Nature, Art & Deep Enquiry Will Save Us and Keep Us Human

Tracey Tee
Sep 21
5 min read

I watched The Life of Chuck with my family the other day, and was profoundly affected not only by the depth of simple, heart-felt feeling infused into the medium of film, but of the expansive message reminding us of our own personal wonder and awe. It was a completely psychedelic movie. No psychedelics needed.

As I cleaned up the kitchen and got ready for bed that night, I realized that our Friday night movie nights as a family, the books I read, the paintings I gaze at, the trees (and turkeys) I talk to, the studies I employ - THIS is what keeps me human and alive. This is what removes my looming fear of robots or AI or a total dystopian collapse. This is what helps me make sense of players on the world stage who are horrible or at the very least: downright confusing. It is the arts, it is nature, it is the ability to dive down deep into deep that keeps my imagination intact and my sanity palpable. It's so simple! Between The Great Mother and the beautiful messages we as humans try to share with each other day after day, how could there be any doubt that life is so beautiful, so sacred, and so absolutely, deliciously exciting?

All the other things...the darkness, the hate, the division, the violence...they are distractions created energetically to keep us from this luscious gift of living in Eden and understanding that have the consciousness to understand that we get to have one helluva time while we're here. We've been trying to remind each other of this gift for lifetimes through the arts, and through our thirst for learning. And Mother Nature has been here every step of the way, beautifully illustrating our own struggles and questions in 3-dimensional real time. All we ever have to do is look and listen. having

The destruction of old systems, old beliefs; the illumination of lies and deceit may be inevitable, but it is the trees, it is music, it is poetry, is it architecture, it is discussion, it is exploration, it is curiosity, it is flowers will save us as we march headfirst into the the kali yuga with a small spark of hope flickering in our hearts that on the other side is more beauty than we ever thought possible.

If you came here from my instagram post, here are some beautiful things currently keeping grounded and hopeful when so much just doesn't make sense.

I hope they can bring wonder and inspiration to you as well.

📻 Music

Fall of the Veil - the Moms on Mushrooms playlist, channeled and curated for the energy of Autumn 2025. (My daughter and I build a new playlist that drops on every equinox or solstice that captures what we think is the energy of the time. While each seasonal playlist stands as a capsule for a moment, they can be listened to whenever you'd like - perhaps even stoking some not-so-distant memory or remembering that can be applied to now.)

🐍 Deep Enquiry

SACRED ARCHETYPES — I am leading a powerful cohort of daring mothers who want to pull back the veil and sink into the stories, myths and folklore that have shaped the archetypes of our lives. Sacred Archeytpes is rooted in earth medicine, it is a seminal microdosing class for mothers, that asks the medicine to guide us through ancient knowledge so we can understand who we are, and why. It was always about our journey. It was always about our descent. ENROLL TODAY, if you dare.

📖 Poetry

Committed to Memory: 100 Best Poems to Memorize — edited by John Hollander (*Special note about this book and a special poem. My husband went to our favorite vintage book store and brought this home to me as a gift after a particularly gristly fight where we were both in the wrong. I forgave us both. :) I also want to mention that when working on this piece, I took a deep breath and opened the book to a random page, trusting that the right poem would present itself. I turned to the last lines of Dylan Thomas' famous poem Do not go gentle into that good night - a work that has haunted me since my college days, drinking bad beer and sitting on the floor of a dingy and dirty frat house, talking in the wee hours with rebel boys about poetry and The Man and how we fight against it all. )

📖 Nature, Spirituality & Myth

Ten Birds That Changed the World — Stephen Moss
To Speak for the Trees — Diana Beresford-Kroeger
The Comfort of Crows — Margaret Renkl
The Silver Branch and the Otherworld — O’Donoghue
Crows and Ravens — Franklin De Yampért
Sacred Actions — Dana O’Driscoll
Celtic Women’s Spirituality — Edain McCoy

📖 A Fantastic Book Series About An Ancient Time (I devoured all three!)

Inanna — Emily H. Wilson
Ninshubar — Emily H. Wilson
Gilgamesh — Emily H. Wilson

📖 Foraging, Wildcrafting & Homesteading

National Audubon Society Field Guide to Trees (Western Region) — National Audubon Society
Wild Magic: Celtic Folk Traditions for the Forest — Danu Forest
Edible & Medicinal Plants of the Southern Rockies — Darcy Williamson
437 Edible Wild Plants of the Rocky Mountain West — Caleb Warnock
Acorn Foraging — Alicia Bayer
American Indian Healing Arts — E. Barrie Kavasch & Karen Baar
The Whole Seed Catalog 2025 — Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds
The Encyclopedia of Country Living — Carla Emery

📖 Cooking & Food Writing

Mastering the Art of French Cooking — Julia Child
Sweet Farm — Molly Yeh
Nigella Bites — Nigella Lawson
Cooking with Cafe Pasqual’s — Katharine Kagel
Dining In — Alison Roman
Around My French Table — Dorie Greenspan

📖 Feminine Archetypes, Wisdom & Earth Medicines

The Heroine’s Journey — Maureen Murdock
Grandmothers’ Wisdom — Various - Synergetic Press
The Way of the Wild Soul Woman — Mary Reynolds Thompson
Seeding Consciousness — Tricia Eastman

🖼️ Art

I've been really loving art from the Renaissance era lately; especially art that depicts mythology and tries to tell the story of the Sacred Feminine through allegory. This is one beautiful aspect of the internet - type in a search term and let yourself wander! OR BETTER YET, play hookey for an afternoon and go to a museum or the library and devour images off a screen.
I've also been loving the bold and haunting works of daring female artists like Frida Kahlo. The older I get, the longer I sit, the more I see.