I will just say — wow, this is humbling — in ways I couldn’t have expected. I feel layers of my psyche and relational being-ness and soul being contacted that I didn’t see coming.

Grateful and curious for what more will unfold.

Donating to Land Justice Futures with this post.

Letter #20

June 29, 2026

Dear Earth,

Sweetgrass

Vultures (so many of them over the landfill, well actually a bit next to it. I was thinking about how they might fly over landfills wondering to themselves how they are going to clean up such a big mess since that is their job. And I was thinking how vultures are so devoted to tending death. And how landfills are huge places of slow, inefficient death. Typically when vultures are involved, the death clean up process is quite efficient. So I wonder if landfills confound them.)

Anyway
also Cedar
and waves in the lake
and my aching, bleeding womb so grateful for water
and braiding while praying for the wellness of my relatives
and hot humid air
and wind
oh and the warmth of sun soaked raspberries on my tongue
and yesterday – basswood flowers brushing against my lips and nose

I’m so grateful.
I love the gift of life deeply.

Thank you,
Seren

Letter #15

June 24, 2026

Dear Earth,

Are you also turtle? Does the wholeness of you encompass all my relations that you birth from the fertile ground and fiery belly that you are? When I write ‘dear Earth’ is it the same as addressing turtle directly, since she came from you and is you?

I suppose possibly not, because that would be like assuming a human child birthed is the same being as her mother simply because she came from her. I guess this might all boil down to the sense that we all are of the same being-ness, essence, substance.

Perhaps you, Earth, are a being all your own, who companions and births and nurtures infinite other beings upon your body, but when I write to you I am writing to a being all her own – separate from all you birth, yet intimately connected.

So I traversed all that simply because I wondered how to tell you about my day with turtle today. I had several beautiful encounters with your offspring, your children, turtle today. Gratefully all encounters that involved turtles in good health. (I have to call the wildlife rehab center to check on my other turtle friend soon).*

Today I encountered three turtle mamas** laying eggs in the gravel along road ways. It’s so interesting to consider all the ways life mothers. These eggs will be below the gravel for 60-90 days (depending on temperatures) and then the hatchlings will find their way to water and perhaps never encounter their mother. Their mother risked her life to leave the water where she spends most of her days hugging the bottom as a camouflaged rock, and made the arduous journey into car traffic to pick the optimal laying grounds.

I suppose all mothers are always risking their lives to birth more life.

Anyway, it’s just fascinating to me how many different ways there are to mother. Like infinite ways. Makes me wonder what my way will be. How did you discover your way, Earth? Through trial and error?

Gave some things a try and saw what led to thriving – stuck with that.

That makes sense. Observational. Responsive. Attuned. Observational. Responsive. Attuned. Observational. Responsive. Attuned. That seems like a good way.

I pray that those turtle hatchlings have all that they need to thrive.

I hear you (Earth) saying you long to provide all that my relatives need (like the turtle hatchlings) but in order to do that you need support from my human relatives to help you stay in good vitality and homeostasis so you can actually be the life-giving, responsive, observational, attuned mother that you are capable of. You’re only capable of that if your wellness isn’t being thwarted and strained. That makes sense. You long to be well so you can be in the rhythm of mothering life well. That makes sense. I want that for you too. May you keep sharing your longings with me and may I keep growing into one who can be a voice of collaboration with you in good ways that support the thriving of all life.

Together with you,

Seren

*(added note from Aug 30 – the turtle I wrote about back in June who went to the wildlife rehab center didn’t survive 💔)

**(added note from Aug 30 – two of these turtles were spiny softshell turtles and one was a painted turtle)

Letter #16

June 25, 2026

Dear Earth,

I’m not sure what I’ll write to you about tonight. Perhaps again how grateful I am to be alive. How grateful I am that you exist and that your being is home to my life and so many lives. How grateful I am to be at home amongst a tapestry of lives. What a gift that is. What a gift that my life is safe and secure enough at this moment that being alive registers as a gift. A gift to be able to perceive life as gift. A privilege, certainly. An honor. One I hope to honor well by often and a lot saying ‘thank you’.

Thank you to all that feeds me and nourishes me and holds me and steadies me when I wobble. Thank you to water and birdsong and birds themselves. Thank you to turtles and osprey and frogs and fish. I’ve been feeling especially grateful to have abundant time to be greeting my local tapestry of kinship – like biking to the osprey nest and watching the parents feed their young a fresh meal while the young one chirped for more between each bite given. And the turtle mama’s laying eggs and stopping traffic. And the rabbit young‘ins hanging around my house. And the spiders who weave webs in the juniper branches at dusk. I’m so grateful to be alive and in this tapestry. Thank you earth for being our home.

I love you.
Seren

Letter #17

June 26, 2026

Dear Earth,

Leopards leaping through fields of tall grasses must be quite a sight. At dusk. As air is cooling and the closer to the ground you are the damper and colder the air is. And there are birds trilling all around you and you watch the graceful majesty leaping in between bounds of pure muscle and agility. It probably is just as beautiful as the fish I saw darting in unison to the surface of the water and leaving behind little star patterns in the ripples. Or the pink and purple clouds at sunset or the fields of purple coneflower and cupplant. Or the bubbling spring companioned by bathing birds and wild rose bursting in blooms upon blooms of bright pink brilliance. Or the sentinel oaks standing watch over the mouth of the sacred waters. Or the catbird singing, no, squawking at me while I lowered my naked body into the cold, cold water. Or simply the beauty of the sun shedding light upon all this beauty – illuminating it, letting my eyes take it in. A true gift. Thank you for this day, dear Earth. I’m grateful to be alive with you.

Love,
Seren

Letter #18

June 27, 2026

Dear Earth,

I love you. When I had MRSA and didn’t realize how close I was to the potential of the infection spreading to my bloodstream where it could have become fatal – (until I was in the ER getting tested for sepsis and getting a crash course on ‘what is sepsis and other things you should know about systemic infections’) – anyway, before I realized that what was going on in my body was really serious, I was in a state of taking my life, and you – Earth, and my love for you – for granted. Not fully, but certainly at some level.

I wasn’t fully cued into a depth of preciousness and fragility that living in a human body requires. And how big of a gift it is to get to be alive in a human body that loves. Oh what a gift to be alive in a human body that loves. While I was healing from the infection, it was my love for you, Earth, that gave me strength when I didn’t feel like anything else was. On the days where putting any weight on my leg produced searing hot pain, it was you who lured me outside to sit beneath Maple in the cold February air to breathe and feel the support of my relatives.

It wasn’t in that moment that I could feel all of them wanting me to live, too – but feeling back I can sense the immense amount of love and longing for my healing that Mape and those lands were pouring into me.

In the moment though, I got in touch with a depth of my heart’s conviction and longing to live that was deeper than I ever touched before. And you know what it was my heart most wanted to stay alive to do? Love you, Earth. Tell you how beautiful you are. See your beauty and tell you I notice. Pour into you as you so generously pour into me. I hope to live a long time of loving you.

Thank you for showing up for me during that time of infection. I’m grateful.

Love,
Seren

Letter #19

June 28, 2026

Dear Earth,

How are you today?

Weary? Weary with the weight of your human children hurting each other and life so much. That’s what I hear you say first. I also hear you telling me you’re well and powerful too, and also weary.

It’s good to be together. What should we talk about today?

I think there’s a part of me that is hesitant to open these letters into a full on form of dialogue with you because that would ask a different kind of surrender into vulnerability of being seen. For some reason a dialogue feels more intimate than a one-way letter – perhaps because in a dialogue I’d be taking responsibility for listening with integrity and neutrality and recording what I hear and some people might think I’m making it up. When really I’d just be listening to you, Earth, and writing what you say. It seems like it could be a good thing to do. It’s certainly one way to get to know you more deeply like I said I wanted to. I’ll think about it.

“Let your heart lead”, I hear you telling me.

I’ll try. I love you.
Seren

nets of nourishment
weightless
breeze flows through
no friction
burdenless to hold
simply arms that support

spider weaves her web at
dawn – same as before
sky pink now
threads still weightless
but mighty

poems might not do it,
but she can

Mary Oliver told me to put
down her book
and write instead. Pen filled
with ink and heart filled with awe
that life could be so fecund,
so verdant,
so blossoming in the
fullest range of beauty that
my brain dare not even try to
comprehend lest it shrivel into a
tiny ball of disbelief and
incomprehensibility.

Dare not try, this brain, to
comprehend the sheer abundance of
nourishment that beauty is to the heart –
the way a blue jay’s call at sunset
while its deep blue wings flash
dancing against colored sky and lake
laps gently against rocky shore adding
watery undertones to the symphony
while robins too sing, the
shrill notes of “thank you,
another day alive. Another day
fed. Thank you.”

