Re-wild isn't an idea... or a performance.

FREE CLASS tomorrow, July 14th

I’m in the Seattle airport.

I just dropped my Eula off for her first 2-week experience without her family or friends in a place she has never been. It’s wild to watch the wild at work—the way the child body holds onto the parent body, the way my mother-self scans, assesses, and then trusts an edge that my gut tells me is okay. Especially in the wake of family loss.

Damn, biology is beautiful.

I don’t want to share much about her process because it is hers. She’s on her way; I’m sitting here at a Delta gate next to thousands of people going to and fro, and it was an absolutely dynamic, confidence-boosting and growth-edge send off.

This wee babe is onto her first very big fledge experience.

Three days ago, I was feeling lonely, like capital ALONE. I was not alone at all—little requests coming toward me all day, a friend or two circling around, some extended family needs to tend to immediately. Still, I’m all alone played the song in my head. That too, is animal. And interesting. Was it because I wasn’t communicating myself to anyone, or being reflected? Maybe.

The smallest drop of connection is a cure.

You’ve heard me say it 1,000 times: we are social animals.

One of my pressing questions for this era:

How do we preserve connection that isn’t performance?

We want to identify ourselves. It’s important. I like this; I don’t like that. I prefer x instead of y. We want people to know THIS IS WHO I AM because it helps us figure out who we are. It isn’t narcissistic or self-centered. It’s being a human. It’s filling in your outline. One of my favorite pastimes is listening to kids identify themselves: I’m the kind of kid who….. Tell me more. Let me hear you.

However, on a large scale, the performance in the modern adult world feels vapid, saccharine, not real. The woman doing a full moon dance under the trees so she can take an IG worthy photo to post to her followers about her connection to nature…. well, that’s hard for me. Would she do that dance if no one saw, or if she only shared about it with a few friends? What is her actual relationship to nature; is she giving and receiving or is she only using? This isn’t her fault. But that shit gets wired in. If every experience you have with nature (insert: kids, partner, rituals, sex, etc) is a set on which we ‘show people’ and broadcast widely, then you forget to be with the thing in the moment. Your connection to that stick washing up in the ocean is no longer about the stick and the mystery and your relationship to it, it’s about what it says about you when others witness it.

Slippery. Slope.

For all the photos my children take of me in nature, there are about 5000x more undocumented moments.

I left IG years ago when I realized, while making banana pancakes for my kids, that I was 1/2 in the moment and 1/2 planning my cool post about the moment. Ahhhhh. No thank you. I had lost my presence. Recently, I’ve been undergoing a massive and intentional internal experience these last three years. None of it is public. I’m not hiding or withholding. My shares are simply reserved for five of my soul friends and my husband. Plus little bits shared with my parents. It’s a true re-wilding from the inside out. I don’t need everyone to know about it to make it real for myself. These beloveds get the juice. The whole thing would be very juicy and shiny and probably “gain” me a lot of followers. For me, with this, it would be go against my instinct to share widely.

This isn’t either/or, black or white.

I’ve written two very public books. I love sharing my experience and hearing others. It’s my blueprint. But a book is usually written after the fact. The experience has been lived—without an audience watching as it is lived. There is the difference.

It’s worth being in discernment.

What am I sharing, with whom am I sharing, and why?

Last year, I made the decision to share with you all about my move across the valley because many readers felt connected to that land and to me on that land. It wasn’t a light waltz. I almost didn’t write about it, until my mom said, “People have lived there with you in their hearts, they will want to know.” It then became an opportunity for me to make art about a transition that gutted me as much as it was right. I didn’t go into that process thinking, “Now I’m going to the ritual with my kids so that I can share that with people.” I was already ritualizing with them. With each part of that lived experience, I would sit afterwards and decide: to share or not share?

Here’s my question:

Can modern humans preserve the wild impulse to express, engage, interact with others, self or nature even if there is no witness or guarantee they will get identity ‘points’ for it?

I know that’s blunt.

It may offend.
I’m really asking.

Re-wilding is about you, your body, the bodies you interact with and the natural world. It doesn’t need a tagline. It definitely doesn’t need to be performed.

If any of this speaks to you, my Q&A is tomorrow.

July 14th at 11am MT.

Open office hours. Dynamic. We are going to dive in. I won’t be “teaching at you”….I want to be in this water with others. Let’s do it.

**Recording send to anyone who signs up.

Go well, go well,