I found myself at a strange crossroads. The Tittabawassee River wound itself around my legs stretching North and South while a roaring overpass crossed above me traveling in the opposite direction.

In older days, these physical places where paths intersect were powerful portals for good and ill magic to be made. Medicine people, conjurers, those associated with the darkness, would make their way to these places at night to offer up prayers, spells, and wishes not fit for the day. The crossroads were a place where the veil runs threadbare, where what we see and what we don’t weave in and out of each other like a needle.

This crossroads carried that same kind of potency as these creations of man and nature hashed across each other with urgency. I stood there with dozens of other people of all ages and walks of life as we made a slow procession into the current. One by one we were handed a small wriggling dinosaur. It was cool and slick to the touch, its spiny back combing my hand, pointy snout shaped into a perfect curve.

We paused long enough to give a quick greeting, a quick farewell, a quick wish for safe travels, thoughts and words melding into their own kind of crossroads’ spell. We lowered our hands quickly into the water and gave them a gentle nudge in the right direction. One after another, dinosaurs disappeared into their native waters.

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Help me search for a fairy cave on an August moon and a low, low tide

~ Rachel Carson

I love this time in August when the wildflowers grow tall and tangled. The land is loosening her laces, letting her hair down, giving it one final shake before bed. All of her little jewels tumble out. It feels like long hot days by the lake, slick with sweat and sunscreen, and memories of laughter and longing. It’s unhurried, unkept, unconcerned with the time or the trends. This moment on the land is a lesson of letting go, in allowing these last moments of summer linger.

When August sweeps over us in a gold rush of goldenrods, there seems to be this sudden need to do more, pack it all in before the summer is over and gone. But wait, sit a minute with the wildflowers. Notice how they no longer are straight, sturdy and blooming profusely. They languidly bend and twist in all directions, falling downward on leggy stems. No, this is a time for doing less, for letting ourselves fall apart a bit. The summer lasts longer when you do it this way.

That’s the thing about flowers. They are expressions of the cosmic soul, of our souls. They know our deepest desires and display them in color and form and movement.

Earlier this spring, a blue flag iris bloomed for the first time in the wooded wetland I’ve been tending here. I cried. It’s rewarding to see the grasses, ferns, animals, and pollinators return to a once stagnant land of course. But when I see a flower bloom that was written into the original blueprint of this place, it feels like the land is beginning to dream again. It is an expression of hope.

It happened again just a few days ago. On my way to the mailbox I saw a small blotch of pink in the distance. I knew what it was without seeing anything other than color. I waded my way through a wave of plants to greet it. A single pink swamp milkweed, my favorite milkweed. In this whole swath of greenery, there was a bloom of tiny ballerinas, little fairy maidens. Dancing with them was a single monarch butterfly. How it found this one blossom in the middle of the woods, I have no idea. Spirit transcends form, reaches out to the rest of creation. Like calls to like.

According to Rudolf Steiner, the founder of biodynamics, flowers exist as a sort of lightning rod. They take in the secrets and whispers from the cosmos and channel them down into their roots and further into the moist depths of the earth. They are a bridge between the sky and the soil. When they return to a place, they are re-weaving that collective connection.

Flowers are often a bridge between humans and earth too. They are a door, a portal to deeper conversations with the natural world. Every person, no matter their interest, has a favorite flower. Flowers speak a language we can almost understand, but don’t stop to think about.

I actually considered becoming a flower farmer at one time. Then I learned about the actual business of flower farming and changed paths. There was too much about how many stems you could harvest per minute, how much money each variety could earn, how to optimize every aspect from seeding to selling. There was no spirit in it. Humans have an uncanny ability to weed the divine out of most anything.

I wish we all had more time to slow down and truly see how flowers move through the world, to contemplate why and how they have such an affect on us. They heal the land, heal us. Flowers speak in ways we don’t quite need to hear to understand. Flowers are forever dreaming.

From the studio

This year for the 100 Day Project, I chose to sketch flowers every day for 100 days. I wanted to see what they had to say on a deeper level. I drew from vases of flowers, from every angle, under different lights. During the cold days of winter I drew from pictures of faraway petals and pods. As spring arrived, I sat in the garden and drew the first snowdrops, crocuses, daffodils and tulips.

At first they came out rigid and disjointed. In art school you have to learn the anatomy of things, compositions, proportions, how to measure negative and positive space, how to render light and shadow, and so on. I think it’s important to learn how to study and create art in this way. Once you become good technically, then you can break those rules and create the things your soul wants to express.

The difficult thing is breaking those rules. The mind naturally wants to adjust the lines and shapes so that they look more realistic, more natural to the eye. It wants to use colors that are close to the real thing, to smooth the rough edges, then put it all in a neat little box. But the job of an artist isn’t to copy the world around us. The job of the artist is to channel how the world feels into something tangible, and this is often not pretty or perfect. Feelings don’t belong to the physical world, they belong to the ethers, the same dreaming world as flowers.

In a way the artist is similar to the flower. Both are lightning rods, trying to pull down the secrets of the universe into something solid. Maybe this is why I am so drawn to them, trying to decipher what it is they know.

As the days passed, eventually the rigid boxes that trained me dissolved. Out came the spirit of the flowers. I always wanted to get to a place where I felt that something outside of myself was working through me. It finally felt that way. Not every day brought a favorite depiction, but the flow was there. You’ve probably seen a few of these sneak into my newsletters over the past months.

After 100 days and hours and hours of listening and looking, I can finally express how it feels to truly see a flower. At the same time over the past few months, I’ve been quietly working on something. I’m planning on re-launching my shop once I finish updating my website. Part of that launch will be a zine called Flower Medicine where I’ve compiled my favorite sketches and musings from this 100 day journey into the flower world.

I love zines because they are accessible for both the creator and the collector. You don’t need to go through the system, aka a traditional publishing house, to get your message out there to someone who may need it. There will be much more on the zine and the launch in the weeks to come. For now, I hope you do bask in these golden hour moments of summer. I hope you take it as a time to slow down and let it flow.

A soft journal prompt

I would love to hear your thoughts. My favorite part of this newsletter isn’t writing it, it’s hearing from you. Send me an e-mail, leave a comment, or just use this as a prompt for your own journal.

August always arrives with a tinge of strangeness. Maybe it’s unrealized hopes and plans, or nostalgia with a bit of melancholy. The land mirrors this. It is still beautiful, but it is beginning to fade, growth and decay clinging closely together.

Now combine this seasonal transition with the cosmic transition of the solar eclipse in Leo coming up this week. This eclipse has to do with a shift in the core of your being, your central fire, your purpose for living. Just like the dog days of August, something is growing and something is dying. The scary part is that the death must occur before something new can be born. This means jumping before you can see the ground, listening to your gut, trusting your work to guide you.

We don’t often take time to dive into these tangled feelings that times like these bring. Take the time now. What is dying and what is growing in your life now? What work must be done so that you can move out of this transitional phase? What decisions must be made? What flowers are blooming near you? What do they have to say?

Much love,

Val

P.S. Feel free to share, it’s much appreciated!

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{The next full moon is on July 29th. For consistency’s sake, full moon posts will now be sent the Sunday before the full moon.}

I wake up one morning and it seems like autumn, how the fog swirls between the trees and clings to the plants and grass. But it’s July and it’s not fog at all, it’s smoke in the forest. There are no fires here, these are from Canada, blown over from Ontario on a breeze.

Even without the flames, I see their flicker through the mirror of the sun. There is an orange glow around it, casting an eerie false golden hour light across the land that lasts all day. It reflects off the hoop house, the cars, the windows.

It’s not actually the fire that makes the skies glow. The sun contains all of the colors of the rainbow. Short waves look violet or blue, long waves look red or orange, yellow and green are somewhere in the middle. When the smoke particles pass over the sun, they scatter the shorter violet and blue wavelengths, allowing the red and orange to pass through.

While it’s an optical illusion of sorts, it fuels the all-day sunset, the red omen sun, a bad sign for living things. Even with land and lakes between us, the air is choked with smoke. We stay inside. I watch my son play on the floor as I look out the window above him at the smoke winding its way through the woods, a hungry specter, a ghost of another monster. Over his shoulder I see a dark object looming large in a crooked dead red pine tree. I look closer. It’s a turkey vulture, haloed by an orange grey sky. It sits there unbothered, as if it was a part of the ash itself, a winged reaper from the north.

