Ep.69 Daughter of Tulip Poplar Tree with Amanda Nicole

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Hello! Hello! Hello! Everyone! Welcome back to another episode of reconnect with plant wisdom. It’s me Tigrilla Gardenia.

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And this episode is so

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enthralling, enthralling. That’s the word that I want to use in. So this episode is all about

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Amanda Nicole’s relationship with tulip poplar.

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And

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I keep saying over and over again that relationships with plants take time, intimacy takes.

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And Amanda describes this beautifully in this twelve-year relationship that she has had with tulip poplar, and everything that has changed in her life. As a result of it I am extremely excited to share this episode with you, so please

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enjoy episode 50, no. Episode 69, 69. I still can’t believe that episode. 69 of reconnect with plant wisdom, daughter of the tulip poplar with Amanda Nicole, enjoy

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welcome to reconnect with plant wisdom. I’m your host. Tigrilla, Gardenia, nature inspired mentor and leadership coach. In this podcast. I share ancient and modern knowledge from biology to spirituality about the wondrous ways in which plants can help you lead a naturally conscious life.

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Amanda, when, when we had our kind of like little pre interview question like little time together. I already had a list of questions a mile long.

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but before I jump into that I would love for you to tell the audience. Who is Amanda Nicole?

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Well, I have come to call myself a liriodendress. I had to write so many bios over the years, and you list. I’m a mother. I’m a writer, I’m a creative. I’m the this, I’m a that. And I just got tired of the list and thought, What am I actually trying to say

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so. I created the term liriodendress.

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and for myself it encapsulates who I am.

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what it is. The definition is

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the human embodiment, or the daughter

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of the tulip poplar tree.

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So Lirodendron tulipifera. And so I’ve been with this tree for about a decade, and

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there’s just been a merging happening and a mirroring, and I feel that we share an essence, and that it’s why I’m

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here. So I could say, I’m a mother of 6 living children which I am, and I could say I’m a writer and a teacher and an herbalist, and all the things

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but

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the laryodendras title for me

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encapsulates

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all the parts of myself that keep shifting and changing. So

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I’m Amanda Liriodendress. Yes, I love that so much. I love it for multiple perspectives. Besides, the fact that I love, that you have found this thing that incorporates, that encapsulates all these parts of you, and I think so many of us struggle with that, because we try to use the normal words that exist out there. And that’s the reason why, in our naturally conscious community, we’re always talking about the need for us to coin new words

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for us to create a new paradigm based on new words and new modes of speaking that really bring this relationship and these relationships that we’re creating with the natural world to the forefront. Because that’s the reason why these words don’t exist

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because we haven’t done this. So I’m going to back up for a second, because that implies that the audience should know that you have a very special relationship with a specific tulip poplar tree. So where did that start?

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You know? Honestly, I think it started before I was conscious of it

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right.

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But well, I’m sure of it. Actually.

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there’s a lot of places we could take. This.

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I’ll start with the normal chronology. The normal chronology is.

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I started to notice this tree

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and its leaves sort of looked like hands to me, and it was sort of wave, and I started to notice it, and I noticed it about the time that I started my herbal studies herbal medicine tease tinctures, you know, clinical herbalism.

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And there was whispers in that group. This was, you know, over a decade ago in the mountains of Virginia.

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of plant communication that you could communicate with plants.

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and I was very interested in this, in spite of the fact that at the time I was

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the wife to a conservative pastor, very conservative and extremely conservative church

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head coverings, no musical instruments, no holidays.

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But I was really curious, because I thought, if the world is that magical, I want to experience it, because that’s why I imagined as a child.

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So

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I decided I wanted to talk to this particular tree after some practice with nettles and mullen. You know I wanted this tree.

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and I was actually at a writing cabin I had found at the time.

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and I wasn’t writing. I actually don’t think I wrote a word in that cabin over all those months, but it’s curious, because it’s the very 1st thing I talk about in the book that I’ve written. I am the tree that’s soon to be published. Was that writing cabin? The writing process began there.

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and I took a walk, and I found the tree.

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and I just opened my heart to let it speak to me. And it did, and those messages it gave me on those walks at the writing cabin were the 1st impressions that I had of this tree. I

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phrases like impenetrable fortress.

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and we will be your parents, and

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the wound being the medicine, these different, and at the time I didn’t understand any of those phrases, and I didn’t know how any of them applied to me, or why it was saying the things it was saying.

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And so it’s been a 10 year

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more than 10 year journey now of unpacking.

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would it?

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What it was saying at the beginning, what it means, and everything it said since then, and some people have asked me sometimes, you know.

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Why are you so drawn to this tree? Why, this tree and I really haven’t had an answer except my heart’s been drawn to it. And recently it’s been telling me more about my origin, its origin, and I’ve realized more and more that I don’t know. Maybe part of the reason I’m so drawn to this tree is because it really is me we really are.

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They really are the the same. So one note before I finish this answer is, I had a teacher at the time Matthew Wood.

