Daily Inspiration: Meet Linds West Roberts

Today we’d like to introduce you to Linds West Roberts

Linds West, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
I’ve been a lifelong writer, singer, and lover of story. As a little kid, I insisted my older family members and babysitters read or dictate stories to me that I would write (scribble) in notebooks. I also loved to sing and would spend hours making up little songs and melodies while playing in the yard. My family moved to Colorado from Alabama in 2004. In college at CU Boulder I studied French literature and Humanities and taught English at a high school in rural France after graduation. While there, I was inspired by the high school librarian, who offered a safe and creative space for the students in a community where domestic violence and substance use were daily challenges. I realized that libraries were powerful third spaces where art, community, and change could be incubated.

When I returned to Colorado, I earned a master’s in library and information science and worked as an academic librarian. At work, my love of story came through hosting events such as the Living Library, a storytelling event where marginalized identities could be shared and participants could be invited into authentic dialogue across differences. During this time I took guitar lessons and ukulele lessons at Swallow Hill Music School in Denver for fun. These were some of the highlights of these years for me during a time of hard work in grad school and my first professional library jobs. To navigate work stress, I started meditating through a Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction class in January 2016. It helped me so much to have strategies to navigate that incredible tumultuous year, personally and globally. As I reconnected with my breath and body, it became clear that I wasn’t living my life aligned with who I really was. I began exploring my gender identity and came out as non-binary over the course of that year.

Burnout struck me hard during the pandemic. I was spending so much time on the computer as a tenure-track college professor and not able to find enough ways to play or rest during these global crises. I found relief through deepening meditation practice and finding refuge in the forest near my home. I also bought a banjo in January 2020. At first, I was paralyzed by perfectionism and discouraged by how hard I was on myself as I tried to learn a new instrument. I found a wonderful banjo teacher based in Fort Collins, Saja Butler, who helped me cackle and relax through banjo lessons on Zoom. Playing music just for myself became a source of joy.

In July 2021, I visited Deer Park Monastery in California, one of Thich Nhat Hanh’s practice centers in the United States, for a meditation retreat. We sang a lot during the retreat and shared stories of our lives and our spiritual growth in small groups called “dharma families.” I found myself so moved by this experience and found local meditation groups in this same tradition, called Plum Village.

Yet, I was suffering from daily migraines as a result of the many hours of screen-time for work. My tenure as a librarian at CU Boulder was about to be granted–an incredible offering of job security doing work I found very meaningful. It was a difficult decision, but the health issues helped me realize that something needed to change in a big way to restore balance in my life. With the help of a wonderful local therapist, I decided to leave my job at CU just after earning tenure in order to take a period of personal sabbatical time for rest and renewal.

I wound up spending six months at Deer Park Monastery outside of San Diego. We sang every day before our working meditation time and often at other times, too. I felt so lit up and alive singing and playing simple songs with friends on my banjo. I still sometimes felt very shy about sharing music or playing in front of other people, but with trusted friends, it was possible to feel more playful and explore creating something together. I began to write songs and share them with friends, finding the same joy I had as a kid in the backyard singing.

While at Deer Park, a friend encouraged me to study InterPlay, a simple set of forms designed to unlock the wisdom of the body through playful improvisation using the voice, movement, and storytelling. Together, we co-created InterPlay “playshops” and offered them to fellow retreatants. I found these practices, along with community singing, deeply healing for the effects of burnout and the intensity of the pandemic. This friend and I later offered a long weekend retreat, “Riding the Waves” that brought InterPlay and mindfulness together. We extended this project through a cross-country road trip last summer and offered InterPlay playshops to meditation groups around the country.

In the past couple of years another friend offered to facilitate a “Daywander” for me and a small group of friends. This is one-day contemplative time in nature to explore an intention or question one wants to embody more deeply. I found this to be such a profound experience of homecoming with my body and the land that I also began to participate and learn nature-based rite of passage facilitation through the School of Lost Borders based in California, and their Colorado counterpart, Wild Mountain. Storytelling is a key part of nature-based rite of passage programs, where participants are given the opportunity to investigate and let go of stories that are no longer beneficial, and to step into new stories or identities that can help them meet new opportunities and challenges.

Through these experiences of the past couple of years, I’ve come to understand a calling to serve as a modern-day bard, gathering and pollinating songs and stories for land and community. These practices can help meet the challenges of individual lives and the many collective crises of the climate, and racial, gender-based and social injustices.

As part of this modern-day bard journey, I am co-creating Gather The Wild, an artist collective, with wonderful friends and collaborators. We are offering mindfulness, play, arts, and nature-based programming for individual and collective well-being and social change. Our work aims to help people reconnect with inner wisdom, each other, and the natural world.

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
This journey has had many twists and turns! In terms of wellbeing and health, work burnout during the COVID pandemic manifested for me through extreme vertigo, a form of visual migraine related to screen-time. These made me concerned about being able to drive safely and showed up as brain fog and difficulty sleeping. I have found relief through physical movement and time in nature, and hope that what I’m crafting of a bard life in this next chapter can offer a meaningful livelihood with less time in front of a computer.

