Tara Westover’s memoir, Educated , grabs me hard because her story resonates so deeply with mine. So today I use both of our stories to explore mental abuse or epistemic abuse—attacking the mind of another, trying to control how and what they think. It’s key to authoritarianism. And we explore the 2000-year-old form of authoritarianism in Western history and how it rests on a religious idea that took hold as Rome was crumbling. The fixes we need today run even deeper than education because the a...
May 10, 2025•29 min
When the failing avocado tree in our yard suddenly puts out perfect creamy fruit, and I find out it was because the compost I made healed the tree, I feel a kind of joy that has something a lot bigger to say about thriving. What the avocado tree teaches about right relations—between people or between countries—and how to build the kind of world where everybody can flourish. Get full access to Nature :: Spirit — Kinship in a living world at priscillastuckey.substack.com/subscribe...
Mar 22, 2025•22 min
Do we have everything within us to make good decisions? When Abraham Maslow lived among the Blackfoot people, he learned their answer was yes. Today we hear from Indigenous voices on knowing from within, or “sovereignty of mind.” And we look at the long habit in Western history of defining knowledge instead as the ideas handed down from outside authorities—a habit feeding the rise of authoritarianism and fascism today. Plus a moment from my own life when I took a step toward reuniting with my ow...
Feb 12, 2025•24 min
That time a tree came to talk with me and I started to really learn. How spirits are different from ghosts. And how a Yurok man’s thoughts about talking with the spirits of trees provides the foundation for living in balance with our more-than-human kin. Get full access to Nature :: Spirit — Kinship in a living world at priscillastuckey.substack.com/subscribe
Jan 17, 2025•23 min
As a child I recited the Christmas story of the baby born in a manger, but the story comes to life in deeper ways when you read it in light of Mary's Song, a freedom song that she sang while pregnant with her son. She celebrated the upending of the social order, when the hungry are filled and the rich sent away empty. In her birth story, poor people get the positions of honor: the poor young single mother, the lowly animals, the rough shepherds. Together, they show that this birth is about divin...
Dec 24, 2024•22 min
A lesson from fifth grade lasts a lifetime—and makes me wish I'd learned about honeybees instead! What honeybees know about fair and democratic decision making. And how the story of human origins held in this society—that we are selfish and violent by nature—keeps us from imagining better ways of relating with nature and each other. Get full access to Nature :: Spirit — Kinship in a living world at priscillastuckey.substack.com/subscribe...
Oct 20, 2024•26 min
Have you ever been grabbed by a poem so hard it wouldn’t let go? I recently found “Closing Time; Iskandariya,” by Brigit Pegeen Kelly and couldn’t put it down. Living with it over days revealed layer after layer of wonder and meaning—a thrill for someone trained in close reading of texts. At least one of those layers outlines a pathway for making peace with Earth. Cello music with the poem today is by The Wong Janice. Get full access to Nature :: Spirit — Kinship in a living world at priscillast...
Jul 24, 2024•28 min
Young people in Hawaiʻi just won a huge victory in a climate lawsuit that will end carbon emissions in the state’s transportation. But why are the children doing this work? Today we listen to Indigenous voices from communities around the world that are losing their homelands because of climate change, and we reflect on land and kinship and identity. We ask, Am I doing everything I can to work for the climate? With suggestions for resources to help in lowering our own carbon footprint and finding...
Jul 03, 2024•24 min
A path of listening, learned first in the yoga class of a beloved teacher in Boulder. For five years I attended her class, five years of book writing and coming to terms with my older brother's death. Wendy taught us how to move by listening—listening first to the body and breath, which is listening to the Earth. Here is a story of listening in Wendy's class. Get full access to Nature :: Spirit — Kinship in a living world at priscillastuckey.substack.com/subscribe...
Apr 13, 2024•28 min
Why is there a price on land? When land is the living source of all our food—and of us—why do we think we can own it? We take a look at how private landownership got put into law in England in the 1600s to justify the landlords’ seizing of common lands. And how we might imagine our way to a different system. With inspiration for our imaginations from Dr. Lyla June Johnston (Diné) and Greek economist Yanis Varoufakis. And a first imaginary glimpse into an economy where land is free. Get full acce...
