Wild Muse

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'To Love an Unlovable Thing' - Longlisted for the Wild Muse Nature Writing Prize

Gabriela Blandy — Tue, 05 May 2026 14:03:41 GMT

“In the face of chaos and meaninglessness and death, the only power a person has is to stoke up their love and blaze it, defiantly, into the world.”

Clare Diston: Longlisted for the Wild Muse Nature Writing Prize.

As we countdown to the opening of the 2026 Wild Muse Nature Writing Prize in June, here is another selected entry from last year’s prize, alongside a short Q&A with the author .

What I loved, as I began reading Clare’s piece, was the intention: to try to love winter. Immediately this entry stood out with that grabbing, unusual opening. And then very quickly, it was clear that this plan wasn’t necessarily a ‘seasonal preference’, but something much deeper. A question of whether we can choose how we meet what feels unbearable.

There’s something very precise and also quirky in the way Clare builds this her story. We have the small, deliberate acts at the beginning. Then the discipline of noticing, reframing, trying.

Suddenly, there’s a sudden shift a phone call.

From this moment on, the piece has a different energy. The landscape becomes something wild and uncontrollable, and we feel the narrator’s sense of orientation begin to loosen. The writing carries this shift in energy masterfully, placing us inside a suspended, almost otherworldly state where everything feels fragile and immense.

What I find so clever is that the original intention isn’t abandoned. What we see is that commitment to loving winter being pushed to its edge, leading to a powerful realisation at the end.

For me, this entry stayed with me beause of its bravery to sit with the uncertainty of questions.

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Author Q&A: On Winter, Wildness, and Letting Go

“We’re not in charge, but that can be a beautiful thing.”

1. Can you share a little about how this piece came to you?

This story is a fictionalised version of a real drive I did coming back to Bristol from Cornwall, through an awful winter storm, after visiting a family member in hospital. The drive took 7 hours (it should take 3) and I was diverted past huge floods and down tiny country lanes. It was such a visceral experience, driving alone through this lashing, wild darkness, that I knew I had to write about it – and that’s where this story came from.

2. What is your relationship with nature within this piece?

The narrator of this piece has a quite complicated relationship with nature: at the beginning she tries to control, or at least shape, how she feels about winter. But then the untamed reality of nature hits (an illness, the storm), and any sense of control goes out the window. She’s forced to put to the test her grand idea of ‘loving everything’, including the least predictable parts of life – as represented by nature in this piece. I think that’s something nature does to us constantly: it reminds us that we’re not in charge, but that can be a beautiful thing.

3. What do you find most challenging about writing – either in this piece or more broadly?

I find it challenging to make what I write on the page match the vision of it I have in my head. This is why writing multiple drafts is so important, because nothing ever comes out fully formed to begin with, and it’s too easy to stop after the first draft when all you can see is the problems with your work. But persisting and ending up with something polished is so rewarding. That’s why I write.

You can connect with Clare on Instagram:

“Frosty winter tree against a blue sky with reflection in water” by Aniszewski

To Love an Unlovable Thing

She tells her friend, I’ve decided to try to love winter.

This will not be easy; winter kills her. The cold that moves into her bones and won’t leave. The way stepping outside feels like skinning. The illnesses, the dark afternoons, the waiting for sunlight and breath and freedom. Unoriginal to call it a dead season, but who cares about that when you’re in the tight black grip?

Loving summer comes naturally. Summer feels like holding two handfuls of tomatoes in one hand, watching them spill and laughing at abundance. In summer everything is close, connected. Everything has somewhere to go, something to say, something it means – like living inside a metaphor.

It’s OK if you don’t like winter, though, says her friend. Loving everything isn’t healthy.

No, that’s not what I mean, she says. It’s about beauty, and looking for it. Everywhere.

She can’t explain. Perhaps she means: you can’t completely love if you only love what’s easy. So this year, she tries to love winter.

Things she does:

Dressing slowly before facing the cold. There’s pleasure in anticipation, so imagine the cold evening as a date to dress up for.

Taking a break from work to step outside and look at the sunset. If the day must end early, she can at least see it go.

Sleeping with the curtains open, so she can fall asleep under the stars and wake up to gentle morning light.

Buying festive treats early. Every day she has a peppermint cane or a seashell chocolate or a gingerbread man and doesn’t worry about saving these pleasures for Christmas.

Some of these things work; other times she forgets and catches herself hating quietly. But after a time, she notices a shift, realises her mission has extended beyond itself. She is not only trying to love a season, but anything that causes her fuss and worry. Perhaps all disliked things can be loved in this way – carefully, intentionally. And if she cannot truly make herself love a thing, she can at least love that she feels something about it. Feeling, being proof of life, after all.

She tries to get up as soon as her alarm sounds. She tries to enjoy the ritual of chores, the painful self-love of exercise. She tries to pick up the phone on the first ring.

Come home, says her mum on the other end. Your dad’s in hospital.

She drives through the night, and the night is abysmal. The worst rain she’s ever seen closes the main road and sends her down flooded side roads. She sits in queues, she eyes the fuel gauge, she watches the sat-nav add time even as the car nibbles up the miles.

At last, a breakthrough: open road edged by thrashing trees; clouds moving so quickly it looks like the world is tipping over; but between them, in glimpses, stars.

She feels she has been driving forever. The road and the night are one thing – a dark tunnel she has been trapped in for eons, in the tiny warm bubble of her car.

Behind: her home, that phone call, her choice to love winter, every decision she’s ever made, every heartbreak and happiness she’s ever felt, every moment she ever lived that turned into a memory – or didn’t, her own birth and wherever she was before that.

Ahead: an ice patch that will kill her instantly or the hospital visit, the operation, the outcome, the knowledge of what comes next, everything she will ever do in her life, every person she will meet, her own death and wherever she will be after that.

Looking down at life from above is rare – doubly so without dying. Here is a moment that is hard to love. If her mission of the past few months has been building to anything, it is this.

She looks out at the violent season. Trying to love winter isn’t about loving winter; it’s about trying. A person can try to love anything – even the very worst thing. Whether they succeed doesn’t matter. In the face of chaos and meaninglessness and death, the only power a person has is to stoke up their love and blaze it, defiantly, into the world.

Her car slides through a puddle, reaffirms its grip on the other side. Her heart pounds, because she is alive. And, for now, so is everyone else who was alive before she left. She drives through the night, the downpour, the tearing wind, the risk of ice, the mortal fear – and tries to love it all. Not succeeding. Remembering, at least, to try.

Thank you for reading and spending time here. If something has touched you, responding in a small way, a few words or a heart, helps this piece reach others who may need it today, and keeps this space relational rather than one-sided.

The Earth Within Us

Gabriela Blandy — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 13:31:39 GMT

“Most of us don’t struggle to write because we lack ability, or discipline, it’s actually because we’re standing on synthetic ground.”

Walking on the beach in El Nido in the Philippines.

AS WRITERS AND CREATIVE souls, we can feel a distance from the work that wants to emerge through us. For me, there have been times when I seemed to circle the ideas budding within, fearful, disapproving. I’d sit down to write and feel exposed, or unsettled. Instead of continuing to get words on the page, I’d start editing, or I’d abandon the piece altogether.

I thought this was because my ideas weren’t interesting enough. Now, I understand that these moments actually reflected the fact that whilst I was able to perceive emotional complexity – sense the depth of my inner earth – I didn’t know how to stay with that depth without pulling away.

I felt like someone who didn’t quite fit. I would compare myself to other writers, believing I was too much. I believed I had to dilute what wanted to emerge from me, or even hold back entirely.

I know this is a common struggle. Through my own healing, I’ve discovered that this isn’t about lacking ideas or ability, but rather lacking a felt sense of grounding, safety, permission to be who and where we are.

This is about our relationship to both the earth beneath our feet and the earth within. Standing and feeling are physical experiences, but many of us lose this tactile way of experiencing. The ground we end up standing on internally is made up of thought, the words and stories we tell ourselves in order to make sense of our experiences. We trade the true feeling of belonging – feeling held by Mother Earth and thus safe within our own body – for the ways we come to describe our place in the world.

Gritty sand, thick clay.

Dark, loamy mud.

The slow crumble of soil breaking apart in your fingers. The compost tang of mulch.

Dry dust that coats your shoes.

The gentle give of the forest floor. Warm, sun-baked soil, hard beneath your bare feet. A mineral scent after rain.

Earth.

The element of earth is a mirror to our own earth – the body that contains us. What is our relationship to our own shape and our inner landscape? Do we want to be in our body? Do we want to be here?

RATHER THAN LEARNING HOW to be in our bodies, we’re taught to speak about our experience of being here. These stories become the ground we stand on. This ground might sound like: I’m not disciplined enough. My ideas aren’t original. I start things but never finish. This isn’t good enough. I don’t know what I’m doing.

We repeat these thoughts, and over time they become our earth, our internal landscape.

Then, we try to grow our dreams from this earth – our desire to write, to be free, to connect is true to us – but the trouble is these dreams can’t grow in the ‘false’ earth we have created.

“The feeling of not belonging is sustained by the stories we stand on to explain it.”

TWO THINGS COME TO me when I think of truly belonging and to our relationship with the earth within.

Story and practice.

When I say story, I’m referring to the words we’ve grown used to that seem to describe our experience. Stories we tell ourselves and others.

For so long, my story was, ‘At school, I didn’t fit. Growing up, I often like I came from another planet.’

We share these stories day to day and find they resonate with others. It’s soothing to hear responses like, ‘God, me too!’ ‘Wow, I thought I was the only one!’

Perhaps we go deeper into this false or synthetic soil. We share more stories, because it’s comforting: meeting others who also feel separate helps us feel less alone. But it doesn’t take away the sense that we don’t quite fit. This is because the very feeling of not belonging is sustained by the ‘synthetic’ ground we’ve created to explain it.

No matter how many stories we share, we can’t find true ground in something that isn’t felt. We can’t root into thought. And so, the feeling of not belonging remains – not because we don’t belong, but because we’re trying to stand on something false, rather than sink into the living earth of ourselves.

I found that when I began to share my stories in a therapeutic context, I could bring about healing. I remember first exploring the wound of not belonging in a coaching session and my coach said, ‘When you say, “At school I didn’t fit it”, fit into what?’

(You might try this for yourself now. When you say, “I don’t fit,” or “I’m not enough,” – fit into what? Not enough for what?)

What suddenly happened, when my coach asked that question, was that I was no longer rehashing my story summary – the meaning I’d given to my childhood – I was suddenly travelling down the stem of my experience into my roots, my earth, to feel for the answer.

What I felt was an aversion to rules, to the crowd, and by staying in contact with that slightly shivery, clenched experience deep within, I touched my essence. My actual truth.

My focus shifted. I wasn’t floating in thought, trying to find a footing, I was standing on a deep feeling of, This is who I am.

When it comes to our journey to bring the earth back beneath our feet, and find a sense of safety within, this is a vital step. We shift our attention from the story that only ever leaves us untethered, to being fully engrossed in all that we are.

I’VE LEARNT SO MUCH from the earth. She has guided me back from my wound of not belonging. One of the ways this has happened is by feeling into the simple example of roots growing in soil.

If I take a plug plant and bury it in glue, or concrete, that plant is not going to feel the same support for its natural growth as moist, nutritious compost.

And then, of course, some plants like it hard and chalky, others like sodden marsh. Some thrive in clay, others sing in sand.

When we stay with stories that bring no joy, or comfort, we’re trying to plant our destiny in the wrong soil. In this way, we’re actually denying ourselves what we believe the world is denying us.

And we accept this – as I did for many decades – because we actually don’t know what good soil is like: we have no idea of how it feels to be rooted, grounded, safe, nurtured; we keep trying to grow from a place that feels like it could give way beneath us at any moment.

Pale dust lifting in clouds.

Roots threading through the earth.

Warm sand trickling through your fingers.

Gravel crunching underfoot.

Ancient ground, always there. A feeling of being contained, supported.

“When we keep returning to our body and staying with what we feel,
we start to feel more at home in ourselves.”

FOR YEARS, I MOVED – upping sticks, replanting myself, searching for belonging, for home. Each time it felt good, for a while. But then the stories returned and I was untethered, trying to find my footing on air.

And then, finally, I learned that I had to move and relocate within.

This work is about the second word: practice.

Like me, perhaps you don’t have an experience of truly belonging. It could be forgotten, drowned out by pain, trauma. That feeling of safety could be too intermittent to fully trust.

Some of us have to learn belonging. Some of us have to unlearn rejection, censure, to let go of the feeling of risk and find faith, once more.

In our writing, this might look like feeling discomfort as we get a sentence down on the page, and instead of deleting, or editing, we breathe, we stay with it, with allow it to be.

The more we practice belonging, the more we remember how to belong, and also the more we’re able to stay present with the nuance of our felt experience. Suddenly, even though we feel an urge to step away from our work, drop our idea, distract ourselves, we remain, we allow something messy to exist on the page without rushing to fix it.

As we remain, the earth solidifies beneath and within us. We’re no longer a writer trying to get it right, we are a writer who is allowed to be.

For me, over the years, I’ve experienced a transition from being on the outside looking in, to a deep, warm sense of being with myself as I write.

The often-unbearable flood of aloneness I was always trying to think my way out of, has become an almost exquisite feeling! I’ve learnt to sink deep into my body, sensing the rich truth of my earth.

Stillness used to feel empty. Now it feels full of potential.

WHAT HAPPENS WITH THE wound of not belonging is that we can end up planting ourselves in a sense of depleted self. In judging ourselves wrong, alien, or other, we’re internally banished, as well as disconnected from the wider earth.

If I tell myself I don’t fit, the story shapes a landscape that only reinforces that I’m unable or not enough.

How can I flourish from that place?

In my healing journey, I’ve discovered that the feeling of not belonging is actually a message from our essence, pointing us to the mistaken way we’re belonging to ourselves.

Perhaps we’re trying to shape our creative work. We want it to be ‘acceptable’, something that fits. There’s a tightness in our body, and we assume it’s because we’re not good enough. We believe that feeling is proof we’re wrong but often it’s a signal we’ve planted ourself in a place that isn’t true.

Our essence is saying, ‘I’m not wrong, I’m not alien, I just don’t belong in this not-enough place you’ve planted me in.’

This is why practice is vital.

Many of us didn’t grow up in communities that taught us how to be rooted in our own true nature, our essence, as well as in the natural world, or collective essence.

As so we must practice feeling grounded, returning to our body, staying with all that we are.

Firstly, spend a few minutes on one of the journal prompts below, taking one a day, allowing yourself to see the ways your stories might be keeping you in a kind of false soil.
Then, stand barefoot and imagine gravity. Conjure up the feeling of the earth holding you to her. Sense that embrace, which never lets go of you.
Let your attention drop down into your feet. Notice the ground beneath you.
Each time your mind moves away – to thoughts, plans, distractions – lovingly return to that contact. The unconditional bond that gravity creates.
Stay for a few minutes each day.

This is how we begin to remember belonging, and come back to our earth.

Journaling prompts

In what ways was connection available to you growing up?
In what ways did it feel safe or unsafe to be who you were?
Where do you notice disconnection in your life?
In what ways do you feel supported and also undermined by your environment?
Describe the soil you are planted in.
Do your thoughts create the kind of ground you want to be standing on?
Where are you struggling to belong?

IT’S COMMON TO FIND ourselves standing on stories that don’t support our dreams, and to forget the felt sense of being held in our body. If we try to live and create from these stories, we will struggle to grow, to feel rooted. But if we return to the body, the earth within, we find a ground that we can stand on. From there, our writing can grow.

As always, wishing you creative contentment.

Gabriela, Tree Goddess

I support writers and creatives who long to share their work but find themselves holding back. My work helps you return to your essence – the inner truth that carries your dream – and teaches your nervous system that imagination and desire are safe.

If this resonates, you’re welcome to book a complimentary call.

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'Wonder' - Longlisted for the Wild Muse Nature Writing Prize

Gabriela Blandy — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 09:52:08 GMT

“Gone are the news headlines threatening rumblings of war and emphasising man’s awkward estrangement from the natural world; gone are the demands of work and emails and all the things we think have value. Instead, I enter the simple world of the honeybee…”

Liz Gwinnell: Longlisted for the Wild Muse Nature Writing Prize

We’re continuing our publication of selected pieces from the Wild Muse Nature Writing Prize, alongside a short author Q&A, as we move towards the opening of the 2026 prize in June.

What struck me, when I first read this piece, is that it begins with an event the writer never witnessed. Yet, through the evidence left behind, Liz brings us into that unseen moment. She creates an immediate suspension of disbelief that feels very much like the magic of excellent writing, which weaves you into a hypnotic trance so that you follow the words, wherever they may take you.

Throughout the piece, there’s an attentiveness to what’s present, and what’s changing, which educates in an invisible and yet profound way. Buddleia, weighed down by an abundance of cone-shaped flowers is a gorgeous image. The strange disappointment of scentless sweet peas. The return of butterflies and moths after their absence. There isn’t an ounce of over-explaining in this piece, and yet Liz manages to always reveal more than the image of what she is describing; she reveals the state of the world, the climate.

Reading it felt like entering a kind of descriptive banquet. By the end, I found myself understanding the connections within a living system, the role of pollen, the significance of insects, without ever feeling I’d been taught!

I also love the way the piece turns at the end. The act of beekeeping becomes not only a relationship with the natural world, but a relationship with memory. The final image (no spoilers!) brings an emotional resonance to everything that has come before. We see that these connections are both ecological and personal.

Please share this post to celebrate the writing and support the Wild Muse community

Author Q&A: On Hidden Worlds, Honeybees, and Everyday Wonder

“I am merely an observer of the secret and magical processes that go on around me…”

How did this piece come to you?

It was a way of conveying the simple wonder of a back garden – my back garden. There are two things which fascinate me about my garden: the honeybees who live at the bottom of it and the way it produces flowers or plants I didn’t put there. Wonder was an amalgamation of what I feel every time I step out the back door.

***

What is your relationship with nature within this piece?

I am merely an observer of the secret and magical processes that go on around me on the strip of land which happens to be my garden. I am in awe of the silent happenings that go on day in, day out which produce such bounty.

