As the subtitle of this posts suggests, we’re going to meander through several things here that came together for me a couple of weeks ago. And if you make it to the end of the post, you’ll also get to see a sneak peek of the cover for my new book! :)

Before jumping there, I’d love to share some curiosities I’ve been swirling in since I saw a river flowing into the sea on the very northern tip of this wild place that I currently call home.

I was taking a walk to explore a bay, following the instructions in our Airbnb that said to follow the river down to the beach. I savored the sound of water cascading across rocks and stones toward the shore, scampering closer and closer to the waves I simultaneously heard crashing on the coast. It was a glorious symphony of sounds. As I soaked in the salty air, I noticed that the river, like many others in that place, was a rich red color.

In this area, where bog and peat are vast, the water that flows out of it carries its first home with it in a rogue hue that thins and thickens at different depths. Like tea that’s been steeped, you can see where this water has been—in the peat and the bog—even when it’s traveled miles and finds a new home in another body of water.

Steps later, I found myself at the north sea with her crystal clear water inching toward me as the tide was coming in. Waves lulled back and forth.

Running directly into these waves, the red river was still flowing strong, with the river water being pulled by the tide every few moments, before releasing back into the flow of the river. Both waters ebbed and flowed, back and forth at this threshold, colliding, dancing, combining, releasing, and creating something distinct as they met.

I stood at the intersection, mesmerized.

While I looked at this mixture of waters, a light bulb went off in my body. It was as though I was seeing a tangible representation of a category I was already familiar with—third culture kids—and, a curiosity sprung up inside of me: might the category of third culture kids offer a helpful framework for people (self included!) who have experienced significant shifts in their spirituality?

Third culture kids are people who spent significant developmental years in a culture that is different from their parent’s home culture. I know this category because I am a third culture kid—I grew up between the United States, Canada, and the Netherlands, with American parents. My body knows the love and longing that gets tied up with these different homes, carrying these different cultures with you into each other, naturally creating a third culture that’s unique to your experience of the two. As a third culture kid, the home you inhabit isn’t just one place—a way of life that inherently includes ache, loss, and longing wherever you are. For me, this is the most mind and body bending pieces of being a third culture kid: there’s not actually one singular place that feels like home to you, because you embody more than one home in your bones.

Looking at the water, I saw the sea bringing its salt as it converged with the red river, just as the red river water brought its hue into the clear sea water. Similarly, my time in different cultures and homes came with their own distinctiveness that shaped who I am, not only while I was in those homes, but also anytime I shifted to another place. I brought their distinctiveness with me when I went back and forth between different homes. And just as this leads to third culture kids creating their own unique third culture from their experiences in different places they have known to be home, I saw a unique third water come together. There was a space where it wasn’t the red river, and it wasn’t the salty sea: it was both all-at-once, a new, unique, body of water.

The waters in front of me were different from what I had known though. Unlike the homes I carry with me anywhere I go that are separated by geography, the two bodies of water in front of me didn’t have thousands of miles separating them. Instead, as they met, I could see the third new thing they created alongside the places they came from.

And while this metaphor certainly breaks down at points, lets stick with it a little longer, curiously considering how it might help make sense of navigating spiritual shifts in our lives…

For myself and most others I know, shifts in our spirituality don’t happen out of the blue. Oftentimes something happened. And more often than not, the something that happened was harmful, wounding, and/or traumatic in some way, even if we don’t have the language for it (or even if it doesn’t feel safe or accessible to name it as such).

And if a shift in our spirituality has happened, that also often means there’s been a shift in the place we consider our spiritual home.

Maybe that spiritual home was a church.

Maybe that spiritual home was a certain type of theology or beliefs.

Maybe that spiritual home was a community of people we considered to be our family.

Maybe that spiritual home was tied up with our job, our future plans, or our whole sense of security.

And if we’ve experienced a spiritual shift because something happened—a something that was harmful—we’re rarely making a change because we had a choice in the matter.

Maybe we were forced to leave.

Maybe it was too painful to stay, even though we’d give anything to feel at home like we did before the something that happened.

Maybe they protected the people who did the harm, making it no longer safe to stay.

Whatever the case, like the red river water that carries the hue of its former home wherever it goes, whether we choose to or not—and whether we want to or not—we generally bring pieces of our former spiritual homes with us as we move through life, even across miles or into new bodies of water, into new homes.

That new home might be a different church.

That new home might be a non-church space or a new season of non-spirituality.

