This isn’t a rejection of the spiritual community. There is so much within these spaces that I love, and so much that has genuinely changed the way I understand myself, other people, and the nature of reality. But I can feel my curiosity moving somewhere new. I want to be in conversation with people who are building companies, shaping technologies, stewarding resources, working within institutions, tending land, studying systems, and grappling directly with how the world actually works. And I think that pull is emerging alongside a realization I’ve been negotiating with myself for a while: somewhere within our desire to imagine a different world, I think we can begin to dissociate from the one we’re actually living in.

There was a real intrigue in these spaces for me initially, particularly as I started exploring alternative paths of healing and relating and different ways of connecting with God, or this larger intelligence. There was something incredibly beautiful and freeing about entering communities where so much was open to questioning. There was this curiosity around the unboundedness of our reality, around consciousness, around our ability to question the belief systems we’ve inherited and perhaps create new ones. It opened me to ways of understanding myself and the world that I don’t think I would have arrived at otherwise, and there are parts of that exploration that I still hold very deeply.

But over time, I’ve also started noticing something else, and I think what I’m coming to call it is a kind of collective dissociation. Not necessarily a dissociation from Spirit or from ourselves, but a dissociation from the material reality of the world that we’re actually living in and the structures that govern it.

There can be so much anger and disappointment and resentment in these communities toward the institutions and systems that govern power and resources in our world. Toward corporations, capitalism, government, money, technology, and really anything that can be associated with “the system.” And I don’t think that questioning these things is misguided. If anything, I think we desperately need people willing to question the structures we’ve inherited and ask whether they’re actually serving us, who they are serving, where power has become overly concentrated, and what the consequences of these systems are for people and for the Earth.

But I think the place where I have started to lose resonance is when questioning becomes dismissal, and when dismissal becomes a reason not to actually understand the thing we’re criticizing.

I’ve noticed this particularly around money. I’ve spent a lot of time in communities where people speak about abundance and creating new paradigms around value and exchange, while at the same time there can be a deep resistance to engaging with the structures through which money and resources actually move. I’ve listened to a lot of explanations for why people don’t have the financial resources they desire, and sometimes underneath those explanations seems to be an anger that the world requires participation in systems they don’t agree with.

And I understand that anger. I think there are plenty of things about our economic systems that deserve critique. But I also find myself increasingly interested in understanding why these systems exist in the first place, what problems they were attempting to solve, what they make possible, and where they actually do function quite well. Because while there are very real shadows to capitalism and corporations and financial institutions and governments, these structures also coordinate resources and labor and knowledge across millions or billions of people. There are reasons they emerged. There are reasons they have persisted. And I don’t think we can meaningfully imagine what should replace or evolve them into something better if we’re unwilling to thoroughly understand what they’re doing now.

I think this is where I’ve started to feel myself drawn back toward other communities that I’ve always felt some resonance with, particularly people who are deeply connected to the Earth and the outdoors while also being fairly grounded in the practical realities of the world. People who understand that there is this core mission of tending to our planet and our resources consciously, but who also recognize that those resources exist within political, economic, technological, and institutional systems. There is something about that integration that I am craving right now. The ability to hold gratitude for what humans have managed to build while also seeing very clearly where those structures need to change.

Because I don’t actually want to reject the world we’ve built. I want to participate in making it better.

And increasingly, that makes me want to be around the people who understand how these systems work and who actually hold some amount of power within them. I want to understand how resources move, how decisions get made, how technologies get built, how capital gets allocated, how institutions evolve. I want to be able to sit with appreciation for the complexity of what already exists while also holding the possibility that we can create something better.

Artificial intelligence has become one of the places where this tension feels particularly obvious to me.

There is a lot of disgust toward AI in spiritual communities right now, and again, I don’t think all of that concern is misplaced. There are questions about what these technologies mean for creativity, labor, energy consumption, privacy, power, human connection, and our relationship with our own intelligence that I think are incredibly important. I don’t want a future where we adopt technology without questioning what we’re giving up in exchange for what it gives us.

But I also find the wholesale rejection of AI to sometimes feel strangely entitled.

Because when someone says that we shouldn’t be using these technologies at all, I wonder whose life they’re imagining when they say that. There are people all over the world who barely have enough time in their day because they’re working long hours, raising families, caring for other people, navigating bureaucracies, or trying to create some amount of stability with very limited resources. There are people who have never had access to a tutor or an assistant or an editor or someone who can help them understand a legal document or develop an idea or learn a skill. There are people whose education, geography, language, disability, family circumstances, or economic position have placed enormous limits on what kinds of knowledge and support have historically been available to them.

And now we are watching a technology emerge that, for all of its problems, has the potential to create an extraordinary amount of logistical efficiency and access to knowledge. It has the potential to give people back time. And time can become rest. It can become creativity. It can become being with your children. It can become starting a business or learning something new or making art or going outside or simply having enough space in your day to think.

I don’t think we can dismiss that possibility simply because we are afraid of what else the technology might become.

And this is maybe the larger thing I keep coming back to. I think we desperately need some kind of compromise between the systems we’re building and the values we’re afraid of losing. I don’t think either pole is sufficient. I don’t think unquestioned technological acceleration is the answer, and I don’t think refusing technological evolution is the answer either. Both perspectives contain something we need to listen to.

I remember reading an article that made the argument: “If anything, disengagement from systems that will govern civilization is one of the most dangerous possible responses. Historically, populations that refuse participation in emerging power structures do not preserve influence. They lose influence.”

Because whether or not certain communities want AI to exist, it exists. Whether or not we like our economic systems, they exist. Whether or not we trust corporations or governments or financial institutions, they hold enormous amounts of power over the resources and infrastructure that shape our lives. And there is something that increasingly feels almost like giving our power away when our response to imperfect systems is simply to refuse to engage with them.

If the people who care deeply about the Earth refuse to engage with technology, then the people building technology will have less influence from those perspectives. If people who care about community and equity refuse to engage with capital, then those values will have less representation in the places where capital is allocated. If we decide that power itself is corrupt and therefore distance ourselves from it, we shouldn’t be surprised when the people most interested in acquiring power are the ones who end up holding it.

Maybe this is the part of my relationship to spirituality that is changing. I’m less interested in transcending the systems of this world and more interested in understanding them deeply enough to participate in their evolution. I still believe there is immense value in questioning the reality we’ve inherited. I still want spaces that make room for mystery and ceremony and consciousness and relationship with the Earth and ways of knowing that don’t fit neatly inside our existing institutions. I don’t want to lose any of that.

But I also don’t want those things to become another way of leaving reality.

I think what I’m searching for now is a deeper integration between these worlds. Something that can hold reverence for the Earth alongside an understanding of economics. Something that can question technology while still being willing to learn how it works. Something that can imagine radically different ways of organizing society while remaining curious about why our existing institutions evolved the way they did. Something that understands that changing systems requires more than standing outside of them and pointing toward what is broken.