***

What do you find most challenging about writing – in this piece or more broadly?

I find writing quite a natural process and love to see how my words grow and turn into something in much the same way my garden does!

You can connect with Liz on Instagram: @Snowdancer63

“Abeille du jardin 42” by Guy Pracros (Adobe Stock)

Wonder

By Liz Gwinnell

On a day and at a time unknown to me, a virgin honeybee queen left the hive at the bottom of my garden escorted by a faithful retinue of worker bees. They guided her to a drone congregation area – the mating site for honeybees – somewhere up in the sky, in preparation for the most important day of her life. How did those worker bees know where to go?

I knew nothing of this momentous and significant event. I might have been eating my tea, bringing in the washing or clearing out the cats’ litter tray. No trumpets sounded, no sirens went off. It was a quiet and private affair.

What I do know is judged from the aftermath of the evidence I see in the hive. For in the little colony I split off from my main hive earlier this year, the queen – who I have yet to meet – is laying eggs, the nurse bees are feeding larvae and the flying bees are gathering nectar, pollen, water and ingredients to make propolis, the bee “glue” which they use to seal up cracks and paste everything together. The hive is “queenright” and thriving. All is well and balanced in their world.

The nectar flow for this year is coming to an end as August arrives, but I watch the bees gathering orange pollen from my neighbour’s scarlet runner beans and white pollen from the Virginia Creeper in my front garden. Pollen is a good sign for it means the bees are getting ready to raise the winter bees which will take the colony through the colder months.

Outside my back door, I have a pot of white sweet peas which re-seeded in the Spring after last year’s planting. They are immensely disappointing sweet peas, for this ghostly looking plant has neither colour nor fragrance. I am not sure if the bees – honey, bumble or solitary – like the flowers for I have seen little interest. There is one stem of rogue pink flowers sprouting up in the middle, and I remain hopeful that if they return next year, they might revert to their natural kaleidoscope of colours and scent and override the breeding I suspect some horticulturalist somewhere has applied.

Behind them is the gorgeous, purple Buddleia, its branches weighed down by an abundance of cone-shaped flowers. It has seen a proliferation of winged visitors this summer, including a Jersey Tiger Moth, proudly wearing its black and cream flag on its back.

It has been a joy to see the butterflies and moths return this year after their absence in 2024 when the Spring was so wet that caterpillars were washed off plants and trees before they could hatch. I have even seen a Comma with its beautiful, sculpted wings amongst the more prolific Peacocks and Red Admirals. Many butterflies are black and orange to attract mates and help butterflies find and recognise each other. Their bright colouring also flashes a warning of toxicity to predators: a strategy called aposematism or warning colouration.

Letting my garden grow wild has brought all sorts of treasures and a walk to the end of it has turned me into a nature detective as I look for signs of life. A big, flattened whorl of long grass and a lump of poo on the path, evidences the visitations of a fox. I think he sought out cool refuge in the long grass during the intensely hot days we experienced in June and July. One morning, he came right up to my patio doors. I don’t know who was more surprised when our eyes met – me or him.

I have seen tiny British Blue butterflies skittering around the bushes in the back garden. I have also seen the gorgeous red, black and equally tiny, day-flying Cinnabar Moth which starts its life as a small black and yellow caterpillar living on bright yellow Ragwort. Whilst it is growing, Ragwort gives off a scent which warns dogs and horses of its toxicity. That toxicity only becomes a problem if it is cut and gets into silage. It then loses its warning smell and can be fatal to animals if eaten.

It is an offence to let Ragwort escape from your land, but I am not sure how you can prevent natural pollination occurring or arrest a seed dropping bird. Rich in nectar and able to grow in the most challenging of environments (a little like the cheerful but equally unpopular dandelion), Ragwort provides a welcome source of food for insects and bees at a time of year when many flowers have finished blooming.

By the Buddleia is an abundance of bright yellow crocosmia and together with the not-so-sweet peas, these three plants present a rainbow of purple, white and yellow every time I open the back door. There is a rambling rose behind them, which grows shyly, but quite madly, with the leggiest of limbs, the deepest of pink flowers and a heady, intoxicating scent. This is how you do it sweet peas.

The rest of my garden does pretty much what it pleases. Last year I was delighted to find a clump of purple Loosestrife behind the lavender, its seeds dropped by a passing bird and this year, a wild plum has grown up from somewhere, pushing its way through the bushes in the flowerbed.

I have a proliferation of brambles in the garden which seem to grow overnight like magic beanstalks, ready to snag me when I’m walking past or hanging out the washing. They are immensely valuable to the insects and creatures of the natural world, and their stems are so malleable that many gardeners strip off the thorns and use them as trellises. Their flowers come in a profusion of pinks followed by the shiny black fruit of late summer and early autumn. I have already harvested the blackberries and plums to make jam, crumble and summer pudding. This is the domain of my bees which I like to think provides them with a variety of food sources to keep them busy and fed. If all else fails, there is a garden centre about half a mile down the road.

It amazes me that with their short lives – honeybees only live for 6 weeks in the summer – they are able to convey and pass on so much information to their progeny during the only season of their lives. They raise queens, get rid of old ones, raise their young, clean and ventilate the hive, gather water, nectar, pollen and sap to make propolis, secrete wax and produce honey. Honey is created to a secret formula known exclusively to the honeybee. The bees collect nectar from plants and store it in their “crop” or honey stomach and when they return to the hive, it is stored in wax comb. The worker bees will fan the nectar until the water content is reduced to less than 18% to create honey. How do they know how to do this?

Honeybees are the only species known to communicate in the way that they do and this is mostly done in the dark; employing methods such as pheromone distribution, waggle dances and sensing what a colony needs from the behaviour of its cohorts: more nectar, less nectar, more water, less water. If supplies are low, more bees will go out to forage. If they are plentiful, they will forage less.

The waggle dance, undertaken inside the hive, is a method a worker bee uses to tell her sisters about a new source of nectar, pollen or water she has found and in which direction they should fly to find it. On warmer days, usually at about two o’clock in the afternoon, the bees can be seen flying in figures of 8 just outside the hive entrance. This behaviour, called orientation, can indicate that another generation of bees has graduated to forager status which they don’t achieve until fairly near to the end of their short lives. Orientation allows them to learn the position of the sun and the landmarks in the area which they will use to navigate their way home after collecting nectar and pollen. It is a wonderful sight to see a honeybee sitting on the roof of the hive, raising her abdomen and frantically beating her wings to disperse pheromones from her Nasonov gland which sends out a chemical signal to the foraging bees and helps them find their way home.

And on a day and at a time when I was oblivious and possibly attending to trivial tasks, the queen returned to the hive with her retinue. This is her one and only mating flight and indeed the only flight she will ever make unless it is earlier in the season and she takes half the flying bees with her when the colony swarms. After mating, she returns to the hive with enough sperm to lay eggs for the rest of her life which can be up to four years. And, no longer a virgin queen, she will perfectly position her long abdomen over the hexagonal cells the worker bees prepare and lay the eggs which will develop, after 21 or 24 days, into the next generation of worker and drone bees. During her lifetime, the queen’s retinue never leaves her side, grooming and feeding her until her work is done.

Keeping bees has made me much more aware of nature and has made me look at the world through new eyes. It is an activity that provides solace and calm within a short walk from my back door. Gone are the news headlines threatening rumblings of war and emphasising man’s awkward estrangement from the natural world; gone are the demands of work and emails and all the things we think have value. Instead, I enter the simple world of the honeybee where every one of a hive’s 60,000 inhabitants works for the common good to ensure the survival of the colony.

I suppose I bee keep in the way I “tend” my garden: with as little interference as possible, trusting that the bees and nature will know what to do. Some things have to be done, like looking after the bees and being able to access the garden in the first place, but in more exacting things, I think that within reason, nature and the bees know best and I can only follow where they lead. I can learn, I can observe, I can share and experience a tiny part of the world with them and learn that in life, the simple things often hold the most importance.

I started keeping bees because of my father. It was something he considered doing in his retirement but walked away from when he decided he wouldn’t be able to identify the queen in a hive. He never did walk down the beekeeping road in the end. How I wish he had. I often feel him standing behind my shoulder, watching and observing, and in this way I feel a quiet connection to the man who was perhaps the most important influence of my life, and who brought me to the world of the honeybee and all its wonder, inspiration and solace.

Why Am I Shying Away from Writing?

Gabriela Blandy — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 11:24:01 GMT

“Many of us weren’t taught how to understand, or to deeply know ourselves. Instead, we learnt to conclude there’s something wrong with us, or decide: this is how I am going to resolve the situation.”

For some time, I’ve been wanting to find a more public way to respond to the questions that land in my inbox. Many of them reveal practical concerns on the surface – consistency, doubt, editing, sharing – but deeper down I can see they’re often about the ways we’re meeting or seeing ourselves.

My new “Apothecary” series is a space where I can step away from quick, one-on-one answers and take more time to explore what truly sits beneath questions I feel will resonate with many.

If you have a question you’d like me to explore, you’re always welcome to comment below or send something through privately.

Ollie’s Question

How can one write with detachment? My best writing is when my whole soul and heart is there, it’s vulnerable, and I feel almost a protective energy coming to the fore reading it back...

On the other hand, sharing writing with others... does that need detachment (for a good edit, releasing attachment to words), creating space between you and the work to numb the fear of rejection? That ends in my mind analysing, critiquing as I’m writing... strange experience...

I’ve been shying away from my writing for a while. And I want to understand why...

The way forward here, isn’t actually about learning to detach. Ollie is feeling something real. It’s just that he doesn’t yet know how to stay present with that experience.

We can see this in the most important section of this question:

“My best writing is when my whole soul and heart is there...”

This is real, or what we might call aliveness. And Ollie senses it.

When we’re connected to the aliveness we’re born with, it does feel like our best writing. Creativity is energy. It flows through us, just as it moves through a plant. In a plant, we see the manifestation of that energy through leaves, a thickening stalk, petals perhaps.

We also give the energy flowing through us form – with words, voice.

Ollie’s question reveals his current (one might say wounded) relationship to that aliveness or creative energy. It’s very common to be in a wounded relationship with the life within, wanting to shield, or even block the creative energy that is asking to flow through us. This is because of how our expression of that energy was received in the past.

In my avid reading of Eckhart Tolle I came across a quote of Jesus’ that I love: “Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin.”

In the natural world, we see the pure collaboration of form and creative energy. The lilies are not “toiling” or striving to grow. “Spin” to me represents twisting or contorting the energy that wants to unfold through us.

What do we do if we have forgotten that natural, “lily relationship” to the energy flowing through us?

“…it’s vulnerable and I almost feel a protective energy coming to the fore.”

Right now, from what Ollie so bravely shares, we can see that there is “toil”, or effort. Energy wants to flow from the soul and heart, as it’s designed to do, but then the body is toiling to shield that.

Unfortunately, our past relationships, and the ways our early forms of self-expression were met and received, can teach us to do this. When we feel a strong energetic charge, we think, “this is too much”, “I shouldn’t go here”, “it’s vulnerable”.

This isn’t because the feeling is wrong, but because no one modelled how to stay present with it. As a result, we end up pulling back from the very centre of what’s true and alive within us.

Instead of detaching, the first step is to understand that the noticing of this protective energy is a skill. It shows a sensitivity to the inner state and an ability to listen at a microscopic level, which are extraordinary capacities for a writer to have.

A lovely practice here, is to sit and invite, or replay, that experience of the protective energy coming to the fore. Sense how it feels, how it moves in the body, and breathe slowly through the nose, repeating the words, “I feel you. I believe you.”

Here, we replace the urge to abandon our feelings, by growing our capacity to stay present with them.

I want to turn now to another significant layer to this question. Ollie’s honest reflection of shying away from writing.

Notice what follows on from this reflection: “I want to understand why.”

I wanted to write more about this because in my experience as a coach, this can be a stumbling block. Many of us weren’t taught how to understand, or to deeply know ourselves. Instead, we learnt to conclude (that there’s something wrong with us), or decide (this is how I am going to resolve the situation).

When we conclude or decide, we look from a vantage point we’ve learned, which might be described as top-down.

Here, we look down on the withered leaves of the lily and conclude it needs more water, rather than feeling its roots and understanding that, in fact, they’re saturated.

We water the lily, see the leaves shrink and droop even more, and then look down upon ourselves as a useless gardener.

In my Shamanic training, I was taught to understand the self – and others – through the practice of ‘standing underneath’. Here, we allow ourselves to experience the essence of whatever it is we’re seeking to know deeply. This is a feeling way of being, rather than a thinking way of being.

We’ll come back to this way of being/knowing in a moment. I firstly want to bring in a second layer, which is the question itself: how can I write with detachment?

If we hold both layers together, we have a desire to understand why we’re shying away from writing, alongside a request to know how to write with detachment.

Do you see how this is looking down on the situation, concluding that detachment is the cure – when we now already know this situation is asking for presence.

When we’re exploring our writing, it’s essential to notice the conclusions the mind is making, and not place them above our connection to what’s true.

Our brains are problem-solving machines, and here we can see that in the attempt to solve the experience of shying away from writing, the brain decides the solution is to learn how to write with detachment.

This is a common place to find ourselves in our creative process. But when we try to correct a pattern without first understanding it deeply, those corrections can often exacerbate the situation.

“I want to understand why.”

At face value, the words show an absence of self-reproach and a simple desire to know. But because there is that question – “How can one write with detachment?” – there’s also evidence of a decision already made.

Often, we internalise the way our emotions and expressions were met as we grew up. When something we felt was misunderstood, ignored, or made wrong, we learn to see it that way too. This becomes the vantage point from which we look at ourselves (top-down). Our brains do this to help us belong and stay safe within the relationships we depend upon.

If we feel stuck, frustrated, or blocked, it’s often a sign that we’re trying to solve the problem from this learned way of seeing.

As I said, instead of detachment, the “remedy” is the opposite.

Rather than overwatering those saturated lilies based on a top-down appraisal, we stand underneath and feel how much our roots are calling to be held, touched, witnessed.

We learn to be with our inner experience. We become a student of all the things we were never taught but are most essential for a life lived according to our truth.

Now, let me say something vital here! Being with our inner experience is very different from identifying with it.

To be, is to feel the protective energy, the vulnerability, and stay with the feelings, which are all the inner sensations, flutters, tensions, aches, iciness, sweatiness, numbness.

If we’re identifying with the experience, we slip into thinking about what we’re feeling, often trying to get rid of what we feel, or make sense of it.

In order to learn how to hold my own feelings, be with them, soothe them, I’ve found my somatic yoga practice invaluable, which is why I trained as a practitioner. This could be Yin Yoga, Chakra Yoga, Restorative Yoga too – any practice that guides you to hold a position and feel deeply into the body, and use the breath.

Another lovely remedy relates to: “I’ve been shying away from writing for a while. And I want to understand why.”

“Why” puts us in the mind, but when the mind tries to solve what it has essentially created, we only circle the same ground.

Instead, we ask ourselves, “Where?”

This question helps restore our natural, feeling relationship with ourselves – our connection to our body, our inner landscape. We stand underneath the lily.

When growing up, we might express a deep feeling, or knowing, or intuition. This is often met with “Why?” This response teaches us we should have a mental understanding of something we’re experiencing at the level of feeling.

“Why are you crying?” teaches a child they should understand something they’re only just learning to feel.

“Where are you crying?” brings us back into connection with ourselves.

So simple, right?

I can point to my eyes, and suddenly I’m in connection with myself and the person witnessing me, which could also be me witnessing myself.

What’s lovely is the question might also encourage a child, or adult, to point to a place other than their eyes, where they feel a hurt, prioritising the source of feeling over what they might think.

“Where are you shying away from writing?”

Journaling on this daily for a month or two will be a powerful prescription for Ollie, and any of you currently struggling with the rhythm of your writing.

It invites true witnessing, rather than top-down judging, or impulses to fix.

The answers might explore physical locations: in the office – I’m looking the other way when I pass my desk.

It may also touch on subject matter: in my online writing – I’m writing poems in my notebook, but I’m not sharing anything.

It could also investigate the inner body: in my heart – when I feel a tightening there I either abandon what I’m working on, or don’t even start.

This is the kind of involvement we’re inviting.

Not detachment, but immersion.

Two minutes a day on this prompt can be transformational, especially if followed by two to ten minutes of slow nose breathing.

Lastly, I want to say that we can get stuck with our writing when our gifts allow us to sense things that we either don’t know how to be with, or were incorrectly taught how to handle. If we don’t know how to meet the energetic or emotional experiences we sense within, or we’ve been taught strategies that don’t truly support us, and we then identify with the solution the mind offers, we end up avoiding the very place that’s signaling where we need to come closer.

When we sense something taking place in our internal landscape, the first response is to breathe.

We breathe through the nose, slowly and deeply.

Then, we might physically hold ourselves. Perhaps a self-hug, or gentle rocking.

Through this, we learn to sense even more into our inner world, to form a relationship with what we’re sensing.

At first, this practice is massively healing.

Later, what we discover is that this relationship guides us to the very life we’ve always dreamed of.

Creative growth begins with the honest observation of what is or isn’t happening, and the curiosity to deeply know it. When the mind tries to solve the problem from within the pattern itself, we only circle the same ground, reaching for solutions like detachment that move us further from what’s actually needed.

Remember, what appears as struggle is often a sign of a sensitivity to our inner world that isn’t yet in right relationship.

The invitation is not to numb what we feel, but to learn how to be with it. When we shift – from asking why to noticing where – we return to ourselves, to the body, and the truth moving through us.

As always, wishing you creative contentment,

Gabriela, Tree Goddess

If you have a question about your writing, your process, or something you find yourself returning to again and again, you’re welcome to send it to me.

'Tidal' - Shortlisted for the Wild Muse Nature Writing Prize

Gabriela Blandy — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 16:30:22 GMT

“It felt very visceral and like a story I needed to write in order to assimilate the aftermath of that relationship.”

