Category: Illuminations
All I Really Wanted for Mother’s Day
The moment I woke up this morning, I knew exactly what I wanted for Mother’s Day. It wasn’t breakfast in bed (though who doesn’t love that) or flowers (which are always lovely)—I wanted to go be with the mother trees. A few years ago, during the pandemic, I started a project of mapping the “mother trees” on…
Revealing Your Life’s Blueprint with Plants
Once, if you’d asked me what my greatest fear was, I would have said this— I’m afraid I won’t live up to my soul’s potential in this lifetime. Not spiders, not earthquakes, not even death. My greatest fear was that I would never fully tap into the blueprint of what my widest self knew was possible for me…
Your Life can Always Start Again
The other day I saw a miracle. To explain the miracle, though, I need to take you back to last year… One night, late last summer, a humongous windstorm ripped across the spine of our mountain. The next day I was walking my favorite trail to the ridge when I turned the corner and stopped…
Learning Requires Destruction
Before I had my daughter, I’d daydream about showing her the green world. I couldn’t wait to teach her how to smell snowdrops or touch the lilacs so their petals fell like rain. I wanted to introduce her to the world of wonders that is the moss, the leaves, the earth. So I was excited when…
What does it mean to be “in process”?
The earth in our garden is ready for planting. How do I know? It looks like a “mess.” The cozy mulch of winter leaves has decomposed into wet clumps. Here and there chunks of soil push up in a riot of disorganized weeds and the compost is spilling out of its pen, bursting into lawns…
Opening your Doors Again
Last week I opened the doors to my house. It was a glorious early spring day, the hillsides were bursting with daffodils and a robin was singing, singing from a nearby tree. I’d opened the doors in winter, of course, but always in a hurried manner, holding them for a second while I hauled wood in from…
Are you on the threshold?
I walked up to the stone threshold and just stood there. The old tower was at the top of a green-lit hill, rising clear into the sky like a standing stone. As I approached the entrance, the wind kicked up. It voomed past me and through the open doorway. I paused. Beyond the doorway, across the dark…
A Reading for 2024
I woke up on New Year’s Day to a sense of lightness. Did you feel it too? After being up for hours in the night with my daughter, I figured I’d be ornery and tired come morning. (I normally am after nights like this.) But instead, I felt a levity I haven’t felt in a while. A…