i shot him in the nuts

(no i didn't, but you should see your faces*)

“Yes! I shot him in the nuts!”

My daughter has four brothers, but it was an imaginary wolf, not they, that she had aimed the arrow at through the trees. My daughter has four brothers, so wolves are nothing. My daughter has four brothers, so she knows words like nuts.

I too was once a little girl with woods behind my house. In the summers I would spend long hours mashing berries and leaves into stew and looking for tadpoles in the creek, sometimes with companions, often alone. My only brother was five years younger than me, so I didn’t use words like nuts, though once when I clawed the neighbor boy’s arm for being mean to my friend, my dad cheekily suggested that next time I hit lower.

If you were a kid in the early nineties, you could be gone all day and no one cared. My parents were more or less able to find me when they really needed to: most likely I was at one of three houses in rotation on our street, or at the humble neighborhood pool where I could get a hamburger and a Dr. Pepper for a few bucks, or yes, maybe in the woods.

Kids today don’t get to go missing for 8 hours at a time, except my kids, but they don’t want to. Their friends come over with wide eyes, eager for adventure, for hijinks, for fighting pirates on the prairie, and my kids will shrug and suggest playing Fortnite instead. Familiarity breeds contempt and all that. But when the stars align and they do get a wild hair to venture out – necessarily devoid of any acknowledgment from their mother, you understand, lest the allure shrivel up and die right where it stands – something dormant in them awakens. They stand a little taller. Hold their necks a little straighter.

Learning to trust yourself is not easy work, but it is work with dignity. Through building forts and scaling hills and tracking scat, my sons and daughter find they are strong enough to handle this world. Resiliency does not come cheap, and rarely feels resilient in the moment. Forts collapse and legs grow weary and shit is stepped in. But it is in the womb of the earth that my children realize they are made of sturdier stuff than they had given themselves credit for. They discover that despite their deepest fears, they are in fact competent, able, trustworthy. And they learn that if and when they fail, the earth will not stop holding them.

It’s been years since I’ve built a house out of sticks the way my children do, but I’ve created shelter from the oaks all the same.

I’ve walked the forest when there was no sound but the shocking hum of my truest thoughts. I’ve laid down among moss and mushrooms when my only words were written in salt from my eyes. I’ve danced under the moon when there was no one to witness the movement of my body but my body itself. I’ve loved and lost; I’ve loved and chosen to let go. I’ve found that I am strong enough to handle my own breaking. I’ve learned that the earth will not stop holding me.

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It was an honor to be invited to The Francis Effect, a podcast about culture and politics from a Catholic perspective, to talk about Lent. (Which starts on Wednesday!) Check out the whole episode to also hear the co-hosts’ discussion on the pope’s health scare and a faith-based response to the potential slashing of Medicaid.

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A big thanks to all of you who joined me for the trial run of what has been dubbed “The Rewilded (Night)life.” I read bell hooks and Terry Tempest Williams, we did some guided breathing, sat in silence for a bit, then chatted freely before closing. It was simple and lovely, and so nice to have a space of gentleness on the internet.

(Note: I did NOT realize that Substack would send an automatic email to all of you afterwards. I apologize for bombarding your inbox and hope to fix that in the future!)

Until next time,

Shannon

*shoutout to the real ones who got the Taylor Swift reference