Skye Ayla Mallac: Shortlisted for the Wild Muse Nature Writing Prize, 2025

HAVING SHARED THIS YEAR’S winning pieces from the Wild Muse Nature Writing Prize, I’m now publishing a selection of longlisted and shortlisted essays from the prize, alongside short Q&As that offer a glimpse into each writer’s process.

This week, I’m delighted to share ‘Tidal’, by , which was shortlisted this year,

This is a piece that moves with the rhythm of the sea and of memory, where time, love, and attention ebb and return. From its opening image – “a necklace of horses crossing the expanding lungs of the tidal space” – Skye quickly establishes a way of seeing that is both intimate and expansive. With this line there’s a sense of the natural world and inner experience moving in a beautiful correspondence.

When I first read the piece, I was struck by the way it unfolded with a playful, almost magical use of time. I also admire the way it sifts through moments of love with exactly the same attentiveness it takes to read a shoreline.

There is also a sense of something only fully understood in retrospect, which is something I particularly enjoy in personal writing. The piece gives the experience of the narrator’s feelings only just revealing themselves: “We have just met but I think we are falling in love. I only realise this when it is over - years later when we part.”

When we shared the longlist and shortlist, Skye responded with such generosity, reflecting on aspects of her work being seen in ways she hadn’t realised were there, and on what it meant to have the piece honoured in this space.

Please share this post to celebrate the writing and support the Wild Muse community

Author Q&A: On Tides, Memory, and Writing What Remains

“I love watching how nature shifts and changes, and the swiftest way to observe it is watching the tides.”

Can you share a little about how this piece came to you?
It came during an evening brainstorm after I discovered The Wild Muse Nature Writing Prize. I was thinking about natural spaces that mean a lot to me, and the horses crossing the river mouth just popped into my mind. I wrote the opening paragraph on my phone before bed. It felt very visceral and like a story I needed to write in order to assimilate the aftermath of that relationship.

***

What is your relationship with nature within this piece?
I love watching how nature shifts and changes, and the swiftest way to observe it is watching the tides. I loved that piece of coastline, how private it was, and how you could watch the movement of nature pushing and pulling all day. I adore walking the margin of the wild and the familiar. To me this piece is about pacing that edge.

***

What do you find most challenging about writing — either in this piece or more broadly?
I found it difficult to revisit the emotions from that time, so there was a level of grief it brought on. However, it was also very freeing.

This essay was originally shortlisted for the Wild Muse Nature Writing Prize 2025, and I’m so grateful for their appreciation of my writing. It’s a piece which explores a piece of the Eastern Cape coastline that is very close to my heart, the tidal shift of a rivermouth, and a love…

Skye’s own image of the necklace of horses

I now invite you to read and spend time with this thoughtful and deeply felt essay. I have published the first section here and you will be able to read the rest on Skye’s own Substack page, which is linked below.

Tidal

by Skye Ayla Mallac

There is a necklace of horses crossing the expanding lungs of the tidal space.

I am watching them and wondering why they chose this time of deepest water. Yet there they are, tracing a curving line through the river-mouth, nose to swishing tail, their riders perched precariously, lifting their toes from the folds of water. Deeper and deeper. Surely it is too deep. Their heads are arching up and away from the briny sea. And then they make it, vanishing from sight beneath the thick bush at the foot of my view. No one is here to see it but me.

Breath in. The river-mouth swells, blooming wider, swallowing up the teardrop sandbank, washing across the jutting bedrock that keeps the land steady at this margin between worlds.

Breath out. It recedes, draining with a force that forms rushing eddies in that deep channel before the sea. The sandbank reemerges, pocked with bubbling prawn holes, solid ground suddenly where there was not before.

From above I watch it, taking note of the changes every hour. How the river, which separates our little salt-slicked cottage from the town on the opposite hill, meets the ocean and how they bend to one another. Pushing and pulling. A brink.

We are nestled in the dense coastal thicket of the Eastern Cape. The front porch opens up onto one of the countless river mouths which segment the coastline in these parts. Thick railway sleepers lie beneath my feet, uneven now and pushed apart by eager plants taking root in the crevasses between.

The town is not Kariega, but the river is, so we call the place by that name. The cottage is old and sagging but in a comforting sort of way. Overstuffed with decades of memories which aren’t mine. Evident in the plethora of outdated spices, repeated and unopened, the sliding towers of original Tupperware, the groaning electric stove whose plug is an unrecognisable shape, the photographs strung on a clothesline over the passage doorway.

If you were to stand on the far side of the river-mouth and look across to where we are, you would see a span of thick bush interrupted by three singular rooftops. The first, the largest, is white and square and obtrusive. The second is green and rectangular and tucked into the shrubbery. The third, and smallest, is green too, with a pole upon which one of an extensive collection of flags is hoisted in daily succession when the JP’s are in residence. It’s a coveted location, with access to an almost private beach and a sprawling section of wild bush. At night the twinkling lights of the town across the water glitter and slowly go out.

The first time I am here it is just me and a boy I have just met. Because when he said, would you like to take a trip? I said, yes please. So I am here. With the living, breathing river below me.

We have just met but I think we are falling in love. I only realise this when it is over - years later when we part. We will be waxing sentimental, dividing up our things and he will say, in despair and regret, we should’ve gone back to Kariega, that’s where we fell in love. And I will be surprised because I never thought of it that way.

But for now we are here. And we are falling in love. And I am thinking, I love this place. I am thinking, I want to stay here forever.

Oh no, forgive me, we are not there. We are somewhere further into the future.

Continue reading…

Skye Ayla Mallac

Tidal

2 months ago · 5 likes · Skye Ayla Mallac

The way we talk about our writing

Gabriela Blandy — Tue, 17 Mar 2026 16:30:33 GMT

“The version of me I’ve given voice to over the years, and the true version, have been out of sync. I’ve felt this disconnection and yet lining up inner truth and outer voice, felt frightening.”

Photo by Jeni Bell - www.seekingwildsights.co.uk

THERE’S A VICTORIA PLUM tree at the far end of the garden that has been calling to me for several months. It started in the Winter, images of it popping into my head at sudden moments: its crooked silhouette, glimpses of the range of colours on its lichen-covered bark, sometimes an earthy scent.

For weeks, I watched myself dismissing the tree’s appearance in my mind. At times, I was adamant I had no idea why it kept coming to me. Other times, I appeased the images by making mental notes to visit at some point: at the weekend perhaps, when it was more convenient, when the rain stopped.

I hadn’t realised then, but of course this was the very thing the tree wanted to teach me – the way our mind creates perfectly reasonable narratives that keeps us slightly removed from what’s actually happening – from presence.

In fact, many of the narratives our thoughts offer up are a ‘false reality’ into which our creative potential can disappear, like a star sucked into a black hole.

MANY OF US TALK about our writing in ways that sound reasonable but prevent us from fully being present with it.

Without realising, we might leave certain things out and emphasise others. Perhaps we say something like, ‘I’m just playing around with something at the moment,’ when a part of us is actually deeply invested.

We could tell people, ‘It’s only a little idea,’ or ‘It’s probably nothing,’ or ‘I’m not sure it’s very good’. These small, sensible narratives create a false reality. Once we step into this parallel world, we no longer have direct contact with our creative aliveness. The largeness of our dream, our talent, our potential is concealed. And we don’t even realise.

WHEN WE’RE INSIDE THESE stories, they don’t feel like stories. They feel like statements of fact.

‘I’ll work on it at some point.’
‘It’s not ready to talk about yet.’
‘I’ll share it when something happens.’

Each of these seems reasonable, so we don’t question them. Just as I didn’t question the story that I’d go and see the plum tree at some point, that I genuinely didn’t know why it kept appearing to me, that I wasn’t ready to speak with it.

The more we identify with these stories and explanations in our mind, the more they move us away from the moment right now, creating a subtle disconnection. The version of us that we’re giving voice to, and the true version within are slightly out of sync. We feel this disconnection yet can’t explain it. Or worse, we address it in ways that take us even further from presence and being in deep connection with the living creative process wanting to unfold within us.

Let’s say we talk about meaning to work on a book. This places the real encounter with our writing somewhere in the future, even though the truth is, right now, we’re a creative soul – there’s a divine urge within asking to be revealed. But without realising, we’re gradually drifting further and further away from that truth.

And then we address the ache of coming untethered from the alive juiciness of the present moment by spinning in thoughts of our laziness, our wrongness, our ‘never going to amount to anything-ness’.

At the very moment that I was adamantly telling myself that I didn’t know why this tree was calling me, it was calling me!

The tree was already there.

The present moment was happening.

But as long as I was identifying with the story – that not understanding was more worthy of my attention than the call itself – I wasn’t living the version of reality where I’ve committed to being with the trees, to following only their guidance, to shaping my life in exactly the way they show me.

All I could see was a vague point in the future when I was supposedly going to visit the tree.

The first time I went to stand beneath the Victoria plum was in the darkness of an early morning. I could see the shadow of it as I approached. The ground – a mixture of grass and moss – was mattressy beneath my feet. I bounced with each step, both buoyant and supported.

Finally, I had come.

I was in an in-between stage. The false narratives were still drifting through my mind. I still felt a tinge of discomfort from my supposed baffled state of not-knowing why I was here. I still sensed the twitchy inconvenience of an un-planned moment.

The air was a cool, damp breath on my cheeks. I approached and walked through low hanging tree limbs, entering a cavern of naked branches and twigs that enveloped me and became more and more visible as the sun rose.

I focused on my breathing – as much as my mind wanted to absorb me with its plea of, ‘Why on earth are we here?’

Non-engagement with thought is a life-saving skill.

By practicing it, I am saving the life that truly wants to live through me. I am saving it from my doubts, my fears, my not good enoughness.

I stood in the cool, sheltered hollow of the plum tree and simply felt the air filling and releasing from my lungs. Instead of engaging, or listening to my thoughts, I gave my attention to the sensation in my body, feeling my way through my inner landscape.

At first, I felt a surface layer of agitation. I continued to breathe, burrowing my attention deeper. Deeper and deeper with each breath.

Gradually, I began to feel an intense, velvety, peace.

Soft, tender.

In this moment, my resistance – the false reality that had been restraining me – became utterly limp and I floated free.

IT’S COMMON TO TALK about our writing from a mind that’s holding a false narrative. We hear the call of a creative project, but answer with a story that keeps us from heeding that call, something like, ‘Later, when I have more time…’

We circle that call, instead of walking towards it – instead of standing within it.

I’ve done this so many times over the years.

I’ve talked about the short stories I’ve written that have been published, or won awards, without mentioning the ones I never finished, the countless rejections.

I’ve talked about travelling to a prize-giving in Malta for my unpublished memoir, but not the three unsuccessful rounds of submissions to find an agent for that memoir – emails like: ‘I really liked this idea. However, despite enjoying your pages, I couldn’t shake the concern that it’s very hard to break out a new non-fiction writer without a decent public platform. I know you already have a lot to offer in that respect, but it’s probably not quite in the area that publishers might find necessary in order to take on the proposal.’

The version of me I’ve given voice to over the years, and the true version have been out of sync. I’ve felt this disconnection and yet lining up inner truth and outer voice, felt frightening. This is because I was living in a false reality that demanded a fait accompli. The fear I felt at talking about my ‘in-between’, was the fear of a child eager for love who learned that success was the only welcome news.

But the more I lived in this reality, the more I perpetuated the belief that the version of me, right here, right now, was not enough.

False.

THE PLUM TREE GREW buds.

The mornings lightened.

Each time I stepped into the cave-like space of branches, the moment became deeply alive. As the wind gusted, I sensed each fine, hair on my face flickering back and forth, re-tuning my attention to the wondrous microscopic – rather than the broad, sweeping ‘invention’ of the egoic mind.

I was able to see that all the sudden moments the tree had been appearing in my mind, that were supposedly ‘inconvenient’, were moments I’d been lost to lies. Perhaps I’d been speaking in my ‘persona voice’ where I adopt a professional tone to be a version of myself I think others will take seriously.

Slowly, instead of seeing the plum tree in my mind and listening to the false reality of my confused thoughts as to why this was happening, I stopped engaging with those thoughts. Quickly, it became clear that the visions my mind had adamantly demanding were not tied to anything specific, came at moments I was out of resonance with presence: describing my current novel, vaguely, trailing off, changing the subject.

BENEATH ITS SQUIGGLY BRANCHES, and then gradually engulfed in its sweet scent as buds exploded into blossom, the truth emerged.

The false reality, where I had to deliver a version that was a fait accompli, blew away. It became so obvious, so undeniable. The version of all of us, in the present moment right now, is DIVINE. Why would we not speak about it? Why would we not do all we can to be with it?

The tree had called to me at exactly the right time.

This last year, I’ve been taking ‘The Big Edit’ course at The Novelry. Recently, I’ve been working on the final module as I prepare a submission package for my novel – a modern retelling of Rebecca set in the Mexican theatre world. I’ve been invited by my editor at The Novelry to enter their agent submission pathway. It’s an invitation-only process where selected manuscripts are reviewed and, if ready, shared directly with literary agents.

They’ve offered to look over my full submission package – query letter, synopsis, and opening chapters – and let me know if it’s a fit.

I’m standing at the edge of something far from a fait accompli and yet I feel more ready, more alive, than I’ve ever been because over the last few months the version of me I’ve been giving voice to, and the true version within are in sync.

I am ready to be who I am right now.

This morning I stood beneath the plum tree and watched the wind lift swirls of petals from the ground into a delicate vortex of white. It was a combination of air, cellulose, water and some other organic compounds. Such simple ingredients. Yet, beholding this dance made my heart open and flutter. I was smiling. I felt lucky.

I didn’t fear the moment the wind would pass and the petals would fall.

And I’m no longer caged by the story that says, ‘Don’t share until you are sure.’

It is this very uncertainty that feels alive, because in the centre of that uncertainty is the heartbeat of presence.

The Victoria plum has reached into my brain and re-arranged old, scared pathways. We too are water and organic compounds. Oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, phosphorous. The stories my mind wants to tell me about who need to be don’t even come close to the magical nature I’m comprised of right now – this miracle of being.

My thoughts demand I’m not enough – I must talk only of my last decent achievement or speak once something is certain, once there is an outcome to reveal. But reality – presence, the here and now – tells me different. I am petals dancing; falling, lifting, spinning.

Our creative life isn’t waiting in the future. It’s already here. When we stop engaging with the narratives in our mind that take us from the present moment, we suddenly feel the profound aliveness happening right now.

As always, wishing you creative contentment.

Gabriela, Tree Goddess

I support writers and creatives who long to share their work but find themselves pulling back at the last moment. My work helps you return to your essence – the inner truth that carries your dream – and teaches your nervous system that imagination and desire are safe.

If this resonated, you’re welcome to book a complimentary call.

Read the Third Place Entry of the Wild Muse Nature Writing Prize 2025

Gabriela Blandy — Tue, 10 Mar 2026 16:01:20 GMT

“But the forest never asked me to explain myself. It didn’t care whether I was useful, whether I smiled on command. It opened its arms and said: stay.”

Rachel Desiree Felix: Third place in the Wild Muse Nature Writing Prize 2025

Over the coming months, I’ll be sharing selected essays from the Wild Muse Nature Writing Prize for you to read. My hope is that these pieces will offer beauty, craft, and a sense of companionship as we move toward opening the prize for 2026.

If you’re subscribed, you’ll be the first to hear about this year’s judge and when entries open.

This week, I’m delighted to share ‘Roots and Ribs’, by . This was the third-place entry in the Wild Muse Nature Writing Prize 2025. When Rachel first saw the longlist announcement, she shared this response:

“Honoured to see ‘Roots and Ribs’ on the longlist – thank you! Nature’s wisdom and this community – keep me writing. Congratulations to all the writers featured.”

When Rachel learned that her piece had been awarded third place, she reflected on the deeper layers of the essay:

“Thank you so much for choosing my piece as one of the winners. I wrote ‘Roots and Ribs’ during a time when the forest was the only place I felt safe enough to breathe. Coming back to this piece now reminds me that belonging can indeed grow from the natural world, where it is held without demand or expectation.”

Rachel’s words speak to something deeply aligned with the spirit of Wild Muse: the ways the natural world can become a place of refuge, belonging, and quiet restoration when other forms of safety feel uncertain.

Our 2025 judge, , felt this was a moving and resonant piece, saying:

“A moving piece about finding safety and acceptance in the forest in Gangwon-do. It’s especially strong on the timeless love and restorative power of nature.”

Now, I invite you to spend time with this beautiful and powerful piece!

Please share this post and help it reach others.

“Nature had been loving me long before I knew how to love it back.”

Roots and Ribs

By Rachel Desiree Felix

The storm came in like grief—wild, violent, without asking permission. I stood at the edge of the woods near Chiaksan, where the fog rolls in thick as breath and the air smells of pine and wet stone. Rain slanted through the air like needles, stinging my cheeks, my throat raw with all the words I’d never said. The mountain trembled under the downpour—pine needles twitching, granite slick with runoff, soil slipping loose around the roots. Somewhere in the distance, a startled magpie cried out and vanished into the grey. For the first time in months, something cracked through the fog that had settled in my chest. The sky tore itself open above me, and in its brokenness, I recognised my own.

I grew up knowing that love could vanish without warning, that silence could be sharper than any blade. The people meant to hold me taught me instead how to vanish. I became smoke, a shimmer on the edge of sight. Hypervigilance curled into my bones, a second language. I flinched at footsteps, read rooms before I entered them. Stillness was dangerous. Safety was a myth we told children who hadn’t yet learned better.

But the forest never asked me to explain myself. It didn’t care whether I was useful, whether I smiled on command. It opened its arms and said: stay.

That first day, I pressed my back against a towering pine in the highlands of Gangwon-do. Its bark was rough against my spine, its roots like ribs beneath the earth. The wet ground welcomed my trembling body. The woods didn’t need me to be cheerful or healed or worthy. They simply allowed me to exist—drenched, shivering, but alive.

I returned the next day. And the day after. At first, I treated it like a bargain: if I kept showing up, maybe the tight fist around my ribs would unclench. Maybe I could earn peace. But nature doesn’t bargain. The trees moved in a rhythm older than language, older than pain. They didn’t rush me. They expected nothing.

