Let’s Grow Baby
Email sent 1.1.25 | 2 years 21 days
Hello fellow Fairies and Wood Nymphs,
We did it!! The biggest mouth in the house had the staggeringly fantastic honor of speaking with one of the biggest mouths out there. CNN and Miles and OMG!
CLICK IMAGE TO READ FULL CNN STORY!
Never mind the bubble up feelings of complicated joy vs guilt when it comes to conversations about the death of our beautiful boy, because we worked hard for this press and we are so very honored and elated to share.
Has it been nearly impossible to see our name, story and photo in print? Nearly impossible to still process that this, this, has happened to us? Of course. Thoughts of denial cross my mind and catches my breath at least once a day, like a little animal skittery by just out of view.
But it happened and here we are and here it is. The mountaintop I was hoping for, climbed blindfolded with cold, bare and broken feet. Give my shaky hands the mic, the megaphone, the internets and your gentle ears.
Let us tell our story in hopes that we can bring the option of human soil composition to the front of our culture’s zombie brains. Let us help in escorting you to the tangled section of our consciousness library, the dank and poorly lit corner usually only visited in times of great emotional distress. Let’s repeat this story enough times to enough ears that it may rise to reachable.
As a culture we do not speak of these unsavory dark matters of death and grief. So why bother discussing the logistics of our precious bodies when they no longer have a service to provide? A fine and perfectly acceptable stance to take, until of course, it happens to you. Maudlin conversations are not the new black, until they are, and you better have your dress pressed and ready.
Mind you, our goal is not to promote that soil composition, human composting, whatever we want to call it, is the best option for you. It’s just that it IS an option and we should be versed in what our options are, even prepare ahead of time if you're the preparing type. Free will is part of what makes us humanoids walk upright.
So here we are, 147 million CNN digital viewers globally, 117 in the United States alone, seeing our very human story of love and tragic loss, struggle and hope through what is now an official new funerary option. I can just see that shit eating grin on Miles’ face. Fly story fly!!
The hilarious part of firsts, with press like this, is reading the comments. The ghouls I called them to Izzy who corrected me as the term is “trolls”, a correction I refuse to accept. Understandably for every ignorant ghoulish turd spouting gruel, there’s an exponentially higher percentage of those to whom this article may have moved their thoughtful needle even if just a smidge, and that’s a win. All we want is for our story to help bring this option to the “easy to reach” part of our culture’s brain, in the well lit area of the awareness forest, far from the bridge trolls.
In the first hours and days after Miles’ accident, whilst in shock and rattled with unsatisfying shallow breaths, logistics had no place in our guts and our beds and bodies. Yet while every cell of our souls were strangled and suspended in what should have been a true sense of timelessness, the phone rings, paperwork is waiting to be signed, decisions need to be made. Seriously?
Our child. Our child. Our family. Our child.
Without a plug and play manual on what to do in times like these, our free as the wind mentalities were dealing with a hurricane that had appeared without warning, and we had to decide what to do with our beautiful boy’s body.
Historically, our family lives happily, in a doctrine-less life. Dwelling amongst our love infused people, residing peacefully in the absence of any ritualistic guardrails often accessed at times like this. We reside in a big ol star wars bar scene with our fellow non-dogmatic, spiritual and nature embracing witches and cheerfully drunk goblins. Letting love, good instinct and nature to rule as our guides.
There is no shaming of organized belief systems and those who embrace them. When there is a distinct need to be walked as guided, by all means take that gentle hand that reaches for you. Equally so, we did not want to be shamed for not abiding by systems we were not familiar with, especially while in our darkest hour.
But if there was one thing we knew, amongst all the things we didn't, we needed to honor our family’s gorgeously feral nature and we needed options quick.
Thank the stars we remembered about human soil composition. A treatment of Miles’ body that would best suit our family bones. So on a plane he flew to Seattle, the first of many flights in his new space suit.