Maybe that means stepping away from some of the spaces I’ve been moving through. Or maybe it simply means my relationship to them is changing. I’m not entirely sure yet.

What I do know is that I feel increasingly called toward the places where these worlds meet. Toward people who can love the Earth and understand money. Who can question power and still be willing to hold it. Who can imagine another world without needing to reject everything humans have already built. Who can recognize the very real shadows of our systems while also holding some gratitude for the extraordinary amount of human intelligence, labor, coordination, and creativity that has brought us here.

Because the future won’t be shaped by those who stand outside of the systems changing it. It will be shaped by those willing to enter them.

Washington, 2026.

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This New Moon arrived with the current Mercury retrograde in Cancer, which has been inviting us to revisit old memories, family patterns, and conversations before we decide what deserves to come with us into the next chapter.

And just two nights before this new moon, on Sunday, July 12th, Mercury reached its cazimi. During a cazimi, Mercury passes through the heart of the Sun, a moment associated with sudden clarity. While Mercury retrogrades are a period of revisitation, the cazimi offers a a glimpse of illumination. We may not have all the answers right now, but many of us have felt a subtle shift from uncertainty toward deeper knowing.

As if that weren’t enough, we’re standing on the threshold of one of the most anticipated astrological configurations in decades: Barbault’s Basket. Named after French astrologer André Barbault, this rare planetary pattern gathers several planets into a cluster of harmonious, and some tense aspects. This is a collective turning point, the beginning of a process, a period where a new culture starts to take shape. While much of that transformation unfolds collectively, within that, it also asks each of us what kind of future we’re building to contribute to this vision of a better world.

I’m going to make a separate video to go further into this series of transits, but the key point I want you to remember is that Jupiter is sextiling Uranus today. There’s an opening for lucky little breaks; get outside, it’s a great day to be in community, be in groups, writing, teaching, leaning into that luck. And so this Cancer New Moon felt like the seed just before the breakthrough.

Reflection

• What memory, relationship, or old story is asking to be revisited with greater compassion?

• What truth became clearer for you during this last Mercury cazimi?

• As this new chapter begins, what thread are you weaving into this basket?

Washington, 2026.

Last night, Mercury reached cazimi, the moment where Mercury passes through the heart of the Sun. During a Mercury retrograde, which is already such a reflective time, a cazimi is this brief window where something comes into focus. It’s almost like the mind gets illuminated for a moment. Because you can finally see something that has been there all along.

That felt really true for me today.

A friend of mine who’s an astrologer and I were talking recently about my birth chart. She pointed out that my Venus in Aries squares my Neptune in Capricorn at 29 degrees, and she said something that’s been echoing in my mind ever since. She told me that one of the themes she sees running through my life is learning discernment in relationships. She described this tension between having a huge heart that genuinely wants to see the best in people while also having an incredibly intuitive sensitivity to what’s happening underneath the surface. She said that one of my lifelong lessons may be learning to trust that intuition, especially around deception, even when it’s painful.

I don’t believe our birth charts completely dictate our lives. But I do think they can give us language for the lessons we’re living.

As Saturn has moved into Aries and I’ve stepped into my Saturn return, so much of my life has become about relationships. My Sun, Saturn, and Venus all in Aries in the 7th house. Not just romantic relationships, but friendships, business partnerships, community, and learning what integrity actually feels like in my body.

One of the hardest things for me over the last few years has been this strange experience of sensing something before I have any evidence for it.

It’s such an uncomfortable place to be.

Someone is telling me one thing, but my body is saying something completely different. I’ll leave a conversation and think, Why do I feel so unsettled? Why do I suddenly feel anxious? Why does my chest feel tight? Why can’t I relax around this person?

And then my mind immediately jumps in and starts trying to explain it away. You’re projecting. You’re reading too much into it. You’re being unfair. You’re carrying old wounds.

I know that voice really well.

Part of why I know it so well is because one of the biggest heartbreaks of my life began exactly like that.

Before I ever found out I had been deceived by someone I deeply loved, before any of the facts came out, my body already knew something wasn’t right.

I remember feeling almost crazy. I wanted so badly to believe what I was being told because the alternative was devastating. It felt easier to distrust myself than to imagine the person I loved could actually be lying to me.

When the truth finally came out, it changed something in me. Because I cannot abandon what my body knows in order to preserve the version of reality I wish were true.

Lately, this lesson has been showing up again in different relationships.

There have been moments where I’ve been sitting across from someone and I can feel that there’s another conversation happening underneath the one we’re having. It’s hard to explain. But I can feel attraction that isn’t being acknowledged. Financial stress that’s quietly shaping a conversation. Expectations that have never actually been spoken out loud. Motives that exist beneath all the right words.

And then I find myself in the same place all over again.

Am I imagining this?

Or is my body noticing something before my mind can explain it?

The hardest part is that, when I’ve chosen to trust that feeling and speak to it, sometimes it has led to really painful truths. Conversations I wish I’d never had to have. Relationships that couldn’t continue. Moments where I realized my intuition had been picking up on something real all along.

I wish that weren’t true.

I wish discernment felt lighter than this.

At the same time, this has also been one of the most beautiful seasons of my life. I’ve become a homeowner. I’m building Amanita Apothecary. I’m continuing to work a full-time job while pouring my heart into creating something that feels deeply aligned with who I am. I feel more connected to my purpose than I ever have before.

And that’s part of why these lessons feel so amplified.

As my life expands, the way people relate to me is changing too.

I’m realizing more and more that not everyone is relating to me. Sometimes they’re relating to what they hope I’ll become. Sometimes they’re relating to what I can offer them. Sometimes they’re relating to an idea they’ve created about me.

The people I trust most all have something in common.

When I’m with them, my body exhales.

I don’t feel like I’m solving a puzzle.

I don’t feel confused after I leave.

I don’t spend days wondering what they really meant.

I laugh more. I soften. I’m playful. My nervous system settles.

I’m finally trusting that feeling more than almost anything else.

That’s what this Mercury cazimi illuminated for me; the quiet realization that discernment isn’t pulling me away from love. It’s slowly leading me toward relationships where love doesn’t require me to stop trusting myself.

Washington, 2026.

This axis of Cancer and Capricorn can also illuminate inherited family dynamics. Cancer is often associated with the mother, home, emotional roots, and the ways we’re nurtured. Capricorn is often linked with the father, authority, responsibility, and the expectations we learned to carry. Whether those themes came through parents, caregivers, or family systems, this Full Moon offers an opportunity to notice the ancestral patterns we’ve inherited and ask which ones still belong in the future we’re creating.