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who has really been instrumental for me. He’s given me

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so much support and permission, and

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hearing whatever I hear, and at that time, more than 10 years ago, in a class he brought up to La Poplar, and I had just had this impenetrable fortress experience

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very unwelcoming, you know, and

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the people in the class were chattering, and everybody was like, Oh, I love to look poplar, it’s so loving, it loves humans. They were just loving this tree, and I’m thinking

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I did not get that. So I raised my hand in the back, and Matt, just, you know, nodded, and

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he said, Amanda has something to say, and I said, That’s not what I got.

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I didn’t get love and acceptance from this tree. What I felt not heard at the time, but felt

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was that it was an impenetrable fortress.

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It was just so unwelcoming I couldn’t approach it, and the whole room was like, Oh, that’s not right, that’s not right, that’s not how it is. And you know, and I just thought, Well, that’s what I got. And Matt, who’s usually very soft spoken.

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and really open in those sorts of settings.

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His tone shifted, and he very firmly said, That’s enough.

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It’s teaching Amanda something different.

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And the the room just kind of got quiet, and you know I’ve told him so many times.

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Neither he nor I realized what happened in that moment, right, because he doesn’t even know about tool poplar. All the things now, and I didn’t know but it was this moment of permission, and that’s exactly what’s happened is

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a decade long journey of

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learning something else.

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And I think this is such an important fact that we forget, and that a lot of people forget which is. It’s very easy to get caught up in the common definitions and the common experiences with plants which hey? I’d rather have that you get caught up in that than not have any experience at all right, but especially when you study herbology.

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especially when you work with plant spirit medicine of any sort. Oftentimes it’s kind of like we work with crystals in the same way. Right? You know you have this list, and here’s the plant, and here’s the definition. And here’s the thing the plant is good for, and you do it this way and this way and this way. But when we do that we’re forgetting that it’s all about the relationship, and that each one of these plants, each incarnation of this plant.

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just the same as you know, everybody who’s from Virginia is not exactly the same. Every

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tulip poplar living in Virginia is not the same. Each one of us has individual experiences, has had different relationships, has a different environment, even because even if

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even if can are right next to one another, it’s still 2 different experiences that are being had. And I love that this tulip poplar kind of saw something in you and said, this person, this person I can actually share my truth with.

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like what I’ve experienced, and I see that we have this symbiosis, this synergy, this potential. Let me say it at that probably time, this potential to have that kind of aspect. One of my previous guests said it so if Jenny emits just said really beautifully, she said, because the plants have different senses and different abilities, I don’t even say different. Their senses are more awakened than ours are. It’s almost as if

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can can see us more clearly.

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and therefore can tap into that, and to share with the others. So it makes sense that you

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had this experience. That was just very personal already from the beginning.

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There are so many things to go. It’s from there I love it first.st I love that you mentioned what your guests said, that they see us more clearly.

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and one of the ways that I like to speak about the plants is that

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they’re instruments of incarnation. This is a phrase I like to use

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because they do see us.

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and we don’t yet always see ourselves.

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And so when they begin speaking to us, I feel part of what they’re doing. Maybe part of their role is not just for food, or even oxygen, or even physical medicine.

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But there, I feel.

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enabling us

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to fully incarnate here to really fully become ourselves, because they help us to begin to fully see ourselves and know ourselves. I see you so even that moment, with the tulip poplar with impenetrable fortress.

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I took it, as the tree is an impenetrable fortress.

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Right? It was unwelcoming.

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It is. It is an impenetrable fortress in some ways, but it’s not the way I thought

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right over the years we’ve been unpacking that, and it took years for me to realize. Oh, it was telling me that about myself. I was the impenetrable fortress, and there are different ways that I was that positively, negatively, in the way we.

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you know, describe things.

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But this idea of relationship, that unpacking, took time, and it took relationship.

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And you mentioned potential. Which reminds me of another plant Mullen.

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because Mullen will actually often talk to me about potential at the moment of potential right before the creation. So like through the pulse point right before this potential.

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But it also speaks to me about the idea that intimacy takes time.

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So this relationship and this intimacy with the plants.

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it takes time to get to know them, and in getting to know them honestly, to get to know

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ourselves, you know, really. And when you say, you know, this

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really surface knowledge, I feel with

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a lot of the general information that’s out there about plants.

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That’s how I started. I feel. That’s probably how most people start. And it’s okay. Because that’s how we start with other people like right now, people have learned that my name is Amanda Nicole. Right? You’ve heard that I lived in Virginia. I have brown hair. Look, we’re starting with the surface right?

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But the more we go into this conversation, and if we had more and more and more, you know the deeper we go. And for myself, I found that

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absolutely for me

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the most potent, magical.

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effective, beautiful. I guess. Medicine that’s the way I use the word

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has come from absolutely nothing that has yet to be in a book. I’m writing them, but it’s not in books yet, and I tell students and clients, the more you listen you’ll literally create your own material medica. You’ll create your own basket. You’ll just create

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your own reception of it, and, like you said, bring things into the world that aren’t here yet. I think part of the reason we don’t have some of these words is because we’re so focused on human language. If we go and speak to some of these other beings.