That new home might feel like a never-ending liminal space, like a desert, or like a temporary rental.

And as we step into these new homes, we can’t not take the red hue of the water with us that’s flowing in the river from our first home. Meaning, we can’t not create a third thing between our previous home and where we find ourselves now—a third culture, just like what’s created for third culture kids.

And as I looked at that red river water, I couldn’t help but wonder: How many of us are walking around without an anchored sense of home in our spirituality, but instead, feel a push and pull like the ebb and flow of the red river water meeting the sea’s tides, not finding a place of rest, but swirling in murky middle space that doesn’t come with a guidebook of how to navigate its waters?

How many of us ache as we carry our previous spiritual homes with us, with the red hue representing wounds of spiritual trauma, confusion from harmful control, or grief from loss? All the while also longing for the simplicity of the bright salty water of the sea—a new home that is clear and pure. But, when our red river water meets that clear water, rather than simply entering the clear water, our red river water creates a murky mixture as it flows into the tide.

Maybe we feel stuck in that murky mixture and would give anything to swim far enough away to reach clear waters.

Maybe we find ourselves torn between what was home in the past and the possibilities of a new home ahead of us, unsure of which direction to try and swim.

Maybe we’re sinking, not even sure of where we are, exhausted from the currents we’ve already swam through or been tossed around in.

The middle-space of not really having an anchored sense of spiritual home after spiritual shifts is brutal, especially when there’s often so much pain, confusion, and loss that we’re already holding when we’re trying to navigate shifts in our spirituality.

All of those shifts for each of our lives are tied to stories that include their own details and wounds. And even though those details and wounds will be different between different people, I can’t help but think about something else I know as a third culture kid: Every time I meet someone else who is also a third culture kid, there’s an instant connection. Beyond words, our bodies know that we both get what it’s like to hold more than one home in our being as we move through life. Our homes don’t have to have been in the same for us to get this—for us to get what it’s like to hold a third culture in our bones.

And similarly, our spiritual shifts don’t have to have been the same for us to understand at a gut-level what it’s like to have lost a place that was once a spiritual home, or what it’s like to be in a place of liminality when it comes to our spirituality/spiritual home. Even if the places that were our former spiritual homes aren’t the same, or even if the ways we’re navigating life on the other side of spiritual shifts looks different, if we’ve known this middle space, there’s a resonance that runs deeper than words.

And as I chewed on these curiosities on that beach, I realized that that very resonance that runs deeper than words—deep down in our gut-level knowing, burrowed deep down into our bones—is the very place I wrote from when I crafted the pages behind the cover you can see below. The thing I hadn’t been able to put into words behind the why of this next book was happening in front of my eyes in the shape and form of those waters.

And so, even though I didn’t plan it this way, as I shared these reflections on that river running into the sea today, I’m also going to (excitedly!) share a sneak peak of the cover of this new book.

These pages are filled with thoughts, questions, and cries from the depths of my soul, from the murky middle space of having experienced significant spiritual shifts on the other side of spiritual trauma, no longer having a clear spiritual home, finding myself at times floating, at times sinking, at times lost at sea, and at times bogged down back in the river. And while I know what each of us has walked through is different and unique, my hope and longing that’s woven into my writing is to invite each person who has known this murky middle space to find a home in these pages—a place to land, a place to rest, a place to be held, and a place be witnessed.

And now that this is way longer than I intended, I’ll land here for the day, simply saying I can’t wait to share more than just the cover of this book and place her pages in your hands 💛

For now, enjoy a peak at this beautiful design, and if you want to see her up and live online, you can follow this link. More details to come over the next few months :)

And genuinely, I would love to hear what you think about the imagery of the red river running into the clear sea, and if this connects at all for those of you who have experienced spiritual shifts or find yourselves in what feels like a murky middle space without a clear spiritual home on the other side of shifts in your spirituality.

The show was a so-called reality show (I’ll spare you the details of which one so you can still hold some amount of respect for me…), and while I’m confident there’s not a lot of reality happening in that show, there was something real in this statement, and others like it.

As relationships were built between people venturing into vulnerable conversations, inevitably, tears would rise to the surface. And over and over again, variations of this phrase would pop up, almost as if the words were trying to rush out before the tears freely flowed.

I’m sorry, I’m about to get emotional

I don’t know why I’m getting so emotional, I’m so sorry

I’m sorry, I don’t know what’s wrong with me, I’m getting teary

And then I started to notice how I heard this phrase in actual reality, not just on this show. For months, it’s struck me so deeply just how normal it is for people to explicitly apologize alongside visible emotions—even in spaces where emotions would be expected—as though we’re somehow honoring the person in the front of us by smearing shame and sorry’s on top of our tears.