Much has changed. Smoke from the fires only started finding its way here a few years ago. Now it’s an annual occurrence. While this is a recent shift, I’ve noticed marshmallow always flowers during wildfire season. I take it as a small gift amidst the ominous energy that covers the land. Its delicate white blooms become a small beacon of hope and relief.

Most people speak about the root, but its flowers and leaves are also full of mucilage. It’s good medicine for throats and lungs affected by the particles in the air. Marshmallow is also cooling, another wave of relief from the heat. The root is best dug in fall after the plant has set seed or early in the spring before flowering. But even in the midst of summer, it brings us medicine. I harvest the flowers and leaves, a few from each plant, and make cold infusions at night. I let them infuse until morning, strain, then sip them throughout the day.

It’s been a long time since these shores saw wildfires like the ones we see to the west or the north. But a long time is not never. Michigan was first colonized by French fur trappers, though the loggers weren’t far behind. Prior to settlement there were millions of acres of virgin forestland inhabited by the Anishinaabe people. In only a decade or so it was all gone. Except it wasn’t. They left mountains of dry brush on the ground which was a foreshadowing death knell.

Gale force winds and a dire drought created the perfect storm, a fire storm specifically. Fires roared to life all across the state with residents describing walls of flames and an impenetrable darkness that made it impossible to see a few feet ahead even during the day. They described it as apocalyptic, a hell on earth. In a way it was. It was the end of all things here. All things that once were and could never be again. Over two million acres of green earth was given to the flames that year, and again a few years later when more fires caught.

Eventually conservation measures were taken and the forests regrew. But they returned as a shadow of their former selves. The old growth white pines that towered over the land as silent sentinels were gone. Instead, they were replaced with overcrowded stands of pioneer species, suffocating the once biodiverse soil. Still, they did return. They continue to be logged, with a tad more regulation, but the land is still scarred from our hands.

With the past imprinted on our lineages and the smoke finding its way back to these skies, we are forced to admit that conservation is not enough. Conservation is built within the same systems that seek to cut the forests down. It is a business of profit and efficiency over care and reciprocity.

There is a growing movement called the Rights of Nature that asks us to envision not just our personal relationship to nature, but the collective’s relationship to nature, the system’s relationship to nature. If you read this newsletter, then most likely you already believe that we live in an animistic world. But what would happen if we dreamed bigger? What if we dreamed that an entire society could acknowledge this truth?

This seems farfetched within our systems, but in other countries, it is not. Ecuador for example, is the first country to grant Rights of Nature.

Under these articles, the relationship between humans and nature is seen as integral for public health. Because of this, it is upon the state to restrict activities that would put species or ecosystems in danger and restore environments when damaged. Most of all though, nature is written as a living being. River has a life, mountain has a life, forest has a life. It was radical, it was revolutionary, and it did not stop there.

With Ecuador leading the way, others have followed. In Peru, the native stingless bees were granted ordinances that recognized them as legal subjects with rights to exist, thrive, and be defended in court. New Zealand granted the Whanganui River legal personhood. Uganda, Panama, and Bolivia have also included Rights of Nature in their constitutions. Most of these articles are based on and made possible because of the local indigenous traditions and communities.

This has not gone unseen here in the states. The world is noticing. In my region, local Anishinaabe tribes and environmentalists have taken inspiration from this movement to establish rights to our own landscapes. Frank Bibeau is a tribal attorney based in Minnesota. He tried to establish rights for manoomin, or the wild rice that grows around the Great Lakes region. His case ultimately failed, but others are popping up.

The Sauk-Suiattle Tribe in Washington sued Seattle City Light, an electric company, on behalf of the salmon. The case states that the three dams the company owns violated treaty and rights of nature as there was no way for the salmon to pass through. The case ended with the city agreeing to invest nearly $1 billion over the next 30 years to install fish passage technology into its dams.

Both Frank Bibeau and representatives from the Ecuadorian movement recently spoke here in Michigan. With the rise of data centers, climate change and increasingly unstable dams and pipelines, the people finally want to look for another path forward.

When the smoke clears and all is said and done, we will see what side of cosmic history we stand.

A soft journal prompt

Let’s take a step back. This was a lot. This is a lot. Let’s take a moment to acknowledge where we are in the wheel of the year. July is a tipping point, intensity is at an all time high as heat and weather events peak. Everything is blooming and buzzing and burning. Where is the intensity gathering in your life? How can you lean into it? Can you look into the smoke and see the shapes forming there?

Much love,

Val

P.S. Feel free to share, it’s much appreciated!

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Some people read the movements of the moon and stars. Some people pull tarot cards for cosmic guidance. I sit. I ask. I listen. I wait.

How do you get used to the sounds that come out of the woods at night? A text from my sister reads.

She just moved from a farm to the woods. She finds out quickly that living in the woods is not the same as country living. The forest engulfs you. Darkness doesn’t fall in the forest. It circles, prowls like a pack of wolves, creeps closer and closer. As the sun dips below the canopy, each layer of forest slowly disappears from furthest to closest until there is nothing but night. There are no streetlights, no light pollution from a nearby town, no porch lights from the neighbors, just darkness.

In the darkness lives the abyss. And out of the abyss comes sounds human ears can’t comprehend, that would break your heart, that send goosebumps down the back of the neck. For centuries the forest was seen as a primordial space where the depths of the universe and the mythic consciousness resided. It wasn’t just for fairytales, it was lived in, experienced. It was something to fear, something to stir awe. It’s where all of the heroes wandered in search of answers.

I remember my own fear and how it softened over time. I also remember just a few weeks ago how quickly that fear can return. Evan saw a “shadowy figure” standing at the edge of our woods before it promptly disappeared. I stood at the window all night waiting for something to step out of the trees. Nothing did. Days later both neighbors down the road said they saw a bear around the same time. Just a bear, I let out my breath with some hesitation.

I told my sister time, and a dog also helps.

Along with this healthy sense of primal unease though, lives a connection and a natural rhythm. The forest has a way of peeling back the human sensibilities. This is why I sit and do nothing at midday. I don’t need to look anywhere for the wild divine, it comes to my front door every day.

I sit and I ask: what do I need to know in this moment?

Lately, it’s been a blue jay. When I sit on the front porch, it flies to a low branch, a fence post, a stump. We sit together in silence. I wait, I watch. I think about the notion that blue jays are “mean”, or so someone once told me. It’s true I saw her fighting with a squirrel in the trees the other day, but she’s just quite fierce, a bit territorial, maybe too over protective. She must have a nest nearby. I understand.

Sitting with her though, she’s peaceful. I wonder at her presence. Sometimes signs are grand gestures like a fox running in front of your car or an orchid growing under your porch step. Sometimes they are quieter, softer, requiring a closer look. Sometimes the message is received immediately, sometimes it takes longer to understand. But there is always a moment when I know that it is a sign and not just natural coincidence. The heart jolts, sparking a sense of waking.

It’s the same concept as reading the moon or pulling tarot really. I ask for news from the universe, it delivers in some way, and it’s open to my interpretation. It’s not about conjuring magic, it’s about observing.

For a bit I just enjoyed blue jay’s company. It was a bit odd, but I didn’t look further into it. Until it found me again on our morning walk, miles from home. Ok, I said, I’m listening.

What I received was a whisper that’s been swirling around us all it seems. I feel it in the turn of the new Cancer moon, in the way it feels like the world is holding its breath.

Blue jay is an orator, loud and confident. They are communicators. As she returned each day, I felt the peace between us turn inquisitive. What do you want? I felt her say, this winged messenger of the cosmos. For a moment I saw her not as a bird, but as the open eye of the universe, watching me, waiting in return. Communicate clearly, tell the sky and the forests and the rivers what it is you want. Thinking it is not enough anymore. Say it and say it now.

There is a small town in Poland where traditional folk healers called szeptucha still practice. Their name translates to the “whisperers” because they use spoken incantations during their rituals to heal ailments. People travel from all over to experience their miraculous work. They implement various herbs and wax and other talismans, but it is the word that holds the medicine.

For hundreds of years people believed in the power of the spoken word. Not just in its effect on the mental and emotional realms, but on our physical realm as well. Slavic people once believed the spirit resided in the breath. When we speak, our spirit travels out into the universe, doing the work we assign it, whether good or bad. I do not take this lightly.

