My friend and I don’t know a lot about each other, and that’s what is good about it. We chat about family and work, both of us in very different industries but sharing about the creativity in our work that encourages us both to keep going.

We said hello today, and when he asked how I was doing, I knew I could actually tell him in my own way.

This is what is true: not everyone can handle how you’re doing, and not everyone is safe enough to share with.

But every now and then, you’ll be surprised at someone asking, and at your own response.

Instead of oh, good, thanks you might end up saying I’m alright, not great or it’s been a shit week but I am here or things are moving beautifully in my life, can I tell you about it?

And what often happens is that we open up space to be human with one another. Your friend may share that they just dropped off their oldest at college and they have tears in their eyes, or they’re trying to get some rest but feel restless nonetheless.

Human.

I recently chatted with my dear friend Nadia Bolz-Weber, and you can find that short 15 minute conversation below:

The Corners by Nadia Bolz-Weber

Finally...a Conversation About Trees.

Thanks everyone, for sticking around during my time of relative non-productivity. As you can maybe tell from this video, I’m recovering from another breast reconstruction surgery (Aug 10th), and taking life real slow.If my work has been of help to you over the years and you’d like to support me during this less-than-easy time you can do so below. But we…

Listen now

2 days ago · 175 likes · 10 comments · Nadia Bolz-Weber and Kaitlin Curtice

Nadia isn’t afraid to name how she is, and I’ve always loved this about her. Nadia isn’t afraid to name the realities of being human, which is something she’s taught me about my own life, my own grief, my own showing up in the world.

I am not here telling you that you need to crack your heart open to near-strangers at coffee shops; but I encourage us to allow ourselves to crack open a little when we need it most. And when we do it, I think we learn a few things:

1. we learn that we are actually human, and being good all the time is a facade

2. we learn that a lot of people can hold space for care and compassion

3. we learn to look for the people who show up and to accept those who really can’t

4. we learn to trust ourselves more

5. we learn that if a few humans can hold us, of course the earth can hold us, too

If we believe that there is a sacred thread running between all of us as human beings, I think we can learn to trust that thread a little more.

Next time I go visit the Grandmother Elm who holds me, I might lay down some tobacco and thank her for the friends who have shown up for me when I needed them, for a kind word from an acquaintance, for the cafe owner who didn’t charge me for the refill I needed.

When we remember that we are human beings, we remember our deep belonging to ourselves, one another, and this earth. And that is the greatest gift we could hold.

I am announcing the next book in our book club in a few weeks! Book club is for paid subscribers; we gather weekly on zoom (totally optional) and I share weekly posts guiding us through the book in spiritually-grounded ways. It’s not your typical book club, and that’s what I love about it!

Become a paid subscriber to learn more and join us once the book is picked:

Subscribe now

Nevertheless She Preached is coming! Join us October 18-20th for this special gathering in Austin, Texas, where we will explore JOY as resistance, and my god, we need it.

I am honored to close out the event, and would love to see some folks from this Substack community there.

You can use this code, KAITLINNSP02 to receive 10% off your ticket!

get your ticket here

I want to invite you into a few weeks of writing, of getting away from the screens and back into your body, to get the pen and paper out and ask what might show up on the page.

You hold deep medicine and wisdom in your bones. In this beautiful offering from Kripalu, we want to hold space with you to gather in and create sacred space for words.

Each instructor will host an evening of writing and care, and my session is on October 29th. Once you register, you’ll have access to the recordings of the event in case you can’t make it.

Please join us. This will be a beautiful space for us to hold together.

learn more and register here

And last, Autumn is coming, and it’s a perfect time to grab this day calendar created by my dear friend and incredible author .

Rachel is one of the most tender, compassionate people I know; we’ve been friends for over a decade, and her books have held space and care for so so many people.

You can preorder it now, to prepare for the upcoming year.

Only Love Today calendar

Hi friends,

Excited to share with you a solidarity spotlight post as you head into your weekend!

For those who are new here, The Liminality Journal is a community, and when I see beautiful things happening in the world, I want you to know about them.

I want us to show up and support one another, to lean into the power of complexity and care, to ask what it means to journey this life together as a collective.

So today for our Solidarity Spotlight, I’m sharing two new books that are out in the world, and I am asking you to order at least one of them.

I was showing a friend my office the other day, and pointed to the shelf that is full of books I’ve endorsed. Every time I look at that shelf, I am full of gratitude. Reading other people’s books, helping them celebrate their place in the publishing industry, is an absolute honor, something I never take lightly.

There are several incredible books coming out this fall, and you’ll be hearing about them right here!

And here are two that have released in the last few weeks. They’re both beautiful; they both speak to the power of trusting our path, our journey, leaning into our relationship with one another and this sacred earth, and asking what’s next with care.

First, my dear friend has a beautiful new book out called Our Ancestors Want us to be Mushrooms.

Visit Madison's website

I had the honor of endorsing this book. Here’s what I’ve said:

“We desperately need the medicine offered in this book, and I am so grateful for the guidance of Madison Murphy Barney, who reminds us that we are not just connected to ourselves and to one another, but to the universe of networks and beings who hold and tend to us just as we tend to them. In a world marked by rampant individualism and disconnection, we need paths of healing that restore us to community care in the deepest of ways. Recognizing that our ancestors want us to be mushrooms will help us forge that sacred path together. Read this book, and let it heal you.”

There is so much beautiful, ancestral wisdom in these pages. Go get a copy wherever books are sold!

order from amazon

order from an Indigenous seller

The next book I want to share with you is written by my one of my dearest friends, Shel Kim Rollison. Shel is a truly beautiful human being—liminal, caring, passionate.