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they will share with us other words and concepts.

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You’re speaking my language. That’s exactly the way that I see it, and I love it’s a recurring theme. And it’s 1 of the things that I love the most about having all these concurrent conversations on the podcast. Is relationships. Take time.

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All relationships. Do we tend to forget this with our human relationships? And we don’t even consider it when it comes to our plant relationships. And therefore we don’t really get to go beyond that surface level. We don’t have an opportunity to not only get to know the other, but even more important than that

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who we are as a reflection of that other. I live in community, and one of the things that I love about living in community is the fact that I have all these different reflections, and some of them are hard. Some of them are hard to see, and it’s very easy when you’re in those 1st years, and when you’re just starting to get to know somebody to point the finger at the other person. Oh, look! They do that! And they have this, and they have that.

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And over time you realize that. Oh, my goodness! The reason I’m pointing my finger at that is because it’s this piece of me that’s being touched in this way. And this is something important. And this, I think, happens even more with the plants, because

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with humans, we have, you know these understandings to a certain extent codified rules and conditioning and all these different pieces. But with the plants they’re so different

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from us that when you build that relationship over time. What gets reflected back

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is aspects of ourselves that we didn’t even know were there.

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Yes.

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yeah.

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yes, that is on point with what I’ve experienced with the plants. So one of the lovely things

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with the plant, and for me particularly, tulip poplar

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is like you said, the human relationships can mirror things back. That’s what they’re meant to do. And it’s really meant to turn us inward again.

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you know, so that we can re-engage with the other

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hopefully, in an improved capacity, more loving capacity.

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But that’s really difficult with humans, because honestly, humans are not always acting from a loving place. They’re not always reflecting things back to us because they love us, at least

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maybe at an ultimate origin place. You know our souls, but not here in this 3D moment.

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But with the plants.

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even hard things

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that I’ve needed to see about myself right

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have always been communicated gently and lovingly right. There’s never unkindness. They’re never saying anything to me to hurt or to be unkind, or to judge or to criticize. And that’s 1 of the things that’s been so lovely about it like this trust that

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is able to develop in the relationship for me

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over time with the plants. So now, when I hear something from a plant, even if you know it really hits at a spot that’s a little raw or vulnerable. I know it’s loving, and I know it’s true, because it’s loving. If that makes sense, I’ll talk about Violet sometimes it’s a plant that teaches us to only listen to the voices that love us.

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even some voices that don’t love us. They might be right, but it’s going to cut in a way that maybe we need to receive it from a different place, so it can be effective.

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But then there’s also that aspect you said of places about us we didn’t even know were there.

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So

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part of what tulapa has drawn out for me is a lot of human characteristics that needed to

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be brought more to the surface. But some of them I sort of already knew, like I enjoy singing, or I’m a writer, or a mother, or a teacher, or right, but they needed some

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emphasis and some honing and some encouragement. But then there’s been. And I think this is where plants are lovely with that instrument of incarnation idea.

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parts of us that are really outside of maybe this dimension of who we are.

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and they’re able to bring that in. So we can just more and more and more embody the soul self from all these different dimensions. So I’ll speak sometimes, and I’ll say I’m a rainbow dragon.

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and I mean it’s an aspect of myself that tulip poplar revealed, or I’ll talk about myself in a celestial way, or even recently, talk about myself from another time and another place. But here on earth. But I am that.

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or even when I say I am the tree and the tree is me, and I’m a Lurio Dendris, and I mean it

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like these aspects of ourselves that are also outside of like, you’ve already addressed the norm normal language or normal ways of seeing ourselves. And I think that those parts are order

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also really very lovely they, I think they help us to

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just get a wider view

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on what it means to be human, and I think it makes us love ourselves more absolutely. And this is really where working so closely with plants is such a blessing. Because, I mean, you’ve hit so many things yourself right. The aspect of the lack of judgment. There’s no need for that judgment. Therefore, when a plant shares something

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just like when a plant shares information with another plant, or with, you know, an insect or an animal of any other sort that plant

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shares because it’s important, because it’s either going to be good for survival, because it’s something that you need to know, because it’s going to help our ecosystem grow, because it’s going to improve the quality because it’s going to be something that needs to be worked on as a group in a symbiosis, whatever the reasoning is. And of course, so when they share that same type of information with us. It’s for the same reasons.

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What is their goal to improve, to evolve, to make the best ecosystem, the most resilient ecosystem, and you are now a part of that ecosystem.

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So it makes sense that that’s exactly what’s happening. And because all of these extra senses, from the physical perspective, plus probably from everything else, all the subtle senses.

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The plant is able to recognize things inside of us and to help kind of show. These like, point them out to us give us an opportunity to embody them even more.

