I have always been reaching for something I could not have.

First, it was my mother.

She existed, but only in the margins of my life, a ghost pressed between sealed records and the hushed voices of adults who decided what was best. I was placed in new arms, and they told themselves I would never notice the absence, as if love could be reassigned like a change of address.

But I noticed. I have spent my whole life noticing.

Later, it was nature.

I love nature the way a child loves a mother they have never met—quietly, desperately, achingly. If I could just get close enough, press my body into her, breathe deeply enough, maybe she would claim me.  Teach me her ways. Remind me that I belonged.

But I was never taught her secret language, never shown how to listen to the trees, how to read the rivers, how to hear the meaning in birdsong. I visit, I touch, I taste—but I never stay long enough to truly understand. There is always another life pulling me away, a different world I must live in, one that demands schedules and screens and endless striving. One that keeps me just far enough away that I can see her, but never fully know her.

Still, something in me refuses to believe I am a stranger to her.

Maybe the pull I feel toward nature—the ache, the hunger, the intrigue—isn’t just longing. Maybe it’s memory. Maybe it’s written in my blood, passed down through my unknown ancestors, those who knew the earth not as something to long for, but as something to listen to, something to live by. Maybe it’s the echo of something I was supposed to have but was severed from before I could hold it in my hands.

Some things are meant to be passed down by hand, by voice, by presence.

I was supposed to learn at the feet of my grandmother. She was supposed to learn at the feet of hers. But history had other plans. Policies had other plans.

People with power had other plans.

The Stolen Generations. The Forced Adoption Era. The quiet, deliberate breaking of bonds that were supposed to last forever. The unthreading of language, of identity, of land. The kind of severing that doesn’t just take you from the stories, the ceremonies, the knowing; it takes you from yourself.

And it worked. The severing was real. I grew up away from my people, away from the land that should have been home, away from the teachings that should have been my birthright. I never got to learn the ways of nature through family and community. No one placed my hands in the soil and told me its name. No one pointed to the stars and traced the stories they carried. No one taught me how to listen to the wind, the rhythms of the seasons, the meaning of the animal tracks pressed into the earth.

But the land did not forget me. Even when I did not know what to ask for, she called me back.

I met her through the sacred Ayahuasca plant. And I knew. I knew that this was the mother I had been reaching for all along. Not the one I lost. Not the one I met too late. But the Mother. The one whose love does not waver. The one who does not leave. The one who has been waiting, always waiting, for me to remember her.

I have felt her, seen her, known her. She is the deep, ancient intelligence that weaves through all things. She is the whisper in the trees, the knowing in the rivers, the pulse in the earth. She is the mother who heals. The mother who holds.

I do not just want to visit her. I want to be in daily communion with her wisdom. To hear her guidance not as something rare, but as something constant, woven into the fabric of my life. To trust—fully, without hesitation—that what she shares is exactly what is needed in the moment, in my body, in my life.

But trust requires surrender. And surrender is hard when you have spent your whole life grasping, striving, surviving.  I have been trained to push. To struggle. To measure my worth in productivity and progress.

But she teaches something else. She teaches stillness. Presence. A different kind of knowing—the kind that does not rush or demand or strive but simply is. I want to live in that knowing. I want to belong to this natural, breathing, sensing world. To know, not just intellectually, but in my bones, that I have a place. That I have a purpose.

I want to wake in the morning and feel the hum of the earth beneath me, knowing I am held. I want to walk barefoot on the land and feel her pulse steady and sure beneath my feet, reminding me that I am not separate. I have never been separate.

Because the ancestors never forget us. Even when we are taken. Even when we are scattered. Even when we do not know their names, they know ours.

They watch. They wait. They speak to us in the language of the land. They ask me to Listen. The trees remember. The waters whisper. The wind carries their voices, the stars hold their stories. They are calling me back.

I want to listen—to really listen—to the trees, to the waters, to the rocks, to the stars, to the plants, to the animals. I want to hear what they have been trying to tell me all along. Because they have not forgotten. They have not severed the bond. The land remembers, even when people try to forget.

Teach me your language. Teach me the hum of the trees, the way the ocean breathes, the secrets the wind carries in its pockets. Teach me how the rocks remember, how the plants whisper healing, how the animals carry stories in their bones. Teach me how to belong.

Maybe my purpose is not just to long for what was lost, but to weave it back together. Maybe my task is to mend what was broken, to find the pieces and stitch them into something whole again—not just for me, but for those who came before me and those who will come after. Maybe longing is not just a wound; maybe it is a guide, pointing me toward the path I was always meant to walk.

I don’t want to keep leaving. I don’t want to be a guest in my own story. I want to stand barefoot on the land and know—deep in my bones—that I am home. I want to listen so deeply that I can hear the voices of the grandmothers I never got to meet. I want to speak their names into the wind and feel them whisper back: ‘You were never lost. You were always ours.’

I want to trust the mother I have found. To let her teach me. To let her unbind me from the weight of striving, to loosen the tight knots of disconnection, to soften the grip of longing until I no longer feel separate from the love that has always been here.

Maybe the healing has already begun. Maybe belonging is not something I need to chase, but something I need to remember. Maybe the bonds of love and home and wholeness were never truly broken—only waiting for me to return.

And so, I will listen. I will learn. I will stand still long enough to hear the trees whisper their names. I will let the rivers teach me how to move, how to rest, how to trust the current. I will let the wind carry away everything I no longer need. And as I learn to listen, I will learn to give back. To plant, to tend, to care for the earth as she has always cared for me. To move beyond longing and into relationship.

And one day, I will wake with the sun on my skin and the earth steady beneath me. My body will remember that it belongs. My nervous system will co-regulate with the land, settling into a deep sense of ease and connection. The land will recognize me, and I will recognize it in return. In that moment, I will trust, surrender and know—deep in my bones—that I am home.