This symphony – universal. The
universal thank you symphony.
The song all life knows to sing.
Us included.
Thank you, my toes say as they
greet waters edge, slippery stones
underneath. Slippery stones
say thank you back – “we’re touched”
they say.

This dance, touching and being touched.
Loving and being loved.
Singing and being sung.
Put down the book and write –
The universal symphony
says thank you.

I had to start with that poem! I wrote that after I had signed off on letter #14 and picked up Mary Oliver’s book to read some poems before bed. Turns out my pen didn’t want to be done writing yet.

I didn’t send out an email notification for the last batch of letters (#9-11) so if you want to read them they are here. Some yummy nuggets in there like “Beauty, you are. Embodied, miraculous beauty in infinite forms constantly unfolding and evolving into even more grace.” and “May the pangs of our hunger lead us toward life-serving collaboration with the web of togetherness.” and “pale purple cone flower dazzling in hues of light pink against vibrant green grasses and goldening sky alight with cotton candy clouds in all shades of purples and orange.”

With this post I’m donating again to Women & Water Indigenous International Clean Water Summit. This organization is hosting a ceremony September 24-27, 2026 in Hayward, WI with the aim of gathering 5,000 women to stand for the health and well-being of water. You can donate to their cause by clicking the link above and finding the “Donate” button on their homepage.

Thanks for being here!

Letter #12

June 21, 2026

Dear Earth,

It’s father’s day today. Everyone commonly refers to you as Mother. Mother Earth. Mama Earth. The one who carries and births life. The endless field of fertility. The endless field of fertility. The birthing ground. The birthing force. The prima materia of all else that possibly can be created here.

Are you also the vision or do you simply follow the blueprints? Who makes the plans? Who is the father? Where does the spark of creation come from that inspires your life force to manifest into form such brilliant and miraculous beauty? Who inspires you into such acts of selfless creation? Who inspires you? Who lights your fire in a way that catalyzes you to continue saying yes to the task, the arduous task that asks everything of you, of continuing to birth life into infinite miraculous forms? Who plays this role for you, Earth? Who inspires and seeds your creative energy to birth form?

In my limited understanding of reality and the ways we humans like to perceive the binary I might say that perhaps fathers day has something to do with honoring whatever force it is that inspires you to keep birthing life. Whatever force it is that is persistent and tenacious in its knowing of itself as catalyst, as spark, as seed force. Whatever force it is that knows itself as wedded to you in pure need and dependence, life force depending on life force to see the other through to continuation. To see the other through to aliveness.

Yes, your opposite. Your opposite. Your companion in the dance. The one that sparks you to continue. The one who lights your fire. The pole to your valley. The rod to your cone. Allow myself to also know this way of being inside and out you say. Ok, I’ll try.

Love you.

Til tomorrow,
Seren

Letter #13

June 22, 2026

Dear Earth,

Hello. Me again. Seren. I’m slowly growing into this name and learning how it wants to be carried and shared and known. Reading Grandfather Wallace Black Elk’s account of how making his Chanupa with his grandfather was a four-year-long process from start to finish humbled me to the realization that for so much as I say I value slowness I can still be very impatient. It’s so easy to forget that cycles of all kinds can last years. That the journey of receiving a name and allowing it to take root in my being could take years.

Us humans sometimes (oftentimes) have such a tendency toward urgency. What is that about? Our animal instinct toward survival that can pump us full of cortisol? You know something about slowness don’t you dear Earth? You also know something about frenetic, chaotic, sudden, jarring happenings like tsunamis or tornados. You’re certainly not all slow all the time.

It’s like that song I caught a whole back that said “opening is slow and steady work, unless it’s not and you crack open suddenly.” Yeah, you know lots of paces and postures, don’t you? Just like we do. Just like we do. There are lots of ways to be and they are all just right and some are more suited to particular moments than others. Certain happenings and unfoldings might prefer a particular posture of pacing and sometimes it’s clear from the start and sometimes you only come to find out the preference by first feeling a pace that doesn’t work. That’s ok too. That’s ok too.

I was touched by your beauty again tonight – walking the prairie at sunset – Osprey family tucked into nest for the night. Flower kin in full glory bloom – bursting – wild – kin – rooted – joy. So much enlivening of my heart simply by drinking you in. Thank you for your beauty way. I love you.

Goodnight,
Seren

Letter #14

June 23, 2026

Dear Earth,

Greetings beloved. You are everything to me. Everything I might need, you are. Your existence is my life. Truly. Sincerely. Everything I might need, you are. Your existence is my life. Everything I might need, you are. Truly. Sincerely I acknowledge this as one whose life is completely dependent on yours. As one who wonders whether my life for you alone is enough – enough for what?

I’m exploring my own psyche in real time as I write to you. Enough to potent you, to help you be well, to support your wellness so that my life might continue to be supported by you. Yeah, I think that’s what I wonder when I say “is my life for you alone enough?” It’s a selfish question because what some part of me is really asking is “if I love you well enough will my life, my survival, be guaranteed?” Its confronting to notice the pervasive nature of the question of survival, and how much it drives the core of human behavior whether we are always conscious of it or not, and how slippery it can be, and how quick it disguises itself behind love or morality such as the impulse to love the earth “well”.

What am I really saying when I say “I love you”? I think in most cases I’m saying “Thank you. You astound me. I need you.” Something like that perhaps.

I like writing to you dear Earth. I feel like I’m learning. I feel like I’m learning. About what I don’t yet know, but the curriculum feels important. One day soon I’ll start typing these letters so they can be shared like the trees asked, and I imagine as I type them and read them again I’ll learn even more. I haven’t forgotten the thread about whether you and air are different or the same being-ness. I sense different. And I still hold the intention of wanting to know you more deeply through this writing practice. May that be. May I learn what is mine to learn. May you know my sincere love.

Seren

With this post I’m donating again to Land Justice Futures which is an organization based in Milwaukee, WI working on land rematriation projects. Here are their words about what they do: “At Land Justice Futures, we help religious landowners pursue land justice — centering racial repair, ecological healing, and community power into decisions about how land is loved, used, and governed.” You can read more here. Will you donate alongside me? Here’s the spot to give.

Letter #9

June 18, 2026

Dear Earth,

Beauty, you are. Embodied, miraculous beauty in infinite forms constantly unfolding and evolving into even more grace. My heart is in awe over and over again at the realization of your infinite beauty. Like this morning, sun drenched elderberry flowers in shade of soft grass bed beneath over-hanging branches. Wind comes occasionally to lightly drift flowers from branch to hair like small, perfect sequence dazzling my skin.

Allow the beauty to saturate my being. I try. I try. Sighs of heart from my lips. Resting back into ground and taking in with eyes and skin and body the full sensory experience of living amongst infinite beauty. Allow – I try. Sigh. Heart so full. Breathe.

It’s like that. It’s like that. I feel the full gift of the moment. Sun drenched and resting beneath fluttering flowers. Head to toe miracle – this life.

Thank you dear Earth for the beauty that you are. I love you and am so grateful for the ways your beauty gives me life.

Love,
Seren

Letter #10

June 19, 2026

Dear Earth, holy waters, sacred air, fire in my belly,

Thank you.

Thank you for this day of aliveness. Thank you for this day of sustenance and provision. Thank you for this day of coming into right relationship with my own heart a little more fully. Thank you for this day of rest. Thank you for this day of connecting with family. Thank you for my sacred animal companions Gracie and Violet. Thank you for the ways they teach me about wildness that cannot be tamed out. Wildness that cannot be domesticated. Thank you for the ways they are mirrors to my own wildness.

I am here dear Earth, hoping to keep growing into one who can say “thank you” with more and more of my heart online. More and more of my heart in love with you, with life. I’m grateful to have spent this day breathing and alive. Here’s to many more together.

Love,
Seren

Letter #11

June 20, 2026

Dear Earth,

Your beauty astounds me. So easily shakes me and shocks me into profound gratitude to be alive. To not take for granted the miracle that it is to be breathing, to have food and clean water, to be safe, to be able to sit and notice your beauty without fearing for my life, without perceiving threat. I’m so grateful. I’m so grateful. I’m so grateful.

Tonight: pale purple cone flower dazzling in hues of light pink against vibrant green grasses and goldening sky alight with cotton candy clouds in all shades of purples and orange. Cool grass underfoot. Baby Osprey newly hatched being watched over by parent in high nest perch.