CLICK IMAGE FOR OUR EARTH STORY
Self soothing in nature was Miles’ power move and he learned it from a very early age. Our stories of his toddler years, were completely incongruent with the peaceful man he became. From the ages of 1 to 3 our savage child emitted boundaryless razor sharp and loaded screams. Behavior that baffled even the “specialists” and all local eardrums alike. His vocalizations were a demonstration that Miles’ precious consciousness had an inability to fit into the confines and the pace of his developing brain, a pace and timeline which seemed to be set by a cruel goony from Mars or Uranus. Now that I think of it, it's most definitely Uranus.
Public places were riddled with toxic landmines of unwanted opinion. The finger waggers and self titled parenting police claiming we are certainly not raising our wilding right. Lazers of silent glaring disdain by unattractive strangers as Miles screamed and Izzy traipsed unaware, in her food stained fairy dress, through the grocery store aisles. I was desperately trying to fill the fridge at home or we would have chosen to stay in hibernation, chewing on gristle for a few more years.
Instead, we ventured out only to be publicly crucified because I couldn't get Miles’ vocal chords under control. His outbursts we learned, and the teenage renditions soon to follow, were part of his magic and part of the growing pains of our future wizard child.
We learned from these developmental years that the only way to soothe our savage little beast was to immerse him in nature whether it be outside or through the magic black box. In those early years, when frazzled far enough, with a car full of melting groceries so painstakingly purchased, we’d plop our untameable, short circuited, pantsless 2 year in front of the TV and hit play on National Geographic’s “Season in the Sea”. For hours, the ocean, the king of all dragon slayers, would velvet speak our beast into submission. Chill my boy, chill.
Miraculously and without much pause, this combo of nature visuals and calm narration would flip the switch in Miles’ brain and he’d soon John Travolta strut straight into the wooly warm embrace of the natural world. An unlikely couple, this disco visual with nature’s dignity, yet there they were dancing together in the waves with the seals and the movement of water. And there in the wild, he found his peace and continued building the foundation of his beautiful wisdom.
Over the years of steadfast love and trust, Miles grew into his own and the screaming found other places to hide or disappear depending on its placement in his development. His brain finally conceptualized that his frustrations were a valid necessity of just being a human, and collectively we were able to cast those timekeepers straight back to Uranus and embrace his pathways. Miles started becoming one with his nature and his nature learned where to find its own pace and peace.
Miles never lost that Travolta strut to the natural world and the ahhhhhhhh of arriving there. It was very becoming of him and a genuine fit. So when your very much alive kid talks to you about where he wants to be buried when he dies, you don’t really think this is crazytalk for a young man. Biological rhythms were so comfortably ingrained in his world and we talked about life cycles from a very young age. “I want to be zipped up in a mycology suit and laid on the forest floor” is what he told me. I am sure he hoped to be magic mushrooms and tripped on by many. He spoke with Izzy at length about his return to nature as well.
Following his accident, I miraculously remembered an article I had read months prior about human composting. Combined with the conversations we had previously with Miles, we were able to honor him in a way that suits him as closely to his own skin as we could imagine.
Our nature boy returned to his roots. magically transformed into soil and back to the earth where he belongs. For now and evermore, embraced by the infinite wild, there will be growth and regrowth with beautiful Miles.
As you would imagine I am ready to shout this mountain high, or whisper tenderly in all the ears that I can find. Let's get this option into the hands of the google gods, one story at a time.
I’m feeling thankful to the daily news algorithm that fed me a story of human composition so long ago and now to CNN for the current megaphone.
All we wish is for this option to be easily accessible for those needing to make decisions in their darkest hours.
If you haven't yet, please spend some time on the map on Grow section of Miles’ website. Explore all the places his soil has been planted, grown or added to the wind so far and the stories, photos and videos that accompany them.
And please, if you’d like Miles to join you on your next journey or garden revelation, he makes a damned good soul inspiration so just let me know and I’ll send you some soil. Oh the places you can go.
And when you take a walk with Miles in the woods and beyond, try not to hear this song in the trees while you’re at it
Big love, new years, giant hugs,
~ Laura, David, Izzy and Miles
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