Now, one simple avenue ahead is for me the therapist in me to simply say things like:

We’re all human, we all have emotions, so there’s absolutely nothing to apologize for when we cry.

Or, with our emotions, if we restrict some of them, we impact how we experience all of them. Meaning, if we try to restrain uncomfortable emotions like sadness or grief, whether we mean to or not, we’ll also restrain the emotions we long to feel, like joy and happiness.

Or, why do we put the word ‘get’ in front of these statements, almost as though we’re distancing ourselves from saying that we are emotional, or we are feeling things—something that intersects with our whole embodied being?

And while validating emotions and offering fun-facts or curiosities about them is something I’m always happy to delve into, what I most want to say today is something else.

I can’t help but be curious about why we think emotions are something to hide, when we all have them. I can’t help but wonder why we say we are sorry, as though we’re being offensive or inappropriate when a natural emotion flows through our body. And it’s not like we’re saying this in a premeditated way or planning to respond like this. We don’t plan when we cry, so it’s not like we wake up one morning thinking, later today at 2:51pm when I cry in front of another human, this is how I’ll most appropriately apologize…

Instead, our apologies happen automatically, in the moment, oftentimes without us even thinking. Meaning, it’s so engrained in us to apologize for our emotions, that we blurt out I’m sorry without giving conscious thought to what we’re saying or why. So, what if we gave some conscious curiosity to this right now? Just for a minute or two?

I’m not sure how other people experience this, but for me, when I slow down with this curiosity, the scripts that seem to be lurking behind the I’m-sorry-I’m-getting-emotional-script seem to be variations of…

I’m not allowed to feel

It’s not safe to be just as I am

Don’t show weakness

Something is wrong with me if I can’t control my emotions

My honest emotions—my honest existence—is not welcome

I must hide who I am to be accepted

.

Now, full disclosure, part of why these statements are popping up for me is that I just co-facilitated an IFS retreat, and one of our days together, I came up with an experiential exercise to explore burdens we carry in life that aren’t actually ours to carry. If you’re familiar with IFS (Internal Family Systems, a well-known form of ‘parts-work’1), you’ll know these burdens as legacy burdens, cultural burdens, or spiritual burdens — things that aren’t ours to carry, that we’ve absorbed from the world/systems around us, that we’ve internalized to the point that we don’t even realize they aren’t ours to carry. And like all of my favorite healing spaces to offer to others, inviting others into this experiential exercise was deeply meaningful for myself as well.

Getting curious about statements like the ones above made me realize how easy it is for us to internalize something we really don’t agree with, that we wouldn’t want to adopt as our own, or that is silently (and somehow simultaneously very loudly) killing us inside to carry. And along with all of these things, the biggest thing that stands out to me is how we can carry these things not only without realizing it, but also, therefore, without consenting to it. Said more simply, if we don’t even realize we’re carrying something like this around, how in the world could we consent to carrying it around?

Hence my love of slowing down and getting curious, creating space to consciously reflect on what we’re carrying, and whether we want to consent to this or not.

So, as usual, I’m not going to land here with a ‘how-to’ manual for not apologizing for our emotions. Instead, I’d love to invite you into this curiosity with me. These are the kinds of questions I’ve been chewing on…

What are the messages that inform our automatic reactions to apologize when we start to cry?

Did these messages originate with us or another person, group of people, or system?

If they didn’t originate with me, do I want to carry them any longer?

How does it feel to imagine setting these messages down, releasing what was never mine to carry in the first place? Are any parts of me scared of this, and if so, what would make it safe-enough to play with setting something down that I don’t want to carry anymore? What would scared parts of me need to know in order to feel comfortable trying this out?

What would it be like to choose—to consent to—who and when I share my emotions with, and how, both honoring what naturally comes up without apology, and also, honoring the sense of safety my body needs to fully feel emotions as they move through my body? ←this one right here can feel like a doozy. For me, this requires s p a c i o s n e s s to even begin to explore.

There’s so much more I want to chew on here, going down rabbit trails about autonomy, masking, and spiritual shoulds, especially for women… but for today, there’s a windy Scotland waiting for me to spend some time with her, and some sweetness with friends to savor before I head off on a roadtrip up the coast.

Thank you for slowing down here with me.