Shel is a musician, a deep thinker, a retreat leader, a mystic, and an amazing writer.

Her new book is called Where the Map Ends. This book is a beautiful guide for deep change, for the crossroads moments, for honoring our questions and letting the path lead us home to ourselves.

Here’s more about the book:

There comes a point in your life when the map you’ve been following no longer works.

Something in your life ends––a relationship, a season, a job, a belief, a way of thinking––either by choice or unexpectedly.

Or maybe you realize you’re not who you used to be.

Perhaps you’ve drifted away from yourself and who you truly are. Or perhaps you’re becoming somebody new, but you need to get to know who you are now and reconnect with yourself.

However change enters your life, you’re suddenly walking an unknown path.

How do you move forward when you’re not yet sure where you’re headed?

How do you orient when everything seems unfamiliar?

Even in the midst of uncertainty, you can move forward in your life as you figure things out, and become more deeply connected with yourself.

I invite you to purchase the book, to read it with a friend, to let Shel’s wisdom guide you.

Buy Where the Map Ends

Friends,

Autumn’s Abundance, the final book in my children’s series, An Indigenous Celebration of Nature, is out September 1st!

You can order a special, signed copy of the book from one of my favorite local independent bookstores, Main Point Books.

Grab a copy for yourself, for a friend, for the local library.

It’s really special to have this final book finally releasing, and I can’t wait to write your names in them.

order a signed copy!

Bozho friends!

I wanted to share a few notes from my summer journal, which is always a combination of thoughts and writing about what’s happening in life to quotes and sections from the books I’m reading.

Currently, I am reading The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. He writes:

True artists create from the place of no-mind, from inner stillness.

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This is so true, though I’ve never experienced it worded in this particular way. There is a point when I am writing poetry and my books that things clear out—I’m not quite thinking anymore from my mind, but alchemizing from my heart to the page.

And I’m learning how to do that in different ways in my life.

Read more

Around 7am yesterday, I found out that Glen Hansard passed on. When I first saw the post about it on Instagram, it felt fake—my brain couldn’t seem to believe it, to let the reality sink in.

The mysteries and intricacies of death are not new to us as humans, and we have varying degrees of avoidance of death as a portal.

But this passing was so unexpected, and of someone so beloved, the wound will remain open for a long time.

I have been listening to Glen’s music since I was about eighteen.

I saw him in concert years ago, and it was a truly sacred experience.

His voice has been with me on road trips, through the birth of my children, in former seasons as a church leader and then as a writer, in grief and in celebration.

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In my first book, Glory Happening, I wrote a chapter titled Glen, about that concert I’d mentioned.

Here’s an excerpt:

…We were listening for God. He began the show with an a cappella version of one of his songs, and I knew I’d stopped breathing by the time it was over. If I could have hushed the world, I would have, so that they could hear that still, small voice.

We tell ourselves that worship happens in the proper places at the proper times, when we go to church and do holy things and work hard to take part in the sacred and good. But it seems to me that Jesus changed that with every day that he lived, surprising people with healing by mud, with touching the untouchable, making the unholy places perfectly sacred again.

I keep listening to his voice because it points me back to myself and back to God, back to the gift of hope, a fire lit in the heart that cannot be put out.

Glen was born and grew up in Dublin, and began busking in the streets at a young age. His passion for storytelling is abundantly clear in his music, from the complexities of relationships to the journey of learning to care more deeply for one another as human beings, his Irish heart and voice ringing clear and true.

About a decade ago, we lived in Atlanta, and I’d drive about an hour from where I lived to give guitar lessons to one my best friend’s daughters. On those drives, I listened to Glen’s music. As I was understanding who I am as a Potawatomi woman, storyteller, singer-songwriter, and healer, his narratives and clear Celtic voice were a balm for me.

His voice is a voice of fire, that has always been true. And fire feeds fire—Glen’s fire helping others find their way in the world, helping me find my way in mine.

For so many people in so many different ways, Glen’s music and voice is a balm, a guide, a sort of compass for how we live in this liminal world.

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Yesterday, not long after I found out about his passing on, I prayed for Glen. I lit a candle and sent love to him through the shkode, the fire, as he travels the Otherworld, as he moves in spaces we cannot understand.

I wept all morning, throughout the day, as I listened to his music while getting groceries. I played my favorite songs of his on the piano and cried while I sang them.

Below is a tribute to Glen with one of my favorite songs of his, Rare Bird.

Glen was a huge advocate for those who live on the margins—the unhoused community, those who have endured abuse, people finding their way in a world that is harsh and unloving at times.

One of my favorite performances to watch is this concert in the National Library Dublin from a few years ago, a charity event during COVID for Safe Ireland, an organization advocating for those who suffer from domestic violence.

(Donate to this organization here)

In Anishinaabe, we call the northern lights “waawaate”—and this word describes the dancing of the ancestors as lights, how they move and show us who they are in a world and a way we cannot always understand.

We believe that those who pass to the spirit world travel the Milky Way, the Spirit Path, as they transition to another kind of existence.

As Glen moves and transitions through the veils of space and time, may we honor his waa—his glow, his moving light that continues to pulse through the music, words, stories and embodiments that we receive as medicine in this lifetime.

Sign up here

An event you should know about: a virtual workshop on deepening ecologies of care by my dear friend Gabes Torres!

Registration ends August 18th, you can click the Instagram post below for more information:

Learn about + Support Gabes

I am really excited to announce a Fall Immersion Writing Program with Kripalu!

