TreeBound Books did not come from one book, one class, one culture, or one moment in my life. It came from years of being curious about the things around me and wanting to understand what sits underneath the surface. I can look at a plant, a stone, an oil, a piece of jewelry, a crocheted blanket, an old object, or even a word and immediately begin wondering where it came from. Who used it before us? What did they believe about it? Did it mean the same thing to everyone? How did that meaning change from one culture or region to another? Those questions are a large part of where my inspiration comes from and why cultural history, storytelling traditions, beliefs, family history, handmade traditions, and Earth-based knowledge have become such an important part of TreeBound Books.
My family history also shaped the way I look at people and culture. I have spent time following my family tree and learning about generations that came before me. Some of the genealogy I have been shown continues into traditional biblical family lines reaching all the way back to Eve. I understand that once genealogy reaches that far into ancient and biblical history, it cannot be verified in the same way we can document a recent ancestor through birth records, census records, marriage certificates, or other historical documents. Still, seeing a family history stretch that far made me think differently about heritage. It made it harder for me to think of a person as coming from only one race, one location, one culture, or one single point in time.
The farther back we look, the more complicated human history becomes. People moved. Families joined other families. Borders changed. Languages changed. Beliefs traveled. Traditions moved with people and sometimes changed when those people entered a new place or met another culture. Some knowledge remained almost untouched while other knowledge blended, disappeared, or was renamed. The story of where we come from is rarely as simple as choosing one label and stopping there.
But my history is not only something that exists on a family tree. Some things were simply passed down from one generation to the next. Stories were remembered because someone told them. Lessons survived because somebody taught them. Memories stayed alive because somebody felt they were important enough to carry forward. That is why I think so much about storytelling traditions and oral history. Long before there were databases, websites, printed books, or written records for everything, people depended on one another to remember.
That is where I see myself. I am a storyteller.
I am not using that word to claim authority over an entire tribe, culture, race, or belief system. I do not speak for everybody. I am one person carrying and passing along stories while continuing to learn. In the tradition I was taught, storyteller is a role. To me, it means helping a story continue. It means remembering what you can, sharing what was given to you, and understanding that the story does not belong to you alone.
That difference is very important to me because someone may come to TreeBound Books looking for information about a certain culture, tribe, religion, race, belief, or region. I may have something that can help begin that journey, but I may not be the person who knows the most about that subject. I do not want TreeBound Books to become a place where one person tries to explain the entire world. I hope it becomes a place where more voices can eventually be heard and where people who carry different histories and traditions can add to the conversation.
Different people carry different pieces of knowledge. Some people know family stories. Some know language. Some know crafts, foods, plants, ceremonies, healing traditions, or beliefs that were taught to them by people before them. Others study documents, books, archaeology, science, or history. Sometimes those different kinds of knowledge can help us understand something more completely.
That is also why culture inspires me so much. The same thing can mean something completely different depending on where you are, when you are looking, and who you are asking. A plant may be food in one place, medicine in another, part of a ceremony somewhere else, or simply something beautiful growing in the ground. An oil may be used for the body, for scent, for prayer, for cooking, or for a traditional practice. A stone may be a tool, a piece of jewelry, something used in trade, or something connected to a belief about protection or healing.
The object can stay the same while the human story around it changes.
That is the part I want to understand.
When TreeBound Books talks about beliefs and traditions, I do not want to simply say, “This is what this stone means,” or “This is what this plant was used for.” I want to know who believed it, where they lived, during what time period, and what their relationship to that object actually was. If another culture understood the same thing differently, I want to know that too. The differences matter just as much as the similarities.
That is why I keep looking for books that go deeper than a broad subject. A general book about herbs may open the door, but then I want to know how a particular culture used those herbs. A general book about stones may be interesting, but then I want to know what a certain stone meant in a particular region and whether the belief attached to it is ancient, modern, spiritual, commercial, or something that changed over time. The more specific the history becomes, the more meaningful the story becomes.
My inspiration also comes from handmade traditions. I create things with my own hands, and that changes how I look at objects made by other people. Crochet is one example. When you spend hours creating something stitch by stitch, you understand that the finished object contains more than yarn. It contains time, patience, skill, choices, mistakes, corrections, and the hands of the person who made it.
