In Case We’ve Never Met

Pull up a chair and let’s have a cuppa

I’m writing this at a kitchen table that isn’t mine, with someone else’s dog at my feet. Tomorrow I won’t be here. Next month I won’t be in this country. I am truly the Traveling Hermit.

But before I embarked on this quest around the globe, I had escaped real life and spent a decade alone in a little cabin in the Appalachian Mountains. I left to see how the resilience and wisdom I learned there would carry me in uncertainty and change. Home is now wherever I make it.

I’m an author, interfaith minister, and spiritual guide, devoted to seeing the sacred in the ordinary.

I bring my stories to Everyday Magic: The Sacred Ordinary.

Here are some of my favorites. Maybe you can see yourself in them, your longing or discontent, or a glimpse of what’s possible for you when you live from your own truth.

Holy Tears
This story is about learning to make space inside for all of my feelings. Being awed and overjoyed by driving the coast of New Zealand, while also consumed with grief for my dying dog.

Even Among Spiritual Teachers I Still Don’t Fit In
This explores my rebellion against external authority, what it means to me to be truly “sovereign,” and how it’s possible to belong, and yet never conform or “fit in.”

What Real Expansion Feels Like
When I spent a decade alone on a mountainside, life was easy, but nomadic life is much more challenging. Staying happy and centered while way out of my comfort zone was a real lesson in expansion and resilience.

The Car Has a Dead Battery, and I Do Not Care
I often spend weeks caring for fur people while their humans travel. This is a wonderful, but typical report on a day like that. Joyously hermitting in New Zealand.

Heartbreak on the Road: A Kerala Day I Won’t Forget
Sometimes sadness and grief just pile on, and all you can do is cry yourself clean. This was one of those days.

I’m glad you’re with me. I hope you like the stories, and if you do, pass them on to a friend. And tell me yours.

With love from wherever I am,
Lauren