*** Oh and one last tidbit here… here’s a poem I wrote a couple of weeks ago. After a long day, I decided to relax with a silly movie. I didn’t watch the full trailer so I didn’t realize I’d be crying in the first five minutes, and then crying on-and-off the next two hours. It turned out to be exactly what my body needed that day, making me realize there was a reservoir of tears that had been held down for weeks. I couldn’t help but get curious about how and why those tears had stayed back if there were so many of them…! And out came these words :) ***

Lomond Hills, June 2026

streams of sweat

condensed

hiding

aching

brewing

blurred

.

if there are so many of you

to rush out—gushing

why didn’t you come sooner?

.

sweet ones, has no one told you?

.

you don’t have to hide

you don’t have to hold back

stewing—stuck

alone

pushed down

disconnected

.

you can sing

.

your song doesn’t have to be happy

it doesn’t have to be upbeat

we can melt into the shadows

of a heavy melody

finding new depths

new harmonies

make memories

melting

unmasking

free

.

as long as you need

i’m not here for a radio edit

i’m here for every verse

yes

every word

.

you are welcome here

you have space to speak

so tell me sweet ones

what would you like

to have heard?

single

drop

into my body

into my skin

i want to breath

hold

all of you

take every ounce

in

.

each cell

pulsing

pulling me

closer

toward

your glass skirts

twirling

layers of crystal lace

lapping over

a blanket

of brown sugar

snow

.

feeling you

under

my soles

is not enough

is not

what i

want

.

i want to breath

drink

hold

soak

all of you

in

.

Kingsbarns Beach, June 2026

My eyes and heart are filled with tears of joy, getting to share with you that I’ve written another book.

and also…

My body—the depths of my soul—are fatigued right now. I hit a wall of overwhelm last month that I’ve been slowly thawing from, holding the complexities of chronic illness and neurodiversity that make daily life and navigating stress uniquely delicate.

I wonder though if writing from a raw place is actually the best way to honor introducing this next book to you, precisely because this book is incredibly raw, tender, wild, and dare I say, absolutely beautiful.

So, here we go…

More than anything else I’ve ever created in my entire life (big statements here, I know!!), the words in this book fell out of me. This is not a book I tried to write. This is not a book I planned to write. This is not a book I knew I was writing. This is a book that made her way out of my body, onto pages across personal journals (see below!), a book that I genuinely didn’t realize I was writing until I was months into writing her.

She was unexpected, scary, freeing, and soothing to write.

Writing her also connected me to depths of trauma, darkness, and grief that I’ve been carrying for over a decade, and while this was incredibly healing, it was also incredibly heavy.

So, why write this book? And, before I get too far ahead of myself, what’s the book even about?

For today, I’ll share two brief things…

The book is called When Wounding Strikes the Soul: A Gentle Journey Toward Embodiment and Wholeness after Spiritual Trauma. In and through a unique format (more soon!), I explore many of the both-ands, messiness, grief, confusion, and pain that can feel impossibly invasive and inescapable after experiencing wounding that we never asked for, but are still left to live with, on the other side of spiritual trauma and harm. No prescriptions, no answers, and no agendas—other than a longing to offer a safe space for others to feel witnessed and held in pain and grief that can feel crushing to the very substance of our souls.

That last sentence gets to the question, why dare write about something so heavy? Since I didn’t start writing this book intentionally, the better question is, why did I craft spontaneous writing into pages that I could share with you, bound together in a book?

Speaking from my body—the depths where trauma lives—alongside my therapist brain, I wove this writing together for one main purpose: I know how incredibly painful and lonely it is to try and navigate life after experiencing spiritual trauma and harm that I never asked for, that I never wanted to have as part of my story.

And if these pages can help even just one person who resonates with this kind of gut-wrenching grief and loneliness to know that they are not alone—to offer another a sense of witnessing the sacredness of this kind of pain—then creating this book will have been worth it.

More soon :)

For now, enjoy this picture that gives you a window into where this writing came from. I took this November 2025, when I started to compile writing across personal journals into googledocs to play with what this project might become :) And while it looks like these journals span years, believe it or not, I was only pulling writing that I started to play with in March 2025…! That’s when words started falling out of me that became this next book. For most of 2025, I was grabbing the nearest journal to write down what was stirring up and out of me each day/week. Excited to share more in the coming months!

March 2025 sunrise across the Sound of Iona, overlooking the Isle of Mull

We were created for so much more than rushing through life.

