Day 23
Today I am nature
I am lying in my bed and it is dark outside and the earth is saying you moved a lot, today, rest your system
No photos outside
Take a salt bath
I spent the day in a journey about Mother and I threw up and cleared and felt
My relationship with my mother
My relationship with the plants
My relationship with being a mother in the future
As I spend more and more time with the plants every day I feel myself opening. They are getting louder, clearer.
I feel my body like the earth
The earth knows how to take care of me. She always has. She has been there since I talked to her as a child
I feel as if I am cocooning. Letting old things die. Nourishing myself
Letting her nourish me
My biggest desire right now is to have my hands in the dirt. To have land that I am responsible for. To dive deeper into this connection that I have pushed to the side and tried to invalidate for fear it would take over my life.
Now I am willing to let it.
To see: where does she want to take me?
I am hers.
We are always nature
Day 24
Dark night
Home of crows
Master of the chess game
Holder of everything
Can you feel at home in the night
Can you feel at home in the icy
Rain
Can you feel at home in the sorrow, in the stripping away of who you wanted to be
How you wanted me to appear
What you thought the definition of care
Was
Is there love in these moments
In your ability to stand within yourself
To hold the mystery without being
Assured of the outcome
What if there was never an ending
He says
What if
The continued unfolding
Is the only true thing
Day 25
Painted delight
Chalky, sweet, musty
She is at alert
Paying attention to the sidewalks
She has her song
The most beautiful
Process of decay
From vibrant to the most beautiful
Brown
She holds her shape
This is what aging is like
She says
The slow turning of hair
To gray
This is how perfect it can be
If you allow it
She has a tender
Innocence
I touch one blossom and they all dance
You are like this
She says
Not the dark
Not the erotic
Not the messy
Not the destructive
All those
Pieces
You thought you
Craved
Sweet, innocent
Creation of beauty
Willing to be deeply
Present
With every part of life
And there is a lightness to it. A youthfulness, this process of slow
Allowing
The returning to the soil
The cotton candy colors
The knowingness that this is enough
Not needing to make it look
Like anything
Not needing it to
Be
One way or another
But letting everything soften
And fade
Only to bloom again
Day 26
I was walking, bleeding. At the slowest pace
Feeling into how much has been shifting at the moment.
A desire for a house. House seen. Offer made. House sold – maybe – to someone else. Another house. Someone else putting an offer on the house.
Learning: slow down, here. Get clearer about what you want. Learn from the wind, learn from the land. Get details in order. Surrender to the process and what wants to teach you
I was walking and just contemplating taking a few days completely off the internet, these last few days of the year. To retreat and go within
And this portal called to me
This opening. The mystery
The creation of endless possibility
Like a giant, pulsing cell, like the top of an anemone, or like my cervix
An opening to god
Deep within the earth
Deep within the dirt
It said
Yes
I’ve taken the last days off from these photos because I’ve been taking care of my energy, feeling myself within all these sudden shifts.
I feel a video coming on this soon, a desire to share more.
For now though I am taking these next few days to enter in here. Deep inside this space in my body.
Everything happens in perfect time.
See you in 2021, beauties.
Day 27
I went for a walk and my body pulled me the other way.
“This is wrong,” my mind grumbled. “There is nothing in this direction.”
I walked anyway. I walked for a while, trusting that my body would tell me when to stop.
The sun is setting, my mind said. You should stop here, or you won’t get a photo.
I kept walking.
Suddenly my body tugged to the left, toward an alley, to the side of a building.
No, my mind said. Waste of time. There won’t be anything back there.
A full block later my body was still pulling backwards.
So I turned around with a sigh, and followed.
I walked around the corner and there was an entire garden.
I saw this dead purple plant. And I registered the pull but kept walking, because there was a beautiful bush covered in red and yellow blooming flowers toward the back.
Here it is! My mind said. Here is the perfect reason you came. Look how pretty it is.
Not this, my body said. The dead purple plant.
I sighed again, turned around and walked toward the purple plant.