One afternoon, too weary to keep walking, I folded myself beneath a blooming mugunghwa shrub near the ridge. I ran my thumb along its soft petals—blush pink, rain-heavy, quietly defiant. A dragonfly landed on my knee, shimmering like glass. For a moment, I forgot my fear. I forgot my name. I was simply another breathing, pulsing thing beneath the breathing, pulsing sky.

And the seasons began to gather me.

In spring, the highland birch buds unfurled into pale green fans, trembling in morning fog. Wild violets and azaleas emerged in clusters along rocky paths, small rebellions against the frost. Summer brought the song of tree frogs and the hum of bees in buckwheat fields. Autumn wrapped the trees in ochre and fire, ginkgo leaves spiralling like slow rain. Winter pressed its hush across the land—first snow feathering the stone steps, water freezing into lace across quiet streams.

Without meaning to, I began to leave traces behind: a strand of hair caught on a twig, the imprint of my heel in softened earth. Not offerings. Not apologies. Just quiet proof: I was here.

Sometimes I dreamed—not of escape, but of arrival. Of becoming like the ancient pines on the mountain ridge—weathered but standing. Of being accepted the way the magpies accept the wind. I dreamed of belonging, not by earning it, but by simply breathing.

I never spoke aloud to the trees. I didn’t need to. They spoke in branch-creak and pine-sigh, in wind threading through the canopy. They knew the language of bruised bodies and cautious hope.

There was a day when grief roared so loudly inside me, I thought I might split in two. I stumbled into the forest above Chiaksan, following the path to a stream hidden deep in the valley. I collapsed beside it, curling into moss. The water whispered steadily, even as the world above it cracked. I cried until breath was the only thing left.

When I lifted my head, a crane stood nearby—tall, still, silver-grey against the stone. It regarded me not with pity, but with presence. As if it had watched centuries of sorrow pass through this land and found none of it shameful. We stayed like that—two creatures in rhythm—until it lifted its wings and vanished into the sky.

In its leaving, it left something behind: a quiet knowing, deep in my marrow. A whisper that said: you are never as alone as you think.

Nature had been loving me long before I knew how to love it back.

Now, my life leans toward the wild. I wait for the slow bloom of sansuyu in March. I listen for the owls calling over barley fields at night. I watch the moon rise over snowy ridges. I trace the scent of mugwort and pine after rain.

Some mornings, fear still curls in my chest like smoke. Some days, the ghosts rattle louder than I expect. But I know where to go. I know how to step into the hush of the forest. How to kneel in the moss. How to press my palm to granite warmed by sun. I know how to remember myself.

The land doesn’t ask me to pretend. It doesn’t tell me to “move on.” It holds my grief the way the earth holds rain—gently, completely, without fear. It lets sorrow sink into root and rock and rise again as something else.

I think now about family—and how small we’ve made the word. As if it belongs only to bloodlines and signatures. But I know better.

Family is the stream that hums me to sleep. It is the red squirrel darting through branches. It is the crane that watched me fall apart and didn’t look away. The mugunghwa blooming, too red and too bright. It is the rocks of the Baekdu range and the quiet hush of snow on cedar. It is every living thing that stayed when others left.

When the ones meant to love me turned their backs, the land stepped in without fanfare. It wrapped me in fog and fern, in mountains and moonlight. It showed me that love doesn’t always arrive the way we expect—but it arrives all the same.

And it is an honour to be loved like this. It is also a responsibility.

So I leave water in bowls tucked along the path, for birds caught in the heat. I plant seeds where trails go bare. I pick up what others discard. Not because I must. But because it is my way of saying: I remember. I see you.

The ocean winds, the granite cliffs, the wide sky, the stars—these are my kin. They have endured fire, war, and carelessness. And still, they offer us beauty. Still, they offer breath.

When I remember this, I am never truly alone.

When I remember this, I am always among family.

Storms still come. Grief still presses against my ribs, some nights more than others. But now, I know what the trees know: storms pass. Roots hold. Leaves return.

Healing is not forgetting. It is survival. It is making something soft and stubborn out of what remains. It is choosing, again and again, to stay.

And the trees—my first family, my oldest teachers—sway in agreement. They have always known the way.

I am home.

Here, in nature’s quiet arms—in the hush of the forest, beneath the cloud-strewn sky—I am not asked to be more. I am not punished for being less.

I am home, not because I was good enough to be allowed in—but because I am alive.

And at last, I believe that is enough.

Thank you for being here with this essay. If you feel moved, a comment or a heart supports the wider Wild Muse community by helping this work find others who might need it.

About Rachel

Rachel is a Malaysian writer based in South Korea. Her work explores cross-cultural womanhood, memory, and belonging, often reflecting on the quiet resilience that grows in in-between places.

Drawing from her Malaysian heritage and lived experiences of migration and language, her writing moves through themes of identity, ritual, and the landscapes – both inner and outer – that shape how we find our way home.

Why I Said No to a Top Literary Agent

Gabriela Blandy — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 16:30:45 GMT

“We are the albatross whose parents forgot their capacity to glide for days on end, feeling the tug of the sky and calling ourselves foolish for wanting to circumnavigate the earth.”

WHEN I SAID NO to one of the top literary agents in London, believe me it wasn’t because I didn’t want what he was offering! It was because, somewhere beneath my conscious awareness, I didn’t trust myself to cope with all the things that would happen next – edits, comparisons with his other hugely successful clients, the pressure to deliver a second book.

WE CAN WANT SOMETHING deeply and still feel ill-equipped for it.

An albatross chick can feel the pull of the earth’s circumference, the sense of circling the globe over and over, long before it can stand. This is because life is already moving through its tiny body, reaching for expression.

We can feel that same pull of life – towards love, creative fulfilment – and yet believe that such flight is unrealistic, dangerous even, because we’re often taught to mistrust our own ‘wingspan’.

As a result, we undermine the way life reaches through us towards expression.

Unlike millions of plants and species that grow according to their essence, we’re modelled versions of adulthood that have lost touch with their truth. When we express our dreams – that natural movement of life within seeking form – we’re often told such dreams of true love or making a living from our creative gifts are unrealistic or don’t exist.

We are the albatross whose parents forgot their capacity to glide for days on end. We feel the tug of the sky and call ourselves a fool for our impossible longing to fly around the world.

IN MY LATE TWENTIES, I wrote a novel and when I went out on submission, I had offers to meet with three agents, one of them considered to be London’s top agent at the time.

Firstly, I turned up a week early for our meeting.

He was kind enough to come down to reception to tell me this himself before apologising that he was already in a meeting.

After we had properly met the following week and he gave me a formal offer of representation, guiding me to take my time in deciding, despite liking him a great deal, I wrote back immediately and said, thank you, but no thank you.

This type of behaviour has a name: self-sabotage.

I’ve often thought this phrase can make it sound deliberate. As if we consciously think, ‘This is everything I’ve ever wanted. Let me ruin it.’

It isn’t like that at all.

Self-sabotage is largely unconscious and can be triggered by hope. A long-held dream about to be realised can activate old fear so quickly that we move to smash everything up before we even understand what’s happening.

We’re the albatross, feeling the pull of wind beneath our wings, calling us to skies we’ve long dreamed of – and instead of lifting, our body folds in on itself. We hunker down in the nest, waiting for it all to pass.

At the time I wasn’t thinking, ‘I’m full of hope, let’s dash this wonderful feeling on the rocks.’ I believed I was turning up for a meeting. I thought I was evaluating an offer of representation.

Now I understand the date mix up for what it was: an activated nervous system.

My body was in a sympathetic state, also known as a stress response. In this state, we’re designed to either fight, flee or fawn. The rational part of the brain goes offline, and the body takes over.

I was trying to do the middle one.

Despite the fact that the agent had come down to reception, apologised he was in a meeting, and offered to chat for a few minutes, my body was already fleeing. I was sliding my feet across the floor, edging towards the doorway, holding up my hands, shaking my head. My heart was thumping. All I knew was that I had to get out of there.

He was still speaking when the electric doors opened behind me and I backed out. They began to close again, so we both just ended up waving at each other from either side of the glass before I turned and fled – in a way that attempted to look as much like a walk as possible.

Consciously, I told myself I was just embarrassed. I’d messed up the date. I was an idiot. Of course I needed to leave.

That explanation felt sufficient. I never questioned it. But unconsciously my body had registered danger.

IF THE ALBATROS, FEELING its longing to glide through the clouds, covering thousands of miles, believes that such an act is impossible or will end badly, what happens?

Although it can’t stop the dream, perhaps it tries to banish or silence it.

‘Deliberately destroy’ is one of the definitions of sabotage. But that can make it sound intentional, like we wake up and decide to ruin our creative career. It’s so important to understand what lies beneath that deliberateness because it’s rarely conscious choice. In fact, it’s fear.

In my own healing journey and witnessing others, I’ve come across anger, confusion, frustration, and a deep sense of powerlessness:

I’m an idiot for behaving this way.
Why am I behaving this way?
It’s so annoying I’m behaving this way.
I can’t seem to do anything about my behaving this way.

Notice what’s happening here.

In all these responses to the deliberate destruction of our dream, we’ve turned against ourselves. It’s so common to believe the problem is a flaw in our character. For me, it was that I was often an idiot. For others, it could be laziness, weakness, inconsistency.

But turning against ourselves will never heal our unconscious drive to sabotage.

This is because at the heart of that drive is a little albatross who was taught flight was impossible. Its refusal to leave the nest is not incompetence, it is a profound act of protection. The dream for the sky is still there, the ache, the need, but the fear about what might happen overrides the impulse to lift up.

‘DELIBERATELY OBSTRUCT’ IS ANOTHER definition of sabotage.

I’ve seen that in my own writing and countless clients who desperately want to finish their books and yet find themselves reorganising cupboards, reworking chapter one for the fifteenth time, or deciding the entire idea is flawed.

We talk about procrastination, but the moment we call it ‘self-protection’ something will shift.

There are layers to the ways we protect ourselves from the impossibility of our dream, based on what we were taught growing up.

Did we ‘learn’ we can’t fly at all? Or that we can only fly a certain height or distance, before something goes wrong?

For me, the reason I was able to write my first novel in the space of a few months is because I learnt I had a capacity to take off, but that I then couldn’t maintain my flight. I trusted I could write a good book, what I didn’t trust was what came after.

I didn’t trust myself to complete edits, to exist in the same professional space as writers who were already successful.

Saying no to one of London’s top agents meant I saved myself. It didn’t feel like ‘deliberate obstruction’. In fact, at the time I felt relief.

I had saved myself from something my nervous system was already finding too much. I damaged my dream just before the moment it would have been revealed that I couldn’t handle my dream.

THIS IS THE ESSENTIAL part that we can often miss. If sabotage is a way that we save ourselves, then trying to become more disciplined will not solve it, and in some cases can make it worse.

When we understand what sits beneath our behaviour, we understand why things don’t change just by promising ourselves we’ll write tomorrow.

If the albatross believes that flight will end in catastrophe, no amount of promising or scheduling will make them show up for a flying lesson.

If our nervous system is registering danger, it will activate, and then we can only fight, flee, or fawn.

Let’s say that albatross feels its dream to circumnavigate the globe so profoundly that it puts the hours in and builds momentum. There will still be a moment when the nervous system is triggered.

Perhaps that’s a feeling of guilt for the birds that can’t fly in the same way or a sadness at leaving its family behind.

And so the dream becomes limited – not because we don’t want to fly, but because flying too high might make other birds feel bad, or because we’ve learnt to sacrifice the magnificence of our flight for family and their needs.

When we are unconscious, we think the problem is our talent, our discipline, our guilt, our family.

When we become conscious, we realise something different is happening.

When we understand what sits beneath our behaviour – the sense of self and capacity we learnt growing up – something shifts. We finally wake up.

What do I mean by that?

Let’s say you’re working on a piece of writing and you keep putting off finishing it. You’re thinking, ‘This is rubbish’. You can sense a structural problem, but you can’t articulate it. You feel uncomfortable, irritated and most certainly stuck.

Here you’re unconscious.

You are inside the experience – caught up, powerless to stop, unable to prevent the berating voice, swamped with inadequacy or frustration.

What’s going on here is that your nervous system has been triggered into a sympathetic state – a stress response. Perhaps your body senses that finishing the piece of writing means sending it: sending it means being read; being read could mean being judged, which could mean rejection, or humiliation. And so, your body moves into fight, flight or fawn. Unconsciously.

LET’S GO BACK TO hope.

We all have an innate inclination for connection. Just like the albatross who feels that desire to lift into the sky and soar around the world, we want to reach out with an open heart.

This urge carries a kind of knowing or expectation. We are drawn to connect because of a deep sense that when we reach, something good will meet us.

When that expectation is met with absence – something good should have happened but didn’t – our nervous system registers this. It’s a subtle event. Nothing dramatic, no shouting or overt rejection, but something was missing.

The inclination for connection doesn’t disappear. The albatross cannot forget its destiny in the sky because this is a blueprint stored within.

We try again. Once more, there’s an opening, a reaching. Once more, there’s an absence. Something isn’t met. We gave but didn’t receive.

This might look like offering ourselves but not being accepted for who we are. Loving unconditionally but being loved conditionally in return. Expressing excitement and being ignored.

We feel rejected, alone, abandoned. Over time our nervous system registers a pattern: a deep movement of what feels profoundly real within us that isn’t met, received, or welcomed.

Because there’s no obvious catastrophe – we can’t point to something overtly bad happening – this form of trauma becomes invisible. Over 80 percent of adults carry this form of relational trauma, which affects the nervous system and the brain – and crucially, the way we perceive our capacity for what we long for.

As much as we long for true, committed, honest, reliable love, we may perceive ourselves as not being good enough for it. We meet someone, we start to hope, and then a part of our brain is triggered because we learned that hope gets dashed. So, we withdraw, or pick a fight, or lose interest. We sabotage.

The same thing happens creatively. As much as we long to write a book, to be read and understood, our nervous system and brain carry the trauma of not being accepted for who we are. Instead of writing, we load the dishwasher, we scroll, watch a movie, decide the idea isn’t strong enough.

We are unconscious.

We don’t think, ‘Oh, I’m reliving relational trauma.’
We think, ‘For God’s sake, I need to stop procrastinating!’

If we were conscious in these moments, something very different would happen.

We would notice a tightening or tension in our body and breathe it back to softness because we’d learnt how to care for ourselves when we’re afraid. We’d give our fearful, wounded self loving attention, calming it with words like, ‘Dearest one, I am here,’ and moving our body in a soothing way, such as rocking from one foot to the other.

We’d bring a hand to our heart, perhaps, to contact the part of us who didn’t realise it has a wingspan of three meters, and we’d be able to tell them – with absolute conviction – that the dream they carry of circumnavigating the globe is the most real thing about them.

As always, wishing you creative contentment.

Gabriela, Tree Goddess

I support writers and creatives who long to share their work but find themselves pulling back at the last moment. My work helps you return to your essence — the inner truth that carries your dream — and teaches your nervous system that imagination and desire are safe.

If this resonated, you’re welcome to book a complimentary call.

Grief in the Desert

Gabriela Blandy — Tue, 24 Feb 2026 14:30:16 GMT

“It’s really easy to dismiss your early work. But there might be one line that becomes a springboard.”

Vanessa Wright’s essay, which won second place in the Wild Muse Nature Writing Prize 2026, took seven years to write.

In this conversation, she shares that she’d tried to write about her dad and that time in her life before, but the earlier versions were “so raw and so painful” that she couldn’t even read them aloud without bursting into tears. When she finished one of those drafts, she put it away and didn’t return to it for years.

“Grief isn’t something that just finishes. The pain doesn’t go away, but you learn to live alongside it.”

When the prize was announced, Vanessa knew she wanted to write about her dad. She went back to those earlier pieces she’d once dismissed as “quite rubbish” and found a line in one, a paragraph in another, that became a springboard. Not word for word, but enough to reconnect her to how she’d felt at the time.

One of the most striking craft decisions in her essay was the opening. An earlier version began with the phone call announcing her father’s death. This time, she chose to begin in darkness in the desert at dawn. She speaks about wanting to “tone that down a little bit” and allow the landscape to mirror the grief. The restraint in the prose was intentional, reflecting the sparseness of the desert itself and creating space for the reader.

We also speak about the monarch butterfly that spiralled around her head at Katajuta while she sat alone listening to the song played at her father’s funeral. Vanessa admits she wondered if the image might be “too cliché.” But as she says, “If it is, it’s my cliché.”

It was real. It happened. It carried meaning for her – the colours, her name, the timing – and that specificity is what gives the scene its power.

Later in the episode, Vanessa shares her reflections on Rachel’s third-place piece, Roots and Ribs. She speaks about the “sensory richness,” how the piece trusted the reader with space, and allowed nature to provide comfort without over-explaining.

At the end of our conversation, Vanessa says something that feels central to the Wild Muse community. The prize, she says, has created “a really safe environment for people to share very personal and vulnerable writing.”

This episode is a conversation about time, grief, craft, coincidence, restraint, and the evolving relationship between landscape and loss.

If this conversation resonates, you’re warmly invited to like, comment, or share it. Those small gestures help this episode travel beyond this space and reach the writers who might need it most, while also supporting the Wild Muse community to keep growing.

You can connect with Vanessa on Instagram here. (@elgeeko1506)

Fixing versus tending a writing practice

Gabriela Blandy — Tue, 17 Feb 2026 16:02:46 GMT

“We’ve been taught to evaluate ourselves rather than behold ourselves.”

I SPENT YEARS TRYING to fix my writing practice without realising that no amount of discipline would overcome my second-guessing; the voice that said, ‘Not that.’ The real problem was that I was confused about who I was meant to be on the page.

Both in my own practice and in the lives of people I work with, I’ve seen that at the centre of our desire to create, write, express is a feeling of aliveness, or a movement of life through us. It’s a current, an energy, that when combined with the physical matter of our bodies, can create form. We see this in the natural world as leaves, petals, fruit; the poetry of a bud opening, the narrative of an apple ripening, leaves unfurling.