It’s easy for everything in our lives to seem fine on the surface. Deep down inside, there are often other stories at play—narratives of overwhelm, stress and heartache, of finding ourselves stuck in old patterns. Rather than feeling the weight of it all, it all to often feels easier to spend our days on autopilot, ignoring the noise inside.

But what if the peace and relief we most long for comes from tuning in with what’s happening inside, instead of tuning it out? And what if slowing down to connect with the depths of our being could help us to move through life in freer, more wholehearted—and wholebodied—ways?

That’s what these pages are about: an invitation to connect with our body and get curious about the spaces within that we often have no idea what to do with—finding where we need safety, attunement, and care.

Rather than a prescriptive “how-to” guide, these pages invite you to simply be before starting to do.

Rather than feeling like you’re working against yourself, these pages invite you to be with—and work with—what’s happening inside.

Rather than chopping ourselves up into good parts and bad parts, these pages invite you to holistically explore the cognitive, emotional, spiritual, and somatic strands of yourself—all wrapped up in one embodied being.

Rather than shaming you to get it together, these pages invite you to embrace tender compassion and care—especially for the most wounded parts within.

Think embodiment meets parts work meets polyvagal theory meets spiritual trauma healing meets experiential exercises meets narratives… basically, all of my favorite things :)

As I wrote these pages, again and again, my hope was that they would be a sacred space for all parts of you to be seen, held, and nourished in new ways. If you’d like a bit more of a window into my reflections on this writing process, you might enjoy this post.

Available on these and other sites:

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

Tyndale

Bookshop.org

Target

Amazon UK

the sun

warms my face

strung together

with

cold air

beneath

the stars

which soon

i will not see

for months

.

the last cycle through

i did

not know

to say

goodbye

before

it was

too late

.

missing

their diamond

dust

sprinkled

across

silky seas

of sinking

blue

.

and so

i waited

warmed

each day

by

slanted rays

until

we came around

and the night

stretched down

.

a blanket

cooling

covering

the

ground

.

my feet on the ground

knowing exactly where i am

with the earth

.

not knowing

exactly which direction

i’m facing

not remembering

the day of the week

not noticing

the time of day

entirely unaware of what i need to go do next

having fully forgotten

even if only for a moment

the items

cascading down

every list of to-dos

.

savoring

not doing

sinking

into the ground

steeping

in the thick of the air

stretching

into space a little more

with each

and every

breath

.

no longer in the land of doing

but instead

simply being

here.

If you’d like to hear how the pacing of these words flows in my body, enjoy the audio included above.

Kemback, April 2025

There’s something curious to me about how we use the word wild—what it indicates, and also, what it doesn’t indicate.

I also can’t help but continue to chew on the ways an untrained eye (including my own!), sees what looks just like a domesticated tabby cat when looking at a Scottish Wildcat. Even though I’ve been shown the differences, if I’m not straining to notice those distinctions, what I see before me looks like, well, a cat, minus the wild designation. And rather than going down the road of zoology here, I’d love to play with some metaphors we might glean from how we see these Highland Tigers.

Before I moved to Scotland, I started to enjoy cold plunges in the mountains of Tennessee, preparing myself for swims in the North Sea. Once I arrived on this side of the Atlantic, I started to notice that people called here called this wild swimming. Part of me loved this, it felt fitting as I like to consider myself a wild woman, untamed, adventurous, and at times a little too feral for the constraints of the culture around us. And at the same time, another part of me found this curious, starting to wonder why we use this word—wild—in the ways that we do.

Sometimes we use the word wild to denote animals, plants, and places that are in their most natural form. In this way, we’re saying something about their rootedness and belonging — all just as they’re meant to be. There’s a sense of the puzzle pieces being placed just right, nothing’s been altered or messed with. They’re real and raw and wonderful. For the Scottish Wildcat that’s being rewilded, she’s stepping into her truest home. The place in which her little body knows how to belong most naturally. She simply fits.

We also sometimes use the word wild to describe people as uncivilized, unrestrained, or chaotic. And while I know that people are not cats (although sometimes I wish I could nap all day in the sun…), I can’t help but wonder why we use this same word in such different ways depending on the facets of creation that we’re referring to.

We’d never look at a glorious meadow exploding with wildflowers and think, Oh wow, these flowers are much too uncivilized, unrestrained, and chaotic. And if this is someone’s response, I’d like to suggest it’s simply silly, if not also shaped by societal scripts that have conditioned us to value control and dominance in ways that suffocate beauty and freedom.

