ABOUT

Hello! I’m Amber Magnolia Hill, calmly but intensely feeling up this incense cedar in one of my favorite vintage dresses.

I make podcasts and plant medicines for people who yearn for knowledge about herbalism, deepening ancestral connections, and remembering what it is to be human upon the earth.

I help folks to drop the cultural lies of disconnection and disempowerment, and to remember that the old ways are in our bones.

I’m an herbalist with 17 years of study and practice under my belt, and I’ve been growing my relationship with my ancestors for the last decade (or technically since birth, since I was lucky enough to know both parents, all four grandparents, and even four great grandparents!).

I’ve walked with thousands of people on this path via interviews and talks on the Medicine Stories podcast and by offering hand-crafted, mythically-minded herbal medicine.

My known ancestors were French, Dutch, English, Scottish, Irish, and Manx. Going back farther than what genealogy and autosomal DNA can tell me, my people traversed Eurasia and lived in Northernmost Europe (thank you mitochondrial and Y-DNA) and, of course, the first homo sapiens in my line emigrated out of Africa, as did yours.

I say all of this because we tend to focus on only the last ten generations or so of our ancestry (again, what the autosomal DNA tests- the ones that break down ethnicity by estimated percentage- and genealogy research can tell us), when there are thousands upon thousands more generations living inside of us, people who existed long before there were nation states to claim as a source of identity.

All four of my grandparents moved to California from other states, and I am now raising the third generation of California natives.

I am also a mother, writer, and podcast host.

I love swimming in the Yuba River or in Lake Tahoe or just melting in the bath with an informative, inspiring book (I’m a voracious reader and dream of having a full-on home library someday).

But let’s be real- I spend most of my time mothering my daughters, born ten years apart. I always wanted two girls (like my mom had), but never anticipated the years of single motherhood between them or that a decade would separate their births. I love how it’s worked out though.

Here are some little known things about me (that you can never tell anyone):

• I was a blackjack dealer at Harrah’s Lake Tahoe (my hometown) the summer I was 21.

• My family (grandparents, parents, sister, and now husband and daughters) and I are total Disneyland freaks. Not Disney World, not Disney Cruises, just the old magic of the original Disneyland.

• I have a Religious Studies degree from U.C. Davis that I’ve never “done anything with”.

• My secret ambition is to be a children’s book author.

You can learn more about my work by listening to the Medicine Stories podcast or perusing our herbal line Mythic Medicinals.