My Story

My journey has led me to weave together a life rooted in poetic expression, holistic healing, and embodied learning. With degrees in writing and education — and having navigated the terrain of trauma, depression, and insomnia — I’ve returned from my inner wilderness with courage, wisdom, playfulness, and tools to guide others home to their own wild hearts. I believe in living inspired, embodied, whole, and true.

From an early age, I found freedom through creative expression — music, dance, theater, and literature were my first languages. At 13, disillusioned with society and searching for deeper meaning, I left home and school. I raised myself in the woods along the Potomac River near Washington, DC, where I discovered a sense of belonging in nature and learned to live by my own rhythms. This was there I began writing the poems and songs that would ultimately save my life.

For 27 years, I held a thriving practice in massage therapy and spinal cord injury rehab, retiring my hands in 2011. Since then, my path has blossomed: I’ve taught music and movement to children and elders, coached guitar, voice, and songwriting for teen girls, performed as a singer-songwriter, guided nature walks, grown gardens, and co-managed the farm at Esalen in Big Sur, CA. I also stewarded Whale Song, a retreat center on the Big Island of Hawaiʻi, where daily swims with wild spinner dolphins deepened my connection to source.

Since 1996, I’ve worked as a poet in the schools in Boulder, CO and Marin County, CA, and have led writing workshops in public and private schools, juvenile detention centers, women’s prisons, wellness and creativity retreats, the Institute for Poetic Medicine, the Kennedy Center for the Arts, and online for a global community of writers. In 2024, I was honored as Trails’ Poet of the Bear Yuba Land Trust in Nevada City, CA.

My poems and essays appear in a wide range of literary publications, including HerStories, Rebelle Society, We’Moon, Raw Earth Ink, Sad Girls Club Lit, Tiny Seed, Aquarian, Avocet, American Songwriter, and Creation and the Cosmos, and Aphrodisiac.

My books include:

• Writing By Heart

• Write a Poem, Save Your Life

  Poetry Collections: Songlines, River Spells, Yuba Witch, and Caterpillar Girl (Aug 2025)

Happiest in nature, I spent fifteen summers solo-backpacking and vision questing. I live with a gentle footprint in a tiny cottage in Marin County, CA and spend my summers writing beside rivers and oceans. I hike daily and listen for the paths — within and without — that sing us home.

join me for a workshop &
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 by Meredith Heller