Meeting & Remembering My Essential Self

I appreciate where I live and my relationship to the Earth and her creatures, here on the Sonoran Dessert.

I first experienced my relationship to the Earth and her children in New England (NE). At a very young age I would spend hours in the woods that abutted the cul-de-sac we lived on. There was a swamp and seven caves and I was small and skinny enough to slip in and play for hours, always with one of my dogs trailing along. I enjoyed my time with angels, fairies, gnomes, snakes, frogs, caterpillars, ducks – you name it. I played with them, saved them and tried to take them home. I remember wearing snakes wrapped around my legs as jewelry, and putting frogs in my pockets, and squishing butterflies in my hands (by accident of course). There and in those experiences I was instantly transported to my “essential self” for an afternoon and untethered from the confusion of home life.

It was during those early years I first had awareness of – my ability to communicate with the animal, plant and mineral kingdoms. I then forgot this ability in my late teens as life became more complicated and heady for me as I operated in my survival mode. I was distracted!

As I matured and traveled through many nature experiences in NE, my idea of myself and the natural world expanded and so did my consciousness of myself as One with All That Is. I remembered my essential self again in my early thirties during a long period of time I spent living in the woods and sleeping under the stars in a sleeping bag. I woke up during that period and haven’t gone back to sleep again! My essential shift from surviving to thriving was initiated. 
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Today my relationship with the natural world keeps me connected to my essential self. Sitting in nature, consciously connecting to my breath, and entering the silence between my thoughts gently opens my heart and relaxes my body. From this state I know myself – self-reliant, interdependent and free!

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