What I have been thinking of lately, however, is actually related to the alleged theme of this Substack; that is the magnetic pull of digital life and how it can become the antithesis to unearthing our own wise, wild, and free nature.

To me, a key facet of the wild woman energy is embodiment. Living in and with and through these delightfully quirky, fleshy, magnificent wonders that so many of us take for granted (if we have the privilege to do so) day in and day out. I give us a pass. Modern life makes it difficult to remember that we even have bodies, much less to actually listen for and heed their inherent wisdom. Many of us spend the majority of our day in the realm of the mind, expecting that all the other facets of us (body, heart, soul to name a few) will zip along at the speed of thought. We sit in front of computers, typing little characters onto white screens. We distract ourselves from boredom by getting lost in the lives of others on social media (often consuming as content the very types of lives that we ourselves would like to be living). We decompress at the end of the day by watching TV or zoning out to the latest streamer.

Maybe I ought to be using “I” statements, because I most definitely do this. But I also suspect that I may not be alone.

So much of life these days seems to exist not by living in and with and through our physical bodies, but rather by living in and with and through lit up screens of various sizes! (The irony of course, is here I sit typing to you on one of those very screens that I am lambasting and where else would you be reading it if not for…you guessed it, a screen. It’s all so nuanced, isn’t it?)

And now, along comes AI and we are being sold the idea that because of this technology, we will have more time to spend in the actual real world. Painting, hugging, gardening, sipping wine with friends because the computer will now do all the work all by itself! We will get to be human again!!

There is always that chance (*fingers crossed*), but as more and more people seek out AI chatbots to meet needs for connection that are not being met by other humans, I somehow have a hard time envisioning the utopia that the tech bros seem to be selling. Instead, it seems more likely that we will spend greater time chained to our devices, not looking up often enough to see the glorious world that surrounds us.

Boredom.

Personally, that is my main driver of digital consumption. Sitting at home by myself. Working on a project that I don’t find engaging and want to distract myself from. Waiting in the lobby at the dentist’s office, slightly anxious and very tired of staring at the molar-shaped sign that reads, “Tooth be told, we love our patients”.

It’s an unconscious compulsion that leads me to reach for the tiny computer that brings the entire world to my fingertips. Perhaps I have received a text from a friend? Maybe that woman I follow who lives above the arctic circle in Sweden with her dog has posted a new story of her sledding through the wilderness? Something horrible is likely happening somewhere in the world that I should probably know about?

Instantly, my mind is transported from that which is boring or mundane or slightly uncomfortable, to somewhere else, far, far away. Occasionally, I actually see something that inspires me to get off my ass and do something in the real world (pick up a paintbrush, go weed my garden, get up and stretch), but usually not. Instead, I zone out for a few minutes, sometimes too many minutes, and then pull myself back into the boredom that I was trying to escape in the first place. Untransformed.

This is not how I want to live my life. And the days where I don’t, where I resist that digital pull, I feel more…alive. Fulfilled. Like I was present to my own life.

Because boredom, when not bypassed, can be a potent teacher. It can show us the deadening agents of our lives. The places, people, or activities that drain the life force from our bodies and souls. It can also become fertile ground from which true creativity can blossom. Only against the quiet backdrop of a boring day can the song that is wanting to be sung through us be heard.

If we let it.

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I would wager to guess that a good majority of us are overstimulated yet undernourished. Our minds run on overdrive from morning to night. Our nervous systems are depleted. Meanwhile, our bodies, hearts, and souls - our ways back home to ourselves - are mere afterthoughts.

But here they are. Persisting. Existing. Waiting for us to turn toward them.

How do we do that?

• We walk.

• We dance and sing, even if we are offbeat or in the wrong key.

• We shimmy our shoulders and shake our asses.

• We feel the tickle of fresh grass beneath our feet and the heat of the sun on our shoulders.

• We laugh till we cry and we cry till we laugh.

• We watch the sun paint the sky pale pink in the morning and hot orange in the evening.

• We allow ourselves the grace to expand and contract with the seasons of life.

• We tend to a plant or grow a garden or sow some seeds.

• We share a glass of wine with a friend, catching the twinkle in one another’s eyes.

• We allow the way the water reflects the sky to take our breath away for a minute.

• We pet a dog, listen to a cat purr, bargain with a neighborhood squirrel.

• We become intoxicated with the scent of magnolia and mimosa blossom in the spring air.

• We hold someone’s hand, we whisper in their ear.

• We look up to the night sky and howl our goodnight to grandmother moon.

• We invite a friend over for dinner even though the house is a mess.

• We savor our morning coffee and evening tea.

• We let the dark chocolate melt in our mouths.

• We stop worrying so much about how it looks and get curious about how it feels.

• We listen to our gut instincts and our dream visions.

• We slow down.

• We take deeper breaths.

• We ponder what truly matters to us and put that front and center in our lives.

• We read poetry and listen to music and look at art that moves us.

• We pick a bouquet of wildflowers.

• We crouch down and search for four-leaf clovers.

• We delight in an ice cream cone, fingers sticky like a child’s.

This is an incomplete list.

There are many paths back to the wise and wild presence within. Often they are simple and mundane, but transcendent when experienced wholeheartedly. They are available to us whether we live in the forest or the suburbs or the city, but each one demands that we reclaim our time, our energy, and our attention, away from the monotone static of the digital world and back toward that which contains true soul and substance.

With love,
Linda

In his recent Substack article, Bill Plotkin, founder of the Animas Valley Institute, writes about how we as a species are being called to migrate from our old “dominator” world into something new. How we are being called to create the future that we wish to live into. Part of what we have lost or devalued in our current society are many of those aspects of life that truly make it worth living: relationships, art-making, and storytelling, to name just a few.

We have somehow forgotten what makes us human.

And then along comes a story that reminds us what a beautiful, fragile privilege this life truly is. The Guadalupe Swept Us Away. This Is The Story of All That Came After by Aaron Parsley for Texas Monthly is one of those stories.

Last year, I sobbed my way through his Pulitzer-prize winning piece The River House Broke. We Rushed in the River. This follow-up piece was equally, if not more, gutting.

I know that for some, that might not seem like a glowing endorsement or how you’d like to spend 30 minutes of your day, but I think it would be well worth your time.

With snot running down my face and my eyes puffy from tears, I walked away from that article feeling more human, which is to say, feeling more like myself. And I would venture that is what storytelling, at its heart, is really about. Though it is one man’s story, it speaks to something that we all share: how difficult and divine it can be to hold the depth and breadth of the human experience. How intimately grief, gratitude, and guilt can be interwoven (which is a topic Laura and I spoke about on a recent episode of Woman Uncaged). And how we continue living after unspeakable trauma and tragedy strike.

