An Ode to Those Who Walked Before Me
A story of forest wisdom, feminine lineage, and the remembering of Nordic stillness.
There’s an ancient thread in me. A deep calling.
It’s part of something I didn’t learn from books or training.
Something I’ve always felt but only recently begun to name.
It lives in my body. In my instincts. In the way I’ve always turned toward the wisdom of the earth when life became too loud. And when I look back, I see I’m not the first.
“When in doubt, let the forest whisper you home.”
When I was little, I remember my grandmother quietly slipping into the forest whenever something was heavy. Her mother—my great-grandmother—did the same. When there was a problem to solve, or a weight they couldn’t carry alone, the forest called. They didn’t make a fuss about it—they just went. Out there, among the trees, everything seemed different. Calmer. Like the woods were listening. Like they were being held by something larger than themselves.
These weren’t just outings or forest walks. They were rituals. Private, instinctual acts of reconnection. They were going out to find answers, or to return to themselves when life pulled too hard. They didn’t need incense or chants. They had breath. Silence. Presence. And a forest that knew their names.
It wasn’t until much later that I learned there was an old word for this.
Úti-seta.
The Norse practice of “sitting out.”
In the Viking Age, úti-seta was a way of listening. People would sit out in the wild—often all night—to seek wisdom, guidance, or visions. They’d fast, sit in silence, or sing quietly into the dark. They believed in land spirits, in ancestral guidance, in fate. And they believed you could access these things—not through temples—but by sitting alone with the wind and waiting.
We had more people deeply connected to the earth—and to the beyond—in our family.
My grandmother’s sister was sensitive in her own way. She could feel the weather shift inside her body—migraines would strike before the clouds even gathered. My daughter has that too.
And me… I’ve always been intuitive. I just know things sometimes. No reason. No proof. Just a quiet certainty.
I see energies, too—sometimes as sparks of light, other times as fields of colour moving around or between people. I don’t always understand them straight away, but I know they’re messages. Clues.
Sometimes they’re there to help others.
Sometimes they’re there to help me.
And then there’s the story I’ll never forget.
When my grandmother’s daughter died—so young, too young—one night, she came to her.
Not in a dream.
She walked through the wall and stood at the side of her bed.
My grandmother saw her, as clear as day.
They looked at each other for a while.
And then… she was gone.
She never saw her after that encounter. But the experience soothed her. She was, and was going to be ok.
That moment wasn’t talked about much, but I’m glad the story was shared with me, and I’ve always carried it with me.
Because that story—along with all the others—tells me this isn’t imagination.
This is inheritance.
These things don’t surprise me.
They’re part of the thread.
The quiet inheritance passed through the women in my family—
of knowing,
of deep connection to our earth,
and to what lies beyond what the eye can see.
And now, I’m stepping fully into it.
Because it’s not superstition.
It’s not fantasy.
It’s wisdom.
“Stillness is sacred, Earth is sacred, You are sacred.”
I call it Nordic Mindfulness™—but really, it’s remembering.
A remembering that stillness is sacred.
That the land speaks.
That silence is a portal.
And that the forest still holds space for those of us who come—not to demand answers—but with listening hearts.
🪶
Tell me—who walked before you?
Whose knowing lives quietly inside your bones?