Earlier today: Bald Eagle fishing while I waded in cool water as morning sun shone through opening in the trees and warmed my back. Deer, many. And rabbits and bullgrogs and swallows. My kin, living just as I am living. All of us a gift to each other. All of us a gift to each other. Free in the fullness of our beauty to inhabit the niche that is ours to live within. To eat the food that is ours to eat and to live in the homes that are ours to make and to help the others that are ours to help, whether consciously or simply by circumstance of our being. Yes, may we serve each other in the ways that are ours to serve, whether consciously or simply through our being-ness – the way bee serves fruit adn flower simply by following the pang of their hunger.

May the pangs of our hunger lead us toward life-serving collaboration with the web of togetherness. May we trust that our being-ness, our living, serves the web when we align ourselves with the hunger of our soul’s deepest longings for love and beauty. When we act in care and integrity. When we see the preciousness of aliveness. When we know life as fragile and tender and fiercely powerful. When we know ourselves as this too.

Bless this gift – life. Bless this gift. Thank you thank you thank you Earth. I love you.

Seren

I’m noticing the vulnerability of sharing these with you. I’m noticing how prevalent judgmental thoughts are as I read my own writing back. I’m noticing that I’m feeling really committed to continuing. I feel excitement about what this practice will open in my trust body and in my willingness to be seen as a messy, imperfect, loving human.

With this post I’m donating $5 to Land Justice Futures which is an organization based in Milwaukee, WI working on land rematriation projects. Here are their words about what they do: “At Land Justice Futures, we help religious landowners pursue land justice — centering racial repair, ecological healing, and community power into decisions about how land is loved, used, and governed.” You can read more here. Will you donate alongside me? Here’s the spot to give.

Thanks for reading and taking this journey with me!

Letter #6

June 14, 2026

Dear Earth,

Good evening to you. You’re getting ready for sleep here where I am. Sun is setting below the western horizon. Air is cooling down even more. Darkness is creeping in. Bird kin are quieting. Breeze has stilled. I’m feeling quiet myself. I had a rest-filled day.

How are you dear Earth? If you could tell me how you are I wonder what you’d say?

You’re saying “maybe you should ask me and then listen.”

Yes. That simple.

You said you love me and you’re grateful I’m doing this practice and it’s kind of achy to be you right now both because of all the damage that is being caused to your body but also because it hurts your heart to witness your human children being cruel to each other. And there are a lot of ways we are being cruel to each other right now. And that hurts your heart. What you want most is for all your babies to be well and to treat each other with respect.

Dear Earth, how do you think I should share these letters? On substack? Type them all out? Share a week’s worth at a time or one per day? A week’s worth at a time you say – if they can be hyperlinked or accordion style so people can choose which ones to read in full and the post simply outlines the week’s themes or headers. I hope to also invite collaboration with others at some point in this process – perhaps inviting people to submit a love letter of their own to be featured on one of my posts.

Are these love letters love-filled enough for you dear Earth? Are you feeling my appreciation for you thoroughly? My appreciation for you is vast and deep. I recognize that without you I wouldn’t be alive. Wouldn’t have a home. Wouldn’t have food or water. Wouldn’t have anything. It’s a miracle that you exist, spinning orb of life hurling through space. Crystalline structure of immense beauty. Other worldly power to generate life. Thank you, thank you, thank you Earth for being and existing and creating day in and day out. Your love is my life.

In deep gratitude,
Seren

Letter #7

June 16, 2026

Hi. I love you. I’m grateful to be alive today. I’m feeling especially grateful to have access to nourishing food that supports my body to be well and nourished and able to love life. I’m especially attuned to the importance of good nourishment. And how everything else depends on it. Everything else depends on access to good nourishment. And how nourishment isn’t only food but also water and rest and human companionship and touch and access to safety in the body and nervous system. And how heartbreaking it is that so many don’t have access to life-sustaining nourishment.

I feel a prayer that all my kin might have access to life-sustaining nourishment. We’d need to really work together well to establish that prayer into material reality. I do think it’s possible but that it would require pretty radical effort of collaboration and sharing. And probably setting aside all our notions of individual need and instead attuning our beings to a posture of radical collective sharing. Where I’m only fed and sustained if I know you’re fed and sustained – and where my well being truly and genuinely depends on yours. And upon my knowing and tracking of yours in an intimate relational way.

Something like that. The intimacy feels important. Re-establishing tapestries of intimacy where the tracking of personal and collective need is part of the fabric such that mutual attunement and responsiveness is second-nature. Second nature. Inherent. Intrinsic. You work that way don’t you dear Earth? Second nature responsiveness to the needs of your kin. And of course needs can’t always be met. And of course there’s times of famine and hardship and real genuine struggle and death. But perhaps we could posit that radical collective responsiveness is possible. Perhaps we could learn from you there. Generosity abounding. Overflowing grace.

Thank you.

Love,
Seren

Letter #8

June 17, 2026

Dear Earth,

I love you. I think I might be close to bleeding as my heart feels extra tender today. Like really extra. I know my heart is usually a very tender heart but today it’s like extra extra.

I love that I get to be alive. I love that I have so many teachers around me who teach me about love and devotion. That is what I’m most tender about today – having so many incredible, beautiful teachers around me who teach me about love and devotion.

Do we think all of these letters need to be made public? Yes? You say yes? It seems like you’re saying yes.

By “you” I don’t know if I mean my own gut knowing or the Earth or perhaps they tune to the same channel.

From somewhere I sense a “yes” – yes to letting the human-ness be witnessed – and the intimacy of letter writing as communion – and the commitment to longevity.

But that means this isn’t a personal journal, or is it?

Anyway. Love. What a gift. Thank you Earth for being my home while I learn about love.

In gratitude,
Seren

Thanks for stopping by — I’m sharing a batch of letters today, numbers 2-5 from early June. Putting #5 first because it is my favorite of the batch and features Turtle 🐢. Felt myself really remembering that moment with Turtle while typing up the letter. I reached out to a friend yesterday who volunteers at the wildlife rehab center and she’s going to check in to see how he’s doing (sorry for the spoiler).

Excited to continue feeling what it feels like to read my own writing after having been away from it for some weeks — so far sometimes squirmy, self-conscious, grateful, easy, “awww”, warm-hearted, impulse to hide, proud, embarrassed. A mix of sensations.

Donating again to Women & Water Indigenous International Clean Water Summit. This organization is hosting a ceremony September 24-27, 2026 in Hayward, WI with the aim of gathering 5,000 women to stand for the health and well-being of water. You can donate to their cause by clicking the link above and finding the “Donate” button on their homepage.

With love,

Seren

Letter #5

June 13, 2026

Dear Earth,

I’m tender-hearted today. This morning I found one of my beloved kin – turtle – badly injured in the middle of the road. At first I simply stopped to move him out of the road, thinking he was not alive. But then realizing he was, I placed him under a tree where I thought he might be able to die peacefully. I admit that it was hard to look at how injured he was. So hard that I think I just told myself he would die so I didn’t have to keep looking at how hurt he was. And so I didn’t have to feel how sad I was about it. It was much simpler and cleaner to just tell myself the damage was too great for him to live so that my only job was to usher him to a soft patch of grass where he could die more peacefully than if left in the middle of the road awaiting his fatal blow.

But as I drove away crying, thinking my job was done, I realized something didn’t feel complete. It was almost like Turtle was calling out for more care. So I went back – this time with soft red cloth laid inside of a plastic tote, and found turtle a short distance from where I had left him – little trail of blood on the grass blades behind him – chunk of shell dangling loose over his left back leg when he walked, hanging on by the soft tender tissue that lives pink and gooey beneath the shell.

I carried him gently to the cloth lined basket and told him I’d try to help. Upon getting him I got out my first aid kit and scissors, much like I would do if an injured human kin were sitting in front of me, and I started to intuitively listen to what his shell needed. A little piece of tape here, a non-stick gauze there, a wrap around this way to hold things in place. It could heal, I sensed, as I deepened into intimacy with this cracked and bleeding being.

It was interesting to feel how I could stomach the pain with more presence and ease when I actually turned toward it fully, as opposed to simply trying to leave him to a peaceful death. It was easier to feel my heartache and grief for how he had been hurt when I turned toward intimate relationship with him – turned toward care and listening and intuition.

He’s resting at the wildlife rehabilitation center now. I told them to call me with updates. I pray that he heals.

Dear Earth, I’m sorry that turtles get hit by cars so often. I’m sorry that deer and turkeys and birds and butterflies and frogs and snakes and rabbits and gophers and squirrels and opossums and raccoons and so many others get hit by cars so often. It hurts my heart that this happens. It hurts my heart a lot. I send a prayer of love to all my kin that get hit by cars. I’m sorry your life got cut short. I’m sorry the world of fast paced cars is confusing and overwhelming and hard to navigate. I’m sorry our driving often causes your bodies great pain and harm. I’m sorry.

