5 Mother Earth Practices for Summer

a series

Friends,

Thanks to everyone who wished me well and promised to stick around as my wrist healed—it’s a lot better, but still tender, so I’m taking it easy with my writing and my climbing for a bit longer.

I spent last week in southern Arizona with a group of Indigenous women, sinking into the goodness of Mother Earth, into tender conversations, and into immense and much-needed care. I’m so grateful.

And I also want you to know how much this community means to me, all of my subscribers, everyone who opens these words in your inbox and takes them in, everyone who orders my books and shows up to my speaking events, who holds sacred space out there in the world.

We doubt a lot that community can be found online, but I’ve known this to be true time and time again. So, thank you for showing up. Let’s lean into summer together.

We’re here, we’ve made it: summer is upon us, in all the heat and stickiness, in the dirt of the garden beds and the shade of the mighty oak trees. Here we rest and dance and escape that heat and ask what rebirth feels like in all the ways.

So, I thought it only fitting to write a series on Mother Earth practices.

Here’s what I mean by practices:

a mindset characterized by the various ways we embody relationship with Segmekwe, remembering our connection to her, recognizing how our bodies, minds and spirits connect in various ways to the lands and waters around us

And as I write to you, I encourage you to find your own ways to connect with Mother Earth. In fact, you’re probably already doing so right now, whether it’s an early morning walk before the heat sets in, daily prayer centered around care for your kin, mindfully eating your meals, or bird watching from a favorite window.

Don’t underestimate your beautifully sacred connection with the world around you.

Photo by Ben White on Unsplash

So, why do we need this series?

I come back again and again— through various wisdom traditions, through the countless wisdom of elders from around the world— to the reality that we are disconnected from the lands and waters around us because colonization’s goal was to do just that.

And as we lean into this political season in the United States, as we continue to see genocide unfolding, mass starvation in various parts of the world, climate change, and governmental shifts that terrify us, we need to stay grounded, we need to remember who we are and who Mother Earth is.

That is what this series is about.

So over the next few months, we will be asking questions of our relationship to Segmekwe, and exploring ways to find ourselves, ways to get into our bodies and souls, ways to remember who we are on this gorgeous planet.

So, 5 Mother Earth-based Practices for this summer:

1. Practicing holistic connection

2. Letting your relationship with Mother Earth drive your politics, social dynamics & beliefs, and not the other way around

3. Grounding yourself in practices of sustainability

4. Embracing childlikeness

5. Infusing spirituality into your daily life in respectful ways through Indigenous wisdom and earth-based care

So, let’s get to #1, Practicing holistic connection!

You know, as an author, and in a previous season as a worship leader, as someone studying social work in college, I’ve realized over the years that we must live and act in holistic ways, because that’s the most honest way to do our work in the world.

We can compartmentalize things up to a point, and then what happens is we begin to feel these uncomfortable shifts. Things aren’t lining up, making sense, we feel distracted and disconnected.

And as an author, that’s really, really bad news for my readers. If I am not connected to my writing, to the sacred act of sending words out into the world, there’s a consequence to that, and we will all feel it. You don’t get the fullness of who I am when I’m at my most honest and authentic, and I don’t feel like I’ve given you that, either.

So, every season of writing a new book, or being a keynote at speaking events or leading a workshop somewhere involves me making sure I find ways to stay grounded, to practice this holistic connection.

Because of colonization, we feel this sense of othering when it comes to our relationship with Mother Earth. So healing that connection is essential, not just for me, not just for Indigenous peoples, but for e v e r y o n e .

Everyone has an opportunity to practice reciprocity and care with Segmekwe. Everyone has the opportunity to create sacred space around this relationship.

It takes time and energy, yes, and an opening up when we’ve often been closed off. But there is so much healing in this connection to the lands and waters, to the animals, fires and air around us.

So, 3 ways to practice holistic connection this summer:

1. Love Letters to Mother Earth: this is a practice I encourage people to do all the time, or even lead people in on my retreats. Begin writing love letters to Mother Earth, and make them real, a real letter to a real loved one, as she is, as she has always been. Be honest about your relationship, where it’s been, where you hope it goes, and see what happens inside your heart and mind as you open up.

2. Talk to trees: when we light the spark of kinship, it’s hard to put it out. And when we begin living with the beings around us as kin, it affects every other part of our lives—our families, our work places, our mindset, our beliefs—and those ripple effects can transform communities. Begin with this simple thing, that when you are near a tree, you acknowledge them, thank them quietly for what they do for us, and let the relationship change you.

3. Let your art speak: we all have art living in us. I lead people through poetry writing prompts, and folks who have never written a poem in their lives show up, read their poems out loud, and all of us listeners, in tears, say, yes, yes, the poetry is in you. We need art to help us understand ourselves and the world. Art wakes us up to our realities, and helps us get grounded. Art is a holistic gift, and pairing our art with our relationship with the earth is timeless, a true, sacred gift.

Photo by Melissa Askew on Unsplash

Photo by James Wheeler on Unsplash

I want to share a lovely opportunity with you, from my friend and incredible teacher and grief guide, Mirabai Starr, who is hosting a space to help us unravel the myths of grief:

Have you felt pressured to rush or "fix" your natural process in the wake of a great loss?

Grief is a natural response to all flavors of heartbreak.

We have all experienced loss and whether someone you love died, you are going through a breakup, health diagnosis, or any other life shattering change, your loss counts.

Welcome to Wild Heart

A space of refuge where we welcome grief as a friend on the spiritual journey

You are invited to join a vast circle of grieving people who long for a space where we can enter into an authentic grieving process, where no one will try to correct or direct us and where the internal voices of shame that heap pain on top of pain grow quiet.

You can register by clicking here, and the event is totally free.

And lastly, thank you to everyone who continues to celebrate with Summer’s Magic! I recently did an event with Books of Wonder in NYC and with our local Barnes & Noble right outside Philly, and I can’t wait to meet more families who are honoring the seasons and asking big, beautiful questions of our relationship with Mother Earth.