This event will go throughout October, and I encourage you to sign up early and claim a spot—these spaces will be tender, embodied, and full of care.

Learn more here

Writing Our Way Back to the Analog

In a world of endless scrolling, fractured attention, and digital noise, what happens when we slow down to place pen to paper? What wisdom becomes available when we return to the intimacy of handwriting, the rhythm of breath, the movement of the body, and the sacred act of listening deeply to ourselves?

This year’s Fall Writing Program invites you into a collective remembering—an exploration of writing not simply as productivity or performance, but as ritual, refuge, transmission, and creative awakening. Together, we will explore how a return to the analog can nourish our imagination, deepen our presence, and reconnect us to the living pulse of our creativity.

There’s someone in our family who always jokes about how much she enjoys a good scream, letting everything out when it builds up for too long in her system, and I quietly envy that about her.

If you grow up in repressive emotional spaces, or in systems, like, for example, the purity movement, you learn to keep things buried, hidden, quieted, for days, months, years, decades.

It’s a tragedy to the human soul that yearns for expression in our precious, tender, liminal bodies.

So, I’ve been thinking about screaming, how it rises up from the gut and gives voice to something.

But it’s not always so simple; I won’t step out my front door in the suburban neighborhood I live in (very very close to our neighbors) and scream at the top of my lungs without probably bringing in some unwanted attention.

I can’t necessarily go to the woods and guarantee I don’t scare a runner to death, either. Sometimes, we cannot get the escape to the mountains or the retreat center to provide us what we need.

This is when we engage in our everyday sacredness, where we become crafty and honest, where we make space because we know we cannot live without it.

A few months ago I held a grief session in my car. Loud, guttural weeping, the kind that you let build and build up inside of you until you have space to release it.

I listened to a song I only listen to a handful of times a year, one particular song that helps me grieve in certain ways, that opens up a portion of my soul that I don’t always allow myself to retreat into.

So in that small parking lot on a quiet weekday morning, I wept and wept until I was ready to return home, back to work and life, something newly alchemized in me.

We just finished reading Francis Weller’s The Wild Edge of Sorrow in our book club, and we talked about how we are all grieving, holding something tender inside of ourselves, something that longs to be expressed out in the world, either in a very private way or on the collective level.

How can we curate a life that allows us to show up to our grief, that allows us to make space for what is needed?

1. We must think of time differently. I’ve been meditating in the mornings, and even if I wake up twenty to thirty minutes before other people in my house, there’s time, time to pray, to settle in, to sing or chant, to lay my body on the floor and ask to be led. If we understand time as expansive, it’s easier to access.

2. We must be intricate in the way we create space for ourselves. Carve out a corner (or a room!) in your home for spiritual care, whether it’s a chair in a corner with a small table, an altar in your bedroom, or some other space. Once you have that, choose when and how to get there, and once you’re there, stay a while. Practice moving in the sacred flow of all things from these spaces you’re curating.

3. Get offline and get into a journal. Journals aren’t just notes on the day, they’re time capsules, reminding us of the journey we’ve been on. Every few weeks I find myself returning to previous journals from the last few months to remember— an important dream that’s resurfacing, a quote from a book, a simple, quiet thought that won’t let go of me. We engage our souls here, and while Instagram is great for some kinds of inspiration, it’s not the same thing as writing your heart into a page to return to yourself.

4. Practice surrender. And practice it again and again. As someone who really loves control, surrender is incredibly difficult, but that’s what all of this is—we are learning how to surrender to the universe, to the flow of the world, to Creator, to our ancestors, to all of it, again and again and again. This is a lifelong endeavor, and if we hope to move in our grief, if we hope to engage the sacredness of our souls and our bodies as one, we must empty ourselves out and allow ourselves to be moved through.

I don’t want you to think that you must escape your everyday life to find the healing you need.

I don’t want you to think that you must get to a retreat center in order to get the right answer you’ve been looking for (and I say this as a retreat leader!).

I don’t want you to feel like you’re waiting for someone to give you permission to go on the journey you need.

I want you to notice that in your everyday life, there are windows into The Sacred.

I want you to notice that simple rituals carry incredible impact.

I want you to take the necessary risks to practice embodiment, the kind that brings you home to yourself and this earth.

I want us to know healing in all the ways it can show up in this lifetime.

And a special opportunity from my friend Dr. Rosales Meza:

A sacred 12 week journey to unlearn oppressive work patterns, & Ancestral, Earth, & Spirit-led wisdom for sacred work that is good for your spirit, the collective, & our Mother Earth

For Healers, Therapists, Practitioners, & Spiritual Entrepreneurs.

learn more here

Hello friends,

Thank you for coming along on this journey of an experiment with a book club. I have so enjoyed diving into The Wild Edge of Sorrow with you, both through these posts and with those who could make it for the gatherings.

We are definitely going to do this again! I will announce the next book sometime in the fall.

For now, we come to the last…

Read more

Enlightenment is absolute cooperation with the inevitable

—Anthony de Mello

I come here, as I sit at my favorite cafe in order to write, to the point of needing to write the thing that I’ve been avoiding.

The thing about bringing deep embodiment, presence and wholeness to book-writing is that it can never be half-assed.

I must show up fully, every time, and that often means I need a lot of space for the build-up.

Today, I open the proposal for a new book, and it all drops into my gut, where I often feel the medicine, the presence, the energy, the sacred flow move in near-overwhelming ways.

We think we write books, but really, they write us, taking us on their journey, bringing us into their stories, their realities. Often, I go willingly. But sometimes, I hide a little, waiting to be ready, if that’s ever really possible.

