The Three Sisters

The story of my 3rd poetry collection

“Hermit Season” came to me as a bit of a surprise. I was in the middle of working on two other projects when I suddenly got a wave of energy and a very clear message from my inner self; “Type up what you’ve been writing for the last two years. Don’t ignore this inner work.” In truth, I had been planning to ignore the work I’d be writing, thinking of it less as poetry and more as little conversations I was having with myself. But the energy doesn’t lie, so I so went upstairs, got out my notebooks, and began to curate a collection from the mess of visions, dreams, and meditations. It came together much faster than I expected, and with a great deal of ease.

This collection is a series of poems and visions I wrote during, what I lovingly call, my Hermit Season. After the death of my father in 2021, I found myself exhausted and incapable of keeping up with friends or chores or teaching. I spent months resting and recovering from everything that had gone down for the past several years (the pandemic, a challenging career shift, moving, my partners’ parent’s deaths).

I have been studying Celtic druidry and shamanism for many years, in addition to being a Unitarian Universalist spiritual director.  One of my primary spiritual practices is connecting with my internal guides through deep meditation, many of whom come to me in the form of animals or ancestors. Much like my first collection, “Secrets & Stars”, this collection was written in collaboration with those guides.

The Three Sisters 

As I finished “Hermit Season,” I realized I had completed a kind of accidental trilogy. When I look at my three books together, a larger narrative began to form. Each collection has its own narrator of course, but the narrators share a history, like siblings or the archetypical developmental stages of the self.

“Secrets and Stars” is the Maiden, full of magical thinking about love, driven by lust and a desire to be completely consumed by passion. She must find ways to break free of the need to please her parents, to win her father’s affection through repeating that pattern in her love life. Her lesson is to choose herself in the end. Though it’s only mentioned a couple times, this book is also about sobriety, and the ways we must completely upend our identities and begin again. 

“Bread Sex Trees” is the Mother, wrestling with the inevitable loss of freedom that comes with commitment and caregiving. But also finding the real joys of creating family, mothering, partnering, and finding home, in both literal and metaphorical ways. This book was written in a season of profound personal and collective grief, and speaks to parent death, the pandemic, and that time when so many terrible things were happening that any singular event couldn’t fully be processed. 

“Hermit Season” is the Mage, turning inward for wisdom and reassurance. Our narrator has gone through a lot and returned home with some wounds that need to be healed through rest and self-acceptance. This book is a conversation between the narrator and her inner guides, who show up as ancestors, animals, seasons, memories, and dreams, to remind her that simply existing is enough sometimes. 

All three collections are rooted in a deep love of the world, of animals, nature, and the infinite hope I have for human beings. They each try to address the main themes of my own life; how to love myself as well as others, how to be an adult, how to parent well without losing my own identity as a creative and philosopher, how to stay sober, how to make positive changes in the world, and how can I live with the agony of only having this singular form while being able to see so many paths and ways to live. 

This is why I write; to live as many lives as possible in this one life. To love as many people as I can with this limited time. To know myself as deeply as possible, and to somehow make other people feel less alone in the Universe.   

In which season do you find yourself these days? Do you need permission to rest? What would a Hermit Season look like for you? What do you think comes after?