I am a recovering perfectionist, productivity chaser, and people pleaser, coaching women to disrupt old thought patterns, let go of behaviors that keep them stuck, and make their joy an everyday priority.
🍃 Green Is The Tree's Business Suit 🍂
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Guten Tag, Reader, Green is their costume—the business suit of the deciduous trees—signaling that they are working, producing, and transforming. They make energy out of sunlight. Transform out-breath into in-breath. Humans, in their quest to understand, describe, and name all things, call it photosynthesis. I call it tree green magic. The slower I walk among the trees, the less interested I am in understanding, describing, and naming things. When participants on my nature immersion walks ask, “What shrub/bird/berry/flower/tree is this?” I ask back, ”What are you noticing about it?” The question invites curiosity. A desire to actually get to know the being in question and explore its shape, smell, sound, texture, color, movement, neighbors… Whereas, when I used to respond with the official western name (rocky mountain maple, stellar jay, snowberry, knapweed, douglas fir…) that often seemed satisfactory enough, checked some internal box, even if the brain could not recall the name by the time we returned to the parking lot.
I am glad some humans went and figured out the science behind tree green magic, though.
Without their desire to explain, I would have missed the 💡 moment in when I learned that the green in the leaves is not their true color—the yellows, oranges, and reds are. Only when trees get the “it’s autumn, dudes” signal (longer nights, cooler temperatures, and who knows what hidden messages float by in the season’s winds) do they stop working so hard, cease producing chlorophyll, and prepare to rest through winter. And that’s when they shine in all their true glory. Makes you wonder, doesn’t it, what’s waiting underneath our productivity veil, behind the chain mail we forge out of our to-do lists, protecting us from facing the fact that we might not be who we thought we were, who the culture formed us to be. Are our true colors waiting for us to slow down, prepare for rest, stop the hustle? I intend to find out through an extensive cut to my social media presence this fall. Will you join me? How might you slow life down and prepare for a more restful winter? Hit reply and let me know. Midlife Wilderness ExpeditionsIf you are a midlife woman with a desire to shed some outdated shoulda-coulda-woulda, consider joining the Midlife Wilderness Expeditions Fall Adventure. Registration is open for another week or so, but the opening Zoom session happens on Monday, October 7. The website has some details, but please don’t hesitate to ask me anything about it. Or book an absolutely obligation-free meet-the-coach call. Forest BathingIf you are in the Missoula area, I also have two opportunities to experience Forest Bathing with me:
I will see you back here in two weeks. If you liked this letter, please forward it to a friend. Always on your side, truly, p.s. If you got something from today's letter, why not buy me a coffee? I am keeping my writing AI-free, so I put much work into it. You can leave me a tip here. p.p.s.: If you want more of me than a letter every other week, you might enjoy hanging out with me on social media: |
Welcome to my Joy Letters
I am a recovering perfectionist, productivity chaser, and people pleaser, coaching women to disrupt old thought patterns, let go of behaviors that keep them stuck, and make their joy an everyday priority.
How do you wish to walk into 2025? This is me trying to avoid sliding into it on an icy road. Even though the Germans will wish you a "good slide" ("Guten Rutsch"). Photo by Mr Laine Guten Tag, Reader, Here we are again, the liminal week that the Germans call “Time Between The Years.” Neither here nor there, neither now nor then. I was going to mention the term “lame duck,” often used to describe the time between one administration and the next. But then I thought it was lame imagery, so...
As the creek tells its last stories before it freezes over, how might you prepare to slow down? Guten Tag, Reader, The land settles into winter. All growth is done, all seeds have been set, and all systems are switching from generation and expansion to slow-shit-down and leave-me-the-fuck-alone. Well, I might be projecting on that last bit. Certainly, though, nature knows winter is the season to conserve and protect energy. Yes, I am noticing the juncos, chickadees, finches, flickers,...
My prescription for the winter blues: smell the forest at dusk. Guten Tag, Reader, The sweetness tickled my nose as a deep breath carried it through my nostrils. Immediately after, my brain registered bitter and earthy hitting my olfactory system on a soothing wetness, so different from the dry (and annoyingly loud) air that’s being forced through the vents in my house to shelter me from the approaching winter and its blunt. Smelling a fall forest weaves a thread that connects me far, far...