Dear ones - “Am I doing enough?” How often do you find yourself wondering that? "Am I doing enough when it comes to my children and whether or not they're OK?" "Am I doing enough to ensure my future and the future of the ones I love?" "Am I doing enough to love myself and be myself in the world?" "Am I doing enough to love my partner?" "Am I doing enough at work?" "Am I doing enough when it comes to mitigating climate catastrophes?" "Am I doing enough about genocide, about injustice, about...
20 days ago • 1 min read
Dear ones - When people are skeptical about “animal guides” or “plant teachers,” part of their criticism usually revolves around the question: “how do you know you’re not just making it up to justify things?” Answer: You don’t. Not really. But we humans are meaning-making creatures. And we are observant. Much of our scientific and academic knowledge pursuits are based around the idea of being an impartial observer. As though we could somehow separate ourselves from the world we are observing....
about 1 month ago • 1 min read
Dear ones - A quick note to let you know I dropped a bonus podcast episode today exploring ancestral harvest holidays, like Lammas or Lughnasadh, which were generally celebrated on August 1st, and mark the beginning of the harvest of storage crops and the subtle shift towards Fall. Within the episode, I: muse on what the practice of these holidays, the themes and perspectives they invite, might have to show us about burnout; share some agricultural context for the season; and pose some...
about 1 month ago • 1 min read
Hello, dear ones - The tricky thing about burnout is it can work a lot like the frog in the slowly boiling water - it’s the result of so many seemingly inconsequential calibrations away from aliveness that we don’t notice we’re cooked until too late. (And then we usually feel like we need to burn our lives down and start over… only we don’t manage to change the root causes of the burnout - in part because many of them are cultural, not personal - so we just keep cycling through the same...
about 1 month ago • 4 min read
Hello, dear ones - Happy Feast Day of Mary Magdalene - a day to remember that it’s through the wild, tender aliveness of our own hearts we glimpse the Divine. photo by K. Mitch Hodge The last seven months since I returned from Scotland and Ireland have been working me deeply. I’ve been drawn more inwards to integrate and gestate. In the last few months, the fruits of the process are slowly coming into the world and you’ll see and hear more from me about that as they’re ready. Suffice it to...
about 2 months ago • 3 min read
Dear ones - I write to you today from a friend’s house outside of Boulder, CO - where, after over two months in the desert, I find myself in awe and wonder at the variety of green, green grasses. It reminds me how quickly we can attune and adapt ourselves to an environment and how small shifts at the level of environment can profoundly affect our subtle and physical body - and all the other aspects of our experience which are woven into those. Today is the full moon and so… we have another...
4 months ago • 2 min read
Dear ones - I hope you had a beautiful Beltane (for those in the Northern Hemisphere - Samhain for those in the Southern) - a time when the veil is thin between this world and the other and life is either at the height of bursting forth or at the beginning of its deepest diminishment. There are times when it feels so grounding to tune into the cycles of the year - nature’s rhythms. And times when the beauty of the continual flow of life feels so dissonant with the happenings of our human...
4 months ago • 2 min read
Dear ones - Happy Full Moon in Scorpio - a time for leaning into the death of things which are ready to release to make way for new life and aliveness. I write to you today from the mountains outside of Santa Fe where the warm sun balances the cold wind as it sighs through the cedars; and the full moon is bright enough to cast shadows while the coyotes yip and howl all night long. There are blooms. And on the highest peaks, there’s also still snow. Today’s podcast episode is a continuation of...
5 months ago • 1 min read
Dear ones - Endings are not as final as linearity would have us believe (although what we are mourning or celebrating the ending of - specific situations, relationships, individuals, etc - may never come back into our lives). Remembering the innate cycles and circularity to life returns us to the wisdom that endings are thresholds. And thresholds come with grief, discomfort, relief, excitement, fear, pain, and pretty much everything else a human can be capable of feeling. We often arrive at a...
5 months ago • 2 min read