I watch the nettles re-emerge from the dark soil and I remember why I’m here. I watch the first bee take a sip of a water droplet held delicately in the leaf frond of a garlic I planted in the fall, and I remember every thing and moment is precious. I watch the groundhog crunch on the kohlrabi I composted and I remember there are small ways I am re-connecting to the web of living collaborative systems around me even if it feels like I can never do enough.

I’ve been listening to Tyson Yunkaporta read his book Right Story Wrong Story - How to Have Fearless Conversations in Hell and I appreciate his Indigenous worldview, his commitment to talk to all types of people, and his funny no nonsense way of saying it’s wrong story to elevate Indigenous thinking to some lofty, “mystical”, unattainable easily, thing. I am once again reminded that this way of re-membering (shout out to Layla K. Feghali writer of the Land in Our Bones) as in reassembling the disconnected parts inside and outside of us that are part of a wider land-based local ecosystems is the way through all of this pain and chaos of centuries of death-cult empires breaking us apart and uprooting us worldwide. We all have a role to play in the mending, and the “right” story is both ancient and future. In fact there is no future life without the relational re-weaving of the Earth’s tattered tapestry. Tyson shares and reminds me that no matter what people and lands we came from, our ancestors thought with the land, burned the land, followed the bees to water, ate the animals to the webs benefit, and talked to the trees. Even if colonization of our living memories of this deep and embodied animate connection to land has been erased in our conscious knowing, it lives: deep in our bones, in our ancestors passed and still living, and in the Earth themselves, just waiting to be awakened. Even if we no longer know the lands we come from, we can embody the lands we now occupy, reweave the local webs where we can, and learn to see the other beings as teachers again.

I cry thinking about beaver teaching humans what trees to cut and in what season, moving towards a thriving collaboration, by simply looking to those who have come before and hold knowing in their bodies. I can only imagine how untrustworthy the other beings must think of us now, as we zoom by on vehicles inherently disrespectful to the land, talk at them or past them as if they cannot ever understand, and deprive them of their homes with every development, clear cut, and poisoning of waterways. Still, I think they would always welcome us back if we were willing to listen and mend what we as a sibling species have broken.

This week I came home to a groundhog who was hit in front of my home and left in the road at the end of our driveway. Mercifully they were already passed on and no longer in pain, and I was grateful I would not have to make any hard choices. I imagined they were crossing the busy street that cars speed down (for no good reason) to come snack on our abundant property we let grow a little wild on purpose. I’d already been having lots of defeated and exhausted thoughts around how much work me and my roommate put into tending the land we inhabit since we rent and could lose access at any point, so renting goes. We are still deeply lucky to have a size-able house and yard that we both love so much, and since we both live to garden and adore wildlife, we have both spent years expanding flower beds for pollinators, shade beds for shade plants and creatures, letting the back half grow wild with blackberries and goldenrod, and planting and tending whatever native plants we can get our hands on. In a neighborhood that is losing green spaces at a rapid rate, we have co-created a biodiverse patch in a soon to be tall and skinny surrounded concrete wasteland. The deers are in our backyard most afternoons trying to sneak a nibble on whatever they find, like our baby tulip poplar or the lambsquarter patch I’m trying to grow for them and the groundhogs. Birds are often foraging and setting up home in the few trees that remain post tornado and taking baths in the bowls of water I lovingly fill for them in the shade bed since waterways are also scarce around here. We’ve seen turtles, possums, raccoons, woodpeckers, skinks, skunks, lizards, snakes, vultures, hawks, bats, and more in this tiny oasis we have created just a few blocks from Gallatin road. I think to myself that the groundhog was probably living across the street behind the construction supply business where there is a few sad bushes and grass that gets cut every single week by lawn care. I imagine our yard was looking pretty tasty compared to the desolate and deprived land across the street and so they took the risk and didn’t quite make it. As I carry their limp heavy body to our back field I suddenly remember this is why I do what I do. It’s worth breaking my body digging into hard compact soil and endlessly pulling Ground Ivy, Honeysuckle, and other aggressive growing vines if it means all these creatures in my web have a place, have a meal, and have somewhere tended to visit. This is what it’s all for. I placed their tiny body in a bed of Honeysuckle that we’ll probably never get to unless we figure out how to prescribe a burn, and I prayed that they pass on in peace. I gathered Red Clover, Fleabane, Daffodils, Vetch, and Periwinkle to offer to their body to send them off, and hoped anyone in need of a meal would find them be it Coyote or Vulture. Even if this home gets taken away, clear cut, and paved over, every act of care made here and every seed grown was worth it.

I pray that my own hands and eyes influenced by centuries of colonial patriarchal separation and dis-memberment learn to see the connections around me and slowly, intentionally, build them back up. I pray that my vision extends to all edges of the web I inhabit. Our task is both clear and daunting. The way towards a rich, juicy, green Earth (like Hildegard of Bingen would prophesize) and to pierce through the veil of isolation and anthropomorphism, we take small steps to reconnect every day. “We are here to green” says Bingen.