I used to think ideas came solely from my mind, which meant I treated creativity as a mental event rather than a living current moving through my whole being. I believed that if the mind was the source, then the only way to access creativity was to stimulate it, in the ways many of us do, through consumption, pressure and mental overdrive.

I was hooked on the intense, magical buzz of a new idea. It was the cosmic flash of light at the horizon, the moment the sun appears. And yet my own inner dawn was never so consistent, or so I believed. I thought this was about discipline, that if I showed up enough days in a row, the habit would finally stick.

My writing practice was the equivalent of waking for a sunrise that I felt depended on my own mental effort. I woke early and watched the horizon, all the while doubting whether the light would come that day.

Now I see how such a belief goes against natural law.

This is why nature is the best teacher when it comes to creativity.

SOME TIME AGO NOW, I signed up for a training programme that began my education by nature.

The best decisions I’ve made in life, the ones that are still reverberating in my life rather than ones that led to dead ends and painful backtracking, have all come from a sense of rightness rather than an ability to clearly articulate why.

This is the way nature orients itself towards the sun, enabling it to grow, to turn aliveness into form. A plant can’t worship a false sun, orienting its life towards it, and then be surprised to find itself in darkness, forced to backtrack.

Mother Earth has helped me remember this essential urge within us that moves towards truth, life. Writing, being, and living are not about fixing or discipline at all. They’re about tending.

The origin of tend comes from the Middle English word tend, meaning to move or be inclined to move in a certain direction, and the Old French tendre, meaning stretch. It’s so easy to sense the movement of a plant in these descriptions. A tiny green shoot emerging from the ground, stretching upwards, inclined to move towards life, the light.

Creativity is the same, an aliveness rooted in the earth, stretching through us, moving in a certain direction, reaching outwards, seeking contact, touch.

At school we did experiments germinating seeds in darkness to observe the evidence of their search for light. Plants can become intricately contorted if denied light, but they do not lose their guidance system. When we find ourselves in the darkness of a creative block, it’s often because we have lost the sense of our own true sun. We strain, we stretch, wanting to write, yet unable to find our way. And, in that stretching and straining, something subtle but devastating happens. We start to believe this bent shape is our true form.

“I had mistaken artificial light for the sun.”

THE TROUBLES WITH OUR writing practice ensue, as I discovered, when we take our contorted selves as simply who we are. We focus on our tightness and confusion, rather than sensing the aliveness reaching through us, moving in a certain direction.

Part of what I can now feels reaching through me is love. I experience that love when I write now. Even though I still hold the fear-based contortions of the past, the difference is that I know that’s not my truth. As a result, I’m writing and it feels pleasurable, life-affirming, right.

We’re all contorted in some way. Each of us has our own unique bends, shaped by fear, schooling, rejection. And yet, despite this, we’re still trying to create, write, live, express because to varying degrees we feel something moving through us, stretching, inclining towards.

Our writing practice often reveals just how strongly we’ve twisted against that aliveness. Instead of stretching towards the page, we clamp down. We clench, shrivel, twist, contract.

Although we feel a distinct urge to write, we incline towards housework, scrolling instead. I know this place. I’ve spent years trying to fix this place, thinking, ‘Okay, let’s just get the vacuuming done,’ or turning off the wifi for an hour.

The problem wasn’t discipline – a plant doesn’t have to discipline itself to reach towards life. The twisting was evidence of misorientation. I was growing towards artificial light. I was not aligned with the original inclination within me, confused about who I was meant to be on the page.

Years of schooling had taught me there was a right and a wrong, and so I became afraid. I’d felt my aliveness, the love stretching through me, but over time I experienced rejection and flinched back.

My contortions were an adaptation. They were designed to offer only what was wanted. Growing in this direction, I lost sight of the sun.

When we try to fix ourselves in this state, we only deepen the bends. We continue to grow away from our truth. No amount of discipline can restore what is fundamentally misaligned.

Every day we show up to the page exhausted, a plant that has bent over and grows down into the soil, wondering why we no longer feel joy, wondering where the light has gone.

When we replace fixing and discipline with tending, we stop forcing ourselves to stretch and begin observing the stretch within.

We’re no longer trying to overcome our inclination to scroll, but sensing beneath the twist that has us growing away from life. From there, with gentle attention, we can learn to feel the original inclination of our truth.

Instead of the discipline of 1,000 words a day, tending to our creativity invites us to care for it. We are not trying to push through block, but attend.

Another root of this word is to listen, to pay attention deeply.

“A plant doesn’t have to discipline itself to reach towards life.”

I HAD LITTLE IDEA how to care for my creativity. In fact, many of my habits were actually destructive to that aliveness flowing through me.

It’s common to develop an unnatural way of being with ourselves. We say yes when we mean no, lounge on the sofa eating when we want to go to the gym, abandon yet another writing project even though we’re desperate to finish something, hate what we create although we yearn to love.

This is the result of growing up in an education system that operates on reward and punishment rather than a celebration of essential life. We are treated like plastic, as if we can be poured into a mould, taught our value rather than shown how to feel our priceless soul.

We not a man-made commodity, we’re a seed containing a rather exquisite blueprint.

I certainly didn’t used to think I was exquisite. Such thoughts were deemed big-headed and not allowed.

During the years that I tried to fix my writing practice, I was attending to myself unnaturally. I was only paying attention to the version of me that wasn’t even true.

EARLY ON IN MY nature apprenticeship, something massive shifted for me. I’d driven to the New Forest in a state of deep despair. By this point, despite having tried to fix myself for years, I felt more contorted than ever.

I’d rented a van for five days aware that the only thing that felt right was the idea of spending time alone in a forest with my back against a tree. Something in me was orienting towards life again, even if I didn’t yet understand it.

I arrived after dark. That first night I remember sweating in bed, even though there was a frost. I wonder now if it was some kind of cold turkey because I’d left all my devices at home. I hadn’t even taken a book or a journal. Even though having none of these ‘accessories’ was frankly terrifying, I knew it was the right thing to do. It was what something deep within was calling for: a total nothingness.

The following day I went for a vigorous hike, head down, eyes to the ground. I trudged from point A following the route and returned to point A. Then I drove to Lyndhurst for a pizza, all the while knowing I hadn’t done the one thing I’d come to do. I could hear the call, feel the sun, but I was still growing according to my old bent shape.

It wasn’t until I’d got back to my van, taking in the other vehicles now parked in the small area and attempted to manoeuvre out and failed, that I erupted into a slightly feverish and tearful state, jumped out of the van, paced in a discombobulated circle and flopped down beneath a tree, not at all aware as my spine aligned with the thick rutted trunk behind.

For the first few moments my breathing was ragged, gulped, almost painful.

And then, like a musician drawn to the up and down of a conductor’s baton, I sensed an organised guidance leading my awareness and then my breath up into the boughs of the tree behind me and down into the grounded roots.

I was astonished, not because of the appearance of some supernatural conductor, but that breathing in this way could feel so right.

I began to enter a state of alive peace, and I was able to sense what I can only describe as energetic rain. I knew it was coming from the branches above that had become some kind of enormous showerhead.

But the tree wasn’t washing something wrong away. It was filling me. Each droplet was love, and I had been empty.

In that moment I felt something vital: I wasn’t dirty. I wasn’t in need of fixing. I was a hollow vessel that had disconnected from its source. I needed to be filled with what was true.

I rested my head back, lifted my face and let myself be filled.

How could I deny my exquisiteness after that? And this didn’t come as a I’m better than everybody else.

It came with the profound understanding that we’re all exquisite.

“At the centre of our desire to create is a feeling of aliveness, a movement of life through us.”

I THINK OF HOW I used to show up for my writing practice unsure of whether the sun would rise. I now see that this is not because creativity is elusive, but that I didn’t understand my own true nature.

Imagine how you might respond to a friend who frowned early one morning and said the sun isn’t coming up today. Not that it’s going to be overcast, but that there won’t actually be a day. You would know instantly something in their understanding of the world had shifted.

My own understanding has also shifted. I was trying to fix myself without realising I needed reorientation: my unnatural perception was causing my pain, not my wrongness, not my not-good-enoughness.

You may not have experienced a love shower whilst sitting beneath a tree, but what about awe?

Just like the natural world around you, your own inner landscape deserves to inspire awe. Nature teaches us that.

What if you looked at yourself with the same devotion and astonishment that you look at the landscape around you?

This is the benchmark we’ve drifted from in our forgetting of our nature, in our plastic schooling. We’ve been taught to evaluate rather than behold.

We can tend ourselves back to truth.

Slowly. Naturally.

Feel where that deepest, most silent current within is stretching.

Feel where it’s inclined to move.

Feel back along your stem past the contortion that veers towards artificial light.

Feel the original direction of your essence.

Listen to the aliveness within.

Let it be tended with the love of a sun for a seedling.

As always, wishing you creative contentment.

Gabriela, Tree Goddess

Thank you for reading and spending this time with me here.

If something touched you, responding in a small way, a few words or a heart, helps this piece reach others who may need it today, and keeps this space relational rather than one-sided.

I support writers and creatives to come back into relationship with their essence – an inner seed of truth that holds the dream they’re here to live. My work invites the body remember that imagination and desire are safe, so that creativity can take its natural form. If you feel drawn to chat about this, you’re welcome to book a complimentary call.

From Journaling to Sharing

Gabriela Blandy — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 16:13:20 GMT

“Even before anyone actually reads your work, the idea of being read is enough. As this second presence enters your awareness, the nervous system responds.”

Doubt arrives the moment our mind slips from presence and begins to imagine what might happen next. Our words are still on the page, but our awareness has travelled elsewhere. The shift is subtle, a tiny change in wind direction, yet it can carry us onto an entirely different trajectory. What was pouring forth is now something we start to monitor, assess, and question.

Recently, left a comment on a post that captured something many of us experience: wanting to move from journaling into sharing more of our work publicly, and then meeting the wave of doubt that can arise the moment we imagine our writing being read.

We might start questioning our words, worrying the writing is too self-absorbed or too repetitive. We may wonder whether it has any value beyond the page.

What I want to explore here is what’s actually happening in that moment when our writing leaves a private space and begins to reach outward.

This is a threshold. And when we understand how to navigate this threshold, our experience of doubt begins to shift.

WHEN WE MOVE FROM journaling to publishing our work, we cross what I’ve come to call a relational threshold, because the shift we experience isn’t primarily technical, but relational. This is why doubt appears even though the writing itself hasn’t changed. In this moment something other than the writing has begun to matter.

On one side of that threshold, we have journaling, which can be thought of as a closed relationship. Here we are in self-contact. We are being with ourselves the way a forest is with itself.

I want to pause here, because it’s important to name something clearly.

Self-contact can seem challenging if journaling doesn’t feel safe or comforting. But it’s important to understand that when journaling feels difficult, critical, or exposing, we’re not yet in self-contact.

It’s natural to assume that because we’re writing alone, the witness must be us. But often, we’re looking through eyes that aren’t our own, such as a teacher, a parent, a past editor. When this is happening, we’re not being with ourselves like that forest. But this is a deeper conversation, and one I’ll return to another time.

For now, when I talk about the closed relationship that journaling offers, I’m describing a space that feels safe, forgiving. The relationship here is about honesty.

I can write what I want, what I think, what I feel. In this secluded contact with myself, I can tap into what’s there and give it voice.

The stakes feel low here, even when the content might actually be quite intense. There’s a fluidity here.

I can ramble.
I can repeat myself.
I can contradict myself – and be curious about that.

I don’t have to finish sentences or worry about grammar.

This place is simply about my relationship with what emerges, rather than how that truth might land for others. We haven’t crossed that threshold yet.

As I finish a first draft of my post, I close my eyes and feel a sense of being summoned by nature. I leave the house and walk towards the water.

I move through the neighbourhood past dogs barking at their fences, holding myself open, with the simple intention of receiving. I notice how quickly my mind wants clarity. my thoughts trying to explain why I need to be outside, walking down the street, in order to complete this post.

‘It’s the dogs,’ I think.

Here I am, wandering fluidly down the street, free. The dogs are trapped behind wooden gates, desperate to get out. Surely, this is the threshold I’m writing about?

I let the thought dissolve. As tempting as it is – the logic, the neat metaphor – I know the different between a mind-generated idea and one that comes directly from the earth.

WHEN WE ARE IN our safe, closed loop of journaling, where we are both speaker and witness, our nervous system reflects that. We might experience comfort, relief, the softness of a familiar space. We are securely within a relationship that’s known.

The threshold appears the moment the known gives way to the unknown.

We have something private that’s now about to be shared. What was internal, this self-contact, is about to meet another consciousness.

Just as the nervous system reflected the closed loop, it now responds to its opening. What was held by you is about to be held by another, and the body registers this change. The soft, familiar containment of the closed loop has to open, offer, share.

Even before anyone actually reads your work, the idea of being read is enough. As this second presence enters your awareness, the nervous system responds.

There’s an alertness. A forward pull. A part of you is straining, tracking what might arrive. It’s the feeling of the dogs at the fence, bodies stirred, because the field has changed.

In this moment, old relational memory is activated. The more we can bring understanding into the moments we feel ourselves straining at the fence, the more we understand the urge to bark is an urge from the past.

Old relational memory refers to the ways our truth was met growing up.

Was it, in fact, met?

Or was it misunderstood? Rejected? Ignored?

As the idea of being read appears in the mind, the body opens and reveals what it’s been holding. It might clench, because of the memory of words that weren’t met. It might tense, bracing for the rejection it remembers.

If we aren’t yet able to witness these feelings as echoes from the past, we attach them to the work in front of us. We look at what we’ve put on the page, feeling clenched and tense and ask: ‘Does this matter to anyone else?’ Or, ‘Is this too self-absorbed?’ Even, ‘Is this good enough?’

There’s a dry, stony trail here that runs between the lake and the Colorado River. I walk away from the final cluster of houses, following the path, and stop to watch the surrounding mountains reflected in the almost still water.

As I look more closely, I notice there’s just enough wind to create delicate ripples. They don’t disrupt the reflection of the mountains, but they animate it. The patches of snow seem to twinkle. The areas of scrub ripple, like thick grass moving through a generous breeze.

Once more, my mind begins to seek.

‘Oh, look here,’ it says. ‘The original is still, the reflection vibrant with life. Surely this is the threshold nature wants you to see. The crossing from stillness into participation.’

The metaphor is tempting.

But I can feel the difference. This isn’t a two-way conversation yet. This is my mind filling the waiting space, reaching for meaning, rather than staying present long enough to receive when the earth is ready to give.

What do we do, then, when we want to cross that threshold, when we want to keep writing more regularly and bring more of our work into the world? The impulse to share is real. We’re in that still place, alone with our private truth, and we want to move into a new relationship, into participation.

But as we step toward that relational threshold, the past spills out. Old relational memory arrives before we realise what’s happening. And from this place, those questions arise:

Does this matter to anyone else?
Is this too self-absorbed?
Is this good enough?

Here’s something important to remember: when these questions land as something to answer or solve, we’ve already slipped from presence.

In truth, these questions do not require answers.

The journey toward true, creative expression – writing regularly, sharing more – isn’t about resolving these questions, but learning how to give them awareness.

Time becomes very important here. As we move from journaling into imagining our work being shared, our awareness projects into an illusory future, shaped by how we were met in the past. We move from presence, this moment right now, into an evaluation of what might happen next. We leave the body, the page, the truth moving now, and enter a state of defence. The dogs begin to bark. From this place, the question ‘Does this matter?’ isn’t a creative inquiry at all. It’s a protective reflex.

The mind isn’t offering ‘literary critique’ on the work, it’s responding to a ripple that has moved through the nervous system. Instead of answering the question – which is like going berserk at the dogs barking – we learn to give it our awareness. We notice the questions simply as a signal, telling us we’re at a threshold where something private is about to be seen, calling us back to presence.

Perhaps we place a hand on the dog’s head – our heart – offering it contact, warmth. We’re not trying to stop the barking, but to be with it. This can help loosen the question. Not because it was answered, but because the nervous system was met.

I continue along the trail. To my right, the half-frozen lake is silent. To my left, the river gushes, gurgling and burbling. I feel myself getting closer to the truth. Nature almost has me fully in her arms.

I drop deeper into my body and follow a narrow path through the brush that leads to the rocky riverbank. I close my eyes and sense the sploshing, hissing, plopping of the flowing water. This isn’t an act I do with my ears, but my body.

At first, I feel a tickle in between my ribs and smile.

Now, my lower belly begins to fizz.

There’s a swoosh from my pelvis all the way up to my throat.

The moment is so perfect my eyes fill with tears.

THE MOST COMMON EXPERIENCE at the relational threshold is doubt. This is why so many of us struggle with consistency when sharing our work. We’re treating doubt as guidance. But when doubt becomes the guide or decision-maker, the creative process can only be destabilised.

Doubt can’t tell us whether our work has value. It doesn’t assess the truth of what wants to move now.

Becoming the creative soul we came here to be in this life means learning to hold doubt in our body – to sense it – rather than listening to the mind’s response to it. We don’t answer its questions; we give it our awareness. Through that, we return to presence.

We’re on the riverbank with all that flows through us. We stay with the feeling of that. Self-contact then reveals itself as an experience of something greater moving through us.

Doubt causes us to focus on a perceived threat at the gate, presence draws us into contact with something far larger – the living field we belong to, the miraculous love of the universe.

We realise then, that the energy of the universe is moving through us, sploshing, splashing.

This is what the Colorado River gave me.

A knowing that something greater in the outer world is calling us forth – louder, truer, more alive than our imagined perceptions of what others might think. That call is tickly, giggly.

It is real.

Alongside the river, I felt the energy of the water touch me. Once, we’ve experienced this true sense of aliveness, it becomes easier to notice when the deadening of doubt has sunk through our body.

As I sat beside the rushing water, feeling it within, I saw my arms begin to stretch, ripple. My hands were undulating, my fingers curling. This was my body in a kind of divine dance with the truth moving through it, and I had no inclination to question, to hold back.

I laughed, and as I laughed my tongue became water and flowed on.

As always, wishing you creative contentment.

Gabriela, Tree Goddess.

