Oh, hi there, I'm Nomi Kate!

me at age 3 sitting on a tree stump by a lake, canoes and a dock behind me in the early 90's in an outfit i wish i still had (purple pants, white tee, white socks, multi-colored itty bitty bowling Keds). kids are cute, this is a cute picture. film photo taken by my mama Kris Monson.

For a decade or more now, I have been enraptured by the podcast "On Being with Krista Tippet." At the opening of each episode she has repeatedly asked the same question of her guests. Today in the archive there are 523 episodes. She has asked, at least 523 people, 523 times to describe their childhood religious or spiritual background. This question pivots from our usual offering of credentials and traces origin stories. I love a good origin story because it points at what depth psychologist James Hillman discusses in "The Soul's Code: In Search Of Character and Calling."

“There is more in a human life than our theories of it allow. Sooner or later something seems to call us onto a particular path. You may remember this 'something' as a signal moment in childhood when an urge out of nowhere, a fascination, a peculiar turn of events struck like an annunciation: This is what I must do, this is what I’ve got to have. This is who I am.”

In my work practicing therapy, holding space, and supporting seekers in architecting their life I am often asked... "Who am I? Where do I belong? What should I do?"

Build your life from your direct experience.

"Let's start from the very beginning, it's a very good place to start..."

I believe in James Hillman's metaphor of the acorn for our innate potential. We all come with a blueprint for what our soul would like to express in our lives through us. The mighty oak is within the acorn and the sapling.*

My mother annunciated for me when I was nine years old, when we moved from our first house on Woodland Ave. in Duluth's city proper to a more rural area, that we wouldn't go to church as much because god wasn't only in church. ...god was wherever we were. ...god, god was outside in tree bark and the sparkling water (thanks mom). My grandmother, a minister's daughter, expected us to go to church, and when it wasn't so convenient for us to attend her church, my mom differentiated from her family of origin and stopped taking us to church. Oh, and she also told me god might not be a man (more on that later... thanks again mom).

So here is the thing which is most true about the religious and spiritual experiences of my childhood: I was raised to be spiritually inclined and outside. ...god. is. wild. Being outside is part of my acorn, my blueprint.

As a child I read "My Side of the Mountain" and dreamt of living inside of a hollowed out tree with an oil lamp made of a turtle shell, deer fat, and an old t-shirt to read and write by. I was outside for hours of my childhood, much of which I remember being with neighborhood kids, my little brother, or alone (my parents working nearby). Then inspired by "The Box Car Children" I would keep pretend milk jugs chilled in running ditch waters behind my house. I would slurp those same waters out of cupped palms because I read somewhere in a youth survivalist novel that running waters were clean enough to drink because they were moving. I obviously misunderstood. Spoiler alert! I didn't die (and I don't remember ever ever getting sick).

I was recently reminded of my ditch by Robert Michael Pyle's book "The Thunder Tree: Lessons from the Urban Wildland." When he says, "My own point of intimate contact with the land was a ditch… Without a doubt, most of the elements of my life flowed from that canal". 

Me too, Robert!

I knew flowers personally. I whispered my secrets to butterflies and bees. My mother's favorite animal was a turtle, and little sacred turtle statues don a special shelf in her bathroom to this day. When our family held hands and sang grace, "And so I thank the lord for giving me the things I need, the sun and the rain and the apple seed." The song planted the truth of interbeing and what we humans need: sun, rain, food. The bare necessities.

I thought I could read the weather in the wind, and I would sing it, imagining my voice carried to the ears of far off animals taking shelter before a storm. I vividly remember the small yellow birds at my grandmother's nursing home chirping away behind the glass. I made mud pies and magic potions beneath thee willow tree in our backyard. I picked apples with my maternal grandma, and wild blueberries with my mother. I fished with my dad. I fished with my grandpas. I foraged hazelnuts with my mom's friend on a camping trip once. When she opened the fuzzy involucres to show me a nut, I could barely believe it. What an absolute miracle to eat a nut right from a bush! My paternal grandmother died when I was four or five, giving me my first memories of the nature god present in death. I received messages from her in the clouds for years to come.

Like most Disney Princesses of the 90's and timeless fairy tales, I spoke to the natural world with ease.

me in a white dress with puff sleeves around the age of two or three in the early 90s. i am smelling flowers. my face is in a bouquet of yellow daffodils with red and yellow tulips blooming behind me. a bed of luscious green grass and dandelions is in the foreground, and birch trees line the background. a banging photo which gives me life to this day. film photo taken by my talented mama Kris Monson.

Twenty years later reading Susan Griffin's book "Of Women and Nature: The Roaring Inside Her" I was reminded of this:

"And so it is Goldilocks who goes to the home of the three bears, Little Red Riding Hood who converses with the wolf, Dorothy who befriends a lion, Snow White who talks to the birds, Cinderella with mice as her allies, the Mermaid who is half fish, Thumbelina courted by a mole. (And when we hear in the Navaho chant of the mountain that a grown man sits and smokes with bears and follows directions given to him by squirrels, we are surprised. We had thought only little girls spoke with animals.)"

Life moves in cycles. We forget. We remember. We forget.

I am humbled by questions of identity because I too once sat beneath thee willow tree asking the questions, "Who am I? Where do I belong?" While, if I'm honest, I asked more in the form of a dramatic sing along of Mulan over a mud pie, "If I were to truly be myself, I would break my family's heart. Who is the girl I see staring straight back at me? ...When will my reflection show who I am inside?"

The cycles begin during the first forgetting of our blueprint at our birth.* Our human development is a love letter to remembering our nature. I am remembering just like you.

I am answering the call to offer my skills in support of those seeking to evolve and increase their connection to their human experience.

As Mary Oliver said, "I got saved by the beauty of the world."

We know the medicine is our intimate connection with the living earth.

We know we are the earth.

We forget. So we must practice relationship to remember.

In this blog I'll be exploring rewilding and my attempts to live an authentic and nature centered life.

Here's some notes from the chorus of voices singing behind me:

• “A walk in nature isn’t just a break it’s a boost for your brain. Time outdoors helps your mind wander, sparks new connections, and can lead to creative solutions you wouldn’t find indoors.”(Inspired by Berman, Jonides & Kaplan, 2008)

• “Even a few minutes in a natural setting restores focus, clears mental clutter, and opens space for imaginative thinking.”(Kaplan & Kaplan, 1989)

• “Immersing yourself in the outdoors enhances cognitive flexibility, making it easier to see problems from fresh angles.”(Atchley, Strayer & Atchley, 2012)

• “Nature is a quiet partner for your creativity. By reducing mental fatigue, it allows innovative ideas to surface naturally.”(Berto, 2005)

Would you like to come outside and play with me?

Rewild your time and steward your soul,

Nomi

*Linked above: James Hillman, The Soul’s Code: In Search of Character and Calling (Grand Central Publishing, 1997)