The universe is watching, waiting for you to speak what’s on your heart out loud. It seems simple, but I always find it difficult to speak things into the universe. I can think or write about it all day, but spoken word holds so much more weight. And this is where blue jay leaves me, leaves us.

A soft journal prompt

I so enjoyed all of your responses on my newsletter from a couple of weeks ago so I thought I’d include this section again.

I would love to hear your thoughts. My favorite part of this newsletter isn’t writing it, it’s hearing from you. Send me an e-mail, leave a comment, or just use this as a prompt for your own journal.

Blue jay brought us the challenge of telling the cosmos clearly: what do you want. Not in vague terms, not in some faraway future. Right now. But let’s go deeper. The psychology-based astrology newsletter posed this question for this Cancer new moon: what do you actually want to belong to? Not what has worked and felt comfortable in the past, what feels socially acceptable, but notice what is stirring now. It can be a home, a place, a community, a belief system.

For me it is an uncomfortable question. It’s one I’m not sure I have an answer to yet as we are currently looking for a new place to move, potentially close by, potentially across the state, hopefully in another forest. But this has been our home for a decade, I brought my baby home here. Where else could I possibly belong? I feel that pull that I’ve felt many times before in my life though, telling me go, it’s time to go. For now it’s open ended, but I’m working on figuring it out.

I’d love to hear your thoughts though. Where is that friction of change, of belonging showing up in your life?

Much love,

Val

P.S. Feel free to share, it’s much appreciated!

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For weeks rose blessed this house. Its scent finds its way around corners and through trees to find me wherever I am. The bees and other pollinators obsess over it, the bloom becoming their fluffy pink feather beds. Rose is a balm to the heart. I can see now that the last wave of flowers are putting on their show. Soon the front garden will start putting in the work toward growing her red hips. I wanted to capture this last gift for just a bit longer. It felt like there was no better time than the full moon for this project. So today, we’re making rose bitters.

If you’ve been here since the beginning, you may know I specialized in making bitters when I ran my online apothecary and in my brick and mortar store. It is such a unique type of tincture that is equally treasured in the culinary and medicinal world. Finding the balance between health and taste is fascinating to me. Getting to explore all of the complex compounds that make up plants and how they can be blended to create a bitters formula is still exciting. This is a fun exploratory recipe that preserves a glimmer of this special moment of summer.

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I looked outside to see a mother turkey pacing around the driveway. I was washing dishes and the sun softly reflected its final glow on the tips of the trees. We found her nest tucked into the green underbrush a few days earlier, her eggs big and speckled with brown. She was alone but calm, unconcerned without her flock, satisfied with the sole task of tending a nest.

Just before then I watched a mother killdeer flying around frantically in circles over my head. Her feathered bands of black against white and brown snaked through the sky. I hadn’t seen the babies, but I knew the panicked cry of a mother. Not long after, a fluffy throng of baby killdeer bobbed out of the woods, skipping happily into their new lives.

Maybe it’s because I see more animals than people here, but there was something I recognized in those little dramas. I understood the steady vigilance of mama turkey as she meandered slowly around her nest. There was a piece of me in the wild emotion of the mama killdeer watching her babies take off on their own.

While they are living their own lives, we are not separate. They are community by proximity, our lives rubbing up against each other. We are all held in the same vessel of forest and intertwining roots. In my own woodland hermit way, I feel a quiet kinship in the way we reflect each other.

The “village” was never meant to be just human. In the old tales there were whispers about talking foxes and rabbits that give directions to the hero, plants and trees that sing and dance, forests that provide shelter, sky that sends divine messages. These weren’t just fantastical elements to entertain children, they were glimpses into a cosmic worldview.

The earth was once alive with community. Of course families also lived closer together and people still asked their neighbors for sugar when they ran out. The human village is one that looks very different now. But I want to always remember the invisible village that is still holding us, caring for us, celebrating and grieving with us.

~~~

The anise hyssop and chamomile volunteer seedlings that sprouted in the garden when I didn’t have the time or energy to plant anything last summer.

The perennials like lemon balm and mint that grew without any work on my part.

My cat who would crawl onto my chest every night after I put a newborn back to sleep at 3am, offering a low purr to settle me in. (A cat’s purr actually regulates the nervous system!)

The trees that entertained my baby before he could crawl around and explore the world, giving me a moment to rest.

The water that held us both on hot summer days, making me feel like a kid again when we splashed and laughed.

The motherwort tincture and all of my plant medicines that nourished me in gentle ways as I was healing and growing.

The zucchini, and my neighbor who gave it to me, that the baby absolutely loved sauteed in oil and spices.

The weeds I was able to pick on tough days that made me feel like I was actually doing something useful.

The crackling fire in our wood stove that kept us warm in the long dark months of winter.

The bouquet of flowers that sits on our kitchen table, bringing joy to my space.

The breeze that comes out of nowhere, shakes me out of my routine, and reminds me that I am alive, so alive, in this wild beautiful season of life.

~~~

The beautiful thing about this invisible village is that it never leaves. A village isn’t just someone who carts the kids off or brings us a meal. It’s anyone and anything that brings us back to ourselves, eases our minds or bodies for a moment, keeps the chaos at bay. So many times it feels like it’s not just the physical load of life that needs to be lifted, but the mental and emotional. This invisible village also feeds us, heals us, gives so much more than human hands alone.

And it’s not just mothers raising children that need a village. We are all raising a human, even if it’s ourselves. We are constantly shifting and becoming, and that requires support. Life is hard.

This is why I love art. One of its main purposes is to make the invisible, visible. I’ve been craving community as I think so many of us have. This mission to make that invisible village visible, is one that feels essential to rebuilding the entire concept of what a “village” truly is.

A soft invitation

I would love to hear your thoughts. My favorite part of this newsletter isn’t writing it, it’s hearing from you. Send me an e-mail, leave a comment, or just use this as a prompt for your own journal.

The world is fresh and green and breathing deeply right now. It’s the best time to jump back into the dance circle of life. What more-than-human relations supported or are supporting you right now? What does your green village look like? Take a moment to think of any time you were brought a bit of joy, a snippet of relief, an inkling of support, no matter how small by the world around you.

When we start noticing the small things, they add up and become big things, living things that become family.

Much love,

Val

P.S. feel free to share, it’s much appreciated!

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In the forest, spring comes in a flood. Like after the first snow of the year, the world is transformed in a single day. But instead of white, everything is chartreuse. It’s not the flowers that take center stage, though they are also beautiful, it’s the leaves and the grass and just the green. It’s everywhere. It’s intoxicating.

Colors are associated with emotion. They can also influence emotion. Someone sees red with anger, feels blue with sadness, or green with envy. The best way to describe chartreuse though is ecstasy.

Nothing gives a better hit of dopamine than chartreuse. It is the color of leaf that is fresh out of the womb of the earth, not yet blemished by hand, animal, insect, or weather. Eventually it will deepen to a rich green as it comes to know the ways of the world. Tent caterpillars will nibble its flesh, a storm may tear its green veins. It will muster through the elements before it fades to brown. Yet in that moment of chratreuse, there is hope and possibility and salvation.

I feel chartreuse even more acutely now after a long winter with a toddler. All he wants to do is be outside from the moment breakfast is finished until it’s time for bed. Our favorite things to do right now are picking up sticks and rocks from the gravel driveway, dancing with the trees as the wind blows through their leaves, listening for different bird calls, blowing dandelion seeds into the air, pointing out every color of flower in the garden, and of course pushing around anything that has wheels.

Our days are bathed in that pale yellowy green that filters through the canopy and lands on our faces. I feel a spike of energy as soon as I step outside into its presence. My heart opens, my nerves soften, my eyes eat it in.

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Humans have always searched for inner and outer maps or frameworks to help them navigate the world.

~ Jake Farr

There are invisible lines crisscrossing the earth. The equator, longitude and latitude may be the first that come to mind from your school geography days. But there are so many others like the Wallace Line which bisects Indonesia. This line marks a sharp transition in flora and fauna between those species associated with Asia such as monkeys and those associated with Australia such as marsupials. Or the Qinling-Huaihe line that divides the subtropical humid south of China from the dry temperate north.

There are invisible lines not far from where I grew up that are manmade, like the line in Detroit signified by 8 Mile. While physically 8 Mile is just a road, it’s also an invisible line that still racially segregates the city, a lingering reminder of the past and how it continues to seep into our present.

