How we'll get through...

Connection, Connection, Connection

“These times call us to be mycelium in the wounded soil. To be the interstitial web of connection, quietly and steadily regenerating connection and the flows of resources to where they are most needed for the healing of the whole.

This calling has been alive in many of us for a long time, and now more than ever. May we feel deeply. May we move strategically. May we love wholly.”

I wrote these words the day after the election, and they’ve circulated farther than anything else I’ve ever written on Substack. They’ve also echoed into everything that has unfolded in my life since. Every day I face a choice- to tune into the chaotic forces fragmenting our world, or to be a part of the networks of connection seeking to make the new systems that will make these crumbling systems obsolete.

The metaphor of mycelium feels truer every day: unseen yet vital, quietly weaving the underground networks that restore life to wounded soil.

Mycelium doesn’t thrive alone. It exists in relationship—to the soil, to the roots of trees, to entire ecosystems. It moves resources to where they are most needed, regenerating life in the process.

Every day I deepen into the knowing that this is the work we are called to now: to become the mycelium of our communities, our networks, and our futures.

Regenerative Living Is Rooted in Relationship

Everything about regenerative living is relational. It’s not a solo endeavor, nor is it just about frameworks, systems, or strategies. At its heart, regenerative living is about the quality of our relationships—with ourselves, each other, the living world, and the futures we dare to dream.

The Art of Regenerative Living is an invitation to embody connection through the winter season through three phases:

• Remembrance: Composting the past. Honoring the stories and relationships that have shaped us—ancestral, cultural, ecological, and personal—and grounding in the wisdom offered by the past.

• Reconnection: Grounding into the present. Deepening our bonds with ourselves, the living world, and one another. This is the heart of regenerative living: the recognition that we are not separate but deeply intertwined.

• Regeneration: Germinating the seeds of our potential. Nurturing the visions and relationships that will carry us into more life-affirming futures, creating spaces where imagination and collaboration can flourish.

Each phase is an invitation to reweave the threads of connection, to cultivate relationships that nourish us and the world around us.

Photo by Thais Aquino

A Season of Connection

In my own life, I’ve been reflecting on how connection has been a guiding thread—especially in these uncertain times. Despite the heaviness I often feel about the future, connection continually pulls me back to what is possible.

Here are some of the ways connection has been alive for me this season:

• My Garden(ing) Birthday Party: I’ve never before had a vision for my own birthday party and made it happen, but this year I had to. I have a deep longing to get my hands in the soil with my friends, family, and neighbors. So I’m inviting them all to my garden on the Solstice where we’ll do light weeding and have a beautiful brunch spread. I’m really looking forward to this, and it feels good to be gathering in person this way the day before we begin the online winter council that begins the next day:

• The Art of Regenerative Living Winter Council: Beginning on the weekend of the solstice, we will anchor ourselves in ancestral connection and carry that thread through the season in our phases of Remembrance, Reconnection, and Regeneration. This council will be a space of deep relationship—within ourselves, with one another, and with the futures we long to create. (Registration for The Art of Regenerative Living closes on December 18th or whenever the 12 seats are filled.)

• Regenesis Institute: This peer network of Regenerative Practitioners has been a source of deeply present inspiration and support. When we gather, we gather as peers and friends in the work who mutually resource one another to help our work truly fulfill its potential. The Systematics Frameworks of Regenerative Development are brilliant, but can get abstract quickly when not applied to real, grounded examples. I’m so grateful for this community of practice.

• Glacier Nation: In my work as Interim Executive Director, launching this ambitious initiative with Regenerative Design principles at the root, I’ve been connecting with brilliant leaders and strategists and talented people volunteering their skills from around the world. These relationships are profoundly expanding my sense of connection with the entire planet, and with the spirit of glaciers that has called so many people into open hearted collaboration. (Want to get involved! Let us know here)

• Communitas Calls within The Vision Society: Every week I host a collective wisdom call within Storywork Studio’s business incubator The Vision Society. Week after week, I find myself inspired by the power of the subtle rites of passage that our members are moving through on their entrepreneurial journeys. Together, we celebrate wins, name what we are calling into greater stability, and call in the expansions that will bring us to the next level. (Doors are open to The Vision Society through early January.)

• School of Wise Innovations Winter Cultivator: This is a community of practice for founders, changemakers, & practitioners across silos, convened by

  Andrew Murray Dunn
  and a group of deeply trusted leaders. The whole program is a full year, but you can join just the winter to sense into it.
  Seth Kaufmann
  and I will be co-teaching a workshop on Regenerative Somatics within the Cultivator, and I am really eager to see the visions, innovations, and connections that emerge from this space. (If you are interested in joining, DM me for a code for $250 off enrollment!)

Reflections on the Mycelium Metaphor

Like mycelium, connection isn’t always visible, but it is always vital. The relationships we cultivate—the ones that are nourishing, the ones we revive, and the new ones we seek out—are the networks that sustain us.

Take a moment to reflect:

• What connections are nourishing you right now?

• Which connections feel ready to be composted?

• What new connections are calling to you in this season of your life?

These are not just abstract questions. They are invitations to notice and tend the web of relationships that holds you—and to recognize your own role as a thread in the larger web of life.

An Invitation to Join Us

If you are feeling the call to deepen your connections—with yourself, with the living world, and with others who are committed to life-affirming futures—I warmly invite you to join any of the things I’ve linked above, but my deepest invitation is to the Art of Regenerative Living.

Beginning on the weekend of the solstice and continuing through the Spring Equinox, this council of no more than 12 people will be an intimate and deep space to:

• Explore remembrance and reconnect with the wisdom that has shaped you.

• Deepen reconnection to yourself, your place in the world, and those around you.

• Cultivate regeneration, dreaming and weaving futures that honor life in all its forms.

However you’re finding connection this season, this is my prayer for us all:

May we feel deeply. May we move strategically. May we love wholly. And may we, together, tend the connections that will carry us forward into futures that are worthy of our children.