About me

I’ve always loved the natural world. My parents had a deep, but quiet, relationship with nature. One of my earliest memories is standing in front of a patch of forest with my dad, listening to the symphony of cicadas on a hot summer evening. I remember being absolutely blown away by the sound, and also by the experience of connecting with something so ancient and powerful.

As an adult I’ve dedicated myself to deepening my relationship with that beautiful force. My desire for a stronger connection with the world around me has taken me on a fantastic journey through my life, although not necessarily the traditional route. I’ve been extremely lucky to study under several incredible teachers including Katie Singer, women’s health expert and author of Garden of Fertility and The Wholeness of a Broken Heart, and Sarah Preston, an expert herbalist. I’ve studied ecology and the natural world extensively and co-owned an eco-friendly landscaping and gardening company for a number of years. I also worked as a teacher in the Waldorf School system for some time, with kindergarten age children. Their bright spirits and unfettered connection with our environment taught me more than I ever could have taught them. Rewilding has been my path and my passion for many decades now and it has given me so much.

Currently, I am working as an herbalist, teaching, and writing full time. My previous work includes The Year of Black Clothing Project (https://theyearofblackclothing.wordpress.com/ ) an exploration of grief and rebellion, and Liminal; a Novella, published by Black and Green Press in 2014.

I lost my mother, whom I was very close to, in 2018. I would not be where, or who I am, without her influence, unending support, and unconditional love, and I miss her very much. Losing her also showed me how precious our time here on earth truly is, and it is with an open heart and deepened understanding of the cycles of life that I go forward into the world now.

Currently I split my time between Missouri and Pennsylvania and share my life with my amazing husband Kevin Tucker, and our four incredible children. I am so lucky to have all of them and am bursting with gratitude for all the love and support I experience in my life.

I always say that if I got to live on planet earth for just one second it would already be enough for me. There’s so much beauty here, and magic. Everything is imbued with life and meaning. I am so thankful for the opportunity to share that love with others. It makes me endlessly happy to connect with kindred spirits who feel the same way, to rebuild that sense of community and belonging that was taken from us.

My work is driven by love and connection, but I remain relentless and unwavering in knowing that it is ultimately about the destruction of civilization - of the domesticating force in the world that seeks to diminish us as individuals, and reduce forests into board feet.

I have fallen in love with the world, have nurtured relationships with the wild around us, and with the land bases I live in and the watersheds that support those places. Places like the Susquehanna River watershed. The Susquehanna River long ago wrote her way across the land, her ancient pathways evident in the voluptuous curves she carved into the hills and mountains she left standing. They say you never step into the same river twice, yet I am driven to return to her again and again, in the hope of understanding her, and to offer my humble apologies that she hasn’t been the same since the dams and locks arrived to build the industry that poisons her. Yet she can still sparkle. Life carries on through her living wake. She isn’t gone. She is here. She is struggling for survival. She hasn’t yet given up the fight.

Too often we fixate on healing and resistance as separate entities. As though our bodies were segmented in unnatural ways. Just like the roles we employ and the roles of being employed. We see healing and resistance as separate because the ideas have been separated for us. Isolating the pieces of ourselves, and isolating us from the people and world around us makes us capable of being wounded enough to wound ourselves. I want people to fall in love with the land. To see the world as a living organism teeming with living organisms gives us the lens to see that we ourselves are still alive. We are here. We are wild. We are capable of reconnecting, and loving deeply, of experiencing life in all its incredible fullness. Like the river we have been wounded by civilization. But we are still struggling. We are still fighting for what we love. And we aren’t alone.

I want people to find their place and feel it. To find their rivers and feel those river wounds reflected in their own. We need to heal, but that won’t come apart from the land or apart from the struggle to build a better world. Instead, it will come through it.

Growling softly, roaring fiercely: we have been tamed and made docile, but we are neither. My wish for my work is that it may help remind us of who we are so we can stop being what we aren’t. So we can bring back what they sought to erase and awaken what was never really taken. Remove the dams and blockages they placed so that she, and we, can flow freely again. So that one day our children’s children will be wild like the rivers and able to drink from them again.

I’m inspired by this poem from Hafiz:

The small woman
builds cages for everyone
she
knows.
While the sage,
Who has to duck her head
When the moon is low,
Keeps dropping keys all night long
For the
Beautiful
Rowdy
Prisoners.

I think one of the most important things we can do in the world right now is recognize where we are and that things desperately need to change. We can identify the places that feel difficult and painful and offer a hand to each other as we work through them. We can find the spots in our lives and in our culture where cages exist and we can drop keys to one another to help each other break out. Freedom exists in collaboration and community. Let’s destroy these broken, old paradigms and build new ones together.