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And actually, it was funny that you were just talking about this relating to being able to see yourself on multiple dimensions, and even in other space and time. So in domenicur, we do a lot of past life research. And it’s a very big part of the process of understanding, of reawakening your memories from past lives, and re-embodying those memories so that you have all that knowledge and wisdom so really helping your soul

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reach the goals that you set out for yourself faster because you’re able to use all this old information. And one of the things that I’ve just over, you know, recently started to work on is, we have plant past lives. We have those connections at multiple level. And therefore what would that be like. And I just recently. So I have in the naturally conscious community we have a writing and creativity group

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which I love. And once a month we do we? We meet every week

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for writing and such, and once a month we do something called budding artistry, where we design, we draw. We use arts of all sorts. It could be movement, it could be poetry, it could be watercolors, it could be anything. And the whole point is to explore beyond just words.

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and I recently took our group through a series of prompts that were physical movements and meditation and exploration to connect to their plant past lives.

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And it was been. It’s been amazing to see what comes out in those designs. The designs that help the person embody more of that life so really reawaken. More of your plant self, of your plantness.

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as I call it. And I think that that sounds like a lot of what you’re doing. Also with tulip poplar. You’re not only working with tulip poplars to see more of your humanness, but you’re also connecting more into. Hence. Why, you say the daughter of tulip poplar is like you’re really embodying even more of your plantness. Do you find? What have you found that has really changed in your life since this relationship started

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started.

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I know right? One of those easy questions I know, and that’s the answer. But I’ll be specific. I’ll be specific. But before I’m specific, I want to address what you said about tuning into your plant self because I was smiling, as you were saying it, because of the synchronicity. So I called myself a Liriodendris and a daughter of the tulip poplar tree

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before

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I tapped into previous life plant self. It was just what I knew. I just knew like where that

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we’re family, because one of the 1st spoken, I’ll say spoken instead of like an impression. But

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words are saved

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was, We will be your parents which that particular story I write about my book Flowers for a girl.

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and

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I remember when the tree said, We will be your parents thinking, Wow, this is just beautiful, that, like these trees would receive me as family. But at the time I didn’t realize that I was going to need

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a replacement set of parents in a way, and also that they are

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right. So that’s been 10 years in the making. So recently, I’ve been making pilgrimages. I guess I’ll use that as a word

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into the mountains of East Tennessee and western North Carolina.

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which I was born in East Tennessee, but

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sort of been

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exiled from that place for a while because of my family of origin.

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But the tree’s calling me back there through a story, through a Cherokee story, an indigenous story.

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And so I went back because of that story because I could see the 2 of popular connections in the story, even though it’s not named.

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Then once I went back into the mountains.

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tulip Poplar started telling me more of the story, like, you know how people go to a movie like for a superhero. And then you’ve got the backstory. Okay? So we got the back. We get the backstory

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and it gave me its origin story. So after more than a decade together, and I would even describe it to people as the

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a tree that would teach us about our origins.

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It decided. I’m going to tell you my origin story now, Amanda.

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but what happened was when it told me its origin. Story. Guess what?

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This is also my origin story right

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in a past life. You were this person right, and this person shape-shifted for these reasons, and became the 1st tulip poplar tree. And this is what it looked like. And this is how it happened. And it’s just, I know I’m not going into too much detail, because honestly.

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it’s

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It’s still percolating, and it’s being written, and I want to be sure to say it as it once it said, but it literally wanted to come and say.

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You have. You have literally been me. You are me. This is how I began. You know, this is how we started.

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and it’s just beautiful. So all these words of I am the tree, and the tree is me and Larry or Dendris, and we will be your parents, you know, coming together where I feel like in some ways. We finally got to where we’ve been going together, you know.

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So there’s that. And then what has changed in my life since this relationship started? When I say everything. I’m not kidding.

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So I was married. I’m no longer married, which is not uncommon for a lot of people, but in my

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in my world, and the way I was raised religiously, and the

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part of the world I live in the idea is, you get married and you stay married right? So I’m no longer married.

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I no longer have a family of origin, I mean, they are here on this earth like they exist, but

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for reasons that are probably not surprising anyone when I mentioned conservative Christian church and whatnot the fact that I’m saying I’m a liario Dendris, and even talking about past lives and plant communication. It’s just it’s just not acceptable. And also when I started to speak about

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sexual trauma that didn’t go over well, either, which was also connected to the tulip poplar tree.

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So I don’t have a family of origin here, like in a human sense anymore.

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it changed my mothering.

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It completely changed my mother. It’s even changing my mothering right now. I’ve been having conversations this week with a friend of how my mothering is getting ready to change again.

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And I. I speak about the tree in that way. It’s the parent tree. It’s a

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connected to the Divine Mother all all sorts of aspects. It’s really a beautiful tree.

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My mothering has changed. I’m a mother to 6 children, and they’re like 3 older, 3 younger. This gap in between you can really tell the difference.

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That’s changed. My belief. Systems have changed what we think of as spiritual or religious beliefs. I was raised in the church like my mom used to say. You know the second. I was born, you know, from my 1st breath I’m in the church Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night revivals. I went to a Christian school growing up, ended up marrying a pastor. So all the beliefs of conservative Christianity, most all of them are gone, except for

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the thread of truth that I think is everywhere. You know this is still with me.

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Religious beliefs have changed. What I think it means to be human has changed. What I think about the universe, the cosmos, what we think of as the afterlife.

