Last week, I sent a piece of my heart into the world an article born from my rituals, my lineage, and the wild path I walk. When the response finally came, it wasn’t a thank you or a thoughtful reflection. It was a number.

An “AI percentage.”

A cold, digital metric trying to tell me my spirit wasn’t real. I didn’t receive the number but an automated message!

In that moment, it felt like someone had taken my carefully woven words threads of ancestral memory, plant magic, and lived experience and run them through a machine that couldn’t possibly understand their soul.

But here’s the thing: you can’t scan a prayer.

You can’t quantify the smell of cedar smoke or the way my great-grandfather’s stories echo through my bones.

You can’t reduce ancestral whispers, late-night journaling tears, and visions received in ritual to a percentage on a screen.

And no matter how many numbers are thrown my way, I will keep writing anyway.

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When the Fire Burns, Look for the Shadow

When something like this happens when someone dismisses your spirit or your work it stings. It’s supposed to.

Because our voices matter. Our words matter. And the act of sharing them is an act of courage.

But here’s what I’ve learned walking the Hollowbone Path: when a piece of writing, a story, or even a single sentence feels like a call-out, it usually is… but not in the way you think.

That sharp pang in your chest?

That defensiveness rising like a storm?

That urge to point a finger or to silence someone?

It’s not proof that the writer was wrong.

It’s proof that a shadow has been touched.

If my words feel like fire on your skin, maybe that fire isn’t here to burn you down maybe it’s here to illuminate what you’ve been hiding.

Shadow work begins when we stop running from the heat and start listening to what it’s trying to teach us.

If this feels like you’re being “called out,” good.

That means there’s a doorway here a chance to pause, breathe, and ask:

“Why does this hurt so much? What part of me needs tending, healing, or releasing?”

Because here’s the truth:

We all have shadow work to do.

I do. You do. None of us are exempt.

So when someone feels “called out” by what I write, I don’t see an enemy I see a mirror. And I choose to keep writing, even if my words are misunderstood, because they might just be the spark someone else needs to face their own darkness and discover their light.

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My Words Are My Medicine

My writing is born of ritual, of ancestry, of the Hollowbone Path.

AI can’t smell cedar smoke.

It can’t hear the whispers of the ancestors who guide me, or feel the pulse of a living plant ally in my hands.

My words carry breath and heartbeat something no algorithm can replicate.

So yes, I will keep showing up here at Wild + Steady, week after week. Now Shadow & Smoke!

I will keep weaving stories and practices for those who are ready to walk beside me.

Not because it’s always easy, but because this path is sacred.

This is the fire I tend, even in the darkest nights.

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A Boundary, A Blessing, A Broomstick

Not everyone will understand what I share here.

And that’s okay.

Wild + Steady is a hearth( Substack) for those who want to sit by its flame.

If my words light you up, stay and warm yourself.

If they make you uncomfortable, I invite you to sit with that discomfort and see what shadows rise.

But if you’re here only to judge, dismiss, or demand proof of my spirit?

Fly your broomstick elsewhere.

Because here’s the truth:

You can scan a poem, an article, a prayer but you cannot scan a soul. And if you try to douse the fire of a writer’s spirit, be ready to feel the heat.

I will keep writing anyway.

For myself.

For my ancestors.

For those who find light in these words.

And for the magic that lives in every wild, steady step forward.