My Story

My journey led me to weave together my passion for poetic writing, holistic healing, and embodied learning. With degrees in writing and education and having navigated my own darkness through trauma, depression, and clinical insomnia, I’ve returned bringing courage, wisdom, tools, and playfulness to guide us home– to live inspired, embodied, whole, and expressive lives in which we are true to our own wild hearts.

As a child I immersed myself in music, dance, theater, and literature, finding freedom through creative expression. But in adolescence my life took a significant turn. Disenchanted with society and in search of a deeper truth, I left home and school at age 13 and raised myself living in the woods along the Potomac River, near Washington, DC. There I found belonging in nature and learned to live by my own rhythms and resources. It was during these years that I began writing the poems and songs that saved my life.

For 27 years, I had a thriving practice in massage therapy and spinal-cord injury rehab; I retired my hands in 2011. In 2012, I opened studios teaching music & movement classes for children. I’ve been a nature guide, gardener, performing singer/songwriter; I coached guitar, voice, and songwriting; I helped run the farm at Esalen in Big Sur, CA, and I managed Whale Song, a retreat center on the Big Island of Hawaii where we swam with wild spinner dolphins.

A poet in the schools since 1996, in Boulder, CO & Marin County, CA, I lead workshops at public & private schools, juvenile detention centers, women’s prisons, the Institute for Poetic Medicine, the Kennedy Center for the Arts, creativity & wellness retreats, and online for a global community of women writers. This past year I was chosen as the Trail’s Poet at my beloved Yuba River in Nevada City, CA.

My poems and essays appear in numerous literary collections: HerStories, Rebelle Society, We’Moon, Raw Earth Ink, Sad Girls Club Lit, Quiet Lightning, Tiny Seed, Aquarian, Avocet, Common Ground, Tiny House, American Songwriter, Creation and the Cosmos, Women’s Names and the Stories They Tell, and Aphrodisiac.

My books include Writing By Heart, Write a Poem, Save Your Life, and three poetry collections, Songlines, River Spells, Yuba Witch, and the upcoming Caterpillar Girl (Aug 2025).

Happiest in nature, I spent fifteen summers solo-backpacking and vision questing. I hike the trails daily and live with a gentle footprint in a tiny cottage in Marin County, CA. Summers you’ll find me camping and writing beside rivers and oceans. In nature, I find my true rhythm and my connection to source. May all beings be at peace.

join me for a workshop and
express the wild beauty of your heart!

Every experience in my life, from the painful to the glorious is the soulfood by which I learn and grow, trust and open. I have navigated my own darkness and returned with courage, wisdom, and playfulness to share.

I am mused by nature, synchronicity, & kindred souls.

Firebird written & performed by Meredith Heller