Read the Second Place Entry of the Wild Muse Nature Writing Prize 2025

Gabriela Blandy — Mon, 02 Feb 2026 16:30:23 GMT

“We are lost in a desert, treading on shifting sands in this dark landscape of grief.”

Vanessa Wright: Second place in the Wild Muse Nature Writing Prize 2025

If you’re subscribed, you’ll be the first to hear about this year’s judge and when entries open.

This week, I’m delighted to share ‘A Butterfly in Red Dust’, by Vanessa Wright. This was the second-place entry in the Wild Muse Nature Writing Prize 2025. When we announced the result, Vanessa shared this in response:

“I think I have just about recovered from the shock of being awarded second place – I’m thrilled! Thank you to the reading panel and judges – but to all of the entrants brave enough to share their words. I wrote this as a tribute to my Dad, really. I’ve tried to write about that period of my life many times before, but it has only taken until now that I was really happy with the piece. Thank you for creating a supportive environment for it to be shared. I will look forward to reading others’ work over the coming weeks.”

Vanessa’s reflection speaks to something I return to often in Wild Muse: the importance of staying in relationship with a piece of writing that continues to call us, that we sense wants to be written. Some stories can’t be rushing into being because they require patience, deep listening, and a little more breath.

Our 2025 judge, , felt this was a powerful and affecting piece, saying:

“This is a powerful piece about how watching a butterfly in the desert helped the author to heal from their dad’s sudden death six months previously. The image of the butterfly is poignant in representing a metamorphosis and the cycle of life and death.”

Vanessa will be joining me on the Wild Muse podcast in the coming weeks to talk about her writing and creative process.

Now, I invite you to immerse yourself in this beautiful and moving piece.

Please share this post and help it reach others.

Kata Tjuta at sunrise from Bill Peach Journeys

“Even in the desperate darkness, there is life.”

A Butterfly in Red Dust

by Vanessa Wright

Nothing prepared me for how cold it would be in the desert. I am in the Valley of the Winds at Kata Tjuta; the clue is in the name. A biting gust gnaws at my bones, and I’m not properly dressed for the occasion. Naively, I thought that being in the middle of the Australian Outback, it would be blisteringly hot.

They say it is darkest before the dawn. It is true; the stars have disappeared from view. It is still an hour until sunrise, and shadows creep around the dunes like ghosts hovering over lonely graves. It is difficult to comprehend the enormous emptiness of it all. And it seems I am not the only one struggling with fierce winds and arctic temperatures. There is not a single insect scurrying, no reptiles scuttling, and no symphony of birds starting to sing and welcome the day. There is no life, nothing at all.

My eyes begin to attune to the dark, and I plod across soft sand. I think about how these grains under my feet shift and drift in the wind. Nothing stays the same forever. The impermanence of this landscape, yet it has stood here for thousands of years. I think about the transience of life, how we are merely a speck in this desert of time.

It’s six months earlier. I pick up the phone.

‘This is the Traffic Police.’
‘Oh. Has my car been nicked?’

It’s as if a howling gale slams into me. Dad. On his way to the bowls club. Hit by a car. Air ambulance. Head injury. Multiple broken bones. Died instantly. Nothing they could do.

A tornado has sucked the life out of our family.

Could I tell Mum?

I put my head against the frosted glass of the office wall and sink to the floor. She’d only landed from London two days before. Minutes feel like hours as I search the streets of the Melbourne suburb where I’m seconded for work. Peering into coffee shops, over to the marina, pausing at the tram stop.

Nope, not there.

It is then I spot her crossing the road. She is exploring on her own, her face taking in the warmth of the sun on this January day. I hesitate.

Just give her a few more moments of happiness.

She looks very pleased with herself, having walked three blocks to get a box of cornflakes, and is about to book an appointment with a hairdresser. All this excited chatter about her adventure comes tumbling out, and I wonder at what point to tell her the news.

‘Aren’t you supposed to be at work?’

I hold Mum’s hand. I feel as though my words are spoken in slow motion, as if someone else is saying them. Her mouth falls open, frozen in time. Nothing comes out. I have just destroyed her world.

We are lost in a desert, treading on shifting sands in this dark landscape of grief.

In this vast nothingness, there is silence. As night becomes twilight, there is a glimpse of colour for the first time. The earth is a fine brick-red dust, and pitted terracotta rocks tower over me. They crowd around me as if joining me graveside. They seem to cry the thick, sooty tears that don’t seem to come in my near-constant state of numbness.

At last, the sun peers over one of the domes; rays begin to thaw me. The wind drops to a whisper of breeze, and the spinifex grass sways like a graceful ballerina, beckoning me over with the longest of limbs. I perch on a rock and sit in the stillness. In this unforgiving place, I spot a hardy, single plant sprouting from the boulder beside me. Its sunshine-yellow flowers remind me of dandelions back home. A crack in the earth has let the water in.

It is only now that tears flow. A release. For the first time in a long time, I feel a sense of peace. It still doesn’t seem possible that he isn’t here anymore. With my eyes shut, vivid reds, oranges, and yellows fill my vision. These hues reflect both my current landscape and match the roses that adorned his coffin. It is in this moment I feel Dad is standing beside me.

Something makes me open my eyes and look up.

Spiralling before me is a magnificent monarch butterfly flickering like a flame in the brilliant light. It, too, is dressed in the same colours as the funeral flowers, flashing its striking black and white markings like blinking eyes with every slow wingbeat. It appears to be watching me.

Like a caterpillar inside a chrysalis, it takes me a while to rebuild and rearrange atoms into new life. Chemicals dissolve the larva’s muscles and organs, leaving behind only the most vital life-supporting cells. Barely existing, it’s just about hanging on. Surviving, not thriving. But in the shadows, the insect’s new body and wings are forming. Although the building blocks remain, the very molecules that made you are being dismantled. Your whole mind, body, and spirit are in disarray. A part of the old you has forever withered and died, too.

I think of the monarch’s previous existence. It doesn’t know what it is destined to become. And we don’t know how this experience of grief will shape us. But it will transform us. How can life ever be the same again? We don’t know how long we will feel as desolate as the desert, but there is healing happening beneath the surface. A metamorphosis is occurring. Even in the desperate darkness, there is life. And in time, we will find that glitter. It’s the faintest shimmer of butterfly wings.

Thank you for being here with this essay. If you feel moved, a comment or a heart supports the wider Wild Muse community by helping this work find others who might need it.

About Vanessa

Vanessa divides her time between Hertfordshire and the Hebrides, moving between landscapes that continue to shape her relationship with the natural world. She left corporate life during the pandemic to follow a long-held pull toward wildlife and nature-based writing.

She recently completed a Masters in Nature and Travel Writing and was announced as Runner-Up in the BBC Countryfile New Nature Writer of the Year 2022 competition. Her work has appeared in Bird Watching, Country Walking, and The Simple Things, and she has led nature writing workshops for the RSPB and the Outer Hebrides Wildlife Festival.

You can connect with Vanessa on Instagram here. (@elgeeko1506)

Unmoored, Yet Held

Gabriela Blandy — Tue, 27 Jan 2026 16:30:52 GMT

“Sometimes I’ll finish a session and think, ‘That was rubbish, I’m rubbish,’ and then come back the next day and realise there’s actually something there.”

In this conversation, I chat with Faye Keegan, winner of the Wild Muse Nature Writing Prize 2025 about surviving rejection and allowing a piece to take shape over numerous drafts.

Before ‘Unmoored’ became a prize-winning piece, it went through many edits and moments of doubt. Faye speaks with striking clarity about how distance shaped her relationship to this piece, and how the writing shifted once the experience was no longer raw, but something she could enter and step back from with care.

“Writing from the scar means I can enter those emotions, but I can also step back out again.”

‘Unmoored’ won the Wild Muse Nature Writing Prize, but this conversation isn’t really about winning. It’s about what happens before and after recognition. We speak openly about rejection, self-doubt, and that familiar, aching question many writers carry: does anyone care? Faye shares how this piece began life as part of a rejected book proposal, and how the same work that once felt overlooked later found its place.

Together, we move gently through the writing process itself. Titles, first sentences, instinct, perfectionism, and the way nature changes how you experience time because there’s a slowing, but also an awareness of cycles and seasons.

This is a conversation for writers who want reassurance without platitudes.

“It’s the difference between lowering yourself in on a secure rope and just diving in and struggling to get out.”

‘Unmoored’

This Isn’t About Getting It Right

Gabriela Blandy — Tue, 20 Jan 2026 16:52:09 GMT

“When the firework of an idea goes off, the buried or slumbering past awakens.
Bedrock shifts, clouds form.”

IN THE PAST, I’VE had ideas for short stories, essays, workshops and coaching offerings that arrive like a firework of inspiring thought going off inside me. Sometimes it’s an image exploding, sometimes a sentence, even a single word, all of which feels deeply alive and necessary.

I’m experiencing it right now.

Yesterday, at the top of my notebook, I wrote the line ‘Instead of right and wrong, I see it as relationship’. Now, as I begin to put words down, it feels good, fun, deliciously satisfying.

I CAN ALSO REMEMBER that in the past these firework ideas would go off one day, and by the next day the sky of my mind would have returned to the black of night. There’d be a sense of something having expired. I’d feel bereft, almost sick with longing, deserted.

How could I get it back?

AS I SIT HERE WRITING, I understand that this very question, and the energy behind it, was the problem. What was I trying to ‘get back’?

You see, ‘it’ was already there. What was missing was my connection with it.

Of course, there were times I had a flash of something inspired at a moment I couldn’t jot anything down. How many times have I said, ‘I’ll remember this’, but then, later, the whole thing had vanished. But this isn’t about remembering the words.

I’m talking about the ideas we do remember. Ideas we’ve been working on – sometimes for days, months or years, which suddenly don’t seem as wondrous anymore.

All those times I asked, ‘How can I get it back?’ without really knowing what ‘it’ referred to.

Now I know.

The feeling, and my relationship with it.

These days, I have a deeper level of self-awareness: the ability to track the conditions of my inner landscape, to sense the microscopic rustles and flickers that carry real information. I’m in an entirely different relationship with that feeling now.

Right now, it’s before breakfast and I’m filling the second page of my notebook. I’ve been out walking with Sam, my dog, and seen the pale silhouette of a new moon in the sky as the day slowly brightens. I knew I’d come in and work on this idea.

As I tracked my inner landscape, I sensed a little part tightening, clenching. Staying with these sensations, I felt a nervousness at what would happen when I returned to the sentence I’d written at the top of my notebook the day before. The firework had gone off, but what next?

I know this place in my landscape where the young part of me lives. She’s from my school days and has been conditioned with the ‘man-made’ principle of right and wrong. In the aftermath of the firework, all that was left was the question, ‘Will I be right or wrong?’

This tightening and clenching in my body are sensations I spent much of my life oblivious to. Thanks to my somatic movement practices, I now notice them. They belong to a fearful part of me who is ‘efforting’.

This part doesn’t understand what teachers want from her, only that she’s wrong in some way. Clenching is the only strategy she has to lock the truth of her in and try to put something out that is ‘good’, wanted.

These parts don’t ‘awaken’ randomly.

When a firework goes off, the buried or slumbering past is triggered. It is the very aliveness of a new idea that revives old places. Bedrock shifts, clouds form.

Can we witness these parts with love, be with them, without trying to make them anything other?

This is relationship.

Knowing ourselves intimately, feeling our terrain, listening to our thunder.

IN THE PAST, WHEN my inner weather shifted, I often moved into self-attack, distraction, and overriding. This morning would have gone entirely differently!

For starters, I wouldn’t be working on my Substack post right now! Unable to stay in relationship with my shifting bedrock, with those gathering clouds, I’d be doing ‘other activities’.

Instead of listening to my internal landscape, I’d be thinking, ‘What’s wrong with me?’

Rather than feeling my own clenches and squeezes, I’d be caffeinating, drowning out my natural weather with something stronger, choosing a heady rush of known origin.

Instead of building a relationship with the parts that had been woken up by the fireworks display and tentatively revealed themselves, I’d be hating everything about me.

This was simply what I’d been taught. Chin up, push on, get going, don’t dawdle.

As a result, the idea that had burst through me the day before would now feel cold and flat. I’d likely be looking at it and thinking it was boring, that no-one would care. I’d be ‘trying’ to come up with something better. I certainly wouldn’t be on page three of my notebook feeling curious, proud, and content!

THE RELATIONSHIP WE HAVE with our creativity and our ideas, starts with the relationship we have with ourselves. My own journey to this curious, proud, content place has involved realising that much of the way I related to myself came from a mind that was taught good and bad, right and wrong, rather than how to witness the miraculous ecosystems our bodies are.

When my bedrock shifted, I met it from that conditioned place, asking ‘What’s wrong with me?’ rather than standing in the centre of myself, marvelling at the landscape all around in the way that nature invites us to do.

That is how we can now be taught: by standing in the natural landscape, letting it draw our attention, our awe, and then allowing that way of seeing to guide how we stand inside our own thoughts, feelings and inner terrain.

IF AN IDEA SPARKS in my miraculous ecosystem, I now know how to be with that idea. Even when the light fades it leaves an imprint in me. Simply put, I know how to hold the idea, sense it, let it give me words and lead me.

In the past, I met those fireworks differently. I approached them with a head full of fearful demands. I watched them rise in the sky and wondered: Will anyone care? Is this good enough? Are others letting off better displays?

I didn’t understand then that these questions weren’t coming from the idea at all. They were coming from an old, conditioned part of my mind, a set of grooves carved long ago, that can only measure through comparison, approval, and fear of being wrong.

This meant that by the time the firework faded, I hadn’t really experienced it. I’d learnt nothing from the light; it had left no new imprint in me. All I had was the memory of my anxious thinking about the idea, rather than being in a relationship with the idea itself.

Trying to ‘get it back’ from there was like trying to find my way out of a maze using a map made only of dead ends. I was searching for that original, blissful feeling of aliveness, with the very part of my mind that could only lead to doubt, comparison, and not enoughness.

I USED TO THINK that if my feelings about an idea fizzled out, the idea wasn’t meant to be. I’ve come to see how incorrect that is and how this limited thinking not only impacted my creative process, but also my love life.

I understand now that it comes down to the deep dreams we carry and our relationship to them, which again begins with the relationship with have with ourselves. This determines how much we allow that dream to teach us, guide us, and eventually pull us free.

When I was finally able to acknowledge my dream to be in an inspiring, magical, healing, fun, growth-minded relationship, which largely involved tending to the marshy areas in my inner landscape, the swamps of ‘Things like that don’t happen to people like me’, the sinkholes of ‘I’m not worthy’, I met a man called Bonn.

I see now how this mirrors the dream of wanting a creative life: to share words, to touch others, to make a living from what wants to emerge through us.

Before meeting Bonn I was single for six years, tending to the relationship I had with myself. As I met those marshy areas within with the warm gaze of my attention, that sun of love transformed the climate of those swampy beliefs that had held me back.

Bonn and I finally met in a hot tub in Idaho Springs over a year after the trees had been telling me to go to Colorado. As I got into that lovely bubbling warm water, I knew this was the man the forest had been telling me about, the miracle I’d asked for. I also knew how much there was to lose.

TAKE A MOMENT TO think of your own creative dream. What is it that you are asking for? Then think about the moment an idea has arrived, miraculous, lovely, bubbling, warm.

How do you respond to it?

That day, in the hot tub, Bonn and I both decided we wanted to navigate the 4,000 miles between us and commit to each other. It was clear that this was the relationship we’d both been dreaming of and asking for. Now that it had arrived, we said, ‘Yes!’

A few days later, I drove into the mountains to spend the last four days of my trip with Bonn. We went for a walk in an Aspen forest. It was snowing. I’d known this man for just a few days and yet as I hiked through the trees, feeling the thick hush of the snow-capped landscape, I was at total peace.

I suggested that we take a pause in order to sit with the Aspen. For me, this is like taking a moment to ‘check-in’, with our idea. When we’re in right relationship with ourselves, we can easily pick up the phone, make that important call deep within our inner landscape, and be met, guided, comforted. Without that relationship, we can only ping back and forth in a mind that’s largely made up of the past – those doubts and comparisons and not enoughness.

What unfolded during and after this pause showed me how the relationship-with-self actually works.

As I sat beside Bonn, the two of us leaning against a tree with our eyes closed, and I tuned into the forest, I heard, ‘Take a photo.’ As well as the words, I felt a clear impulse in my solar plexus, to stand, to act. It was a firework, exactly like the arrival of a new idea.

And then I noticed my thoughts.

‘Why?’

‘Maybe Bonn doesn’t want to be photographed.’

‘But it’s snowing.’

All of those thoughts felt like dead ends. The firework rises up; the thoughts smother it.

None of those dead ends lead out of the maze of my mind to the kind of relationship I’d been dreaming of, that much I knew.

I stood up and took a photo.

My thoughts said, ‘Call yourself a Tree Goddess, you’re just standing here on your phone.’

I breathed in and out. I trusted the instruction to take a photo because it had felt like a firework when it came, even though the fire had now passed.

LATER THAT DAY, BONN and I were having supper: two people, a few days into discovering each other. Such a fresh idea!

Although we barely knew anything about the lives each of us had lived, we did know what each other wanted, what we’d both been looking for. We’d felt enough about the peaceful experience of being side by side to know it was what we’d always dreamt of.

As we talked, Bonn said something that triggered me. I felt my energy – the glorious, calm yet buoyant feeling I’d been enjoying since we’d met – turn heavy and sink down. My inner ecosystem went cold as clouds formed overhead. The easy-going birdsong of my mind turned to evil cackling. As the plummeting sensation continued, I heard, ‘He’s not the man I believed him to be. I can’t trust him.’

And I recognised the feeling. My slumbering past had awakened, just like with a new idea.

What at first raises us up, can also pull us down.

‘Maybe this isn’t such a good opening sentence after all…’ we think.

‘Can I really trust this book is going to get published?’

As I sat on the stool next to Bonn, hearing my despairing thoughts, I began to deepen my exhales so that I could use my breath to help me return to relationship with myself. Right now, I knew I was in opposition.