This past couple of years I have been embracing new skillsets and resource-streams as a transition from working in higher education to sharing poetry and music and offering somatic, mindfulness, and nature-based classes, workshops and retreats in partnerships and with beautiful artistic collaborators. This has been an edgy time of trusting this artistic path and continually navigating waves of fear and doubt as well as waves of joy and awe.

As part of this time, I decided to sell my beloved cabin near Rollinsville to align my resources with the flexibility to learn and grow as an artist. I’ve been grateful to live more communally with friends in Denver this year. These shifts required me to embrace new ways of thinking and working in home-life and in artistic partnership. I’m deepening ways to create communication and trust in more regenerative models of life and work. Currently, my work with colleagues in Gather the Wild Collective is focused on a gift economy model of donation-based, sliding scale, and tiered payment options. We are learning a lot about what is sustainable for us energetically and financially and where there are sweet places of mutual benefit. These paths are not always clear or linear. I am so grateful for the wisdom and sharing of mentors and friends on similar journeys.

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I’m so proud of two classes I created, Writing the Self, offered to freshmen students at CU Boulder, and Storying the Self for Leadership and Creativity, a Massive Open Online Course on the Coursera platform: https://www.colorado.edu/ali/storying-self-leadership-creativity-specialization. Both of these classes are designed to help people connect with the incredible material of their own lives, to make sense of it, play with it creatively, and share it with others in meaningful ways.

It has also been incredible to germinate Gather The Wild Collective beginning in January of this year. Gather is an organization of guides, artists, facilitators and collaborators who co-create mindfulness-based classes, workshops, and retreats that make space for people to rediscover embodied wisdom, embrace joy, and find deep belonging in nature. Gather began from my desire to work in collaboration, where the spirit of rest and play can be brought to work, and, where the ways of working together are as important as the what that is being produced. The multiple meanings of the word ‘gather’ inspired me: to collect ourselves, to make something from pieces, and to gather in community all describe the intention of this organization.

Gather’s work addresses individual and social issues of loneliness and lack of belonging, disconnection, and burnout. Our programs are designed to reconnect participants to themselves; to let go of and re-examine narratives about our identities, lives and limits; and to listen deeply to their embodied wisdom. This is part of individual and community resilience that contributes to mental and physical wellbeing, helps release trauma, and embraces the fullness of life with greater trust and stability. Collectively, these creative and embodied practices contribute to social change. As participants reconnect with their true nature as wholehearted, creative, wise, and compassionate beings, they remember who they are and what they offer to the world. Gather’s artists, guides and facilitators bring expertise in mindfulness, mental health, education, dance, social work, outdoor education, writing, art, community organizing, and spiritual direction. Accessibility is very important to us. We are proud that our offerings are currently all donation-based, sliding scale, and tiered payment options.

I’m so proud of the two multigenerational playshops we’ve organized this year, with participants from seven months to 83 years creating improvisationally together! We have also offered a Gender Non-Conforming Playshop and a meditation space specifically for LGBTQ+ community and I am passionate about continuing to co-create these spaces.

What are your plans for the future?
I am currently a student in a Buddhist chaplaincy program where I see my work as an artist, facilitator, storyteller and space holder showing up through non-denominational eco-chaplaincy. I am sharing the fruits of my creative practices through poetry, dance, meditations, and music and continuing to dive into and embody the arts of bard life! I am currently piloting a nature-based accompaniment program of four individualized sessions for people going through times of transition and loss that weave these creative practices together. I am exploring offering an Intergroup Dialogue program in the Denver metro area to bring storytelling to one of the many issues where our area is creating social transformation.

Gather the Wild Collective’s recent and upcoming programs include wilderness retreats, online courses, and in-person Playshops in the Front Range for adults, teens, and all ages groups. As fall approaches, we are planning an All Ages Playshop and play-based election event in November, and a mini-retreat in December, as well as an online series, “What the Body Wants” to spark creative fire to creatively explore our experiences and desires through physical movement, storytelling, and vocal play.

In the new year, we look forward to continuing to build our programs in the Front Range. One program I am especially excited about is our “Listening to the Land” project, a proposed peace pilgrimage to sites of historical trauma in Colorado that involves community building, storytelling, and art and physical movement. This project is grounded in the spirit of repair and collective resilience through both joy and grief. I am excited to collaborate on nature-based daywanders and rite of passage programs next year, as well.

Organizations can work with us to customize professional development workshops, and individuals can also work with our team for one on one spiritual accompaniment and coaching sessions. We can also create customized experiences for weddings, memorials, and life-stage rite of passage ceremonies that bring laughter, connection, play, and art to a group or family setting.

Pricing:

• For individuals, by donation nature-based accompaniment and spiritual direction sessions vary, generally $60 to $125 an hour.
• Our community Playshops are donation-based and range from $20-75 depending on length.
• For organizations, our facilitator rate is $200/hour, plus planning or consultation time.
• Linds and the Gather team are happy to discuss additional options based on interest, need, and availability.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://lindsroberts.com/ and https://gatherthewild.love/
• Instagram: @gatherthewildco
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61557491233672
• Other: https://linktr.ee/gatherthewildco

Image Credits
Image credits: Christine Gautreaux; Cindy Phillips