When In Doubt, Ask the Trees
A Story of Nordic Mindfulness™ and Remembering.
There’s a thread that runs deep in me. Something ancient. Something I didn’t learn in school or from books—but from the land. And from the women who came before me.
When life gets too loud, I go to the forest. Always have. I don’t go for the steps or the air (though those help). I go because something in me needs it. The stillness. The holding. The way the trees don’t rush me to figure it all out.
Turns out, I’m not the first in my family to do this.
My grandmother would quietly slip away into the woods when something heavy was going on too. Her mother did the same. It wasn’t a performance. It was instinct. Like they were going out to meet something. Or remember something they’d forgotten.
And now I do the same. Not because they did, but because it’s in me too.
It wasn’t until much later I learned there’s an old Norse word for it: úti-seta – the practice of “sitting out.” In the Viking Age, people would sit out in nature, often overnight, seeking wisdom or visions. Not in temples—but in silence. With the wind. With the spirits of the land.
That makes sense to me.
Because I’ve always been intuitive. Sensitive in ways I never really spoke about. I feel energy in places and people. Sometimes I just know things—no logic, just a deep certainty. And I’ve seen things too. Lights. Colours. People who are no longer here. I’ve never felt afraid of it—it just feels like part of something older than me. Something I didn’t make up. Something I’ve inherited.
It’s not superstition.
It’s not fantasy.
It’s wisdom.
I’ve come to call this way of being Nordic Mindfulness™, but really—it’s remembering.
Remembering that silence is sacred.
That the land speaks.
That the forest listens.
And that not all guidance needs to be loud.
So if you ever see me wandering into the woods… I’m not escaping. I’m arriving.
Like the women who walked before me—I’m just sitting out. Listening.
Letting the forest whisper me home.
🪶
What if the forest already knows what you’ve forgotten and all you needed to do
is get quiet enough to remember?