I’m grateful to have had the opportunity to deepen in intimacy with Turtle today and I pray that his body heals fully and completely.

I love you Earth,
Seren

Letter #2

June 10, 2026

Dear Earth,

It’s me again. Back today. Still here with you. Still loving you. I noticed the thick humid air today that made my skin feel like you were constantly embracing me all over. I wonder what I mean when I say “Earth” but then refer to the wind as part of you. Is the wind part of you? Are the trees part of you or are you just the physical mass and structure that is the planet and then everything else is its own separate being? But what is “separate” anyway? I have a feeling that word wouldn’t even register in your being as a possibility.

So anyway, are you also the wind? When I say “Dear Earth, I felt you embracing me with the thick humidity of air today”, does that register in your being as a true way to be addressed? Is the air part of your wholeness?

When I write to you, it feels important that you feel known in your wholeness by me, but also not mis-identified. Maybe you and air know each other as your own beings, for example. Maybe to address you and then limp air alongside is like an insult to both of you, assuming oneness where really there’s differentiated wholeness. Separation.

Maybe you’d say I should write a love letter to air if I want to acknowledge the caress of humidity. This feels like an important place to start. If I’m going to be writing to you once a day for a year it feels important that I know who I’m writing to. Or at least let you know that I want to know you more. Because I imagine, like any human relationship, it would be foolish to imagine I will ever know all there is to know about you.

So I suppose my intention in this letter is to say: can I get to know you more? It would delight my heart so much.

With love and adoration,
Seren

Letter #3

June 11, 2026

Dear Earth,

Hi! I Love you. I just took a walk in the rain and it enlivened me so much. I had a day today where I contacted some deep pain in my psyche and spirit and to put my bare feet on your body and breathe while I felt the rain drops kissing my skin was just the medicine I needed.

I find that connecting with you almost always brings me just the medicine I need. I get the sense that that’s something you long for more than anything – to offer medicine. To offer yourself as medicine to all the living beings who are alive upon your body. I sense that you really want that. That you really long for us all to be well. Like a good mama. And you long for us to remember that this is something you’re available for. You long for us to remember to turn toward you as medicine. To turn toward you as medicine being. And to remember that you’re multi-faceted in that role. That you have many tools in your toolkit. That you’re available to care for every aspect of our being-ness from our physical bodies to our hearts to our nervous systems to our spirits. You’re available to tend our ancestral loads and our visions for the future.

Thank you, thank you, thank you Earth. What a miracle that you are available to us as such a powerful medicine being. Thank you for uplifting my spirit today and supporting me to feel held and known in my fullness. Thank you for the sensations of rain on skin. Thank you for the sound of thunder and the sight of raindrops on lake surface. Thank you for your beauty in all moments. Thank you for your ever-changing nature. Thank you for never being the same. Thank you for being able to hold my ever-changing nature because yours is the same.

Deep, wide, vast, love for you – and appreciation – couldn’t do this life without you.

With thanks,
Seren

Letter #4

June 12, 2026

Dear Earth,

Good morning. You are looking exceptionally beautiful today – lush green in dappled sunlight, fresh after yesterday’s cleansing rains. I woke up to see you and sun creating dancing shadows on my wall – tree limbs and light and pattern waking me into beauty. It’s a good way to wake – into beauty.

I’m enjoying this practice so much already. You probably know by now that I can sometimes start things out with strong enthusiasm and then fade after a few months. This ask feels different though. This ask to write you love letters feels like it wants to usher me into something deeper. Perhaps simply into deeper love with you and hence into deeper commitment to be true to the path of my soul and how it is longing to serve life. Yes, that feels true. Writing love letters to you is also about more deeply committing to how my soul is called to serve these times. I think a big aspect of what will allow my soul to show up fully for these times is opening even more fully to relationship and love with you. You are a tremendous ally in my becoming.

I see the ways you love us, Earth. I see the ways you stretch your branches to create shade and pockets of coolness amidst hot sun. I see the ways you sprout flowers to delight our eyes and feed the bees who pollinate our food. I see how you are devoted to health and well-being so you can continue to be the fertile ground upon which all life blooms. I see you being magical and powerful in your capacity to let your body be restored and healed by your elemental kin – washed clean by water – cleansed by the heat of fire – blown clear by air. You seem to know something about how to let yourself return to wellness after disruption or harm. About how to surrender to support so that balance and wellness can be restored.

I want to learn from you about that. I also bow to your power. I’m so grateful to be learning from you. And I haven’t forgotten my question from a few letters back about whether you are the air, or separate. And about who you are – when I say Earth – who am I speaking to? Still holding the prayer to know you more.

Love,
Seren

The first letter! From June 9, 2026.

It’s tender for my heart to officially start this process.

I’m grateful and curious and leaning in.

Thanks for being here 💜

Seren

Each time I publish a letter or series of letters I’m going to include an organization that is working to support the well-being of Earth or the more-than-human kin who live here with us, and I plan to donate $5 to the featured organization each time I publish a post. The organizations will likely repeat sometimes. If you know of an organization that you think would be wonderful to feature, I welcome you to share it with me in the comments. And I would love your participation in sending money to these organizations if it feels aligned to you!

For this post I’m featuring the Women & Water Indigenous International Clean Water Summit. This organization is hosting a ceremony September 24-27, 2026 in Hayward, WI with the aim of gathering 5,000 women to stand for the health and well-being of water. You can donate to their cause by clicking the link above and finding the “Donate” button on their homepage.

June 9, 2026

Dear Earth,

I heard the trees, (your kin, your creation), a while back asking me to write you love letters. To write love letters to you from a place of pure-hearted union with how my heart perceives your miraculous power and beauty.

Except for one love letter I wrote to you in a group ritual, I haven’t yet done what they asked of me, though I told them I would. They said to let people see my love letters to you, too. Not to keep them private. I’ve liked to keep things private in my past but they told me it is important that these not be that way. That I let me love for you be seen.

They asked me to write you a lot of love letters. Like maybe one each day. And to be diligent. And persistent. And devoted. They said letting my pure hearted love for you be seen was the most important part.

And that if enough of us witness each other’s pure-hearted love for you coming back online that we might really remember something together about how to treat you with kindness and respect. I want that. I really do. I really want you to be treated with kindness and respect. I want each blade of grass that sprouts from your generously loving body to be treated with kindness and respect. Each squirrel and chipmunk and turtle and frog and fish to be treated with kindness and respect. All of the life you birth to be treated with kindness and respect. I really want this.

I love you dear Earth. It feels like the greatest gift to be alive and in collaboration with life here on this planet, witnessing your immense beauty and power. Thanks for all you provide for us to be alive. I love you. I’m listening to the trees. Sorry it took me so many months to begin.

Love,
Seren

It’s been a while since I’ve written here.

A lot has happened in my life, as I imagine has in yours, too. A lot is happening in all of our lives each and every day. Multiply our singular, deeply complex lives by billions of people and it quickly becomes unfathomable — our whole collective stirring in constant alchemy, transformation, heartache, loss, grief, joy, ecstasy, birth, death, and everything in between.

One of the things stirring in my world is that I’ve been quietly tending a new practice of writing a love letter to the Earth each day. Sometimes I miss a day here or there but for the most part I try to be consistent. I started because the trees asked me to. You’ll read more about that in some of the early letters. Part of their ask was that I make all the letters public. Visible. Out in the open. That I put my love on display. Let it be known. Claim it.

It felt like a bold ask but one that I whole-heartedly (albeit not without trepidation) committed to as soon as I heard their request.

Another thing stirring in my world is that I’ve been carrying a new name in some spaces. “Seren”, or “Ren” for short, is a name you’ll see me starting to use more often. I love and cherish my given name “Emma”, and people will continue to call me that name as well, and its been fun to explore the power of a name and how it creates aliveness in my being to play with other ones.

So, all this to say, this is my introduction post to the longer series of Love Letters to Earth. My thought is that I’ll post once each week with a collection of 3-4 letters. You’ll be reading them from the past as I’ve been writing in my journal and will slowly transcribe them here to share. I imagine that beautiful things will continue to unfold along the way including, hopefully, participation from a wider network of people. (A friend of mine had the brilliant idea to invite others to submit their love letters to be shared as well — I hope to make that happen!)

About 45 days in it has already been a beautiful and humbling practice. My hope is that the letters serve open-heartedness, love, and curiosity. I release any other expectations and simply show up in my vulnerable, tender heart that loves life.

Stay tuned in the next day or two for the first round of letters being shared!

In the mean time may you be well nourished in all the ways you deserve.