When we hear about projects that are helping rewild animals like the Scottish Wildcat, even if we secretly might wish to have our own little litter of highland tigers in our home, we can clearly see these wildcats are where they belong as their paws anchor on the earth beneath them in the expansive Scottish landscape. We don’t think, These cats are far too feral and uncontrolled. Instead, we’re amazed at their intuition and instincts, and heartbroken that people have contributed to their near extinction.

And yet, when a child, uncontrolled, runs in full freedom outdoors, we’re trained to see them as a wild child, all too often in a negative light, rather than one that delights in the wildness of a wildflower or a wildcat.

When someone simply goes swimming in natural water around them, it’s called wild swimming, rather than simply, swimming.

When a woman is in touch with her intuition and lives freely, uncontrolled by systems or people around her, she’s referred to as a wild woman, rather than just a woman.

And so, while the rebellious and free parts of me enjoy the designation of wild, other parts of me long for our wildness not to be viewed as something that diverges from the norm, but instead, is rightfully planted to flourish in its most natural habitat.

With all of this, I can’t help but wonder…

What are ideas that have been passed down to us, shaping how we move through life—domesticating us—even if we never consented to them?

What are the assumptions about things like control and autonomy that have trained us to stay within certain bounds, cultivating behavior—and even a whole life—that’s restricted in ways we might have never actually wanted?

What might be the most free and unharmed expressions of our wildness—not judged as chaotic or out of control, but instead, embraced as our most innate and natural ways of showing up in the world?

What might make it feel threatening or scary to explore the constraints of control that have deemed freedom as wild? Autonomy as dangerous? Instinct as untrustworthy?

And what difference might it make if we reimagined what it means to be wild? What might we discover—who might we uncover—if we both invited and delighted in the wildness in ourselves in the same way we delight in the wildness of wildflowers, a wild coast, or a wild cat?

A grazing sheep in front of the Cuillin Mountains on the Isle of Skye, December 2024.

Read more

The series takes you through years of careful preparation and strategic steps to prevent the Scottish Wildcat from becoming extinct, something that’s become a genuine risk. Footage shows you how the wildcats are cared for in a sanctuary, and then every stage from those enclosures, to creating new little lives, to their reintroduction to the wild.2 And as wildlife conservation is not my field, let me say, please forgive me for any missteps I might make in terminology or description here…

The reality of the story’s starting point for these felines is that their numbers have dwindled to nearly nothing. So watching their conservation and pre-release care is not just watching the rehabilitation of an injured animal—it’s witnessing intentional care to foster flourishing for a whole population that’s been in Britain since the last Ice Age.

Rather than treating these Highland tigers like the house-cats they look like to the untrained eye, experts create homes that are as wild as possible, preparing food as wild as possible, and consider how each step of their development is not just personal growth of their little bodies, but also a relationship with the earth and elements around them—a relationship that must be cultivated apart from too much human interaction to prepare them for the wilderness they’ll be released in.

Following their time as adorably fluffy kittens, they’re moved into pre-release enclosures, a space that’s meant to bring them one step closer to their truest home, providing the scaffolding they need to hone in necessary survival skills for free-roaming life in the Highlands.

And then, when they’re ready, they’re taken to a remote “soft-release” enclosure in the Highlands, like a landing spot to first smell their new home—their truest home—and start to press into that place beneath their paws. These soft-release enclosures are still contained for a short amount of time to allow for some acclimation to new sounds and smells, like a liminal linchpin before they’re launched.

And then, at long last, the final near-human interaction before they’re free to be fully wild, is the unlocking and opening of a door, providing a portal from a contained life to a life unbound.

Now, this part of the story wasn’t a surprise. The documentary made clear this is where the narrative was going—it was the whole point. Still, something in my body was not entirely prepared for what I was about to witness. Perhaps more accurately, something in my body was not entirely prepared for the sacredness of what I was about to witness.

With cameras set up for the team of humans to follow the outcome of their years-long efforts, they watch from a car in the distance. The documentary shows the footage of these cameras, along with the team’s reactions as they’re watching in realtime.

It’s in this scene that the first of the wildcats steps out of her soft-release enclosure. Her paws reach forward onto a branch, a bridge connecting the only kind of world she’s ever known—enclosure—to the open wild world that is her home. Rather than looking scared or anxious, she stands tall, as if her bones know this is where she belongs. And it’s as she steps out onto this branch toward the expansive Scottish landscape around her that the words, bold cat, fall out of the mouth of one of the team members watching these steps in realtime, from a car in the distance.

