Hi folks! I have finally got all of my ducks in a row and am ready to introduce myself properly and tell you about this blog! Being neurodivergent can be a wild ride sometimes.

If you have already perused my About page, you already have a bit of a sense as to who I am and what kind of blog this might be. I won’t repeat a lot of that here but it is probably a good idea to start at the beginning.

My name is Melissa and I am living with gratitude and awe on Treaty 6 Territory here in what is known as amiskwaciy-wâskahikan in Cree and Edmonton in the colonial tongue. I have been an Albertan all of my life and there are few places on this Earth where you can get so many different bioregions and landscapes within a few hours drive of each other. Alberta is truly a natural wonder. I have always wanted to be a world traveller. However, the farthest I have ever been was probably Disneyland when I was 14 with my high school band. I have only been out of my home province three times that I can recall. Seriously!! I still have at least another 40-50 years on this Earth (gods willing) and so you never know how much more I will see before my time on this Earth is through.

Enough though about me, what you all want to know is why you would want to follow my ramblings. You are here for the “good stuff”, right? Thought so.

I have wanted to start a blog for a number of years. Writing has always been my go to creative outlet and I have toyed with the idea of writing novels or poetry since I was a moody teenager trying to make sense of the world. Am I any good at it? Bah…not really…but this is what this blog is going to help me do. The amount of research and organizing that goes into writing a novel is daunting though and I have more ideas on the “shelf” than I have ever had words on paper. A blog, well that might be more my cup of tea. What’s your favourite tea? Right now mine is Labrador tea. I also like a good chai or a strong Moroccan Mint Green. Wait…what were we talking about? Oh yeah, the blog. Sorry.

Something else that I am passionate about (other than tea apparently) is teaching and helping other people learn. I have a background in Adult Learning and I had always wanted to be a teacher since I was in Grade 2. In my day job, I do a lot of training and mentoring and this kind of stuff lights me up. I love seeing people grow and explore their world and their own thoughts and feelings. Knowing that I was able to explain something or guide someone in a way they had not known they needed is such a cool feeling. I feel like I have a knack for breaking down big concepts into smaller bites and to approach things from unique angles. I also really really really (yes really) like organizing information in ways that are efficient and creative. Thanks AuDHD!!

From my About page and some of the photos you have already seen, you can also tell that my love for Nature is a driving force in my life. The love I have for the other than Human world colours everything that I do and my outlook on the everything. I truly feel, deep in my spleen, that our connection to Nature is the most important and also the most misunderstood or underrated relationship that we will ever have. My relationship to Nature is helping me heal from the trauma of living a big chunk of my life as an undiagnosed neurodivergent person. This relationship has also helped me deal with emotional and physical illness. When Society gets me down and tells me I am not enough, Nature is always there to show me I have a place and that I have a purpose.

This is what I want to share with you, Dear Readers (currently obsessed by Bridgerton by the way). This blog is going to be about how I connect with Nature on a daily and seasonal basis and some of the resources I have found to help me do that. It will be about some of the challenges that a neurodivergent, queer, single, person of a larger body and with chronic health concerns can bump up against when trying to live a slow intentional lifestyle in the city. I hope to introduce you to ideas that will bring some Enchantment back into your world and help you find that deep relationship with Nature that many of us have just forgotten we had. Maybe you will see parts of yourself in my experiences and feel that you too are not alone.

What I do not want this blog to be is yet another tool for toxic productivity and capitalism to worm their disease ridden claws into us. I will do my best not to say ” You should do this”, or that my way is the only way to connect to yourself and to Nature. Instead, I want to offer up my ideas as invitations, like we do in Forest Therapy. You all have agency to choose what resonates and leave the rest. I will be sharing ideas that hopefully will work for a lot of us in marginalized intersections but there will be times that I miss the mark. In the end, my goal is to pass on some inspiration and hopefully the ripple of that will be felt by those who need it.

My plan is to hopefully write every few weeks. As a Neurospicy person, this may already be a big commitment and so the frequency may ebb and flow over the course of the year. I can guarantee that it will not be weekly (at least not while I still have to do the 9-5). I have plans for following different frameworks but it will always be with a Four Season spin. I may expand that into an Eightfold Wheel of the Year (as my ancestors may have observed; the jury is still out on that) but I should start small to keep this manageable. The real basis of any relationship with Nature is getting back into a seasonal cycle regardless of what the seasons are where you live.

As for topics I am going to share, this is also going to vary with the seasons. I have a few things that I am super passionate about and have a lot of knowledge on like container gardening, recycling, upcycling, Forest Therapy, waste reduction, ancestral food ways, pollinators, urban homesteading, and similar topics. We might delve a bit into Earth Based Spiritual practices and I will share a bit of my personal spiritual and cultural practices with you. I hope to also highlight people that are doing the “good works” and resources you can use for your own exploration. Someday, I may offer courses and in person Forest Therapy Guide sessions, or items for sale that I have made that I think people may enjoy, but we will see how it goes.

Now for the disclaimer part…As this is what I hope to have as a safe place to share ideas, there will be no tolerance for hate speech. All ideas are welcome and if you have something you would like to share, I please ask that you do so respectfully and with kindness. There may be times when my writing will become political in nature and as this is my own blog, I am allowed for it to be so. That being said, I am going to do my best to also respect other viewpoints in my writing and comments. If I have said something that offends or is unkind in any way, please let me know. If I have missed the mark on an intersection that you have, please let me know. I can and will do my best to only speak from my own lived experience. I will do my best to cite sources and provide back up to any claims I make. I am not a medical provider and so any activities or advice you decide to try will be at your own risk. I will endeavour to provide any safety concerns or contraindications where I can. I do have some alternative health education but not enough to diagnose or recommend anything beyond what can be “generally considered as safe”. My hope is that we can all learn from each other and support one another’s differences in ways that tear down walls and not build them up.

If you have made it to the end of this really long intro post, CONGRATULATIONS!!!!! If you like what you read or are curious to see where this zany trail will take us, please subscribe or come back often to explore. As a wise Harfoot once sang, “that not all who wonder or wander are lost.” ( The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, Amazon TV show)

Take care of yourself and each other,
Melissa