So when this happens, I know it’s time. Time to begin, time to go, time to trust, time to do the work that calls me to it.

I write, and as I do, I stop to take deep breaths. I sit back against the booth and tears well up in my eyes because this is it, the thing I do in our world, the medicine I bring.

I couldn’t deny it or run from it—I will always be found.

So I write more, but as I do, I feel a little overwhelmed. I open my phone, check social media, try to go somewhere else for a moment, because I am afraid—

afraid of the power of the words

afraid of the energy’s flow

afraid of the medicine’s potency.

What if this tender and fierce container, the frame of my very body, catches fire and I disappear from this plane of existence?

What if the medicine is so strong I cannot recover?

A young man walks into the cafe wearing a shirt that reads

Art will bring light and change the world

and I want to hug him, to know his name and story, to scream yes! across this tiny room where people gather for all sorts of reasons—don’t they know?

Can’t they sense the medicine moving, the waft of sweetgrass, the presence of art in the atmosphere from me and everyone else here to create, that does, indeed, change the whole world on a cosmic level?

The Anishinaabemowin word for the Northern Lights is waawaate, referring to the dance and movement of the lights—our ancestors—across the sky.

They dance and remind us to dance, to move and to sing, to give and to practice sacred imagination, to trust the medicine and energy gifted us by the tender fierce Universe that forms and teaches us each day how to show up.

I take a few more deep breaths, return to this document, and ask that if I burn up from the medicine that flows through me, I at least get to dance in the hearts of those gathered here before I make my way to the sky.

AUTUMN’S ABUNDANCE IS COMING!

Finally! On September 1st, the last book in my children’s series, An Indigenous Celebration of Nature, will be available everywhere books are sold!

Order a copy here

Here is a sneak peek at one of the pages that I really love:

This book is truly all about abundance, and how Segmekwe gives us what we need in such rich ways. Abundance is there for us, and in response, we learn to become people who practice abundance for ourselves and one another.

Subscribe now

I am even more excited to tell you that you can order a signed copy of the book through one of my favorite bookstores, Main Point Books!

It warms my heart every time I get to put the name of someone from the Liminality Journal community in my books. Whether the book is for you or a kiddo in your life, please order one and let me write you a little note inside!

order your signed copy here

learn more here

Plus! Download a FREE seek and find activity sheet to go along with your book order! Grab it below:

Autumn's Abundance 9780593577875 Seek & Find Activity Sheet

3.18MB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

Now, a few more events I’d like you to know about:

In my book Living Resistance I explore the ancestral realm, which helps ground us in where & who we are today while exploring our ties to those who came before us.

I’m holding a workshop for us to explore this together.

get your ticket here

And announcing an upcoming event with between myself and author, activist, contemplative Liza Rankow.

This event will be beautiful, you won’t want to miss it—tickets are free! Grab one at the link below.

free tickets here

Hello friends,

I hope you have had some quiet, tender moments easing into summer.

I was with my youngest son in the Wind River Valley last week, leading a retreat at a beautiful ranch (more on that in another post). And we are now back to book club, writing dates, and all the things!

In case I haven’t told you lately, I love my work.

I love writing this su…

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This is my last piece for this Indigenous Grief at America250 series.

Chii migwetch for listening, for sharing in this space with me.

I am on a ranch in stunning Wyoming this week, the lands of the Mountain Shoshone people.

It’s the perfect place to be—to rest, to hold space, to read, to pray, to gather medicine and share it.

A dear friend of mine asked me what my grief would like to say during this week as we head toward the 4th of July, and I keep going back to the first line in my book Native:

Indigenous bodies are bodies that remember.

Our bodies hold memory. The body of Segmekwe, Mother Earth, holds memory. If this is all true, then colonialism has done a hell of a job, because acrosss the world and throughout history, we’ve become disconnected—our bodies from hers.

And this is where so much of my grief sits, and so much of our collective, often un-named grief rests.

I am here leading a retreat with a small groups of folks nestled in the Wind River Valley, the land of the Mountain Shoshone, the Eastern Shoshone & Northern Arapaho. And as I prepared for this retreat, I knew one thing to be true: I wouldn’t be fully prepared until I was on the land.

This is what we as Indigenous people understand about place: you can’t fully know yourself without knowing place. You cannot fully find yourself unless you listen to the stories of the stones, winds, rivers, mountains, birds, ants that abide by you.

So I’ve been doing a lot of listening, and believe me when I tell you that when we show up ready to listen, everyone else is ready to speak.

My son and I walked a labyrinth that’s down near the water, one made of stone, one that calls you in whether you’re ready or not.

And as we walked, we simply asked Mother Earth what she’d like to say.

And what she told me was so simple but exactly what we need.

She said

Re-

Re-

Re-

Restore. Revive. Reimagine.

Words with re- as a prefix are about regeneration, about

again

again

again.

And that’s the lesson she was giving me, the one she gives us—she is the ultimate embodiment of re- re- re-, again again again, in the cycles, the seasons, the way she continues to live on despite the harm we’ve caused her.

So this is the message I give to you, in my own Indigenous grief at America250, I ask all of us to ask to try again, again again, to

reinvest

reimagine

redesign

revive

restore

rejuvenate

relieve.

Add more of your own in the comments section:

Leave a comment

Please find your way back to her. Trace the lines of your ancestors and ask how they cared for her. Learn from the wisdom of those around you and let their wisdom guide you. Be humble and ask questions. And listen, listen, listen, and listen more when you think you’ve listened enough.

This is my hope for all of us, and my hope for a future America and a future world.

