It’s time to connect with the earth and then act like it.

NOTE: Book links below to The Artist’s Way*, Braiding Sweetgrass, and The Serviceberry (three books that have genuinely been important on my life’s journey are affiliate links to bookshop.org as a way to help support both the work I do and share for free and a way to support independent bookstores, both of which are important to me.

That said, these books are probably also available at your local library, and I love and support those as well! Please do what is right for you, but if you haven’t read especially Robin’s books yet, please do.

Thanks for your support and understanding!

Two thoughts have been circling for me lately.

First, it's essential that we connect with the earth right now—deeply, daily, as much as we can.

It's where I've found the most healing, the most grounded processing and productive communion with my shadow, the most support, an outstretched hand to hold while navigating difficult liminal spaces in my life, and it's where I have been able to reconnect with and anchor into my soul's purpose on the planet, and I know I'm not alone in that.

You don't need to be living in the sticks to connect with the land either—it's about presence, grounding, and attuning yourself to the natural world (which you are also a key part of, and not separate from).

I’ve intentionally connected with the natural world while living in some of the most famously urban and industrial places on the planet: Manhattan, London, Paris, Los Angeles, Seattle, Las Vegas, Liverpool, San Francisco, etc.

While getting out a ways can be a welcome reset, it’s not always feasible.

However, most cities have some type of natural element available, from Central Park to the Thames to botanical gardens to, if you will look closely, the weeds and wildflowers that push themselves up through the cracks in the walls and pavement (can you tell I’ve always felt a kinship with them?).

If you’re not in a city where connecting with nature feels hard to come by, I probably don’t need to give you any ideas, but perhaps you just need a reminder to go breathe outside air, touch the earth, and just take time to notice.

What do you see? What do you hear? Do you have any animal visitors? Are there butterflies or bees?

If it’s winter and you live somewhere much is dormant, what is living? Are there signs of spring to come? Buds on trees still warmly in their covers, awaiting the right time to emerge?

Using all of our senses to remember that we are nature is incredibly grounding and regulating.

Especially when many of us might spend much of our time staring at screens and holding technology, doomscrolling and reading ghastly combinations of words we’d never dreamed possible, unplugging for a moment—or simply using our phones to photograph the sky during a beautiful sunset—is essential.

You might even find your inner voice clears its throat and shares some wisdom it’s been holding, waiting for you to be available to receive it.

In these moments of clarity, you might receive what has been referred to by Julia Cameron of The Artist’s Way* as “marching orders”—an illumination of what actions are calling you, and where your unique cosmic blueprint is being summoned to do what you are uniquely able to.

Secondly, I have been telling everyone I know that will listen that now is an essential time for builders to be building.

For lovers to be loving.

For constructive action.

It is a time to plant the seeds of a fertile, abundant future that is supportive and loving and nurture them as they begin to sprout. Just as urgently as others are trying to salt the same earth.

Maybe that feels odd or off because, inarguably, it is also a time of tearing down, clearing out, and inevitable change. It is without question also a time of destruction that we are living in.

It’s a time where it’s easy to feel overwhelmed, especially if you feel called more to the building end of things than the destruction end of things (although you likely understand that what is built on a rotten foundation will inevitably crumble). It’s an easy time to wonder what the use is of gifts that build, if building doesn’t seem to be the order of the day.

This frustrating disconnect of being a builder in a tearing-down time often brings me back to the quote by Robin Wall Kimmerer in Braiding Sweetgrass:

“The land knows you, even when you are lost.”

The truth that the land both knows you (because you are part of it) and that when you are lost, you can reconnect with the land and in so doing reconnect with yourself, is a key part of how I found myself in astrocartography after a long and winding road through many helping professions.

The power of place is paramount to me as an astrocartographer, and none of it would be possible—including finding our personal soul purpose—without the land we live on and our ability to connect with it to align with our shared truth.

And speaking of aligning with the land and our truth, the sequel to Braiding Sweetgrass, The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World, is also, in my opinion, essential reading for the times we’re living in, and bursting with hope, instructions, and a way forward for building through, around, and during everything going on.

Emotions come easily to me these days, but as I was listening to the audiobook, I often wept at the vision of what can be, if we collectively take heed and choose that path forward. Many are already leading this movement, and we can choose to support them and play the role awaiting us.

It is also a key time to remember that, in the words of the Lion Turtle,

“The true mind can weather all the lies and illusions without being lost. The true heart can tough the poison of hatred without being harmed. Since beginning-less time, darkness thrives in the void, but always yields to purifying light.”

To me, these thoughts of reconnecting with nature (realigning and attuning with our inner voice and true identity as part of nature), and then building towards our shared vision, are companions, lovers, friends.

They are the inhale and the exhale.

They are what sustains life and also hope.

And I hope you find them helpful, too 🫶

I wrote this post because I felt it was urgent and important to share (not from a desire to get bookings), but if you want to meet your magic and consider your soul purpose through the lens of astrology,

I’d love to connect with you!

*The Artist’s Way is a book designed as a 12-week program with a lot of potential to support and help creative people (that’s all of us!). That said, there are some parts I think could stand to be updated that haven’t in the newer editions, including some ethnocentric wording and concepts. I also personally disagree with some of her takes on, for instance, why people stay in difficult or even abusive relationships. That said, there is still much that many artists have found helpful, like the morning pages, the artist’s date, and the deep shadow work she walks people through that have been transformative for many and as a result, I feel it’s still worth sharing.

As always, this blog and my work are created entirely with Authentic [Human] Intelligence. Thank you for supporting human astrologers and astrocartographers!