In the latest episode of the Green Dreamer podcast by Kaméa Chayne, She interviews poet and artist Sophia Kai on “Finding belonging within a fractured world”. The entire conversation is worth a listen, but what most struck me was Sophia talking about the embodiment that comes with “earthfulness” instead of “mindfulness”. What would it look like to think like the Earth instead of our singular human mind. What if we try to extend our senses beyond even our own body like the spider and its web of feeling. Sophie Strand often talks about the web of the spider being an extension of their cognition and nervous system. She talks about how scientists at MIT continue to study the phenomenon that occurs when a piece of a spider’s web is cut, the spider often acts like it is having a stroke, and it’s because the spider’s cognition is the entire web it connects to. Most animals, including us, experience cognition outside of their body because we are all in relation with whats outside of us. Our web may be less visible, but it doesn’t mean it’s not there. Our living web is always beyond ourselves. It is our loved ones, our animals, the plants around us, the waters we drink, the ground beneath our feet and all the beings and spirits that are bound to the lands our feet touch. It is everything we touch energetically and everything that touches us. What if we tried to see beyond just ourselves through web eyes instead of the loneliness of sticking to our own singular feeling brain. What if we stretched our awareness like a muscle out of us, one thread of the web at a time, until we begin to see the gift each being in our web brings us. Instead of trying to fix the world, we tend to our web of influence, one act of love and care at a time, and we begin to see who is collaborating with us back.

We live in overwhelming and overstimulating times. Mainstream beliefs of success are inherently disconnected from the Earth and demand we disembody ourselves and disconnect from our Earthly web knowing, because it will never be profitable. The more we care about ourselves and the beings around us, the less likely we are to agree to harm them. In order to conquer the world to fill the void a loss of relationship has created, power has mistakenly separated itself from feeling everything and anything, even if no permanent separation can ever be sustainable. There is no mansion big enough to hide from your own soul haunting you, and even the billionaires drenched in blood need plants and animals to eat and clean water to drink. We are all doing our best in a system that tries to take away our land, animal, and human connections every day. We are all forced to participate in the extraction even if it breaks our hearts. We stumble, we fall, and we try to remember we are not here to perfect, but we do owe our life to the spiral serpent energy matrix of Earth and all living beings, and even our smallest efforts of repair to the web, including ourselves, are a balm. We have collectively squandered our bounty and acted selfish in violence and still the Earth sustains us. May we be brave enough to return the love in whatever small ways we can muster. May we collaborate with all beings in our web to mend the quilt of life. May we remember how truly and intricately alive we are thanks to all of our divine connections, and that any patch of green, juicy, moist Earth we tend is a blessing and proof that life persists.

I sit on my decaying moss covered wooden back steps with my morning coffee overlooking my overgrown but wildly perfect yard. Branches snapped from the tornado and now the ice storm are still in view but the new Spring growth is already bringing life to the battered landscape once again. Our tornado tree stands as a monument to all we have weathered in the center and still birds find perch and home on it. A Robin lands in the herb garden and trusts me enough to start searching for a meal among the Elderberry, Marshmallow, Skullcap, and Self Heal. I watch them dart back and forth in that chaotic but adorable way birds scratch at dirt for insects and I start to see why I identify with my namesake so fondly. I too stay searching endlessly for something to feed me spiritually, and if it’s not in this patch of metaphorical dirt maybe I’ll try another, but that’s life, unearthing one thing at a time and seeing what will unfold. Robins are also often seen the first sign of Spring and movement towards lush abundance, and I hope to embody that however I can as I move toward re-membering and rebuilding a lush juicy life of Heaven on Earth and re-weave my part in the wider web I call home.

I learned the hard way, after nearly two decades of a lot of pain, trauma, and heart ache, there was already so much true love in my life I was side-lining. I was deeply abandoning myself and denying myself unconditional self-love and care by defining my worth by how much romantic attention I got. I was looking for love from anywhere outside myself instead of loving myself as I am with compassion. I was abandoning my friends who were the ones really there for me to hold me and talk me down whenever there was romantic drama in my life. I was also ignoring my family, and the most unconditional love of all, the Earth who is mother to us all.

When I started really feeling called to build my relationship to the Earth, plants, land, and all the non-human beings we live amongst. I approached them with the same expectations that often came with all my human relationships, and how my so-called partners treated me. The internalized colonialism, capitalism, and individualism that ruled my brain and situationships, had me using them: taking whatever I wanted without a thank you or real appreciation, moving carelessly, expecting abundant gifts without giving any thing in return, and harvesting with out care. Here they were loving me, giving me everything I could ever need to live and thrive, and here I was stomping around doing whatever for my own pleasure. I was doing the same as was done to me in my most harmful romantic relationships, and it took so much time and unravelling of how I viewed love to really see it. That’s the thing about Earth love though, it is the most patient and unconditional love there is. The Earth let me do it all, with loving kindness and little consequence, waiting for me to be ready to pay attention and listen.