Monday also marked Jupiter’s move into Leo for the next year. Jupiter expands whatever it touches, and in Leo that expansion flows through creativity, courage, joy, leadership, and wholehearted self-expression. There is an invitation to take up more space, share your gifts more generously, and create from a place of genuine authenticity rather than performance.

Last, Chiron entered Taurus for the first time in decades, beginning a new chapter of collective healing around self-worth, our relationship with the body, the earth, resources, pleasure, and what helps us feel truly safe. Chiron will retrograde back into Aries this October before returning to Taurus in the spring of 2027, offering time to revisit the healing around identity, independence, and self-trust that has unfolded over the past several years before this new cycle fully settles into Taurus.

Mercury also went retrograde in Cancer on Monday, inviting us to slow down and listen more carefully to our inner world. Cancer governs memory, home, family, emotional safety, and the stories we carry from the past. Conversations may circle back. Old emotions or relationships may resurface. This can be a meaningful time to reflect before reacting, revisit what still feels unresolved, and reconnect with the people, places, and practices that genuinely nourish you. Together with this Full Moon, it may become easier to recognize the beliefs, coping strategies, and family narratives that have quietly shaped your life, while choosing which ones you no longer wish to carry forward.

A few questions to reflect on:

• What am I ready to commit to?

• Where am I playing small?

• What truly makes me feel safe?

It was one-thirty in the morning, and I realized I’d been staying up way too late for weeks now. Midnight, one, sometimes even two in the morning. I’m only getting six or seven hours of sleep most nights, which definitely isn’t ideal.

But instead of feeling worried, I found myself thinking about where I was two years ago.

Two years ago, after the seizures, my body was asking for something completely different. I slept constantly. There were days where I slept twelve or fourteen hours, and even when I was awake, I felt exhausted. I had migraines almost every day, and my brain felt like it was constantly on the brink of collapse. I remember wishing I had my Oura Ring back then because I’m just so curious what it would’ve shown. I wonder what my body was actually doing during all of those long stretches of sleep. I wonder what it knew that I wasn’t aware of yet.

At the time, everything felt like survival. I had left Colorado and was staying with my parents for a while before bouncing between friends’ apartments in New York. Eventually I packed up my truck and started driving west toward Washington. I was living out of bags. I didn’t really have a kitchen that was mine. I didn’t have routines that grounded me. I was trying so hard to do everything “right,” but I didn’t have a stable home I could relax into.

I remember becoming almost obsessive about food. I was convinced that if I could just figure out the perfect way to eat, maybe I’d stop having migraines. Maybe my brain would heal faster. I was chasing keto, avoiding carbohydrates, avoiding seed oils, trying to eat enough vegetables, support my hormones, support my gut. In New York, that was honestly really hard. I ordered food more often than I wanted because I didn’t always have access to a kitchen, and when I did order something, I felt like I was constantly compromising.

When I look back now, I have so much compassion for that version of myself. She was trying so hard. She was terrified. She thought if she could just get it perfect, her body would heal. Her body had become unpredictable, and she was looking for anything that might help her feel safe again.

People always want to know what finally worked, and I honestly don’t know how to answer that question anymore. Was it getting away from mold? Was it moving into my own home? Was it finally having enough quiet that my nervous system could settle? Was it years of learning herbal medicine? Therapy? Boundaries? Amanita? Time? Probably all of it, and none of it on its own.

I used to think healing would come from one big breakthrough. Looking back now, I think it was hundreds of small changes that slowly added up.

Last night, what really caught my attention wasn’t even the sleep.

It was my skin.

For years, especially around the full moon and before my period, my eczema would flare. The backs of my shoulders and my neck would become inflamed. I’d get folliculitis. I’d have these strange swollen welts on my legs. Around the same time, I’d also get these almost unbelievable cravings for processed sugar. There were moments where I’d be eating and thinking, “This doesn’t feel like me.”

I’ve been doing a parasite protocol over the last month, and I genuinely don’t know what role it’s playing. I’m also taking milk thistle, schisandra, trying to support my liver, and I’ve made so many other changes over the last year that it would be impossible for me to point to one thing and say, “That was it.”

But something is changing.

And maybe even more than that, my body feels different.

Today is the last day of our fiscal year at work. Historically, this is exactly the time of year where my body would crash. I would’ve gotten sick. I would’ve expected my eczema to explode. I would’ve expected to feel like I was barely holding everything together.

Now, instead, I just... don’t.

I’m not doing everything “perfectly.” I still want to be sleeping more. I don’t want to pretend that staying up until one in the morning is suddenly healthy just because I seem to be tolerating it better.

What feels important is something else.

It’s that I notice how much more my body can hold than it could two years ago.

I keep coming back to the word capacity because it’s the closest word I have for what I’m experiencing. It's not that life asks less of me. If anything, it asks more. I just feel like my capacity has expanded.

And my life is fuller than it’s ever been. I’m working a demanding job. I’m building a business. I’m hosting tea lounges. I’m studying plants. I’m harvesting and making medicine. I’m tending a home. I’m navigating relationships in a way that feels slower and more intentional than I used to.

Life hasn't necessarily become easier. But my relationship to it has.

A year ago, if I had been staying up this late, working this much, and carrying this many moving pieces, I probably would’ve been watching my body constantly, wondering if I was getting close to another seizure. I would’ve been afraid of every headache. Every strange sensation. Every moment of fatigue.

Last night, I realized I wasn't scanning for danger anymore.

That doesn’t mean I take my health for granted now. If anything, I think I care for it more deeply than I ever have. The difference is that I trust my body more. Or maybe, more accurately, my body trusts me more.

I think that’s the part that made me so emotional last night.

So much of healing has happened so gradually that I almost missed it. There wasn’t one day where I woke up and thought, “I’m healed.” I spent so many years trying to figure out what was wrong with my body that I almost missed everything that had quietly gone right.

I almost missed the fact that I wasn’t getting sick every time work became stressful.

I almost missed that my skin was calmer.

I almost missed that I wasn’t scanning my body for signs that another seizure was coming.

I almost missed that I trusted my body more than I used to.

I almost missed that life simply felt... lighter to carry.

Maybe what made me emotional wasn’t realizing how much my body had changed.

It was realizing how much fear had quietly left.

There was a time when staying up until one-thirty in the morning would’ve sent me into a spiral. Every headache, every moment of fatigue, every strange sensation became a question.

Is something wrong?

Am I getting sick?

Am I about to have another seizure?

Last night, I realized I’m not obsessing over those questions anymore.

For so long, I believed healing meant finding the thing that would fix me.

Now I think healing has looked more like building a life where my body finally feels safe.

Washington, 2026.

Earlier last week, Venus and Jupiter came together in Cancer, one of the most expansive and heart-centered alignments of the year. This transit can bring feelings of gratitude, generosity, connection, abundance, creativity, and a renewed appreciation for what truly nourishes us. With Jupiter’s signature of expansion, opportunities came to light at the heart of this transit on Tuesday June 9^th. At its highest expression, Venus and Jupiter remind us that life is meant to be enjoyed.

