Heartwood

With poetic tenderness, depthful knowledge, and embodied presence, Heartwood will guide readers to their inherent belonging, interconnectedness, and relationship with the living earth. In a landscape of forgetting, this book offers a remembrance and a homecoming toward our own nature and interwoven humanity. There is so much to reckon with as we face layers of collapse; Heartwood provides a map, a prayer, and a path back toward kinship with trees, with the earth, with life itself.—Lisa Olivera, author of Already Enough and When the Ache Remains

In this luminous love song to trees, Lindsay Branham transmutes science into poetry, converts the scholarly into the sacred, and engages language to point beyond itself to a place of profound silence our souls yearn for. Through Lindsay’s fearless example, our own wounds become portals to a deeper intimacy with all that is. Bold and dignified, intelligent and sensual, this book helped me fall in love with the world again.—Mirabai Starr, author of Wild Mercy and Ordinary Mysticism

“A wonderfully perceptive and generative book, filled with invitations to open our bodies and imaginations to the many gifts offered by trees. A powerful reminder, too, of the healing powers of trees for individuals and communities.” —David George Haskell, biologist and two-time Pulitzer-finalist author of Sounds Wild and Broken, The Songs of Trees, and The Forest Unseen

“In Heartwood, Lindsay has crafted a narrative that paints nature as the center point of our healing. Woven together with a beautiful prosaic touch, she has magically connected the dots between our liberation and the centuries old knowledge rooted firmly in the mother of our existence: the trees.” —Joél Leon, author of the 2025 Gotham Book Prize nominated, Everything and Nothing At Once

“Lindsay's mesmerizing book is both a comfort and a call to action in a time of climate crisis. A map to guide us out of overwhelm and despair, and into a reciprocal relationship with the more-than-human world that is the missing piece in conversations about environmental activism." —Ruby Warrington, author of Sober Curious and Women Without Kids

"With reverence and courage, this book draws us back into the circle of life, where trees stand not as resources but as relations. Interweaving the rigor of doctoral research with the depth of personal healing, the author’s prose calls us home. With grounded, proven practices, she shows how the wisdom needed to restore balance in our lives and on Earth is already alive in the voices of the natural world." —Wahinkpe Topa (Four Arrows), author of Restoring the Kinship Worldview, Sitting Bull’s Words for a World in Crises, Teaching Truly, and Last Song of the Whale

“In a world full of distraction, cruelty and pain, many of us are working to engage with the healing wisdom of Earth. With Heartwood, Lindsay Branham invites us to remember our deepest ties to the planet we call home, bringing us back to our bodies, asking us to recall our roots and the trees who long to guide us. Her instruction is both personal and researched, backed by scientific exploration and spiritual connection that is earthbound, practical and holistic. Even in our most existential confusion, Branham offers reassurance: “The Earth has insight for us. The Earth is our source of resilience for the wounds we have wrought.” —Jacqueline Suskin, author of A Verse for Now, A Year in Practice, Every Day is a Poem, Help in the Dark Season

“I have personally witnessed Lindsay Branham’s loving kindness and vision for a transformed world. I very much believe that how you do anything is how you do everything, and I have no doubt that Heartwood is a gift to us all to widen our hearts with more love for this suffering world.” —Richard Rohr, New York Times bestselling author of The Universal Christ and The Tears of Things

“Heartwood is a radiant and deeply urgent book. Lindsay Branham reminds us that healing—of our bodies, our spirits, and our planet—is not found in separation but in relationship. Through sharing her personal story and combining it with her intellectual rigor, she guides us to see how trees can not only be our kin but can also be our guides back to belonging. For those ready to divorce themselves from the extractive, patriarchal, and capitalistic ways of living that have severed us from ourselves and Mother Nature—this book is the map for a new way forward.” —Anna Malaika Tubbs, New York Times bestselling author of The Three Mothers and Erased: What American Patriarchy Has Hidden from Us

“As the world literally and figuratively burns, Branham isn’t panicked or frozen. She is giving us a vibrant, vision-changing way to survive what's coming. And it requires a rethinking of everything. She doesn’t come with a sword, but a gentle invitation to learn to hear the wisdom of trees. If we follow her lead, we just might make it." —Jedidiah Jenkins, New York Times bestselling author of Like Streams to the Ocean, To Shake the Sleeping Self, Mother: Nature