With love,

Seren

12/30/2025

Dear future ones,

May I grow an even deeper taproot into faith. May I grow an even deeper taproot into faith that life longs to persist. That you long to persist.

For if not this faith, then what will resource me through this time of great dying? What will resource me as facades of normalcy crumble and we’re left to see wreckage of hundreds of years of destroyed humanity?

What will persist but the tiny sprout pushing up through the concrete block of towers brought to their knees by bombs and homes brought to the ground by mortgage debt and a failed economy? What will persist but the seeds hidden in storehouses and quiet pockets waiting simply for soil and rain to bring them to bursting? What will persist but simply your longing to come here and love. To come here and love. To come here and love.

Yes, plant in me a faith so strong that it flinches not when I see the facades crumbling around me. That it flinches not when my body is shook by grief aching to the marrow of my bones. That it flinches not as I watch kin after kin be taken in wretched ways.

Plant me in a faith so strong that it doesn’t waver even as I watch the great death of everything we’ve known as truth, as reality.
Even as the facades of ego and mind and system take to the ground also in rubble.
Even as fear and greed grows in the face of loss.
Even as terror grips us tighter and we face the urge to fight and fight and fight.
Even as the earth warms and the oceans rise and the bees die.
Even then, let my faith not flinch.

Even then let my taproot be so deep that it drinks from the well that knows, that knows, that knows — that even if it’s seemingly impossible to live, life will never, ever, ever lose its longing to persist.

And so long as it longs to live, it will.

Let me love with this faith.
Let me serve with this faith.
Let me live with this faith.

Knowing, all together completely and truly, that life longs to live this faith through me. Through us.

That we are the amalgamations of this longing. Embodied. Breathing. Taking care to do what is ours to do.

May we see this and know this and be this and breathe this.

Always and forever, life persisting.
Always and forever, life persisting.

And here’s the thing – we’ll never know if this is true, that life will never lose its longing to persist. Maybe that’s why it’s called faith.

Hello out there, whoever happens to be reading this. I’ve taken somewhat of a long hiatus from posting here, or from sharing writing in general. I’ve been in an interesting process of discerning how the writing that flows through me wants to, or doesn’t want to, be shared. I’ve been orienting to my writing as if I could ask the writing itself — as if it were a being of it’s own accord — what it wanted. I’ve noticed that it has been asking for slowness and relationality.

I’ve been in continued practice of writing each morning as soon as I wake up from dreaming. I record the dream and then free write in response to “what more do you want to say dream time?” It’s teaching me so much about discipline and practice and consistency. There are a few mornings I skip here and there, but generally I’m quite consistent. Oftentimes I run into my own mental blocks and get to practice noticing them and writing anyway. Often my dreams and the writing that flows in response have very clear instructions and invitations for me that are relevant to my personal life and process.

It’s been important for me to orient first and foremost to this morning writing practice as my medicine. To really let the writing land in my being, to let myself fully take in what it says, to notice how it is relevant to my life, to let it work me and stir me and change me.

Early on when I started this Substack, I was aware that the writing coming through in my morning practice was also medicine for the larger collective, and I was wanting to share it for that purpose. But I learned quite quickly that if I wasn’t letting it be medicine for me first, it wasn’t fully serving its purpose. Hence the slow down.

It’s also been important to notice that the writing wants to be protected and held as sacred. I’ve come up across my own tendencies to share, share, share as baseline “best practice”. The willingness to share acting as the marker that I am striving toward. A marker that might mean I’m fully embodying my gifts or fully courageous and liberated from fear or something. Make public and visible and reveal and share the gifts inside and let everyone benefit from and see what is being created through you — these all seem to be a larger motivating forces in our culture as well.

I’ve noticed that this writing is asking for a different way. A slower way. A way that is relational and not moving at the pace of digital social media or internet clicks. Some of the mythic stories that I wrote back in March specifically wanted to be read outloud to people who were resting, so I got to read them to several people as bedtime stories! It seemed to make both the people and the stories very satisfied.

It’s been beautiful to honor the slowness that the writing has asked for. It’s meant I’ve gotten to actually tune into the pace of sharing with one person at a time, instead of clicking “Publish” and never knowing how any of this is received. It has re-woven something in me around sharing creativity slowly. Around not revealing just for the sake of it. Around letting things have depth of impact instead of width or breadth.

There’s something here for me too about protecting the sacred. Not over-revealing. Not sharing out of pressure to prove that one is courageous enough. There’s a lot of other ways to embody courage than to reveal the core gifts of your soul on the internet. That might be one way, but it’s certainly not the only way.

All this has had me thinking a lot about a larger cultural tendency toward revealing and illumination as the way toward self growth. Dig out all of your traumas and reveal them vulnerably in order to heal. Bring your gifts online and find the way to let them be known so they have the most impact in your community.

We have tendencies not only toward revealing and illumination but also toward grandeur. The bigger the reach that you can have the more you’re in alignment with your gifts. The more money you make doing what you love, the closer you are to being in alignment with your true essence. The more people you can help to heal by revealing your core wounds, the more you’ve truly alchemized and made use of your pain.

I am certainly all in favor of revealing and illumination and sharing as important parts of being more fully in one’s embodiment, essence, and aliveness. These flavors have certainly been an important part of my journey. What I’m curious about is whether these ways have become overly pedastalized as the ideal, such that we have forgotten that there are other ways to be on a deep and profound journey toward self, toward coming more alive.

I think there are lots of other ways in fact. Slow ways, quiet ways, private ways, restful ways. Small, unseen, unheard, not broadcast ways. Ways that only one other person in the world might witness you in. Ways that no other person in the world might witness you in. Ways that have you spelunking deep into the inner landscape of your being and taking years to process what you’ve felt and discovered. Ways that have you tending the closeness of your immediate surroundings — the plants, animals, family, waters right around you. Ways that have you communing through prayer with your ancestors and not telling anyone about it. Ways that have you in daily devotional practices of walking or movement or prayer that you don’t need to reveal anything about. Ways that have you singing a simple song to the flowers in your yard that never gets recorded or repeated the same way again. Ways that have you offering a burial ceremony to the rabbit that got hit by a car on your street and purposely not taking a picture of the beautiful flower mandala created on top of its body because the moment was too sacred to capture.

These are ways too. And these ways aren’t rooted in revealing or illumination. They are rooted in presence, mystery, devotion, slowness. More presence. Humility. Repetition. Consistency. Detail. Smallness. Weaving of close-by relational webs. These ways might even have a tendency to protect what’s sacred by choosing not to reveal.

It’s my hope that my life can be in service of re-balancing the ways. Bringing the fullness of ways back online in my own life and letting them all be equally valid and valuable. Releasing pressure to enact certain ways because they are good or better or more courageous. Letting myself be slow and small and private when that is the medicine.

That’s been the inquiry and learning that I’ve been steeping in lately. It’s working me good! I’m glad to be able to share a little glimpse with you here.

On a different note — I have a multi-part mythic/archetypal story that I wrote back in March that is now feeling ripe to share here. I am going to take a little more time to listen to how it wants to be published — I’m thinking perhaps it will have audio files attached of me reading the story out loud so you can take it in while resting if you choose. Be on the look out for that soon. It feels ripe and relevant for the time we are in collectively.

On another different note — I uploaded an album of improv piano songs on bandcamp! Maybe you’d enjoy listening.

Until next time! May you be rooted and embodied in your wild nature, in just the ways that are yours to be.

The front of the t-shirt had bumble bees on it and the words “Never stop dreaming of the dream you are anchored in. Our dreams are our shared reality.”

As is my morning practice, I asked “What more do you want to say, dream?” and began free writing. Here’s what flowed:

(The audio above reads the following writing out loud.)

The bees, the bees, the bees. So rooted in shared reality that each one surrenders the totality of its life to a collective effort.

Each one devotes the totality of its life to a collective effort.

Yes, the ultimate teachers in collective action — and look at the honey that is created — the sweetness — and look at how they help flowers grow — and how they help flowers create the seeds that are needed to allow life to continue.

Bees — the ultimate teacher in collective, multi-species vision.

The ultimate teacher in collective, multi-species collaboration — in giving your whole life to playing the part that is yours to play in the wider web of unfolding dream.

In playing the part that is yours to inhabit and embody so that the whole can thrive.

In allowing the shape of your days to be driven by some deeper knowing of what you must do.

Of allowing the medicine of your knowing to help you seek out sweetness and contribute to a larger group effort.

Of allowing the sweetness of your knowing to inhabit every cell of your being so fully that at your death you know you gave it your all.

To serve the larger whole even if you never get to taste the honey.

To serve the larger whole even if you never get to eat the fruit.