There are lines drawn by both man and earth that spiderweb across the land. And they are ever changing. As climate shifts, nature’s lines move. As humans shift, we redraw those lines too. These invisible layers are shaping how life exists here on earth in so many different ways. They are studied by scientists, geographers and ethnographers to understand how culture, evolution, governments, and so many other things form and develop.

But when they study these lines, they look at how they divide. They notice a line and they want to understand what is on one side and what is on the other. They don’t bother to question where the line begins and where it ends. There are many more subtle lines that often go unnoticed.

You might call them ley lines. These invisible lines were originally proposed in the 1920’s by an archaeologist as alignments that directly connected places such as prehistoric sites and influential landmarks.

Truthfully there were a lot of logistical errors in the original theory of ley lines that was shunned by the scientific world. But something about the idea of another layer of reality hiding just beneath our own intrigued the public. People set off into the countryside with no clear destination in mind, searching for something they couldn’t quite explain.

In the 1960’s the science of ley lines evolved into more mystical realms by various writers who suggested these are actually energetic lines which converge at points of high vibration. The journey continued in the hopes of rubbing up against a deeper mystery right below our feet.

Yet ley lines existed before the 1920’s. In Irish folklore, you will hear about the fairy paths that are eerily similar, connecting sacred sites such as the holy hawthorn tree or a stone circle. Half way around the world you’ll hear them called dragon lines in China, spirit lines or ceques from the Incas, or the mystical songlines of the Aboriginal people of Australia which crisscross both land and sky.

Folklore from these cultures tells us they’re not just lines, but paths to be followed, to tread with devoted feet from one sacred place of belonging to another. The truth of whether ley lines are “real” or not is irrelevant. They are simply a placeholder for something much older.

The scientists that study lines that divide will tell you it’s all pseudoscience. This is a term they love to throw around when they can’t prove something exists in the here and now, in our limited human realm. {It’s useful to bear in mind that scientists also considered plate tectonics, Continental Drift, and even meteorites as pseudoscience at one moment in time.}

This however is besides the point. The point is that there are so many lines that divide us. While they’re important to note, I think it’s equally important to study the lines that connect us. This is what has been the basis of this whole newsletter. I want to uncover the stories told in the language of fish or stars or soil that reveal how interwoven we truly are.

I suppose that’s a long winded way of telling you that the newsletter is changing its name to Land Lines. This represents both the physical and energetic lines that are carefully spun across the cosmos. It is also a little nostalgic nod to the “land lines” of my childhood when we used to talk to each other on the phone directly, without texting and social media to muddy the waters. It was a pure form of communication that traveled on sound waves, but was also a physical connection across telephone wires.

With the upward trend of the “analog life”, I hope we can experience this again in some ways. I think a newsletter without the flashy videos and graphics or influence of the algorithm is one of those ways.

Nothing is changing about the newsletter itself, I just wanted a name that better reflected what I want to express here every week. I started this version of the newsletter a few years ago and just picked a name off the top of my head. Maybe not the best strategy, but it felt right at the moment.

I think these invisible lines are more than something to just explore and ponder. I think they are one of the reasons we exist. I think we are meant to follow those threads to see with who and what we are connected. If we truly are the universe experiencing itself, then the more we explore the outside world, the more we understand about the inside world.

My high school biology teacher once told us “the secret of life is to reproduce”, but I think the secret of life is to connect; with each other, with the land and the stars and the plants and the animals and those invisible things that we can’t yet see. The more connections we can make, the more present and rooted we are. The closer we get to the Source of all things.

So when you see next week’s newsletter come in as Land Lines, I hope you’ll still venture in. You’ll still see my name in the subject so you’ll know it’s me!

Some woodcut images I’ve been working on for the new look:

Much love,

Val

P.S. Feel free to share, it’s much appreciated!

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While it’s the day after, I know Mother’s Day can bring up complex emotions in so many ways. I thought maybe this year I would focus on what it really means to call earth “mother”. A sad quiet part of me used to have a hard time believing we humans deserved earth as mother until I became one. Then I understood.

There are no words to describe this knowing. Still, all of the mothers we’ve ever had and will become live in her. We are from her, and we belong with her. For better or worse.

From a mother, from earth mother, you belong here:

Much love,

Val

P.S. Feel free to share, it’s much appreciated!

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I didn’t know I had ADHD until I had a baby. The thing about having a child is that all of your torn edges and broken pieces, and even the things you thought you healed from come to the light. Half of being a parent is raising the child, and half is raising yourself.

When baby was awake, he had my full attention, but when he went to sleep I found myself paralyzed by my other responsibilities. It felt impossible to switch between tasks, to move between mom mode and work mode, to prioritize self care, to make plans and even small decisions felt overwhelming.

I had always been like this. Having a baby just magnified and intensified everything that comes along with it. My perception of ADHD was hyperactivity, but I learned that there are many different types. I fell right into the inattentive/overfocused category. Finally seeing the way I exist in the world be described so accurately felt like freedom. It gave me somewhere to go.

Because that’s the other thing about having a child. They teach you that hard does not equal bad. We live in a society where we want, and are encouraged, to run from anything that is uncomfortable. We’re always looking for ways to streamline, simplify, optimize. But raising a child is anything but those things, so it feels scary from the outside.

This is honestly why I held off on having kids for so long. It felt like the only thing I heard about having children was negative. Really though, what I was hearing was not negative at all, it was just hard. There are no shortcuts through sleep regressions or fast forwarding through potty training. It is one of the few things in life that has changed very little over the centuries. There are more gadgets and marketing ploys targeted towards tired parents, but nothing is promised.

Here’s the secret though. Hard means room for growth, for transformation, shedding skins, cutting off the parts of you that no longer work because you have to.

I once heard that people don’t change, they die. Sometimes a version of you dies on their own, sometimes you have to kill them yourself. It’s not this pretty gentle idea of healing we’re sold. It’s messy and raw and sometimes brutal. It sounds morbid, but it’s an act of mercy. To put a version of you that no longer serves you out of their misery is grace. I believe that now.

So when I finally was diagnosed with ADHD I was all in. I wanted to see how and why my brain worked the way it did. I needed to know how to function as a human being.

My journey into this part of myself is still ongoing, hard, and exciting at the same time. Like parenting, I’m looking for ways through, not around, over or under. So for this newsletter, I’m sharing an herbal dopamine menu I created as I started to learn more about how I operate.

A dopamine menu is a strategy used in the ADHD sphere to help you find ways to get yourself to do what is best for you instead of what you feel like doing in the moment.

With ADHD in general, executive functions are impaired such as focus, memory, organization, prioritization, etc. This is caused by structural and functional differences in the brain, but also the disruption of dopamine pathways (and other neurotransmitters) which is crucial for many cognitive functions. The dopamine menu is meant to offer simple options to stimulate dopamine production throughout the day so the ADHD brain can get things done, in simple terms.

I created this menu in particular to revolve around plants and herbs as they can be amazing allies for ADHD. Even if you aren’t neurodivergent, you can also benefit from these little dopamine boosters.

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You know, they straightened out the Mississippi River in places, to make room for houses and livable acreage. Occasionally the river floods these places. “Floods” is the word they use, but in fact it is not flooding; it is remembering. Remembering where it used to be. All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was.

~ Toni Morrison

*FLOOD WARNING* my phone dinged over and over again over this past week. The rain came and hasn’t left. Ash splashes in puddles while I listen to news of the rising water. The sky fills the soil. Even on days when it doesn’t rain, the fog is thick and insistent.

Michigan is a water land and we are water people. Lakes and rivers and inland seas raises the children here. Like any other living thing, we tried to tame it. There are over 2,500 dams in Michigan. Originally, they were built for logging purposes so felled trees could be floated down the rivers. Later, they were built to create lakes for vacation homes.

Some folks who like to control things will tell you they generate energy or control flooding. Yet only 3% of dams in the country generate power and over two thirds of dams in Michigan are past their 50-year design life. This means that while dams may give humans some control of flooding, their failure causes catastrophic consequences.

It feels like a mirror of the flood six years ago. We live on the same road as one of these dams. On the day of the flood we drove over the dam’s bridge as the rain poured down. The dam was spewing streams of water at full capacity, like a hole in a capsizing ship on a stormy sea. The bridge was closed shortly after.

Then the dams breached.