As I slowed and lengthened my breath, I came back within, to stand in the landscape of my being. In my six years of being single, I’d learnt to be in an entirely different relationship with myself. When I was triggered and my inner weather became stormy, instead of trying to flee the tempest – in this case by blaming the person who had supposedly brought the blizzard in – I stood in the very centre of myself.

This is what it means to lose presence and find it again.

When our ideas trigger us, causing that internal storm, we turn against them. This is because most of us weren’t taught how to self-soothe, but rather to remove the supposed cause of discomfort.

This is why we’re stuck in a maze of dead ends, trying to find our way out.

The moment we reach a new path, and our nervous system is triggered, we abandon the very thing that will lead us through, turning away from the dream, going back the way we came.

I would not do that anymore.

As I sat and breathed, and felt the tremble in my energy, the old pain of wanting something I believed I couldn’t have, I was able to see: this was an old dead end. This was the past, which had slipped into the present.

I could feel how my body was gripping so that my outer layer had turned to a rigid, impermeable husk. I brought my attention there. I felt this husk, I tasted it with my heart, and it softened.

THIS IS JUST ONE of the ways I’ve learnt to return to presence. Sensing where the past has taken over my body and feeling into it deeply. In this feeling I experience a sense of my skin dissolving so that I gradually begin to feel the whole moment around me, the atmosphere.

This is what I felt as I sat beside Bonn.

And then, exactly then, I heard the words, ‘Take a photo.’

The same instruction, arriving again, but this time without any panic at all.

I closed my eyes and saw the image of Bonn sitting in the forest while it snowed, leaning against an Aspen. His eyes were closed, his face at peace. I felt the absolute certainty of my feelings for this man. He was the soul my own soul had led me to.

This is what we find when we learn to come back to the centre of ourselves and relate to our ideas from the present moment.

The fireworks that spark from within us aren’t asking us to get it ‘right’, but to stay in relationship with them. From here, they can become guides, leading us out of the maze of our past, conditioned thoughts, and into the life we’ve always dreamed of.

As always, wishing you creative contentment.

Gabriela, Tree Goddess.

Thank you for reading and spending this time with me here. If something here touched you, responding in some small way - with a few words or a heart - helps this piece find others who might needing this post today, and keeps this space ‘relational’ rather than one-sided!

I support writers and creatives to come back into relationship with their essence – an inner seed of truth that carries the dream you’re here to live. My work helps the body remember that imagination and desire are allowed so that creativity can take its true form. If you feel drawn to chat about this, you’re welcome to book a complimentary call.

Read the Winner of the Wild Muse Nature Writing Prize 2025

Gabriela Blandy — Tue, 13 Jan 2026 16:31:23 GMT

“In our age of individualism, of every-man-for-himself, a murmuration is a triumph of togetherness, of communication and cooperation.”

Faye Keegan, winner of the 2025 Wild Muse Nature Writing Prize

Over the coming months, I’ll be sharing selected essays from the Wild Muse Nature Writing Prize for you to read and linger with. My hope is that these pieces will offer beauty, craft, and a sense of companionship as we move toward opening the prize for 2026.

If you’re subscribed, you’ll be the first to hear about this year’s judge and when entries open.

Faye has also joined me on the Wild Muse Podcast to chat about her process about surviving rejection and letting a piece take shape over numerous drafts.

This week, I’m delighted to share ‘Unmoored’, by Faye Keegan. This was the winning entry of the Wild Muse Nature Writing Prize 2025. When we announced the winner, Faye shared this in response:

“I’m honestly so shocked and honoured to have been awarded first place – thank you so much. My piece commemorates a very difficult, transformative, special moment in my life, and it feels so wonderful to have it recognised in this way.”

Our 2025 judge, felt this was an assured and tightly-written piece, saying:

“It deftly weaves rich, sensory description with moving background details on how the author came to live in a narrowboat. I loved the contrast between their old life in London and their new life on the narrowboat and then the surprise announcement at the end. It's very accomplished and deserving of first place.”

Now, I invite you to immerse yourself in this stunning piece!

Please share this post and help it reach others.

The Murmurations of Starlings in evening light, by Menno Schaefer

Unmoored

by Faye Keegan

I wake as the starlings are starting to gather. From the boat’s open side-hatch, I watch them, coffee-warm cup in hand: only a few still, no more than ten, twittering atop our nearest tree, on the other side of the canal. It’s a poplar, I think; one of three trees – a trio, like witches, or wishes – tall and pale and bare-branched but for the great ball of mistletoe dragging almost to the ground, and the birds who await their evening’s murmuration, trilling and leaping from bough to bough in giddy anticipation of the dance ahead.

It isn’t like me to sleep during the day, and I feel thick and bleary. I wonder if I’m getting ill; I’ve been tired a lot lately. In an attempt to clear my head, I lean further out of the hatch, the better to gulp the cool, fresh air, to let the crisp, cleansing breeze prickle the skin on my face to alertness. We are not-quite frozen in; the ice is gauze-thin, a melty glister shimmering in the afternoon light. As I lean, the boat gently rocks in the still-flowing water beneath it, and a spider-web of cracks splinter out across its surface. If we wanted to move on today we could, I think; we could easily break through this and cruise up the canal to find the next place we’ll call home – but we won’t. This spot is ours for the winter, and it’s a good one: beyond the trees, a field of frost-glittered marsh stretches out towards the wide blue sky. The warm coo of a wood pigeon carries through the air like a love-note. As it moves once more against the icy water, our boat creaks like a frog in song. I like it here.

At least I’m awake in time to see the murmuration – the mysterious and mesmerising spectacle of a thousand or more starlings weaving through the sky to form vast, shape-shifting clouds, which pulse and undulate as if animated by some supernatural force; as if the birds are all of one mind; as if by magic. It’s a smaller number of birds that congregate here, but it’s still an impressive display, and I particularly wanted to experience it this evening: it’s New Year’s Eve, the first my husband Nigel and I will spend here, on our narrowboat home. I’d like it to be tinged with magic.

I love the hatch thrown wide like this – the bold embrace of the elements, the sense of inviting nature inside. It’s a longstanding habit of mine since our old life in London, which seems like a thousand years ago now; the insidious breakdown in my mental health, the grim, difficult days that led to my doctor signing me off work, the strange, grey weeks of inertia that followed. Every morning, without fail, Nige would bring me a cup of coffee in bed, then do his best to make me laugh while he got ready for work. Once he’d gone I’d move to the cosy old armchair by our bedroom window, heaving open the sash to let the fresh air in. I’d sit there for hours, all day, sometimes, wrapped in a blanket, watching the rain. It was the closest thing we had to outside space in our little first-floor, rented flat. Luckily, it looked out onto our downstairs neighbours’ garden, which was enormous and lovely and home to two towering eucalyptus trees, so the view was always full of green. I began to realise just how drained and overwhelmed I’d been left by my long daily commute into the city’s centre; the noisy crowds, the dirty air, always running late, always panicking, heart pounding, sweat creeping slowly across my hairline on the too-full tube. That tiny oasis by the window felt like a first-step to remedying it, compounded, as I slowly regained my energy, by long park walks, where I’d watch the ducks and moorhens glide serenely over ponds, or place my hand on the bark of an ancient oak and feel connected to the still, solid earth.

As the weeks and months went by, I slowly began to recover, and with that recovery came a gradual realisation: we needed to get out of London. I yearned for expanse – for vast open spaces in shades of blue and green, for wide skies and far fields, with room to breathe and dream and believe again; a big, blank canvas on which to reimagine my life.

I take my coffee outside; for some reason I’m feeling slightly nauseous, and need more fresh air than even the hatch provides. Plus, from here I’ll have a better view of the murmuration. Blanket-wrapped, I settle into the bench built into the boat’s bow, and take it in: the clear sky, the glittering marsh, the water stretching out before me. I guess I got my wish.

In the autumn after my breakdown we left London for Oxford; a rented house on the city’s northern edge, just a few minutes’ walk from a view of patchwork fields, from shady woodland in which to stomp through golden leaves. I took deep breaths of the pure, fresh air, and let the countryside quiet seep into my bones. I walked, I read, I wrote. I got a new job at the bookshop in town. In the spring, I collected lost twigs still thick with tiny buds, and stuck them in jars of water on my desk to see their miniature flourishments slowly unfurl. In the summer, Nige convinced me to try kayaking, and I met our world anew, amazed at how different things seemed from this watery perspective. Despite its never-ceasing flow, there was a stillness on the river, a glimmering quality somewhere between the light and water that helped calm my racing thoughts and slow my breath. In the yellow shade of willow, I felt peace. I grew to love Oxford’s waterways, to paddle on, to walk beside; the Cherwell, the Thames, the canal. This last, in particular, seemed a shimmering, magical place to me, rich with possibility and adventure. I loved to see the narrowboat homes moored there. They embodied a sort of cosy bohemia I was instinctively drawn to, though by which I didn’t necessarily feel welcomed. There was a definite sense that this was a private world, possessed of secrets known only to those bold and brave enough to eschew the comforts of life on land. Its energy was electric; a quiet surface worn lightly by distinct undercurrents of daring, creativity, purpose. I wanted to know its secrets; I wanted to be brave. It made total sense, then, when – after eighteen months of trying and failing to get pregnant, and beginning to accept I might never be a mother – I decided I wanted our childfree life to be as vibrant and exciting as possible, and told Nige I thought we should buy a narrowboat. So we did.

That was nine months ago, and now here we are, living full time on the canal. I pull the blanket closer round my shoulders. The air is starting to chill, but I’ll hold out a little while longer. For the human spectator, murmurations are a waiting game; as darkness descends, and the cold sets in, it can begin to feel like the moment will never come, but it always does, eventually. There are a hundred breath-catching false starts, as small groups flutter into brief formation, then return to their perch. A rehearsal, perhaps? Maybe it’s their way of greeting the new birds, who, as the light slowly fades, are gliding through the sky to join them in ever increasing numbers, taking up position in the trees. From my seat in the bow I can hear the rhythmic beating of their wings as they swoop over-head; like rainfall on the boat’s steel roof, or ocean waves at night. It might be my favourite sound in the world. And a murmuration in full swing might be my favourite sight: the enormity of it, and the delicacy; the birds sweeping in perfect harmony through the air as if it were song. They look like music. There is an undeniable otherworldliness to their dance; something ethereal and mysterious. I can understand why the Ancient Romans believed murmurations reflected the mood of the gods; why augurs – priests responsible for interpreting the gods’ will – would study them closely in an attempt to uncover divine intentions. For a while, scientists theorised that starlings might use telepathy, or perhaps tap into some kind of unified consciousness, to create their murmuration, but that’s since been disproven. Rather, recent studies have shown that the birds’ hypnotic synchronicity is achieved by plain observation, aided by admittedly superior peripheral vision: each starling simply watches and follows the seven surrounding it, who in turn watch and follow the seven surrounding them, and on, and on, a pattern of acute awareness which ripples out to include the whole flock. You might think removing the mystery of the murmuration’s process robs it of its magic, but not for me; if anything I think it makes it even more extraordinary to behold. In our age of individualism, of every-man-for-himself, a murmuration is a triumph of togetherness, of communication and cooperation; a testament to what beauty might exist if we all just paid attention to each other. And actually, there is still a mystery about exactly why starlings murmurate: some have suggested they do it to ward off predators, others that it’s a way of conserving warmth, but both theories have their detractors. Scientists do all agree that starlings are highly intelligent, sociable birds, though. It is quite possible they just do it for joy.

My reverie is broken by the electric trill of my phone. It’s a message from Nige: ‘should I pick up fizz?’ and a miniature champagne bottle, cork popped. I smile; he doesn’t even like fizz. I message back: ‘sure, let’s do it!’ Then, with a single breathless shudder, the starlings finally leap forth from the trees, and the murmuration begins.

Tonight we’ll eat roast chicken and chocolate soufflé, then curl up close on our tiny sofa beside the stove’s warm glow, enjoying the cosy simplicity of our narrowboat home. After just one sip I’ll decide I don’t much fancy fizz actually, and Nige will roll his eyes good-naturedly and tease me for my new-found puritanism, then make us steaming mugs of peppermint tea to drink beneath blankets while we watch silly movies, whiling away the year’s final hours in the comfort and contentedness that comes from hearing each other laugh. At midnight we will throw open the hatch to find the moon and see fireworks flash on the edge of the horizon. Nige will wrap his arms around me, and I’ll feel hopeful, and happy, and calm. In three days we’ll discover I’m pregnant.

Thank you for being here with this essay. If you feel moved, a comment or a heart supports the wider Wild Muse community by helping this work find others who might need it.

About Faye

Faye grew up in the countryside near Oxford, where she spent much of her time roaming fields by the river, cultivating a love of landscape, literature, and emotional intensity.

She went on to study English Literature at Newcastle University, completing a PhD focused on mid-twentieth-century romance novels. Her research was discussed on BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour in 2020.

Faye has spent over a decade working in bookshops, including Waterstones, Blackwell’s, and the London independent Heywood Hill, where she also worked as a personal bookseller and managed the shop’s online communications.

She now lives in the Cotswolds with her husband and daughter.

You can connect with Faye on Instagram here (@fayejkeegan).

Listen to Faye on the Wild Muse Podcast

If you want to write this year

Gabriela Blandy — Tue, 06 Jan 2026 16:30:54 GMT

“The desire to write, to love, is not a setup for disappointment, it’s a signal of truth. This means that what we want is who we are. We are these things because we choose to return to that truth, rather than believe the mind that says your life is the sad frustration of never quite getting what you want.”

I’VE BEEN THINKING about why the beginning of the year can feel both important and vulnerable for writers. There are many creative souls standing at a threshold right now, feeling that familiar pull to return to their writing. I’ve been there. Making promises to myself about books I’ll finally finish, start, or dust off and rewrite. Each threshold has always felt motivated by the experience of holding a truth I’m tired of carrying alone, and so I go at it again, seeking to deliver that truth onto the page.

Again and again, through listening to writers, I’ve noticed an irony: sensing this truth can both compel us to write, and also lead us away from what wants to be written. This is something I’ve been curious about for many years.

I’ve tried productivity systems, writing challenges, morning routines, accountability groups – and while they can all be useful, they’ve never been the heart of it for me. What keeps drawing my attention is something far more important. Relationship.

Sometimes, a writer comes to me and says, “I finally want to get my book out there this year,” and as we talk, a familiar landscape begins to appear: they’ve struggled to find time to write in between family and work obligations; the book went off on a massive tangent that now seems wrong and they’re facing a painful cut and a massive rewrite that feels daunting; at last they say, “I just need to get this done so I can move on.”

As I listen, I start to sense their relationship to the truth they’re carrying. This truth might feel like an urge to you, or a compulsion, a destiny. It’s the creative pulse that calls. It is the force of life itself.

I’ve found that when we heal our relationship with this force of life – a force that wants to become words and touch others – discipline takes care of itself.

CONSIDER THE TIMES YOU’VE fallen in love.

You couldn’t stop yourself thinking about that person – they were wondrous, glorious, everything you’d been waiting for. You longed to be with them at every moment. And when you weren’t with them, you were picking over every detail of the last time you were with them, bathing in the joy, the pleasure, the desire.

When a client tells me they haven’t been writing because of work or family obligations, I often sense there’s something raw or delicate in their relationship with the creativity that wants to move through them. Perhaps they’ve learnt to relate to their writing as less important than family or work. There’s often guilt there. Or fear. A doubt that says, “What if this truth I feel isn’t good enough?”

If the idea of a massive rewrite feels draining rather than energising, it makes me curious about the state of the relationship itself. If you thought about having to spend more time with the person you were besotted with, would your heart really sink?

Lastly, if you truly were besotted by that person, would you say to a friend, “I just need to get this relationship over and done with so I can move on”?

AS I SIT HERE with my notebook, listening to a soft fall of rain on the skylight above me, I feel a rich and deep desire within to speak honestly about what helps me stay in loving, energising relationship with the truth that longs for the page.

And then I notice my mind scattering like a handful of dropped marbles, wanting to follow every possible way to cultivate deep and lasting love and offer them all at once. I catch myself thinking, “This should probably be a five-part post.” Then I remember a solo podcast from last year on the relationship we have with energy and feel a little bit of relief because I don’t have to say everything, all at once.

This, I’ve come to realise, is part of relationship: learning how to stay present with the desire that lives within us – that pulsing, creating, feeling truth – and with the busy mind that so easily pulls us away. If we want to build a relationship that lasts, one we can manage along with family and work, fluctuating energy, and moments of fear or frustration, we have to be able to find our way back to presence. This is where relationship becomes something lived rather than idealised: not in constant devotion to the desire itself, but in our ability to come back to presence when we’ve drifted into the mind.

For a long time, I thought I was present, when in truth I was circling my life from the mind. Many of us don’t actually know what presence is, because no one taught us.

This is why discovering it can feel revolutionary when it finally happens.

Presence is both a touchstone of the most convincing truth – so bright it obliterates doubt when we touch it – as well as a source of energy and a place of joy. It’s a place, a state, an experience, that no matter what has come before, we return to the utter majesty of who we really are and all we came here to be.

I used to believe that presence had to be continuous to be real, but I now know its power lies in its availability – the understanding that I can reach for it again, and again! Knowing how to return matters far more than never leaving.

TWO RECENT MOMENTS COME to mind that show me how relationship isn’t something we decide once, but something we keep renewing through small returns to presence.

Yesterday happened to be the first day in my menstrual cycle, and also the day I returned to work after two weeks offline. As a result, my mind was more than busy. It was negative, reluctant, relentlessly demanding, both overwhelmed and bored, and never quite satisfied. But every time I reached for presence – a short breathing practice, ten minutes of intentional journaling, a moment of gentle stretching while the kettle boiled, a short hug with one of my favourite trees – there was my enduring truth, a spurt of energy, a welcome feeling of relief.

Relationship is like that. Not always as extreme as yesterday, which was an up and down of agonised panic as I lost my centre, and welcome reprieve as I paused and returned! But it is a back and forth. And, for me, as much as my mind insists that these moments of panic and despair make me a fraud, unworthy to be a coach, when I touch my heart, my truth, my essence, I’m saturated with the knowing that they don’t make me a fraud at all, but show me I can find my way back, no matter how much I’ve lost my way.