It’s coming! September 1st, my newest book, the final book to close out the Indigenous Celebration of Nature series, will be out!!

My next children’s book, Autumn’s Abundance, is releasing soon and B&N Rewards and Premium Members get 25% off all preorders this week! Premium Members get an additional 10% off. Use coupon code PREORDER25 at checkout to preorder your copy!

This special pre-order opportunity only runs for three days, so grab your copy now.

This new book holds a special place in my heart. I was born on the Autumn Equinox, and this story about Bo embracing abundance is really beautiful. I hope you enjoy it and stay tuned for more preorder opportunities!

ORDER HERE

Now, onto Indigenous Grief at America250.

Chii migwetch for everyone’s response to the first post, for being here to listen and hold space. As I am sure many of us know, grief is not easy. It comes in so many shapes and sizes, and I tend to think of Grief as someone who comes to visit now and again.

When they knock on the door, we may as well answer.

I just want to touch on a few stories today, and we can thread our way through them together. Maybe it won't make sense, because it’s not linear, but time moves differently than we think.

So let’s lean in and see what the spirit of Story has to speak to us.

I led an event recently with another Indigenous woman, and we were sharing this knowing that as soon as the event ended and we went inside for a break, we’d get bombarded with questions that stem from the sentiment of I didn’t really know there were Native people around here followed by questions that deeply reflected that.

I was getting snacks at a table and in small talk fashion the woman turned to trauma as a point of conversation. Didn’t I hear the story on NPR? she asked. No, I said, but that kind of violence happened throughout history at boarding schools to Native children. Oh, but things are still happening today! she replied.

I found an excuse to walk away.

This is an interesting phenomenon, and I don’t know what to call it, so I’ll name its essence: it’s performative ally-ship, centering the non-Native person as being educated and caring about things happening to Indigenous people by bringing up something traumatic in conversation to impress us.

Except, it’s backfiring, because it’s not impressive. It’s traumatic.

Let me say it like this: when I look into the eyes of a stranger, of a new friend, of someone who wants to position themselves as an ally to Indigenous people, I want to be respected for the wisdom and history I hold in my body, culture and lineage, and then I want to ask how we can move forward together.

I do not want to have conversations about our trauma. We teach on it all the time. We live them constantly, flowing through our bloodstream, our consciousness. We share those stories all the time, and when we break from sharing those stories, we want peace.

I live only a few hours away from Carlisle, Pennsylvania, where the first Indian boarding school was created.

When we drive through Carlisle, we flip off signs. We turn the music up louder. We seethe.

And part of that seething is that people don’t know. They don’t know the history of boarding schools, how so many of our ancestors went there and, if they weren’t killed, were deeply severed from their cultures. This is the America we carry.

It started with Carlisle and spread to over 500 operated schools across the country, some still open, yes, still operating, but the trauma living, living, living in our families, in our bodies.

Some facts about Carlisle:

• over 10,000 Indigenous kids forced to go there

• around 200 died while attending, though, like many boarding schools, the number could be higher

• created by that fucker Army Captain Richard Henry Pratt who coined the term “Kill the Indian Save the Man”

• it is now a monument and army war college

Barding School Healing Coalition

Our lands and building and spaces are sites of deep trauma and horror, and they need healing and care. It’s like Mshike Minis (Turtle Island) versus Chemokmankik (America)—what does the land speak versus the violence and institutions forced over the land?

What if we could quiet the voices of violence for a little while and ask what the waters hold?

I live near Valley Forge, PA, site of Washington’s continental army staying during a harsh winter. But there’s always more to the story—especially the Indigenous story.

From Rebecca Nagle’s new podcast, First America:

We’ve been told the American Revolution was fought over taxes and representation. But the last complaint, the thing our founders were most angry about, goes like this.

He has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages.

He has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages.

There’s a racial slur in the Declaration of Independence. Nativepeople are called savages. Alongside those lofty ideals, our founders included their deep hatred for Indigenous people.

There’s a tree friend of mine that I visit often, and next to her sits an old cannon. I tease her, just stretch your roots out and tip it over, and we chuckle. But we mean it, and in our dark laughter we whisper enough violence, enough.

Enough, enough, enough.

Here is what I want to say about healing.

Wounds heal when we properly bandage them. Wounds heal when we ask how they got there in the first place and we apply the right medicine.

The medicine of this moment is naming what hurts. It’s letting Indigenous people name what’s been hurting, it’s letting Segmekwe, Mother Earth, share her precious voice with us, not so we can jump to an unmanageable solution, but because we care enough about her to listen.

Healing is listening.

And at America250, I just want us to get quiet enough to listen to what’s been moving beneath the surface of this nation for years, years, years.

Once again, my friend Rebecca Nagle comes out with an incredible podcast as we move toward America250. 🎙️Tune in to First America - premiering June 22, 2026 🎙️

Listen to the first episode

This summer, as our country celebrates the 250-year anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, First America tells the true story of our country’s founding and how our current political moment is 250 years in the making.

Written and reported by award-winning journalist Rebecca Nagle (Cherokee Nation), First America brings together Indigenous experts and historians to unveil how the founders’ treatment of Indigenous nations is the root of authoritarianism in the United States.

Featuring:

• Maggie Blackhawk (Fond du Lac Ojibwe), New York University

• Ned Blackhawk (citizen of the Te-Moak Tribe of Western Shoshone), Yale University

• Phil Deloria (descendant of the Standing Rock and Yankton Sioux tribes), Harvard University

• Nick Estes (citizen of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe), University of Minnesota

FIRST AMERICA

• Follow @rebeccanagle on Instagram & X & TikTok

• Follow @rebeccanagle.bsky.social on Bluesky

And if you want to go further, you can use these taglines as you share:

(Native identified): “My name is _______ and I am a citizen of _______. The United States didn’t start with the Declaration of Independence. It started with Indigenous people.”

