A tree recently spoke to me.
I’m curious who thinks that’s crazy and who’s nodding along?
Deep listening has been on my heart lately and I’ve recently shared how it’s available when we get quiet and turn within – to our intuition, gut knowings, body, and Spirit Guidance.
Yet it’s also available when we pay attention in our daily lives and follow the threads that quietly call to us.
A few weeks ago, I saw a flyer at the local bookstore promoting Gabrielle Louise, a musician from our Valley who has a national following. Even though I’ve lived here for ten years, I’d never heard her perform.
When I arrived at the local radio station, I was surprised to discover it wasn’t a concert at all, but an author talk with Gabrielle opening the evening with one of her songs.
Since I was already there, I settled in.
Author Lindsay Branham began reading from her book Heartwood: The Wisdom and Healing Kinship of Trees. As she wove together her chronic illness, her relationship with three Aspen trees, science, poetry, Buddhism, and Indigenous wisdom, I found myself completely captivated.
I rarely buy books. As an avid reader, I’m partial to our libraries.
But I felt called to treat myself to this one.
As I read the opening pages the next morning, Lindsay describes the heartwood – the dead center of the tree that quietly supports the living bark, branches, and leaves.
Without the tree dying and growing at the same time, it couldn’t bend without breaking.
From somewhere deep within, I heard:
I am growing my heartwood.
Those words shifted me at my core.
While I know – and teach – that identity deaths and uncomfortable emotions become our greatest teachers, this time I felt it as true in my bones.
Before moving into this tiny house with the catalpa tree stretching over my deck, I’d had a vision of myself curled up like a seed in my little bed nook.
Resting. Soaking up the sun. Allowing myself to reorient before the next growth spurt.
And yet I found myself feeling cranky and judgmental whenever I had time to rest, read, or journal.
In Colorado in the summer, it feels like everyone is climbing mountains or rafting rivers.
What was I doing lying in bed or sitting on my deck?
Then came a new rental home option.
For weeks I’d wrestled with whether to commit to a beautiful property for the winter. It checked so many boxes. The owner was kind, patient, and waiting for my answer.
Yet I was surprised to realize that it wasn’t the house – it was the urgency around making a decision.
The timing wasn’t right for me.
I’m about to go on a trip to the East Coast that will bring vision and replenishment.
I told myself that this summer was time to simply be and live on this deck in this simple home.
Still, I watched myself struggle with self-trust.
What if another rental didn’t appear?
I longed for relief around knowing what’s next.
When I finally messaged the owner and asked if I could check back in a month, my whole being relaxed. I fell back asleep.
All the impatience and judgment I’d been carrying dissolved.
I was finally giving myself what I’d hoped this summer would become – living intentionally from a relaxed state.
Trust.
(Which seems like everyone’s word these days.)
After reading one of the practices in Heartwood, I carried my yoga mat outside and rested my feet against the trunk of the catalpa tree.
I’d spent so much time beneath her canopy, but I’d never really touched her or experienced her as more than an object. Tree.
As my breathing slowed, I could feel her gently swaying with the wind.
It was exquisite.
She wasn’t standing rigidly upright.
She was rooted and connected.
I felt her move with life instead of resisting it.
I softened and felt a deep sense of belonging.
A knowing in my bones: I belong to Mother Earth.
The ache of home, family, and looking to humans to carry my grief began to dissolve.
One of the Waldorf elders in our Valley once suggested I put my feet on the Earth to find my home.
As I brought my full presence to the catalpa, I heard clearly:
“I will find your home.”
I felt her sending that message through her roots to her kin across the Valley.
I burst into tears.
As grief and gratitude flowed, I remembered another teacher once telling me, “When my daughter was little and her emotions were too big to hold, I would tell her to go give them to Mama Earth.”
This time, it was my turn.
I sat with my back against the tree, remembering one of my favorite sensations – leaning back into someone strong enough to hold me.
I’m not looking for someone else to do that for me.
And while I am calling in a physical home, what the catalpa gave me was deeper.
A visceral experience of being held.
I’ve always prided myself on taking action and making things happen. Yet this season of life is asking me to go slow.
This season is showing me that aligning, feeling, releasing, trusting, moving with life instead of forcing it are the most important foundation I can create for a new identity and new life.
Strangely enough… work is getting done. Life and home are being tended to.
And it’s not because I’m doing more.
It’s because I’m finally learning to do what’s needed – and what’s inspired.
This summer, I wonder if many of us are growing our own heartwood.
We are embodying home inside our own bodies.
We’re engaging with a slow and steady process of no longer abandoning ourselves.
We’re trusting our readiness and our pauses, our yes’s and no’s.
We’re cultivating relationships with our kin – water, trees, soul sisters, Self.
The time of excavating to heal or search for what’s wrong is over.
It’s time to become more rooted in trust of our own timing, of permission to rest, of a willingness to deeply listen.
What is this season illuminating for you?
What new, alive, powerful, wise part of you is quietly becoming visible?
And how might you carve out a little more space to listen?
The ways are often so simple.
Take a walk. Journal. Enjoy a cup of tea.
Maybe make some art. Or pull an oracle card. Call a dear friend.
The world is noisy. So many of us are tired.
This season asks us to listen anyway.
I am so grateful to be able to deeply listen – both in shamanic journey space and in my daily life.
I wish the same for you.
Meghan Gilroy is a shamanic healer and spiritual mentor who helps women answer their soul’s calling, amplify their sacred light, and create a lit-up life that uplifts the world. Rooted in the teachings of don Miguel Ruiz, author of The Four Agreements, she blends timeless feminine wisdom with modern spiritual practices to spark transformation in individuals, families, and communities.
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