A few people and texts got me to see it even more. There was of course “Braiding Sweetgrass” by Robin Wall Kimmerer and her written out version of a widely practiced Indigenous tradition of “honorable harvest” gently encouraging me to think a little more intentionally about how I was approaching my herbal and foraging practices. It brought up a lot of important questions like: is how I’m working with and approaching the Earth respectful and caring? Is this a healthy relationship? Do I even appreciate all that they do for me? Yes, the Earth Mother is abundant, lush, and a joyous gift giver, but what am I doing for them in return, and am I even thankful?

The Honorable Harvest is a love agreement with the Earth, and it could a way we approach all other relationships as well, with appreciation and reciprocity, and without the ownership and objectification. Reciprocity was a new concept for me at the time, still in the throes of unhealthy romantic love, I was so used to operating in a way where I felt I owed people and they owed me. It was all transactional and born of obligation and learned patterns, rather than the deep love, care, and selfless generosity healthy relationships deserve and the Earth teaches us endlessly every day. Thanks to Robin and the Black and Indigenous herbal teachers I was beginning to learn from online and in real life (shout out to Amanda David of Rootwork Herbals, Nikki Minor of Chicory Zine, the Diné folks that taught at the Homointensive Herbal Retreat of Middle Tennessee) my views on love, relational tending, and the Earth slowly but surely began to shift.

It takes practice, as anything does, but the more I made it a point to work through my unhealthy patterns the more my loving relationship with the Earth grew into one that felt more balanced and mutually nourishing. When I harvested plants I first made sure they were not in danger and in abundance, I asked for permission and only took what I needed, I spread seeds, left gifts, and said thank you. I left snacks out for creatures I share the land with and tried not to be upset when they helped themselves to some of my herb garden. I composted what I could and gave it back to the Earth. I became familiar with Land Back movements and tried to speak as often as possible of the original caretakers of the land I occupy. I began paying regular reparations and giving credit where due to the largely ignored Black Herbalists and their contributions to “Western Herbalism”. I sat with the Earth and began talking to them, singing to them, and just being with them as often as I could. There’s something that inevitably begins to transform and shift inside you when you nourish any relationship in a way that truly centers care and reciprocity.

By paying attention and tending the Earth and all the beings who call them home, it begins to heal you too and how you approach all your relationships. Most of us come from long lineages of harm and disconnect from our land-based origins and practices. We all at one point had a more loving connection to Earth, rituals and giving practices, and an understanding of how much they took care of us. The disconnect can leave some of the deepest unseen scars, and it takes time to build trust and love up again, as anyone who has experienced harm knows too well, but once again, the Earth is forever patient and ready whenever we are. They will never judge us, punish us, and any harsh environmental conditions are never out of contempt, but more often the result of living out of balance with them. No matter how far we stray, they remain with arms wide open to welcome us home at any time. The more we repair our relationship to them the more we repair our relationship to self, and therefore any one else we interact with. The more love and care I show to them and inevitably myself, the more healing my herbal remedies and magic are, the more beautiful my friendships are, the more plants and animals I see, the more “divine timing” moments happen, and the more at peace I am with every moment. Real love is so beautiful in that way I’ve finally learned.

Now, when I think of love, I think of the Earth. I try to ripple the care, affection, and gift-giving they show me every day out to every single relationship. When I dream of romance now it is one that will hold me like the Earth holds me and nourishes me as deeply as they do, physically, mentally, and spiritually. They are the original teacher of love, and I hope to be their humble minister for the rest of my days.

