The Wilderness.

Remember who you are.

We knew something about The wilderness as kids. How each moment could fill with wonder, possibility. Was already brimming with both the seen & unseen.

And on those night when we couldn’t sleep, or woke up with a jolt, we knew it was because absolutely there was something under the bed (in the closet, in the dark corner). And the people who deeply wanted to keep us safe told us to stop being silly. Look, there’s nothing there—nothing to be afraid of.

Even now, when we come to the end of our distractions, we feel in our bodies what we’ve always known.

There is something there.

Coming into our wholeness is to look under the bed (finally!), to find what’s been there all along.  Once encountered—if we don’t remember who we are—we will run & hide.

As if we could.

This is the stuff of nightmares, of dark fairytales, of children being eaten.

This is also the site of transformation.

In the wilderness, we face the Unsayable, which at times feels threatening, and at times deeply resonant. And most often we feel both at once. Only the raging river can witness our rage; the barren dessert, our barrenness; the dark forest, our darkness... and though we struggle to find words, words cannot make our knowing more true.

It’s in the wilderness we face the Babadook, the embodiment of our fear; we wrestle the Angel, that which is good but not safe, and are forever marked. These encounters shake us to the core, which as poet Rilke tells us, is how we grow. By being deeply defeated by ever greater things. Vanquishing what we find in the wilderness is not the point.

Because here at the end of ourselves we know truly, nothing can separate us from Love.

Just because we turn away, doesn’t mean it isn’t there.

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Poetry holds our vastness—our mixed emotions, grief, awe, love, our questions about love, our identity, our dark corners, immense light... For everything we don’t know (about ourselves, about poetry, about the world we’re leaving to our children), there are some things that we do know. About hope, potential. Facing our fear. And we can write what we know within the limitations of line breaks and image, the limitations of metaphor and sound.

These limitations hold us, contain us, as we attune to something greater.

And we find we can stay, just a little longer, to turn toward what’s been haunting us.

Which also is transformed by love.

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Clinical psychologist Maria Nemeth says facing our challenges reveals that  “there is something much bigger inside us than we had realized.” By making contact with The much bigger, we’re offered an exquisite chance to create a life that more truly reflects our deepest selves.

The wilderness, Nemeth says, is where we each encounter our 3 faces: the face we show, the face we hide, and the face we hope. Or, who we think we should be, who we’re afraid we might be, and our true nature, which exists as potential.

We see this potential in those we admire. We’re in fact drawn to people who express this potential. Ex: I’m drawn to people who against all odds express kindness, to the underdog whose insistence on kindness, rather than vindictiveness, changes the system (I married such a man!). Given Nemeth’s framework, if I value kindness, I have a receptor for it. But if I value kindness, I also know the pain of cruelty.

Do you hear the threat here?

Touching this place in me touches the kindness I’ve known, but also the cruelty. This is a place of ache, ambivalence. So it’s understandable that I might want to shut the whole thing down.

But this is also a place of transformation. Resurrection.

We all have these places. And (glory be!) we all have people & other-than-people in our lives whom we LOVE simply because they help us remember who we are.

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Who are these people for you? And what does this say about you?

The writing experience outlined below was mostly lifted from Nemeth’s profound book, The Energy of Money. Fair warning: don’t skim or skip ahead, but finish each step before you move on to the next, or some of the revelation will be lost.

On a sheet of paper:

—along the left side make a list of the people & the other-than-people you’ve admired: family, mountain lions, classmates, places on earth, teachers, priests, oceans, friends, ravens, healers, waterfalls, world leaders, caves, hikes, artists, biblical figures, warriors, coyotes, mythological characters, roads, trees, etc.

—along the right side of your paper, record the correlating qualities or traits you admire (adventurous, courageous, creative, powerful, kind, elegant, intelligent, truthful), and if a quality shows up more that once, put a checkmark by that quality each time it shows up

On another sheet of paper:

—when your inventory is complete, spend some time with each quality and listen to your internal response

—does reading or saying this word bring you more alive?

—if so, write that word on this new page, and if other enlivening qualities come up that didn’t make it into the initial inventory, write those down as well

This is yours too:

—you possess the capacity to receive & embody each quality on this page

—if you didn’t, you wouldn’t resonate with them, your heart wouldn’t recognize them

—these qualities exist in you

& finally:

—write a statement or poem about you

—this can be short, incorporating the qualities you’ve identified: ex. I’m the kind of person who values hospitality.

—or written with a hyperbolic spin: I am hospitality (ooh! I kinda love that).

—or the evocative: I am the sun after 9 gray months.

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You’re invited to share your statement or poem about you in the comments section. You’re also invited to respond to each other. A couple forms you might engage in your response:

Thank you for ____ [verbatim word or phrase from author].

I feel ____ [emotion evoked in you].

This touches a place in me that ____ [resonance in you].

Of course you don’t have to engage forms, but sometimes it’s helpful to lean into them rather than the blank space.

What a gift your generous response is, both to the person you’re responding to and also to you—to consider what you feel, understand, remember, and then to say out loud requires a muscular kind of movement. & it takes reps to build muscle.

I have so enjoyed hearing from you, either directly or on the side. Grateful to be on this journey with you! If you like what you read—either from me or someone in the comments section—be sure to hit the ❤️ button. And if you want to write a response, hit the 💬 button.

With open palms, Sarah

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I am.

I am the Ohio Valley wandered across the Great Plains. I am Grandmother’s forget-me-nots. I am grasses who whisper, know me. I am rainforest born in shadow. I am Moon tide. I am Earth’s Daughter, the Pacific Madrone, the fingers of the Salish Sea. I am starling, her cape of night. Raven, her voluptuous song. I make nourishment from what was once dead. I am Hestia swallowed by her father, and BabaYaga whose fiery skulls make free. I am resurrection. I am blackberry and sea lettuce. I am bagworms in juniper. I am the dark descent.