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Oh, I mean, it could just really go on and on.

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Everything has changed. Every

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everything has changed, and which can be scary for some people to hear. And I think that’s legitimate, because it’s not easy always in the physical form to make the changes.

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But I think about this often.

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and I would. I don’t regret a single moment

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with the tree or the changes, because I am so deeply grateful to have a clearer, truer, more loving, beautiful view of myself and of you, and of the world and nature, and just everything like the word that came to my mind when you were speaking earlier about how the plants

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speak to us

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was benevolent. That was the word that was coming to me.

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I’m so grateful, especially with my Christian background, conservative Christian background

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to just sort of

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be in a place where.

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except for moments, right? Because we’re human. I can really bask in the benevolence

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of the cosmos so well, I think that’s that string that I do. Another one of those pieces that I feel happens when you re-embody that your plantness, when you really reconnect, or or, as I call it, you have your plant reawakening. I feel like the because plants are about presence.

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they have to be present. They have to be in the now, and they have to be aware. And so, therefore, spending time with kin forces. Awareness. Not because they’re like you must be aware, but because

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that’s the model that you have in front of you is you have a being that spends can’t run away from things, can’t ignore things and pretend it’s not happening, and so, therefore has to be extremely present to what’s going on. And therefore, when you are present.

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it gives you the opportunity to. I don’t want to say evaluate, because that’s not even the right thing is to feel from what the resonance between the inside of you like you said your truth, barometer, your understanding of things, your senses, and your experiences, and what is happening outside of you. And so when you stop.

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stop literally in that, the running around in the way of the human that’s always going and doing things. And you stand in that presence

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all of a sudden you’re able to hear more clearly. You’re able to taste more clearly, feel more clearly, be more clear. It all becomes different, and stories become just stories. And what you’re looking for is that resonance?

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And if it doesn’t resonate, it doesn’t resonate, and it makes it also so much easier in that presence

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to let those pieces fall away. That’s the other piece. I find that even though, of course, lifting is hard, right we call it peopling. Peopling is hard. Everything that has to do with people and all kinds, human people, animal people plant people, rock people. Peopling is hard.

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but that presence allows me to sort of

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be so connected to myself and so connected to my ecosystem that you see things. And you’re like, no, that doesn’t fit in my ecosystem anymore.

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It just doesn’t.

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It just doesn’t. Yes.

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this is part of what’s been so lovely to me about my connection with the plants, and particularly to look poplar

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is the stillness.

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the stillness to just to just be with the tree and just be

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which, like you said, is to just be present. And that’s an interesting part of how they communicate to us as well, because I’ve over the years from tulip, poplar, and other places, because you know I also talk to land and animals, and who knows what else

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you know. So I received these messages, and at the beginning I was very wanier in the reception. I was very human and chronological in the reception.

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but what I’ve come to realize is that, like you said, they’re just present. They’re just now they’re just outside of time. And so a lot of the things I was receiving. It’s because

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they have this awareness of everything all at once. And right now, right?

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So I would. You know I’d hear something and think.

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Well, how does that pertain to this very moment, or what do I do next, and it’s like, no, it’s all. It’s all a story. They’re all stories, you know. We’ll get to this message, you know. You’ll you’ll take action on this 10 years from now. Right? You took action on this 5 years ago. You know, it’s this, this timelessness

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that allows us to be in the moment.

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And it’s really beautiful, because, even as I’ve experienced what I’ve experienced with things falling away as you mentioned, and it is easier. It is easier to just let them fall away in the stillness, because there’s not the resistance, right? There’s not the fighting. There’s not the analyzing. There’s just the knowing.

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Yeah, exactly. There’s just the loving, knowing just it’s love. This place of what I say is love.

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but

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what I found?

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I’m sorry. Sort of pausing in the timelessness.

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I’ve lost my train of thought there for a moment in the timelessness to be honest because the falling away

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it’s like it, doesn’t. It does all exist, but it doesn’t. So I’m able to see myself.

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Yes, in relation to my mother, yes, in relation to my former partner, to an institution towards this or that.

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but in the stillness and the presence of it it expands out, and it’s just timeless. It almost even isn’t right. It just all is and isn’t which.

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It’s interesting. When we speak like that it can sound like we’re floating up here. And

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but that’s something that I found with the plants that what you were saying reminded me is that it’s grounded me. Yep.

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and in being grounded I have the ability to sort of let the let it become that big, you know, and still be in the moment, and still cook dinner for my children, and go to the grocery store and do the things that are right here and right now.

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So there’s just such a value in what they’re teaching us, as you said, of

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just presence, just learning how to simply

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yep, and we forget we we try different avenues to. It’s almost like we think that beingness is.

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I don’t know. It’s something that you can manufacture when instead, it is. It’s a state, it’s a it’s a it’s something that you enter into. And from there the paths around you all seem more

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just present and clear, and I love that, that you were talking about it the stillness in that way, because I think that that’s so important.

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I want to ask you about all right, folks. You might have seen that my friend’s cat mocked over my microphone. And so, yeah, we had to start over, not start over. We had to continue on in a new way. So.

