🌾 5-Star Review: Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer

[theharbourreader]

 “What would it be like to be raised on gratitude, to speak to the earth as if it were a beloved relative?”

There are some books that don’t just share knowledge — they reawaken it in you. Braiding Sweetgrass is one of those rare treasures: a weaving of science, story, and spirit that gently transforms how you see the world and your place in it.

Robin Wall Kimmerer — botanist, professor, and member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation — invites the reader into a slow, reverent conversation about reciprocity, kinship, and the intelligence of the living world. With prose as rich and grounded as the soil she studies, she offers both scientific insight and Indigenous wisdom, never treating them as separate threads, but braiding them together with deep care.

What I loved most was the sense of listening that underpins every page. Kimmerer writes not just to share, but to invite — into gratitude, into relationship, into responsibility. Whether she’s describing the quiet generosity of sweetgrass, the learning curve of raising daughters close to the land, or the intricate exchanges between mosses and water, each chapter feels like a sacred offering.

This book took me days to read — not because it was slow, but because it asked me to slow down. To read with ceremony. To think. To notice. To look at the trees outside my window not as background, but as neighbours.

If you’re yearning for a book that reconnects, recentres, and replenishes — this is it. Not just a favourite of the year, but one I’ll return to again and again, like a familiar forest path that always shows you something new.

Favourite quote:
“In a world that values constant growth, sweetgrass reminds us that the most beautiful things are those that grow in circles, not lines.”

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
A wise, generous, and deeply healing book — Braiding Sweetgrass is both a love letter and a call to remember.

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