About

My name is Maddy Hoepner, I’m a Shamanic Healer and Folk Herbalist. I’m passionate about slow living and sustainable design. I advocate for rejecting capitalism, and reconnecting with nature and the traditional skills and wisdom of our ancestors. I believe this is the path to healing ourselves, our lineages and the earth. 

I design interiors, homewares, clothing, costumes and accessories. I sew, knit, crochet, weave, garden, grow, cook, make medicine, preserve, ferment, upcycle, repair, furniture restore, and more! All these traditional skills are self taught.

I want to show you how easy (and important) it is to get involved in producing some of your own food, medicine, clothing and other goods. 

I live with my husband Dan, Matilda the purple heeler, and Frank the black cat, in a decrepit but lovely 132 year old house which we are restoring and renovating. We live in a country town but are on a pretty small block, which is too small for producing much of our own food. We’re also in a really cold, damp area, so getting anything to grow well is a major challenge! 

We bought our dream block of land (around 4 acres) in central Victoria, Australia just before covid hit. We are currently researching, planning and designing our future permaculture homestead and farmhouse. Gardening and spending time in nature is without doubt our favourite thing to do. We’re really looking forward to being able to spend much more time outdoors, doing what we love.

This is especially important to us, because we lost a big chunk of our lives. Me to illness, and Dan to working full time, commuting, and caring for me. I spent most of the last decade being so sick with trauma induced chronic illness that I could barely get out of bed, except for medical appointments. And that was before I nearly died twice from subsequent gallbladder complications and liver failure, then a perforated intestine! 

It’s amazing how a near death experience (or two) can really open your eyes to what’s actually important in life. While I was healing myself from intergenerational trauma and abuse, chronic illness, minor and major abdominal surgery, and broken ribs, it became very apparent that the way most people live really didn’t work for us. That trying to fit in with society’s expectations was slowly killing us. That we needed to seek a life surrounded by, and more in tune with nature. 

I think the most powerful thing an individual can do to combat the capitalist/colonial system and its abusive social constructs, is to opt out of it:

To accept yourself and stop thinking you’re inferior, broken or defective, and that you need to buy and display things to appear more popular, attractive and successful.

To stop buying mass produced plastic and chemical junk to fill the void created by such a hollow, superficial existence.

To reduce, reuse, recycle, upcycle, grow and make the things you need yourself, as much as possible.

When we use our own energy and creativity to problem solve and grow, make and fix things for ourselves, those things give back to us in abundance.

And when you have to buy things (even the most self sufficient person in the world would struggle to make everything they need themselves), to buy responsibly and ethically, and made to last.

I’m not against things at all, in fact I believe it’s vitally important to have a comfortable home which makes you feel both relaxed and inspired. I just think we should try to be more intentional about the things we surround ourselves with.

I’m here to make things, and to show you how to make things. I’m also here to gently encourage you to work on healing yourself, because when you heal yourself, you heal the Earth. Humans are meant to live in harmony and balance with the natural world, it’s time for us to return to this state. If enough of us opt out of the current system, I believe we can change the world. 

Now, who’s with me?

Contact me

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