Episode 7: Nana Tomova. Story-telling, Mental Health and The Story Apothocary
Hello and welcome to my interview with Nana Tomova from The Story Apothecary. So, how are you? Things are changing quickly, aren’t they? I hope you’ve been able to find space to breathe, write, and do whatever you need to stay creative and centred.
Nana is a storyteller based in Sussex. She is a storyteller of oral stories, of poetry and of images through her photography. She is drawn to stories about nature and our relationship with her. Nana loves to tell transformational tales about strong women, and Bulgarian and Slavic Stories. Nana was born by the Black sea in Bulgaria and loves telling stories of the deep blue sea and translates and tells Bulgarian tales which have not been heard before. Her telling has been described as “An ocean of inspiration”, “Spellbinding” and people say that she "Has the power of making the audience feel in safe hands".
Nana’s background is in mental health where she worked as a pharmacist for a decade, and this inspired her to create the Story Apothecary podcast where she dispenses medicinal and healing stories for the whole world. Nana’s inspirations for her poetry and photography is nature, which she finds rich, beautiful, inspirational, wise, and healing. When writing about or photographing nature, she is in conversation with her.
In this conversation, we talk about:
Nana’s background as a mental health pharmacist and how she merges this with her work as an outdoor story-telling.
Psychiatry and the stigma surrounding mental health pharmacy
Her exciting plans for the future and her creation of a ‘real life’ ‘Story Apothecary’ along with her beautiful podcast
Her ‘wild’ childhood in Bulgaria, the transition from this to an urban setting and her journey back to ‘wildness’
The liberating effect of Nature
The joy of being an enthusiast
Her journey to embracing her Bulgarian roots and how this influences her creativity and story-telling
The responsibility she feels for respectful updating of traditional Bulgarian tales
How she takes care of herself and her creativity
Her hopes for the future
And Nana shares a story with us, which was such a treat!
Nana has the most calming energy and I loved listening to her thoughts and insights. Please do go and listen to her new podcast and get signed up to her new Patreon, and be soothed by her stories and words. Stories have the power to transform emotions and mindset and therefore the world, and I’m such a big believer in the impact that these stories can have on our actions, especially traditional stories, which, when we explore their teachings and bring them into our own contexts, can expose us to perspectives we perhaps hadn’t encountered before.
You can find Nana on Instagram @Nana.Tomova and her storytelling walks are @walkinthewild.uk. Her website www.nanatomova.com and you can find more information about her Patreon on www.patreon.com/nanatomova
As always, stick around until the end and I’ll pop back to give you an insight to the meditation and writing prompt that follows this episode.
And if you use the prompts from any of these conversations, please do share them with me as I love reading your words and am working on setting up a section of my website dedicated to your writing. You can find me on www.promptedbynature.co.uk or on Instagram and Facebook @prompted.by.nature And please do leave a five-star rating wherever you are listening and, if you have a little review would be wonderful too.
Enjoy the conversation and I’ll speak to you after!
Ps. The workbook I mention in the introduction can be found at the Me and White Supremacy website here.
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Meditation and Writing Prompt
Something a little different for you this week! This week's writing prompt asks you to spend some time with a tree in your local area, noticing all the little details that so often go unnoticed as we walk by. This prompt is about telling the story of the tree, perhaps in the style of a fairy tale or a fable, or maybe something more modern, telling the story of everything the tree has seen in its life, the changes and people and so on.
Please do share any writing with me if you'd like!
Happy writing!
Helen x