In our modern, consumerist culture, storytelling, much like art and creativity in general, has been hijacked by the forces of commerce. On a recent Diary of a CEO podcast, Scott Galloway and host Steven Bartlett spoke about storytelling as a necessary and enduring skill for the future. Scott defined storytelling as “your ability to look at data, create a narrative arc, and then communicate that story in a compelling way via all the different mediums [...]”.

Storytelling 101 for budding entrepreneurs and CEOs-in-training. Storytelling as a way to sell more stuff or get venture capitalists on board with your vision, and thus, your business.

Are these unworthy pursuits? Not necessarily, but they are a wholly different species to the type of storytelling on display in Aaron Parsley’s piece, which serves to connect us to ourselves and our shared humanity.

Empire wields storytelling as a tool for its own expansion. It always comes with an agenda, usually in the form of wanting to sell you something. In short, it becomes little more than effective marketing.

It communicates.

It persuades.

It influences or manipulates.

But one thing it cannot do is express. Because expression requires interiority. There must be a life that is experienced within that is then given voice or word or image to exist in the external world. Expression is its own end goal, and I fear that as a collective we have lost sight of that.

For years, I wrote a weekly newsletter to accompany my coaching practice. Much of what I shared were personal stories. At first, it was exciting! I felt a rush knowing people were reading my words; hearing how those words had landed in another - how they felt reading them or what it made them think about - was deeply meaningful. But as it turned out, this type of writing didn’t necessarily convert readers into paying coaching clients and that was supposed to be the whole freakin’ point of the newsletter. Naming conversion and business growth as The #1 Goal shifted how I wrote and what I wrote about. Suddenly, it wasn’t enough for me to express what I was learning and the growth edges I was encountering in my own inner work; instead, I had to end with a CTA…a call to action. Wrap it up in a beautiful little bow explaining how this story was clearly a sign that the reader should sign up for coaching services.

To free myself and my writing from that cage has been immensely liberating. But, to be honest, it has also made writing a heck of a lot more difficult because it now demands that I write about what I value and what I actually want to say, rather than scouring my life for potential content that can be turned into marketing for coaching services.

The soul of a writer or a storyteller or an artist or a poet is not necessarily the same as the soul of an entrepreneur or a marketer or a business person. There are people who are amazing at starting and/or running businesses, and they light up while doing it. Given the opportunity, they will do it again and again and again because they are operating in their zone of genius. There are many times when I have wished I possessed those skills!

But the issue is that we consistently try to wedge the creative to fit the shape of the entrepreneur. We have to. We are given no other options except becoming the cliché “starving artist” or simply making our art as a hobby on the side, in slivers of time stolen from our real jobs. Forcing everyone - artists, helpers, healers, etc. - through the funnel of entrepreneurship, flattens culture. “Business” as a monolith becomes a deadening agent of sorts, in the same way that a tree farm is decidedly less alive and less diverse than an old growth forest.

Art isn’t meant to respond to market forces.

The poetic soul doesn’t look for problems to solve or niches to fill that had previously been left dreadfully unoccupied; instead, it lives life deeply and fully, and tries in some way to evoke that inner experience on the page or the canvas, with an instrument or the instrument of the body itself. It calls forth something beautiful because it calls forth something real. Something that swims beneath the surface of our waking awareness, or that we simply overlook, and thus goes unnamed and undervalued in our collective consciousness.

Art, when allowed to be simply itself, has the power to reflect and remind us of the glorious mystery that it is to be human. The poet/artist/storyteller has a sacred role in culture that needs to be protected, cupped like a tiny flame against the mighty winds of our societal ideals of progress and utility, productivity and metrics, which are unabashed in their determination and certainty of their own necessity.

In this time, that has been dominated by machines and is now being inundated with artificial intelligence, stories like Aaron Parsley’s remind us of the power of love and connection - with family, friends, community, the divine - that is distinctly human in nature.

This type of storytelling, this type of art, which celebrates the creativity, resilience, and beauty of the human spirit, might be more important now than ever.

With love,

Linda

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Long after Ursa’s breathing had returned to its gentle and rhythmic sleep pattern, I lay awake, staring out the window into the dark night. My imagination had been captured by the four astronauts aboard the Integrity space craft and on this particular night, as I lay snug in my bed, I wondered how they could possibly sleep in space, without the pull of Mother Earth’s gravity to hold them.

How does one lie down where there is no such thing as “down”?

I love to sleep. There are few things I love more than crawling into bed at the end of the day to begin my nightly love affair with “Bedrick”. To surrender the weight of my body into the mattress. To feel my head held by the pillow beneath me.

But of course, all of these experiences are wholly dependent upon my relationship with gravity. Without that constant pull, without the weight that Mother Earth gives to my body, there is nothing to surrender nor surrender into.

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The next morning, I did what many a modern wonderer would: I googled that shit.

I learned that on the International Space Station, astronauts sleep in structures that resemble phone booths with sleeping bags tethered to the wall; you just zip yourself in to keep from floating away. The booths are vertical because it doesn’t matter. On Integrity, Christina Koch would “hang” from the center of the spaceship like a bat.

I really wanted to write “upside down” as it is very strange to imagine life without reference points, like directions! I forget how much of my orientation and perspective is determined by planet Earth.

That is one of the gifts of space travel, even if we are simply watching and pondering other human beings who embark upon such celestial adventures: seeing our own home through fresh eyes. Beginning to touch upon the sheer magic, not only of the great big universe out there, but of what we often consider the more mundane aspects of our own place within it.

Like lying down.

Like what a simple, daily miracle it is to be cradled by the Earth.

with love,

Linda

P.S. Pair this article with the Staying Radically Human in This AI/Automated World and Uncaging the Creature Within Woman Uncaged podcast episodes from last season. A little wine and cheese for the wild soul!!

The beginning of 2026 has felt intense on so many levels. I have needed space to be with that, sans the pressure that I tend to put on myself about contributing words of wisdom or beauty. Often “what the actual fuck” has been the best I have to offer. (If you’d like to hear more of those unfiltered and in-the-moment responses, I invite you to check out the weekly podcast I co-host with my dear friend Laura Gates-Lupton called Woman Uncaged.)

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I have been reading quite a lot though. Most recently I finished Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest by Suzanne Simard. Though I had heard about many of the discoveries in this book from other sources, it was still deeply moving to follow this woman’s journey of tracing the interconnected nature of trees and nature as a whole.

This book helped me to remember why I started this Substack to begin with: to celebrate the wisdom and beauty and meaning of the wild, no matter where we live. To approach the world with wonder and delight and an open heart (even if that means our hearts will be broken plenty of times).

