On my first trip to the Pacific Northwest in the early 1980s, to be at a conference at the Whidbey Learning Community (now the Whidbey Institute) on Whidbey Island, WA, I saw my first huge clearcut. Whole mountainsides shaved, and helicopters doing the logging on the steepest slopes. This was old growth and they were fast taking every elder they could. I knew there would be clearcuts, but I was not prepared for their reality. Luckily, I was not doing the driving. I felt as though I had been kicked, hard, in the stomach the pain was so intense. And it was physical as well as in my heart and spirit. And the message I got in that moment from the land was that my ability to feel the pain was a gift. That my feeling the pain of the elders and the mountains and streams ruined, all the death and losses, was like an escape valve for Earth. My tears releasing some of the pressure she feels. And since then I have never resisted opening myself to that pain. Our bodies are also “tuning forks”, and when aware we can be healers for the land (and in turn be healed). Our love, too, our presence, our personal relationship with all the non-humans, who are, to me they are friends and family, that is medicine - for the land and the Beings and me. I wish more people understood this and incorporated the reality of our human roles here into their daily living. Some do of course. But the key is that heart connection, that love, the openness to the pain and grief as well as the beauty and love. I love how you bring this into the very elements, down to the very cells of our bodies. I can visualize the integration, the permeation, the “fizziness” . . . And your words also help me feel it at the cellular level as well. I am looking forward to reading your newest book. I’m sending you so much love for healing, and I know that while I’m reading your book, I’ll be doing the same. As will so many of us. Perhaps this will help your body as well. 💖
It feels so key to remember that the pain is the portal/bridge of connection. If our bodies are suffering it is because they are one cell in the larger body of our polluted and clearcut ecologies. I am so grateful for our sensorial kinship Susan. I am so glad to be on this journey through the pitfalls and beauties of bodily porousness.
Couldn't agree more. For years, I've been trying to figure out how to consistently stay in the state of love and connection shown to me by the medicines on my own power, my own breath, my own softening. The Grateful Dead's great sage Pigpen counseled us, "Turn on your lovelight...and leave it on!" Hopefully more and more I'm living a lifestyle that makes my body a fertile ground where the seeds of wisdom can land and flourish. I'm glad to hear you say it so eloquently.
You are really doing this work of dialoguing with your ecosystem and community with such grace and humor. I just know you talk frog and fungi and mountain with complete fluency!! But yes, it is hard to keep those initial openings into love and connectivity continuous through our daily lives. I'm trying to keep that lovelight on too
This resonates so much with other writing I am holding dear about not joining the death cult of abandoning life and people who want to live. We are ecosystem. I love the idea of being medicine for this beautiful planet. Excited for your memoir, Sophie 🧡🪲🌳👣🪱🌊
How is it this phrase, "What does it mean to be medicinal to your ecosystem?" feels so fresh, joyful, and potent? Reminiscent of a child who has discovered the power in being able to make their mother laugh? We can have an effect by PLACING ourselves somewhere to benefit our earth?!!!!!!!
I really believe this! If we listen quietly enough and feel called to a tree or lake or place, it's often because it might want the pressure of our feet. The feeling of our presence!
I feel pretty sure that these plants and fungi are intentionally renewing their comradeship with us right now, precisely in order to remind us of the medicinal / custodial capacities (and responsibilities) you're calling in here. I appreciate your focus on the DISCOURSE around psychedelics, because I do think that's exactly where the reframe is needed. As you say, there's a frame where we 'take' a 'drug,' extract an awakening, download insights, 'optimize'. And, too, I feel a teacher finding us, tugging us out of our ruts, and demanding our reinvestment in entanglement.
Much love and appreciation to you Sophie. Thanks for your tender footprints this new moon 💛🌚
I think about this very concept all the time. It's long been my prayer that my life be a love song to the earth, and more recently I have understood the desire to be a healing presence. I often wonder why I'm incarnate in this body now, when everything seems to teeter towards the end of the relationship between humans and the world, and my only resonant conclusion has been that the earth needs humans who are lovers and tenders of a mutually medicinal relationship to hold her through this passage, whatever it turns out to be.