At the same time, this energy can sometimes encourage excess. We may overextend ourselves, romanticize situations, avoid difficult truths, or mistake temporary comfort for deeper fulfillment. The invitation is to ask what genuinely nourishes us in the long run.

Then Sunday evening, the Gemini New Moon peaked at 7:54pm Pacific and opened a new chapter around communication, perspective, learning, and the stories we tell ourselves about our lives. Gemini’s energy invites curiosity, adaptability, and a willingness to consider possibilities we may not have seen before. This is an excellent time to explore new ideas, have meaningful conversations, begin writing projects, learn something new, or become more aware of the narratives shaping our choices.

The shadow of Gemini is becoming lost in endless information, opinions, and possibilities. We live in a world overflowing with information, and this New Moon reminds us that wisdom is found in discerning which perspectives are actually helping us grow.

As we move into the week ahead, Venus will oppose Pluto, bringing another layer to this story. While some interpretations frame this transit as relationship turmoil or ego death, I think its deeper invitation is honesty. Pluto has a way of illuminating what has been hidden beneath the surface, while Venus asks us to examine our relationships, values, desires, and sense of self-worth.

At its highest expression, this transit can deepen intimacy, strengthen relationships, and help us reclaim parts of ourselves that we’ve given away in pursuit of approval. It can bring powerful healing when we’re willing to look honestly at what is present.

Its shadow can show up as control, possessiveness, obsession, jealousy, power struggles, manipulation, or becoming too attached to an outcome. Wherever Pluto appears, we are often asked to loosen our grip and trust the alchemy that’s unfolding.

Underlying it all, we’ve been navigating a profound collective awakening as Uranus formed tense aspects to the lunar nodes - stirring old karmic patterns, inherited stories, and familiar ways of being while simultaneously pulling us toward a more authentic future. Sometimes growth arrives as inspiration. Sometimes it arrives as disruption. Either way, life has been asking many of us to listen more deeply.

Taken together, these transits feel like a story about awakening and alignment.

The Uranus-Nodes tension has been shaking loose old patterns, inherited stories, and identities that may no longer fit who we’re becoming. Venus and Jupiter invite us to reconnect with what genuinely nourishes us and expand our capacity for joy, connection, and gratitude. The Gemini New Moon asks us to stay curious, question old assumptions, and become more conscious of the stories shaping our choices. Venus opposite Pluto then asks for honesty, illuminating where our relationships, desires, values, and attachments may be ready for transformation.

There is a deeper question running beneath all of this: What part of my life is asking to evolve?

The opportunities emerging now may not look exactly like what we expected. Some doors are opening while others are closing. Some truths are becoming clearer while old certainties are dissolving. Yet there is an invitation to trust that what is falling away is creating space for something more aligned to emerge.

A few questions to reflect on:

• What am I being asked to leave behind in order to step more fully into the life I want to create?

• What feels genuinely nourishing, life-giving, and aligned—and what am I simply holding onto because it is familiar?

• If I trusted the direction life is guiding me, what choice, conversation, or next step would I be willing to take?

Sweet briar rose from my garden, Washington 2026.

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The Taurus new moon peaks tomorrow, May 16th at 1:03pm Pacific, bringing an invitation toward embodiment, grounding, simplicity, and truth. Taurus is the sign of the body, the Earth, nourishment, sensuality, beauty, and what is actually sustainable over time. This energy asks us to slow down enough to listen to ourselves beneath the noise. to notice what truly nourishes us versus what merely distracts, seduces, or keeps us disconnected from ourselves.

At the same time, there are some deeper astrological undercurrents moving right now around illusion, projection, desire, ego, and the patterns we unconsciously fall back into while searching for meaning, validation, transcendence, or escape. Asteroid Lucifer conjunct the South Node points toward old glamours becoming more visible; especially in relationships, spirituality, identity, power, and the masks we wear to feel chosen, safe, desired, or significant. there’s a collective feeling right now of seeing through things that once felt intoxicating but no longer feel aligned.

Alongside this, Mercury is moving cazimi, into the heart of the Sun, near the fixed star Algol. In astrology, a cazimi is considered a moment of illumination or revelation, where insight becomes suddenly clear. With Algol’s association with instinct, emotional intensity, suppressed truth, and the untamed parts of the psyche, this feels like a time where deeper emotional truths may rise closer to the surface. Grief, longing, rage, desire, intuition, or the wisdom of the body itself may feel harder to ignore than usual.

We might ask:
What feels true in my body?
What actually nourishes me?
What patterns am I ready to release?

Washington, 2026.

Capitalism has taught us to see the world as a series of resources. Something to extract, to scale, to optimize, to monetize. The earth becomes a supply chain. Plants become products. People become labor. And in that framework, reciprocity doesn’t actually exist. There is no built-in mechanism that asks us to give back in proportion to what we take. There is only more. More growth, more output, more consumption. And we’ve internalized that pattern so deeply that it feels normal.

But when you step outside of that system, even slightly, you begin to feel how dissonant it actually is.

I’ve been sitting with this a lot since starting my apprenticeship in local, seasonal herbalism and dreamwork. I’ve felt for a while that something is off in the way we relate to the natural world, that there is a lack of respect, a lack of listening. But this work is sharpening that awareness in a way that feels impossible to ignore. Because when you begin to work with plants in a local, seasonal way, everything slows down. You start returning to the same places. You notice what grows there, when it grows, how it changes throughout the season. You begin to recognize patterns, relationships, timing. And in that process, something shifts. You no longer feel like an outsider collecting resources. You start to feel the relationship.

And this relationship requires something very different than extraction.

As part of this apprenticeship, I’ve been reading Seasonal Herbalism, and there is a passage that I keep coming back to, one that feels important to share in full:

“Herbalism has always been the medicine of the people. The plants belong to none, save the earth herself, and they are incredibly generous. People have always and everywhere had access to their gifts of nourishment and medicine. It’s only in very recent history that capitalistic and scientific efforts have been undertaken to own, control, and manipulate the sacred design of plants. As science and capitalism have grabbed hold of herbalism, it has had the devastating effect of taking herbalism out of the hands of the people. One reason for this is simple accessibility. It’s a downright privilege to live in an area with access to wild spaces, let alone to have the square footage for a garden or a few pots. Capitalism has tied profits to plants in the form of the herbal industry, making herbal medicines inaccessible to people below a certain economic level.

Most devastating of all is that the people no longer believe that herbalism is their medicine. Mainstream integration has served to cut most people off from a simple belief in the healing gift of plants. Even the privileged few who do have financial access to plant medicines no longer believe it’s their medicine. These folks often see all the herb books available, see the hundreds of tincture bottles in supplement stores, and hear experts pontificating on the herbal research being done. All of this makes herbalism seem intimidating and out of reach. Many unknowingly adopt the belief that herbalism is too advanced or somehow beyond them.