(Non-Native identified): “My name is ________ on _________ land. The United States didn’t start with the Declaration of Independence. It started with Indigenous people.”

Happy Solstice, everyone! Enjoy this reading of Summer’s Magic!

The mighty oak has fallen.

The 1,200 year old Major Oak tree in Sherwood Forest has officially passed on, and I’m here to honor them.

This is one of those days, when I woke up to the news of their passing, and came here, to you, to this community, right away.

We grieve when our elders pass, don’t we? When we see that their bodies no longer contain who they are, that they have moved to another realm to look after us from there?

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I write in Everything Is a Story about the oak:

The oak is mighty in more ways than one and contributes to their environment in countless ways. Oak leaves, as they fall in autumn and remain on the ground through winter, purify ground water, prevent flooding, and help creatures live in safe ecosystems.

Oaks have provided wood for boats and lodging for centuries, acorns— ground into flour for sustenance and nourishment—have provided food to many Indigenous cultures worldwide, and oak trees remain a symbol of strength for many communities and nations.

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We are seeing, in real time, the life cycle of an elder come to an end. And how are we to feel here, now?

I feel empty, yet full of gratitude and hope.

I’ve cried this morning, and then I’ve been comforted.

If anything, trees remind us we aren’t alone.

I’ve been remembering.

In my late teens, early twenties, I dreamt of getting a huge tree tattooed up my side.

I’d re-read scripture passages about trees steadied beside living waters, about trees that remind us to stay steady ourselves.

In our Potawatomi culture, the tree is mtek, and provides for us—shade, shelter, fruit, sap for the syrup that has always nourished our people.

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Trees are our elders, and when we lose them, we hold grief and gratitude.

I met a Grandmother Tree the other day, and she’s here for me, right in my community, the most outspoken, most sassy tree I’ve ever met with. I love her.

And I’ve been thinking of Grandmother Willow from Disney’s Pocahontas—yes, despite all the problematic elements of this film, Grandmother Willow holds a really soft spot in me, an elder who is there for a young woman who grieves.

The willow is sacred, tending to our deepest needs, medicine waving in her slender branches.

The trees, the trees, the trees.

What would we do without them?

From Everything Is a Story:

As oak trees age, they often become hollowed out on the

inside, making room for many different creatures to shelter

in their cavities. I think of this as I imagine a story aging.

Stories become so huge that they shape societies and leave us

asking ourselves who is sheltering inside those stories— who are

the shells giving safety to, and why?

The Major Oak in Sherwood Forest will not be cut down.

They will remain there, as the elder they are, a monument to their many-centuried life.

And as their body settles even more deeply into the place they’ve lived, they will become the hollowed-out shelter they were always meant to become, both physically and ancestrally.

Their body will literally become home in new ways again and again.

How lucky are we to live in a world with trees?

How lucky are we to get to learn from them, to grieve with them, to literally breathe the oxygen they gift us?

I invite you to read “Trees” by , shared on his Substack:

David Whyte

Trees

TreesIn writing about trees the hand should burst a thousand leaves on the page or spread in silhouette the curled branches between words so that as we read the white hollows between words can be the wind or in certain poems, stillness so that as eyes descend the page, smoke rises straight toward heaven as the lines descend down to…

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4 months ago · 233 likes · 7 comments · David Whyte

So when we witness our dear oaks fall into their eternal sleep, what should we learn from them? What might they speak to us? If you could get close, really close, and put your forehead against the Major Oak’s rough skin, place your hands on their belly, on their roots, what might they say?

We are eternally linked.

Your whole life is meant to prepare you to become shelter for others.

When we fall asleep, we still remain monuments to peace.

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Spend some time with a tree this weekend, either physically or in your sacred imagination, where your soul meets the depths of the world. Let them speak to you, thank them for their elder wisdom, and ask them to help you become a shelterer in this life.

Excited to share the live link for you to register for this IN-PERSON workshop at Main Point Books in Wayne, PA! Spaces limited, reserve your spot now!

Register here!

Hi all,

We are discussing chapters 4 and 5 of The Wild Edge of Sorrow this week, and then we get a nice little break because I will be out west leading a retreat (please join us!)

save your spot!

This Friday is our next book club date. If you haven’t been to the previous ones, no worries! You’re welcome to join. They aren’t recorded, simply so we can be fully present to our time together. You’re all welcome any week.

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I am coming to you today with a mini-series that I’ll be sharing over the next few weeks as we approach America250.

As complex people who are grounded first and foremost in kinship, care, and solidarity, I want to say that there is so much that is special about the country we live in, and the ways people from so many backgrounds and cultures have shown up for one another (including in this space).

I am so grateful for that.

But, I’m also noticing some grief and anxiety rising in my heart as we approach the 4th of July, and it’s not an ambiguous grief—it’s Indigenous grief.

It’s the grief that comes with invisibility and loss, it’s grief from years upon years of colonization and living under a government that doesn’t value us, our ways of being in the world, our spiritual practices, or the lands and waters we love so much.

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These are my stories, my opinions, my experiences. I don’t speak for all Potawatomi people or all Indigenous people. I share my grief from my own well, and know that I am not alone in it.

So, I ask you to stay close to me here in these coming weeks. Bear witness and don’t turn away. Listen and take it in with me.

