I’m excited to share that I’ll be participating in an upcoming online writing course with Janisse Ray, an award-winning Southern author whose writing is deeply rooted in the land and in the rhythms of her daily life.
Janisse believes in the power of stories—to change the world, to help address the climate crisis, and to create a more just society. Notably, she was a major inspiration for me early in my career around seeds and seed saving, after I read The Seed Underground: A Growing Revolution to Save Food. Her work helped shape how I think about stewardship, nature, and attention to place.
I took a previous online offering with Janisse, and it inspired me to begin creating phenology wheels. For me, they’ve become a perfect way to gather and reflect on my observations—what’s happening, when it’s happening and how it’s all woven together, what I see both in the natural world and in my garden. They give me space to practice sketching and painting skills, while sharpening my ability to notice patterns and seasonal change.
This is just one of many creative practices that will be shared in the course. I’ll be joining 10 other creatives, each offering ideas to support your own journaling practice, including:
nature observation and writing
simple art exercises
shapes, borders, corners, spirals, dividers, banners, and other page designs
weather, mapping, perspective
what place means to us …and so much more.
Registration is by donation, so you can pay what you’re able and what the experience feels worth to you.
The Winter 2026 series focuses on Place—our complicated, ancestral, and modern relationships with the places that matter to us.
The course meets 7 Sundays in a row, from January 11 through February 22, 2026, on Zoom from 5–6 pm Eastern.
When you have a quiet moment to yourself, close your eyes and visualize colors that resonate with you. Find one that really feels right, like it could heal, comfort, bathe, and support you.
While visiting my friend and healer Tia (mentioned in a previous post about metamorphosis), at the beginning of my cancer ordeal, I was open to trying and discovering new things. One of them she offered was this question: “What color?”
I closed my eyes, settled in, and rotated through several options. Being an ecologist, the colors were very specific, and existing in nature.
Freshly unfurled spring leaves, practically a neon green in their youth and vigor. Stunning, but that wasn’t it.
Bright, blue, and clear Florida summer skies, with a few puffy white clouds. Cheerful, but that wasn’t it either.
Oooh….the aquamarine, crystal clear blue of a healthy Florida spring run. Dappled with green eelgrass and traces of algae. Refreshing, but not the one.
Fall foliage in a beautiful mountain setting. A mix of yellows, oranges and reds in all possible shades cascading among valleys and river edges. Magnificent, but not it. Feeling warmer though…
Then I saw it, and felt it. Golden winter light filtered, then expanded, through the trees. Winter time in North Florida, produces a very specific color that I’d come to love over the years, but was only now truly connecting with. Winter light is different, than all other times of the year. The sun is lower in the sky, and the light seems more akin to the warm glow of a fire place. Winter light is golden and soft.
At this time of year, a walk through the woods is more well-lit too. The sun can peek through the canopy, finding the forest floor in more places. The deciduous trees are in various stages of having dropped their leaves for the season. Some are entirely nude, while others still hold on to a few. Pine trees still have their needles.
What’s most stunning about this particular wavelength of light is how it’s filtered through branches, leaves and needles, but then at certain view points, radiates and magnifies in all directions outward. Sometimes it looks sparkly, you can see the light wavering and pulsating. It dapples golden hues onto seed heads, foliage, and Spanish moss, illuminating them. Grey and brown fall plants transform from drab to fab!
This is the hue that felt most healing and comforting to me.
Winter light finds an opening, filters through the trees, then radiates out, sparkling and enhancing everything it lands upon.
Once I connected to this color, I started seeking it out more. I wandered a lot through the woods between Forage Farm and the Prairie Creek Conservation Cemetery, usually with my dog. We’d wander the cemetery trails, where I was secretly looking for desirable final resting places. You know, just in case.
In the woods, that light was always found, and eagerly greeted by me. I’d get just the right angle and position for the light to filter through and then pour down over me. I’d close my eyes, stand strong yet soft, with palms turned up and out to receive the light. Then the psychedelic stuff would start.
With light bathing on closed lids, the images my brain continued to produce became an important part of this light-seeking experience. I would “see” radiating light waves, moving towards the sunlight. After a few moments, that directional movement continued, but changed to very tiny particles still flowing with determination towards the source. Millions of tiny dust-like sparkly particles were moving quickly and surrounding me.
I felt a release from my physical body, and experienced a feeling of oneness with everything. My cells felt a part of the greater expanse of the universe around me, the trees, damp soil, and everything beyond. In equal exchange, the massive expansiveness of the universe felt very much apart of all of my cells.
In this state of consciousness, feeling absolutely free and untethered, I asked. It didn’t seem like too much to ask, given the connectedness and oneness I felt. I asked the great Mother Earth with all her beauty, and the universe beyond in all its vastness and wisdom, to absorb some of my illness and pain. I could feel that light absorbing it, and the sparkly light behind my eyelids, still pulling me up and out.
It’s hard to describe this experience, but it was profound, to say the least.
I felt softened of heart, mind and body. And expanded, far beyond my physical self and this physical world. Softened, and expanded. Receiving.
What a tremendous gift to receive. Beauty, connection, and healing.
