How “Placed” Or “Dis-Placed” Are You With The Land You Live On?

Joyful Winter Solstice to you all! I need to thanks for one more yr of caring in regards to the work I do, of being on this article record, of studying what I write and taking part in workshops and different packages I supply, and of giving me the present of service to you all. After a really rocky yr and a half of destabilzing uprooting from the house I’ve raised my daughter in for 17 years, after 9 months of dwelling quickly within the great city of Forestville, California, close to the Russian River, Jeff and I’ve lastly landed in our new house close to Bodega Bay, in West Sonoma County, and my daughter is house with us for the primary vacation season after her first semester at Pratt Institute in NYC.

So I’m comfortable. This transition has been one of many hardest transitions of my life, proper up there with dropping my father after which my mom. With my daughter flying into her stunning individuated life, with my housemate of 15 years transferring again to the East Coast to be nearer to her household, and with my house now right down to the studs, getting gutted to be was a company retreat middle for my landlord’s enterprise, and with no different place to reside accessible in my beloved Muir Seaside, I’ve felt deeply displaced, unsettled, ripped from the Muir Seaside land that has been my longest intimate relationship.

I didn’t understand how “positioned” I had felt till I felt dis-placed. Feeling positioned snuck up on me slowly. Through the years, I discovered each plant that grows in Muir Seaside, ever blossom and when it peeks its head by way of the earth- each daffodil and the place they develop each season, each lupine, each subject of California poppies, each bare girl along with her naked brown stems that come up months after her greenery photosynthesizes. I knew each animal, the place the fox dens reside and once they have little cunning infants, each deer mama and coyote papa, each bobcat and whale that blows because it passes north and south alongside our shores.

I knew the place all of the edible vegetation on the land develop, and throughout the lockdown of the pandemic, we spent weeks consuming practically simply that. I knew when to reap what and which tree the owl sleeps in earlier than searching at nightfall. It occurred to me at one level throughout my journey to being “positioned” that this was a really Indigenous factor, one thing I had by no means had in my life or totally understood till it was ripped away from me so instantly and in opposition to my will.

I knew Mount Tamalpais as my sacred mountain father, who I woke as much as each morning out my window. I knew the Muir Seaside and Stinson Seaside ocean as my mom. I knew the bones of the animals who had deceased in Muir Seaside across the bone circle within the eucalyptus grove as my ancestors, together with the bones of my pets and the ashes of my mother and father that I sprinkled in my yard alongside the labyrinth there. I knew this land because the place the place I used to be a mom and watched my youngster develop from a toddler of three to a virtually 20-year-old now, come January 6.

In any case of my analysis into Indigenous healers for my e-book Sacred Medicine, I got here to comprehend that this sense of being “positioned” could be very Indigenous. Most of us have misplaced that medication, however I’ve been fortunate to seek out it, regardless that Muir Seaside is on the unceded land of the Coastal Miwok, and it doesn’t belong to my ancestors or me. My ancestral land is overseas to me, however this land has been house, regardless that it was constructed upon the tragedy of colonization. 

All of that historical past has modified for me now. My grieving the lack of my Muir Seaside house and its folks and land and the transferring on into grownup lifetime of my daughter has been as exhausting because the grief of a loss of life. It has hit me in waves that contract my coronary heart like I’m laboring. Grieving all this similtaneously I’m grieving the lack of democracy in my nation has taken my breath away. Simply as one should breathe after which push throughout labor, I’ve struggled to breathe when the contractions hit me, however I’ve been dedicated to pushing in my activism, however, as a result of now will not be the time to surrender the resistance of fascism and authoritarianism, regardless of how a lot my private grief would possibly take my breath away.

However little bits of sunshine are on their means because the solstice approaches for these of us within the Northern Hemisphere, because the darkest days come in the direction of us, with the promise of on daily basis being only a bit longer after the solstice. I at all times discover that promise hopeful, even throughout the darkest occasions.

I really feel the emergence of lightness of being coming into me, too. We simply completed unpacking the containers, transferring 17 years’ price of issues we tried to downsize, whereas additionally incorporating Jeff’s possessions. That is the primary house Jeff and I’ve moved into that’s not mine, nor his, however ours. We’re attending to play home collectively, to treasure hunt at consignment outlets and property gross sales, to seek out our personal adorning style for the 1870s renovated barn we at the moment are calling house. It’s beginning to really feel like a house, with all of mine and my daughter’s artwork held on the partitions, and all of our previous and new belongings gracing the hayloft and high-ceilinged important rooms that also have hoof prints on the baseboards.