Ours stayed intact, but the two dams below us on the Tittabawassee River collapsed completely, destroying the manmade lakes and washing out homes, farm land, and streets.

The Tittabawassee is not a river that should be bridled. Its name originates from the Ojibwe name Ditib-Waasizo, meaning “rolling sparkling river”. This is its original spirit. Before being dammed, it wound its way back and forth down the land in a vigorous dance of clay and silt. It is big and wide, originating here at my dam and covering thousands of miles of watershed downstream. For a brief moment it remembered itself.

It made national news. They called it a 100 year flood. They blamed it on the dam’s owner (yes they are often privately owned) for not maintaining it properly. There was an argument for a year over whether to rebuild the dam or let the river take its natural course. As expected, those with deep pockets who have homes on what were the lakes held the most sway. The dams were rebuilt. Of course this was a long process, in fact it’s still ongoing as another flood covers the state.

Even though our dam didn’t breach, construction lingers here too. They poured massive amounts of concrete to create spillways on either side of the dam so that if water levels did rise too high, there would be a place for it to escape. Instead of simply letting a river be a river, they chose to fight harder against it. But friction causes friction.

As crews continue to rebuild after the flood six years ago, seven more dams are in danger from this week’s rains. News crews are keeping a particularly close eye on the Cheboygan dam which sits at a critical junction further north. All week we’ve held our breath as we watched the water inch closer and closer to the top of the dam.

8 inches, then 7 inches, then 6, 5…at one inch below the top of the dam is when evacuations are issued. So far, the water has held steady at 5 inches. However, more rain is anticipated so residents will be caught in limbo until the final storms have passed.

I share this because I think many of you understand the impact of flooding over the past few years. From North Carolina to Texas, water has shown that it cannot be governed. If not for the people affected, I would let the small quiet part of me that calls water kin dream of river’s release.

Not only do dams run the risk of causing catastrophic flooding, but they turn once vibrant bodies of water into stagnant reservoirs that ruin wildlife habitat and increase the temperature of the water. This can cause a 70%-80% biodiversity loss. Yet, only one third of the world’s rivers remain free.

Still, I want to leave you with something to hold on to. There are some rivers that are being liberated. In Grand Rapids, the Grand River for which the city is named has had its dams removed. This came after years of stops and starts. I remember this proposal from when I went to college in the city over a decade ago.

The Grand River has its own spirit. It is older than glaciers. The Ottawa people settled its shores over 2,000 years ago and believed the mist from the rapids was the earth releasing its spirit. They named it Owashtanong, meaning “far away water”. Without the noise of cars and barriers of buildings, the echo of the rapids reverberated for miles through the woodlands that originally covered the land. It was a river that stretched in every direction, not just with its length, but with its voice and its spirit.

With the dam removals, the rapids will return. Mist will return. Spirit will return.

People will also return. A dam prevents humans from communing with water too. You can’t kayak over a dam, or fish where there are no fish, or swim and play in contaminated waters.

Until people care more about life than about a lake view, we will continue to suffer the consequences of these increasing climate-induced floods and extinction of biodiversity.

But I believe in ripples because I have to. The barely-there waves travel outward not just once after impact but over and over again. They keep going until hopefully another pebble breaks the surface. If we can see a big river like the Grand River free and alive, maybe we can dream up new futures for our other rivers too.

As of this writing, the waters continue to rise. Hope all of you impacted by this flood stays safe.

What I’m Reading

Is A River Alive? by Robert MacFarlane

I started this one a few months ago, but got busy with life before I could finish. I picked it up again this week with the current state of the rivers.

This book follows the life and spirit of rivers all around the world. It is written by one of my favorite nature writers as he treks to far and away places such as the northern boundary waters and the South American forest of clouds to search for the thing that animates all rivers. He weaves the stories of land and its humans in such a special way that I think we can all relate to. It is a story about the sentience of place and the rights of nature.

Much love,

Val

P.S. Feel free to share, it’s much appreciated!

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Most of use are taught, somehow, about giving and accepting human gifts, but not about opening ourselves and our bodies to welcome the sun, the land, the visions of sky and dreaming, not about standing in the rain ecstatic with what is offered.

~ Linda Hogan

There are certain things about particular landscapes that make you acutely aware that the divine is close. For most places, it is sheer expansiveness. The endless depths of the ocean, the sweeping views from a mountaintop, the barren breadth of the desert. Places like these remind us of our microscopic existence within an infinite universe. But the forest is different. It blocks every view, swallowing you up from all sides, above, and below.

No other landscape is so alive with sound. With spring emerging, you may see the squirrel gathering the last of the past season’s acorns or glimpse a deer moving between trees, appearing and disappearing like an illusion. Most often though, you will only hear them, making it seem as if the forest itself is alive and speaking some language that sounds just so familiar. It is the voice of the forest that stirs the same mystery within me as the ocean or the desert.

This is a low forest, a seasonal swamp, a forested vernal pool. These special kind of wetlands are so important for the land, but are always in danger of being cut down and filled in because of their lack of “use”. Just like all wetlands, they control flooding, filter water, and sequester huge amounts of carbon. Being seasonal, they are fish-free, meaning they are perfect breeding grounds for amphibians. Migratory birds also find this place a vital home ground.

In spring, it is never quiet here. Woodpeckers knock on hollow branches and baby birds chirp from their unseen nests high in the trees. It’s the frogs though that I hold my breath for each year. Their chorus fills the woods, reverberating off branches and trunks as the weather teeters between rain and snow. There are layers and layers of this chorus, created by many species of frog that made this place home.

I had to record a bit for you to hear. Take a moment to close your eyes and listen to all of its layers (including a little harmony from my toddler).

It may be difficult to hear all of the layers from my phone audio, but the high pitched chirp you hear is the spring peeper frog. The stilted call that sounds like a stick being dragged across a fence or a card in a bicycle wheel spoke is the Midland chorus frog. The medium pitched trill is from the Eastern gray frog. Every once in a while you will hear the singular call of the green frog which sounds like the pluck of a banjo string. Lastly, the undercurrent of the low toad ties them all together.

The frog song isn’t just a harbinger of spring. It feels sacred, like a melody you learned long ago and can still hum along to, but have forgotten the words. Still, a part of us remembers. It surrounds and fills the house. With the occasional warm day, the open windows invite it in.

The chorus is reminiscent of the Miracle Tone, the divine vibration. This tone is otherwise known as 432 Hz, and is considered a healing vibration by many. It is believed to reduce the heart rate and stress, brining a person closer to equilibrium. The reason for its effect is because its wavelengths directly reflect the Golden Ratio; a perfect mathematical pattern that is found throughout the cosmos. It is the thumbprint of creation. You may remember mention of this in my previous newsletters on Sacred Geometry.

Just for fun, I’ve created a little five minute meditation track for you that combines this divine vibration with our beloved forest frogs. At first listen, it may seem a bit chaotic with the many frog voices. Give yourself a few minutes. As your mind centers, listen closer for the unifying vibration within the chaos.

{feel free to download this audio for future meditations}

I wasn’t expecting this song to be so close to home. In years past, they’ve stayed in the marsh a ways beyond the house. But over the past few years I’ve worked hard in the forest. The trees here are thick and crowded, the soil waterlogged and stagnant with mosquitoes. It’s the product of a clear cut probably a few decades ago (I ignore the weekly letters and text messages I receive now from developers wanting to buy the land for felling again).

Forests aren’t meant to live like this. They need space to grow and breathe. I’ve heavily thinned out about an acre of woods, like I would the garden. I left a wide variety of maples, oaks, pines, and aspens with plenty of space to spread their branches.

The ground was cleared of brush too. Where there were once tangles of undergrowth, now there are vibrant grasses and a weaving of wetland and woodland plants. Each year a new one pops up that I am in awe of. Wild roses, iris, asters, berries, and bunchberry are threaded into the forest tapestry. I haven’t planted anything here. They’ve simply been waiting for their time to be stirred in the soil.

With the plants, came the animals. The deer love the open woodland and grasses, often bedding down at night for safety and food. I see their imprints the next day as I walk to the mailbox. Birds nest in the sunbathed branches and bunnies hide in stump hollows. And of course the frogs are the beating heart of this place.

There are secrets here, and everywhere, lying in the throat of a frog and within the ungerminated seed beneath the soil. Everything is sacred and speaking. Everything wants us to notice and listen.