Here are just a few of the juicy tidbits from the book that I invite you to ponder with me:

1. Trees send each other nutrients and water through the mycorrhizal network according to their need. Let’s say a birch grows quickly, shading the small Douglas fir next to it, thus minimizing its ability to photosynthesize. The birch will send extra carbon to the fir to make up for snagging so much sunshine (at least during the summer months).

2. Trees warn one another as danger approaches so that their neighbors can up their defenses.

3. Mother trees “communicate and send carbon, the building block of life, not just to the mycorrhizas of their kin but to other members of the community. To help keep it whole.” Mother trees help to grow and sustain the next generation.

4. Mother trees can also recognize their own kin! “Douglas firs, it turns out, recognize their kin and distinguish them from other families and different species.”

5. Our forests cannot thrive without mycorrhizal connections to their family and extended community.

These scientific experiments are illustrating what indigenous peoples have always known: that all of life is connected. That there is an intelligence to the trees and the plants and the forests that we can only hope to understand and mimic in our modern human communities. That our thriving is intricately interwoven with the thriving of those around us, be they other humans or our greater-than-human kin.

“We see the world not as it is, but as we are.” - Anaïs Nin

For a long time, the (mainly) men of western science looked upon the natural world and saw competition as the sole driver of growth and evolution. This was perfectly in line with the stories of the solitary hero undergoing his feats of strength. We can see how these stories are still being lived out today, clouding our sense of what is natural and thus what is possible.

When we shift the lens through which we are perceiving, that which we perceive shifts as well.

As it turns out, collaboration and connection are equally if not more important to survival, growth, and evolution than competition. Collaboration is complex and often system-wide, and it is what makes individuals, and the systems they are a part of, more resilient. More able to withstand changes and hardships. It was never solely about brute strength or domination; survival of the fittest might turn out to be survival of the most interlinked.

And while I can’t speak for the trees, I know as a human, it also makes life a heck of a lot more enjoyable when we do it together.

xoxo

Linda

P.S. You can pair this with our Woman Uncaged podcast titled “Collaboration: The Key to Dismantling Patriarchy”.

This year, I am feeling besieged by its opposite.

Perhaps it is due to new year’s resolutions becoming passé as more people realize how many intentions are typically forgotten by February 1st. Or, more likely, it is due to the type of hippy-ish, nature-loving people that I follow (and thus who the algorithm has pegged me to be). All I keep seeing, all over my feed and in my stories, is that January is a time of rest. This is not when we ought to be starting fresh; all of nature is hibernating and so should we.

And I get it. In our industrial society, the importance of wintering is a very needed message. (This is why the winter season was such a large focus in my book Homecoming.) The constant pressure to be productive and efficient is wearisome, and many of us need to give ourselves a permission slip that it is okay to slow down, to not have it all figured out, to relish in more time for reflection.

It’s just that this inward call may not always happen on schedule in January.

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At the beginning of every LORE class, founder Rochelle Schieck invites us to connect with the healing forces of nature. Recently, when I looked out the bedroom window, I was struck not by the many trees that are entirely stripped of their leaves, but by the Yaupon Holly in the corner of our yard. It is positively bursting with ripe, red berries, patiently waiting for the flocks of Cedar Waxwings to come and feast.

It reminded me of how the camellia in our front yard in Austin would spring into bloom every February. When everything else was barren and brown and gray, she was an explosion of pink. A feast for the color-starved soul in the middle of winter.

Nature is much more diverse than we often give her credit for. Yes, there are those plants and creatures that rest throughout January and February, but then there are also those who don’t. There are those who blossom when we least expect it, and what a gift they are! Both to the humans who admire them and the birds and insects that may depend upon them for nourishment.

Also, how does the idea of resting all of January work if you live in New Zealand, where it is the middle of summer? Or nearer to the equator where the seasons are much less pronounced?

Or what if the circumstances of your life at the present moment don’t allow for such prolonged periods of rest? You have young children, are caring for an aging parent, or work a 9-5 job, etc.

This platitude of rest feels like it is asking for greater nuance but most often it is touted as a universal truth.

Why does any of this matter?

Because our lives become much more rich and interesting when we call out monomyths for what they are: the same thing in another outfit. Whether we are told we need to hit 2026 HARD or that we should refrain from hitting it all (at least until the spring equinox!), we are still being told what we SHOULD be doing: A or B. As if either of these approaches could possibly be true enough to hold the diversity of human experience!

What if we instead traded the imperatives for curiosity?

What if we let January be what it wants to be?

Are you tired? Then make as much time for rest as possible.

Are you craving more community? Meet a friend for lunch.

Are you exhausted by all the peopling? Go hermit status to the degree that you are able.

Are you feeling the stirrings of new ideas emerging? Then by all means, follow them!

Because I don’t think there is a right way to start (or not start) the year, despite all the messaging to the contrary.

The season of life that you are in might not perfectly align with the season of the year in your part of the world. You might be in multiple seasons at once or moving through several seasons in a single day. Or you might feel yourself to be more alive and invigorated in winter and wanting to lay low during the summer!

And all action isn’t necessarily energy-depleting. Its effect often depends on the motivation from which it emanates: does it come from a place of obligation or inspiration? Is it machine-like or organic?

With all that said, my invitation is to let nature’s exuberant biodiversity be your guide back home to your own wild and weird and singular self, so that while we connect to the greater cycles of life, we also stay rooted in our own individual rhythms of shedding and becoming, of resting and blooming.

With love,

Linda

I hate them. (Or perhaps more accurately, loathe entirely.)

In part, I hate them because our dog Ursa is terrified of them. She pushes the door open with her nose and runs back inside immediately when she hears one in the area, and I don’t blame her. They are large and buzz like monstrous bees hovering in the sky. It’s taken a lot of time and work to help our wolfish pup (according to Embark, she shares more traits with wolves than the common canine, go figure) grow accustomed to, and more comfortable with, this modern world with its roaring engines, giant trash trucks with the weird mechanical arms, and ominous ceiling fans that move of their own accord. Having to start fresh with a new flying threat is annoying to say the least.

The same day Amazon announced the new drone delivery service, I found out that our favorite local pet store was closing for good. It has been a magical anomaly in our times; the people who worked there seemed genuinely glad to be there. Employees brought their pets to work and exuded a love for animals. There was a fabulous woman whose border collie would share the same wild hair color as she did, whether it was hot pink, blue, or red and green for the holidays. After a few months, I no longer had to enter my phone number for the rewards program; the women who worked there began to remember our faces and names.