Mar 16, 2024•25 min
On rivers, the secret river, and what one very early project from 1400 BCE to drain a lake can tell us about both. Plus, what losing spiritual connection to the irrepressible flow of life looks like: reaching for power and control over ourselves and others. How can we stay open to the life-giving currents, even those we don't understand? Get full access to Nature :: Spirit — Kinship in a living world at priscillastuckey.substack.com/subscribe...
Feb 04, 2024•23 min
Looking up and opening the heart at the Solstice. We delve into the stories told by people through the ages about Venus and Orion and share some cool facts about red giants and blue giants. In a season for cultivating peace and goodwill, we turn to the stars to evoke wonder and awe and to cleanse the heart for a new year. Get full access to Nature :: Spirit — Kinship in a living world at priscillastuckey.substack.com/subscribe...
Dec 22, 2023•21 min
In a recent university talk Robin Wall Kimmerer, author of Braiding Sweetgrass, reflected on how Indigenous understandings of what she called our “shared responsibility for Mother Earth” can help us heal our relationship with the land. “What does the Earth ask of us?” she asked. She suggested that Indigenous principles for relating with land might help guide Western science so that all can thrive. We reflect on three of these principles—responsibility, respect, and reciprocity—and we ask what mi...
Nov 18, 2023•24 min
After my first book came out I hit a wall, feeling churned up inside. What was going on? I turned inward to find out, crossing right over the sharp line that the Western world draws between matter and spirit. I began to talk in spirit with an animal helper: a bear. Some thoughts on the limits that the matter-spirit split imposes on Western thinking, and how most Indigenous traditions regard reality as one unified whole, matter and spirit flowing together through every being and part of Earth. Ho...
Oct 04, 2023•23 min
Here on Maui we’re in crisis since the fire that destroyed Lahaina two weeks ago. But some of the same patterns of using and abusing water that contributed to this crisis are all too familiar from a history of colonizing people and land—including the land where I grew up in Ohio—that extends all the way back to ancient Mesopotamia. Today we look at a few of those historical connections and ask: When is diverting water harmful? What does it look like to care for land, or as we say here, mālama ʻā...
Aug 23, 2023•23 min
Getting tripped up in the early stages of writing my next book leads to some reflections on the process of writing the first two. More about how life led me to listening from the heart instead of following thoughtful plans and chapter outlines. On being open to the moment—in writing and life. Get full access to Nature :: Spirit — Kinship in a living world at priscillastuckey.substack.com/subscribe...
Jul 23, 2023•21 min
Opening the gift of Robin Wall Kimmerer’s question: Why is the world so beautiful? How awe and wonder make us better people, as shown by the findings of psychology researchers into the science of happiness. But how can we feel awe at a time like this, when the Earth is wounded and so much life is endangered? An example from Maui’s degraded dryland forests, and how people are coming together to help the forests flourish again. Get full access to Nature :: Spirit — Kinship in a living world at pri...
Jun 24, 2023•24 min
How do we learn to trust the knowing that arises without words? Some thoughts on growing more sensitive to the messages we pick up through our many human senses. How to pay attention to our inner knowing, with ideas for simple ten-minute quiet times we can set aside each day to listen to the subtle whispers of the heart. But following the heart can be risky, so is it really worth it? Exploring the connection between how we treat the nature inside us—the heart-pulls—and how we treat the natural w...
May 21, 2023•22 min
We have everything within us to make good decisions and follow a good path, and we can do this even when we’re young. It’s not what I learned among my own people, but it’s what Abraham Maslow learned among the Blackfoot early in his career. Today we listen to Indigenous voices, who talk about knowing from within, or “sovereignty of mind.” And we look at the long habit in Western history of defining knowledge instead as what is handed down from external authorities—an age-old habit that feeds the...
Apr 14, 2023•24 min
Putting the pieces together with a very late in life diagnosis, including growing out of self-doubt; masking reframed as empathy; living with the challenges and gifts of an autistic mind; and how being autistic can enhance a person’s life. All this and more from an interview that autistic art therapist Jackie Schuld did with me for her series on late-identified autistic people. Get full access to Nature :: Spirit — Kinship in a living world at priscillastuckey.substack.com/subscribe...