Octavia Butler tells us “God is Change” in her dystopian future novel “Parable of the Sower”. Her grave rests in Altadena, an area ravaged by the recent California Fires, and while her gravesite (at least) did not suffer damage, too many people lost their lives, their homes, their animals, their precious heirlooms, their art, and their sense of safety. The land and local ecology lay scorched and violated for endless feeling acres and the fires brought with them the release of so many toxic chemicals they encountered into the environment and unprotected lungs that continue to circulate to this day. This was a complete capitalism-induced climate-chaos-fueled disaster whether human hands began it or not, one of many, that seem increasingly intensified. After centuries of Indigenous practices including intentional burns being taken away and made illegal, the loss of full access to their homelands Indigenous people had (and have) methods to protect and nourish, the colonial leveling of forests/destruction of fire-evolved grasslands/draining of streams/explosion of mountains followed by the planting of fast growing non-native species that are quick to burn, and millionaires/billionaires buying up all the remaining resources (especially water) and making easy-to-burn homes with no respect for the landscape or the multitude of beings who live there, this was a heartbreaking tragedy just waiting to happen. With each fire, migrant farmhands and forced incarcerated workers in the vicinity of the fires are having to labor for barely anything in apocalyptic and dangerous conditions, to harvest and firefight, risking long term lung and other organ damage from smoke inhalation, while also dealing with the violence of ICE arrests/detention and the prison system, just to keep people fed and the fires from growing. The added layers of violence are being further fueled by the newly elected rich, white, man run clown party, a living “American” fascist nightmare straight from the shadow of the collective unconscious, that has assumed so-called leadership of Occupied Turtle Island and has already declared war on the Earth, Trans people, Queer people, Women, Migrant people, Birthing people, Black People, People of Color, Indigenous people, Arab people, Sick people and any one else deemed not “American” enough while pledging to drive the climate crisis full speed ahead. While many people with varying degrees of privilege and safety all feel the collective fear, some are being hit the hardest, and the despair worldwide is deafening. We are also creating life and joy wherever possible, adapting as best we can, and turning more to each other and community as more systems prove they can not or refuse to take care of all of us. “God is Change”, but change can be absolutely traumatizing, devastating, and soul-crushing.

When asked by an interviewer about how she envisioned the future Octavia Butler answered:

Octavia saw the future on fire, and she wasn’t wrong, but she also intimately understood the need for us to be able to see clearly what’s already happening to the most vulnerable among us and adapt with each crisis to prepare for the future as best we can. Before the fires we had Hurricane Helene and the destruction it wrought on North Carolina and Southern Appalachia. It’s been a few months and still people are living in tents and trailers in a deep cold winter, unable to work, and unsure what the future holds. Before this most recent Hurricane, many of us have been watching a hellish and horrific (to say the least) genocide on Gaza, on Palestine and Palestinian people, take place for well over a year with our money and weaponry through our screens. It seems the time between this disaster and the last is shortening, even disappearing, and things are heating up, if you will. It’s scary, to wonder “when will this all end” but it also gives us past experiences to learn from, and some time, to prepare for whatever comes next however we are able. Ever since the tornado of early 2020 that hit and took my place of work away, the tornado of late 2023 that nearly hit where I live, and every disaster since, I’ve seen the resulting trauma close, but not extremely intimately or tragically being relatively safe compared to many, and also from a distance. I’ve also seen the communities and every day people who jump up (or already were) offering to lend a helping hand in all the struggle that follows and is ongoing:

-The Sanabel Team in Gaza, one of the many community-led groups who make meals or hand out groceries and aid to people every single day to fellow Gazans, even though they too are also living through the genocide.

-The local mutual aid efforts of Southerners like ROAR who traversed hurricane collapsed bridges, roads, and rivers following the Hurricane to make sure people were okay and to find out what every one needed, only to do everything they could to return with all they could gather.

-The folks in California and beyond who opened their homes to people fleeing the fires, who set up distribution centers of food and safety supples, started funds for those who lost everything, went back to look for lost pets and animals, and those who saved what seeds they could to replant when it’s time. Those also like, National Day Laborer Organizing Network, offering aid to migrant laborers who face so many barriers and risks even just asking for aid.

-Artists and creatives everywhere organizing raffle after raffle to help raise funds to send to folks locally and across the world.

When the tornado hit our neighborhood, we were relatively unscathed physically, but our neighbors were not so lucky. It broke part of me to see people who were already without much, lose their lives, their homes, their roofs, their bedrooms, their cars, and some unable to return. At the same time it mended me to see the aid that came in so swiftly, our neighbor behind us being the first to offer us chainsaw help if we needed it and making sure his neighbors could get out as he and a few other neighbors went immediately to work cutting up all the massive trees lying across the street first thing that following morning, after a night of holding his daughter tightly in protection during those short moments the tornado narrowly missed their home, crumbling another home two blocks behind them, before exploding the Madison power station. I’m pretty confident that man probably voted for Trump, and I saw first hand what he was willing to do in a crisis, moving with care and doing something truly kind and loving for those around him. Ellen and I had friends and strangers offering us help left and right, and we were more than taken care of. It seemed Gofundme’s for those neighbors that had unfairly passed due to living in less than sturdy mobile homes were quickly met, although no amount of money can fix the bottomless heartache of their families. It was all a balm, although the wounds seem to stay gaping in late stage capitalism and colonialism.

Although we need to start thinking of community and mutual aid as necessary all the time outside of just during crisis, and many of us may be learning the hard way as more crises unfold around us, even so, I see and am honored to know SO many people who have been trying to do what they can for years now, and give me so much faith and hope every day. I’ve watched first hand people share mutual aid more, start houseless outreach with just a few friends, organize supply drops and free fridges, and create accessible spaces. I hold all of that while I also hold the call to pay attention, do what we can to learn, care, and prepare, and evolve as needed so we can care for ourselves and our community as best we can.