And right as I knelt down to take a photo, I saw it. Right next to the purple plant.
One of my favorite herbs.
Yarrow.
Hi, she said.
One time, many years ago, I had been looking for yarrow all day on a hike and hadn’t been able to find any. In the back of the car on the way home, I felt a hit and told my mom to pull over. To the side of a random hill. My mind was like, this is ridiculous.
And there she was.
Wound-mender.
Blood-stopper.
The first time I ever found her.
If you chew up some yarrow and place her on a wound she will stop the bleeding and mend the skin. So quickly.
She has helped me heal many things.
Hey, she said to me today.
I know you’ve been sad lately. And I love you.
That was her message. Just, hi. A friend saying hello.
Trust your body to lead you. Trust your process.
It is moments like this when I truly feel the interconnectedness of everything.
Day 28
We often drown out the present moment.
We put on headphones, music, podcasts, call someone.
We drink or eat or watch tv
Anything to avoid being here.
Anything to avoid feeling the sun on our bare face
Its light in our eyes, waking up our brain
There is an intense vulnerability in it.
To be quiet, outside.
To sit with the sun
Who gives the whole world life
To sit and be gazed upon by a being who is millions of miles away
The sun is there every day.
The opportunity is there for you every day.
But we fill up the world with cities and cars and shows and games and texts
Anything to avoid the unbearable, pure joy
Of existing
The pain of existing
Which is harder for you to feel, pain or joy?
One time, I was at a training where for two weeks straight, we got up and sang to the sun every morning
Good morning, sun
Sometimes I still sing to the sun in the morning
Day 29
It is quiet for a moment.
And I feel her pulsing deep in my heart
Hello, she says
You came to see me
I did not know that’s what I was doing, I said
She shows me how her snow melts
Her sweat and tears
Filling the lake below
I had felt unsettled all day until I caught sight of her
Not knowing why I was walking anywhere I was walking
Not knowing why I was here
She shows me her reflection in the water
Sit here a while, she says
Everything is still
She translates the earth sounds
Each tree, a being
Each rock, a being
Each stream, a being
Trust life, she booms
From deep within
The core of the earth
Speaking through her body
I cannot see where the water meets the trees
Everything is a reflection of one another
Day 30
It is the same spot of dirt I touched, months ago
It has been through its winter
Like paper it coats my skin
Ashes, dust
Including my new friend, chickweed
Who I recognized the first time by sight only a few weeks ago
She called me all the way over to her
And I only knew, because she was blooming.
She was at the base of a tree. And I saw her and she said the tree has something for you, since you found me
And I wrapped my arms around the tree
In public
Quieting my mind that said, people will see you
And as I stood there, my heart pressed against the tree
It pulled coils of brown out of my solar plexus
Like intestines, wound
And I dry heaved and it was done
And I said thank you and I walked away
Here is chickweed, again
Growing out of this soil I touched months ago
That I moved my hands through
Allowing it to see me
Each tiny organism, crawling through my skin
And she sprouts
As if it is no big deal, to give medicine for those who choose to see it
Cyst-dissolving medicine
Ovary medicine
She blooms like a star
An exploding firework
And without her bloom she is much less obvious
I wonder, were her seeds here in December?
Growing in the dirt, before I could see them.
And aren’t we like that too?
Day 31
Hello, she says, and she has a younger energy this time.
There is a piece of my hair wrapped around her flowers
Could it be here since last time? Or did a piece of me just float away, to be closer to her?
She loves me so much, she says
Often when I talk to plants they want to tell me how much they love me.
How happy they are to be seen, to be listened to.
To be received
It is similar, really, to when I walk into the room and Jordan tells me how beautiful I am. Or when he remembers something I say
The thrill of being noticed, fully.
She is happy I am back
Her scent rich like honey
Last time she felt more like a grandmother, I tell her
And she shows me how that is still there
But she is showing me her little girl this time
As I have been integrating mine.
Her pure joy at being alive
We hold hands.
