeah. And I think that what you said is spot on and beautiful. Yeah.
ash alberg: What is next for you? When is the book coming out? What are working on now? What's, what are all of these timelines looking like?
christine blystone: Yeah, so I am currently in a manuscript workshop for the summer. It started last Sunday, it's going through the beginning of September. And my goal is to finish my book. And then at that point we'll see what happens.
It's like what we said, I'm hoping to find a publisher, even though that world is so big and broad and like nebulous to me at the moment. But if I don't, I understand, especially given the specific vision I have for this book, I'm also okay self-publishing if I need to, so the next step might be hiring an editor. I don't really know.
I'll figure that out. I keep telling myself, I'll figure that out in the fall. And but I do really want, I really hope that it's able to come out in sometime in the next year. So there's that. I also have plans to do the next deck of the plant I Talisman cards and then the fifth deck, I want to be all trees. So ...
ash alberg: Ooo, that’s going to be lovely.
christine blystone: Yes. So the fifth deck will be a tree deck. And then beyond
that, I don't know. We'll see who I am and where I am at that point.
My, my father-in-law asked me the other day, he said, he's, I know you've been working on your book. Do you have any other plans for other books? And I do. When I write them down, I would love to write a book, a memoir about playing in a band in my early twenties and call that The Hibiscus Years. [Laughs.]
ash alberg: Oh, that would be so lovely and so sweet. That makes so much sense. [Laughs.]
christine blystone: Yeah.
ash alberg: Love the of tartness of it too.
christine blystone: Yeah, exactly. And then I would also, I've also always wanted to write at least one children's book. Like when I was little that was what I thought I was going to do. Like I'm going to grow up and write books for kids.
But I would love to write a book called Auntie Owl. And it's about your magical owl auntie that lives out in the woods and you can learn some cool shit from her. And she also loves you and protects you, ‘cause in my book too, in my book too, like there's a lot of bird image. Like when I'm in my early twenties, there's a lot of mention of ravens. And then as I get older, I turned more into this owl character.
And yeah, I'm like maybe I'll take Auntie Owl out of here and give her own little thing. So we'll see. I have ideas. Who knows what will happen, but I would love to keep writing and keep illustrating and connect with people in that way, for sure.
ash alberg: Ah, I love it. And so, people can actually download a really lovely PDF. Checkout your show notes for the link for that, that you have very generously provided for us. Which will also just give you a general idea of how lovely Christine's work is. Like I remember when I like looked at the PDF, I was like, this is so pretty. [Chuckle-snorts.]
christine blystone: [Giggles.] Thank you.
ash alberg: It’s so fun. But also if people want to be buying things from you, then they can check you out online and follow you on Instagram @_velvetback_. And then you also have some lovely stockist buddies, including our friends over at Seagrape.
So yeah, I love, I remember like after you reached out to me and I was checking things out, I was like, I have been drooling over these plant talisman cards for so long. [Laughs.]
christine blystone: Aww!
ash alberg: They're so pretty. Yeah. People can definitely find your things and order them and just enjoy lovely things whilst they wait on the book, because I think we're all gonna want to read that book. I'm just like saying for everybody.
You're welcome to everyone. I've chosen your next book for your book club. [Both chuckle.] This has been delightful though. Thank you so much for joining me.
christine blystone: Thanks for having me. I always get giddy when I can nerd out over witchy things with people and so it's just been lovely.
ash alberg: Mhmm. It's also, I feel like you're in the right city for it. [Laughs.]
christine blystone: Yeah, for sure. I know. And it's funny ‘cause like, there was a time in my life, like mid twenties to like about 30, where I was just like dying to get out of Portland.
I was like, I gotta get out of here. I'm going to go do this, that, and having a family, that didn't work out, but I was like, I'm so glad that didn't work out because like it came back around and I was just like, I belong here, like now I can't even think about leaving, so ...
ash alberg: Totally. It's like a nice place to root yourself and then do some travel, but come back to home base.
christine blystone: Exactly.
ash alberg: Thank you so much. This has been delightful.
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