I realize that the timing of these two things - one of my favorite local stores closing and Amazon expanding to drone delivery - is a coincidence.

And yet, in a larger sense, we all know that they are related.

It is another way in which our economy sacrifices connection for convenience.

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Online shopping and seamless one-click-to-buy options are simply the latest iteration of a steady societal march towards consumerism without community. (If you haven’t watched Buy Now! The Shopping Conspiracy, I highly recommend it.)

My husband Eric and I were speaking about how it would be if we knew shop owners again and felt a connection to those supplying goods and services to our neighborhoods. If instead of looking for as cheap, as fast, and as easy as possible, we valued products that were well-made and the people who created and sold them.

Of course, this is mostly imagination and speculation because neither of us have ever truly experienced that world. I spent much of my childhood and adolescence in the DFW area surrounded by large grocery chains, Super Targets, and other big box stores. There were, and are, exceptions (the pet store, the local wine bar we lovingly refer to as Tom’s, and how everyone at Natural Grocer’s seems to know and love my mom), but like most American suburbs, Plano was designed to promote consumption and convenience. Everything you need under one roof! I never knew the cashiers, much less the owners of those places. So when people started being replaced by self-checkout counters, it felt almost frictionless. The encounter had already been anonymous; now I was simply interacting with a machine instead of a live person.

What I have come to believe is that the foundation of the version of society that is being built right now - where everything we could ever need or want or momentarily covet is delivered to our doorstep in an hour or less - was actually established long before the Amazons of the world became ubiquitous. This new, ultra-convenient, drone delivery model is simply the next step in an economy that has promoted convenience over connection, the machine over the human, and money over meaning for quite some time. We are simply living this value system to its inevitable conclusion.

The costs of this system have been under our noses all along. The lost jobs, wages, and livelihoods that are often the shadow of “labor saving” innovations. The small mom-and-pop stores that were run out of business when the big box store came to town. Massive overconsumption and wanton degradation of our environment. The loss of community and belonging when we no longer feel known where we live.

But for many of us, this has been our only reality (and there are likely aspects of it that we also utilize or appreciate).

So how are we to register the loss of something we have never experienced?

How do we hold the both/and of living in modernity, including all that we are grateful for and the opportunities that we have for growth at this moment in time, while also recognizing where we wish things were different?

And perhaps most pressing, how do we create systems that are more generative, radically human, sustainable, and supportive of all life when we have never seen that in action on a large scale?

To me, acknowledging, naming, and grieving the loss feels consequential. We begin by admitting what we have sacrificed on the altar of productivity and convenience, both collectively and individually.

The loss of meaningful human connection in daily life.

The loss of a natural creatureliness to our rhythms and ways of being.

The loss of deep belonging to the wild and sacred world of which we are a part.

The loss of slowness and sensuality.

The loss of reverence for life in all its forms.

Without acknowledgement, the ache and anxiety of modernity easily becomes amorphous. There is a sense that something vital has gone missing but we don’t know what it is or how to reclaim it or create it anew. We wander through the fog of our lives unsure where to place our energy and attention.

So I say let’s begin by grieving. By watering the parched ground with our tears for all that has been overlooked and underappreciated in our quest for efficiency and progress. And for the ways we may have participated in that, knowingly or unknowingly.

In that newly moistened and fertile soil, we plant the seeds of what we wish to grow and are willing to tend with our “one wild and precious life” (in the words of Mary Oliver). For we must marry our critique with both our creativity and our courage, and call upon our imagination to show us the way toward what we know in our hearts to be possible.

It’s also important to note that seeds will not grow without light. It is vital that we allow our inner sun to shine its warmth on all that it touches. For myself, I know it can be far too easy to focus solely on what is wrong or absent, and miss the beauty, the fecundity, the lushness that is right here in front of me, right now. In my quest for change, I end up missing out on the very thing that I am yearning for and also failing to nourish my soul for the journey ahead. As we acknowledged, named, and grieved what has been missing, may we also acknowledge, name, and celebrate all that is already here. To give exuberant expression to what we love and are grateful for.

Finally, we are called to summon our courage and start where we are.

I have been returning to Wendell Berry’s ideas frequently as of late. In The World-Ending Fire: The Essential Wendell Berry, he writes, “I have no large solution to offer. There is, as maybe we all have noticed, a conspicuous shortage of large-scale corrections for problems that have large-scale causes.” For him, the solutions are smaller, occurring in individual human hearts and minds and actions, and rippling out into the land we inhabit and our local communities.

As we start to pull away from the aspects of society that do not resonate with the integrity of our own soul, we turn more of our energy towards what we wish to create and be a part of instead. And then, we live into that vision as much as we are able. It becomes our compass home to ourselves when we inevitably lose our way.

Because when we live according to our own values, we are no longer willing to sacrifice what truly matters to us on the altar of societal beliefs that do not belong to us. We refuse to mirror a culture that is sick and stop expecting for it to mirror us by doling out its gold stars or status symbols.

Instead, brick by brick, day by day, decision by decision, we lay the foundation for the type of world in which we long to live and wish to leave behind for those who come after.

Laura Gates-Lupton and I have several Woman Uncaged podcast episodes that would make a great accompaniment when it comes to this topic, including Staying Radically Human in this Automated/AI World, Uncaging the Creature Within, and From Stuffed Closets to Starved Souls: Why Consumption Can’t Fill the Void.

With lots of love as we close out 2025 and usher in 2026…

Linda

P.S. And to all my neighbors living in South Plano, enough with the damn drones already.

I won’t go into all the details, as I have realized that rehashing why a year felt particularly hard doesn’t necessarily make it any less so. It also taints all the beautiful moments that even our most difficult years hold.

I will say that four months before we brought Ursa home we lost our beloved Sophie. She was 14 ½. A good age for a big dog, as everyone reminded me. They weren’t wrong and I am eternally grateful for all the time I was able to spend with my gray girl by my side. Eric and I had originally planned to not welcome another four-legged into our home for at least a year after Sophie’s passing. We wanted time to grieve and to begin to mend our broken hearts. We also wanted time for just the two of us to experience more freedom, as the last year of Sophie’s life didn’t allow for much of that. (I could not bear the idea that something would happen and I wouldn’t be there with her when she took her last breath; I needed her to know how loved she was until the very end when she crossed that rainbow bridge.)

As it turns out, life had other plans. It usually does.

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When the bully breed rescue The Love Pit brought in a pregnant mama dog from the streets of Dallas and named her Freya, like the norse goddess, I started to pay attention. When the foster mom began referring to the puppies-to-be as the viking litter, my ears perked up a little bit more. (I can almost imagine Sophie’s headtilt as I write this.) In the midst of the grief, a childlike joy began bubbling up from somewhere deep within me.