“Parable of the Sower” begins in 2024 (lol) and follows a young woman named Lauren Olamina who knows nothing of the “old world” (our world), and has grown up in post apocalyptic conditions whose cause we do not know, the fallout being most major cities, most infrastructure, and communication networks aside from a few radio stations if you can even find a radio. The degradation of the nation has resulted in: lots of borderline feral roaming people desperate to survive with barely any clean water to drink or food to eat, small communities who have survived by building walls around their neighborhoods and setting up community defense measures, rich people who simply pay people to enslave other people, and corporations who can afford to pay to have personal armies and offer indentured servitude working conditions for those desperate enough to give up their freedom. Lauren lives in one of those neighborhoods still able to defend itself, but begins to fear for the future. She doesn’t agree or believe in her father’s God, Baptist preaching, or his belief that they will be safe behind the walls forever, so she begins to form her own spirituality in secret that honors the uncertainty and a return to Earth-based ways, that she calls Earthseed. At the same time, she begins preparing for possible future disasters no one else wants to talk about. When she tries to confide her fears in trusted others they all shut her down, seemingly stuck in a past version of safety, and unwilling to think ahead. She makes a go-bag while everyone else dismisses her fears out of their own fear. She reads as much as she can and develops what skills and protection measures she is able to learn. She also deeply understands the desire to believe that the wall that has helped keep the community safe for years will hold, but she also pays attention and starts to take note of how things are shifting, changing, worsening, speeding up, and …

Heating up.

While I truly don’t believe we should be afraid of the future, there is of course plenty to be scared of and to worry about, to be cautious about, and to be prepared for. Beyond our own individual, friend’s, and family’s survival, there is the survival of those more vulnerable than us, those who come after us, the animals, the plants, and the Earth themselves. Change is always coming, and we must both help bring about it and be prepared to adapt.

What does change even look like? It can be hard to pin down, what we need individually is always shifting, so what we need to thrive collectively is also constantly evolving. Most of us were raised in an educational system where problems had just one solution, but our shared reality has generations of frayed relationships, layers, people, and history, interacting that have brought us to the current moment, and all must be examined and considered, and from what I’ve learned, there is never just one easy answer and we all need different things. Then there is real change and mutual aid that brings resources and nourishment to beings who need it most without exploitation, that adapts to the surrounding elements and needs of every part of the local ecology, versus performative manipulative disrespectful “change” that hands out crumbs just to look “good” and expects suffering people to just accept it.

What is the best pathway to change? We’re told to get involved, to vote progressive, to donate to non-profits, to go to church, to join an organization, book a wellness retreat, etc, to ORGANIZE, ORGANIZE, ORGANIZE is what so many activists are yelling, and they’re not wrong, but what happens when those things have also become part of the problem? When the rot is in the foundation? What happens when we inevitably begin to mirror harmful systems unknowingly and we are so afraid of being a problem that our shame keeps us from being honest with ourselves about how we are all capable of hurting others, and we react, instead of staying grounded enough to be accountable to our community and thinking of how to move differently in the future? What happens when colonialism and capitalism have been so deeply internalized we do not see it or how it needs constant composting and reassessing? What happens when all political parties have abandoned every day people for profit and power and refuse to listen to the people or change? What happens when the settler government built on top of stolen land and so much violence and death, is not working no matter what we do? What happens when rich people, who are so out of touch with the struggles of those without privilege and safety nets, get to make all the decisions and remain stuck in a mindset that does not have to worry about survival? What happens when the wellness retreat tells you to abandon your body and dissociate from the Earth? What happens when the church who is supposed to be the holiest place is full of trauma and abuse and refuses to adapt to the spiritual needs of the times while also abandoning original teachings of love and kindness? What happens when the radical leftist/feminist/socialist/anarchist/communist/punk/hippie group that is supposed to be the free-est tells you what to think and what to do? What happens when we forget the necessity of being open to constant flow and change? No person, group, party, or organization is immune to the internalized empire that is disconnect fueled, trapped in power dynamics, and limited by upholding binary beliefs and othering, so Where do we go? What do we do? and how do we normalize and even begin to Change what is ingrained?

Octavia Butler tells us “God is Change”,

I think first we must accept that we inevitably change whether we choose to or not. We can remain stubborn, pushing against the current, or we can try letting go and moving with the flow of where it might be leading us. Our survival relies on growth, our lives a story of how we have changed and been changed, but we must each begin to practice learning being open to changing with every moment we experience new information, and adapting, constantly, as best we can. Every relationship changes us, and can be a catalyst to stay repeating old habits or the spark that leads us to learn to move in new ways. We must confront all our tendencies to stay stuck, rigid, unmoving, and repeating unhealthy patterns just because they are familiar. We must try to always shift how we are looking at things and try new perspectives out. We must change how we organize. We must accept that we too can cause harm and make mistakes. We must change what systems we put our trust in. We must learn to move past systems that exist by threatening control of beings and the Earth and preach sameness. We must diversify on all fronts. We must learn to think like a varied community of many working parts rather than just as an individual. We must change our approach constantly, rebuilding and reworking until we do have a sturdy foundation. We keep building the same structures and following the same blueprints over and over and expecting different results. We believe deep change isn’t possible when it is inevitable. To survive we must adapt and that is the basis of all evolution on this planet. We have followed the paths laid out for us, but how often do we carve a new path by listening to a deep knowing beyond ourselves and trying something freshly imagined and in tune with the Earth?