I’m not asking you to abandon your celebrations in July, or to disown everything you love about this country. I’m asking you to become more of the complex, sacred human being I know you already are.

We become more of who we are together.

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I want to start here, with who America was to my Potawatomi ancestors, and a reflection on a decade since Standing Rock.

First, who is America to those who came before me?

My ancestors called America chemokmankik, which I’ve been taught translates loosely to “the land of the long butchering knives” referring to the violence of our first and continual contact with settlers who colonized this land and our people. It includes the bayonets used against my ancestors on the Trail of Death, the forced removal of over 800 Potawatomi people from their home in Indiana in 1838.

Read about the Trail of Death

Once we understand that Turtle Island, our home, is sacred, it is easy to understand that the institutions built on top of our home are grounded in violence and force. I hold much of this at a safe distance to protect my own heart, but it’s still there, lingering in everyday interactions with the psyche of America.

Which brings me to a decade ago, in the Spring and Fall of 2016, as Indigenous protestor and their allies gathered at Standing Rock to fight against the Dakota Access Pipeline which threatened the waters and peoples of the area on their sacred lands. This particular fight would last nearly a year with repercussions continuing today.

(we listened to this music video almost every day for a year)

This was a pivotal moment in my life. I was just become a published author, and asking how I wanted to show up in the world. The day I saw dogs being sent across barriers to brutally attack protestors, I felt the present-day realities of being Indigenous in a very real way.

Read more about Standing Rock

Visit the tribe's website

As I witnessed tear gas and rubber bullets, livestream after livestream of my Indigenous relatives being told their cultures, stories, and lives don’t matter, in the face of an upcoming election of Donald Trump, let’s just say I became radicalized in a way I wasn’t before.

The struggle against DAPL is far from over. You can read more here.

(the year I met Peggy Flanagan at a Christian social justice festival and was reminded I am never alone in this work)

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I began writing for Sojourners in January of 2017, after I hadn’t heard from them for months because my piece had gone to a junk folder. But it showed up exactly when it needed to, just as Trump became president for the first time. I asked what my role as a worship leader was at the time, and along the way I was growing in my writing voice, in the voice of my activism, asking what the hell the church was going to do in the face of such violence, white supremacy, hate, colonialism and greed.

But with two young kids and no understanding of how to regulate my nervous system, I was exhausted, opening up the floodgates of my own trauma and grief as an Indigenous woman.

And I realized in that season that being Indigenous is about being a threat to the status quo in every way—socially, politically, spiritually.

That was a decade ago, and as I chose to become a full-time writer and public speaker, I was choosing the medicine of my voice. I was choosing to name and uncover, and with that came a lot of my own grief at who I believed America was.

I didn’t learn about chemokmankik until a year or two later as I was studying the Potawatomi language. But once you know, you cannot un-know it.

So, what I want to say is that we all have a version of this country that works for us, and we all have things we can un-learn and grieve about who this country isn’t.

Are we willing?

I’ve written before that in the psyche of America, we don’t fully exist; we are remnants of a violent past, or things that got in the way of progress, those “merciless Indian savages,” or the wise sages who live out in the wilderness and speak to animals where no one can access us.

But we aren’t quite real.

And I deeply, deeply grieve that.

And I’m asking you to grieve it with me.

I’ve got some wonderful events coming up this summer that I want you to know about. I love getting to meet folks from this community both in person and online, so please come say hello!

First, in June:

On June 22nd, join me through the as we hold a special retreat with Indigenous medicine woman, healer, author Asha Frost!

This will be a space to hold solstice medicine, to spend time in community, and ask how we share our medicine with the world around us. Hope you can join us!

Tickets here!

And make sure you’re subscribed to the Aki Institute newsletter so you’re up to date on all our future events (at least four more planned this year!)

The Aki Institute

Online Retreat with Asha Frost!

Hello friends…

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3 months ago · 2 likes · 1 comment · The Aki Institute

Next, a half-day conference in the Minneapolis area! I’ll be sharing the keynote in the morning on June 27th.

Soul Conference 2026 creates space for all people to learn and grow as we share wisdom and build skills to better care for the Earth and one another in community.

Register here!

What are you doing at the end of June? Come spend a week with me in the Wyoming wilderness—retreat and community gatherings in the evenings, exploration (and yes, naps) during the day!

I am really excited about this gathering and there are a few spots left, so sign up today!

register here!

Next, July events:

I love leading journaling and community workshops at local bookstores! And I am excited to focus on my 2023 book Living Resistance for this upcoming workshop on July 12th at Main Point Books in Wayne, PA!

Mark your calendar now, link to register will be available soon!

Let’s gather online this summer!

First, a workshop on Living Resistance with our ancestors, a 2-hour online workshop to ask how we gain wisdom from those who came before us in this moment we are living through.

July 15th, 12-2pm ET! Only 25 spots available, so grab your ticket now.

Get your ticket here

And on July 29th, we are gathering to practice holistic are as writers. I believe that being a writer involves all of who we are. How can we embrace our creativity through that lens? Let’s learn how together!

Tickets here

Onward friends!

This week is a big one for this book, moving through the gates of grief.

I’ll share first this quote from the second chapter, and then move into chapter 3, where the bulk of our time will be spent this week.

To be able to freely move in and out of the soul’s inner chambers, we must first clear the way. This requires meaningful ways to speak of…

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I was recently getting dressed in my office, where I keep a lot of my work clothes in a closet, and as I got undressed, I noticed the picture of my Grandma Downing on my altar.

It’s the pamphlet from her funeral, the in memory of paper that I’d managed to keep all these years after losing her in high school. And as I saw the picture of my Grandma Downing looking at me with her quiet smile, I thought oh my god, cover yourself up!