Understandably, Eric was a little uncertain at first. We had said a year; it had been a fraction of that. He had never had a puppy, much less two. And it would once again postpone the travel that we had talked about doing.

But while he wasn’t sure, he wasn’t shut down to the idea either. So when I woke up one morning to the announcement in the Love Pit group that the viking litter was going to be available for fostering soon, on December 17th to be exact, I squealed with delight.

“Eric, Eric, Eric…we’re getting puppies!! We have to!!! It’s my birthday!!!”

I ran into his office like a kid running to open presents on Christmas morning. How was he ever going to say no?

Thus, on the same day that I turned 41, we picked up our Ursa girl and her sister Nanna.

Within a week, we had officially foster-failed and we knew that Ursa was ours to stay.

Now, clearly she had some big shoes to fill and my heart was still exceptionally tender. There is an interesting dynamic at play with the dog you get after losing your soul dog. Many questions swirled in my mind.

How will she live up? Can I ever love her in the same way? Would that be a betrayal to what Sophie had meant to me?

This showed up by me repeatedly saying that Ursa was clearly going to be Eric’s dog. In comparison to her sister, Ursa initially seemed so chill. Easy going. Slept well. Stomach of steel. Much more like Eric than my often anxious and spastic self. Ursa was clearly destined to be his soul dog. I had already had mine, thank you very much.

(You can see where this is going, can’t you?)

Over the last two years, my little bear has snuggled her way into my heart in a way that I wasn’t expecting. And much like her predecessor, she has challenged me in ways I wasn’t prepared for either. Sophie taught me my own power. The importance of presence. How to use my voice. How to open my heart, and then trust in and follow its guidance.

What will Ursa teach me? I am only beginning to discover that.

As it has turned out, Ursa is much more sensitive than I initially thought. Even more so than Sophie, especially sensorially (sounds, smells, touch, etc.). When the trainer we were working with last year said, “She’s an interesting mix…happy-go-lucky, but also super sensitive” I almost burst into tears on the spot. Because of course, he could just as well have been describing me. And the last two years have been an exploration of how to work with that dynamic for the both of us.

How can we make space for our heightened perceptivity so that we both feel safe enough for our happy-go-lucky selves to be fully expressed? What is the right-sized life for us, that isn’t too small but not too overwhelming either?

What is also amazing is who we become because of our dogs (I assume this is probably true for children or other pets, as well). I am having to call forth my own calm, confident energy so that I can be the best guardian and leader for my girl, especially in those moments when she is feeling extra nervous and shy. It’s nervous system regulation and emotional maturity training on steroids, live and in the flesh. So often, I fail miserably. I meet her nervousness with my own. Or with frustration. Or with urgency. But then there are those moments where I am able to access something deep and wise and wild within myself. Where I can say to myself, and to her, “You can trust me; I’ve got this” and truly believe it in both my mind and body. What a gift that is to us both.

And that is in addition to two years full of kisses and zoomies, bucking bronco-like puppy gallops and toilet paper stolen right out of my hand. All the laughs and love. To think I had convinced myself that was all in the past. That my growth with and for a four-legged companion was behind me.

Of course Sophie and my own soul had other ideas. So cheers to 43 and to my wild, wolfy bear girl…life wouldn’t be the same without you. As I tell you often, I am so glad you’re here.

With love,
Linda

With a team of researchers, Buettner discovered nine habits that were shared by nearly all the blue zone locations, from Japan, to Costa Rica, to Italy. These habits include what one might expect: eat more plant-based meals, move naturally and regularly, know your purpose, decrease stress, have a community, etc.

But this article isn’t actually about the blue zones; it’s about what I think is missing from this entire paradigm.

And that is the greater, more-than-human, natural world of which we are a part.

It is high time that we shift, or at the very least expand, our definition of who is worthy of quality of life. (And the “who” in that sentence is carrying a lot more weight than simply human beings.)

What if, rather than focusing solely on human longevity, we looked at the health, vibrancy, and diversity of the communities and ecosystems to which we belong?

Research has shown that humans thrive when our world thrives. It makes complete sense, given how interwoven we are to all the creatures and plants and waterways and soil and air. This interconnection is what makes life itself possible. And yet somehow, we have forgotten this basic fact.

Some seem to expect that with technology alone, humans can be happier, healthier, and more fulfilled, even if the wild world around us is paved over in concrete, species are going extinct, and the oceans are being poisoned with agricultural runoff. As if that doesn’t hurt us, also. As if we were somehow separate and immune. Of course, it negatively affects us physically, but it also engenders a deeper and different kind of hurt: it wounds the soul. We become less alive, less able to feel and sense and respond to the world around us. Though it is not always consciously acknowledged, this wound is painful, so we further retract or distract or numb until we become even less alive, and on and on the cycle goes. Is it any wonder that one of the main sentiments of our time seems to be “I don’t care”?

In his essay, A Native Hill, Wendell Berry writes:

“We have lived by the assumption that what was good for us would be good for the world. [...] We have been wrong. We must change our lives, so that it will be possible to live by the contrary assumption that what is good for the world will be good for us. And that requires that we make the effort to know the world and to learn what is good for it. We must learn to cooperate in its processes, and to yield to its limits. But even more important, we must learn to acknowledge that the creation is full of mystery; we will never entirely understand it. We must abandon arrogance and stand in awe. We must recover the sense of the majesty of creation, and the ability to be worshipful in its presence. For I do not doubt that it is only on the condition of humility and reverence before the world that our species will be able to remain in it.”

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What happens when we begin to live by this contrary assumption, that what is good for the world will be good for us? How does it shift our choices and perspective? How might it change where we devote our precious energy and time?

How does it transform who we become and how we steward the world that is in our guardianship?

There is much focus on self-care in our culture, and for some good reasons (others of which are more consumerist in nature…). Many of us are chronically anxious, tight, stressed, and bordering on burnout. Adding more to our plate of care seems counterintuitive when we feel close to a breaking point already.

But as Sue Stuart-Smith writes in The Well-Gardened Mind: The Restorative Power of Nature:

“The contemporary emphasis on self-improvement and self-investment can make care seem like a depleting activity because it requires putting in effort for something other than ourselves, but the neurochemistry of care is not like that. For obvious evolutionary reasons, care has inbuilt neurochemical rewards. The feelings of calm and contentment that accompany nurture have benefits for the giver and receiver alike [...].”

We are made to care for the world that exists outside of us and all the living beings that make up that world. By expanding our focus, we too organically begin to feel more whole and at peace.

