Letter from the Editor – Kindred February Issue
Don't Panic, It's Just Nature, Our Birthright
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“If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.”
– Lost, by David Wagoner
Dear Kindred,
In his book, The Forest in Folklore and Mythology, Alexander Porteous reveals the ancient root of the word panic, the state of consciousness that seems to define our modern lives. In his story of humanity’s shifting relationship to Nature, especially during our early days of building and moving into cityscapes, Porteous writes that when “loud and incomprehensible noises” were heard emanating from the forests, they “gave to the timid a kind of superstitious terror, and these being ascribed to Pan [the god of Nature], gave rise to apprehensions which are now known as panic.”
Are we panicked because we’ve been too long disconnected from our relationship to Nature? From our Kinship Worldview?
Welcome to 2024, the year we are slated astrologically to begin our collective quest toward wholeness after centuries of separation consciousness and its resulting Dominator Worldview. Where to begin our quest for wholeness this pivotal year? According to mythologist, Joseph Campbell, we must journey to the “darkest part of the forest where there is no path.” Ah, the forest again.
Maybe we’re panicked because, individually and collectively, we have arrived at the darkest part of an ancient forest, a long cast-off realm of our human psyche, where our Dominator Culture skills have no power. Maybe we’re huddled here at the edge of the unknown, fretful and frightened, searching for a shortcut, a way out, or a rocket ship to Mars.
What happens when we face our fear of relationship to the living world, beginning with ourselves? Could we create sustainable humans if we normalized nurturing? What does science say?
If you’ve followed Kindred for very long, you probably know that Kindred is where I have chronicled my own Mother (of a) Quest for over two decades. In this issue of Kindred, I am honored to share a podcast interviewwith two women who were there with me from the beginning, when I first stepped into my own dark, pathless forest of motherhood.
As Lysa Parker, Barbara Nicholson and I recall here, while we did not know the questions to ask as a new mothers, our hearts and intuition prompted us to protect and support our children’s whole states of being. And we were able to perceive our children as whole through a lens of love, through our hearts.
In the new edition of their classic book, Attached at the Heart: Eight Principles for Raising Connected and Compassionate Children, Parker and Nicholson present 80 years of attachment science, along with 30 years of grounded experience (they train parenting educators worldwide through Attachment Parenting International). The third edition integrates updates from Adverse Childhood Experiences, co-regulation, resilience, gut microbiome and birth, breastsleeping, alternatives to sleep training, and how to have more Nature and less screen time to strengthen attachment.
In her foreword to Attached at the Heart, Darcia Narvaez writes, “Indeed, society pays the price of under-nurtured, under-cared-for children. In the United States, where Ian Suttie noted there is a ‘taboo on tenderness,’ we have burgeoning epidemics of mental and physical illness, suicide, and violence at all ages.” You can read Darcia’s foreword to Attached at the Heart exclusively on Kindred here.
In addition to the Normalizing Nurturing interview in this issue, we’ve curated courage, light for the path, and inspiration for the new year’s journey to the forest’s edge, and beyond. If you’re wondering where the science is taking us, you can read an excerpt from Darcia’s new paper, Understanding Deep Nestedness for All, here.
You are invited to join us this month in the Evolved Nest Learning Module, Rewilding Through Nesting, beginning on February 6, and for the LIVE Breaking the Cycle discussion on February 8. Register for these events below.
In the year ahead, let’s resolve to not pan-ic over the “incomprehensible noises” coming from the ancient forest of our human psyche; but instead, employ our rational imaginations to discern the sounds of a great party we’ve been invited to as our birthright. As David Wagoner writes in his poem Lost (above), let’s simply standstill, and let the forest find us.
Onward,
Kindred Media,Editor
Kindred World, Co-founder
editor@kindredmedia.org
READ THE CURRENT ISSUE HERE
Join Us This Year for LIVE Discussions and a Rewilding Through Nesting Learning Module!
