Guten Tag, Reader,

“Which lands do you consider home, today?”

It’s a question I often ask to open the first sharing circle of my Nature Therapy walks. It is an opportunity for the participants to learn something about each other.

I could simply ask, “Where are you from?” but over years of writing, coaching, and opening liminal spaces for Nature Therapy sessions, I've learned that words and intention matter when it comes to creating connection, whether with nature, each other, or one’s Self.

Home isn’t the same as the place one arrived from today.

Today might invoke a different answer than a more general question.*

“I was born in Seattle,” Lilly spoke into the circle during a recent walk.** “But then we moved around for my husband’s job, and now we are here.”

Her words alluded to home in the dictionary sense.

But there was no sense of belonging. No connection to place or landscape. Her presence felt somewhat adrift. Untethered.

Once we had entered the liminal stage of the experience — a time outside of
normal time and space*** — I offered the following haiku as an invitation:

Lilly came back to the circle last, eyes still a bit cloudy.

“I mean, I thought I had touched trees before,” she shared, “but I have never been touched by a tree like that.”

She opened up about her marriage falling apart and how this had been the first time she felt calm enough to truly feel into her emotions around that separation.

The tree, the land, and the other women on the walk (strangers just 90 minutes ago) held that safe space for her.****

How? I could tell you about the science and what happens in the brain. About hormone levels, heart rates, attention restoration, and immune system boosting.

In short words: When you slow down, you notice what’s always been there. When you become quiet, you can hear your wild, creative voice. The one that’s not repeating and amplifying the culture’s boring narratives.

Go play, that wild voice says. You belong among the powerful witches, artists, change makers, and you already KNOW what to do and where to go.

Reader, what might you hear your Self say if you gave it time and space to speak? If you felt held, carried, and accepted?

Are you carrying a conundrum? A doubt? An unspoken (and perhaps unknown desire?

All answers to my life’s questions, all solutions I have ever found, were discovered in collaboration with female mentors, coaches, and elders. My experience is that we cannot return to ourselves alone. That’s why I created Midlife Wilderness Basecamp with monthly guided nature therapy experiences.

And it’s why I added weekly group “campfire” and co-creation sessions.

If you are a woman in midlife craving space for calm and wild, creative play and rest, connection, and more self-ness, we’d love to add you to our circle.

Stay curious,

P.S. The fall equinox is only a few weeks away, with harvest season fast approaching. If you are curious about spending fall at Midlife Wilderness Basecamp, you can find your gateway here.

* I am from Wiesbaden, Germany. I live in Missoula, Montana. My answer for home changes depending on what is on my heart, who I am with, and what land I am standing on in the moment I consider the answer.

I have referred to the Lech Valley in the Tyrolean Alps as home. I spent every single childhood vacation there. To the Rocky Mountains, who called me all the way from Germany to make my home here. And last week, as the wildHER River Retreat adventurers rafted down the Green River through the Gates of Lodore, I received an unsettling settling message from the Utah Canyon Desert, letting me know that parts of me belong to her, too.

** I changed all references to places and names to protect anonymity.

*** From the ANFT Guide Book: “In liminality, there is a heightened potency in the ways we are in communication with the world around and within us, and increased support for our capacity to grow into greater authenticity.”

**** Not all my walks have that kind of effect on all participants, but they do on the ones that want and need it. I believe that the land can notice those things.

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