When we nurture the land and the plants and the animals and one another, we become more human in the process. We reclaim our own innate creatureliness. Connection and care were never meant to be depleting; they were meant to make life worth living.

What might this shift of focus look like in real life? I am currently reading We Are The Ark: Returning Our Gardens to Their True Nature Through Acts of Restorative Kindness. In it, author Mary Reynolds provides many potential ideas for how our gardens and outdoor areas of all sizes (ranging from several acres to a single window box) can become a restorative act of kindness towards the earth.

Here in the ‘burbs, these are some things we are putting into practice:

• Planting more Texas natives. Not only are native plants more accustomed to the crazy temperature ranges and drought periods we experience here in North Texas, but they also evolved within this particular ecosystem. This means that they support native insects and creatures in ways that other non-native plants may not. Our perennial gardens include Gregg’s Mistflower (beloved by butterflies, particularly monarchs who are passing through on their migration south), Turk’s Cap, and Texas Lantana. Over the coming years, we plan to convert some of our front yard to native plants and grasses, as well.

• Letting perennials hang out over winter. Instead of cutting back perennials in the winter, we leave them as nesting sites for insects and critters during the colder months.

• Putting out water. We have a dish that we leave out with fresh water for the birds and squirrels and bobcats and such.

• Having a variety of different sized plants. From ground cover to perennials to shrubs to big live oak and cottonwood trees, I have seen how different creatures have varying preferences. The female Yaupon Holly is a favorite of the flocks of Cedar Waxwings that come through in the winter to feast on her berries (and we have hopefully found a sustainable solution to keep their tipsy tushes from flying into our big living room window after having one too many fermented berry…). Cardinals love to build their nests in brambly, bushy shrubs. The squirrels, crows, and hawks prefer the bigger trees, especially the cottonwood in the corner of the yard.

I am certain that as I continue down this path I will continue to learn more ways to live in support of, and communion with, the natural world around me.

And as much as reading books or seeking out teachers has been a helpful starting point, I feel like the most important lessons I have learned have come from paying attention. Noticing the creatures and plants around me, slowly beginning to understand what their needs and preferences are, and how they dance with one another.

There was a time when what they needed to thrive here already existed. The plants and the animals and the waterways had grown and evolved together over thousands of years, creating symbiotic relationships. But now, so much of this land has been altered by man, for our sole benefit and to the detriment of the many other living beings with whom we share space. Thus, we need to consciously put back what was taken, as an offering to the wild and the world we all share.

So that we, as human beings, may remember to reweave ourselves back into the greater story of our earth’s unfolding.

With love,

Linda

If I were to categorize my own energy in 2025, one lens through which to do so would be the tug-of-war between the spirit of the depths versus the spirit of the times.

What words arise for you when you contemplate the phrase “the spirit of the times”? What feels like the prevailing mood of our age?

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This is what I came up with…

Mean. Angry. Fast. Urgent. Hard. Ugly.

It reminds me of the gut-wrenching poem Of The Empire by Mary Oliver.

Contrastingly, what words come up for you when you ponder “the spirit of the depths?”

I find meaning rather than meanness. Kindness instead of anger. Patience in place of urgency. A softer and slower pace that allows for the unfurling of life. Beauty replacing ugliness.

I don’t know about you, but I would much rather be in that energy most of the time. And yet, all too often this year I have found myself attuning to the spirit of the times instead of that of the depths. The collective energy is quick to take over my body, mind, heart, and soul if I let it, with all the screens and never-ending scroll. When it does, my heart contracts and armors in protection, my pulse quickens. Compassion and connection are swapped for the heady cocktail of righteous indignation, a potent-seeming antidote to the feeling of helplessness.

Because of our digital technology, the spirit of the times is also no longer solely in the air or an underlying mood that we can sense but can’t put our finger on. It’s hungry for our attention. Constantly vying for our eyeballs and our energy. Its tentacles reach out all the time with pings and dings and push notifications.

The spirit of our times is addictive and it calls to us like a drug.

Go harder, faster, get mad, it urges.

It takes a surprising amount of discipline to not listen to or heed that voice, whether it is coming from the outer collective or an internalized voice.

Let me be clear that I am not advocating that we all bury our heads in the sand or frolic like Pollyanna through the meadow deluding ourselves into believing that everything is fine.

But I cannot create something new, nor offer my unique gifts, when I am attuned to, and thus creating more of, the spirit of the times we are living in.

I can observe it. Name it. Definitely critique it.

But I cannot source myself from it.

There must be time and space for something deeper if I am to stay soft and human and not get swept away in the constant chaos.

I wish to renew my commitment to the spirit of the depths. To listen to the deepest, most soulful, and most true part of myself. To speak, create, and live from that place. To source from that which is intrinsic to who I am.

Maybe we can all do a little bit more of the same and offer our own individual beauty to a world that so desperately needs it.

With love,

Linda

The interconnection of the air that we breathe, the earth that holds us all, and the water that makes life possible.

When the world seems flat, it can be harder to access this consciousness, and I feel more prone to being concerned with only my little square, losing sight of the bigger picture.

This year I have been taking a nine-month course on the work of Marion Woodman with Sil Read. The class is broken up into three trimesters focusing on the Conscious Mother, the Virgin, and the Crone, respectively.

I have read most of Marion’s books (many several times over), but I had never heard this quote before:

I also believe that there is a new global culture being called for—and that means that every country is going to have to surrender its selfish nationalism and open up to a global community. The earth has moved from tribe to group to country and then to international trade laws and international connection—and now even these systems are too small. We are moving towards global community, and in the process narrow [nationalistic] loyalties will have to be surrendered to the larger whole.

These words describe the energy evoked by the clouds this morning. A reminder of how we are all related, humans and more-than-humans alike, whether we are conscious of that fact or not.

Sadly, in the sphere of global politics, we seem to be moving into the opposite direction. Rather than expanding our sense of community and who is included when we say “us”, we are retreating and shrinking our ideas of who belongs and what is worthy of our care. We don’t want to acknowledge that eventually we will all rise and fall together, as one body of life.

This is not to say that individual cultures are to be subsumed into some massive gray, global monolith. Quite the contrary. Differences in food, music, dance, thought, belief, and customs make the world of humanity a vibrant tapestry. A rich and textured biodiversity in this experience of being homo sapien.

This more particular form of culture tends to have sprung from a specific place and the people who grew out of that place; it is often passed down from generation to generation. In that way, it grounds us vertically. By that I mean, in relation to time. It connects us to our ancestors, the rituals we grew up with, the foods we turn to for comfort and memory, the thousands of candles that have been lit and the prayers that have been whispered for centuries.

