You are nature.

If it all doesn’t work out, if we don’t reach collective liberation, if my ideas and longings are crazy or deluded in some way that I don’t know about yet, if we don’t make it, I want to at least be able to know about the intricacies of nature so I know why there’s something beautiful about being alive. – younger me to one of my friends in my 20s explaining why I was choosing to study botany. 

This is the sentiment that led me to nature and the sentiment that eventually led me to classical Chinese medicine.

There were two trees in my backyard growing up. I have vivid memories of the flowers, leaf shapes, and trunks – and I now know they were a big oak and a little cherry tree. The oak tree was the bearer of the giant leaf piles I got to jump in every fall and the cherry tree was the one I spent a lot of time climbing. I did not grow up with much awareness of nature, I was more familiar with concrete and pebble playgrounds than I was with the woods. But I did have my small piece of nature in my little backyard. 

I built a relationship to nature through community organizing and social justice work. I stumbled into a student environmental action meeting in college because one of my good friends was always bummed that no one came to their meetings. I showed up for my friend and everyone was so enthusiastic to see a new face that I instantly was appointed into a leadership role. That next weekend, I joined my friend and a few others at a gathering of students organizing around climate change in Knoxville. I heard about mountaintop removal for the first time as Appalachian community members shared about the health, social, and economic impacts of coal mining in their homes and communities. From that weekend on, I was impassioned and nothing was ever the same. 

Through my early years of community organizing, I also was introduced to the medicinal plants of Appalachia and the necessary community gardens in the food deserts of Memphis. This is how I began to more deeply connect with nature. And since then, it has led me to grow food on farms, foster a multitude of gardens, learn the names of animals and trees and know their rhythms, wildcraft plant medicine, listen to the history of the land, navigate water and wind, and eventually study classical East Asian medicine. I don’t think I would have built this relationship if it wasn’t for this meandering path I had continued to follow. 

Nearly a decade after stumbling into that meeting, there I was, justifying to one of my organizing friends why I was studying Botany. The same experience would happen over and over again (still to this day sometimes) where I justify why I am also focused on healing work and holistic medicine. There is a much wider acceptance now of healing work and political movement work as mutually necessary. Much of this is due to the work of the healing justice movement and all the healers and organizers who had these inklings and knowings before me. And there is still some skepticism. 

In a world where our lives are gripped by capitalism and white supremacy– where there is a constant onslaught of violence, injustice, and suffering– where there is so much work for us to do to get to the other side (and y’all, I believe that we will. And, we might not all make it.)- my connection to nature is foundational to my ability to show up everyday. To carry the belief in revolutionary optimism. Nature is sustenance and it is a reminder. 

I am so grateful for stumbling onto the path of community organizing and then continuing to stumble along to find healing and holistic medicine. I am so grateful for the ways in which I have been able to connect with life that is larger than my own through both avenues. I am so grateful for the beauty that I get to witness everyday. I am so grateful to have followed the inkling that there was something to discover there – and on the other side, as I continue to follow the thread, and deepen my connection— I can tell you with confidence that we are interconnected, interdependent, and never alone. 

And the wonderful thing is, we all have our own small piece of nature that we are… from which we are never separated. You are, we are, nature.

I have been thinking about my personal story and connection with nature as I am preparing to facilitate an upcoming class about deepening our relationship with Spring. I am writing about all this to share my intentions and why I think deepening our connection with nature is valuable, important, and life-giving. 

I am offering this Spring class as a part of a year-long course called Humming with the Seasons. These classes are a way to deepen your connection with nature and the cyclical rhythms of change through the lens of classical Chinese medicine. I believe that this medicine has a lot to offer us as humans at this moment in time. This class is a small and humble offering, and I carry these big intentions simultaneously. The things we stumble upon and the inklings we follow may lead us to some serious transformative change. 

For more information about Humming with the Seasons and to register for the Spring class click here!