Herbal knowledge is the birthright of all people. And it is only very recently that this has changed. As long as there are plants growing from the ground, herbalism is still here for the people. We don’t need to be gifted in math, biochemistry, pathophysiology to harvest plants. We don’t need to be literate, let alone scientifically literate, to make medicines to keep ourselves, our families, and our communities well. This is an ability we all have, and until very recently, every household held this baseline herbal knowledge. Every family knew how to gather herbs, make medicines, and support itself through most bumps along the road of life.

We need a return to folk herbalism, and herbalism that is accessible to the people, simple enough that most everyone can understand it. Herbalism is meant to feel and be within our reach, instead of off in a distant ivory tower. The medicine-making instructions and recipes shared in this book utilize what has become known by modern herbalists as the folk method. It is a way of making medicine that involves minimal math and no need for an understanding of biochemical constituents. The folk method is simple, and it is effective. It’s the way our ancestors were making medicine for millennia in their own hearths and homes to keep their families and communities well all around the world.”

We’ve been taught, in subtle and not-so-subtle ways, that we need to buy back what was always ours. That healing lives in a product, in a supplement, in something formulated and sold to us. That expertise is something external, something we need permission to access. And in that process, we’ve lost a kind of intimacy with our own capacity to care for ourselves and each other.

Another passage that has been sitting with me speaks directly to locality:

“Another reason for working with local plants is accessibility. If we know how to work with the plants that grow where we grow, then we are not asking the energy of fossil fuels and other agents of global commerce to provide our medicine, lightening the load on the web of life. Sustainability naturally rises from focusing our herbalism on the plants who are our neighbors.”

This is where things start to feel more confronting. Because it’s one thing to agree with this in theory, and another to look honestly at your own life. I think about the plants I work with, the ones I love and have built relationships with. Blue lotus is one of them. It’s woven into the spaces I create, into ceremony, into the blends I’ve been creating. And yet, blue lotus doesn’t grow where I live. It’s cultivated in places like Sri Lanka, Thailand, Indonesia—places that are geographically and culturally distant from my daily reality.

The same is true for cacao, and for so many of the herbs and foods we’ve come to love. And while some of these industries aim toward sustainability, many do not. There is a real and ongoing pattern of exploitation embedded in global supply chains—of underpaid labor, of child labor, of the extraction of resources from Indigenous lands without fair reciprocity. This is part of the reality of globalization that we rarely have to confront directly.

We are deeply disconnected from where our things come from. We don’t know the people growing our herbs or harvesting our food. We don’t see the ecosystems being strained or depleted. And because we don’t see it, it becomes easy to continue participating without questioning.

But once you start to see it, it becomes much harder to ignore.

The question I keep coming back to is what it actually means to be in right relationship with plants in a globalized world. Because I don’t think the answer is as simple as cutting ourselves off from anything that doesn’t grow locally. There is a long history of plants traveling alongside humans, of cultural exchange, of shared medicine across regions and traditions. But what we are participating in now is fundamentally different. This is extraction at a scale and speed that ecosystems cannot sustain. This is demand driven by consumption rather than relationship. This is a system that rewards taking more than is given back.

And the planet is responding.

We are seeing more intense storms, fires, droughts, and disruptions to seasonal rhythms. The earth is not subtle when it is out of balance. These are not abstract warnings, they are signals. The system we are living within is out of alignment with the reality of a living, interconnected planet.

What this apprenticeship is opening me up to is not just a different way of practicing herbalism, but a fundamentally different way of relating. It’s teaching me to slow down enough to actually listen. To approach a plant not as something to harvest, but as something to be in relationship with. To ask: is this the right time? Is there enough here? What is the impact of my taking? And what would it look like to give something back?

It’s also asking me to reconsider where my medicine comes from. To explore what it means to root my practices, my rituals, and my nourishment in the place where I actually live. Not in what I can order, not in what I can import, but in what is already here.

This isn’t about perfection. I don’t have clean answers yet. I’m still sitting in the tension, loving certain plants that don’t grow here, while also feeling the weight of what it takes to bring them here. Still learning how to shift from consumption to reciprocity.

But I do feel that we are being asked to remember something.

That the earth is not a resource.
That plants are not commodities.
That healing is not something we purchase.

It’s something we participate in.

And maybe the beginning of that is simple: to slow down, to pay attention, to learn the names of the plants growing around us, and to ask, honestly, how we can be in relationship with this world without taking more than it can give.

Because right now, that is the pattern we are in. And it is not sustainable.

And beneath all of this, I think we already know this.

Nymphaea caerulea from https://www.instagram.com/metamorflotus/.

But when I sat with the question more deeply, something else demanded to be acknowledged. The truth is, these last two months have felt absolutely unerotic. Writing about eroticism while watching the world unravel has felt tone-deaf and out of touch. Over the past weeks we have watched the killing of Renee Good, a 37-year-old mother in Minneapolis who was shot and killed by federal immigration enforcement while driving her car. Shortly after, Alex Pretti, an ICU nurse who worked with veterans, was shot multiple times by federal immigration enforcement during a protest in the same city. Videos circulated online showing the chaos, the confrontation, the moment a life ended. Streets filled with protests, tear gas, and mourning.

At the same time, the long shadow of the Epstein files continues to haunt the public consciousness, reminding us that powerful people across governments, the financial industry, and media were entangled in a network of sexual exploitation that still feels only partially exposed. Internationally, tensions have escalated as well. Bombs falling in Iran, escalating geopolitical confrontation that threatens wider war. Political upheaval and power struggles in Venezuela. The violent cycles of cartel warfare and state response unfolding across Mexico. Every day another headline appears announcing some new fracture in the world.

It has felt, at times, like watching the fabric of reality melt in front of my eyes. The thought of writing about eroticism while all of this unfolds has felt deeply dissonant. Not inspiring. Not sexy. Just surreal. I’m exhausted watching people perform outrage online while the systems that produce these horrors remain largely untouched. I’m tired of our leaders destroying our planet and our sense of shared humanity.

So no, I haven’t been basking in infinite pleasure from the safety of my home, detached from our collective reality. I’ve been crying. I’ve been shaking. I’ve been screaming and groaning over just how painful and frightening this world can feel.

And strangely, that’s exactly where erotic herbalism has been pointing me. Not toward some aestheticized pursuit of pleasure, but toward something much more basic and necessary: safety. Because safety is where pleasure actually begins. If the nervous system does not feel safe, there is no arousal, no curiosity, no openness to sensation. The question I find myself asking is not “How can I have more orgasms?” but rather, how do I tend to safety in a world that often feels profoundly unsafe? How do I remain hopeful, tend to my body, and stay present in life without disappearing in the face of cruelty?

