The call of the animist child within

Dissolving human supremacy and how feeling deeply is a gift

I was an animist child. I had the felt sense that everything was alive. I talked to rocks (I still call them the recordkeepers) and made potions with wild grass. I attuned to animals and sang to spirits. I felt kinship with nonhumans and connection in other realms. But I didn’t inherit a worldsense of interconnectedness. Absent animist cosmologies and elders to guide me, I lost that magical animist child.

When I was young, I felt things that weren’t mine, including other people’s and spirits’ emotions, and that was really confusing. Somewhere along the way, I started to believe those feelings were mine, and I couldn’t tell them apart. I realized I was different.

I absorbed the language and intellect to seed disbelief in my felt sense.

I got sick, and later chronically ill, and developed all kinds of survival responses, including disordered eating, suicidal ideation, codependence, substance abuse, and self-betrayal.

I studied environmental policy, science, literature, nature, climate, yoga, mysticism, spirituality, etc. In my journey to make sense of it all, nothing gelled because:

1. The dominant intellectual frameworks I gravitated towards opposed or shunned my felt sense, and often required either/or commitment

2. I didn’t have the words, myths, and cosmologies of an animist worldsense to understand my lived experience

3. It was/is painful to be an animist child in a capitalist, patriarchal, white supremacist culture

4. I disassociated from my body and intuition regularly and often for long periods of time

Now, I am answering the call of my animist child within.

I’m realizing now that I was often circling ways to align with my felt sense. But, without the foundation of animism and so far removed from the indigenous knowledge of my ancestors, any progress I made was stacked against a nasty wedge of colonialism, appropriation, and perpetuation.

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I wrote this poem after an adventure with my five-year-old son. I was communing with my animist child within, too. I remembered her. The gift of feeling deeply—of knowing the Spirit in all things—reminds me that answering her call shapes the future we choose: a future held between lament and song.

song of the animist child

My son wept at the dead and dried up roly poly at the park
Bless your deeply feeling heart, I whispered
He covered it with a beer bottle cap, scattered a seed pod he opened and sprinkled
Crisp yellow flower petals
He watered the grave with his tears, this descanso for a bug.

I held him and he wept.
If we bring him home, can we do magic and bring him back to life?
No, baby but the spirits of all things stay

The recordkeepers and crawlers and slitherers and ancestors
The Land, too.

I held him and he wept, still

A garter snake hid in plain sight at the crossroads 
Of a sidewalk-meets-a-path-meets-a-concrete wall
He paused his weeping and we watched it 
Slip back to the brush, talking about the ways snakes move
Is it undulating or scrunching like a concertina?

He rode ahead of me on his bike, weeping.

At bedtime, I placed my outstretched palm
Across the span of his shoulder blades
I hummed a prayer for his wings

Knowing liberation might mean:
collapse, grief, hunger, yearning, pillaging, community, loss, division, humanity—or, no humanity

Knowing it may also mean:
ruddy feet, attuning to rhythms beyond self and sun, shirts dried by the sun, rainwater on lips, kin of all kind brushing up on each other, spiral time, delight in the messiness of being, marrow and bones and dust, breath, and constellations everywhere

Weep with me now for what we’ve lost, and for what we remember

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dissolving human supremacy

Animism does not place humans at the center of everything. We are a part of something bigger, and we influence and are influenced by rhythms beyond our individual and cultural cycles. Here is my working definition: the belief that all things—rocks, rivers, homes—have a spiritual essence, and the practice of ritual and tending that cultivates relational belonging and honors interconnectedness and agency. I am also learning how animism relates to Spirit (i.e., the spirits gathered in my body and the Spirit world itself)

Reclaiming animism is a process of acknowledging that:

1. Human supremacy is a lie that perpetuates violence, disharmony, etc.

2. As a child, I sensed this lie. As an adult, I am complicit in this lie. And, it’s not my fault, but it is my responsibility¹

3. I want to repair, and it is okay if I don’t know how or feel overwhelmed at times

4. I am curious about animism, but I am removed from myths, stories, and cosmologies that support this worldsense. It will take time, effort, and curiosity to reclaim an animist worldsense, and thus reclaim my humanity

Knowing that humans are not the center, that I am not the center, brings me deep relief. Knowing that the Earth is regenerative, despite humanity, and certainly in a potential future without humanity, brings me relief. But I also know that humans can do this differently. It doesn’t have to be like this, and I yearn for a different way.

I am working with a European animist wisdom teacher, Ro Marlen, to explore the animist traditions of my ancestral lineages and to engage in open, cross-cultural practices.

feeling deeply is a gift

With grief as a teacher, I learned that my capacity to feel grief mirrors my capacity to feel joy. In other words, I cannot feel intense joy or love without also feeling intense grief or sadness (not necessarily all at once). This includes feelings for Land, all kin, and other people. I was shamed for this as a child and young adult: I was told I was unrealistic, idealistic, out of touch, emotional, sensitive, and superstitious.

Without words, myths, and cosmologies of an animist worldsense, I couldn’t hold what I felt.

It was a burden to feel so deeply. But I have reclaimed some of what was lost. My animist child has begun to thaw, and my capacity has grown. I am exploring liminality, collapse awareness, grief tending, ancestral tending, relationship with Land, relational belonging, ritual, and more.

I am not offering answers, fixes, solutions, either/or statements, or blanket statements on how to “heal your life.” This is a deeply personal process, and I have found that those things don’t exist. However, I believe your inner animist child, the one who feels deeply with abandon, knows pathways to healing. Here is a gentle suggestion for a ritual to commune with them:

spellcast: tend your inner animist child

Let yourself really feel the gravity of where we are as a species. Nature may be the conduit that helps you commune with them, or maybe find somewhere else you feel safe enough. Listen for the call of the immortal child² within who:

• Notices the world around you with intense focus and devotion

• Is saddened and amazed by the dying and living of everything

• Is confused by the grown-ups around them

• Gets swept away in moments

• Practices radical presence naturally

• Sees beauty everywhere

• Deeply feels what is unjust or unfair in the world

Meet the inner animist child who will look into the eyes of another being and see a universe, and also see themselves. Sit with them, ask for forgiveness. Make them a snack they’ll love, and listen. If you’re invited, weave a spell together.

1. This phrase is attributed to Ro Marlen, and much of this post is inspired by her teachings and guidance.

2. According to Ro Marlen, the rebirth of the immortal child births the immortal sage.