To serve the larger whole even if you don’t have a clear vision of what the end game will be.

To serve the larger whole even if you don’t always know exactly why you’re doing something.

To serve the larger whole because you can imagine no other prerogative that would be worth devoting your life to.

let your unraveling be soft
supported by saturn and moon gently
untwisting the rope tied around
your belly. 

let your unraveling take you on
long drives with grief -
disoriented by rising rage
and frustrated that the radio 
blaring never seems to turn off.

quiet your mind

frogs and deer get hit by
the loudness of your pain
every day. 
cars blaring speed down two-
lane highways taking life 
with bright lights 
and great force. 

soft kin, soft skin
mutilated

let your rage rise
let your grief take you on long drives
where you just want to turn
the radio off — 
just want to find
a quiet place to scream —
just want to find a quiet 
place to lay your 
soft body on the earth 
and say "why?" 
"Why?" 
"Why?" 

"This mutilation — why?" 
"This unending speed of violence — why?"
"This harm — why?"

Let your unraveling be gentle, 
and fierce, and fueled. 

-------- 

Fire and air
crackle embers in my belly
see me rise in standing
to speak for all life. 

My grandma Bev loved frogs. And so I’m here now, typing out this poem, tears streaming down my cheeks thinking of her. She had so many stuffed animal frogs. One I gave her for Christmas one year that was nearly the size of her torso and she slept with it every night. She loved it so much. She would make her bed every day and leave the big stuffed frog laying there on the pillow waiting for her. I wish I would have asked her what it was that she loved about frogs. What she knew about them that drew her heart in so deeply. Some part of her must have known their medicine, their ways, their gifts. I wish I would have asked her.

This poem is also reminding me of how deeply I’ve always been impacted by roadkill. It always guts me. Makes me feel a queasiness in my belly to see the life that had been taken by fast speeding cars. It’s one of the quickest and surest pathways in to my own grief body. To my own care for life.

A few more snippets of writing from this morning:

“The vision you hold feels under attack. Threatened at the whim of great forces of destruction. Threatened at the whim of great forces of destruction. And so the fortitude required to hold the vision is stretching you — asking for a real deepening — asking for a real deepening into trusting earth — trusting that earth needs and wants and is sourcing and is sourced by your devotion to your vision… The stretching open of immensity. The stretching open of immensity. The stretching open of immensity. Call in equal immensity of holding, again and again and again until the systems find coherence. The systems will find coherence. The systems will find coherence… allowing the immensity of the prayers you pray to call in the depth of support and healing and intention that meets the immensity… That acknowledges the webbed-ness of your tissues to all things. Let let let let the immensity of support come to meet the immensity of webbed-ness.”

“Big times call for big prayers. Don’t waste your time doing much else than speaking big prayers.”

And I’ll close with all these picture of frogs that I took as a younger person — and a few of my Grandma — two with her stuffed animal frogs and one of us making pies :-)

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This morning (3/27) I woke up to a dream that spurred this poem about ancestors and protection for all life, especially the hurting and the vulnerable.

Before the poem, a few other snippets from my flow that moved me this morning:

“Yes you are just going to continue to be invited to bare your heart because their heart needs the medicine that you're bringing through, and your heart needs the medicine they are bringing through. It's impeccable mutuality what is happening. Each heart needing medicine from the other hearts which calls each heart more deeply into resonance with truth and softness and service."

“So just get out of the way dear, let your mind release ownership of prayers that are bigger than you. You’re baring your heart but it’s not just your heart, it’s also our heart — 1,000 grandmothers, condensed into a fistful of tissue, praying big prayers for thriving.”

and now, the poem:

fathers of harm
assuage the bleeding skin
of your daughters
shattered by cracked
windows and cold
winds whipping
tenderness

comfort the wailing hearts
longing for your solid 
holding 

protect, protect, protect
what is yours to stand for: 
life in its vulnerability, 
life in its pain, 
life in its broken need
for healing and mending 

fathers of old
come back to us in ways that remind
us of the power of your fortitude
that remind us of the power
of your stamina to be unwavering and resolute 
in the strength of your convictions 

come back to us
come back to us 
come back to us 

embody our men 
and have them know the ways that you served
have them remember
the ways that you stood 
to protect the vulnerable 

have the remember
your unflinching conviction 
to protect all life

have them remember 
that you oriented to nothing else
as more important 

fathers of old
come back to us 
come back to us

you who remember the solidity 
of standing on behalf of healing
and repairing and protecting

come back to us
come back to us
come back to us

Some of the writing that has been coming through me lately has been speaking of masculine and feminine, fathers and mothers and grandmothers and grandfathers. I want to include an acknowledgement of how I am orienting to these words, with a snippet of writing that came through a few weeks ago: “and in this story, let me be clear, there are all manner of beings with all manners of blends and combinations and expressions of these masculine and feminine energies. There is no binary. There are ones who are inhabited so fully by both that they know of them each in completeness and serve the role of acknowledging when the energies are not in right relationship in the greater collective body. But anyway, I just wanted you to know this is not a story of binary — it is a story of myth, of archetype, of pattern, of progress.”

I feel such resonance with those words still, and hope that all of my writing can hold a spaciousness of orientation and an acknowledgement of the presence of these energies as archetypal and universal within each of us.

May these words call in a stance of protection toward all life.

On this particular morning (March 15th, 2025) I don’t remember what the thread of the dream was that I woke up to — but here is what the liminal time between dreaming and waking wanted to say to me:

I am everywhere. Spirit in all things. Mythic story lines weaving you through sleep and waking. Dream language pulsing through your bones waiting to be heard and listened to. I’m here even in the day time, even when you’re doing your bills, even when you’re at the grocery store. Let me in. I don’t knock because I have nothing to prove to you. You need to be the one who wakes up to your own longing for me. You have to open the door because you wake up to your own longing. I promise I’ll enrich your life. I am spirit in all things. Dancing even in your toaster. How do you think I help you get the toast crispy?

Your ways are dying right now. They won’t sustain. You’ll have to find new ones. Don’t effort to look for old ones. Those won’t be suitable for the times you’re in. Don’t effort to reclaim old ways, but look instead at the moments you find yourself in and listen well for the core of responsiveness that lives in each moment. The core of responsiveness that would orient you toward thriving. Look there. Don’t look back. Don’t try to reclaim ancient ways. I mean, do, if they inform your responsiveness, and if you know them deep in your bones. But don’t try to reclaim them from some false illusion of what you think they were. Because they were not what you think they were most likely. You’re probably trying to locate your awareness, or transport your awareness, back into a time where your perception can’t travel. So orient here, now, to your responsiveness. What response might further thriving? Wellness? Connection? Sometimes you won’t know, but can you stay centered on the question? Can you stay oriented to that as guide?

You all need each other to be orienting to that question right now. For yourselves and for each other and for the earth and for all life. What responsiveness will help orient you all toward thriving? And with this question as central, it’s all about the little choices. It’s all about a receptive and responsive posture to life. And so, the first step might be to ask, how can I find and take and practice embodying a receptive and responsive posture toward life?

Because often times you don’t hold those postures. You hold reactive ones, aggressive ones, defensive ones, and violent ones — and those cloud your vision and your listening. You can’t have eyes fit to see thriving with those postures. And so that might be the first step. And that might be the most confusing and the most painful because it’s likely that those reactive postures have a lot of pain stored up with them. And it’s likely that letting them go or letting them shift into something else will ask you to confront the pain that’s stored up alongside and within them. And you need to do this. Life needs you to do this.

Wonder about yourself. Don’t judge or harshly ridicule. Wonder about yourself. Wonder about what you hold and what you’ve known and what you’ve been. You’ve all been and known a lot more than you give yourselves credit for. You get distracted by the singularity of your linear lives and forget to attune to the vastness of who you’ve been. And so of course you have defenses and stories storied up. Wonder about them. Wonder about them. Wonder about the ways they inhabit you. About the ways they inform your reactions. About the ways they color your sight.

The world needs you to wonder about them, because the world needs your responsiveness. The potential for thriving needs your responsiveness. Love needs your responsiveness. Will you do the work?

And going in to look at the pain that might be stored up with the reactivity is a different kind of work than just spewing rage and reactivity. It’s true that when you go in, you might find some things that need to be released, expressed, discharged. It’s true that you might need to embody rage or grief or outrage or anger — but you’re doing so conciously. You’re not mindlessly spewing it in reactivity to life. You’re doing so because you know that clearing it out will support thriving of the whole.

And you might feel like what’s inside of you is endless, that you’ll be raging forever, and that might scare you. Most likely, that’s not true. But most likely, you’ll start to find yourself more fluid and responsive to the never ending flows and waves and arrivals and departures of all the sensations and emotions that get stirred by being an alive human around other alive humans living on an alive earth with other alive kin.