But the next instant, I caught myself.

After all, part of why I am here at all is because of her. I’m an extension of her very body, now in a celestial form. I carry her with me, and so this body, in its naked form, has always been known.

I am 37 years old. And as an Indigenous woman and pastor’s step-child who grew up in the cult practices and thoughts of the southern Baptist purity movement, missionary exploits, and more in southwest Missouri and other conservative, patriarchal spaces beyond that, let me tell you I’ve had a difficult relationship to my body for many, many years.

For all the complaints about perimenopause, and believe me, they are varied and justified, there is also the coming-home-to-ourselves part of it grounded in the I-don’t-give-a-shit-anymore space deep within us where we attempt to de-program ourselves from the judgments and expectations of society.

Add any religious trauma onto that, and we’ve got quite a journey for ourselves.

Yes, we are women in aging bodies, but also, we are strong and resilient as hell.

So a lot of this current journey for me has been coming to know and love my hormonally adventurous, aging body with her stretch marks, tattoos, weak ankles, bad eyesight, cute nose and thick brown hair.

And if I am learning to love her, maybe I can heal some of what my Grandma couldn’t heal for herself, with her own body. Maybe if I learn something about myself here, she learns something about herself on the other side, too.

I’ve been learning a lot from The Ancestors lately, and my friend Robert would remind us that when we call in the ancestors or name them, we call in the “well ones,” which speaks to the complexity of those who haven’t quite healed yet and those who are doing some sort of sacred work on the other side of this thin veil we inhabit.

I’d add to this that the work we do in our lifetime has ripple effects of healing for the ones who came before us, the ones who couldn’t quite get there, the ones who just didn’t know the way. This includes my Grandma Avis, a Potawatomi woman who maybe didn’t always know what it meant to be Potawatomi, or the language for healing, or the depth and care and fire it took to be alive and well and to carry our stories and culture.

But part of this healing is letting our ancestors see us naked, in all the ways—in our bodies, in our spirits, in our minds, even (and especially) letting the ancestors of the earth penetrate the ego we hold onto so closely.

Recently the pine tree in the neighbor’s yard reminded me of their wisdom and care in providing us shade—they dance and laugh against the raging sunlight so we can find shelter.

And also recently, Raven came to visit, reminding me that I, too, am a shapeshifter.

Grandmother Spider walked up the window of my office and told me to remember that I am part of the web of belonging much bigger than myself.

Then a vision of water visited, trickled on my head, asking me to accept what is holy and good.

And every time I ask God, Mamogosnan, Segmekwe, Saint Brigid, Mother Mary, the elders and guides, to show up and speak to me, they will. It might not be what I want to hear or how I want to hear it, but they will.

But we’ve got to allow ourselves to be seen.

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So, a few portals to nakedness for those who might need some space to explore this more deeply:

• meditation as nakedness (return to the breath, the body, surrender)

• nakedness as nakedness (dance naked in your bedroom without shame)

• poetry and/or journaling as nakedness (how do we allow ourselves to be loved?)

• practice vulnerability with those you trust (let a friend know that you’re journeying)

• listen to the earth, and speak less (sit with a tree, dog, raven, moss, ant, and let them teach you who you are)

• engage with the earth’s elements (water, air, fire, stone all bring you back to your stories)

At the core of this is the question: Am I loved?

The answer is yes. Of course you are. Of course I am. Sacredly, deeply, ancestrally loved.

We belong in this large sacred spiral of time, and within that existence, we are deeply, deeply loved.

I invite you into that space today, into your own story, into healing that has ripple effects beyond this lifetime. I invite you to receive love in your own surrender.

Minneapolis friends! Come see me on June 27th at the Summer of Soul Conference!

tickets here!

Buy my ebook poetry collection, Thresholds of Alchemy, now available on my website!

Purchase here

There’s still time to join our book club if you’d like—we’ve had one session so far, and even if you don’t come to the live sessions, I share reflections and journal prompts each week. I’ve already loved this and it certainly won’t be the last book we explore together! So please join us!

Become a paid subscriber:

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I am really excited to introduce this book to all of you. I’ve thought a few times of doing a book club, but then I think everyone is doing a book club, no one would join me.

Then I found this book.

And as soon as I started reading it, I thought, it would be so powerful to spend time as community with these words.

And here we are! I know man…

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I was sad today
that when I woke
there was no poem
waiting to be given
to you, no comment
given back into a 
digital room that
feels so real we can
hardly believe it.

I was sad today
that I couldn't feel
the same movement
of spirit between us,
so I showed up one
more time to these
pages, to this poem,
to you, in hopes that
maybe in our sadness
we are more deeply
connected by that 
thread of kinship 
than we were before.

I read this morning that 
true Presence has no
beginning and no end,
and I think that's exactly
it--that every time we see
ourselves here, we are
instantly dipped into
a river with no beginning
and no end, a sacred well
that has no bottom, a glimpse
at the souls gathered here
to proclaim that we will
always, somehow, belong
to one another and all 
the healing that has ever
moved between us.

Maybe we don't have
to be so sad, after all.

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Friends, don’t forget, if you’d like to be part of our summer book club, you can become a paid subscriber (as little as 6 bucks a month) and either follow along in the weekly posts with journal prompts or join our online weekly gatherings.

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And in case you missed it, I’ve released a collection of poetry!

Thresholds of Alchemy is about the portals we pass through in life, and what they teach us about ourselves and The Sacred that moves within and around us.

Hope you enjoy it.

Buy the ebook here!