Change begins within and ripples out. All of us drops in the great living ocean, we shift and merge with each other to create the collective shape, God, if you will. Most of us humans have forgotten our unbreakable connection to one another and all life, but the threads that weave us together are never broken no matter how long it’s been. Maybe we start with taking care of ourselves, and then offer what we can to our friends and loved ones. Maybe we learn about what’s needed at the local center that supports houseless folks. Maybe we commit to a certain amount of mutual aid money each month to send directly to folks. Maybe we start a garden that can feed our neighbors. Maybe we build outdoor homes for feral cats. Maybe we offer a ride or a grocery run to our immigrant friend who hasn’t gotten their papers yet. Maybe we go to the bathroom with our Trans friend when they’re feeling anxious. Maybe we just stay alive and find reasons to be kind and loving. Maybe we watch the animals, plants, and land learn how they each change with every season. Maybe we intentionally move our bodies more, go for walks, seek joy, and create for the fun of it. Maybe we learn to exist and work with people who challenge us and learn to see the things we share. Maybe we try something new. Whatever we tend now is a spell for a changing future that is constantly evolving with our collective choices, actions, and dreams now, and the future could be a well cared for, communal, and diverse mosaic, that we all deserve to be a part of.

Without spoiling “The Parable of the Sower” for those who have not read it yet, the take away for me after its completion was that we keep going even when the worst we have faced has happened. We remain open to changing our tactics with every new experience and challenge. We learn to work with other beings with varied beliefs and gifts who are so different than us and have had completely different upbringings, life events, and traumas. We decide what we can all agree on, what our shared values are, and we practice conflict resolution. We learn what our own offerings to the collective are. We respect everyone’s abilities and capacities. When danger, tragedies, and disaster unfold we vow to look out for each other, to protect one another, and do whatever we can to keep the our neighbors and loved ones safe. We open ourselves up to change, constantly. That is the Earthseed pledge, and that is what I want to embody moving forward. I may not share your dreams or beliefs, but I want to change my tendencies to only surround myself with likeminded people, and broaden my capacity to work with every single type of person, especially those that challenge me, because our collective survival hinges upon it. No matter what happens, the flowers of life that bloom next come from the seeds of change we sow now, and the future balances on how we learn to adapt to change in all its forms.

I was walking through the creek looking for the biggest creekside Elder patch of the season, when I heard the sounds of big powerful wings in seemingly all directions, and instantly saw about ten vultures begin flying above me from tree to tree, and some more circling the space in flight high above in the sky. It was a powerful and loud gathering as they beat their wings and cracked branches above me. I figured it was a decaying animal, possibly multiple, since I was in the woods full of them, and that is usually the draw of so many vultures, but when I followed the sounds of the vultures to where they were mostly gathered, I was shocked but unfortunately not surprised to see a giant pile of half burned trash just yards from the precious creek so many beings call home.

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It was one of the cooler mornings we’ve had in awhile, and while my Long Covid lingering haze has lifted slightly this week, my sweet roommate Ellen has once again gotten the VID, and so I’m trying to spend as much time outside as I can handle to get breaks from masking around the house to stay safe. After spending some time enjoying a coffee on the back patio, listening to the combined sounds of nature, construction, and the occasional train passing through, I decided to make a tour video of the herbal garden I’ve grown in our backyard, and show you all the friends I’ve transplanted, planted, and started from seed. I’ve been studying herbs off and on for years now, but my herbal relationships truly took off once I started growing the friends and meeting them in real life.

Western herbalism, which unfortunately is influenced by and has a history of deep ties to colonialism and capitalism, often values knowing as much as you can about every scientifically studied constituent and benefit so you can become a “professional”, often putting a high price point on it, but not really prioritizing getting to know the plants themselves in real life, how to respectfully tend them and their environment, acknowledging loss and theft of cultural connections to herbs, and actually meeting and experiencing them and the whole spectrum of their being.

