Marybeth Bonfligio

I come from volcano people. From pressure and tension and expansions and righteous eruptions in the name of transformation. I also come from salt people, whose ancient beginnings were to shield evil and protect each other. Volcanos, by the way, made oceanic salt.

My medicine is from a volcanic island against the salty mediterranean sea.

My three daughters are my most potent teachers. Sometimes it hurts; they are so fierce. Being a mother is a stunning kind of pain.

I bring mother magic to the table, always. I was raised with mother magic. My lineage is mother magic.

My life understanding is animistic. I believe as even my recent ancestors did: there is spirit in all things.

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My medicine is from a volcanic island against the salty mediterranean sea.

My three daughters are my most potent teachers. Sometimes it hurts; they are so fierce. Being a mother is a stunning kind of pain.

I bring mother magic to the table, always. I was raised with mother magic. My lineage is mother magic.

My life understanding is animistic. I believe as even my recent ancestors did: there is spirit in all things.

learn more ↓

My favorite flowers are wild roses that grow along rivers and the mandrake that blooms purple in the fall on dry Mediterranean earth, and the caper unfolding against salt air.

I am an abolitionist. I am dedicated to being with the hard work in my short lifetime to ending collective injustices to all beings and creatures and unspelling and alchemizing the egregore of white supremacy forever and ever. May it be so.

I’ve studied and trained in quantum midwifery for birth and beyond, yoga of mystics, herbalism, post-part I’m doula care,lineage-based tarot and ancestral somatic practices of Sicily.

have an MFA in creative nonfiction, study Sicilian and southern Italian tarantism through un prescribed moment and ancient sounding — as well as drumming, dance, and song.

I’ve taught body movement since 2000, ritual, tarot, writing, and ancestral recovery and regeneration practices to thousands of people all over the world. I’ve also written two books.

I’m neurodiverse. There are labels, but I prefer to burn them and say— my brain works as it does, and it often does not work in the way capitalism demands. It has taken me a lifetime to love my brain. A lifetime to recognize it for what it is. For a long time, I thought I was the problem. I’m not. You aren’t either.

I was born on the winter solstice in 1973. I feel the most comforted in liminal spaces, even in the thrashing of threshold work. I bring lanterns to the dark mystery and turn out the lights so we can sense our way through the darkness. The edge of the two is my favorite place to hang with you. This is where I support you in finding your own powerful magic and medicine. The world needs it. Now. Now. Yesterday, actually.

I’m a Sagittarius sun (be free). Scorpio moon (be mystery). Aquarius rising (be human).

I’m a second-generation Sicani and Lucani, from Sicily and southern Italy as well as Masche from Northern Italy. My maternal grandmother gave me the gift of Położna (midwifery) from Poland. I was raised by the working poor, culturally intact, slowly but traumatically assimilated and vibrant, non-nuclear immigrant communities in small towns in Upstate NY, the land of the Eries people. My mother worried. My father was a bookie. My mother was devoted to La Madonna. My father was a witch.

I now live along the Hudson River— one of its indigenous names is Muhheakantuck which means the river that flows both ways. I live in a little port town that was tended to by the Esopus people of the Lenape. I am becoming the river.

I have 3 adult daughters, 2 huge dogs, and a long-time partner— a white cis man who brings home half the bacon working with his hands. I bring home the other half working with mine. We live multigenerationally (we have an elder we tend to).
I do this work that I am offering here, in this space, because it’s my work to do, my service, but also, it feeds my family. It is my full time gig.

to be here now, and also, to be laying on a hillside on my ancestral land, drying out in the sun, drinking wine, cutting lemons, gathering olives, making love to everything, and diving into the sea to be held, completely held.

I am honored for you to be here. I mean that.

I am excited to work with you.

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