I continue to seek this light out, and connect even if only for a few moments in a busy day, to it’s power and life giving force.
I’ve long been fascinated by the process of metamorphosis. It happens a lot in the insect world, most beautifully and visibly for us humans as the transformation of a caterpillar into a stunning butterfly.
Imagine! You fall asleep one day, forming a protective sheath around your body. Your own cells start to liquefy, digesting themselves. But then they start re-organizing, creating entirely new structures, until eventually you re-emerge. You’re an entirely new being. Something with scales instead of skin; wings instead of legs to move around the world. Everything about you is different, even though you’re still the same. That’s pretty mind blowing.
If you’ve got an extra 2 minutes and 42 seconds, watch this time lapse video of the process.
“The caterpillar is a necessary stage but becomes unsustainable once its job is done. There is no point in being angry at it, and there is no need to worry about defeating it. The task is to focus on building the butterfly…” ~Elizabet Sahtouris
I liken the transformative process of metamorphosis, to that of my cancer experience. I felt a major shift in the way I viewed and lived my life.
Our society always talks about the FIGHT against cancer. Everyone reassured me of how strong I was, that I would surely fight this and win. We had to be aggressive to beat this thing. There’s an all out WAR on cancer.
I was frustrated with the assurance of my strength and bad-assery, and the assumption of the great fight that lay ahead. It just didn’t sit right with me.
I was with my friend and healer Tia, receiving some counsel and much needed massage and other healing treatments. I mentioned this concept of a fight to her. She looked at me deeply like she does, really connecting. While I can’t remember her exact words, it was something like this:
“Well, you’re not a fighter. It’s not your nature. You are gentle, and you nurture. Perhaps you don’t fight this thing, but you work with it in your own way.”
I was reminded of a quote from a card a friend gave me long ago when I was a teenage animal activist that said, “The greatest strength is gentleness.”
That was it! I wasn’t going to fight the cancer. The cancer was after all, me. My own cells inside my own body had gone haywire. Was I going to fight myself?
When the caterpillar starts the process of becoming a butterfly, the Imaginal cells that lay dormant in the active caterpillar start to become active. Initially, the caterpillar enzymes attack the Imgainal cells. But eventually these cells organize and mobilize, creating the necessary bits and pieces for a butterfly.
“There is no point in being angry at it, and there is no need to worry about defeating it. The task is to focus on building the butterfly…”
And so it was with my cancer. I couldn’t be angry at it, or the unknown conditions that caused it. I couldn’t be angry at myself (even though I blamed myself in many ways for the diagnosis).
So I went within, and really had a conversation with myself. Not how I normally do, chatting away out loud as I fumble through my day. No, I went really inward, visualizing those growing cells, that were my own. They were a part of me, so I could connect with them. I talked to them, or myself, or whatever and said….
“Hey. Thanks for the visit. No really! You’ve woken me up and I’m definitely paying attention. I’ve made some changes and I’ve been thinking a lot. I’m really not in any position to leave this world right now. Maybe in 20, 30 or 40 years you can re-visit and take me then if you must, but certainly not now. I’ve got a lot of work ahead of me, and lot of people that need me. So I’d ask that you kindly dissolve and leave. Thank you for showing me what’s on the other side. So long and farewell…please.”
Furthermore, I envisioned all kinds of things that gently asked cancer to leave. Chemo silently dissolved the cells when infused. Healing warm rays of light dappled through trees, gently melted the cells. I asked Mother Earth and the endless universe, to absorb into her vastness some of my pain and illness. Water washed them away. I saw my mother (passed away 3 years prior) at a totally fabricated and perfect place in my mind, sitting with me and helping me heal, like she always did.
And so, all the myriad things I allowed to happen to me, and those that I chose, showed my cancer the door. Through a massive metamorphosis of my own, eyes and heart wide open, I transitioned into a different person. Perhaps not as dramatically as a caterpillar accomplishes, but damn near felt like I had wings and a new lease on life.
(Pro- tip: these tools of visualization were cultivated by reading the book, Creative Visualization by Shakti Gawain. I would recommend this for anyone, not just those experiencing a difficult time.)
My sweet mother and I at Devils’ Millhopper. I longed for her through my cancer ordeal, but also was glad she didn’t have to bear the weight of the situation.
My life is full. I’m using that word more than busy intentionally. It feels hectic sometimes and I’m constantly buzzing around from thing to thing to thing.
Most days I have to pause, and reflect how fortunate I am to do spend my days so fully doing things I enjoy.
Today, a warm and comfortable December morning in Florida, I spend hours in my seed saving gardens with two amazing women that help me tend them. Huxley the dog gets to come today because school is out, so no students or anyone else is around. I love hanging out with him, and knowing he is ecstatic to be free to follow his desires, and check in with the humans for love.
After the garden wraps up (I really could stay there all day!), I go to my office at Working Food to pack up the van quickly for the farmers market. One pop up attempt before the holidays to sell seeds and artsy things. Seeds that I curated, gifts that I made.
Mikey comes to market at the end with Huxley to help us pack up, and now I sit at home making a blog post and catching up on a few work things.
13 hour day non-stop, but filled with wonderful things.
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