However it’s unusual right here too. I really feel shy on this new land in West Sonoma. Like a brand new lover who doesn’t know the curves of somebody’s contemporary physique, I really feel awkward and unfamiliar in my new place. Though the land is much like Muir Seaside, being 1 ½ hours north on Freeway One. I acknowledge the vegetation and animals, the tidal flats that stream out and in all day. In Forestville, I used to be within the forest. I couldn’t see the sky, and I used to be removed from the ocean, so I misplaced observe of the moon cycles and the tidal schedules. However now, I’m so removed from San Francisco that I can see the Milky Approach from my new yard sizzling tub, and I do know precisely the place the moon is in its cycle and when low tide is at Dillon Seaside, the place my canine can run off leash among the many sand dunes round Tomales Bay.

I’m studying the place the tide swimming pools are throughout the very low tides, the place the colourful starfish get uncovered, and the urchins seize my finger with their sticky tentacles once I attain right down to caress them. Like I discovered to reap oysters when Jeff and I lived in Cape Cod, I’ll learn to harvest mussels and kelp right here and perhaps even get a fishing rod so I can be part of the lads who catch Dungeness crabs with their hookless poles from the seashore.  I get to know the tule fog that blanketed us for the previous month and simply lifted, permitting the temperatures to heat only a bit. 

Turning into “Positioned”

This winter solstice, I invite you to verify into how positioned or displaced you are feeling. In case you are displaced, perhaps it’s time to go on a couple of dates with the land that helps and holds you. Listed below are a couple of light methods to try this—provided not as prescriptions, however as invites.

You would possibly begin just by noticing how your physique feels the place you reside. Do you exhale while you arrive house? Do your shoulders drop while you step exterior? Or do you stay braced, vigilant, unmoored? The nervous system usually is aware of lengthy earlier than the thoughts does whether or not it feels held by a spot.

You would possibly start to be taught the names of what lives round you, in addition to the names of the individuals who initially inhabited your land. Not in a performative or romanticized means, however in a relational one. What bushes share your block? What tribe tended this land? What birds sing at daybreak the place you reside? What weeds insist on rising by way of cracks within the sidewalk? What’s the title of the bay you reside close to, or the lake you swim in, or the mountain out your window? Naming is a type of respect. It says, I see you. I’m prepared to know you.

You would possibly mark time by one thing aside from the clock or your calendar. Discover when the sunshine shifts in your kitchen in late afternoon. When the fog rolls in—or lifts. When the primary rain adjustments the scent of the soil. When the moon makes it more durable or simpler to sleep. These are methods the land speaks, quietly, consistently.

In case you are grieving a land you really liked—or a house that held you thru an vital chapter—know that this grief is official. In our tradition, we don’t usually acknowledge place-based grief, however your coronary heart does. You’re allowed to mourn a mountain, a shoreline, a yard, a view. You’re allowed to overlook a spot the best way you miss an individual.

And when you really feel deeply displaced—by transferring, by local weather change, by financial stress, by colonization’s lengthy shadow—be light with your self. Displacement will not be a private failure. It’s a collective wound. One many people are carrying, usually with out language for it.  Nonetheless, even inside that reality, a relationship is feasible.

You may sit on the bottom and let your physique keep up a correspondence with the earth beneath you.

You may supply gratitude—out loud or silently—to the water you drink, the meals you eat, the shelter that holds you.

You may ask the land, humbly, how do you need to know me? How can I belong right here with out proudly owning you?

You can also make choices to the land- flowers, songs, little altars below bushes or on seashores, the best way so many cultures do. (There are various directions for doing this in my e-book Sacred Drugs, in addition to in a weblog I wrote Sacred Reciprocity.)

Belonging to land doesn’t imply possession. It means reciprocity, care, and listening. Displaying up repeatedly, even awkwardly, even shyly, even not sure.

Because the wheel of the yr turns and the sunshine begins its sluggish return, could this solstice be a threshold for you, too. A second to honor what you’ve misplaced, what you’re studying, and what would possibly nonetheless be potential. Wherever you’re, could the land beneath your toes come to know you.

And will you, in time, come to really feel recognized by it.

Joyful Winter Solstice, pricey ones!

*In 2026, I can be providing sooner or later or weekend IFS-informed mentoring intensives, one-on-one with me on this new land I get to know. For those who’re focused on studying extra, simply ship your curiosity to support@LissaRankin.com. A part of the intensives, do you have to want to expertise it, can be land-based rituals that permit for a deeply somatic expertise of no matter it’s you’re calling in, letting go of, or dreaming into being.