I started out my herbal journey wanting to know as much about as many plants as I could from folks revered as “Master Herbalists” or the most popular, white, herbal celebrities if you will, but mostly I found myself feeling lost, a bit jaded, like something was missing, and not feeling the passion I knew I could feel as I tried to navigate the herb world through the lens of Western Herbalism knowing the plants kept calling to me and I did truly want to explore that more deeply. After mostly internet exposure to plant workers and growers that built relationship with land, plants, people, and liberatory respectful practices foremost (people like Nikki Minor of Chicory Zine, Corrina Rosella of Rise up! Good Witch Podcast, Amanda David of Rootwork Herbals, and J Pea who hosted a queer herbal retreat I was able to attend in Rural Middle Tennessee) I slowly realized that I did not even know what most of the plants I had learned about even looked like. I worked in an herb shop and could list off what more than 50 plants could possibly help with and in what form is best, but who WERE they? I didn’t even really know these strangers, and that didn’t feel right.

When I began meeting plants in their habitats, the yards of myself and others, growing out of cracks of sidewalks or on trashed roadways, and finally growing them in my own small rental apartment garden, I realized quickly it was the most fulfilling way to expand my physical herbal knowledge with real life study, but also get a feel for the spirit and personality of each plant friend as well, and really REALLY start to deeply see them and respect them as other expansive beings. When a plant is chopped, dried, faded, and delivered to you in a plastic bag, it is absolutely easy to forget they were once a fully alive being that drank water and ate sun, and had a living experience. It is hard to even imagine their environment, what beings visited or were nourished by them, who grew along side them, and who they called kin in the surrounding landscape. We do not know how they were tended, who watered them, and if they were processed violently or with caring and careful hands. We do not know if any gifts were given in return, and we certainly don’t know if the Earth and all their elements were properly thanked, among other things, something I learned from caring plant loving people like Indigenous elder Robin Wall Kimmerer who writes in depth about reciprocal practices in what I call my bible, “Braiding Sweetgrass”.

Growing an herb garden, and letting my yard be overgrown with grasses, native and non-native herbs, and so-called “invasives”1 , has taught me so much about plants as extremely varied individual beings with a wide variety of preferences and personality types, just like us. Being able to feel the textures of leaves and stems, smell the aroma of flower tops as I stick my face in them or leaves when crushed, and experience the fresh taste of a nibble in your mouth and what it might reveal about their medicine are just a few of the ways meeting the plants in real life can really give depth to your herbal practice and knowledge. I am now deeply in awe of these beings that have influenced me in both known and subtle ways, and I am humbled that they let me tend them, so I try to respect them as well as I can. If the plant path is calling to you, I highly recommend meeting the plants one at a time. It can be hard to start slow especially when you feel the pull and excitement to “learn it all”, but I promise you it is worth it. I find it far more intimate and nourishing to deeply know a few plants and build relationship with them, then to know 100 plants and their textbook benefits. I’m not saying that isn’t helpful, but also we can get ego-trapped in definites and what has been studied, and we lose intuitive experiential immersed in environment knowledge in the process. Plants are individuals as we are, and our relationship to them is never set in stone or textbooks. Even if we know all they are “good for”, each of us could have a completely different personal experience with them, both how they interact with our own unique bodies and how they play with our spirit as well. We are all different and that is beautiful.

I cannot recommend enough immersing yourself in a plants environment with them, even if it’s a city roadside, you still can get to know them far better in person as a whole being, and see who all shares space with them, getting a glimpse of the interconnected web of life that co-exists and is all part of the medicine.

Some of the plants featured in the video that I talk about:

Valerian, Anise Hyssop, Thyme, Bee Balm, Chamomile, Rosemary, Sage, Motherwort, Elecampagne, Marshmallow, Self Heal, Saint Joans Wort, Echinacea, Mountain Mint, Nettle, Skullcap, Elder, & Wormwood

While my sickness lifted and I finally tested negative on about Day 14, part of me knew that my life was going to be different from here on out, while the other part of me hoped every one else’s well meaning affirmations of just needing more time would get me back to “normal”, were true. I’ve tried to be an advocate for disabled folks for years now, doing my best to think about accessibility wherever I can, and trying to learn as much as I can especially from Black and Indigenous disabled queer and trans folks who face some of widest array of systemic barriers, violence, and oppressions, but I really hadn’t fully confronted my own internalized ableism towards myself. It also didn’t help that my partner of the time kept telling me that I just needed to be more positive about it, as if that wasn’t gaslighting my very real changing body that HAD become more disabled with just one round of sickness. As if disabled people haven’t been told for decades by colonial capitalist mainstream beliefs of “just try harder”, and as if that has helped anyone but non-disabled people feel safer about their own proximity to the potential of becoming disabled themselves, something disabled people have been saying and repeating for decades. It’s easier to believe that we can just find and “manifest” a way out of hardship if we work hard enough and believe in ourselves, but in a world that has only sped up the trajectory towards mass-disabling, mass-houselessness, mass-poverty, mass-hunger, mass-incarceration, mass-sickness, mass-genocide, ETC every year, it is not only a spiritually bypassing ableist belief but an irresponsible one that doesn’t any offer real help or support to anyone who is disabled and/or chronically ill, and has probably tried a wide variety of healing modalities. Of course as an herbalist I wanted to believe there is an herb for everything, but the reality is we’ve co-created a complex dis-eased world with complex illnesses that there are no easy or simple quick fixes for most of the time, and something that works for you, won’t work for everyone else. We are living in unprecedented and very disconnected from Earth circumstances with lots of layers to everything, and a long road of untwisting and untangling ahead of us that requires all methods of healing, and future ways still be dreamed & created, but also one that makes space for all different types of people and bodies.