In our modern world, this kind of rooted culture has been watered down, if not lost all together. We have been led to believe that in order to “be one”, or to be unified, differences have to be melted down and reshaped to match the greater over-culture. Throughout history, this has often happened by brutal force. I think of indigenous children sent to boarding schools to have their languages washed from their mouths with soap and their own customs beaten out of them in order to become “American”.

So much place-based culture has already been lost. This might be part of the reason why many of us feel unrooted and are longing for nothing more than to feel like there is somewhere we truly belong.

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And yet, there is a paradox. Because somehow all this glorious specificity and difference also has to be held in a greater web of interconnection and shared experience.

That, to me, is what Marion Woodman is calling for when she says “a new global culture”.

This ability to embrace paradox is the energy of the Wise & Wild Woman.

It is a consciousness that can hold the parts within the whole without losing sight of either.

It grounds us not only vertically through time, but also horizontally through space. It connects us to all of life that is in existence in the here and now. The life that we can touch with our hands and see with our eyes and feel beneath our feet, and also the life that we can only imagine in our mind’s eye that is unfolding on the other side of the world.

We are connected to all of it: past, present, future. Near and far. Local and global. Known and unknown. Our wellbeing is intertwined with that of people we have never met, flowers we have never smelled, and animals we have only seen in nature documentaries, as well as those we share space and breath with every single day.

To some, that might feel overwhelming. To me, it feels like an antidote in this time of great contraction. To expand and open the heart can sometimes be the most radical thing we can do.

I get to be me

and you get to be you

and we get to be here now

doing this dance of life together.

how wonderful is that?

When I was actively growing my coaching practice, there was pressure (mostly self-induced) to consistently put content out there, whether in the form of newsletters, social media posts, etc. In our modern digital age, the easiest place to find such content is in our daily lives.

Thus, for several years, every moment was mined for its hidden wisdom. Not so that it could be digested and nourish my own being, but rather so it could be regurgitated and offered up on the altar of the algorithm.

Experiences were no longer simply lived, they were documented.

Meaning did not arise unbidden, but was squeezed from life like the last drops of a juice from an orange.

It was an exhausting existence and part of the reason I lay down my coaching cap. My practice never reached the point of sustaining itself and I felt like I constantly had to put myself out there, for fear that without the daily posting and the weekly newsletter, the work would be forgotten all together.

Thus, I cranked out content and called it creativity.

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Generating content is not equal to creating art.

Perhaps it is not a coincidence that when I stopped marketing my coaching work, I picked up a paintbrush again for the first time in years. For so long, much of my creative energy had been diverted into utilitarian needs. It was poured into crafting instagram posts and selecting the perfect hashtags. Photos of nature I found beautiful became the backdrop of some treatise on the wise and wild woman. All of my writing had to feature a neat call to action at the end.

“I was moved by a flock of geese flying south for the winter; sign up for your free Discovery Call today!”

It makes me laugh now, but it didn’t then. Nothing could simply be. It all had to be used for some other purpose.

Art is nourishment for the soul.

A song can bring you to tears or force your toe to tap along to its upbeat rhythm.

A piece of writing can punch you in the gut in the best possible way.

A painting can invite you to pause and see from a different perspective.

There is little to no nourishment in content. One is rarely moved by it. The word itself betrays its emptiness; it sounds anemic.

While art is a slow, four-course candlelit dinner with great friends and lively conversation, content is a fast-food value meal scarfed down in your car on the way to work.

Empty calories devoid of nutrition that have to suffice when we lack the space or time to experience the real thing.

While art satiates our soul, content feeds the hungry ghost of digital space, which can never be truly satisfied; it always cries out for more more more.

—

So you can see my trepidation in starting this Substack. I don’t want to fall back into old patterns of generating content at the cost of creating art that is expressive and enlivening.

But it also has me sinking into the question of where the line is between these two. Our creativity grows out of the soil of our lives; when are we mining it versus when is it simply blossoming?

And if I could approach this digital space as one where I share my art through the medium of the written word, rather than treating it as yet more content, what would shift?

Because maybe the difference between content and art isn’t solely in where or how often it is shared, or even our intention in sharing it, but in how we relate to our own voice, expression, and creations.

—

If you’d like to explore this topic more deeply, I invite you to listen to the latest Woman Uncaged podcast where Laura and I dive into what it means to unbrand ourselves and step into our full humanity.

—

With love,
Linda

Adults know how to evade her; babies, not so much.

We had no idea the nest was there until Ursa started sniffing around the garden box and then excitedly digging her nose into the corner, body tense, tail high and wagging fervently. Since there had been a nest there this past spring, I didn’t think too much of it.

Until I heard a high-pitched squeal emerging from beneath the soil.

“You have got to be kidding me,” I thought to myself. “Not again.”

Ursa is roughly 60 pounds and not easily dissuaded from the object of her desire. Especially when that object is tiny, furry prey that sounds disturbingly similar to her favorite squeaky toys. (Of course, they design them that way on purpose.)

“No! No! Leave it!! Leave it!!!” I yelled while holding back her by the collar, my voice sounding constricted with a slight degree of panic. “Errrriiiiiic!!!”

She was nearly choking herself trying to get her schnoz back in that damn hole before we were finally able to get her back inside. Then it was time to put on my problem-solving hat and strategize how to make the nest harder for her to access.

I opted to set up a barricade that looks something like a kid’s version of Fort Knox. I couldn’t help but take a sneak peak at what had gotten her so excited. The kits (learned this term when googling “what to do when cottontails build their nest in your yard and you have a dog”) were snuggled in and puppy-piled on top of one another so it was impossible to see how many there were.

Each one small enough to fit in the palm of my hand.

Eyes yet to open.

Cuteness factor absolutely off the charts.

It is an illustrated storybook that has come to life in our garden; my inner child is delighted. My adult self wonders, “Fuck, what do we do now?”

When they were here this past winter, Ursa never got to the baby bunnies while they were in the nest. When they left? That’s another story.

Valentine’s Day evening, we let Ursa out in the yard do her business before heading to bed. She bolted straight for the corner of the yard and dug her nose underneath a broken down Adirondack chair that had yet to find its way to bulk pickup. It was dark, so we couldn’t see what she was going after, but we knew what it had to be when we heard the sound of the baby bunny.

Though we were able to get Ursa to drop her quickly, the damage had already been done.

Holding the baby gently in my hands, I went to fetch a shoebox and a soft towel. But in that time, I noticed that her heartbeat had slowed and then her breathing stopped. I will never know if it was the lone puncture wound or the fear that killed her.

I write this not to be gruesome or grotesque, but this is a Substack about the wild woman archetype and it would be false to ignore the more brutal aspects of the wild.

