You don't need to pick a lane or have a "thing"

• The thing Al (that’s hubby AL not Ai 😜) and I might never agree on

• Anne Lamott’s surprising priorities

• The 1000 year old lesson I’m still trying to learn

The other day I reached over my right shoulder to put my seatbelt on and grasped at thin air.

For some utterly unknown reason my brain had glitched and reverted to British car mode where the driver’s seat and seatbelt are on the right.

How weird is that 🧐 🇺🇸 🇬🇧?

TODAY marks 20 years since we moved to the States with our three rambunctious kids, to follow God’s rather hilarious but ultimately brilliant plan.

Twenty years hasn’t dulled my English accent, I still say rubbish not trash, and drink alarming quantities tea (hot, never iced 😵‍💫), but I’ve also grown to love so much about my adopted home.

Do I feel American? Not really. America is home in one sense (I can think of many ways to define “home”) and I’m even an American citizen, but despite loving it here, I would never say I’m American.

I’m a Brit with American citizenship! 🙄

Which means I can feel a little out of place or like I don’t belong.

Al on the other hand, says he’s American as well as English.

We might have to agree to differ on this one.

As usual though, nature’s been there, done that and got the t-shirt to prove it. Ecologists even have a word for places like me in nature.

Ecotones.

It’s where two different ecosystems meet. Where the edge of a forest becomes a meadow. Where the river meets the land.

And rather than just being a hard border between two ecological zones or an overlap zone with a muddle of both, they’re often the richest, most diverse and alive places in the whole landscape.

Which of course made me think about my American/British ecologies coming together and how many of us have ecotones in our lives we’ve never seen the richness of.

Or we’ve been told to pick a lane, we wish we had a “thing” we were really good at or known for, or are struggling to know what to do next in life.

It turns out, ecotones can help.

I unpack it more this week’s podcast episode The Ecotone Effect: Why You Don’t Need to Pick a Lane

And it’s why I’m hosting this year’s WildlyKnown Retreat.

Not because I’ve got some magic formula for figuring life out (I wish!).

But because we need to stop, get away, and exhale, to notice where we are and what’s growing in us. It’s impossible to do when we’re rushing from one thing to the next.

We need time and space to exhale. To take guided discernment walks in the woods. And have permission to daydream and pray as you take in the calm lake waters.

It’s time to make a little space for God to remind us who we are.

If that sounds like exactly what your soul has been craving, I’d love you to join us this September 18-20th at my house on Lake James.

You can find all the details and register here.

And yes, there’ll be English tea and cake because we’ll, like I said, I’m still very English!

Some things are just non-negotiable.

BTW The Early Bird Rate ends on August 16, so if you’re thinking of joining us, now’s a great time to grab your place.

Our daughter, Sophie, got me into Amy Poehler’s podcast Good Hang and on this brilliant episode with the wonderful Anne Lamott, they talk faith, writing, and having a best girlfriend to break the power of all the rubbish we think (there, I did it again - rubbish!).

Apparently, Anne’s priorities in life (or maybe it’s people) are Jesus, cats, everyone else.

What would yours be? Mine? Maybe Jesus, nature, everyone else!

Hildegard of Bingen was a German Benedictine abbess and, dare I say it, an all round spiritual badass!! A polymath, writer, composer, philosopher, mystic, visionary, and medical writer and practitioner during the High Middle Ages, her teaching are touching me today. Mary Sharratt’s historical fiction about her life, Illuminations, is wonderful and I’m now reading a book by Matthew Fox, Hildegard of Bingen: A Saint For Our Times.

Hildegard reminds us to pay attention, be astonished, and share our astonishment. Honestly, it’s the first bit that always trips me up! But it’s something we’ll be doing together on the retreat and using it to help us feel more alive and awake in our own lives.

You can find both books HERE along with some of my other favorites.

Hope to see you at the lake. Early Bird rates only last until August 16th so don’t think about it too long and miss the $100 saving (don’t ask me how I know!)

Until next time, stay wild.

Niki