Now, I need to back up a moment and say, during the build up to the final release, I could sense something stirring inside. It’s not uncommon for me to cry at movies and documentaries. It’s actually a joke in my family that my mom, sisters, and I can all easily start blubbering just 30-seconds into a well-produced trailer. But this was different, the force and tone of this emotion brewing beneath the surface resonated at a distinct register.

Minutes later, as the wildcat took her first steps home, this emotion erupted into feral tears that could not be contained. Now, my husband is used to me crying at tv shows and movies. He’s also used to me being loud and expressive and unfiltered in my emotions, which is important to understand for what he said next. My entire body was so uncontrollably wrecked by what I was witnessing that he gently, but seriously, asked me, “Do we need to stop watching?”

He could see that something was happening beyond my usual being-moved-by-a-story tears. And even though I didn’t quite understand what it was at that moment, the answer for me was a simple, “No.” I wanted to witness what I was witnessing, and feel what I was feeling, even if I didn’t understand it. Because even though I didn’t understand it, I knew it was significant.

In the moment, as I tried to make sense of what was happening, I had some thoughts scurry through my mind. I couldn’t help but think of the opening story of Glennon Doyle’s Untamed, depicting a cheetah in captivity who’s reduced to chasing a dirty pink bunny and moments of returning to her wild instincts when she’s not set to perform. It was as though something in my brain was trying to parse through whether this was the same, or if it was something different.

Yes, both had a cat.

Yes, both cats were ultimately wild.

Yes, both had themes of wild and captivity.

But that cheetah only had glimpses—tastes of her wildness—and was most likely confined to captivity for the rest of her life, with only the imaginative flip-side of an untamed life to contrast with her containment.

And instead of having performance or captivity ahead of her, this bold wildcat freely stepped into the Scottish Highlands. And represented so much more than her one being. She was part of a long lineage of striped felines who were nearly extinct—with estimates that had reached as low as 35 Scottish Wildcats left only a couple of years earlier.3 Her steps were an embodiment of hope and movement into a different kind of future, one that moves away from the extinction of these wildcats, and instead, advocates for, promotes, and celebrates their flourishing and freedom. One where harmful, oppressive, and lethal interference with their flourish and freedom is taken seriously and understood for what it is. From this bold cat’s first steps, this project has seen an incredible success rate in the survival of these wildcats,4 including 24 (known) kittens born in the wild to released females in one year-cycle alone.5

And something about these nuances, these distinctions, poked corners of my soul that run far beneath intelligible speech.

I was moved by the care and concern to not let these Highland tigers simply disappear—the way they were seen, valued, and advocated for, despite the fact that they will never offer gratitude or repay these teams for their efforts.

I was struck by the echoes of home and belonging that resounded from this cat’s silent footsteps (or should I say paw-steps?). It was like a stake in the ground was anchored and settled in its rightful home. Like a critical puzzle piece perfectly placed where it so clearly belongs.

And, a curiosity was piqued about what we might learn from these wildcats and their journey. Not so much a sense of how can we make this about us, but how can get out of our own head, our own confines, and let their wildness teach us something we might not learn in our own bounds?

What could be our truest home that we might also step into, boldly, if we had a branch to bridge between the place we find ourselves, and the place our bones most long for?

What might the branch be?

What have we mistaken as our home, instead?

What difference would it make to become reacquainted with wildness, not only within, but also, around us?

And how might we become reacquainted with wildness, not only within, but also, around us?

These questions (and more!) are ones I want to continue chewing on—and as a spoiler alert, reflections on these wildcats deepened as they intersected with wisdom from the brilliant Sharon Blackie, who I got to spend a week with contemplating place as a teacher, what it means to be rooted, different types of belonging, connections between stories and place, and more… now just to find time to keep writing :)

For today, I’ll pause here, and leave you with this little poem that I wrote about witnessing that bold cat taking her first steps into her truest, wild-Highlands home. And fun fact, there’s a whole section here on acseiple.com of me Playing with Poetry. If you want to check out more of these wild-written words, check them out here. For me, this has been a bit of a practice of exploring wildness not only within, but also around.

Hiking down from Driesh, Corrie Fee Nature Preserve in the Cairngorms National Park, May 2025.

bridging open space

and an open cage

standing tall

an unknowing escape

they call her bold

.

when all she holds

within her fur

is all she knows to be

is she being brave and bold

or is she simply free?

.

they do just fine

when on their own

it’s us humans who got in the way

and what if that’s true

not only for these little tigers

but also, for us too?

