I am bear, soil, wolf, nettle and oak

We are made of wild and must remember to treat ourselves as such

I was called into the forest and so I walked there, surrounded by small tangled hawthorns, gnarled and vast oaks, beautiful ash, muscly beech and crinkled elders.

The forest spoke with me in a voice of wolves, mycelium, leaves, birdsong, petrichor and seeds. She told me that when I was made, I was made with bear blood and that part of me was bear.

Laurie Kaplowitz

The forest told me that it was there to protect me and yet, it was also killing me.

The wild strength and beauty of the bear blood helped me through some very painful truama and abuse and perhaps I wouldn’t have got by without it. But, the bear blood hated confinement, hated taming, hated cages and not being in integrity more than any other blood. And as such, Bear blood will rot, crumble, shake, disintegrate and go mad in order to break free.

“You are part bear” said the forest, “and you must remember to treat yourself as such”

Shaun Tan

This dream made me think and feel about all the ways in which I contain myself, all the ways in which I step away from my centre and how it would serve me to make myself aware of these things and start to disintegrate them, before I disintegrated.

I remember reading once, that our souls, or our wildness inside us, will always want us to be in integrity (wholeness) and will always try and and bring us back to that place even if it means making us ill.

But the dream made me also think and feel about how we can forget we are wild beings with the blood, bones and bodies of earth, bear, plant, worm and tree inside us, and as the forest reminded me in my dream, we must treat ourselves as such.

Raija Jokinen

I believe, our bodies and our souls, long to feel the earth under their feet, to swim in wild waters, to eat wild plants and good fruits, to moonbathe, to absorb birdsong, to live seasonally, to rest deeply, to move our bodies.

Many of us live so against our wildness, hemming it in and suppressing it by forgetting we are it and living in ways so far removed from it. I believe we need to visit our home and our kin that reside in it often.

We need to find gateways back.

I dont think my dream was just about leaning even more into my integrity through voice, action and habits. But also by letting the wild animal of my body and the wildness of my soul be held by all I am made of.

Alexandra Dvornikova

The bear in me longs to stand in rivers, to eat berries and nuts from the trees, to bury my face in dark soil and inhale, to lie with my cub and watch the leaves fall from the trees, to rest often in roots and to eat well and wild and remember to honour the seasons in how I live.

I long to howl, to sing, to lament, to keen, to eat soil and wee in the meadow. I need to be held and supported by the wild, so I can support my wild

How is your wild body and soul?

Much love and dark tender soil

Brigit xx

---

POEM -

Tijana Lukovic

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean—
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

—Mary Oliver

---

Coming this week-

Samhain Letter and link to next online gathering.

Taryn Knight