“I cannot see anything.”
“Don’t be silly,” said Frog.
“What you see is the clear warm light of April.
And it means that we can begin a
whole new year together, Toad.
Think of it,” said Frog.
“We will skip through the meadows
and run through the woods and swim in
the river. In the evenings we will sit right here
on this front porch and count the stars.”

~ Arnold Lobel

Much love,

Val

P.S. feel free to share! It’s always appreciated.

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The moon glows the same:
It is the drifting cloud forms
Make it seem to change.

~ The Moon Glows The Same, 1687

There is a rocket ship orbiting her dark side tonight. There is nothing to prove they chose the day of the full moon for the launch, but I like to think they picked it for the view and maybe some lingering influence of the moon goddess herself. They named it Artemis after all.

But I digress. Today’s newsletter is meant to be the final part of my exploration into Sacred Geometry and how it shows up in every aspect of our world and beyond. We’ve talked about the overall concept and laws of Sacred Geometry, how plant growth is affected by this mathematical unfolding, and how the plant itself is a pulsing vibrational entity ruled by the same laws that govern galaxies. Finally, I want to dive into the individual parts of the plant so we can see how each piece of its anatomy is affected by this universal creative language.

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P.S.

I’ve mentioned a few times how important this newsletter became during my transition into motherhood and at the same time, the shift within the apothecary. It took me a while to realize this was a way for me to process my own personal mythology aka my inner story, my psychic force, the narrative that shapes my identity, direction and purpose. Writing gave me a way into my own subconscious with all its symbols and mysteries.

I don’t often accept invitations to teach because I don’t consider myself a teacher. I’m just an herbalist/forest hermit that enjoys sharing my own experiences of this shared life we live. But when I was asked to create a lecture for The Art of Personal Mythmaking Summit, I felt very connected to its mission to explore healing through writing.

My presentation specifically covers why and how to collaborate with the natural world to create meaningful art during dark times. I cover some inspirational artists that created impactful work in the world’s darkest corners and also recommend some of my favorite flower essences for creatives. I get into the details of how to forge new ways to communicate when everything is so loud.

The Summit is a free four day event that will run from March 30-April 2. There are 25+ presenters involved in different healing practices that will share their own stories and lessons. Each day will be filled with kind, grounded workshops offering memoir-writing processes, somatic practices, and soulful prompts to help you move forward on your healing path.

Get Your Free Ticket

Presenters also created bonus content such as classes, ebooks, etc. for those interested in a more in depth experience with the All Access Pass. If you’re at all interested in developing a creative writing practice, this option is for you.

All Access Pass

Plants are not objects, and there is no absolute. They are transient and their form exists in a constant state of flux.

~ Karina Sharpe

Plants are travelers. They continuously move between the living and the dead, the earth and the air, the light and the dark. In our two-legged lives, we see them as static because they are rooted to the ground and we don’t take the time to watch them go about their business.

But fixed is far from what they are. Their leaves are on a search for sunlight, their roots digging for nutrients and water, their flowers calling for pollinators, their fruit waiting patiently for hungry animals and animal humans, their seeds ride a breeze. Plants are on a journey, same as us.

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There is a language that lies beneath the language of the land, the river beneath the river. It lives underneath the chorus of birds, the flourish of petals on a flowerhead and the pattern of a dragonfly’s wings. At first glance, it may seem like the world and cosmos beyond are a chaotic smattering of organic breathing matter with no rhyme or reason to its beauty and madness.

But the language beneath shows that it is not. It shows that there is a divine order, a conscious hand that crafted each piece. We always talk about how everything is connected, these intangible threads that tie us all together. But this language beneath the language shows us how everything is connected.

I didn’t realize when I walked into one of my college classrooms years ago that I would be introduced to that language. In fact, it went completely over my head. It wasn’t until years later that I put it together.

I needed one math credit to fulfill my BFA, so naturally I chose a course called Geometry in Art. The description was “A rigorous look into symmetry, tiling, perspective and surfaces using tools from Euclidean Geometry and other mathematical principles to further the understanding of limits, areas under curves, slopes and tangent lines.”

It sounded straightforward and boring. But then we were introduced to a wave of equations and symbols that looked nothing like I had ever seen in a geometry class. They related to perfect mathematical spirals and patterns and sequences that were not manmade at all. They were made by the cosmos and they showed up in everything from the cross section of a tree to the hemoglobin of a human’s blood cell.

On the surface, this geometry looks organic, but look closer and you will see how the entire world is a continuous unfolding of perfectly planned proportions. Suddenly, the universe didn’t look so haphazard. It looked carefully laid out, like a genesis blueprint from some conscious truth.

The course was called Geometry in Art, but to most, this study is called Sacred Geometry. This is the language beneath the language that leads to the Source. Maybe the mention of “geometry” sounds stale and uninspiring. But that’s because man separated it from nature and molded it into something that was wholly isolated to marks on a page. True geometry is alive and unfolding, carrying secrets of the divine. Sacred Geometry is the marrying of science and spirit.

Geometry is the science of the soul. The practice of geometry was an approach to the way in which the Universe is ordered and sustained.

~Robert Lawlor

At its core, Sacred Geometry is the language of creation. When studied, it reveals the interconnection, consciousness, and balance within our Universe. It brings us as close to the truth as we are allowed.

By geometry we may curiously trace nature through her various windings to her most concealed recesses; by it we discover how the planets move in their respective orbits and demonstrate their various revolutions; by it we account for the return of the seasons and the variety of the scenes which each season displays to the discerning eye

~ Randall Carlson

Basics

The mechanics of Sacred Geometry are tied to dynamic symmetry, which is the idea that the parts of the whole are found in each individual element. This creates fractal structures found throughout nature that mirror the greater cosmos and the Universe itself. We are God and God is us.

Golden Ratio

Represented by 𝜙≈1.618, the golden ratio is a universal irrational number that symbolizes divine proportion, balance and cosmic unity. It is also known as the Greek letter phi (𝜙). It is the basis for the structural growth in nature, connecting the physical and spiritual realms via naturally occurring geometric patterns. The golden ratio occurs when the ratio of a larger part to a smaller part is equal to the sum of both.

From this ratio, geometric patterns unfold in a shape called the golden spiral, which reflects many growth patterns in nature as well as the human body. The spiral occurs when a rectangle is continually divided into smaller squares and rectangles via the golden ratio.

Some of the greatest mathematical minds of all ages, from Pythagoras and Euclid in ancient Greece, through the medieval Italian mathematician Leonardo of Pisa and the Renaissance astronomer Johannes Kepler, to present-day scientific figures such as Oxford physicist Roger Penrose, have spent endless hours over this simple ratio and its properties. ... Biologists, artists, musicians, historians, architects, psychologists, and even mystics have pondered and debated the basis of its ubiquity and appeal. In fact, it is probably fair to say that the Golden Ratio has inspired thinkers of all disciplines like no other number in the history of mathematics.

— The Golden Ratio: The Story of Phi, the World’s Most Astonishing Number

Fibonacci Sequence

The numbers within the division of the golden spiral are known as Fibonacci numbers, or the Fibonacci sequence. Simply put, it is a series where each number is the sum of the two preceding numbers (1+1=2, 2+1=3, 3+2=5, etc.) These numbers create the spiral via division. When you divide a Fibonacci number by its predecessor in the sequence, it gets closer and closer to 𝜙 or the golden ratio, creating the spiral that folds in on itself as it gets smaller and smaller.

But just as we can never know the whole truth of the great mystery that is life, these numbers will never actually reach 𝜙. It circles 𝜙 over and over, getting close enough for a glimpse, but never close enough to touch.

Platonic Solids

There are five structures that are considered the building blocks of the universe, also representing the five elements (water, fire, earth, air, ether). These structures have congruent, faces, angles, and edges, symbolizing perfect symmetry and cosmic harmony. These structures are called platonic solids and are as follows:

Tetrahedron: four faces made of triangles, symbolizing fire, heat, light and personal power.

Cube: six faces made up of squares, representing earth, structure, stability and grounding.

Octahedron: eight faces made up of triangles, symbolizing air, balance, healing and compassion.

Icosahedron: twenty faces made up of triangles, representing water, flow, emotion, and creativity.

Dodecahedron: 12 faces made up of pentagons, symbolizing ether, spirit, higher consciousness, and the cosmos.

