Nature Therapy + Nature Writing
Connect with the natural world for wellbeing
02/12/2026
You may have heard the saying that time is money, which is a great capitalist idiom to make sure that you aren’t wasting time being unproductive when you could be making money. But what about the opposite? Money is time. Which means that in order to make money, you need to invest time. And time is a commodity you can never get back. Time is our most precious resource. It allows us the ability to do the things we love that bring us joy. Most people want to make money so that they have more free time. But that’s the conundrum because making money uses up time. Henry David Thoreau famously wrote in Walden regarding cost and value, “The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.”
Read more at OurUncertainFuture.com or link in bio
02/06/2026
So in terms of choosing our own adventure, we landed on the best financial outcome for where we stand right now in 2026. If the time ever comes to sell the off-grid place down the road, we may wish we had gone with something more traditional that’s easier to unload and likely appreciates faster. Unless, of course, off-grid continues to become more desirable and even… necesarry. This is something the AI pointed out without prompting:
"Off-grid infrastructure provides resilience against energy price volatility, grid failures, and economic disruptions. The 2021 Texas winter storm demonstrated grid vulnerability; rising electricity costs throughout the 2020s stressed household budgets nationwide. Off-grid households remain largely insulated from these shocks. Combined with minimal debt exposure, this creates antifragility—the ability to benefit from disorder and uncertainty rather than suffer from it."
Read the while article to see why we made the right choice or decide for yourself at ouruncertainfuture.com or link in bio for Our Uncertain Future
01/20/2026
Over five years later, the verdict is now clear: it was an accidentally savvy move that has already paid for itself three times over.
Snow finally came to the Mesa. The lack of precipitation this winter (across the country, I heard) is beyond disconcerting. When I moved here just 20 years ago, winters were consistently colder and snowier. It's weird to be warm in the winter. If this is happening in such a short time, what is our trajectory? How do we prepare?
01/06/2026
20 months later we are finally moved into the extension. There are bits that will need to wait until spring to complete like the greenhouse bed and exterior but we're in the room! We went from a tiny home to a regular sized home. I now have a full size kitchen with a dining table and don't have to eat on the couch anymore! This extension was built with only our muscles and willingness to learn step by step. It is a testament to what can be done when you put your will into something. And it took a lot of heart. Sometimes I was so stressed with all that had to be done and we had to think of only the next step. It's hard to believe it's actually real. It feels amazing. Eric has requested no more house projects for a while. Fair.
12/31/2025
This year I went all in on my Substack that I write with my husband I didn't set a resolution to do so, but I felt compelled each and every week to write about living off grid, sustainability, slow living, collapse, nature connections, ritual, localism, minimalism and anti-consumerism. It's been like a calling to put my gift for gab into a subject I'm passionate about, living in a reciprocal relationship with the Earth. I want everyone to know that there is a different way. You don't have to grind your way into retirement. You don't have to buy more or achieve more to be happier. Actually, the opposite is true. Less is more.
Anyway, I plan to continue my consistency in 2026 and keep writing what I know from my life experiences doing my best to live a full and loving life with a small footprint. I expect 2026 will be filled with inspiration and fodder for new newsletters. I hope you might consider joining us if you haven't already and subscribe at www.OurUncertainFuture.com
Link in bio
12/19/2025
Here are a multitude of ways that you can ritualize the change of seasons including, creating an altar, harnessing your creativity with a writing class, practicing a ceremony, listening to season-inspired music, yoga nidra and reading insights. I hope at least one of these things inspires you.
Link in bio or at OurUncertainFuture.com
12/07/2025
This week, we are so grateful that Johanna (yes, same name, different person) shared her writing with us on rest and ways to rest during this often hectic time of year. For more of her writing, visit her beautiful Substack LIVING REST and subscribe.
When I connected with Stockholm-based yoga teacher and energy healer Johanna Andersson, I was excited to find someone who advocated for rest.
In the northern hemisphere as the living world around us turns inward and seeks restful hibernation and dark quietude, humans are running around shopping and planning events. There is an obvious disconnect.
