When Seeds Grow
Raising children is a lot like planting seeds. You scatter the truths and lessons you want to share with your children and then you wait and hope. You may water the seeds, but it’s up to your offspring to cultivate the soil for its rooting and care for its growth into seedlings.
I believe all spirits enter the womb withtheir own karma and destiny. A mother’s role is to be clean as a flute andallow their powerful light to pass through, without adding stories they don’tneed to fix. I gave birth naturally because I didn’t want drugs in my children’ssmall bodies, distorting their first impressions of the world. I wanted toexperience the orgasmic rush of oxytocin and be coherent when I looked into mychild’s eyes for the first time.
I taught my sons the world is alive andmagic arises naturally when we connect to every living thing. We counted time bythe phases of the moon, asked permission from plants before harvesting formedicine or food, infused our cooking with love, made room for faeries in thegarden and spent time outside, barefoot, connecting to Mother Earth with everystep.
I was thrilled when my son Skyler chose Wilderness Survival for his year-long eighth grade project at the Waldorf School of Orange County and intrigued how this would develop. I reached out to Joel Robinson at Naturalists for You. Joel took Skyler out to the Cleveland National Forest for forest bathing. They sat by the river and observed as many things as possible, dropping deeper and deeper into the connection of all things. I enrolled Skyler and his younger brother Kobe in Earthroots Field School for ancestral survival training camps.
His teachers were often barefoot and helped them deepen their love and comfort in the natural world. The training culminated in a 16-mile, two-day solo hike in the desert.
Because of these teachings, Skyler is getting a BA in agriculture and experiencing a two-month paid internship at Las Cruces Ecological Reserve in Costa Rica studying plants in the field and applying science that truly boggles my mind. But he explains it slowly and I can see the seed is now a mature and healthy plant with its own internal drive, finding, its own way to the light. Thanks to Naturalists for You and Earth Roots School for helping me water such a beautiful spirit.