The solids are found in nature, just like the golden ratio and spiral, and are also often used in meditation practices.

Geometric Symbols

My favorite part of Sacred Geometry to contemplate though, are its geometric symbols. Like the Fibonacci sequence, it is a series of circles that build off of each other, creating more and more complex mandalas that can be seen throughout our universe.

These symbols are what this next series of newsletters will be based off of.

All of these elements are crucial to forming the basis of Sacred Geometry. Mathematicians have studied their mysteries for centuries, but the most important part for us to remember about Sacred Geometry is that it represents the pattern, the actual web that we always talk about weaving, that connects everything.

If all of this is a bit overwhelming, that’s ok! This newsletter was just meant to be a basic overview of the building blocks of Sacred Geometry. We will be taking a much more wholistic approach moving forward.

Next, we will study each symbol in depth to see how they relate to the world through science, folklore, and human experience. The aim is to circle the singular truth within life over and over like the golden spiral until we end up somewhere with a bit more understanding of our place within the cosmos.

Much love,

Val

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P.S. The 2026 Luna Terra Planner is on sale! If you want to move through your year with more intention and awareness of the natural world above and below you, check it out. Working with a physical planner in our digital world is so beneficial.

2026 Luna Terra Planner

2026 Luna Terra Planner

We are at the midway point of winter, just on the waning edge of a full moon. While the light is beginning to return, this also means we are at the deepest depth of the season. It is bitterly cold. I rarely want to venture outside of my den these days. Instead of traveling outward, I love this time of year for traveling inward.

Friends, our nervous systems are in a constant state of fight or flight right now. We are not meant to casually watch the constant barrage of violence we see every day. I sat and thought about what I need to give and what I need to receive. This is what came forward. Now more than ever I need something grounding, a thread to follow, to show the way forward.

So at this turning point, I’m starting a little series of newsletters that I call Nature as God. My deepest desire is to get as close to the Source as possible. It is at the core of everything I create. I look to plants, stars, animal kin and soil as teachers in this pursuit. Here there is a universal language, a codex to understanding all things. I want to take you back to the beginning, to take a peek behind the veil of the great mystery that is life.

When I took a step back from selling herbal products two years ago, I wanted to see what was left. I wanted to remember why I started all of this in the first place.

It was this:

I am not separate, I am the Universe experiencing itself.

I used to think this path began when I chose a random book to read called Spiritual Ecology in a small mountain town of Colorado.

The world is not a problem to be solved; it is a living being to which we belong. The world is part of our own self and we are a part of its suffering wholeness. Until we go to the root of our image of separateness, there can be no healing. And the deepest part of our separateness from creation lies in our forgetfulness of its sacred nature, which is also our own sacred nature.”

~ Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, Spiritual Ecology: The Cry of the Earth

But I see now that the path started long before then. It started as a child in the laundry room where I sat on the floor, my mom folding clothes. I asked her, “what am I?”

“You’re a human,” she replied.

“But what am I,” I said again, frustrated that I couldn’t put this feeling into words.

It was the moment in a child’s life that they become conscious of their own existence. But it is deeper than that. It was a tendril of the universe unfolding, searching for wholeness.

It started in the dark, staring up at the ceiling in my childhood bedroom, worrying about eternity. What happens when you die? What am I to do about any of this? It was a voice from somewhere within and without myself that said, the answer is something the human mind can’t possibly comprehend, worrying is not necessary. The fear fell away instantly. It was the universe learning to trust itself.

It started on a camping trip as I stared up at a night sky blanketed in stars so dense even the dark space in between the shimmering lights seemed to be holding more stars just a layer away. The feeling of awe and dread was the universe taking in the entirety of its existence.

It started in my room as a teenager when I scoured the Bible, highlighting every passage I could find that made me feel something. It was the only source of spirituality I had access to. It gave me a spark of light, the tiniest glimpse of that unknowable truth. But it also left me deeply disappointed to sense the human ego layered on top with its contradictions, threats, and fear tactics. It was the universe learning to think for itself.

It was feeling my baby breathe for the first time. Not his heartbeat, his eyes opening, his little hands curling, but his breath. This thing so many cultures believe is Spirit itself, here outside of my body, in this new body. Life gives life, consciousness gives consciousness. It was the universe learning how to expand.

What all of these experiences lead back to is the singular point of existence: truth.

This truth lies behind every religion, spiritual belief system, folk culture, ecosystem, psyche and creative expression. It is older than our ancestors, older than life, older than time. It is the unifying point on the grid of all things.

The tricky part is that “truth” is also subjective. Or rather, the translation of this truth. It is this translation that results in religious wars, violence, and separateness. But no single doctrine has claim over truth.

When we try to give a name to the nameless, we put up barriers to our own understanding and to our understanding of others. The truth must be interpreted billions of times, by each individual person. So this is meant to be a guide more than a definitive gospel.

The truth is better felt than said after all. You know it when you gaze into the face of a flower, take in a crimson sunset, feel the breeze rush through your bones. There are no words for the truth that echoes through our spirit, but there are ways to get close. It is in our human nature to want to express these things.

While it is impossible to get to the center of this truth, this project seeks to explore the edges of it, to set one foot inside of it, to answer that original question: what am I?

To do this, it is necessary to take into account both the exoteric (mainstream religion, science and history) and esoteric (visionary science, spirituality, land-based traditions) perspectives. Both are critical to knowing the world.

Wisdom is a putting together. Knowledge is a taking apart. Wisdom synthesizes and integrates. Knowledge analyzes and differentiates. Wisdom sees only with the eyes of the mind, it envisions relationships, wholeness, unity. Knowledge accepts only that which can be verified by the senses.

~ Gyorgy Doczi

In spiritual circles it’s common to witness earth as a divine being in an intangible sense, that it must be felt wholly in the ethers, in dreams, prayer and meditation. But I think this does our cosmos a disservice. While it would never admit, science gives us a physical way to see and observe the divine in nature. Both of these things we will explore.

We are at a point in time where it feels almost impossible not to lash out at the madness of the world. In many ways, I think it can be necessary. But I also think we need to find other avenues forward. We need to find a way to survive without imploding.

I want to leave you with this to begin as contemplation.

These are ice flowers. They are one of the rarest and most fragile natural wonders in nature. Very specific conditions must be met for them to form. Frigid cold air temps with zero wind, plus warmer water beneath a paper thin layer of ice collide to create meadows of crystal blooms like these within seconds. The relatively warmer water vapor escapes through microscopic cracks in the ice and instantly condenses to form the flowers. Yet a single breeze or ray of sunlight can make them disappear completely. In Arctic coastlines and northern fjords, ice flowers can carpet entire lakes.

Stay safe. Much more to come soon.

Much love,

Val

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Much love,

Val

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It’s soft and comforting this New Year’s snow, tending the scars and wounds of the year. It softens the lines of the landscape, cocooning us into a little bubble of place and time. This snow is the only warm hug that is cold to the touch. It’s ok, it says, you’ve made it another year. Rest.

In the weeks leading up to a new year, a particular word seems to always come to the surface. It’s a word that I hope to embody in the year to come, something that feels essential to a path of growth. Like many people I do have goals and curiosities that I plan to explore. There is something so hopeful about a blank page, a clean slate, even if it’s only marked by a change in the calendar.

But it is this single word that seems to be a continual thread that I weave back on again and again throughout the year. These words become mantras when the path becomes hard to find and faith falters.

Two years ago, when I was still unsure about having children, my word was fearless. It helped me walk to the edge of the cliff and step off into an abyss of unknowns.

Last year it was clarity. I was in such a stage of transition both in life, career, purpose, and spirit. It helped me peel back the layers and search in places I had packed away. While there are still some questions to be answered, I have found a solid ground to set my feet.

This year, the word that has come up insistently this month is soften. One night recently I was laying in bed trying to sleep, but realized I couldn’t physically relax my muscles. My body has been in a perpetual state of tension. Particularly in my shoulders, neck and head area where I carry stress. Whenever I’ve had physical issues, it has always been my body telling me something my mind should have already known by then.

Life is beautiful, but there are so many balls to juggle and it feels like there is always one being dropped. I know this is inevitable, but I want to find a way to soften into these spaces like the snow that falls outside my window, unhurried and gentle. I want to melt into life, to fall into it like a feather bed. I want to create intuitively without getting stuck, to become moldable and free flowing again.