Link to Our Uncertain Future in bio to read
11/28/2025
Everyday I am grateful for this amazing planet I get to live this lifetime on. Her mountains, oceans, forests, canyons, lakes, rivers, plant medicine, deserts, all the living beings I share this place with. Including the incredible diversity of animals, especially the ones I am closest to, my friends and family. Grateful for the home Earth helped me build. Grateful for my body Earth helped create. Grateful for the way Earth feeds my body, my heart, my joy, my love. I am nothing without her, The Great Mother. No amount of gratitude can honor her but I'll do my best everyday to try.
11/26/2025
Because it's not that simple. How do we reconcile the spirit of Thanksgiving--friends, family, gratitude, good food, harvest meal-- with the historical context--colonization, genocide, environmental impact? I wrote about how I struggle with this tension and my attempts to resolve it in the latest Substack newsletter at Our Uncertain Future. Link in bio.
11/24/2025
What stories does your body hold and long to tell? What somatic messages are waiting to be revealed within you? Movement is an underutilized creative portal. Writing from the body instead of the head frees us from blocks that often get in the way of our true voice. In this four-week series, we will blend gentle yoga and mindful journaling, designed to help you access creative flow through your body and your pen. Each session begins with setting an intention through breath and guided meditation followed by yoga postures sequenced to align with the class theme. After, we will take time for prompted free writing and end with a long relaxation in savasana for integration. Suitable for all levels with no experience in yoga or writing required. Reconnect with embodied wisdom and unlock your creativity in a welcoming space. Leave feeling inspired, restored and deeply attuned.
$75 for the entire series. Must register in advance and spots are limited. Begins Sunday, January 4th.
Johanna DeBiase is a writer and yoga instructor living in Taos, New Mexico. She is the author of the fabulist novella Mama and the Hungry Hole (Wordcraft of Oregon, 2015) and the poetry chapbook Gestation (Finishing Line Press, 2020). With an MFA in Creative Writing, she has taught writing for over two decades to people across the country, including at the Taos Writers Conference. She has guided yoga classes for over ten years, currently at Aurafitness and Ojo Caliente Mineral Springs.
11/21/2025
At Our Uncertain Future, we write about our lifestyle off the grid to show people there is another way. We bought our off-grid fixer upper in cash and paid it off within a couple of years. Buying cheap land and putting an off-grid tiny home and some solar panels on it is one way to lower your housing costs and free up your life. But this isn’t the only way. In fact, you can quit your job right now and live for free.
If you feel trapped in a job you hate but don't know how to get out of it in this economy and pay your high rent, I have a few solutions for you.
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Bio: Johanna DeBiase is the author of Mama & the Hungry Hole (Wordcraft of Oregon, 2015). She writes from New Mexico where she is spellbound by the energy vortex of Taos Mountain. Originally from New York, she earned her BA in Literature and Creative Writing from Bard College and her MFA in Creative Writing from Goddard College. Her creative work—including short stories, flash fiction and video poems— has appeared in Hayden’s Ferry Review, Portland Review, Atticus Review, Monkeybicycle, Queen Mob’s Tea House, Convergence and Prick of the Spindle, among others. When she is not writing, she teaches yoga, produces the podcast Yoga for Writing, sells vintage clothing, travels the world and cooks vegetarian food for her daughter and husband.
Artist Statement: A lifelong feminist, I write about women and their role in society. Women straddle the line between vulnerable and strong. We are smaller, make less money and have less power than men, but we give birth, raise children and embody beauty and sexual influence. This balance can often be difficult to uphold, and women end up negotiating with reality in various ways, both positive and negative. As a result, my writing is often surreal, focusing on dreams and myths, where we go to work through life’s mysteries.
I also write about nature, though I don’t think this subject is so different from that of women. Nature is the feminine/yin aspect of our world. Women and nature have many parallels in the way they are devalued and revered simultaneously. While my writing evokes a keen sense-of-place, my substories tend to stress current environmental issues. Organically, humans and the earth are mutually integrated, though we often forget our codependency. As the decimation of our planet continues irresponsibly in full force, I seek to draw out and reveal this interconnectedness in my work.
BTW: DeBiase is Italian and pronounced: di-bi-ä’-zi.
