Recipient of a Nautilus Silver Award 2018 and sister book to Burning Woman (Nautilus Silver 2017) and Creatrix (Nautilus Silver 2019).

This audacious questioning of the current medical system’s ability to deal with the modern epidemic of chronic illness, combines a raw personal memoir of sickness and healing, woven through with voices of dozens of other long-term sick women of the world and a feminine cultural critique that digs deep into the roots of patriarchal medicine. Pearce takes us from its ancient Greek roots, through the influences of the Enlightenment and Christianity, the wholesale destruction of the wise woman tradition and Western colonial destruction of native medicines to the current technocratic, capitalist model of medicine.

Medicine Woman asks the uncomfortable questions that our culture refuses to face:

• Why chronic illness, mental health issues, medical prescriptions and costs are rising exponentially.
• Why women are the major sufferers of the modern epidemic of auto-immune conditions.
• Why women are twice as likely to be medicated for depression.
• Why women tend to be taken less seriously by medical professionals.

Voicing a deep yearning for a broader vision of what it means to be human than our current paradigm allows for, calling on an ancient archetype of healing, Medicine Woman, to re-vision how we can navigate sickness and harness its transformational powers in order to heal. Packed with dozens of healing arts exercises and medicine questions to help integrate body and mind in the healing process. Like Burning Woman, this book promises initiation by transmission, reconnecting us directly with the soul of healing.

With a special introduction exclusive to the audiobook placing Medicine Woman in the context of a global pandemic. Please note that a small number of short passages in the original text do not feature in the recording.