More Inchworm than Lightning

Excerpted from Savage River Journey: Lessons from the Forest (coming Fall 2026)

Gretchen Martens, Retreat House Covenant Partner

Wild Spirituality Co-Organizer and Wild Guide | Author, Teacher, and Soul Doula

Like lightning, or bullets that fragment on impact, abuse, pain, and neglect scatter invisible shards we often carry undiscerned our whole lives. These fragments embed themselves deep in our bodies and memory, influencing the stories we tell our Selves and others about who we are and we got here.

It can take years, or even a lifetime, to locate and gently remove this shrapnel. And just when you think you’re finally whole again, another splinter rises to the surface, asking to be healed. Paradoxically, the more you heal, the more aware you become of how fractured you once felt. You may look at yourself today, barely recognizing the woman you were—like a Picasso self-portrait, distorted yet telling painful, inconvenient truths.

The invitation is not to erase the fractures, rather, the challenge evokes the Japanese practice of kintsugi, the art of repairing shattered pottery with veins of gold—beautiful not despite the brokenness but because of it. We cannot control how life breaks us open, but we can choose how we reimagine the pieces—whether the fragments of what once was become evidence of destruction or the inspiration for renewal and what you will become.

My Savage River journey became an act of alchemy, gathering the shards of what was and repurposing them into who I was becoming. Metamorphosis turned woundings and scars into a rich and luminous solder, intensifying my sacred inner fire.

For more than two decades, solo personal retreats to places wild and remote offered me the opportunity to dive deep into wild learning. Wildness acted as both mirror and mentor. Wild learning has shaped my spiritual formation and healing journeys in ways I could not have imagined or predicted. The natural world has an uncanny ability to offer the precise wisdom required in any given season. Sometimes that wisdom comforts, sometimes it confronts. Always that wisdom invites me to walk the edge of becoming—to grow into my highest Self, inch by inch. For that, I am profoundly grateful.

One warm summer afternoon, sitting on the porch of my cabin and sketching while on retreat in the Savage River Forest, I was visited by two inchworms. One was bright green and nearly an inch long. The other was small, delicate, patterned with lichen-green diamonds and a dark underbelly. I watched as the smaller inchworm began crossing my drawing pad.

Ironically, inchworms are not worms at all but larvae of moths in the Geometridae family, with 35,000 species worldwide. Without legs in the middle of their bodies, they move by contracting and extending, anchoring and releasing. Their journey may not be dramatic, but it is precise.

Despite her size, perhaps a quarter of an inch long, and the vastness of her universe, this tiny creature never hesitated for more than a few seconds before choosing her next movement. Her progress almost microscopic, no more than a quarter of an inch at a time, each advance was entirely decisive. Not rushed. Not frantic. Simply the next right motion, delivered with determination. Becoming is often less lightning strike and more inchworm.

The journey of change can feel long and arduous, and the last thing you need is more contraction—to tote a gigantic backpack weighted with unexamined grief, resentment, anger, shame, or regret. Freedom requires tending the subterranean basement of the Soul—clearing, cleansing, grieving, forgiving, discerning—before the journey begins. It requires setting healthy boundaries. It requires Self-compassion for the parts of us that once believed survival depended on silence or performance. And like all deep work, the extensions unfold in stages, inch by inch.

Like the inchworm, you must liberate your Self from old anchors that no longer root you—to unstick your Self— before you can grow forward. Letting go is not abandonment; it is movement. Letting go creates the spaciousness to say yes to what is emerging, to lean into the release from your old Self. Sometimes this growth comes as lightning—sudden illumination that splits you wide open. Sometimes growth arrives incrementally, as imperceptible as the movement of an inchworm, as you practice the gentle art of becoming.

As I watched that inchworm negotiate my sketchpad, I recognized my own sacred journey. From a woman with almost no sense of Self I had grown into a woman who intimately knew and cherished her Sovereign Self. The subtle process was faithful to my fragile, undiscerned Self who yearned become. Quarter inch by quarter inch. Lightning strike by lightning strike.

Lightning struck and I realized I had a Self—not a role, not a mask, not a collection of expectations but a powerful Sovereign Self capable of choosing differently and realizing her full potential. Lightning struck and revealed two paradigms that clandestinely shaped my life—I’m never good enough and I don’t matter. But these were inherited scripts, not truth. The Good Girl released her grip, the Superwoman cape slipping from her shoulders. Lightning struck, and I saw how often I had organized my life around powerlessness—not because I was weak but because it was the story I had been taught. The I’m Fine mask disintegrated and the Victim was met with compassion rather than exile, for she too represented a learned way of being. Lightning struck, and The Responsible One was finally invited to rest.

I did not reinvent myself. I was not transformed. I simply removed the debris from my past. I reclaimed She who had always been there, patiently waiting—my precious Sovereign Self.

Reflection Questions

Stories and Illumination: What invisible shards from your past shape the stories you tell about yourself? What inherited script are you ready to question? I’m not enough. I don’t matter. I can’t ask for help. Has lightning ever struck in your life—a moment of sudden clarity that changed everything; what did it reveal?

Integration and Reclamation: What cracks in your life might actually be veins of gold? What part of you is asking not to be exiled but understood? What debris might you gently begin removing to uncover your Sovereign Self?

Inchworm Wisdom: Where in your life is progress happening a quarter inch at a time? What would it look like to trust incremental growth rather than waiting for dramatic transformation? What must you release in order to grow forward?

Becoming: Are you trying to reinvent yourself, or reclaim yourself? What would it mean to walk the edge of becoming with compassion rather than urgency? If you trusted that you already carry a Sovereign Self within you, what choices would you make today not someday?