Have I missed my greening? When Creativity Slows and the Spirit Goes Underground

I came to the Hudson River on retreat—because I was feeling a little lost. My ideas had slowed. My spark had dimmed. I didn’t know what was next—for myself, or for my business.

I’m in a season of transition. And I needed time to rest, to dream, to remember who I am beneath the doing.

The Lenape called her Muhheakantuck—the river that flows both ways. And as I sit beside her, I feel time folding in on itself, just as she does. I’m not sure if I’m at the beginning or the end of something. Maybe both.

The river moves with quiet insistence, slipping forward and back. I think of how it mirrors the soul—never fully linear, always circling, eddying, returning to itself in sacred loops. And I can’t help but wonder: is there still something within me flowing forward? Or have I begun to dry up?

Lately, my thoughts don’t move as quickly. They stagger sometimes, like old poetry with missing punctuation. My body creaks like wet rice paper—fragile, translucent, and full of memory. I am becoming the age of women who move into the mystery of menopause, into the desert of “what now?”

And I wonder, in the hollows of quiet afternoons: Have I missed my greening?

Have I used up the bloom of my years, the lushness of becoming? Is what’s left only the slow withdrawal of sap?

Then I remember Hildegard.

That fierce and holy woman who saw the Spirit not as fire or wind, but as greening—viriditas. She called it the essence of life itself. A sacred moisture. The soul’s springtime. She saw its absence as a sin. She wrote to bishops and called them out for their spiritual drought. “You have dried up,” she said. “You have forgotten how to green.”

And it hits me: 
Maybe greening isn’t about staying young or productive or ripe in the ways we’re taught to measure.
Maybe it’s about staying moist with wonder. 
About letting something still move within, even when everything on the surface seems dormant.

This past week, I gave myself permission to stop producing. I let the dreaming take over. And slowly—almost imperceptibly—I felt a stirring. New ideas arrived, unforced. Golden threads began to glimmer.

I touched something inside me that still pulses with life.
Not in the loud, flowering way of youth, but in the quiet resilience of roots.

What if greening isn’t gone? What if it’s just going deeper?

What if this season of creak and pause is actually the place where my soul concentrates its medicine?

This isn’t a drying up. It’s a distillation. A drawing down. A sacred remembering.

So I return to the river. I drink in the light dancing on its surface. And I listen, not for answers, but for the sound of my own soul stirring again.

And maybe you, too, are in a season that feels like slowing. Or fading. Or wondering if your time has passed.

But I want to tell you this:

The greening is still within you. 
It may not bloom like it used to, but it will root, deepen, and glow from the inside.
You have not missed your moment.
You are becoming concentrated.
Holy.
Necessary.

Let yourself rest.
Let yourself listen.
Let the Spirit water the places you thought had gone dry.

And you will green again.

🌿 Wildpreneur Field Guide: Returning to Your Wild Soul Truths

This is a practice you can return to again and again—especially in seasons of doubt, dryness, or transition. It’s a way to reawaken your greening force, to remember that life still stirs within you.

It doesn’t require effort. Only presence. And a willingness to listen.

Find a quiet place where you can hear yourself think—and feel.

Breathe. Settle. Let the noise soften.

Then, ask yourself:

🌱 What part of me still feels green?

🌱 What is quietly coming alive within me, even if it hasn’t taken form yet?

🌱 What is my Wild Soul Truth today?

Don’t try to force a profound answer. Let whatever comes rise up like water from a hidden spring. It might be a word. A feeling. A memory. A sentence that makes no sense—yet.

Write it down. Speak it aloud. Draw it in the margins of your planner. These truths are not goals or affirmations. They are remembrances—clues from your soul to guide you forward.

And remember: your Wild Soul Truth will change. That’s the beauty.

Come back to this practice whenever you feel the drying, the forgetting, or the longing to feel green again.

Let it be your sacred greening ritual.