A pilgrimage with Emily Dickinson & the beauty of being Nobody
A few weeks ago, after leading the Earth Dreaming Retreat at Kripalu, I took a solo pilgrimage to Amherst, Massachusetts to immerse into the world of Emily Dickinson.
Facilitating a retreat is always an initiation for me. It's never just logistical preparation; it's a metamorphic experience - a descent into what feels like a subterranean initiatory cavern. There's an inward turning as I prepare to hold space for others, and then an emergence on the other side - a kind of rebirth. This passageway very much reflects the experience many undergo on retreat. I am, we are, never quite the same person who began as the one who returns home.
In preparation for these initiatory experiences, I like to promise myself some sort of gift on the other side. Something to look forward to - a gesture of celebratory honoring.
So for the completion of this retreat, I gifted myself a two-day solo pilgrimage to Emily's homelands, which were only a little over an hour's drive from Kripalu. For me, solo pilgrimages are opportunities to dissolve into the poetry of place. They're a bit like an extended Artist Date, for anyone who's ever engaged in The Artist's Way.
Having spent many past years self-partnered (my favorite word for single!), I've learned the art of my own company - the delight of creating magical dates for myself. I love the experience of being technically alone yet feeling profoundly connected to everything: trees, strangers, wind, sky, the invisible currents of inspiration. It's a kind of spacious intimacy with the world, and returning to that always feels like a homecoming.
I'm not exactly sure when my love for Emily Dickinson awakened - sometime within the last decade. When I first began reading her poetry, I loved how her words felt like waking up in a dream. Are they a beginning? An ending? A door? A dare? Her poems are tiny portals that coax the subtle into form.
Then, during covid, I started watching Dickinson on Apple TV - a playful, modern retelling of her life (it also has such a good soundtrack!) Watching the series awakened a fresh reverence in me. It inspired me to read biographies, dive into her letters, and immerse more deeply into her poetry.
Emily was a seer of the subtle, yet she lived so simply. She spent her entire life on her family's land in Amherst, a property that in her time held nearly 20 acres of meadow, orchard, and birdsong in every direction. Her brother Austin and her best friend (and speculated lover) Susan Gilbert lived next door. She stayed mostly close to home. She loved to bake for friends and neighbors. She tended her garden and inner world with equal presence.
Emily was deeply spiritual, yet she resisted the strict revivalism sweeping through Amherst during her youth. While the people around her were making public declarations of salvation, Emily subtly refused. She wrote in a letter, “I am standing alone in rebellion; and by this uprising, I shall be saved.” Her spirituality was private and experiential, woven into her daily life and her poetry, not something she broadcast in public displays.
On my pilgrimage, I toured the Emily Dickinson Homestead - the home where she lived, wrote, and dreamed. I found her bedroom to be the most luminous space in the house, sunlight pouring in from every direction - her small writing desk placed directly before the window.
Emily’s bedroom
The guide shared that as Emily grew older, she became less physically present in certain social circles, not because she was withdrawing from life - she still saw the people she wanted to see! She simply had less tolerance for superficial small talk.
The guide felt biographers misrepresent her when they call her a recluse. Emily did see people. She spent time with those she loved. She simply had little interest in surface appearances, and perhaps less patience for puzzled looks from those who couldn't comprehend her way of being.
One of my favorite poems she wrote:
I'm Nobody! Who are you?
Are you – Nobody – too?
Then there's a pair of us!
Don't tell! they'd advertise – you know!
How dreary – to be – Somebody
How public – like a Frog –
To tell one's name – the livelong June –
To an admiring Bog!
Emily’s home
What inspires me most about Emily is the way she lived in relationship to her art, her inner life, and her loved ones. She tended both the profound and the ordinary with equal reverence. It wasn't an either/or existence. She didn't have to turn her back on her relationships to dwell in the depths, nor did she abandon her depths to show up for those she loved.
Only a handful of her poems were published in her lifetime - and most were edited so heavily they barely resembled her voice. The rest she kept tucked away in small, hand-sewn fascicles: bundles of folded paper she stitched together herself, storing nearly 1,800 poems in drawers, boxes, and hidden corners of her room.
After her death, her sister Lavinia discovered these packets and committed to bringing them into the world. Much later, scholars restored Emily's original punctuation, capitalization, and expressive dashes, allowing her true voice to finally shine through.
In these archives, we see that Emily wrote about fame with prophetic clarity:
“Fame is a bee.
It has a song—
It has a sting—
Ah, too, it has a wing.”
Emily's home held by an autumnal dreamdate
Emily's didn't seek fame; she sought truth. She lived a profoundly rooted life while tending an inner cosmos so vast it would take the world more than a century to catch up.
During this pilgrimage, something in Emily's way of living awakened a kind of permission in me - a reminder that a simple life can be a deeply fulfilling one. One that is both ordinary and mystical, family-centered and creatively alive. A life where depth doesn't depend on display, and meaning doesn't require a spotlight to be real.
We each carry worlds inside us - worlds that don't need to be public to be true, worlds that shape our days in ways we may never fully understand.
These worlds don't become more real through a critical and praising audience. They are real because we live in them, with them, and through them - and tending them is its own form of artistry and courageous inner communion.
Wherever these words find you today, may you honor where you are, and let the spirit of your soul sing in whatever form feels truest - whether whispered, shouted, shared, or held close to your heart.
And if you're feeling lost or unsure, perhaps a small pilgrimage of your own - across a river, across town, or simply across the threshold of your own bedroom - might help reawaken what's been waiting to be felt.
With love from Nobody,
Madeline