.

how do we find a branch to bridge

where we are and our own wild

when we’ve been whisked away

—planted in a wasteland—

not yet longing for home?

.

If you’d like to hear how the pacing of these words flows in my body, enjoy the audio included above.

like when your hair is long enough

it’s weighed down

but still has

body

to move

.

just enough pressure

that nothing shatters

or snaps

but bends

cracking

open

.

just enough madness

anchored by grief

gutted by

sadness

laughter

relief

.

and just enough hope

to believe

it matters

to still

speak

.

If you’d like to hear how the pacing of these words flows in my body, enjoy the audio included above.

And, the reason I’m writing, is that I’ve just uploaded a new season of the New Rhythms podcast, which I’d love to share a little intro to below.

First, to be completely honest, I didn’t think I’d be putting more episodes together anytime soon, I simply didn’t have the headspace to think about what I might craft for a third season. And then, a conversation happened last month that sparked a snowball of thoughts — all of which you can find me rambling through in these five episodes…!

The topic? Disembodiment + spiritual trauma and harm.

In these episodes, I start with a seemingly harmless disembodied assumption that popped up in a conversation with someone last month, an assumption that was quietly lurking beneath the surface. Then, I trace how disconnection from our bodies — even when it’s lurking beneath surface — can have serious and even harmful implications in faith spaces, especially considering that we live in a time when it’s estimated that 1 in 3 Americans have experienced religious trauma, and yes, that’s only a conservative estimate.1

For me, the curiosity that was swimming through my brain and body enough that it was actually a helpful thing to sit down and write out all of these episodes was this… even if we might not even realize we’re holding disembodied assumptions, how much might this still be tangled up with trauma and harm that’s happening in faith spaces? And if it indeed can be tangled in that web (spoiler alert, it can), what does it look like to parse out these disembodied assumptions that have been handed to us? What might it look like to consider if we ever consented to having these disembodied assumptions handed to us? And what might it look like to choose if we want to continue to carry them with us?

Now, there are so many more things that could be said about disembodiment, so many more things that could be said about spiritual trauma and harm, and so many more things that could be said about embodiment. But this PhD student who has had way too many sicknesses the past few months and may or may not be working on some other fun projects is only one human. So, these episodes are just a tiny slice of a much larger conversation, of much larger curiosities. Still, I hope you’ll them beneficial to chew on, journeying with me through some questions we might not typically ask ourselves.

Listen in for more…

You can find the New Rhythms podcast on Spotify (click here), Apple Podcasts (click here), or right here on acseiple.com, through the direct links below.

Each episode is 20 minutes, enjoy!

S3E1: How Disembodiment Shapes Faith Spaces

S3E2: Disembodiment, Trauma, & Harm In Faith Spaces

S3E3: Dismantling Disembodiment In Faith Spaces

S3E4: What Holds Disembodiment Together In Faith Spaces

S3E5: Toward Embodiment

Please listen with care as these episodes reflect on disembodiment in conversation with spiritual and religious trauma. I’ve tried to make these episodes as safe as possible to listen to, and still, I want to acknowledge how tender this topic can be.

New Rhythms is also available on Spotify & Apple Podcasts.

Please listen with care as these episodes reflect on disembodiment in conversation with spiritual and religious trauma. I’ve tried to make these episodes as safe as possible to listen to, and still, I want to acknowledge how tender this topic can be.

New Rhythms is also available on Spotify & Apple Podcasts.

Even though I honestly wasn’t planning on it, we’re back with a third season of New Rhythms! This little season came together after reflecting on a conversation I had with someone last month, a conversation that made me realize just how deeply we can be disconnected from our bodies, and just how far reaching the implications of disembodiment can be.

Please listen with care as these episodes reflect on disembodiment in conversation with spiritual and religious trauma. I’ve tried to make these episodes as safe as possible to listen to, and still, I want to acknowledge how tender this topic can be.

New Rhythms is also available on Spotify & Apple Podcasts.

Please listen with care as these episodes reflect on disembodiment in conversation with spiritual and religious trauma. I’ve tried to make these episodes as safe as possible to listen to, and still, I want to acknowledge how tender this topic can be.

New Rhythms is also available on Spotify & Apple Podcasts.

Please listen with care as these episodes reflect on disembodiment in conversation with spiritual and religious trauma. I’ve tried to make these episodes as safe as possible to listen to, and still, I want to acknowledge how tender this topic can be.

New Rhythms is also available on Spotify & Apple Podcasts.