Mar 18, 2023•32 min
Florida’s authoritarian laws are leading schools to empty their library shelves of possibly offending books. We dip into Karen Stenner’s definition of authoritarianism—being uncomfortable with differences—and find a tendency toward it stretching all the way back, in Western history, to the Roman Empire. But authoritarianism is fundamentally at odds with democracy, and with nature. For, as Darwin said, evolution brings forth “endless forms most beautiful.” Just as in the rest of nature, human soc...
Feb 18, 2023•25 min
A mother doe once tried to attack my dog to save her fawns. She was single-minded about protecting her young. Not a hair of separation between mind and body. Are human beings this committed? Today we look at our response to COVID, and how kids are getting so sick right now. We’ve left the children unprotected, and we've done it through minimizing and denying some of the serious risks of the virus. What is denial? It’s a gap between mind and body—believing reality is different than it is. And we ...
Nov 07, 2022•21 min
With climate change scientist Kimberly Nicholas, and her book, Under the Sky We Make , as our guide, we talk today about how to cut carbon emissions at home. Ordinary Americans have more power than we think! Most Americans belong to the top 10 percent of income earners in the world—the ones burning most of the carbon so the ones who can stop most of it too. How do we stop burning fossil fuels? By, as Kim suggests, living close to “what we truly burn for.” Can we learn to say yes to our genuine n...
Sep 19, 2022•22 min
We take a cue from the Aymara people of the Andes, who experience the past as in front of us, not behind us. So today we face the past: first the recent past, in June, of devastating Supreme Court decisions and horrifying Congressional testimonies about the former president’s attempted coup. The events are related, and we dip into the deep past to understand their connections. We explore the first law code written down that survives today, the Code of Ur-Nammu in 2100 BCE, and how it protected s...
Jul 09, 2022•24 min
So last year, in my mid-sixties, I discovered that I’m autistic. But what took me by surprise wasn’t the diagnosis, it was the overwhelming feeling of relief. Why so much relief? We talk about that today—how I, like many people, held an extremely narrow view of autism; how autism consists not of one spectrum but of eight or ten different ones; and how each autistic person is their own colorful configuration of things in life that may be harder for them and things that may be easier. I muse on ho...
May 16, 2022•24 min
Did I really get kissed by a fox? Yes, I really did—many times!—by Rudy the red fox, who lived at the wildlife rehab center where I was volunteering. Rudy's story opens chapter 4 of my first book, Kissed by a Fox: And Other Stories of Friendship in Nature , and this recording is taken from the audiobook version now in production. I can't wait to make the audiobook available to listeners everywhere! Get full access to Nature :: Spirit — Kinship in a living world at priscillastuckey.substack.com/s...
Apr 17, 2022•12 min
The everyday miracle of the sun rising into our sky and powering our Earth can become energy for our hearts and minds too, in the meditative practice of looking toward the dawn. What does it mean to look toward the dawn? It means lifting our eyes, metaphorically, from what’s right at our feet and looking toward new developments coming on the horizon, then aligning our efforts with their life-giving power. How do we tell which developments are truly life-giving? We use some examples cited in the ...
Mar 06, 2022•20 min
How does a person start practicing nature spirituality? Today we look at what nature spirituality is and how to begin on this path—with two simple (but maybe not easy!) practices: opening the heart and widening the perception. We outline differences between the mind and the heart and talk about why opening the heart may feel vulnerable or strange at first—because modern Western public life places the mind first. We show how serving the mind leads to personal and cultural imbalance because the mi...
Jan 29, 2022•26 min
How did Western culture get so disconnected from nature? Some people point to the scientific revolution of early modern Europe, with its quest to control nature. But where did those early scientists get the idea to conquer nature? Today we look at the famous theory of historian Lynn White in 1967—that the creation stories of Genesis taught medieval Christianity to “subdue nature.” It’s a theory that people still repeat today, even though most of White’s evidence has been refuted. We look especia...
Dec 05, 2021•22 min
Insights from a Yurok man, shared with an anthropologist, guide us in learning from the spirit of a tree. The Yurok man’s three-sentence teaching leads us through some wide-ranging reflections: on how spirits are different from ghosts; on how Yurok ways of knowing are similar to and different from Western ways of knowing; and what it takes to live responsibly in loving relations with our more-than-human kin. The Yurok man said it all starts with “seeing each leaf as a separate thing.” So how do ...
Oct 30, 2021•20 min