Thank you dear Sophie for sharing this. It helps to know I am not alone in this vein of thought. Xo
Thank you Sophie. This year, I have tried to be in the garden each day, for at least an half hour. I can be just sitting or I can be working in it. I've been making compost and feeding the soil, everything I prune or take out gets back to this space and it has been feeding me. There is food, almost every day, and flowers. Even on my worst days, I touch something in the garden and thank it. Lots of mushrooms have sprung up from scattered branches, and in this city garden all sorts of bees have found a place. Voles have been eating all my potatoes, so I have planted more. They have left me the beetroot, so that's what I could eat. Each morning there is birdsong and my Cypress has become a Sparrow appartment building, with multiple Sparrow nests. In the summer heat it is a few degrees cooler in it, because of the trees we planted years ago. I almost never have to water, because the soil is never bare. I love my garden and it loves me back.
I sometimes wonder if the mushrooms have found a way to entice us into cultivating them, and then dancing with us to awaken the medicine inside that says, “what/who/where is calling for care today and how can I show up for them.”
I love your thinking Sophie, always so fresh - not just way outside of the conventional box but tipping up that box, scattering the unquestioned contents far and wide until they dissolve into a new reality. Your words and ideas brim wonderfully with deeply resonating truths that speak to my soul. Yes! To see ourselves as medicine givers as well as takers is powerful medicine itself.
Sending my song of thanks via earth, air and ether. May it nurture us both and reverberate throughout our ecosystems and beyond.. xx
On my first trip to the Pacific Northwest in the early 1980s, to be at a conference at the Whidbey Learning Community (now the Whidbey Institute) on Whidbey Island, WA, I saw my first huge clearcut. Whole mountainsides shaved, and helicopters doing the logging on the steepest slopes. This was old growth and they were fast taking every elder they could. I knew there would be clearcuts, but I was not prepared for their reality. Luckily, I was not doing the driving. I felt as though I had been kicked, hard, in the stomach the pain was so intense. And it was physical as well as in my heart and spirit. And the message I got in that moment from the land was that my ability to feel the pain was a gift. That my feeling the pain of the elders and the mountains and streams ruined, all the death and losses, was like an escape valve for Earth. My tears releasing some of the pressure she feels. And since then I have never resisted opening myself to that pain. Our bodies are also “tuning forks”, and when aware we can be healers for the land (and in turn be healed). Our love, too, our presence, our personal relationship with all the non-humans, who are, to me they are friends and family, that is medicine - for the land and the Beings and me. I wish more people understood this and incorporated the reality of our human roles here into their daily living. Some do of course. But the key is that heart connection, that love, the openness to the pain and grief as well as the beauty and love. I love how you bring this into the very elements, down to the very cells of our bodies. I can visualize the integration, the permeation, the “fizziness” . . . And your words also help me feel it at the cellular level as well. I am looking forward to reading your newest book. I’m sending you so much love for healing, and I know that while I’m reading your book, I’ll be doing the same. As will so many of us. Perhaps this will help your body as well. 💖
It feels so key to remember that the pain is the portal/bridge of connection. If our bodies are suffering it is because they are one cell in the larger body of our polluted and clearcut ecologies. I am so grateful for our sensorial kinship Susan. I am so glad to be on this journey through the pitfalls and beauties of bodily porousness.
Couldn't agree more. For years, I've been trying to figure out how to consistently stay in the state of love and connection shown to me by the medicines on my own power, my own breath, my own softening. The Grateful Dead's great sage Pigpen counseled us, "Turn on your lovelight...and leave it on!" Hopefully more and more I'm living a lifestyle that makes my body a fertile ground where the seeds of wisdom can land and flourish. I'm glad to hear you say it so eloquently.
