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Cherise Lily Nana is a writer, mentor and artomancer. Her mythopoetic work accompanies you home to your unique soul-expression, often during times of great change or uncertainty.
It is here—between what was and what will be—that we are given the opportunity to cultivate our relationship with the wild stewards of soul, beauty & mystery, and to reach into our deep imagination to uncover the fullest expression of who we are. Cherise is a lover of all things myth and magic, and has had essays and poetry published in Clarion Poetry Quarterly, Dumbo Feather, Paradiso and CosmoMuse. Five Rivers is her first collection of poetry, and she is currently writing a series of oracle decks.
An avid student, Cherise holds a Bachelor of Arts (Art History/Indigenous Studies/Studies of Religion) and a Graduate Diploma in Professional Writing, and has undertaken further studies in Mentoring, Creativity Coaching, Ritual/Rites of Passage, Therapeutic Arts, Counselling, Archetypal Tarot, Myth and Fairy Tales. When she's not working, Cherise spends her time immersed in children's literature/fantasy novels, hunting down the best tiramisu, wandering parks listening to neosoul and attempting to earn the trust of stray cats. |
ancestral threads
I give thanks to my ancestors—my people of Ghana and Scotland—to whose stories I am apprenticed. I also pay my respects to the ancestors (both human and more-than-human) of the land on which I live.
We are all the sum of our ancestors. We carry layers upon layers of deep knowing and hidden gifts. We bear the stories of those who have walked before us, and in every moment, we weave tales for those who will follow in our footsteps.
I give thanks to my ancestors—my people of Ghana and Scotland—to whose stories I am apprenticed. I also pay my respects to the ancestors (both human and more-than-human) of the land on which I live.
We are all the sum of our ancestors. We carry layers upon layers of deep knowing and hidden gifts. We bear the stories of those who have walked before us, and in every moment, we weave tales for those who will follow in our footsteps.
La Naissance de Vénus, dit aussi Pandore by Odilon Redon
A number of years ago, I started hearing whispers from a muse in the middle of the night...
She met me on the page, asking me to write, write because the trees are begging to grow their limbs through your words and their foliage through your verses.
This call continued to reverberate throughout my dreams, and over time, I began to listen. I welcomed the muse; she was responding to my yearning to unlock my voice, to break free from the chains of the inner critic and demolish the barriers that dammed my self-expression.
I sensed that buried somewhere in the mud of those waters I would find the key to my creativity.
What I didn’t anticipate from my conversations with the muse was a greater sense of meaning and a rite of passage that would ultimately guide me home.
Since that night, the muse’s presence has steadily grown in my daily life. Sometimes she brings me the sweet, sunlit perfume of jonquils in bloom and other times puzzle pieces of stories ferried from the uncharted waters of my unconscious mind.
She envelops my psyche in mythic poetry and draws my attention to the way the ocean’s tides mirror the rise and fall of the breath in my belly. I hear her murmurings in meditative insight and embodied revelations, and in wild and domestic encounters with the other-than-human world.
She is also an emissary for my ancestors, delivering the wisdom found in the didactic rhythms of a talking drum or the depths of a highland loch.
It would appear that the muse accompanies me through not only the luminous voyages. During moments of anxiety and despair she has presented me with grace, reminding me that these experiences ask me to deepen my trust and soften my walls, so that I may converge with a love that is so much bigger than the tension in my heart.
In every one of her gifts, the muse continues to offer inspiration, beauty, and initiation into the life-affirming expression of the great mystery.
She met me on the page, asking me to write, write because the trees are begging to grow their limbs through your words and their foliage through your verses.
This call continued to reverberate throughout my dreams, and over time, I began to listen. I welcomed the muse; she was responding to my yearning to unlock my voice, to break free from the chains of the inner critic and demolish the barriers that dammed my self-expression.
I sensed that buried somewhere in the mud of those waters I would find the key to my creativity.
What I didn’t anticipate from my conversations with the muse was a greater sense of meaning and a rite of passage that would ultimately guide me home.
Since that night, the muse’s presence has steadily grown in my daily life. Sometimes she brings me the sweet, sunlit perfume of jonquils in bloom and other times puzzle pieces of stories ferried from the uncharted waters of my unconscious mind.
She envelops my psyche in mythic poetry and draws my attention to the way the ocean’s tides mirror the rise and fall of the breath in my belly. I hear her murmurings in meditative insight and embodied revelations, and in wild and domestic encounters with the other-than-human world.
She is also an emissary for my ancestors, delivering the wisdom found in the didactic rhythms of a talking drum or the depths of a highland loch.
It would appear that the muse accompanies me through not only the luminous voyages. During moments of anxiety and despair she has presented me with grace, reminding me that these experiences ask me to deepen my trust and soften my walls, so that I may converge with a love that is so much bigger than the tension in my heart.
In every one of her gifts, the muse continues to offer inspiration, beauty, and initiation into the life-affirming expression of the great mystery.
(The above is the also the opening of my lyric essay, Encounters with the Muse, featured in the Mysticism issue (no. 62, feb 2020) of Dumbo Feather magazine. Read more here.