The wild makes room for you to come undone
Release is how growth begins again.
Hello, my dear wildling,
Sometimes what we need isn’t advice, a solution, or even a kind word. We just need space.
The kind of space that lets our breath find its purpose again.
Space that gives us room to cry, shake, talk, or sit still without explanation. Without needing to understand how we process, but simply accept that we are processing, releasing, and healing.
You may have heard the phrase "holding space." It’s everywhere, floating through self-help circles in books and social media, and spoken between healers. But today, I want to root it in something deeper. 🌳
Something ancient.
Something wild.
Because nature doesn’t just witness. It holds space for us—wholly, gently, and without judgment.
When Presence Becomes Medicine
To hold space is to offer supportive presence. A sense of safety, acceptance, and love while someone feels what they need to feel.
It is not about fixing.
It's not about identifying.
It’s not guiding or steering.
It’s about being there fully as someone cries, spasms, trembles, talks, screams, grows silent, or processes entirely differently—and trusting that what’s unfolding is necessary.
True space-holders have walked their own inner terrain. They don’t rush your healing or try to shape it. Instead, they offer listening without interruption or agenda.
Holding space can look like:
Quiet companionship
Ritual, drumming, or somatic release
Gentle energy work or bodywork
Allowing emotion to move, in whatever form it takes
Presence that doesn’t push
Sometimes, it’s just letting time melt away, carried by our breath, and the permission to just be.
Searching for a Soft Place to Land
There are moments in life that leave us raw and unraveling, but we don't need a solution given to us. We need space to unravel and find the solution ourselves, or with someone who knows how to hold that space.
Like when:
🌧A wave of grief knocks you sideways
🌧Depression makes the world feel too heavy
🌧Illness leaves you raw and unmoored
🌧Fear shouts louder than your own voice
🌧Life feels like it’s coming apart
In these moments, what we often need most is someone—or something—that doesn’t try to change us, but stays with us through the dark before dawn.
Where the Wild Makes Room for You
Nature has held life through extinction, eruption, drought, fire, and flood. It's witnessed collapse and rebirth, again and again. 🍂
And it remains open to you.
Here are just a few of the many ways nature offers space for healing:
🌲Trees help calm your nervous system when you rest against them. They release compounds called phytoncides that reduce stress and boost immunity (even the act of hugging a tree can lower cortisol levels, as shown in this study).
🪵Moss and lichen build entire micro-ecosystems on rocks, ruins, and rooftops. When you sit among them, they remind you that survival can be soft.
🍄🟫Mycelial networks beneath your feet sense vibration, adapt to presence, and send messages across forests in an invisible current of connection, like roots that listen.
💧Water, with its constant movement and willingness to carry our weight, provides a soothing escape.
🍃The horizon, the sound of rainfall, the texture of a petal or a leaf... each can hold your anguish, your questions, your need.
Nature doesn’t interrupt.
It doesn’t judge.
It just keeps showing up, ready to receive.
Receiving the Wild’s Welcome
You don’t need to hike a mountain or find a pristine wilderness (though if you can, you're lucky!). Nature meets you where you are.
It might be:
A tree in your yard.
A houseplant you tend each morning
A park bench with birdsong
A rain-soaked walk around the block
A soundscape of ocean waves in your headphones
A rock, a shell, a breeze, a flame
All of it counts.
Let the wild hold you in whatever form it takes.
Need to invite nature to you? Here’s a brief, beautiful excursion held by sound healing that you can try whenever you need five minutes of release.
Why the Wild Waits for Us
Even as we wound it, nature welcomes us. Not because it forgets, but because it’s designed to heal.
From an animist lens, everything in nature is intelligent, aware, and deeply relational. Everything has a spirit and a personality. It holds space because it remembers the shape of connection. Because it wants to restore it.
Nature doesn't ask who deserves healing. It simply heals. And in doing so, reminds us we can, too.
“Love, compassion and forgiveness; often mistaken as submissive or weak, are in fact, profoundly empowering and far more strengthening to the body than judgement, revenge or condemnation.” - Marley Finnegan (@marleyonpurpose)
Wrapped in Rain and Wings
I’ve experienced this kind of wild help firsthand.
Two years ago, I buried my cat in the cold spring rain.🐾
As I built a cairn stone by stone, soaked and shivering, my family of crows arrived. My feathered kin who had watched over my home for year—and still do. They gathered silently in the tree above me with no noise. Only stillness.
