Okay, so this is probably going to sound weird, but I’m excited and kind of can’t believe it myself, so I’m writing it out to try and solidify/manifest more of it.

My therapist said a lot of things in my therapy appointment yesterday, but one of the primary things I took away was the concept of the awakened mind. I’m a spiritual person, always have been. I carry deep, strong faith. But since leaving organized religion, my soul/faith/spirit has been emaciated. By reading and writing, I’ve been sustaining it to an extent, but by disconnecting from nature (specifically forests and trees), I’ve been depriving my soul of the one form of faith that has remained constant: my faith in the earth.

And she’s completely right.

2020 was a year I wrote more than I ever could have imagined, and it was a year filled with trips out to the woods. Sitting riverside and reading, writing, breathing, thinking, meditating, talking to myself, hiking. It was year I saw so much personal, emotional, mental, and physical healing. Then the wildfires happened and I got shut indoors and I’ve hardly been in nature at all since August of 2020.

I used to hike year-round. Rain or shine. Or snow.
I’ve hiked four miles in the snow in a dress and snow boots.
I’ve eaten lunch on a completely frozen lake, staring up at Mt. Hood.
I’ve hugged so many trees – literally – and let their divine essence breathe into mine.
I’ve talked to birds and bees and spiders.
I’ve had an orphaned baby deer adopt me for a year and a half, come to my home, eat apples and carrots and berries and sleep under the trampoline in our front yard while I was on top of the trampoline reading.
I’ve had hummingbirds fly up to me and follow me through the woods.
I’ve made eyes with foxes in the wild.

Last year? I memorized some of the species of birds that eat from our bird feeder, but that’s it. I haven’t connected to my soul or let my soul connect to the woods in over a year, and as a result, my faith-self is shriveled. And the result of that is where I find myself now: a state of increased detachment from myself and hardly any motivation or focus. Because honestly, connecting to my faith is really fucking hard and scary now that I don’t identify as any specific religion. Who am I spiritually if I’m not a traditional “Christian?” It’s scary, asking that question. It’s even scarier still to search for the answers.

But the longer I deny my spirituality, the less I feel like myself. And this, my therapist said, is why I’ve felt stifled creatively lately. Why I don’t have the motivation to read or write. “You’re a poet, Riley,” she said, “You’re not satisfied with the mundane. As a poet, you’re called to write about the higher things, about death. How can you write about death if you’re not allowing yourself to see, breathe, live?” And I felt like she’d punched me in the chest because the director of my MFA program said over and over that he’s a writer and “that means I dream of the end of things.” “To write content of substance, you must be connected to your faith,” my therapist said, “You can’t afford to let this part of you keep starving.”

So yesterday after the appointment, I took my dog outside and talked to the trees in our condo complex. I hugged them. Acknowledged them. Spoke to them. Stared at the sky. Breathed deeply and focused my mind on the part of me that has always been moss and dirt and leaves and bark. “Take the small steps,” was my therapist’s instructions. So I did. It felt insignificant, but right to smell the trees and place my forehead against them. To quote Mary Oliver, “I believe in the sentience of trees.”

And the result?

I’ve finally figured out the plot of the first book in my Greek Mythology series. I figured out the overarching conflict. I know how the Regency time period plays into it all. I don’t know all the details, but I have so much more than I did. I actually slept last night, and I dreamed. And I feel like I could write whole chapters after work today. From ten minutes outside just letting myself express my love for trees.

Now I know some people are going to say, “Riley, this is coincidence. Correlation doesn’t equal causation,” and yeah, you’re right. But this is what faith is: belief in things unseen. My whole life people have seen that I am a spiritual being. Leaders in the church have said it to my face, or given me nicknames about my spirituality. One pastor once called me a “planet-shaker,” and wouldn’t you know it, Poseidon himself – a character in my series – is often referred to as an “earth shaker.” My faith, my spiritual self, is the core of who I am. And my writing is an integral part of how I express my spiritual self. I wrote an essay specifically talking about how poetry, and writing in general, grants us access to the divine. (Hilariously, it was aspects of this essay I was falsely accused of plagiarizing.)

I can’t prove the things I feel in my gut, my spirit, my faith. I don’t know if I believe in god, but I do believe in energy. I believe in memory. I believe in dimensions of existence. I believe dragons exist. I believe magic exists. And I believe that nature and literature and writing are portals through which we can access these things. Belief in things unseen.

People will think I’m weird. That’s fine.

People will roll their eyes and criticize and mock and make fun. That’s fine.

I have called myself a forest/hedge-witch for years because they’re the only things that actually fit how I see myself. And while I absolutely believe in things like The Golden Rule as markers for life and how to treat people, I need more. I need deeper. I need weirder.

Last night I dreamt about rereading Aristotle’s Poetics, not because it’s a book I particularly enjoyed, but because it’s an extension of poetic theory, and my soul is thirsting for everything poetic, artistic, creative, and challenging.

If there is a god inside me, she’s Calliope, the goddess of poetry, and one of the Muses. (My creative writing teacher in undergrad said my poetry reminded him of Sappho, and she has been considered a Muse throughout all of creative history.) There’s too many of these “coincidences” for them not to be correlated, in my mind.

So, get ready. I’m not going to hold in my spirituality anymore. I’m gonna get weird and freaky and I’m gonna nurture my most authentic self. Time to find my faith/gut/goddess.