Maybe that is where erotic herbalism truly begins. Not as an escape from reality, but as a practice of remembering aliveness in the middle of it.

My relationship with Amanita muscaria began long before I knew her name.

About four years ago, while I was still living in Oakland, California, I felt a quiet but undeniable pull northward. I ventured to Olympic National Park for the first time - into a world of rainforest, coastline, and mountain mist that felt ancient and alive. The land was wet, dark, and lush. Enveloping. The Pacific Northwest felt like home in a way I couldn’t explain.

At the time, I didn’t know what was calling me. I only knew how it felt.

Courage. Curiosity. Hope.

I remember driving solo up Highway 1 on vacation from work, stopping at Crater Lake, Bend, and forested surf breaks along the Oregon coast. I felt expansive and deeply myself. Free. As if some forgotten part of me had been gently returned.

Only years later would I recognize that call more clearly.

Amanita muscaria entered my conscious awareness in September 2024 - right as I was preparing to move to Seattle. While on Vancouver Island, I met an herbalist who shared his personal healing journey with Muscimol, the mushroom’s primary psychoactive compound.

Doctors had told him that surgery was his only option to manage his Crohn’s disease. Instead, slowly and gently, he found another way. A mushroom that has existed alongside humans for thousands of years - often misunderstood, feared, or sensationalized - became part of his healing process.

This is important to say clearly: Amanita muscaria can be dangerous at high doses. Ibotenic acid toxicity is real. Amnesia is a documented risk when dosing improperly. This mushroom deserves respect, preparation, and restraint.

And, like many potent medicinal plants, at lower doses, it holds therapeutic potential.

Hormesis

This is where the concept of hormesis becomes essential.

Hormesis describes a biological phenomenon in which a low dose of a normally harmful substance or stressor creates a beneficial adaptive response, while higher doses remain toxic. It’s a biphasic curve: what harms at high levels can strengthen at low ones.

We see hormesis everywhere in nature:

• Fasting

• Exercise

• Heat and cold exposure

Amanita muscaria appears to follow this same principle.

Muscimol & the Nervous System

Muscimol is a psychoactive compound that acts as a selective agonist at GABA receptors in the brain.

In plain language:
GABA is the nervous system’s primary calming neurotransmitter. When muscimol binds to GABA receptors, it directly activates the brain’s “slow down” signal.

This can result in:

• Deep relaxation

• Reduced anxiety

• Sedation or restfulness

• Dreamlike or hypnagogic states

• Altered perception

• A softening of obsessive thought loops

Unlike many substances that indirectly affect GABA, muscimol acts directly and selectively, which may explain its distinct somatic and dream-related effects.

Why I’m Exploring Amanita Microdosing

I’m approaching Amanita muscaria with curiosity, reverence, and caution - specifically through intuitive microdosing.

My interest lies in understanding how this mushroom may support:

• Generalized Anxiety Disorder

• Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder

• Nervous system regulation

• Dream states and subconscious processing

What follows in future writing will be my subjective, personal experience - not medical advice, not advocacy, but a lived inquiry into how this ancient ally interacts with my body, mind, and emotional landscape.

A bit more on this mushroom from Lacuna Medicinals: “Amanita muscaria has been used medicinally for hundreds of years among tribal peoples in Siberia, as well as in parts of Scandinavia, Eastern Europe and Russia. It has been used both topically and internally for its analgesic, anti-inflammatory, anxiolytic, and stimulant properties. Recent research on the mushroom’s pharmacology have also demonstrated that certain compounds exhibit anti-tumor and memory-protecting activities.”¹

Looking back, I don’t think Amanita suddenly appeared in my life.

I think she’s been calling for years - through forests, coastlines, dreams, and the subtle feeling of being guided home.

Now, I’m listening more carefully.

Olympic National Park, 2021.

1. https://lacunamedicinals.com/pages/amanita-muscaria

It’s easy to look at the patterns and say that men are afraid of emotional intimacy. But the more I’ve lived, loved, broken open, and tried again, the more I’ve realized it’s not fear of intimacy itself; it’s fear of what intimacy awakens inside them.

And that fear is not a flaw.
It’s a wound.
A cultural inheritance.
A nervous-system response.
A story they were taught long before we ever touched their lives.

I’ve been close to men who were soulful, perceptive, deeply feeling, and full of tenderness they didn’t quite know how to hold. Men who wanted connection, craved soft places to land, and longed for the kind of love that feels like truth. Men who were just emotionally under-nourished. Men who had never been taught how to stay when things got real.

The men I’ve loved or nearly loved were not trying to hurt me. Their withdrawal, their shutdown, their inconsistency, their confusion, none of it was rooted in a lack of care. Often, it was rooted in overwhelm.

When emotional intimacy showed up, so did old stories:
“I’m going to disappoint her.”
“I don’t know how to talk about this.”
“If she sees the real me, she’ll leave.”
“How do I stay calm when this feels like too much?”
“I don’t want to say the wrong thing.”
“I’m not secure or stable enough for you.”

These men weren’t running away from me.
They were running away from their own internalized prohibition against vulnerability.

And when I learned to see that, something in me softened.

Because we often forget:
Women are raised in a world that (generally) encourages emotional expression, relational language, introspection, and community processing.

Men are raised in a world that (often) teaches them that their emotional lives must be hidden, controlled, hardened, or compartmentalized. They’re told to handle things alone. To not cry. To not ask for help. To self-soothe through work, achievement, logic, or withdrawal rather than connection.

So when a woman arrives in their life with emotional fluency, spaciousness, or depth, it can feel like someone suddenly turned the lights on in a room they’ve been navigating in the dark.

That shock isn’t rejection.
It’s unfamiliarity.
It’s survival patterns.
It’s fear of failing, not fear of feeling.

I’ve watched men soften when they trust it’s safe to be human. I’ve watched their bodies exhale when they realize they won’t be punished or shamed for not knowing what to say. I’ve watched them lean into intimacy slowly, unsurely, but authentically, when they sense they won’t be mocked for being tender or emotional.

And I’ve also watched them pull away when that safety isn’t yet available inside their own nervous systems.

Some men collapse inward because their past relationships weaponized their vulnerability.
Some freeze because conflict feels like punishment.
Some retreat because they’ve never been met with curiosity instead of criticism.
Some simply haven’t built the emotional muscles yet, not because they don’t care, but because they were never taught how.

The more I understood this, the more I realized that my experiences weren’t anomalies or personal failures. They were part of a collective wound.

And I began to reflect not just on the men in my life, but on myself.

Why do these connections keep finding me?
Why do I attract men with deep emotional potential but limited emotional practice?
What is the universe trying to show me through these patterns?

