Coming out of hiding
Grief, and pleasure. How do these states of being weave together, inform each other? How are they in relationship?
I’ve started offering Forest Therapy at a senior living community. We sit together on the third floor terrace, along with some small trees and plants in contained gardens. There’s a rock fountain in the middle that hasn’t been turned on yet for the season. There are sounds of all kinds - a breeze blowing through the leaves, cars, ambulances. We hear the clink…clink of a flag waving against the pole. Sometimes, birds stop by.
On my most recent visit, we listened to the world around us, felt the air moving over our skin, and smelled the scents carried by the breeze. Then, we shared what we were noticing. One elder (I’ll call him Sam) spoke about his deep love for trees and plants. Sam told us his grandfather was Native, and had taught him reverence and respect for these beings. Sam also told us about trees being cut down to widen a road nearby; the thought caused him visible grief.
After some time sitting with the plants and rocks, and with everything that stirred inside us, we came together for tea. Mixed and brewed just that morning, it included lemon balm, a kind and gentle plant. Sam inhaled deeply over the dark amber liquid, and smiled. He shared that years before, he and his wife had collected wild lemon balm, and then planted them at their home. This plant and others had been good friends to him. The memories of his wife, their beloved plant friends, and their shared relationship with Gaia (as he names Her/Them), came right into our circle, and settled in.
As we drank our tea, Sam told us that since moving into the community, he usually hid in his room. The chance to spend time outside had called to him, and he decided to join us. Now, he planned to join in more activities there. We created space and time for both grief and pleasure, and offered a welcoming for whatever needed to arise.
Being in relationship with the larger world reminds us that we are not separate from each other. This is true in our material, biological being: our bones and blood and breath and skin are ongoing-ly made up of and from the world around us. And also, the beings we’re in relationship with live inside us, become part of who we are. When Sam smelled and tasted lemon balm, he was right back home with his wife, both alive and well and cultivating relationships with this plant, and with the world around them.
This space for joy, sorrow, contentment, and grief can weave us back in when our threads have loosened from the larger fabric of life. This is what relationships are - they’re the ways we sew and knot ourselves to each other.
There’s a dominant/capitalist impulse (actually a necessity within this system) to “throw away.” Capitalism is built upon the idea that humans and others are here for a particular use, and once consumed or no longer “productive”, should be thrown away or discarded. We see this in the treatment of people that have transgressed in some way - whether against socially accepted norms, laws, or dominant identities. Large and violent systems see too many of us (plants, animals, fungi, and more) as resources to be used and then disposed of, or problems to be dealt with.
How do we upend this way of being? How do we upend systems that are so deeply rooted? I don’t believe we’ll ever be able to dig them all up - there are too many, and they’re too strong, too deep. I do believe, though, that we can crowd them out, by planting and nourishing other ways of being. And we don’t even have to make up these other ways of being! They’re here and have been here - we just need to offer them some sunlight, care, water, and tending.
It’s about remembering our relationships with the world, seeing our human and other-than human-kin as just that - not resources or problems, but as ancestors, teachers, and friends. Spending some intentional time with the larger world can allow us to get reacquainted with old friends (our own self maybe), and make new ones (perhaps a beetle, a slug, maybe a fern).
When we’re held in an intentional and loving space, we get to see and feel our frayed edges. We see those places where our self or another has unraveled from the larger cloth. This unraveling doesn’t have to be a problem, and we don’t need to be discarded because of it. We get to be welcomed back in, again and again. Instead of throwing our tattered selves, our tattered world away, we get to be seen and cared for as an essential and beautiful part of the fabric of life.
The trees, the lemon balm, the birds, and the wind know how to do this reweaving and welcome. They can help us bring our hearts and bodies out of hiding. We just need to take a moment to say hello, sit quietly, walk slowly, and listen.
