The first thing I want you to know, little One, is that the trees are alive in a way many people forget.

You are still small. Still floating beneath my heart, listening through the sound of my blood and the low crackle of the fire. But I think you can hear me already.

One day, when you are old enough to walk beside me, I will take you into the woods behind the cabin.

It will be early morning. The grass will still be wet. The mountains will be blue in the distance. You will hold my hand at first, then wander a little ahead, because you will already love the world and want to know what is hidden inside it.

You will ask me if the trees can talk. And I will kneel beside you in the pine needles and say:

“Yes. But not the way people do.”

I will place your small hand against the bark of a tall pine.

“Listen,” I will tell you.

At first you will hear nothing. Only wind. Only birds. Only the creek somewhere below us. But I will smile because I know the trees speak slowly.

“The trees do not speak to the hurried part of you,” I will say. “They speak to the part that is quiet enough to stay.”

Then I will tell you what the pine says. The pine says:

I have stood through many winters. I have bent when the snow was heavy. I have lost branches and still kept growing.

Do not be afraid when life becomes cold. Put your roots deeper. Lift your face toward the light, even when you cannot see it yet.

Then we will walk a little farther until we reach the aspens. The aspens will be trembling in the wind, their leaves making that soft sound like rain remembering itself. You will ask what they are saying. And I will tell you:

The aspens say that no one is alone. They look like many trees, but beneath the ground they are one living thing. When you are sad, when you feel different, when you think no one can see you, remember the aspens. There are roots beneath you you cannot always see.

Then perhaps you will look up at me with those serious eyes of yours and ask what the old tree by the creek says. The one with the scar where lightning touched it long ago. And I will sit beside you in the grass and say:

That tree says this. The wound is not the end of the story. Even after the fire. Even after the storm. Even after the thing that should have broken you. You may still stand. You may still grow. You may still become beautiful in a new way.

Little One, the world will someday know you by another name. It will call you the Glitchmade Goddess. It will speak loudly and ask you to become many things. But I hope that when the world becomes too loud, you come back here.

Back to the cabin. Back to the trees. Back to the old pine and the trembling aspens and the creek that remembers your quiet name.

And when you place your hand against the bark, I hope you remember what I am telling you now, while you are still safe beneath my heart:

You do not have to become anything other than what you are. You only have to keep growing toward the light.