We humans don’t do alone well. We confuse solitude for loneliness. We seem frightened of or oftentimes angry with those who choose to be alone. There is a weird sort of social judgment or blame cast on individuals who choose solitary lives. We ridicule and punish and call names. This feels like bullying by the afraid to me. But where does this fear come from? Why are we so afraid to be alone? What does this say about our culture? I believe this is where we have to look for an answer to this question. 

I feel in my bones that our disconnect with “nature” is at the core of this contempt for solitaries. I believe that if we had a better relationship, a healthier more nurturing relationship with the natural world— the planet that we would feel more connected to each other and be more compassionate and feel more at home in our own solitary individual skins. That, of course, would call for dramatic paradigm shifts. I guess it is easier to throw stones at the person who tries to extricate themselves from the complex cultural thicket that is our current contemporary world than it is to face our fears— our mistakes — to ask the hard questions about how we got to this scary place where eccentricity and creative solitude is seen as a threat — and strive to change. 

This is the sort of thing I ponder as I create my Counterspells and Lichen Sisters—alone but not lonely in my studio and weird woods…