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Amanda, I wanted to ask you about entosophy, because it’s again another one of these beautiful terms that you have created, and that has an entire story behind it, and I’m super excited to hear about it. But before we start that I just want to take a quick second to introduce one of our eco-conscious business partners.

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Okay, we’re back. Amanda.

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Tell us, am I pronouncing it right? Entos, Sophie. Well, you can pronounce it. However, you want to, Sophie. Sophie. No, we’ve got to choose something right? So into Sophie. I’m really excited actually to talk about this, because this is actually a project that is very dear to my heart.

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and that is still in process and becoming. It’s another one of the books that I’m working on.

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and it came about in a lovely way with some people that I really love, and I’m excited that I actually get to mention them. Human people this time.

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human people, human people. We got to qualify here. I know human people. So

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I took a class with someone named Nathan Defore

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and his website is nathanology, I believe.net or dot org dot.

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He’s lovely. He was a philosophy professor who began to rap his philosophy lesson.

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and, as a, you know, just another way to present the information. And then he has an incredible interest in ecology.

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So

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I had come across him on Instagram years ago, and I don’t know if you have this. But there’s moments you’ll see someone, and it’s just.

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you know, Bing.

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right? And so that’s how it was with Nathan, and in time he offered this class.

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and it was what did he call his class?

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It was an eco philosophy class. I’m not going to butcher what he called it, but it was an eco philosophy class. It’s still running. He’s he just finished up one of the recent cohorts this week.

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So I thought, oh, yay, like it’s a chance to be in space, you know, in time with Nathan, and I’m interested in ecology, and he has this emphasis on action?

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Right? So how do we take thoughts and ideas and put them into action which I really appreciate?

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So I took the class, and it was lovely. He’s lovely. The the members of the class were lovely. And so there’s all this discussion on

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this idea at the time of what is the ideal society?

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Right? This idea? What is the ideal society? How do we create it?

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Right? What are the policies? The this, this and that?

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And so in this class.

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of course, everyone was talking about plants and animals and rivers and oceans, you know, as part of this because of the ecological emphasis.

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but it was kind of driving me nuts which he knows. You and I have talked about this. It was kind of driving me nuts, because

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it was still loving, good and loving humans who are wanting to be conscious and intentional and helpful.

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telling plants and animals and water what is best for them, and what’s going to happen to them.

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So

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we had a final project in this class which you know was optional, because it was a very easy engagement.

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and what I decided was, I was going to take 5 questions that Nathan had given us, that we were supposed to personally answer, like, what is the ideal society to you. What are his policies? What are some challenges? You know all this?

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And I was going to take these 5 questions, and I was going to ask

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the telepopular

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because I was like, we’re missing other voices. We’re missing very significant voices. And I personally think it’s part of why.

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as humans, we just can’t seem to figure it out because we’re not meant to figure it out as humans. We’re part of

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the earth, the universe, everything and everyone

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different types of persons. Non-humans do not have a seat at the table, and are not a part of this discussion

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now. I had never had a conversation with tool poplar like this before. You know, we’ve we’ve had a certain way of communicating. We’ve had a certain way of talking.

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Usually it’s more personal, right.

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But I thought, you know, I’ve come a long way with this communication.

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So I went to the tree and I asked it these 5 questions, and it was

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mind blowing. I had never in 10 years we’d never engaged that way, we never. And it actually said to me in the interview which you can find on my website. They’re listed and on my sub stacks, and it’s a little messy on my sub stacks, but everything will get cleaned up eventually with the head to Sophie because it just was very organic how it came into being.

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But it actually said, Thank you so much for asking me these questions. No one talks to me like this anymore.

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No one asked me these types of questions anymore. So I turned it in to Nathan

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as my final project. And he’s lovely. He’s very lovely, but I really wasn’t sure how it would be received like Oh, great! Let’s talk to plants, and whatever you know.

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But he responded back so thoughtfully.

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I mean, he really engaged

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the project.

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and we ended up having an ongoing conversation about this, and

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our friendship developed from that.

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And I thought to myself.

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like we need more of these conversations. So I went back to Tala poplar, and sort of

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gave Tulip Poplar the response, and Tulip poplar said to me, right beside of this tulip poplar, the one that I sit with all the time.

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There’s a dogwood chain

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right in front of it, and there’s a ginkgo tree off to the side.

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and it said to me, Don’t ask me more questions. When I went back to it it said, Ask dogwood. Ask Ginkgo. So I went, and I just started cooing as I was led, and it got to where I would go to this place near me the Botanical Gardens that are near me.

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which is a really easy place for me to visit a really easy place for me to walk. You know, if I’m not wanting to go into the wilderness right.

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and I would be on my way to talk to one tree.

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and I would have trees that I’d never spoken to before like species of trees that I’d never spoken to before.

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Get my attention, and I would say to them, I’m on my way to meet with such and such. But we want to be part of this

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right. And so sometimes I’d sit down, and I’d think.