Now it is nearly August 2024, almost a whole year from contracting the virus, hoping for a return to “normal”, and both realizing and accepting the reality that I will most likely never go back to the abilities I had before, and that isn’t me just “giving up”. I have some special feeling weeks where I can move around, at least go for a short walk outside, harvest or water my garden, and do an activity after a work day, but more often than not, a “normal” week for me now is getting through work and feeding myself, and then having to immediately rest, so that I can make it through the week and keep going. I’ve started sitting a lot more, and trying to remind myself to move slower, when for most of my life I moved fast. Most weekends now are spent doing one thing, and then having to rest the remainder of it, and that rest usually cannot use too much of my brain capacity or I will pay for it later, and I’ve found I only have a limited amount, which I have learned by overextending myself time and time again, by refusing to accept my new reality, and listening again to my inner ableism. Even reading texts or scrolling on Instagram exhausts my brain fast, so I just have to watch a show or sit outside and watch the wildlife if it’s not too hot. My own herbal practice and business has had to take a spot on the back burner and the days I used to devote to hiking, gardening, foraging, and adventuring seem a distant dream now. I am learning I have to say “no” to more and more invites and events, since even driving myself around, which is also a privilege I still have, has become taxing. Just making it through a grocery run feels miraculous, and if I do go out, I often have to rely on alcohol to stay longer, which inevitably makes me need even more rest later. All of it has opened my eyes to the constant inaccessibility of most spaces, and as someone who can still move around and walk I can only imagine how much harder it is for others. It can all be very isolating, and still I have very sweet friends who reach out to check in, and understand that I cannot come to most of the things they are inviting me to as much as I want to.

While some weeks are really hard, and I find myself crying out in frustration mourning the self I once was, which only adds to my exhaustion levels, I also have been learning to appreciate the altered awareness I have been blessed with. Change is inevitable, and the capacity and movement expected from us under capitalism is unsustainable, for everyone. Even though I cannot push myself like I used to, I can still move around. I can still walk slowly around my garden examining the small details of all the plants, see the stunning variety of leaves and flowers, even the “weeds”, and witness all the bugs I haven’t been able to curb that I have had to accept have taken over. I can watch the bees and butterflies dance and sip. I can watch the sun take its time setting followed by the bats and fireflies emerging to play and snack, and then close my eyes to focus on the cicada chorus taking over the evening. I can hold my cat children, smell and kiss their heads, while feeling how soft and comforting their fur is. I can cut some flowers and make a small bouquet. I can walk around with my bare feet in the grass and learn to love the untamed overgrowth we can’t quite keep up with. I can get a meal with a loved one and savor every flavor. I am still alive. I am still alive. I am still alive. Every small pleasure is a gift of slow and focused attention and awareness.

I have been learning and also have had to accept that my increased hyper-empathy, sensitivity, overthinking, and awareness that already led to burnout before Covid has been magnified and is a gift when I practice working with it. My life is and has to be different now, and also there is still life to live and magic to be made with it. There is still so much to see and experience, and so much to care about and care for. I still deserve to care however I can manage. Although I struggle and it is ongoing, I am still growing and adapting every moment. May our struggles lead to self care that ripples out as deeper care for all others around us. Endless love to any one else moving through similar things, and I hope we continue to shape the world to be more accessible for everyone together. Until then, we keep going, but we keep resting, and we try our best to move through the spectrum of altered abilities. We are still so worthy of the joys of being alive, and I am hoping you also find it in whatever places you are able.

I want to write as a devotional prayer to the Earth. The plantcestors and their magic began this (trans)formative journey years ago, but really, I’ve realized recently, it’s the spirit of the Goddexx Earth Mother that guides me, and the rest of the beings that call them home. I want to find my voice, and my purpose, as it aligns with theirs, and a collaborative thriving future for us all. I know times are heavy, and the grief is deafening, and yet the bounty and beauty of the Earth, the plants, the fungi, the animals, the waterways, the mountains, and beings both tiny and giant persist. I hope to find the trust and joy in the process of letting go of apocalyptic fears. I want my practice to be as humble as a Moss Bed, the ancient & future tender of forest floors. I hope this finds resonance with whoever needs to hear the words that emerge from me, in what I hope will be like flowers, and fern leaves, and less like towers and chapels taking up unnecessary space. This is an offering to all who bring me life, I thank you for the constant love, care, and support.

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