Who I'm Learning From
A reflection of gratitude and wonder for my teachers
While working on my upcoming series Astronomical Grief: A Space Exploration and gearing up for The Big Announcement, I’ve been thinking so much about who I’m learning from - specifically and over time. I’m sharing here, and this is not an exhaustive list by any means.
I learn from so many writers who I admire (and some I’ve even become friends with) who also, joyfully, have Substacks so you can get in on their goodness right here:
I learn from trees. I…cannot overstate this.
I learn about rootedness and how that cannot be separated from interconnection which also cannot be separated from reciprocity. Not if there is to be health, and life, and abundance.
I learn from Pine and Moss and Ground about texture and uniqueness and being your intentionally designed self. I learn about varied purpose of the individual so the whole can be…well, whole.
I learn about resurrection, life and death and life, and - accompanied by Peter Wohlleben’s The Hidden Life of Trees - how leaving a fallen tree on the forest floor is a kind of ancestral veneration, a daily Day Of The Dead, a remembering, a nourishing.
I learn from Moon and Stars (of course).
Moon, the shift-shaper, tide-maker, illuminator, and hide-and-seeker. I learn about constants and about change, about the power of intentions that are tethered to how I choose to exist. I learn about the wonder of looking up, drawn into pause and excitement when my son searches for Moon in the late afternoon sky. Moon is stunning at night, but seeing her during the day is a treat - a reminder that she hasn’t gone anywhere. It’s our perspective that has changed.
I’ve learned the Dark Side of Moon is not to be feared, it’s a refuge to retreat into. It’s instructions for rest and reset. It’s the cool of the shade on the other side of a day scorched by solar radiation.
I could weep at what the stars have taught me, and are teaching me. Existence is so expansive. Some of those pin-pricks of light are entire galaxies, bigger than the Milky Way. There is room, so much room. Exhale, belly laugh, throw your head back, twirl your body. There is room.
Have a second cup of lemonade and drink it slow. Stay a little longer. Don’t dry your tears so quickly. Take in their presence and delight at how whole they are. There is time.
There is no Milky Way without the billions of stars that encompass it. Each one of the stars is unique and has a name - even if we don’t know it. Someone does. May we all be called by our Name, like a Star.
I could burst and go on for paragraph after paragraph. Just like Moon, Stars have phases. Just like the cosmos we are eternal and finite, double-helixed into one entity, one wondrous being a part of the vast expansive whole.
Wow.
I’m currently reading multiple things. I won’t tell you everything (some of it is audio/ebook) because the list would be CVS-receipt-length long. But here is what I am keeping in close proximity these days:
We Heal Together by Michelle Cassandra Johnson
The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben
Black Nature edited by Camille T. Dungy
The Art & Practice of Spiritual Herbalism by Karen M. Rose
Cosmic Voids, the Jan 2024 issue of Scientific American
BONUS: Pale Blue Pod, a podcast about being friends with the universe in the most sciency way - yay!
Fiction BONUS: I’m salivating as I wait for Rebecca Roanhorse’s Mirrored Heavens - the third in a triology - to hit the shelves. Eeeek!
I am learning from you too Nya! 🖤ðŸ˜
Excited to greet your words this new book soon!!