You are really doing this work of dialoguing with your ecosystem and community with such grace and humor. I just know you talk frog and fungi and mountain with complete fluency!! But yes, it is hard to keep those initial openings into love and connectivity continuous through our daily lives. I'm trying to keep that lovelight on too
This resonates so much with other writing I am holding dear about not joining the death cult of abandoning life and people who want to live. We are ecosystem. I love the idea of being medicine for this beautiful planet. Excited for your memoir, Sophie 🧡🪲🌳👣🪱🌊
Love to you Bri!!
How is it this phrase, "What does it mean to be medicinal to your ecosystem?" feels so fresh, joyful, and potent? Reminiscent of a child who has discovered the power in being able to make their mother laugh? We can have an effect by PLACING ourselves somewhere to benefit our earth?!!!!!!!
I really believe this! If we listen quietly enough and feel called to a tree or lake or place, it's often because it might want the pressure of our feet. The feeling of our presence!
Yes I do too but it's the listening quietly to our own presence that's becoming more and more trickier.
Powerful and beautifully expressed as always. Thank you, Sophie!
Thank you Leanne!
I feel pretty sure that these plants and fungi are intentionally renewing their comradeship with us right now, precisely in order to remind us of the medicinal / custodial capacities (and responsibilities) you're calling in here. I appreciate your focus on the DISCOURSE around psychedelics, because I do think that's exactly where the reframe is needed. As you say, there's a frame where we 'take' a 'drug,' extract an awakening, download insights, 'optimize'. And, too, I feel a teacher finding us, tugging us out of our ruts, and demanding our reinvestment in entanglement.
Much love and appreciation to you Sophie. Thanks for your tender footprints this new moon 💛🌚
I think about this very concept all the time. It's long been my prayer that my life be a love song to the earth, and more recently I have understood the desire to be a healing presence. I often wonder why I'm incarnate in this body now, when everything seems to teeter towards the end of the relationship between humans and the world, and my only resonant conclusion has been that the earth needs humans who are lovers and tenders of a mutually medicinal relationship to hold her through this passage, whatever it turns out to be.
Thank you dear Sophie for sharing this. It helps to know I am not alone in this vein of thought. Xo
Feeling this so much! Thank you for writing it, my hearts is glad for the truth of it.
Each of these excerpts and outtakes just makes me more excited for March!
It was funny. On my ipad this image was blacked out with a warning that it may be “explicit”. Interesting what Substack decides is too sexual. 😂
Thank you Sophie. This year, I have tried to be in the garden each day, for at least an half hour. I can be just sitting or I can be working in it. I've been making compost and feeding the soil, everything I prune or take out gets back to this space and it has been feeding me. There is food, almost every day, and flowers. Even on my worst days, I touch something in the garden and thank it. Lots of mushrooms have sprung up from scattered branches, and in this city garden all sorts of bees have found a place. Voles have been eating all my potatoes, so I have planted more. They have left me the beetroot, so that's what I could eat. Each morning there is birdsong and my Cypress has become a Sparrow appartment building, with multiple Sparrow nests. In the summer heat it is a few degrees cooler in it, because of the trees we planted years ago. I almost never have to water, because the soil is never bare. I love my garden and it loves me back.
I sometimes wonder if the mushrooms have found a way to entice us into cultivating them, and then dancing with us to awaken the medicine inside that says, “what/who/where is calling for care today and how can I show up for them.”
I love your thinking Sophie, always so fresh - not just way outside of the conventional box but tipping up that box, scattering the unquestioned contents far and wide until they dissolve into a new reality. Your words and ideas brim wonderfully with deeply resonating truths that speak to my soul. Yes! To see ourselves as medicine givers as well as takers is powerful medicine itself.
Sending my song of thanks via earth, air and ether. May it nurture us both and reverberate throughout our ecosystems and beyond.. xx
Gorgeous, Sophie…your perspective is SO inspiring…always💚🙏🏼💚