For me, nature isn't something out there, to be visited or consumed. Nature is something in here, in my body and experience as a messy, healing human and in my relationships with other beings. 

 

It's so basic, isn't it? A sunset, birdsong, the moon, swimming in a lake – nature helps us come back to ourselves, because we are nature. We are animals. We belong to this earth. Its complexity, its ambiguity, its intensity is reflected in us. 

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I haven't always moved in these rhythms. There were a myriad reasons why, as a young person, it didn't feel safe for me to be myself, animal or otherwise.

 

As an adult, I did years of work across modalities, learning to open my senses and pay attention to my body's responses. But it took a painful burnout in the midst of the pandemic for me to figure out that being with subtleties of the more-than-human world brings me – whumpf – back down to earth, into my body and into a sense of grounded safety. Practices of foraging, land-tending and nature-based mindfulness have been a compass for me, giving me orientation and direction, opening up a path to being me.

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Changing my orientation to nature set the foundation, but working with a coach is what gave me the tools to truly come home to myself. Part of that was witnessing the way the changes in me rippled out to the people around me.

 

It fills me with so much hope and delight to see how – in the words of Robin Wall Kimmerer – when each of us is strong in who we are and carries our gifts with conviction so they can be shared with others, the whole flourishes.

 

That's what drove me to train as a certified Nature-Connected Coach through the Earth-Based Institute in 2021. I so deeply believe that each step we take individually towards being in tune with our messy, complex selves, giving our imperfect gifts into the world and receiving those of others with joyful delight, is a step towards a collective radical future.

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As I learned to coach and guide, I started teaching foraging as a side project. But the two ended up more intertwined than I had anticipated. Foraging has deeply supported me to develop a sense of belonging in the city, and teaching it has become a radical practice of kin-building and connection with the human and more-than-human world.

 

And – I just love this work! I love the way that textures of lichen make me feel. I love gathering handfuls of wild herbs from my city lawn to make delicious free food for my loved ones. I love understanding the different moods of the birds around me through their calls. I love coming back to favorite mushroom spots in the off-season, knowing that below my feet mycelium and tree roots are in mysterious invisible relationships.

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And more than anything, I love seeing how this knowledge, these ways of being – relationship, reciprocity, abundance – are absolutely fundamental to our collective souls. I love guiding others into their own awareness and watching, cheering, as they plant seeds, tend to their needs, and begin to blossom.

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It's such an incredible gift to be able to share my basket of skills with you.