It was definitely a traumatic, heartbreaking, and mood-killing, ending to our romantic Valentine’s Day dinner. (Not to mention that in our attempts to keep Ursa from the bunny, she ended up tweaking her back, resulting in a trip to the emergency vet the next morning.)

Now confronted with the same situation again, there are so many questions swirling in my mind.

As a domesticated creature, is Ursa a part of the greater wild nature or is she something else? Clearly, she still has her instincts intact; is that a problem, a gift, or simply reality? While we now give our dogs sweaters when it’s cold and bring them to brunch with us, they are still the descendants of apex predators; is this just part of their nature?

With fewer natural predators in our suburban landscapes, have domesticated dogs and cats taken over part of that role or are they solely a threat to biodiversity?

As a human and dog owner, what is my role in all of this? Am I being kind? Too sentimental? Overly controlling? Not controlling enough?!?

What would the Wild Woman do?

I don’t know the answers to any of these questions, at least not with any degree of certainty.

What I do know is that this past winter, attempting to keep those bunnies safe while allowing Ursa some freedom felt like I was attempting to hold back the forces of nature with my own two hands and failing miserably at it. Trying desperately to control something that is out of my control is a very familiar, and exhausting, pattern for me.

But I don’t want to throw up my hands either because so many of these questions still feel unresolved.

And because of course I have fallen in love with those soft little baby bunnies.

So, every morning when we get back from our walk, I build up Fort Knox. Every evening before dusk, I break it down to ensure mama can come back and take care of her babies. I have marked the top of the nest with an X made of rust red yarn to ensure that mama is indeed coming back to care for them and that we haven’t scared her off entirely.

We will take it one day at a time. If we see the youngins hoppin’ around in a week or two, we will keep our girl on leash for a time.

Then, I guess, we will leave the rest up to fate. Or nature. Which might be the same thing.

—

As you can probably tell, for me wild woman wisdom is nuanced and multi-faceted. Often it leaves me scratching my head and wishing for the simple black or white answer that our culture prefers, whether that would be letting “nature take its course” or never allowing Ursa out in the yard until the bunnies are gone (both being options I have considered).

But sometimes I wonder if these knee-jerk reactions say more about us and the discomfort that we are (or are not) willing to tolerate. Whether that is not wanting to feel or acknowledge the harm that we advertently or inadvertently cause to the other living beings in our midst or wanting to believe in a world where we don’t cause any harm at all.

Perhaps the wisdom of the wild woman is to hold the tension between these two opposing perspectives.

Perhaps it is messy and uncomfortable because embodied, conscious living is messy and uncomfortable.

Perhaps it goes beyond our neat ideas of rightdoing or wrongdoing, and invites us instead to relate to ourselves, to our choices, and to the world that we all share in a different way, acknowledging our unavoidable interdependence, minimizing harm while maximizing connection, as we stumble and feel our way forward together.

Perhaps the wisdom is in the very wondering itself.

—

And with all that said, please send us good vibes!!

With Love,
Linda

I close my eyes and attune my ears. Practice letting them open softly to receive the sound of the morning around me rather than straining to hear any particular noise. There is a gentle breeze and the leaves of the cottonwood tree that stands guard in the northeastern corner of our yard rustle, sounding just like the beginning of a soft rain.

The cardinal couple chirps back and forth, keeping one another apprised to their respective locations. There is a trill of a smaller songbird that I cannot identify; Carolina Chickadee or a wren of some type? I resist the tug in my consciousness to reach for my phone and open the Merlin Bird app to find out. And luckily, I left my phone safely inside where the odds of it pulling my attention into the virtual world are minimal.

Though I can’t hear her per se, I sense Ursa somewhere close. Lying in the grass. Sniffing the morning air. Relaxed yet alert should a squirrel venture too far down the trunk; she has to keep them honest and they seem to love nothing more than teasing her.

I love these quiet moments first thing in the morning, just as the sun is coming up from behind the cottonwood. Inhaling, a soft smile stretches across my face as I feel myself at one with nature.

All is well in the world.

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Then, a lawn mower starts up in the neighbor’s front yard.

A Southwest flight makes its loud whooshing sound overhead as it begins to make its final descent into Dallas Lovefield airport.

The gentle calling of songbirds is overtaken by sirens from the nearby fire station.

Sighing, I open my eyes and remember where I am.

You see, I don’t live in the mountains or in a secluded hut by the ocean or out in the forests of my native Sweden (although I do dream about all of these possibilities…often!).

My husband Eric, dog Ursa, and I live in Plano, Texas, a northern suburb in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex. DFW is home to more than 8 million people, making it the fourth largest metropolitan area in the United States.

Plano itself is home to nearly 300,000 people, with only 4% of its land remaining undeveloped. And it feels like more people are moving here everyday.

I am a nature-loving wild woman, obsessed with trees and plants and animals and the moon.

And yet, here I am in what often feels like a flat, concrete jungle, where most of the wild beauty that I long for has long ago been cut down and paved over to make space for human “progress” and convenience.

Why, you may ask.

I’d be lying if I said I don’t ask myself the same question.

I suppose in part because my beloved aging parents are here, as are my husband’s. We were able to afford a home early on in the pandemic.

Those reasons aren’t false; they are very real. But I also sense they are scratching the surface.

When I dig into the place where my own wild soul lives, I can feel how crucial and important it is for the energy of the wild woman to show up not only in a cabin deep in the woods, but also right here. Under our human noses and the insistent humdrum of our daily lives.

I need her and I sense I might not be alone.

So that is why I have started this Substack. To share my wanderings and wonderings through my own wild inner landscape and how it dances with the much-domesticated lands around me.

Much domesticated, but never entirely so.

I will be guided more by questions than answers.

• How do I unleash more of the wild woman in my life, right here and now?

• What might she have to offer the world in this moment?

• How can I allow my love of the natural world to guide me through these man-made spaces, to help create more beauty and diversity and nourishment?

• How do we all deepen our own relationships with all that is wild and natural and innate, regardless of where we live?

• What does it actually mean to be a wild woman in the ‘burbs?

We will see what we uncover.

And I want to connect with other wild woman around the world, who are living modern lives in cities and suburbs and are creating spaces teeming with life. Let us ponder these questions, and live into their answers, together.

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For right now, this is a free publication as I get my sea legs under me; I may add a premium tier later on.

And while set schedules aren’t really my jam (I like to write when inspiration strikes), I aim to share a thought-provoking or meaningful article every week or two. You don’t have to worry about me spamming your inbox.

Alright, let’s dive in!!

xoxo

Linda