Crows hold funerals. Research confirms this. They examine the body, gather in trees, and fall into quiet mourning.
That’s what their silent presence did for me.
They didn’t know my cat. He was an indoor cat. But somehow, they knew my grief. And they stayed with me.🕯
As is my tradition for honoring the dead, I sang an old Norse farewell to guide my cat across the Gjallarbrú, the bridge the departed cross on their way to rest. I stood soaked in sorrow, instinctively holding the leaves of a nearby bush like the hand of a friend.
The crows remained. The rain fell. The leaves steadied me.
Nature held space.
Held Space is a Beginning
Being witnessed by forest, friend, or sky is not the journey's end.
Once we’ve been held, the work of healing begins. And nature teaches us that part, too.
Ashes, Claws, and Little Miracles
When wildfires sweep through forests, they leave behind scorched devastation. But in southern China, a gentle, endangered creature offers hope:
The Chinese pangolin.
With strong front claws, each pangolin digs up to 100 burrows a year, some as deep as eight feet. These burrows stay cool and moist even when the forest around them is burned and dry. They become tiny sanctuaries where life returns: seeds sprout, animals shelter, ecosystems begin again. 🌱
Researchers call them pangolin microhabitats.
I call them burrows of renewal.
Because that’s what they are. Little pockets where processing happens and regrowth begins again.
SIFTing the Soil of the Self
Like the pangolin, we can create healing space for ourselves and for others.
One way to start is by learning how to SIFT.
SIFT is a practice developed by psychiatrist Dr. Dan Siegel. It helps us sort through what we’re carrying internally so we can begin to process and integrate it.
S – Sensations
Tune into your body. What do you feel physically? A tight jaw? Tingling? Warmth in your chest? Don’t analyze. Just notice.
I – Images
What images surface in your mind’s eye? These might be memories, flashes of color or light, symbolic pictures, or even fragments of sound or texture.
F – Feelings
Name what emotions you’re aware of. Maybe it’s grief. Maybe it’s fear, or joy, or numbness. You don’t need to justify it. Just feel it.
T – Thoughts
Observe the stream of your mind. What beliefs, phrases, or inner voices show up? Let them float by like clouds. Be curious.
SIFTing slows the mind and opens the inner field. It helps you see what’s there so you can begin to tend to it.
A Quiet Dig 🌿
I invite you to join me in a simple practice.
Grab a notebook and something to write with.
Let nature hold you through presence, memory, or imagination. Sit on the grass or your bed. Surround yourself with natural sounds and scents.
Then, when you feel ready, begin to dig.
Close your eyes and reflect.
1. How am I like the pangolin right now?
Where am I creating burrows of renewal for myself or others?
2. What am I carrying that needs space to be processed?
Use SIFT to guide you. Learn what’s surfacing: sensations, images, feelings, thoughts.
3. What new seeds might grow in the space I’ve made?
Think about the opportunities for change, like healing, growth, challenges, learning, connection, and joy.
Open your eyes. Turn to a blank page in your notebook and prepare space for three lists. They don’t have to be tidy. They just have to be true. Write casually and authentically.
Create one list of the ways you're being a pangolin in life's current circumstances.
Create a second list of observations from your SIFTing.
Create a third list combining the two: what work or opportunities has SIFT revealed where you can build new burrows of renewal?
No pressure to start fixing anything. This is just an exercise in revealing and reflecting to inspire you in the future. To find the work you need to take to a safe space, and the work you can do while holding space for others.
To the Ones Who Hold
I’ve held space, and I’ve needed space held for me. I understand what it means to guide others through pain while holding your own.
Every day on social networks and in headlines, I see the labor of:
✨ Healers
✨ Therapists
✨ Helpers
✨ Spiritual guides and leaders
✨ Teachers
✨ Coaches
✨ Caretakers
✨ Space-holders of all kinds
You are doing sacred work in an uncertain world. And you deserve space, too—even if it’s just loving lessons in your inbox.
That’s why I created Healing for Helpers, a free, 9-week email series for people like us.
Each week, you’ll receive one email with:
A nature metaphor for thinking and healing
A grounded practice to explore
Support for your work and your wild soul
🌸 Learn more & get the Healing for Helpers series here
(And please share with someone who might need it, too.)
