Growing up in a playful nature-immersive familial neighborhood shapes my empathic human experiences and passion for finding sustenance in life-affirming connections. I am aware that my ‘normal’ personal experiences are not the one truth for people, who inevitably face their own hard experiences, transitions and uncertainty that makes them scared, upset, and delighted. Our world has invited me to be highly sensitive, insatiably curious, and increasingly self-aware of our interconnected, fluctuating human emotions.

Where would I go as a child when I felt ashamed, rejected, dropped and lonely? Outside.

I consistently longed for respect and a sense of belonging. Like every child, I had an attachment drive and a need to be more and more of myself (Gabor Mate) In gratitude, my parents loved my siblings and me through their words and actions, but I did not feel understood. This is not self-pitying, this is self-aware. As a child and young adult, I learned to suppress my feelings and needs and disregard gut intuition. I learned to hide my internal experiences with the half-conscious reflexive response that “everything is fine.” Over time I learned this misunderstanding was deeply rooted in feeling shame for being human, someone who feels all range of emotions, asks questions, needs help, and matters because we are all uncertain, vulnerable, and imperfect. Feelings of shame, hurt, guilt, sadness, loneliness, anger, happiness, and fear reside in me and every where I have traveled – internally and externally – reinforce adults and children who are attuned to their bodies have the courage to say no and the compassion to be authentic.

Nature invites people to feel. To emote. To need belonging and a sense of being valuable

I also reject the notion that nature is a past time, a privilege, and strictly a leisurely pursuit. Nature gifts us with feelings and emotions the way it presents trees, caves, tangible rain, and unfolding interconnected relationships. Humans are nature. Our progress as a species on Earth requires we allow each other to experience the emotions we are trained to view as ugly, uncomfortable, and unwanted. Please do not try to fix or help me in the sense that you want to improve me before you understand. We only see an excerpt of each others’ lives and experiences. You do matter. Your uncertainty is certainly a vital contribution to our planet, for your optimal potential is a gift to us all.

I will not fully understand you or always agree with you, but I will encourage you to feel your truth and discomfort and tender experiences are worthwhile terrain to navigate together. I know people who feel they matter, are heard without being told to change, who believe their bodies are ‘in-shape’ through their messiness-making and sensuous magnificence can befriend their bodies. Our bodies merit self care and compassion, and when we can sit in our discomfort, we are making progress as individuals who can ride the waves with humanity. I practice self-compassion, meaning I feel and acknowledge pain and fear and shame, for this whole body experience builds my endurance. I do not want to have tolerance alone for someone’s pain, I want to build endurance to be with someone who brings his/her human grief, confession, reality. In return, I am reborn.

Time to practice scales. Publish long-held writings. save and release rejections. Creative visions need provisions! Be imperfect and nonlinear. Many times you will falter. Be proactive at your diligent pace. Be practical and pay your bills. To experience every emotion is to be really you as your are here to be. To be silent is a disservice. Owning discomfort is a precondition for self-compassion growth and connection. Dig and dig and as you excavate, throw dirt on your shoulder to heal. It is none of my business if anyone likes what I create. Whomever comes here to criticize is invited to create in his/her way. I will let go to do the creative work. Be uncertain but Woman, love, go!

Staring into the computer as I do right now is not reallly being, and I listen to this telling gut instinct. I have lived more fully: waitressing, listening to oral stories, sleeping under? within? embraced by the Milky Way, hitching a lift with sailors to Argentina, assisting UPS drivers, analyzing menstrual blood, cycling with a child from Yemen in Detroit, walked to hear women, failing and face planting and going, cooking with chefs in gourmet Danish restaurants, reclaiming a friend’s stolen bike in Portland, saying thank you, facilitating human-nature experiences with children, hospital bound families, and folks sleeping in hospice care, harvesting garlic, being fired for arriving with personal moving boxes, witnessing hummingbirds in their engineered lichen-nest and the Brexit referendum unfold in Manchester, embodying whole human presence with humus, growing in my nephew’s youthfully wrinkled hands, feeling constipated in the bowels and creation process. Smiling and slogging I am grateful the universe birthed me in its incomplete iteration as a co creator who can be messy and magnificent too. With a sincerity of purpose and practice I am ready yet never fully comfortable. In the end I want to be exhausted so I can’t get up. Know I am human. I am not ‘fine’ I will be unmoved in my will to live. Seemingly disparate experiences connects me with diverse people and organisms across scales and life stories. We are made of starstuff. Ya matter