Presence tells me that I’m true because I’ve learnt to compassionately release the despair and panic as a false reality conjured by a stressed mind (that’s usually stuck in the past) and welcome back the true reality of this moment right here.

And as much as my stressed mind insisted that writing a Substack post this morning was the last thing it wanted to do, I know the true relationship with what wants to be expressed with me. And I know that by taking things slowly, writing a first draft by hand, making myself comfortable on the sofa with cushions and blankets, I can find my way. A few pages in, that way feels like deep contentment and softly flowing energy.

AND NOW THE SECOND story, which has to do with my actual relationship. You may, or may not know, that over a year ago the trees led me to Colorado where I met a man that the forest had been talking to me about for some time – telling me about someone with college-aged kids, who was younger than me, and lived near Beaver Creek.

He’s my miracle man to me, and this magical meeting could mirror the special moment we all experience in our writing when an idea first blooms within. Here, we are in love, in glorious relationship.

I’ve come to see that the notion this doesn’t ‘last’ is false. Entirely NOT present!

Not because over the previous fifteen months my miracle man and I have been in a constant state of blissful, euphoric love, but because of the intentional work I put in to maintain the relationship.

Here’s an example. The other day we were having one of our scheduled video calls and he was sharing a frustration about something that was happening in his life. This wasn’t the funny, adventurous, interesting man I’ve come to know, my mind pointed out. This is an angry, stuck man, my mind said. It felt exactly like the moment in writing when the words suddenly stop flowing in the way they were.

During the conversation, I noticed a part of me thinking that his behaviour was “disappointing”. My mind claimed he wasn’t the miracle man I thought he was.

I recognise this same moment in my work-in-progress. Our initial idea no longer feels as sexy. Perhaps it has become boring. In fact, maybe we need to come up with something new altogether…

But the relationship we have with our creativity, just like the relationship we have with love – if we want it to be true, to be miraculous (which I certainly do!) – demands that we learn how to return to the pure essence of our heart, to presence, when the stories in our mind lead us astray.

In presence, there is a non-negotiable truth that dissolves doubt, and your relationship returns stronger. Even though the mind is loud and convincing, we choose to stay with the miracle rather than believe it.

THE DESIRE TO WRITE, to love, is not a setup for disappointment, but a signal of truth.

This means that what we want is who we are. You are a published author. I am a woman in an astonishing relationship. We are these things because we choose to return to that truth, rather than believe the mind that says your life is the sad frustration of never quite getting what you want.

And so, the threshold is not crossed once at the start of the year, but met again and again, each time we choose presence over the mind’s smaller story. Imagine that is all that is ever asked of us: not to get it right, but to keep choosing the right way to return.

As always, wishing you creative contentment.

Gabriela, Tree Goddess.

Thank you for reading and spending this time with me here. If you feel moved to engage, a comment or a heart helps this piece find others who might be standing at a similar threshold.

Writing as Medicine

Gabriela Blandy — Mon, 15 Dec 2025 15:17:16 GMT

What we call fear is often the body learning how to feel what wants to be expressed without shutting down or pulling back. This means that before our words can touch others, they must first teach our own body how to stay in contact with them.

THE FIRST JOB I had with writers was as a public speaking coach. I taught on a handful of Creative Writing MA programmes as well as working with private clients. Public speaking is one of the most common fears. Couple that with the fact that most of my students were preparing to read their own fragile words at a showcase that would be attended by literary agents, and you can probably imagine how fascinating the work was.

Back then, I didn’t yet know the answer to the intriguing irony that a person might feel enough about what was moving through them to dedicate years of their life to transforming that experience into words on a page, and yet feel simultaneously ashamed, afraid and anxious about those words – before they even had to consider reading them out loud. So often, my students would ask, “Can’t you just read them?” Most of them felt it was a great perversion to expect a writer to be a public speaker.

Now, I understand a lot more about what’s going on here. It comes down to magic, medicine, and the way we learn to connect or “attach” in our early years.

While I do believe it’s incorrect to assume a writer can be a public speaker “off the bat”, it is a skill that can be learnt. But first it helps to understand magic, medicine, and attachment.

Even in those early days of working as a coach, I instinctively knew that I had to appreciate my clients’ “worldview”. I had to see the world as they saw it, and what made their fear of public speaking, and even their anxiety about what they’d written “normal” (rather than repeatedly telling them they’d nothing to worry about and that they were incredibly gifted).

Even though I hadn’t yet undertaken my life coach training at this point, I was guided by my intuition that people weren’t inherently terrible at public speaking, or lacking in confidence for their writing, but that something was “colouring” their perspective and causing this conclusion. For them, it made sense to fear the way the world would receive their words.

TO THE HUNDREDS of students I taught, I asked the same question: “Why write?”

The most common answers were variations of, “I don’t know, I just have to. It’s a feeling. I can’t explain it.”

At this time, I understood that something creative and expressive was moving through them, which they didn’t understand, couldn’t understand. And this urge was leading them somewhere scary.

I was fascinated!

Later, when I began to work with writers to help them find their voice on the page, overcome procrastination and achieve their dreams, I found another commonality: they wrote because they wanted to impact people with their words, move them, even heal them.

This was around the time that things really started to fall into place for me. I could see my students had something within them, something that wanted to move through them, that they often couldn’t explain or articulate, and that they wanted to touch others with this something, but that this desire was leading them to a place that felt challenging, scary, or even impossible.

Around this point in my career, I was working as the Assistant Centre Director of a writing retreat as well as undertaking a year-long shamanic practitioner training, so I was learning about lifeforce energy. I realised that this something we felt as writers was that very energy.

DURING MY TRAINING, I went on a 12-hour vision quest, which is a sacred rite of passage rooted in Indigenous traditions, involving time alone in nature to seek guidance, clarity, and deeper connection through solitude, prayer, and deep listening beyond the mind. For this quest I was seeking guidance about the relationship I was in. There were things I deeply wanted from my partner, and denying these needs had become intolerable, but I still wasn’t sure if I simply had to bear my lot and put up with the pain, or speak up.

At a significant moment in the quest, I was stung by a nettle on my shin. I felt the sharp pain, but instead of focusing solely on that discomfort, I found myself gazing at the nettle, which was bobbing in the breeze in a way that felt animate. As I sensed the nettle’s aliveness, my heart opened into a state of love, and I was bathed in the understanding that the burning sensation on my shin was the result of the nettle having communicated with me. Its sting was how it spoke.

I suddenly considered the loneliness of every encounter ending with people running from you, hurt. I could have done the same. Yet focusing on my breath, sensing the hot throb in my skin, gave me a feeling of profound consciousness. The nettle had transferred its experience of aliveness to me. I felt connected, and a part of something blissfully magical.

IT WAS ALSO clear that I’d become like this nettle – rooted to the spot in my relationship, afraid of the sting my desires might have on another, fearing that my partner would smart from the truth I wanted to share with him, certain he’d run away.

But I hadn’t run from the stinging nettle.

This was because of the days of preparation I’d undertaken for this quest. My practices had brought me to a place where I could receive with love; I was able to perceive a deeper web. The nettle’s sting was the medicine I sought in my anguished state. Its guidance was magical.

I CAME TO understand that we write for the same reason. We have an aliveness within that we wish to convey with words: just as there was lifeforce energy moving through that nettle seeking to impact another, we contain the same impulse.

The way we touch depends on our form. Are we a writer, a dancer, a teacher? Are we water, an apple on a tree, a bird? Each of these different forms converts the impulse moving through it into a unique expression. Perhaps we’re thirst-quenching. Perhaps we’re emotionally captivating. We could be inspiring, nutritious.

All nature is medicinal in some way – giving, offering, healing, transforming.

“WHY WRITE?”

“I don’t know, I just have to. It’s a feeling. I can’t explain it.”

Is it any surprise that many of us don’t understand, or can’t articulate, what wants to move through us when so much of our upbringing is disconnected from the natural world and has forgotten the divine, magical essence that flows through us all?

Indigenous cultures speak of nature as doctor and teacher, and yet Western culture has institutionalised both. We heal in a hospital, connected to a machine, or learn in a room in which we often have to behave in ways that feel unnatural.

What about the river that can return us to feeling joy once more, or the mountain that can teach us we’re braver than we once believed?

No wonder we not only lose touch with the magic within, but ultimately fear how it will be received.

Ours is a childhood of people who have acted stung by our words, because they weren’t in a state of presence when they received us. They couldn’t sense our aliveness because they’d lost it in themselves. They didn’t value our medicine, and instead told us to be quiet and focus on what the textbooks offered.

OUR IS ALSO a history of people imprisoned for their medicine. And there were those who expressed what wanted to move through them and were hung, shot, or burned for offering their magic, their medicine.

In our early years, we feel this lifeforce energy moving through us, and we receive it with a body that’s pure, relaxed, true, which enables the energy to flow onward. But early attachment shapes not just whether we express or speak, but how we do it. When our first expressions are met with silence, irritation, laughter, even overwhelm, our body learns to “protect” what’s moving through it. Our medicine doesn’t stop, but we brace against what wants to flow freely. As a result, we learn to communicate with a kind of built-in flinch. This is how writing can be shaped by trauma rather than truth. We express ourselves from a body that expects to be misread, and that expectation misshapes our medicine.

THE NETTLE’S STING is both communication and protection, depending on who’s receiving. In the same way, our natural expression can carry a charge for some people. We will be misunderstood or confronting to those who’ve lost connection with their truth and with the present moment. They will feel only the hot bite of the stinging nettle. They might feel attacked and react harshly. Because of our own vulnerability, we might take such a response as an indication of who we are.

We believe our magic is wrong, unwanted, dangerous.

But the vision quest taught me a far deeper truth.

THE NETTLE IS not wrong.

Its sting is a perfect expression of its true nature. The pain it gives can either wake us up, or not. Just as your own words will land differently, depending on the presence of your listener and what they’re seeking in that moment.

When the nettle touched me, I was resourced. In that state, the sting became vital information.

As writers, our work is not to clench down on our medicine and try to make it other, but to heal enough of our early wounding that what moves through us is real and true. And also to remember that reception is relational. The same words can sting one person and heal another – both are the medicine they need in that moment.

My shamanic training brought me back into relationship with this magical, medicinal, creative energy within that simply wants to take form and touch others. Just like my early students (who were terrified of public speaking), following the impulse of my own medicine has brought me to many terrifying moments in my journey.

These are thresholds. In these fearful moments, our medicine is doing its initial work in the body that carries it. We can become confused here, misinterpreting our fear as a sign of our inadequacy, or even as prophecy.

As a result, we turn away at the very moment the healing is happening. We abandon the work. We tell ourselves we were wrong to want this in the first place.

The urge we feel within to express is a medicine literally designed to heal the carrier before it can heal the world. This is because the urge is leading our body forward in a way that asks us to soften our protection, to release the ways we’ve been flinching to stay safe.

Just like the sting I felt on my shin, our inner discomfort is inviting us into greater presence with our internal landscape, so we can feel our true capacity and depth.

When we stay aware at these threshold moments, we’re the first to heal from our medicine, from opening into a state of love for all that wants to move through us, and realising the profound aliveness of our lifeforce.

As always, wishing you creative contentment.

Gabriela, Tree Goddess x

If this piece stirred something in you, you might pause and notice where your own fear shows up when you try to share what matters.

What sensations arise in your body when something true wants to be expressed?

And what might it be asking you to learn how to carry, rather than silence or push through?

Audacious Women, Creative Lives

I’m now entering my annual two-week retreat from the internet, a deliberate stepping back to rest, listen, and let what’s been moving this year settle. I’ll be back in the new year, with new words, and new offerings.

Until then, may you stay close to your own medicine – and be gentle with the body that carries it.

Thanks for reading Wild Muse! This post is public so feel free to share it.

Writing Begins in the Body

Gabriela Blandy — Mon, 08 Dec 2025 16:03:18 GMT

“It wasn’t until I started spending a lot of time by myself that I could hear the voices in my head - and it was devastating to hear what was going on in there.”

I’m excited to share this conversation with , which not only maps her own journey from academic writer to novelist, but talks about how this transition came about because of the energetic and subconscious blocks underlying a chronic illness and a lifetime of “scripts” that were formed in childhood. These scripts can hijack creativity (so that we often become triggered by the blank page) until we learn how to work with them.

It’s common for a prolonged health crisis to force us into an inner reckoning and I’m grateful to Anne for sharing that her own chronic illness was tied to stress and unresolved trauma, and how she began energetic healing and saw her creative capacity expand for the first time, IN HER LIFE!

“If the energy isn’t flowing inside, things are not going to start happening on the outside either.”

There’s so much for you lovely writers and creative souls to find interesting in this episode. Anne talks about why imagination requires spaciousness: writers can’t inhabit characters, scenes or emotional landscapes when their bodies are in “contraction”. Essentially, the imaginative leap is impossible when trauma or scripts from the past fill up our internal space.

Many writers think their block is a craft issue, or a discipline issue, but Anne helps us see that many blockages are energetic: “stored” states, subconscious predictions, childhood patterns, and a nervous system braced against uncertainty.

I really celebrate Anne’s courage in leaving academia, listening to her body, and transforming her life!

I’d love to know what resonates for you in this episode – whether it’s Anne’s journey, her insights on energy and creativity, or the ways your own body speaks to you when you approach the page. Share your reflections in the comments so we can keep widening this conversation together.

And if this episode speaks to you, please share it with a friend or fellow writer. Every share helps the Wild Muse Prize reach more creative souls who might need this kind of encouragement and support.

“We’re at a stage in our evolution when, to feel healthy and happy, we need to do more than survive. We need to thrive.”

Links

Anne writes a Substack called Audacious Women, Creative Lives “a newsletter inspiring women to live and write outside the lines,” with a wonderful community of over 10,000 subscribers.

You can enjoy Anne’s most popular posts below:

Two Years Ago I Quit My Life

Two years ago I gave up tenure and retired early from my job as a literature professor in New Orleans. I bought a one-way ticket to Paris and was determined to remake my life, on my own terms. Two years in, it seems like a good time to take stock and share a bit more about how my “audacious” decision to chuck it all and live a more creative life is going…

2 years ago · 7656 likes · 890 comments · Anne Boyd

Audacious Women, Creative Lives

Am I Too Old to Change My Life?

Hello! It’s been an amazing two weeks since I published my last post, “Two Years Ago I Quit My Life.” I’ve watched in amazement as the number of likes and comments increased almost exponentially. The likes are over 1,100 now and the comments 380! Crazy, huh? More importantly, this post has brought over 700 new subscribers. Welcome to our little corner of Substack! I’m so glad you are here…

2 years ago · 1432 likes · 352 comments · Anne Boyd

Audacious Women, Creative Lives

What a Woman (Writer or Artist) Wants

Hello! So much has happened in my life in recent weeks. The ups and downs have been tremendous—as they have been for the past two years since I quit my life and left for Europe. I can’t wait to share with you how my new life is (finally) taking shape. But before I do that, I thought it would be interesting to go back in time and revisit a post I wrote in March 2023, nearly a year and a half ago. By then, six months since I had left home, I had decided that yes, I did want to be a writer. But what kind of life did I need to build around that? Here are my thoughts from back then . . …

2 years ago · 782 likes · 144 comments · Anne Boyd

The 2025 Wild Muse Winners

Gabriela Blandy — Mon, 01 Dec 2025 14:31:28 GMT

These pieces teach us that healing begins in the exact place we feel most undone.

A Little Note Before the Big News

I knew I would get emotional when the winning pieces landed in my inbox! This year’s judge had a big task in choosing them. There’s something about the way these writers have let nature touch their deepest places that completely got under my skin. What moves me most is the courage it takes to write this way and I’m so grateful these writers trusted Wild Muse with their stories.

I’m honoured to share judge Louise Buckley’s three winners – plus a highly commended – as well as her thoughts on the prize.

Please support the prize by sharing this post.

“Nature writing is such a wonderful vehicle for exploring the breadth of human experience…”

Louise Buckley on the 2025 Prize

It’s been a total pleasure to judge the Wild Muse Nature Writing Prize this year. I have loved being transported to distant deserts, verdant forests and moon-lit seas. I’ve seen starlings soar, otters scamper and insects transform. I’ve read about finding love, losing love, breaking down and rebuilding again. Nature writing is such a wonderful vehicle for exploring the breadth of human experience and these pieces have done this wonderfully.

Meet the 2025 Prize Winners (and read Louise’s reflections)

To the four writers honoured here: thank you for trusting the Wild Muse community with your stories.

If you feel called to share, I’d love to hear from you in the comments.

1st Place

‘Unmoored’

by (Faye Keegan)

“Unmoored is an assured and tightly-written piece. It deftly weaves rich, sensory description with moving background details on how the author came to live in a narrowboat. I loved the contrast between their old life in London and their new life on the narrowboat and then the surprise announcement at the end. It’s very accomplished and deserving of first place.”

Faye grew up roaming the Oxfordshire countryside, went on to earn a PhD in romance fiction, spent years as a bookseller, and now lives in the Cotswolds with her family.

2nd Place

‘A Butterfly in Red Dust’

by Vanessa Wright

Vanessa is a nature writer based between Hertfordshire and the Hebrides, with a Masters in Nature and Travel Writing and a BBC Countryfile New Nature Writer of the Year Runner-Up title.

3rd Place

‘Roots and Ribs’

“A moving piece about finding safety and acceptance in the forest in Gangwon-do. It’s especially strong on the timeless love and restorative power of nature.”

Rachel is a Malaysian writer based in South Korea whose work explores cross-cultural womanhood, memory, and belonging through the quiet resilience of in-between places.

Highly Commended

‘HELD (Longtails)’

“This piece impressed me with the rich descriptive detail and imagery.”

Jane is an award-winning poet whose work explores our relationship with the planet and its wildlife, with publications across the UK and US and a long list of major poetry prizes to her name.

Winners, what’s one thing you’d like readers to know about the heart behind your entry and what does this piece mean to you now?