I realized that for years, a piece of me wanted to be the one who could hold it all; the healer, the intuitive, the emotionally literate woman who could translate depth for both of us. That part of me was comfortable carrying more than my share. It was familiar. And sometimes, being the emotionally stronger one felt like control.

But I’m not choosing that anymore.

I’m choosing partnership that breathes.
I’m choosing reciprocity.
I’m choosing a man whose fear doesn’t make him flee but makes him curious.
A man who knows he has work to do and is willing to do it.
A man who understands his inner world enough to let me into it.

And that brings me to the part I think is most important: this isn’t a story about what men aren’t. It’s a story about what we can become together.

We can learn emotional intimacy.
We can build the capacity to stay.
We can practice repair.
We can discover that softness and vulnerability are doorways to deeper trust.

I’ve seen men begin this work through small moments:
A pause instead of a shutdown.
A breath instead of a retreat.
A “hey, can we talk about this later?” instead of disappearing.
An “I don’t know what I’m feeling yet, but I’m here.”
A willingness to name fear instead of hide from it.

Healing for men begins with understanding why it formed. It begins with compassion for their younger selves. It begins with learning emotional language. It begins with finding safe places; therapists, conscious friendships, somatic practices, partners who hold curiosity. Places where we can build capacity one layer at a time.

So what can women do?

We can invite, not demand.
We can express, not overwhelm.
We can listen without assuming.
We can celebrate emotional effort, not perfection.
We can show that vulnerability is something shared, not extracted.
We can model repair instead of collapse.
We can stay grounded when they are learning.
We can let them be learners without expecting them to be experts.
We can hold space without self-sacrificing.
We can be soft without erasing our own needs.

But the most important thing women can do, the thing I am learning now, is to discern the difference between a man who is unwilling and a man who is simply unpracticed.

Unwillingness is a wall.
Unpracticedness is a doorway.
And capacity grows when two people walk through it together.

I’m calling in the kind of partnership where a man’s vulnerability is not something I have to coax out of hiding, but something he recognizes as sacred. Where emotional intimacy feels like shared ground, not a battlefield. Where we both arrive as humans, imperfect, learning, tender, brave, ready to meet one another at the depth we’re both capable of.

And I know that the more compassion I hold for men, the more compassion I hold for myself. The more I soften my judgments, the more I soften my heart. The more I understand their fear, the more I understand my own. And the more I choose connections that feel mutual, grounded, and emotionally alive, the more I rewrite the story I’ve been living.

I’m calling in men who are not afraid of their hearts. Men who understand that emotional intimacy isn’t something they have to master, but something we get to experience.

And in that vision, love stops being something we survive
and becomes something we grow.

Colorado, 2020.

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My nervous system learned to run on vigilance. But the forest offers something else entirely. It invites me to soften; to settle into the wet, dark cradle of the Pacific Northwest winter and let the earth recalibrate me. I return to the trees and call all of my energy back into my body. In the quiet, I hear my own voice again. No one to impress. No one to appease. Only the solitude to nourish the parts of myself that were stretched thin in the noise of other people’s desires.

We’re passing through a threshold, and we’ll never be the same again. On the other side, we leave behind the versions of ourselves shaped by survival. We leave behind the expectations that were never ours to carry. We release the false selves we took on just to belong. We remember to trust in divine timing, in the sacred pacing of love. Love never rushes. It arrives fully only when we’ve grown quiet enough to feel the whole truth of it.

Venus taught me that on Vancouver Island, when she passed over the South Node and pulled me backward through memory and karma into that wild October with John. Everyone else wanted to name it, fate or failure, soulmate or lesson, but underneath the noise was something more ancient. Something asking me not to define us, but to learn how to stay. Stay with the discomfort. Stay with the tenderness. Stay with the rising of old fears and let them burn through me rather than dictate my choices.

And now, as Mercury guides me in retrograde motion to the Peninsula, the Taurus Full Moon offered clarity: that this movement isn’t an escape, it’s a devotion. A devotion to uphold myself with the utmost integrity. To radically prioritize my well-being. To trust my love with him even when the ground shakes beneath me. To see him clearly, not through fear’s distortions but through truth. And to love my family even when the mirror they hold is terrifying, because courage is not the absence of discomfort; it is staying open-hearted in spite of it.

They said we were never meant to be, just another lesson. But I’m learning that the lesson is presence. It’s learning to hold the mirror steady even when my shadows flare. To tend to the parts of myself that want to disappear. To sit with the parts that feel unworthy or overwhelmed. To soften toward the parts that feel anger for the ways I’ve been betrayed. And to offer grace to the parts of me that betrayed myself in order to be loved.

This is the threshold:
The place where we stop abandoning ourselves.
The place where we choose integrity over approval.
The place where we trust what our bodies already know.
The place where love becomes an anchor rather than an escape.

I am leaving the city, yes.
But more truthfully, I am coming home.
Home to my body.
Home to the land.
Home to love that doesn’t collapse under pressure.
Home to the woman I am becoming.

I didn’t realize how heavy the city had become
until I felt the way my shoulders dropped
the moment I crossed the Sound.
Seattle’s edges carved into me
the constant noise,
the mold breathing its way into my skin,
the blurred boundaries in a house
that never learned how to hold itself.
I mistook survival for strength
until my body refused to pretend anymore.

But Vancouver Island remembered me.
On that stretch of southern coastline,
where the waves at Jordan River
fold into themselves like slow miracles,
the world softened.
We moved through that fog-soaked October
as if walking inside a myth
Venus burning out old stories,
the South Node pulling truths to the surface
we weren’t yet brave enough to say aloud.
Love felt like a threshold then
beautiful, haunting, inevitable.

And now Mercury guides me in reverse
to the Peninsula,
to a quieter wilderness
that feels like an answered prayer.
Here, the air smells of rain and pine;
the mountains rise like guardians;
the rivers carve through stone
the way clarity carves through fear.
My body exhales in ways I forgot it could.

In this place, I learn that devotion
is not the absence of fear,
but the choice to stay open
even when the mirror shakes.
To trust what is real with him
even when the ground quivers.
To love my family
even when their reflection startles me.
To return to myself
with reverence.

If this is a threshold,
I cross it barefoot
unarmored,
awake,
and finally home.

Florida, 2025.

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I’ve been kissed again lately
touched,
devoured in pieces.
Fingers down my spine,
lips behind my ear,
skin pressed to skin
without going all the way in.

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Walk slowly,
and the path will bloom for you
a daisy pushing through a crack in the concrete,
a snail dragging galaxies across damp stone.
What once seemed small becomes miraculous
when you give it the time to breathe.

Clean slowly
and find a letter tucked in a forgotten drawer,
dust dancing like fireflies in the morning sun.
There’s a photograph,
creased and faded,
but somehow still holding the sound of laughter
from a version of you that loved without armor.