And you’ll become more responsive — more attuned to tending — more responsible to tending the waves. And the reactivity will diminish and you’ll more skillfully be able to reorient to your guiding question: how can I be responsive in a way that promotes thriving for myself and for all life?

I woke up from a dream about the earth and connecting with the earth. When I woke up, I moved straight into free flow writing and asked the earth what more it wanted to say. Here’s what flowed out:

It’s been a really long time since groups of people like yours have gathered together for the sole purpose of honoring me or water.

The forgetters…the forgetters…
But you’re remembering.

And I need you so badly to remember and reclaim the power of your prayers, the importance of your gathering to honor life. The simplicity but utter profound potency of coming together to honor all life. Let it be the most important thing you do. Shape your life around it. Shape your life around it.

I see your mind is trying to distract you again. You’re practicing. What would it be like to stay right here with me a little longer? Persistent focus — clear mind — the mind doesn’t have anything it actually needs you to do — right now, or maybe ever. It just gets filled with whims of fancy, with possibilities for pleasure — which most of you love to follow — but the mind is not the one who informs you of NEED. The mind is not the one who informs you of need. You’ll have plenty of real true needs in your life that you ought to listen to in service of your well being, and those will always come through the body — never the mind.

Yes, I hear your mind right now saying that seems extreme to claim, but it’s true. The mind is the interpreter not the creator. The mind reads, and is quite skilled, but it is not the source from which content of need is created. The mind is the story teller, the translator, the sometimes humble and sometimes self-absorbed relayer of information.

So don’t go to the mind to listen for need. When you go to the mind to listen for need, you might misinterpret the importance of what the mind is telling you. You might put more weight on it’s impulses and messages than is due. You might make decisions shaped by it’s nudges that don’t actually serve you well because they are rooted in flights of fancy or distraction — not in true alignment with what you need to be well. The mind can get mad at me for saying all this. I don’t mind. I know it’s bold. I know it sounds like I’m speaking in extremes. Ultimates. I know that. But I’m not actually discounting the mind as brilliant. It is so brilliant.

I’m actually just trying to orient to the wisdom of the body as carrier of need. The body is always going to inform you of need. Because the body is in the project of staying alive — the body is in the work of keeping itself well and vital and alive — and so the body is going to inform you of how it needs to be tended in order to stay well and vital. And sometimes you’ll hear and sometimes you won’t. Sometimes you’ll understand the language and sometimes you won’t. Sometimes you’ll know the ways body is trying to speak and sometimes you won’t.

Success isn’t the goal. Relationship is. Listening is. Trust is. There is no end goal. There is no end point. Your body was born to start growing and then deteriorating. Wellness and vitality does not mean avoiding deterioration. It does no mean avoiding breakdown or change. It means listening to the spirit of your being, at home in your body, and asking them both how they can be most well loved and honored in the completeness of what they are and what they are holding. It is not static but ever changing.

In a way, I imagine that I’m letting the dream continue to speak through me, out my hand and through the pen. It’s like I’m courting a deeper relationship with whatever it was stirring within me. I haven’t had a nudge to share many of these writings yet, though in time, I expect I will. I’ve been listening for the ways that they want to be shared. Mostly they are asking to be shared slowly, relationally, and gradually.

But this morning felt different — the words were saying “share me! share me!” and so here I am to share some snippets of what flowed through this morning as I was tuning into a dream I had just been having about trust.

Call on people you can trust. Deeply and fully. Call on people who can wonder about the depths of you alongside you. Call on people who can help carry the torch of your own becoming and light the path of theirs as well. Find the ones who are unwavering in their desire to be free. Use their fortitude to bolster your own. Call on the ones who are unshakable in their support of life. The ones who call on thriving for rabbit and tree and water and friend. Call on the ones who see the miracle of being alive and let their fervor for life carry you through the most challenging of passages. Wonder about your deserving of these people — and then claim it and call them in.

Sweet honey medicine. Flow through. Trust, trust, trust. You’ll never fully know the potency of your own magic and medicine unless you surrender to the wonderings of your heart to come ever more fully alive. Stay right here. Don’t let the mind urge you toward distraction right as you’re moving toward the juicy core. The mind is a tricky one that way. Disguising urges and impulses as true and clean and innocent when really they serve distraction and avoidance and removal of self from the path toward the core of heart and soul and spirit.

Call the mind into gentle collaboration. It loves to be gently tended with love and compassion. It doesn’t respond well to ridicule. It doesn’t respond well to judgement or coercion. Soothe the mind gently like you would a dear friend. The mind also has surprisingly little stamina. You might think the mind is the power house that runs and runs forever but really it’s pretty fragile. It knows how to spin and churn but it doesn’t have a ton of endurance for clear focus and directed persistence. That has to be consciously tended and practiced thru heart in collaboration with mind and body.

There are some things in life that are just never going to make logical sense to the mind. You can spend time wondering how and why and for what purpose and the truth is that the hearts are the only ones who can know — and most likely they will never fully reveal their knowings. Hearts are pesky like that. They love to protect mystery. They love to protect mystery because they know that mystery is the fertility from which all magic grows. So don’t ask too many questions darling. Let the practice of trust and prayer guide your way. Open, heart, to the lush field of loving that is possible. Dream of futures fit for thriving. Call in your people and then do everything in your power to receive and love them well.

Thanks for reading! Until next time —

Emma

so much feels unknown.

Will they make us fight
with each other to prove
our hearts?

Will they make us wander
in the night crying out
for help under auspicious
stars that ache for us
to remember?

Will they watch our feet take
turns that our not ours
to make until at last
we get to the place
we’ve been trying
to go?

Will they hunger us until
our famished bodies cry out in real need
for sustenance?

Will they make themselves
known to us or stay
hidden behind some
guise of empty power?

Will the fight we fight be worth it?

This was a flow poem. These happen sometimes, where I get a little thread that pulls my pen to the paper, and then I just try to get out of the way. Today the thread was "Dear tomorrow". It feels like my job is simply to start writing. This one was really clear — so clear that I didn’t even really have an opportunity to question it’s meaning as I wrote it — it was born in about 2 minutes. It knew what it wanted to be and what it wanted to say. Only now after it’s written can I read it through and see what I “think” it means. What does it stir in you?

The poem wanted to respond to itself, this time with more sovereignty.

:::

Dear tomorrow,

so much feels unknown.

We will fight for each other
to prove our hearts.

We will wander in the night
crying out for help and
remembering the auspicious stars
above us.

We will let our feet take the turns
that they need to take
so we can get where we're
trying to go.

We will feed our famished bodies
with real sustenance.

We will unveil the hidden guise
of empty power.

The fight we fight
will be worth it.

whispers earth, whispers water, whispers sun

stay close to stay soft

sometimes poems come when we don’t try

I’m not alone here.

Did you know my breath breathes plants

and borrows time from bacteria?

Bind them together.

Most of us resist persistence —

tumultuous learning —

stirring instead the soup of familiar

round and round until we’re dead.

that one came through at 5 am when I was trying to get back to sleep but instead had these little lines filtering into my awareness one at a time and asking me to turn the light on and write them down.

That first one was just a text exchange with a dear friend who had shared a dream fragment with me from the night before.

What should I write about today?

Hope —

I’m looking for some.

As a practice of grounding out what flows through me.

As a practice of giving language and words to what stirs in my mind, body, heart, tissues, and dreams.

I need to find a way to give life and form and aliveness to the immensity inside of me.

I need to practice simply flowing. Simply letting it flow. Simply letting it unfold and unfurl and unburden itself from containment.

Paradoxically, giving what is formless form, frees that which I am giving form to by letting it be free outside of my vessel, free from the containment of only living inside of me AND at the same time, creates containment for me because I’m no longer the sole vessel holding these thoughts/words/ideas/questions, etc.

I need to write even if I don’t make sense. I just re-read that last paragraph and only barely understood it myself. If anyone else is reading this, I hope you freely admit that it doesn’t make sense, if that’s what’s true. I’m really not trying to impress you.

I think I have to write to be well. I think I have to write to let my vessel by unburdened by what is moving through it. I think if I don’t write, it will build up in my tissues. It will give itself form, because I haven’t taken the time to give it form, by creating heaviness and stagnancy in my body.

I think I have to write for my ancestors. I know that they are so close by to me all the time. Holding me and whispering encouragement in my ear, and helping the circumstances of my life unfold in beautiful ways, and sharing their wisdom and lived experiences so generously with me, through me, to me. They are me, and they are within me, and they have things to say.

They know things about what’s coming. Especially the future ones.