She whispers to me, memories
And dreams
Day 32
Here is the ground I bled upon, many months ago
Stones have always wanted to hold my sadness
I lay upon them
Like a giant cradle, they cup me.
Gently.
Allowing me to have my feelings
I wanted him to block the wind
But he is not
Instead, funneling it through into my face
But the wind is laughing
Kind in its harshness
Saying you sip the same air as these crows, these gulls, this moss
The birds are dancing, in this wind
There is nowhere to hide from it, today
I find one spot, curl up on its side, placing my head in the rocky soil at the base
The wind can still find my hands
Clearing it away
Like a shower
And the moss clings to my coat
All around me, she is attaching
Up my sleeve
Bird droppings marking my legs
And then I find it
The perfect place to duck
A fairyland of moss, thorns, long blackberry brambles
All set on stone
And there are tiny little fairy seats
And I can see them dancing, down the branch that connects them
And I say hello to this rock. The other side of the one I spoke to, last time, the one with the booming voice.
But on this side, not exposed to the wind, she is covered in green
And all I feel is a woman
Day 33
Today was my final day of messages from nature.
I began this project in November. I thought I’d have it finished by the end of 2020, that it wasn’t a big deal.
I didn’t want to do it. It just dropped in one day that I should.
It was one of those things where I hear it so loudly and clearly that I am like “oh no. Now I have to do it”
Sharing my communication with the earth has been one of the biggest edges for me.
That really surprises people but it’s true.
I had resistance to it every single day.
The first day especially. It took me hours to convince myself to go outside and write the post.
Connecting with plants and stones and earth is something I do constantly. And I’ve done it my entire life.
But the moment it wasn’t just for me, and I was going to share it? Walls came up.
I didn’t know why I chose 33 days. That was just the number that I heard.
I never thought it would take me months.
But after the first 20 days or so of being consistent, it started to feel like I was beginning to force.
So I stopped, and waited each time, til it was true.
DIRT dropped in in December. I couldn’t feel it fully at first, didn’t know what it would be.
I somehow did not realize they were related.
I began this project on the coast of BC, in the same place I was with Jordan the past couple weeks.
Everything feels so alive there. It is where we want to buy a home.
And I just happened to end this project there too.
I wanted to both begin and end with talking to the ocean.
So this morning, on our last day, I walked down to her.
The first thing I saw were the birds.
Last night I was in the hot tub with Jordan, watching the birds in the ocean where they always swim and two of them came to shore.
I said to him, I feel like they don’t really come to shore. I’ve never seen one up close, I wish I could.
This morning I walked down, all alone, in the misting rain. It was cold.
And there were the birds. On the shore.
One kind and then two kinds. Preening themselves, so close to me.
And as I was watching the birds a rainbow appeared.
I have never seen a rainbow there before.
A rainbow appeared and then an eagle flew across the sky.
I tried to take a photo of the ocean and the rainbow, with my Polaroid, to finish out the days – and it snapped and nothing happened and that was it. No more film.
I laughed, somehow it was perfect.
And then – as I had tears in my eyes from all the gifts I had been given –
I saw a giant fin appear above the water.
I was like – what is that?!!
Could that be a WHALE??
I had never seen a whale there before either.
I looked it up later and it was a whale.
There have been so many shifts happening for me lately. I have a long post percolating that I want to write, about food and my inner child and softness and loss.
And DIRT begins this Friday.
I’ve been seeing 333 all over the place for many weeks.
I don’t think it’s any coincidence that this project was 33 days.
This morning it felt like the earth was celebrating with me.
Here are the ducks.
Here is a rainbow.
Here is an eagle.
Here is a whale.
All within the 20 minutes or so that I “just happened” to go outside.
Magic to the highest degree.
The timing was all perfect.
And it has been all kinds of beautiful.
If you liked this piece, you might also enjoy:
– Messages from nature (part 1 of 3)
– Messages from nature (part 2 of 3)
– there is no word for the way you might feel