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When life frays at the edges, many of us reach for nature — a walk, a tree, a river — like a hand on the shoulder.

It’s beautiful. It’s ancient. And sometimes, without meaning to, we begin to treat nature not as kin, but as a tool.

This isn’t something wrong with us. It’s something we were taught: that comfort is something we must earn, buy, or extract.

That healing is a product, not a relationship.

A Story of Good Intentions

A few years ago, I wrote my Master’s thesis where I built a biopsychosocial framework for using outdoor adventure play as a mental health enhancer for adults.

Even then, I knew the land wasn’t just a “setting.” I talked about the need for relationship with nature, not just interaction.

And yet — looking back — I see how even with that awareness, I still used her. I spoke to the land. I listened, sometimes. But the relationship was tilted: goal-oriented, extraction-heavy.

It wasn’t really friendship. Because friendship is reciprocal. If I came into your home, studied how your living room could improve my wellbeing, and never once asked how you were — what kind of friend would I be?

Not a very good one. Not a very mature one.

True relationship is not about taking what we need.

It’s about showing up with no guarantee of what we’ll get in return.

More Than a Mirror: Honouring the Wild as Living Community

Nature is not a service provider. Not a backdrop. Not a human being.

And yet, she is community.

The forest, the rivers, the moss, the stone — they live alongside us, not for us.

She doesn’t “want” our relationship — to our knowledge, want is a human projection. But ecosystems do respond to care. They flourish or pull away depending on how they are treated.

Just like any living relationship. The land is not a passive thing. It remembers. And it teaches — through presence, through pattern, through unspoken invitation.

The Climate Crisis: Grief, Humility, and Hope

When I think about the climate crisis, I don’t imagine that the Earth itself is at risk of being destroyed. It’s audacious to believe we could wipe out a planet that has survived at least five major mass extinctions. The Earth will endure.

It is us — our communities, our ecosystems, our way of life — that hang in the balance.

And yes — it is heartbreaking to witness the loss of biodiversity, the forced migrations, the slow erosion of landscapes that once flourished. It is grief work. It matters deeply.

But as with all anticipated loss, there’s a danger:

We get caught up in imagining what the loss will mean to us — our sadness, our guilt, our nostalgia — and we forget to value and nurture the relationship as it is now.

To cherish the living world not because it saves us, but because we are kin — still alive together.

We must not give up hope. We must not give up the work of staying connected. Relationship asks for tending — not because it guarantees survival, but because love itself is a worthy act.

Healing as Byproduct, Not Purpose

Somewhere along the way, “nature” became another prescription:

Go outside. Regulate your nervous system. Heal.

And yes — being with the living world does regulate the nervous system. We know this through research in relational neuroscience: Connection — to people, place, or land — is one of the primary ways our brains and bodies achieve safety and integration.

But when we treat nature solely as a means to feel better, we repeat the old wound of extraction.

Healing is a byproduct of connection. Not its purpose.

When we walk the land without demand, when we remember we are part of the breathing fabric of the world, healing happens. But it is a side-effect of belonging — not a transaction.

Honouring Indigenous Voices

Much of what we are (re)learning about reciprocal relationship with land comes from Indigenous teachings. From wisdom that was suppressed, stolen, and criminalized for centuries.

Writers like Robin Wall Kimmerer (Braiding Sweetgrass) remind us that gratitude and reciprocity are foundational to living well with the Earth:

“In a culture of gratitude, nothing is done in isolation.”

Other Indigenous authors like Leanne Betasamosake Simpson (As We Have Always Done) and Patty Krawek (Becoming Kin) remind us that relationship with land is not about ownership or stewardship from a distance — it is intimacy, kinship, living memory.

We are not “saving” the Earth. We are remembering how to be family again.

Myth and the Green Man: A Mirror of the Wild

In old European folklore, the Green Man appears — a face made of bark and branch, leaves curling from his lips, eyes gleaming with ancient life.

He is not tidy. He is not gentle. He does not arrive with affirmations and clean answers.

He reminds us: Life is cyclical. Growth, decay, death, return. The wild accepts us — in all our longing, all our shadow, all our unfinished becoming.

Not because we are healed. Not because we are calm. But because we are part of the great breathing body of the world.

🌿 Somatic Practice: Visit Like a Friend

This is not a regulation exercise.

It might regulate you. But that is not the point.

This is about remembering relationship.

Practice:

• Choose a place or being in nature that feels quietly magnetic: a tree, a stone, a patch of moss, a windowsill plant.
• Go without an agenda. Not to ground. Not to reset. Not to heal. Just… to visit.
• Sit beside it. Let your body arrive.
• Notice any tension:

“Shouldn’t I be feeling something?”

“Is this working?”

• Gently remind yourself:

I’m here because I like this friend. That’s enough.

Rest in presence.

Offer your touch. Your breath. Your being.

Without asking anything in return.

This is how kinship begins again.

Not through ritualized striving — but through quiet, patient belonging.

Nature doesn’t need us to arrive perfect. She doesn’t ask us to apologize for being messy, or unsure, or human. The living world — like any true relationship — holds space for our complexity.

We don’t visit the land to be fixed. We visit because we are already part of her. And because belonging is not something we achieve — it is something we remember.

Healing might come. Joy might come. Stillness might come. But those are gifts — not the reason we are here.

The reason is simpler, and wilder:

To be with what already is. To know ourselves as kin.

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If this spoke to something in you, there are a few paths you can follow from here:

Each door leads somewhere different. It is my hope that all of them lead back to you.

<3 Rachel