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you know I’ve never spoken to this

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species of tree before, because this is important. It’s not just plant communication. It’s not just plant language.

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They each have their own voice, and you have to learn their voice right? So I was nervous about it, because it’s like sitting down to do like if we were humans. I don’t speak.

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you know I don’t speak French, so if I sat down with someone to do an interview with them, and I don’t speak their language, so I don’t know how this is going to work.

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But it went lovely. It was great, and so I did this series of interviews. I think there are 16 or 17 interviews

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that I think are.

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I think that that sort of canon is closed at the moment for this.

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this like this segment event to Sophie.

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And it’s beautiful. And part of what came out was

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the personality of each tree, the essence of each tree. And it was so beautiful, because

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every single tree, and well, there’s a stagcorn fern and elderberry in there as well. They wanted to get in on it. They all have different answers to the questions.

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and what’s so incredible to me about it is as humans.

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humans would be giving those answers. And we would think that we were contradicting each other, and that we were opposite to each other, and that we were disagreeing. And the trees didn’t think that at all. They’re like, Oh, okay, thank you so much. No good at all. They see it as all being part of the spectrum, like a

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a disco ball with, you know, these different facets, and so I’ll probably stop now, so you can respond. But

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I love it. And now I’m working on putting it into a book

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where there’s not just the interviews. But there’s the field notes what was happening around it, and like context to sort of

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fill it out. And also some of the trees have asked me, as you do with interviews for follow-up questions.

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but I really think I mean, this might be saying a lot, but I’m just going to say it.

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I can’t even believe I’m daring to say this. I feel this book could change the world. I feel the end. Of course, everything could change the world, right, everything we’re doing.

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But

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to come to believe that

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the plants can engage you in philosophical dialogue and questions and questions. It brought up things like homelessness.

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It brought up things like electricity and how we receive our power.

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It brought up things about dancing and community, I mean.

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just if we could believe, see, we don’t. We don’t believe as a human collective. We don’t believe that they’re intelligent.

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We don’t believe we think we’re smarter.

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I think we’re better.

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But to believe that like they can.

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They can engage with us at our level and beyond.

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And one of the interviews, sorry I keep gushing. I’m going to stop gushing

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ended up at Yale.

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at the Yale Graduate Conference on religion and Ecology.

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One of the trees just pressed through because their theme last year was entanglement.

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and I’m not going to go into all the details, because it’s kind of funny. I even ended up

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being able to

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be a part of that conference, because it was very unlikely.

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but as soon as I saw their phrase entanglement the Japanese flowering cherry was like Amanda. Look at my interview, and I did.

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and so just the fact that, like even though they put it in the art gallery, the art part, and not the like papers being presented.

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Fact that

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a tree interview can even be at Yale. That’s a big deal. The world is changing.

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you know, I agree. And and these are exactly the types of things we need to

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spread more for different reasons. One like you said.

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the the trees are

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the ecosystem, and so therefore they are the planet just like we are. But we forget this. Sometimes we just separate ourselves out. And so to be able to ask these questions of the beings that are not just living, but also

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aware that they’re creating what we consider to be the environment, I think, is so important, and it brings a new perspective.

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a new optic, a new way of looking at these questions. That helps broaden our perspective for our own behaviors like you said our actions oftentimes, especially in these moments, we don’t even know what actions we’re supposed to take, and we can’t think that we should know when we’re only about 200,000 years old.

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When plants have been around for 470 million years. Maybe they’ve learned a thing or 2 about this whole planetary thing and how things work.

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see relationships that we don’t necessarily see, or, as you said before, are not necessarily blocking those relationship views because of fears and conditioning and judgment and all these different aspects. So I think it’s fantastic

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the idea of going to them. We’ve talked about this all the time, and we have had several projects where, for example, I was working. There’s a project that I know of that they have a tree Council, and

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as they’re working on how to develop their project, they are a human council and a tree council that work together. So the humans go out and talk to these trees and gather the feedback of what the trees have to say about whatever it is that they’re looking to do, and then come back.

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And I think this is an extremely important thing, especially in land development. If we’re thinking about any kind of land development. If we’re thinking about any kind of project, the idea of being able to get a thinking outside of the box, something outside of our human norm.

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I think it’s fundamental. I’ve worked for many years

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with spider plant, with spider plant was my business partner for many, many years, and over the last few months spider-plant has been like, Hey, I am taking a break from the business.

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and I’d like you, and I’ve been talking to Noel, the Christmas cactus, who’s sitting over here, and I want Noel to be your new business partner. So if you’ll have Noelle, and so Noel and I are still starting to get to know each other, because Spider Plant was very direct in when we would design programs, or when we would talk about marketing plans, or when we would talk about classes that I was putting together. We’ve written multiple classes together, and even during Covid

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spider Plant was very adamant to be the healer of the family. I am the one that wants to do the healing, and I want to work with plant music and all these other things.