Live slowly,
and you may find that doing one thing well
feels better than doing ten things fast.
That sweeping the floor
can be a prayer.
That chopping vegetables
can be a poem.

Love slowly
not out of fear,
but reverence.
Let your fingertips learn the shape of another’s soul
the way rivers learn the contours of the earth,
with patience,
with grace.

We are taught to rush,
but the world reveals herself
in moments that ask for stillness:
the pause before a heron takes flight,
the breath held in awe beneath a meteor shower,
the silence after a song ends
but before anyone dares to speak.

So go slowly.
And you might just find
you were never behind.
You were simply being shown
the beauty
that is only found in stillness.

Seattle, 2025.

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The foothills shimmer
in the soft evening light,
and my breath catches
on old fragments of might.

I hiked through heat and ache,
past wildflowers and stone,
each trail a doorway
to a place I once called home.

Red Rocks glowing
in the desert gold,
the wind on Lookout
whispering stories I hold.

The mornings came early
sunrise at five,
but something in me
finally felt alive.

Golden is quiet,
but my spirit sings there,
held by the stillness,
the crisp mountain air.

I didn’t choose to leave,
the seizures made that call,
but some part of me
has lingered through it all.

And now I find myself
dreaming of return,
of tracing old footsteps
in the places I yearn.

Maybe one day,
when my body feels whole,
I’ll come back to Golden
to reclaim my soul.

Colorado, 2025.

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It’s subtle. It doesn’t look like collapse or chaos. It looks like reaching out to a friend for advice. Spinning in a voice memo. Asking for guidance when I already feel the truth sitting quietly in my gut, waiting for me to be still enough to hear it.

Working with my sex & intimacy therapist these past few weeks has helped me name this pattern: the part of me that defers to others when I already know. The part that fears trusting myself because it would mean accepting change. Or loss. Or a reality that asks me to take full responsibility for what I desire.

Sometimes I ask for advice not because I don’t know the answer, but because I do, and I’m afraid to accept it.

Afraid of what it might disrupt.
Afraid of who it might disappoint.
Afraid of what it might awaken in me that can no longer be put back to sleep.

But the truth has a rhythm, and it keeps pulsing through me.

It’s in the quiet steadiness I feel when I stop searching for the next place to go and let myself root where I am, even when it’s uncomfortable. Living in a house with people whose lifestyles and values sometimes clash with my own has asked me to step into the tension rather than run from it. Instead of using movement or change as a form of escape, I’ve been practicing stillness. Choosing to stay. To grow deeper roots in the face of discomfort. To meet the parts of me that want to flee, and gently remind them that peace doesn’t come from avoiding conflict, but from facing it with love.

And with my tea business, my ceremonies, my blends, the soul of my work, I’ve been learning to clear space from others’ projections. What it should look like. How it should scale. Who it should serve. I’ve realized I don’t need to shape my vision to make it more palatable or appealing. The medicine is already clear. The vision already true. I just need to trust what’s coming through me.

Returning to myself has looked like walking away from over-explanation and into embodiment. It’s meant grieving all the ways I’ve silenced my intuition over the years to make others comfortable. It’s meant remembering that I don’t need consensus to be certain.

I am the oracle I’ve been seeking.

That doesn’t mean I never ask for support, but I’ve been learning to check in first. Does this question come from curiosity, or from fear? Am I reaching out because I want connection, or because I want someone else to hold the discomfort of my truth?

I’ve been gently untangling the difference.

And what I’m finding underneath all of it, all the old stories and strategies and self-doubt, is a deep, ancient knowing. A wise one who has never left.

She’s teaching me how to listen again.

Colorado, 2020.

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It starts so small.
A message bubble.
A photo.
A headline.
And then I’m somewhere else entirely.

Twenty tabs open in my head,
none of them finished.
My brain buzzing with fragments
of everyone else’s lives,
advice I didn’t ask for,
opinions I never wanted.
I scroll and scroll
until I forget
what I came here for.

Until I forget
my body.
my breath.
my self.

It scares me sometimes
how easily I disappear.
How quickly I lose the thread of me
in the endless scroll of everyone else.
I start to feel like a ghost
haunting my own life.

I don't want to live like this.

So I set the phone down.
Even though my hands itch to pick it back up.
Even though the silence feels loud.

I go outside.
Let the cold air touch my face.
Let the wind remind me
that I’m still here.

I listen for the bird’s song.
I press my feet into the earth.
I ask the sky to help me remember
who I am
beneath the noise.

And slowly, I return
to the rhythm of something real
the slow wisdom of trees,
the steadiness of dirt,
the pulse of my own quiet heart.

In that stillness,
I remember what matters.
And it’s never found
on a screen.

Trinity Alps Wilderness, 2021.

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So I came to this sliver of California
where time moves like honey,
and the air doesn’t expect anything from me.

No one told the poppies to bloom,
but they did,
soft and sudden,
spilling gold into the dry hills
like they’d never been afraid to be seen.
I stood there watching them,
wanting to cry,
because I couldn’t remember
the last time I did something
just because it felt good.

There was no one to impress here.
No one to prove anything to.
Just the sun warming my back,
the wind touching my skin
like it still believed I was sacred.

And slowly,
something in me began to thaw.

I remembered the girl
who used to feel wonder
just watching bees work.
I remembered how my body felt
before I learned to be ashamed of it.
I remembered that I am not just
a list of things I haven’t done yet.

I’m not all better.
But I’m quieter now.
And in the quiet,
I can hear a small voice returning
the one that’s always been mine,
whispering:
you’re allowed to rest.
you’re allowed to come home to yourself.

California, 2025.

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I don’t know how to be
anything but all sky
sun and shadow,
storm and stillness,
a whole season inside a single breath.

I’ve been told I’m too much
too many roots,
too many rivers,
too many winds speaking at once
through the cracks in my ribs.

I’ve watched people marvel
at my mountains,
then quietly slip away
when they realized
the climb takes more than a glance.

They love my spring
the bloom, the sweetness,
the wildflowers I braid into every sentence.
But they forget
I am also winter.
I go quiet.
I go deep.
I freeze when I am not met with care.

And still, I wait
like the redwoods do,
patient in my knowing
that the right ones grow slowly,
that the ones worth leaning into
are not afraid of standing
in the full weather of me.

I’m not asking for rescue.
I don’t need shelter
from my own sky.

I just want someone
whose roots won’t tear
when the rain comes,
someone who hears the thunder
and stays anyway.

Love, for me,
isn’t in the easy days
it’s in the ones
who reach for me
when the wind howls,
who call my chaos beautiful,
not broken.

So I wait,
for the rare kind of heart
that won’t flinch
at the forest fire or the frost.

The one who sees me,
and stays.

Maroon Bells Wilderness in Aspen, 2023.

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