The author will share her book, which draws on her Indigenous roots and guides the reader on a journey to become more human through acting like mushrooms. The more we start to live like mushrooms, the more healthy, just, and abundant our lives will be.

Unlike other mushroom-focused books, Our Ancestors Want Us to Be Mushrooms weaves the guiding attributes of mushrooms and ancestral wisdom into an inspiring metaphor that calls us back into the right relationship with each other and with our planet.Written with warmth, spirit, and whimsy, Our Ancestors Want Us to Be Mushrooms enchants the reader into a more engaged life with the world and themselves by embodying the innate qualities of the wondrous mycelial world.

“What if the answers aren’t above us, but beneath our feet? In this tender, imaginative book, mushrooms become a guide for living with more care, reciprocity, and wonder. Drawing on ancestral memory and the quiet wisdom of the natural world, Madison Murphy Barney traces a path toward a life shaped by cycles, connection, and attention to what’s already here. A small, luminous call to return. Barney has a way of making the reader feel like they are just walking with her through the woods, learning about the ways we are all interconnected.” —Cody Cook-Parrott, artist and author of The Practice of Attention

MADISON MURPHY BARNEY is a Two Spirit, Indigenous sister, doula, author, and public-health storyteller. She authors the popular weekly newsletter Our Medicine, an exploration of our individual, collective, and ancestral gifts, which can serve as the medicine to heal and build our world into a more just, balanced, and communal ecosystem. For the past few years, Madison has been exploring personal and collective practices of rematriation.