I find lately, and maybe it’s just Capricorn season, but I find lately that as soon as I put my fingers to the keyboard, there is an unabashed flow of words that is happy to be free. It feels quite effortless. Maybe it’s in part because I’ve finally given myself permission to write without expectation of impressing anyone, or of making any sense, or of having anything profound to say.

Writing about my dreams each morning is really helping. Because I feel the way that writing about them honors each one, and helps me commit to tending my dream time with devotion, and it also just gives me an automatic topic to write down. A permission slip to put words to imagery. An easy entry point for getting my fingers to the keys.

I want to write because it feels essential to my wellness.

I want to write because it feels essential to keeping my vessel clear and open and fluid.

I feel lately like I could just write and write and write and write. For hours. I wonder if I could. I haven’t tried yet. Perhaps I’ll try tomorrow.

What would I write about?

I think I’d write about grief, and my dream about the orcas, and how important it feels for community to be coming together to practice taking care of each other right now, and about the precipice that we are on collectively, and about how dire these times feel, and about how much potential there is in this dark space, and about rest, and about prayer as activism, and about what it means to have so many choices about our food, and about my GI reset, and about the body of the earth and how it connects to my own well being.

I want to write as if no one is going to read what I wrote, and also as if it’s essential that I write. I want to reside in the place of non-attachment with my writing. Right where it feels integral and important that I do what I’m doing, but I don’t have any pre-occupation with the outcome.

To practice flow
To feel the ways that ancestors speak
Through fingers across keys
They find their way
Even in these new technological landscapes
They know how to make tissues ache
With longings
And eyes well with tears
Until you say
“I can’t hold anymore!”
And take to words
To flow and flood
The world with grace
And hope
And possibility

I want to write on behalf of the ancestors that know things.

Especially the future ones.

I was in my childhood bedroom and trying to packing for a trip. I was a little bit distant and someone kept trying to access connection with me. I was getting frustrated. Finally they came in asking “what’s the matter?” again, and I said “I just feel like you’re trying to get me to DO something” and when I said it I was sitting down and my body made this shape where my heart space stretched open and vibrated as if it were being forced to stretch forward or something. And then I said “just leave me alone, leave me alone, leave me alone — several times with my hand extended out in front of me like a stop sign.

I was supposed to go on a trip to the Netherlands that I had paid a deposit for but then forgotten about. I didn’t want to go. I was considering losing the deposit so that I didn’t have to follow through.

I was with Shay and we drove to Wauwatosa to a cool little lake side town. It was like we had gone back in time sort of, but there were also modern conveniences. There was a big barn and silo at the shore of the lake, and then lots of cars parked around because people were visiting this cool lake-side town. The road was not paved, it just turned into dirt and grass that people drove over. At one point the road might have been cobblestone. We were waiting for EJ to arrive because she was meeting us there. Shay wanted to go to chick-fil-a to get a sandwhich while we waited. We walked in and saw Laura G. also there. I didn’t feel like I could make much conversation with her — it felt a little awkward. I wanted to place my order with a person, not through a computer, so I went to talk to the person who was taking orders on a little hand held computer. They said they’d be right with us. They came over and I said what we wanted and then they tried to offer a special deal where if we bought another sandwich it would come with ear plugs. Special earplugs. The kind of ear plugs that silence that horrible feeling of hurt that is beign inflicted upon the earth.

dream from last night (1/9-1/10)

I dreamt I was in an African savannah, under a big rock overhang, a large open cave amphitheater, able to see out word the horizon widely but contained on all three sides. I was gathered there with other people. We were in circle. Around us, in the distance and close sometimes, were animals. The animals sometimes came too close for comfort, in a way that we knew we had to get humble and behave in a way that would let them know we didn't need to be harmed. Elephants came close once while we were in circle, and the apes/gorillas who were nearest around us, started responding by all taking a creatine posture of kneeling and doing a type of dance/movement that I understood was meant to display their surrender to the power of the elephants. The apes did the dance in unison, and at one point all stopped their foot at the same time, creating a thundering sound. There were two apes that had babies near us and they grabbed them quickly and scurried up and over the rock ledges as the elephants came near. It seems us humans were just still as the elephants approached. Then, a different group of humans came. The leader of them started approaching each person in our circle with an electrical taser, telling us we couldn't be doing what were were doing, and tasing each person in the heart until they were limp and unresponsive. I somehow got this person who was tasing everyone in my arms and was holding him balled up like a little boy. I didn't have any awareness of who "I" was, or what I looked like, or what my specific role was. The person I was holding was a small man, maybe 18 or 19, immature and trying to hold an external facade of toughness. In my arms I had to contain him by squeezing is knees toward his chest, and wrapping my arms around his arms, him in the fetal position being contained in my arms. I kept telling him it is not OK for him to treat my people that way. And over and over again I'd tell him that. I carried him away from everyone else, out toward a flat open space where there was a pond. The pond had muck in it. I threw him into the water. I wasn't sure if he'd come out. He did. He agreed not to treat my people that way after that. I think it was really that simple.

I dreamt at one point that I was part of a volunteer event and I had to drive to my assignment. My cousin Jon was scheduled to visit my mom and dad’s house, and they were getting things ready. My aunt K was over too. I drove my mom and dad with me to my volunteer shift. I went a sort of round about way because I had time to spare. I got there and walked into a large indoor room where people were playing soccer. People from my high school like Mikey and Mitch, and several others that I don’t remember. I jumped right into the game of soccer after setting down my things, including a bundle of firewood. We scored several goals in the short time I played. Then they were announcing that it was time for my volunteer shift to start. I was signed up to help with births and cord cutting. I followed the woman who was the volunteer coordinator for the site that I was at, and noticed that she was trying to work quickly to get everyone where they needed to at this transition point when one shift was ending and another was starting. I was taken to someone’s home who was in active labor. There were two people sitting in the living room that we walked into, and I figured out quickly that these two people were her parents. They were sitting in a dimly lit room, they had soft music playing and there were gentle metallic tinkling sounds like from weird tin wind chimes. Through the room toward the back was a hallway and I could hear birthing sounds coming from that direction. But the parents made some comment like “all good here, nice and quiet”, or something like that — implying that the birth wasn’t disturbing them from their strange peaceful living room experience. I started to walk toward the hallway. As I was getting ready for the assignment, I was preparing in my mind how I would respectfully tell the parents that I didn’t want to clip the umbilical cord right away so that their baby could get all of the nourishment it needed from the placenta. I was trying to figure out how to speak that as a lowly volunteer, who didn’t really have credentials or familiarity in the places I was going.

At another part of my dream I was with my friend Shannon in a cafeteria getting a meal. I picked out vegan and gluten free enchiladas with cord and peppers. Then Kimberly showed up too.

on collective emergence and alchemy

I was moved tonight — in a group zoom call with my Year in Ceremony cohort — to remember that we’re all part of a larger story. That we’re all listening and attuning through one prism of the greater whole. That we’re each struggling and efforting in our own way, on behalf of a larger unfolding.

This is easy to intellectualize. Not always so easy for me to feel. Often really not easy for me to feel in a large group where the noise of the container can be really static-y.

When I think about how we’re all part of this larger unfolding, these questions really stir me: In large groups — where it actually takes intention and practice to create a field of coherence — can we, as a large group body, attune to what Spirit is wanting to create through “us”? Can we maximize the healing potential of “us” on behalf of the whole?

I say “us” in two ways — “us” as individual bodies within the group and “us” as a unique group body. There’s a slight difference in my awareness. We each have an acute, individual role to play in the larger unfolding, and when we come together, those mingle and intertwine and weave with one another. It’s the way a soup gets created by adding lots of different components.

And then there’s the way that when we all come together and surrender our individual identities just enough, but maintain them just enough, we might enter the realm of alchemy. Where the group becomes a body of it’s own — a new body. A never before in existence body because it’s made up of entirely unique patterns of being within entirely unique moments of circumstance that will never again repeat. The group body loses an orientation toward the personal, even through it’s made up of individuals, and instead surrenders to the larger currents at play.

And from this place — in coherence with the group body — can we all agree to surrender to what wants to arrive and happen through us?

That’s what I witnessed in our zoom call tonight. And that’s what I continue to witness over and over again with this group actually. A kind of collective alchemy. A way that the integrity of devotion that formed the container is so robust, that the group body really can surrender to what Spirit wants to work through us. And the group body really can hold each other through the sometimes painful and tumultuous process of unveiling and revealing what needs to be radically altered in order for the whole to be well.

I always leave in awe and deep reverence for what we’re holding together, in all of it’s shadow and brilliance. Working to change the course of deeply entrenched rivers.