Something in the Woods Loves You Something in the Woods Loves You Hardcover Audible Audiobook Kindle Paperback

The idea for Something in the Woods Loves Youarose after I began posting regularly about my struggles with chronic major depression. I shared scraps of poetry describing the ways my mental and emotional pain shift when I walk beneath the trees. I offered metaphors that helped me manage the shame and silence surrounding mental illness. The more I stepped into the light and openly discussed my pain, the more connection and validation I found among a community of folks with similar interests and challenges. More and more, my inbox began to fill with messages about mental health and kind words of thanks for my honest, vulnerable posts. I spoke with fellow sufferers who wanted to “talk shop.”

I wanted to spend days chatting with each of them, sharing my experiences, my victories and setbacks. I wanted to walk with them beneath the trees and talk about what I had learned. I began to think of this imaged conversation as, “the long talk.” I wanted to have “the long talk” with these strangers. Eventually, I began to understand that I also wanted to have “the long talk” with myself, to map out my own journey with mental illness and the healing I found in nature so I could truly understand where I had been and what I had learned along the way.

So, I’ve learned to lean on writing as a potent magic to prevent mental illness from weathering away the positive signposts of my emotional landscape. I was initially drawn to the project of writing this book as a service to others, but I quickly realized that it was also an act of care for myself. There is magic and medicine in giving ourselves permission to love what we love (and let it love us back). The love in this book is rooted in the plants and animals of the Ohio woodlands I roam. Sharing that love is part of my healing process and, I hope, a small light of solidarity in the dark for others struggling with mental illness.