I too experience uncertainty, fear, shame, joy, hurt, sadness, doubt, trauma, struggle, unneeded stress confusion, isolation, insecurity, humiliation, disgust, grace, abandonment, pleasure, wind, disrespect, gratitude, loneliness, engagement, warmth, healing, reprimand, self-compassion, bewilderment, awe, guilt, anger, change, impact, regret, exhaustion, attachment, conflict, loss, neglect, meaningful company, yearning, self-destruction, depression, ambiguity, belonging, humility, meaningful music making, contradictions, relentless aches, free self-expression, fierce resolve, indigestion, self-flaggelation, whole body sensations. One truth I have discovered is our feelings in gut, body and mind are far from trivial “problems”. Menstruation and emotions and a shared will to live are not superfluous, nor diseases but rather connects us as a human species. Thank you for introducing people and water and trees from all walks of life into my life.

Ubuntu is a personally intimate word: each being has inherent goodness. As an author and human-nature connector, I facilitate experiences for people to gather. People and living beings across scales are co pulsing, aching, creating, and those of us who are of service feel heard, seen, and valued. I can’t do this life alone. You’re here and welcome.

April 24, 2019

I am Corinne Gardner, a woman passionate about seemingly disparate ideas from human potential and ecology to weird life forms across scales. My questions and tender experiences are not liabilities, but provide vocabulary to more fully express myself and to do creative work with different people. Privilege gives me the option to be silent, but I I consciously practice being uncomfortable in solitude and with people. Discomfort, pain, and unease are biological preconditions to practice self-compassion. Why? I am wired to contribute and love fellow humans, so I must speak up so people who feel unheard and dismissed are able to live with an increased sense of belonging. I exercise feeling scared and curious. Trained in architecture, I invite people across ages outside to move and to listen to the veracity of our connected feelings. I created Experi-Menses, an evolving monthly publication featuring the experiences humans sense and feel on Earth.

Somehow deep deep in my marrow I am becoming. I am tuning into my self. not logging into the computer. I want to be in touch to be so full of my eccentric, seemingly disparate, intriguing self the universe has asked me to be a bird of paradise. a vibrant dancing and crumbling and dangerous and healing and desperately loved being!!

oOoh I see, universe, you gifted the world with my presence and you gift me with its unfolding expression. I can relieve myself of burden of ‘not being enough’. It is a travesty and shortcoming and disservice to not self-actualize with your teachers. Please love yourself and be compassionate. Feeling every emotion and pain and discomfort as experiences are preconditions for being compassionate and speaking up for the ‘others’

March 10, 2019

Birds rise and remain humble. Their songs are not manipulated, nor orchestrated. Their voices are called. To find my voice, I started writing. I am alive with you. you. you. and I don’t have a clue why we emerged from bedrock as lichen emerges on crust or treeside

Too often I step over invisible miniature lives, so called an ‘other’.  for example, trees and lichen are seen as being in the ‘external’ environment. It is safe to live narrowly. If I want to learn from wiser hands who make mistakes and suffer in vein, who don’t self-pity or blame, I must thank our bones, sand, lichen and story-saving hands. Today, I put attention to my two uninsulated feet and grind spices in the snow. Sun paints snow in earth tones. I appreciate my eyes for receiving light. Thank you skin for your persevering work. Belonging seems to be a cooperation inside Earth. I choose to respectfully touch all that resides inside this gifted whole-body experience. I believe in you with my whole being. You resolutely support life. You pulse flood laugh fumble rhyme.

Echoing birds – human kindness and ecological upheaval coincide. To till the soil means will we spill spices and cultivate such needed compassion. yes there’s relentless upheaval. Our lives emerged from the histories whose eternity precedes us. We choose to make the conditions conducive for each others’ lives. Fiction is humans are self-supported. Every time I run, I remember your experience right now enables me. however seemingly disparate we are physically, our interactions collide. Oh, I am moving and running as you type, or digest, as you ingest, as you curl into fetal position, as you exert pressure on your legs to stretch. When your body feels tender, in pain, heart break, or a confusing overwhelming experience, I encourage you to feel this and come into your full whole body Earth experience.