That makes me think about women in earlier generations, including women during the mid-twentieth century, making blankets, shawls, clothing, lace, decorations, and household pieces. Something we now describe as vintage may once have been part of somebody's everyday life. Someone sat down and made it. She may have learned from her mother, grandmother, friend, neighbor, or a printed pattern. She may have changed the pattern and created something of her own.
That piece holds history.
It tells us something about the materials people had, the styles of that time, the work women did, what families needed, what people valued, and what they were willing to spend hours creating. That is why handmade traditions belong inside TreeBound Books. They are another form of storytelling.
An oil can tell a story. A stone can tell a story. Jewelry can tell a story. A crocheted piece can tell a story. A book can help explain the story. None of those things have to be separated from one another.
A lot of my inspiration eventually comes back to the Earth. No matter where our ancestors lived, people depended on what was around them. They learned about water, plants, trees, animals, stones, soil, weather, seasons, metals, fibers, and everything else available in their environment. They learned what could be eaten, what could become clothing, what could be shaped into tools, what could become shelter, and what might be useful for healing or ceremony.
Those relationships helped create cultures.
Different people developed different beliefs and traditions from what they experienced around them. I do not want to pretend every culture viewed the Earth in exactly the same way because they did not. I also do not want to take one people's teaching and claim it belongs to everybody.
When I speak for myself, I think of the Earth as our first Mother.
To me, that means the Earth was providing for human beings long before our modern systems existed. Before stores, factories, borders, and much of the technology we depend on today, people survived because they learned how to understand what was around them. They learned from the land because they had to.
That is one reason I believe reconnecting younger generations with the Earth matters. That does not mean rejecting technology or pretending we should live exactly as people did hundreds of years ago. It means remembering where things come from. It means knowing that an oil started with a plant. A piece of jewelry started with materials that came from the Earth. Clothing began with fibers. Food came from soil, plants, animals, water, and human labor. Even many of the technologies we use today depend on minerals and metals that had to come from somewhere.
We can move forward without forgetting the roots underneath us.
There are cultures and communities around the world that still carry knowledge connected to land, plants, crafts, food, stories, and traditions. Some of that knowledge has been written down. Some of it continues to be carried by people. Some of it may be disappearing as elders pass away and younger generations move farther away from traditional practices.
That is something I think about often.
I would like TreeBound Books to become a place where those stories can be respected, researched, discussed, and preserved without pretending they are all the same. I would rather see different cultures standing beside one another, each with their own voice, than have them blended into one vague idea of spirituality or tradition.
That is also why I want people to understand that I am still learning.
I do not have a degree in every subject that interests me. I am not presenting myself as the final authority on cultural history, beliefs, traditions, healing practices, or any of the other subjects TreeBound Books may explore. I read, research, ask questions, compare information, and sometimes discover that something I thought I understood needs another look.
I think that is part of learning.
There should be room to say, “I didn't know that.” There should be room to say, “I need to research this more.” There should also be room for someone else to say, “There is another part of this story you should know.”
That is the kind of conversation I hope TreeBound Books can eventually create.
Someone may know of a book I have never read. Someone may know a cultural history I overlooked. Someone may know that a belief commonly repeated online is actually very different from the way it was understood by the people it came from. Someone may know a traditional craft, recipe, story, plant use, or family practice that deserves to be remembered.
I am one storyteller.
I hope one day there will be more.
So when someone asks me where the inspiration behind TreeBound Books comes from, there is no single answer. It comes from my family history and from seeing how far human connections can stretch. It comes from stories passed down between generations. It comes from my understanding of what it means to carry a story without claiming to own every part of it. It comes from culture, beliefs, books, handmade traditions, plants, oils, stones, jewelry, fibers, and all of the things human beings have taken from the Earth and given meaning to.
Most of all, it comes from curiosity.
I want to know what was here before us, what people believed, how they lived, what they made, and what they learned from the Earth. I want to understand what changed, what survived, what was misunderstood, and what may still be waiting for someone to ask about it.
Some roots can be followed through records. Some can be found in books. Some survive in objects. Some are carried through stories. Some are still being passed from one generation to the next.
TreeBound Books gives me a place to follow those roots, while remembering that I am only one storyteller walking through a much larger human story.