In Conversation with the Wild & Wise
Weaving wellness with wildness means listening to more than just flora and fauna. It means listening to each other, too.
In this occasional series, I sit down with healers, teachers, and guides whose practices restore balance in body, mind, spirit, and earth. Their paths may differ, but they all carry one thing in common: a deep relationship with the living world.
Today, I’m honored to share thoughts from Dr. Jose Mendoza, D.C.E.M., a Doctor of Chinese Energetic Medicine. His journey from modern Western medicine to the time-tested Eastern tradition offers a fascinating perspective—and a powerful reminder that healing often begins by returning to the source.
Jose started in minimally invasive cardiac procedures, but found Eastern medical theory at the same time. After a 4-year 4000-hour program, he graduated with the title of Doctor of Chinese Energetic Medicine.
Using ancient methods while staying grounded in evidence-based practices, he helps others feel better, live better, and heal better, to step into their best life.
In Traditional Chinese Medicine, a chief concept is the Dao. The Dao represents the natural order of all things. The deeper principle that guides life, health, and harmony.
It’s not just a philosophy, but a practical path: a way of understanding how to live in alignment with everything and maintain balance within the body.
Speaking of the Dao, Jose says, "In the Taoist text Dao De Ching, written by Lao Tzu, it states, 'The Dao that can be spoken about is not the true Tao.' That means it must be experienced because words do not describe it. Like describing what whiskey or vodka tastes like to someone who has never had it, words only go so far."
Since it would be tough for us to explain the Dao with words, let’s explore nature's place in Traditional Chinese Medicine through Jose's perspective.
I asked Jose, "In your opinion, what does the natural world teach us about healing or growth?"
He said, "It’s a cycle. My favorite example is the agave. It lives for a decade, then produces offspring through a giant sprout. The flowers bloom on the sprout and form the foundation for life.
However, to plant those seeds, the agave dies in the process to allow the sprout to topple and impregnate the land.
Just like people, to continue healing means to die to who you were. That allows a new life for you to form."
Reflecting further on a connection to nature, I asked Jose if there is a plant, animal, element, or landscape he feels especially connected to in his work.
Jose replied beautifully, "As a landscape, it would be the desert. The reason is that despite the harsh conditions, life still blossoms even if it doesn’t look that way.
Just like with people, situations look harsh, but there is always a chance and a possibility. Keep looking."
“What you think about, you bring about.” - Sifu Jerry Alan Johnson (c/o Dr. Jose Mendoza)
In today's troubled times, it may seem like we're in a desert or a drought of hope and positive momentum. 🌵I asked Jose for one piece of advice or insight for those of us struggling to see the blooms.
He said, "Stop looking towards external solutions. Another pill, another program, another person will not provide the answers for you. Everything you need is inside, look inward. A guide facilitates and speeds up the process but you have everything inside you. Take ownership and grab your power back. Stop outsourcing your power."
If you want to experience the Dao for yourself, Jose offers a 30-minute session that helps you reconnect with your center and the Dao. Learn more at RiseToHuman.com
Let the Wild Hold You
You don’t have to have answers.
You don’t have to be healed to be whole.
Just find a patch of ground, a leaf, a moment... and let yourself be held.
Then, when you’re ready, you can dig your own little burrow of renewal.
I’m so grateful to walk this path with you. Until we speak again, be well. Stay wild.
With love,
Dina
If you enjoy The Whispering Wilds and feel moved to help, tips are always appreciated and keep this space thriving. ✨
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Please Note...
The Whispering Wilds method is not a replacement for medical and mental health care. Alternative health and wellness shines when it complements modern medicine, just as I believe modern medicine is at its best when accompanied by a holistic perspective. If you have a heart, lung, or circulatory condition, or suspect you do, or if you have a mental health disorder, or suspect you do, please ask your doctor or therapist before beginning any wellness practice.
Breathwork, meditation, journaling, movement, and other practices in The Whispering Wilds aren't suitable for everyone. The good news is that if your doctor or therapist advises you against a particular practice, the Whispering Wilds method will likely present alternatives to explore. Always ask your medical or mental health professionals first because we are all complex, unique individuals, and no true wellness approach is one-size-fits-all.
Thanks for the shout out, this is a profound and nourishing offering for all kinds of wildness. What gorgeous words from the heart, grateful to witness their flow accompanied with such radical kindness and compassion.
Thank you for sharing, my lovely friend!