Sez, thank you for this offering. Your words resonate like wind through old trees—familiar, stirring, and full of remembrance.
As I sat with your reflection, I felt a thread stretching across time, taut with the weight of history. What I’ve uncovered in my own journey—from Arminius to the great kings and conquistadors—is the same deeply rooted belief you speak to: a myth of superiority, dressed in armor and scripture, cloaked in entitlement. It moves like a plague—contagious, persistent, generational. And like a plague, it doesn’t just destroy—it disconnects. From the land. From the body. From each other.
The systems we live in didn’t just arise—they were cultivated, ritualized, and enforced.
That story—of separation, of dominion—was handed down like an heirloom, dressed in the language of progress. And in that inheritance, we learned to call the Earth a resource, the body a problem, and anyone who didn’t fit the mold disposable.
Reading your words, I see clearly how this epidemic of hierarchy and conquest wasn’t an accident—it was intentional.
And yet, I also feel the pulse of something older, quieter, and far more enduring: the memory that never fully left.
The root remembers. The body remembers. The grief we carry for the Earth is, as you said, a grief for ourselves.
When you wrote that maybe our return is not a revolution, but a remembering—that landed deeply.
Because I don’t believe we need to invent a new way of being either. The wisdom is still there, under the concrete, beneath the silence, in the rustle of leaves and the rhythm of our breath.
We are not separate. And every time we listen—really listen—we re-story ourselves into belonging again.
Thank you for writing with such clarity and care. It’s a balm, and a mirror. May we continue to unlearn the forgetting together.
Thank you Sez and, as a privileged, white man, I'm grateful for your comment that this is not about blaming men. I can't undo the reality that I am a privileged, white man, though I can all too easily slip into shame about the way such men have behaved and still behave. And I choose instead to do my best to show up and to care.
You use the phrase rewilding, and I recently came across the idea of renaturing which I find helpful in the sense that I am nature, and can do my best to renature myself along the lines you are discussing here...
I love this word, John. Renaturing - it offers us such good and truthful guidance on how to return rather than how to achieve. I believe you, being the demographic you are, have a harder time than ever proving your worth because of our history. But that's why you are so vital in changing the story. Because you are doing the work, showing up, and caring about your impact on others, healing yourself, and offering it forward, you ARE changing that story. We all play a vital role in our world's homecoming, and I'm so grateful to share this space with such a soul.
Thank you Sez. Bless this beautiful earth and all that she offers. She truly is our mother as she accepts all her children... even we wayward human ones. Colonialism... a brutish approach to living that teaches us separation from our soul. And from this parting we see with eyes fixed on different-ness not same-ness, hierarchy not unity, and power above nature. Thus, we do everything we can to "feel" again because we have become numb filling our empty loss of connection and compassion with stuff, handing our power over to a system that made us this way, ever longing to be whole again.
Sez, thank you for this offering. Your words resonate like wind through old trees—familiar, stirring, and full of remembrance.
As I sat with your reflection, I felt a thread stretching across time, taut with the weight of history. What I’ve uncovered in my own journey—from Arminius to the great kings and conquistadors—is the same deeply rooted belief you speak to: a myth of superiority, dressed in armor and scripture, cloaked in entitlement. It moves like a plague—contagious, persistent, generational. And like a plague, it doesn’t just destroy—it disconnects. From the land. From the body. From each other.
The systems we live in didn’t just arise—they were cultivated, ritualized, and enforced.
That story—of separation, of dominion—was handed down like an heirloom, dressed in the language of progress. And in that inheritance, we learned to call the Earth a resource, the body a problem, and anyone who didn’t fit the mold disposable.
Reading your words, I see clearly how this epidemic of hierarchy and conquest wasn’t an accident—it was intentional.
And yet, I also feel the pulse of something older, quieter, and far more enduring: the memory that never fully left.
The root remembers. The body remembers. The grief we carry for the Earth is, as you said, a grief for ourselves.
When you wrote that maybe our return is not a revolution, but a remembering—that landed deeply.
Because I don’t believe we need to invent a new way of being either. The wisdom is still there, under the concrete, beneath the silence, in the rustle of leaves and the rhythm of our breath.
We are not separate. And every time we listen—really listen—we re-story ourselves into belonging again.
Thank you for writing with such clarity and care. It’s a balm, and a mirror. May we continue to unlearn the forgetting together.
With respect and resonance,
Jay
"May we continue to unlearn the forgetting together." This is just all of it. Divinely said, Jay - thank you!
Namaste, Sez.
Thank you Sez and, as a privileged, white man, I'm grateful for your comment that this is not about blaming men. I can't undo the reality that I am a privileged, white man, though I can all too easily slip into shame about the way such men have behaved and still behave. And I choose instead to do my best to show up and to care.
You use the phrase rewilding, and I recently came across the idea of renaturing which I find helpful in the sense that I am nature, and can do my best to renature myself along the lines you are discussing here...
Blessings
John
I love this word, John. Renaturing - it offers us such good and truthful guidance on how to return rather than how to achieve. I believe you, being the demographic you are, have a harder time than ever proving your worth because of our history. But that's why you are so vital in changing the story. Because you are doing the work, showing up, and caring about your impact on others, healing yourself, and offering it forward, you ARE changing that story. We all play a vital role in our world's homecoming, and I'm so grateful to share this space with such a soul.
Thank you Sez. Bless this beautiful earth and all that she offers. She truly is our mother as she accepts all her children... even we wayward human ones. Colonialism... a brutish approach to living that teaches us separation from our soul. And from this parting we see with eyes fixed on different-ness not same-ness, hierarchy not unity, and power above nature. Thus, we do everything we can to "feel" again because we have become numb filling our empty loss of connection and compassion with stuff, handing our power over to a system that made us this way, ever longing to be whole again.
🙏🏽✨️
Oh how I love your words, Drew - thank you, thank you 🙏