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Noel has been a very different relationship. Noel is much more chill. Noel grows much slower like. There’s just all these different aspects. And so, being able to have that non-human mentality and that other kin as part of our relationship. And what we do, I just think, is fundamental. I think it really is going to be. What changes the world

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when we step outside of the idea of the human centric

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anthropocentric world, and we start to recognize that other kin have understandings that we don’t have, and that other kin want to share these understandings because their ultimate goal is to co-create with us

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rather than

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us taking over or them taking over. And so when we step into that, and we really move into co-creation, I am completely in agree with you. It’s going to change the world. It’s going to completely change the world.

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I love it. I love that you have a business partner, because that’s the spider plant. And now the Christmas cactus, because that’s what tool poplar is to me. Absolutely. You know.

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it sounds crazy to certain people, but not to you, right. But

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when I’m doing something, you know. Am I going to create this class? Am I going to

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to have this offering? Am I going to do this? Am I going to do that. Even when I recently wrote the book, I am the Tree.

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I would go and sit with Juliet Poplar

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and ask it and receive

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outlines. Put this here, put that there. Don’t forget this. Put this there, you know, and then I would read it to the tree and get the feedback, and you know this collaboration that’s happening. And right.

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I’ll have to say that book.

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I cannot imagine riding it without the tree. It was too hard.

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because I thought to myself, how am I going to piece together all these aspects of the tree’s medicine and the human life? And you know all these threads?

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I mean, the tree is genius, like, I tell people sometimes, you know, either people who are skeptical, I’ll say either the plants talk.

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Either they can communicate or I’m a genius.

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and I’m pretty sure most humans don’t want me to be a genius. So the plants must talk, you know, because you receive things that just.

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It’s just outside of what your your mind could scope. You know what I’m saying, and I completely agree with you about

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this engagement on land development. You know just how beautiful it would be, you know, if every city or business, or whatever had

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humans

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that were

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translating for the Tree Council for the land, and I’ve worked with people even just on their own land. You can just start on your own land. So usually people come in and they want to do this. They want this kind of garden and this kind of landscape. And

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but over the years I’ve had people reach out, and we’re going to listen to the land together. What would the land like? And you can even present your plans to the land right? And the land can tell you, and what people are afraid of, I think, is, the land’s going to tell them. No.

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the tree’s going to tell them. No, and we don’t want to hear? No, because we want to do what we want to do, because it’s what we want.

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But what I’ve found is usually it doesn’t.

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It usually will say yes in every way. It can say yes, and it will make adjustments. Some things are no’s.

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They’re not us. They’re not in competition with us. They love us. They want to collaborate with us. They want to create with us. Right? So it’s not like you’re sitting down with another human that’s got their bottom line, and they’re not budging. That’s not how they are.

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I agree the world is going to get better. It is. It is getting better. Well, and there’s definitely a reawakening that’s happening right now. And we’re seeing it all over the place. The critical plant studies the plant humanities. More people talking actively about plant communication plantthropology. There is so much more right now that is, allowing that voice to come through, and is giving people more permission

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for themselves to be able to be those translators, and to be those voices and bringing plants into the conversation. In some ways I have a feeling that we could sit here and talk for hours hours on these subjects. And I am really I just

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so appreciative of everything that you’ve shared. Where can my audience find you? Where are you?

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Well, the easiest place to find me is my website, which I’m sure you’ll share in the notes, but it’s alchemillas that’s the Latin name for.

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and lady’s mantle my 1st business partner.

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So alchemillas.com.

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and there I’ve got

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one-on-one sessions. Valerio Denders press, which is in its beginnings in its origin story at the moment.

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the tulip popular apprenticeship

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which is beginning, which really is just a transmission. I mean, it’s just meant to pour out tulip poplar.

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My, podcast I don’t. I don’t publish on my podcast anymore. But all of them are there, these little snippets?

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Right? 12 min, 10 min, 15 min, little

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plant. Speaking through me. The whispers podcast my book is there mostly

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most into Sophie’s there, that’s the best place to connect. I’m on

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Instagram as well. But

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the website is the place to dive in

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perfect. Well, I’ll make sure I include the link to the website and anything else that I think you’re also your subsec, and so that people can find you. And I’m just so grateful to you. Do you have any last words that you want to share with everyone.

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What came with my mind was immediately, I am the tree, and the tree is me, and I say this about myself, but really I just believe it’s true of all of us, the oneness.

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you know, the singularity.

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Yeah.

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that’s perfect words to leave us by. Thank you so much. Abanda, and thank you all for listening. Those of you that are here. Please remember to like hit the subscribe button, leave a comment, and also remember to join us in the naturally conscious community, because the naturally conscious community is the only community out there for human plant relationships exactly like these that we’re talking about.

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All of this conversation is normal over there, not just normal encouraged, and we do it all the time, and that’s the best part about it. So please head on over there. I’ll make sure everything is in the show notes so that you can easily find Amanda. You can find the naturally conscious community you can find me, and that’s it. For another episode of reconnect with plant wisdom.

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Thanks for listening to this episode of reconnect with plant wisdom intro on outro music by Steve Shuli and poinsettia from the singing life of plants. So join me, Tigrilla Gardenia and my plant collaborators next time on reconnect with plant wisdom.