So these past few days I’ve created a new year’s plan. These are the things that I feel will lead to relaxed muscles, mind, and spirit. I plan on trying them all if I haven’t already. Some may stick, some may not. Instead of focusing on goals this year, I want to focus on a way of being. If you need a bit of softness too, this is for you.

Prioritize Sleep

I’ve struggled with insomnia on and off my whole life so i’ve decided one of the best ways to build my foundation of softness is to prioritize sleep. I started reading The Natrual Sleeper and this book is a revelation. The thought of addressing sleep issues was always a source of anxiety for me, but this book itself feels soft. It is gentle and full of practical and more metaphysical ideas for practicing and celebrating good sleep. From creating nighttime rituals to alternative therapies, sleep tech, movement, plants, meditation, and everything in between, it has suggestions for everyone to create habits that work for them.

Explore Curiosities and Classes

One thing I learned about motherhood is that (for me personally) it is harder to take care of myself than it is to take care of my child. I have found time to do some things for myself, but this year I want to prioritize it. One of the things that has forced me to do this is by joining classes because I have set dates and a community that helps keep me accountable.

I just joined an online course with Laura McKendry called Illustrating Nature: A Creative Exploration. I have no idea how they can afford to make these courses so cheap because they are so in-depth, but I am loving it.

In-person classes are also on my list of things to do this year. Living as rurally as we do makes this very difficult. We used to have a great spin class I became obsessed with in the basement of the gym in town, but they’ve since stopped doing them. Hopefully I can find something else that isn’t too far away.

Plant Allies

Leaning more heavily on the plants is also a top priority for softness. Matcha has been a constant source of support from pregnancy to the present. It sets a great foundation for the day. I’ve worked with a variety of other herbs over the months, but I want to get serious about some plants in particular more regularly. Herbs that support the adrenals as well as those that focus on releasing muscle tension, improve circulation, and soothe the nervous system are the main focus.

Blue Vervain: this is a plant that was an extremely supportive ally for me in the past. Most western herbalists will say blue vervain is best for those with “type A personalities”, but I have some other thoughts. When I ran my brick and mortar store, I would always suggest blue vervain for anyone who carries tension in the head, neck and shoulders. It also seems to be helpful in physical form as well as flower essence form for overstimulation. This plant is extremely bitter so it is best taken in tincture form. It pairs beautifully with skullcap, passionflower, wood betony, and lavender.

Rosemary: one of my favorite grandmother plants. I think mothers need to be mothered perhaps more than anyone! This is one of those plants that just embraces you fully. It is warming, stimulating, enlivening to the spirit and senses. I’m particularly intrigued to work with rosemary this year because it helps increase circulation to the neck and head area where much of my stress is carried. The essential oil can be used in a diffuser, though with animals in the house I can’t use it in this way. I just made a batch of rosemary bitters though, which I look forward to adding to sparkling water in the evenings. I combined the rosemary with ginger, gentian, dandelion root, motherwort and a bit of fenugreek.

Milky Oats: this is an herb that is often recommended for mothers to support the adrenals. It is a trophorestorative, which is an herb that helps to rebuild and support depleted tissue systems in the body. Milky oats are nutrient dense with compounds such as iron, zinc, silica, magnesium, calcium, and vitamin B. They support restful sleep and diffuse stress in the head area by reducing brain fog. Other ways to support the adrenals are with mineral rich foods, but when in a time crunch, milky oats are a great way to get this boost in quickly. I love the Northern Nirvana Tea from Bear Earth Herbals and I also plan on getting a fresh milky oats tincture.

Body Care

One of the things I stopped doing after giving birth was going to the chiropractor. My practitioner is 45 minutes away and she got increasingly difficult to get to when nap schedules became a top priority. The chiropractor has been an accessible resource for me throughout my adult life for a wide array of issues. I’ve acutely started feeling the tension build up in my right side where I carry the baby. Getting back into a regular chiropractor routine is essential for my softness recipe.

Plus just moving my body in general. Having a toddler means moving around all day, but it’s not the type of movement that is particularly nourishing to the body. There are a lot of awkward positions and held breaths. Getting back to moving with intention in my quiet moments feels important. Whether that be yoga, breathwork, dancing or simple stretches, I need to remind my body that I still care.

Adventure

When the days seem to string together and it feels like you have blinked once and the day is over, break the cycle. Spend the night somewhere else. It can be in a hotel, but it can also be at a friend’s, grandparent’s, or parent’s house. Just getting out of the typical routine helps diffuse built up tension.

Read

One thing I haven’t kept up with this year is reading. I’ve read a few books here and there, but nothing like I used to. Especially those fictional books that transport the reader to another world to dream and imagine. I miss those the most. Nothing softens the spirit like stories. I just started the Shattered Realms series by Cinda Williams Chima. Her Seven Realms series is one of my all time favorite fantasy books.

Analog Planning and Journaling

This is something I’ve kept to religiously, but this past month it’s fallen to the wayside with the holidays. Carrying the next day’s plans and worries to bed is a recipe for tension. Writing everything down with all of my essential tasks as part of a nighttime routine helps me compartmentalize life in a productive way. Part of the reason I create the Luna Terra Planner is because I need it myself.

Other Therapies

I’m also interested in exploring different techniques such as sensory deprivation, massage, craniosacral, somatic therapy, and other types of energy work.

A final prayer to all the things in life that remind us what softness feels like.

A whispered voice like a soft caress
Can calm a spirit in distress
Can touch and heal.
Soft satin flows over a fevered skin
Awakes sensations deep within
My senses reel.

A gentle breeze on a balmy night
Can put a restless sleep to right
Can quiet the soul.
The tender kiss of a little child
An anointing so undefiled
This makes me whole.

A bow pulled soft across a string
With tempered resonance echoing
Delights my mind.
A fleeting fragrance in the air
A little nudge that you are near
My heaven I find.

~ Gillian P Stokes

Cheers to a new year my friends, thank you as always for being here.

Much love,

Val

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2026 Luna Terra Planner

While looking through an old post-war Polish cookbook I found the phrase, czem chata bogata tem rata.

“The little cottage shares what it has.”

The kitchen was once a source of hope and resistance when the world was in shambles. It was a place where families and communities gathered together to share the burden, speak their once outlawed native tongue, and make their ancestral food to feed the collective.

Can you remember the last time you cooked with someone?

Aside from maybe the annual holiday baking get together, the kitchen is a lonely place. It’s a place I avoided as much as possible for a very long time. I hated the task of cooking, then cleaning, the time it took away from every other thing I’d rather be doing, and the constant repetition.

But in winter, our world grows smaller. We aren’t traveling as far due to weather. There are many days I don’t leave the house because of snow, ice, or cold. As our living radius shrinks, all roads lead to one place. The stove is the heart of the home, radiating a soft warmth that thaws chilly days. In Slavic countries where the winters are cold, the stove was built first, followed by the house nestled around it. These were massive stoves that provided both warm meals and a warm bed to sleep on at night with its varying platforms.

I didn’t want to acknowledge the pull of this place for many years. My kitchen sat cold except when absolutely necessary. The shift came when I started discovering all of the small devotions that take place in a kitchen. I learned that when we care for things like they are holy, they care for us in turn.

It’s not until we start digging into the history of how people once moved through the kitchen that we see just how essential it was to their lives. For example, in that same Polish cookbook it suggests:

• beat butter or eggs and sugar for one hour, and in one direction only

• vegetables that grow underground should start off in cold water before boiling

• vegetables that grow aboveground should start off immediately in boiling water

• Bread and salt symbolize the mainstay of life

• Poultry should always be purchased live

• The artistry of the table setting is just as important as the food

• Always salt food during the cooking process, except peas

• All ingredients should be brought to room temperature before using

• A heavy hand with spice smothers the flavor of the ingredients

• Nothing goes to waste. Turn stale bread into breadcrumbs, fruit skins into cordials, and every part of the animal into a dish (pickled pig feet, tongue, liver, and even spleen)

All of these little kitchen wisdoms show a level of devotion that is rare in our society. After all, this was the place that kept the family alive when grocery stores didn’t exist.

While I probably won’t be beating my eggs and sugar for an hour, or eating pickled pig feet, there are many practices that have changed my attitude towards the kitchen ritual and helped me connect with these old ways. Maybe these will help you mend your own tedious relationship with the kitchen or deepen your appreciation and practice.

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